"Cor! "Ernie said. "Who for — the Russians?"
"No, Ernie, not the Russians. An organisation much more effective than the secret service of Russia, America or even China; an organisation called THRUSH."
"THRUSH? I never heard of it."
"You wouldn't have. But it's there nonetheless. A world wide syndicate of evil men with unlimited money; a collection of rogue scientists, bankers, industrialists and politicians whose aim is to rule the world. The secrets of Trewinnock Tor are small beer to them — but it all adds up... They have been receiving all the information that Wright collected on micro film — either direct negatives or photographed documents and so on. And the film was collected by couriers who called at Sheila's booth in the circus. When they asked for a certain thing —"
"What thing? What did they ask for?"
"A black Porphyry pixie, as a matter of fact."
"A black Porphyry pixie! So that's why you asked... but, like I said, there are none. You couldn't make 'em."
"Exactly. That was to prevent the film being given to some chance customer by mistake. Sheila didn't know who the couriers were, you see, and nobody is going to ask for a souvenir that doesn't exist by coincidence, are they?... Anyone who did enquire about a pixie in Porphyry had to be the courier. And then they were given a lighthouse in Porphyry — with a secret compartment in which the film was concealed."
"Now it's lighthouses!" he cried, astonished. "Who made 'em, then? I didn't."
"I know you didn't. I think we'll find one of Wright's henchmen worked in stone; there's probably a wheel some where in the house or the outbuildings."
"Did... did Sheila know... about the films, I mean? She was in on it?"
"I'm afraid she must have been," April said gently.
The boy kicked savagely at the sand. "It was him!" he cried. "He talked her in to it! It's his fault!"
"Well, let's get on and get at him. Does that map..." She paused.
"What is it?" Bosustow asked.
"I thought I heard voices — a long way away, but quite clear. Could I have done?"
"Not here, not in this cave. 'Tis too far. Only place you could have heard voices from would have been the Keg-'ole itself — and I didn't notice too many sunbathers in there tonight!"
"Oh, well... never mind. I was saying: Wright thinks I'm in my caravan. He won't expect me to arrive for sometime. But if we could suddenly appear before they expected us, we could take them by surprise... and we'd have a much better chance of overcoming them. Then we could try and rescue Mr. Slate."
"Where've they got him, then?"
"Apparently he's in a cave –– some kind of storeroom used by the smugglers, I gather — right under the masts of the Tor. And they're... they're going to fix some explosive booby trap that goes off as soon as the door is opened — or when the sand runs out of an hour glass, whichever happens first. So when we rescue Mr. Slate, the idea is, we blow up ourselves, him, and the station
"That must be the old commissary that the freebooters used! There is a way down from the middle of a thicket just behind Wright's stables..."
"Is there a way that would bring us out inside Wright's grounds from here, though? That's the point now."
"Sure there is. Don't you want to try and get Mr. Slate out first?"
April sighed. "The assignment comes first," she said miserably. "We have to stop THRUSH, and that means nailing people like Wright. If we go for Mr. Slate first, we may be too late: the Wrights are being taken off in a submarine."
"But it may take time to get them. We might not make it. We may be too late for Mr. Slate..."
"Just show me the way, Ernie," the girl said harshly, "and leave the decisions to me."
Twenty minutes later, the boy was heaving at a square stone set in the ceiling of the passageway. They had zigzagged endlessly from tunnel to tunnel, with frequent references to Ernie's rough map, and at last they had hit a wider gallery in the rock which he recognised. In the fading light from the torch, he hurried to the end of a short cul-de-sac and began to search the rough-hewn ceiling for the trapdoor.
"Here we are then," he exclaimed triumphantly, "it's still here okay! Comes out in the middle of a ruined chapel, so we needn't worry about noise. When this place was the manor house..." He began to push at the stone slab.
The passageway was just short of six feet high, so that he had plenty of leverage. When April joined him, there was a shower of dust from the crevice all around the stone and it moved slightly. A moment later, the trapdoor lifted at one end...and then it was up and over with a crash that seemed to split the night and they were hauling themselves painfully up into the open air.
Through a wood and across a small field was the house. They could see through the lighted French windows the burnished hair of the woman who was crouched in front of the huge Devon grate tending a fire of papers, which she fed from time to time with documents from a suitcase open on the floor beside her. Wright himself, his silver hair as immaculate as ever, came in through the doorway, beyond which they could see stairs curving up in a gracious sweep. He was carrying two lightweight valises.
April sank down behind an ornamental shrub on the lawn, motioning the boy to keep out of sight behind her. Cautiously, she parted the spiky branches and peered through.
Instantly a bell started ringing wildly and the lawn was flooded with the livid glare of a dozen spotlights. For one frozen moment, she saw the THRUSH man arrested in mid-step, his mouth open in surprise, and then he had dropped the valises and leapt for the doorway to plunge the room into darkness. Obviously she had unwittingly touched off one of the alarms with which the place was ringed.
Footsteps clattered round the corner of the house from the stable yard. Mason appeared with a shotgun in his hands and stood at the edge of the lawn, squinting suspiciously out into the floodlit area. A shout from behind a hedge on the far side of the facade testified that Jacko, too, was out in defence of his master's domain... and then the voice of Wright himself was calling (April thought from an unlit upper window): "Out there, you fools! On the lawn, behind that bush at the side of the lily pond... There's just the girl and a man, as far as I can see. Get in there and get them!"
The girl had been unwrapping another of the smoke- producing pastilles from the packet in her bag. Now, before Mason or Jacko could start shooting, she lobbed it into the lily pond. As soon as the smoke boiled up, she screamed, "Run, Ernie! Run!" as loud as she could — and held Bosustow's arm in steely fingers to make sure that he stayed exactly where he was. A fusillade of shots rang out as the impenetrable screen mushroomed up and then streamed across the lawn before the wind. Wright, firing now from upstairs, and Jacko, using some heavy calibre revolver, were raking the blanked off area in the belief that they were stealing across the lawn behind the cover of the smoke. Mason was advancing cautiously towards it across the stretch of grass that was still visible, his more cumbersome weapon held in reserve.
April waited until he was some way past them, facing the billowing black cloud. Then, motioning the boy to stay where he was, she stole out from behind the bush on tiptoe and silently approached behind the chauffeur. When she was immediately behind him, she called clearly, "No! Back this way, Ernie," and threw herself to the grass.