I stood up to get a level shot, for I could not be seen in the pitch darkness. But there was no change of pace, no sudden rush. Nur Jehan, his lighter color showing just in time through the gray-black of the entrance, walked into the barn, gave me a casual Judas kiss in passing and strolled into one of the stalls to see what, if anything, was in the manger. I prayed that St. Sabas did not know his habits. If he did, Nur Jehan had given away the fact that I was in the barn.
A minute later the mare followed, sidling through the doorway and very nervous. She got mixed up with a pillar and an old cart shaft and let out at the lot with her heels. It was plain that St. Sabas had driven her in to distract my attention —if I were inside —from his own approach. He succeeded in that. The crash made me as jumpy as the mare. I retreated a little from the door so that I could cover the window as well.
Then silence returned, broken only by the munching of the horses who had found something to their taste. Instinct told me that I ought to be really frightened, that the tiger was crouched for the spring. I refused to believe instinct. I could not afford to. Panic was very close. I kept on reminding myself that I must not risk being wounded and helpless. St. Sabas had not the three days which he had spent on the punishment of Dickfuss, but no doubt he would gladly spare an hour.
At last I heard a scuffling on the stone sill of the window on my left. That was more cheerful. If he were climbing in, there had to be a moment when his head and shoulders would be silhouetted against the lighter night sky and it would be his last. My hand was perfectly steady in spite of the uncontrollable beating of the heart.
The scuffle stopped. When it began again it sounded like a slipping boot but was too high up. I moved a step or two back from the window to get a clearer field of fire and met an unexpected barrel hoop under the scattering of hay, which rustled as I gently extricated my foot. Out to my right a torch and a shot flashed, one as fast as the other — and too fast. I fired back to each side of the flash. There was no apparent effect. Six in the Mauser against three in the Colt.
I did not think I had scored. In the close quarters of the barn it was impossible to hear what the bullets had struck. Something long and light fell as I fired. It was one of the long hazel rods. St. Sabas had used it for tickling the window sill. My instinct had been right. He was with me inside the barn.
So this was the position he wanted, where a savage recklessness would count for more than skill and a club be nearly as effective as a firearm. Now that it was too late his tactics made sense. The spectral referee of the two chessboards said nothing, but I was within a move of mate. All that aimless rushing about had been most effective psychological warfare, destroying my nerves until I was ready to seize upon any easy explanation of it.
He had indeed wanted to reach the barn, but not before he had hypnotized me into going inside it. He was not sure, I suppose, that I had really done so until Nur Jehan, fetched by him from the open hill, looked for me and found me. Then the rest of his plan, the closing of the trap, came into operation. He had entered the barn crouched behind the mare’s quarters. I should have remembered the cows and the stream.
My one idea now was to get out. That was partly due to shock at discovering myself so obedient to the enemy, partly to sheer terror because I dared not move so much as a coat sleeve in case he was within a couple of yards of me. I sank down slowly and squatted on my heels, afraid even so that a creak of the knees might give me away.
And then Nur Jehan screamed. It was utterly unnerving. A ghost or the sudden shriek of a mating vixen could not have been more weird and startling. I jumped round to face the horses without any regard at all for noise or cover. What in the devil’s name was this loathsome ruse, and how had he done it? He would draw the line at getting under Nur Jehan’s belly with a knife.
It was not till the stallion’s second scream that I realized what was happening. The mare plunged out through the door, Nur Jehan after her. So that was the cause of his restlessness; and I had no doubt what had broken the inhibiting link between himself and the kindly creatures who played with him and tried to train him. It was the scent of human fear.
I dropped to the ground, streaming sweat. Mrs. Melton’s odd words came back to me: that the same fate was on the horse and the goat in the same place. I was near to tears with the poignancy of it. I wanted to live, as Nur Jehan would, to enjoy that fate.
“A fine foal, von Dennim, I should think. Ah well, in the midst of death we are in life.”
The panting, but still ironical voice came from the far end of the barn on the other side of the door. Under cover of the excitement he had slipped out of my half. The speed of my two shots must have shaken his confidence. It was comforting to know that he hated the threat of such incalculable close quarters as much as I did.
I was sure that this conversational opening meant that he wanted to know whether he had hit or not. It was a good moment to choose. One leaps at a human word when recovering from near hysteria. But I did not reply.
“They’ll be very pleased at Chipping Marton, the vicar and all!” he went on. “What a charmingly passionate child! Even a Gestapo officer will do at her age … Missed again, von Dennim!”
The whine of a ricochet contemptuously emphasized it. I had been fool enough to fire two more shots at a voice certain to be under cover. Four in the Mauser now against three in the Colt.
A needed lesson. I reminded myself how I had made rings round this famous Savarin in the fields of Hernsholt. I must not be bluffed. I must never fire unless sure to hit. I must escape to the trees, and I must use my brains to get there. It was not going to be easy.
His night sight was as good as my own. If either of us attempted to crawl through the area of dark gray on the threshold of the door, he was dead. Within the recesses of the barn no night sight mattered at all. Our world was black.
His preference for the barn suggested that it was not the first time he had fought for his life in darkness. But in the battles of his guerrilla warfare he was festooned with full magazines for whatever weapon he used to spray his enemies. He could not use that technique. Past experience would not help to solve his ammunition problem. So we were equal. A sound had to be very promising indeed before either of us was likely to fire at it.
There were plenty of little sounds if one listened carefully — some made by rats, some by the settling of rotten wood and mortar after the plunging of the horses, some by St. Sabas. It was difficult for either of us to move quietly. He was wearing riding boots; I, ordinary boots and leather gaiters. Three or four steps might be completely muffled by patches of chaff or dung dried to powder, but the next crackled on noisier debris.
I was sure that St. Sabas had moved away from the far corner of the back wall where he had crouched to speak to me. He had crossed the barn to the front wall. An absolute silence from that direction —no rats, no movement — suggested that he was lying down in the angle of wall and floor close to the entrance, waiting for me to try to get out.
I decided on a booby trap to distract his attention. Close to my hand were the remains of a stable door, hanging from one hinge and swaying and creaking in the slightest breath of wind. I lifted a truss of hay and balanced it on the door. On the truss I laid my torch and covered it with more hay. I switched it on. No trace of light showed.
Then I moved on hands and knees to the angle of wall and floor on my side of the doorway. The wind or even a heavy footstep ought to bring the whole teetering pile down and give me a moment to leap out of the barn while St. Sabas charged the light or shot at it.
There we lay, separated from each other by fifteen feet of lighter space into which neither dared venture. He was there, all right. I once heard him draw a deep breath. I was very tempted to risk a shot parallel to the wall and six inches above the floor. But if I missed or only wounded, exactly the same shot in reverse would get me.