Keith moved swiftly to a shelf. His moment of revulsion had passed. He felt a great exhilaration as he took down two large hemp bags of salt. These, too, were lowered gently into the tank. Then, very carefully, they replaced the flagstone.
They braced themselves. Vogel patted his tunic pocket to assure himself that the Luger and ammunition clips were there. Keith whispered: “Remember—we’re puzzled. We’re annoyed…”
Vogel nodded.
Keith leading, they moved into the short corridor. To their left they saw the open door of the bunk room. They saw part of the back of one of the guards. And beyond him the legionnaires, who were standing in small groups, or sitting on the edges of their beds. D’Aran was nearest the door. He looked straight at Keith. Keith nodded.
Deliberately, D’Aran called: “Why are you standing there? Tiens, don’t we get any coffee?”
“No water,” Keith called back, and he was surprised by the calmness of his voice. “We can’t get it out of the tank because those damned pitchers have disappeared.”
A couple of guards appeared in the doorway. Their pistols were held ominously ready as they surveyed Keith and Vogel.
One of them rapped: “Where’s Sarle?”
Sarle, it seemed, was the man in the tank.
Keith shrugged.
“He went to look for the pitchers.”
An expression of baffled wonder crossed the guards’ faces. It was quickly replaced by one of acute suspicion.
“Move back three paces and stand against the wall!”
Keith and Vogel obeyed the order. The two guards advanced to the cook house. One kept his pistol aimed at them while the other looked inside. He emerged after a quick glance.
“Not here,” he said. Then added: “The fool! Gallast will have his skin for this—leaving two prisoners!”
They exchanged oaths. Then suspicion reappeared to take the place of indignation. “Where are the pitchers?” Keith made a helpless gesture.
“I don’t know. Perhaps Sarle will know. He ought to have found them by now.”
“Did he say where he was going to look?”
“He said something about seeing if Gallast…”
“Colonel Gallast!”
“…if Colonel Gallast had taken them. He thought perhaps the professor had been ill in the night.”
“And drink eight or nine gallons of water!”
“They wouldn’t be full, but there would be a few drops in each.”
Keith realised that he had made a mistake in introducing the reference to Gallast. It would have been more convincing if he had stuck to the original plan, which was to plead absolute ignorance.
But Vogel came to his aid. Vogel said vehemently: “Must we spend our time talking about what you swine may have done? We want those jugs! We want them now! And we want them because we are thirsty! If you can’t find them we’ll look ourselves!”
Vogel was showing unsuspected theatrical gifts. He was shaking with anger when he finished. The two guards looked doubtful. They glanced towards the bunk room where the legionnaires had moved nearer the door, despite the pistols. They were straining with apparent curiosity.
It was then that a slight commotion occurred in the-bunk room.
It was centred around Legionnaire Batini, an Italian who possessed a luxurious black beard.
Batini was gesticulating lavishly as he poured forth a torrent of garbled explanation.
“I had the duty to do last night,” he said. “Thus I put them behind… they are better behind for they are smart are they not? They will be behind the stove now where I put them when I cleaned the cook house… why was I not asked? Am I a fool? Am I not right…”
He was interrupted by a crash of carefully simulated anger from his comrades. Then D’Aran called out: “You’ll find the pitchers behind the oil stove. It seems Batini put them there when he was cleaning the place.”
Keith laughed. Then turning to the couple of guards he said: “I think we’re all too thirsty to wait for coffee.”
He went to the stove and pulled out the pitchers.
“They’re here all right,” he said clearly. “But it’s a damned awful place to put them. You’d think they’d been hidden…”
Vogel took one from him. Together they carried the water into the bunk room. They deposited the pitchers a few feet from the door where three guards stood. The two others had departed to look for the missing Sarle.
Keith watched while the legionnaires drank.
Then casually, Vogel said: “We must eat, too. I’ll get the biscuits.” He moved out of the room.
Probably because their numbers had been reduced, the guards hesitated about having him followed. It was a fatal hesitation.
Immediately Vogel was beyond the threshold he stopped. He swivelled on his heel. He re-entered the room holding his Luger.
There did not seem to be any interval between his reappearance and a shattering crash of fire from several pistols.
Vogel, being a Dutchman, was a realist. By the same token he was a brave man. Therefore he almost certainly knew that he would die. Tactically, his position was quite impossible.
The three guards were standing against the wall—two on the left side of the door, the other on the right.
The first shot came from Vogel. He aimed at the single man at his right side. The heavy slug lifted off the top of his skull as if it was on a hinge.
But he had not time to turn completely round to face the others. Nor had the legionnaires time to rush to his assistance. Four bullets entered Vogel’s large body before the garrison, headed by Keith, closed with the men who had fired them.
But some men do not easily say farewell to life. Some men die hard. Vogel was one of them.
A hot slug had passed at an oblique angle through his chest, carrying fragments of the second and third ribs with it when it dropped on the floor behind him.
And—as a strange quirk—the ankle of his left foot was smashed.
But he reeled against the door. He leaned his great weight against it so that it slammed shut. He was on his knees when he groped feebly for the heavy bolt. His last action was to push it into the socket,
Then, shattered face against the woodwork, he died.
The legionnaires…
It had been easier for them. Much easier than they had expected. The two remaining guards had had no chance to confront them after shooting Vogel. They crashed to the floor under a mass of cursing, clawing, kicking men.
Keith got one of the pistols after a quick wrench at a wrist. But he was knocked down by the impetus of the legionnaires behind him. He found himself kneeling on top of the guard, who was already semi-conscious as wild boots thudded against his cropped skull. One kick, intended for the guard, sent a rasp of pain up Keith’s thigh. He wanted desperately to get out of that avenging mass, but he could not.
But presently D’Aran’s voice cut through the confusion.
“Gare a vousl”
The command was theoretically ludicrous at such a time. But any such theory discounted the effect of prolonged military training under inflexible discipline.
The legionnaires drew away from the two guards—both now disarmed and severely injured. They came to an approximate position of attention, all dishevelled and breathing heavily.
D’Aran had gained the other gun. He gestured with it ferociously.
“Sacre! Must you behave like a mob? Our real work has scarcely begun. Have you forgotten the horses?”
Then he turned and ran to the window at the far end of the room, Keith at his side.
It was a narrow window and (as was the habit in Legion forts) protected by widely spaced iron bars. They stood on a bunk to peer through.