silent weapon I could prevent him leaving the copse from the far side. His bike would be useless.
This cunning plan had an undoubted risk, but there were two advantages. One was that it postponed any action at all, true Lovejoy style, so I needn't do anything dangerous just yet and maybe by dawn he would be gone. The second advantage was that in rushing out I'd set off the police alarm. He'd be trapped. All I'd have to do would be to sit tight and threaten him with the air weapon. He'd recognize it, collector that he was, with its great bulbous copper ball dangling beneath the stock. No mistake about that. Unfortunately, though, he might guess I would try a morning sprint and simply move toward my path. I wouldn't care to meet him face to face with him sitting ready and me disarrayed and running.
I dropped the torch from cold shock. A strange echo emitted from the walls about me, taking some seconds to die away. Fumbling along the carpet, I found the torch again and dithered, really dithered. Holding it in fear now, I peered out of the dark living room toward the door. The moon was shading the front of the cottage. Anyone could be there. My heart seemed to boom at every beat. Why does sweat come when you are cold from terror? The shelling I'd endured years ago had been nothing to this. It was somehow worse because whoever waited now at my door was in a sense unknown.
It could be Margaret. She might have sensed my fright and come to make sure I was all right. Why not telephone instead? Surely she'd do that, a far more sensible approach. Maybe she'd wanted to see for herself. I was on my way down the hall toward the door when the obvious flaw came to my mind—the cottage had been still as death. I'd been listening for the slightest sound for nearly an hour now and had not heard a thing. And the path outside was gravel. You could even hear a rabbit cross it. But not a clever, oh-so-clever, murderer. Nobody creeps up to a door, then rings the bell.
Sweat trickled from my armpits. It dripped from my forehead and stung the corners of my eyes. Should I call out, asking who was there? Not if he had the Judas guns with him, which might be used to shoot me down as soon as he located me.
I didn't dare creep closer to the door, in case he fired through. And if I crept back to the telephone for the police he'd hear the receiver go and me dialing. Would he honestly dare to break in? Panicking now, I slithered out of the hall and pulled the carpet back from over the priest hole. I needed no light to find the iron ring in its recess. Astride the flag, I hauled it upward and rested it against the armchair as I usually did. Cursing myself for a stupid unthinking fool, I clambered down the steps into the chamber. By feel alone I found the Mortimer case and extracted the duelers. The Durs air weapon might have been more useful, but I'd relied too much on having the upper hand. Positions were bitterly reversed now.
The slab lowered in place, I covered it with the carpet. Where was he now? Would he still be there at the front door, or was that a mere bluff to draw attention while he crept around the side and gained entrance there? I stood, armed but irresolute, in the living room. Waves of malevolence washed through me—all from the external source he represented. He was there outside, watching and waiting. It was all part of his game. His hate emanated toward me through the walls. I could practically touch it, feel it as a live, squirming, tangible thing. The pathetic unpreparedness of my position was apparent to him as well as to me.
Something drew me toward the kitchen window. Had he given up lurking by the front door and gone back to his place in the copse? I tried turning myself this way and that, stupidly hoping my mental receivers would act like a direction finder and tell me exactly where he was. Perhaps my fear was blunting the effect. If he was in the process of moving through the copse I might see his form. It seemed worth a try. If only it wasn't so utterly dark in the shadows from that treacherous moon.
The difficulty was holding the torch and the Mortimers. I finally settled for gripping one dueler beneath my arm and holding the torch with my left hand. Leaning across the sink, I slowly pulled the curtain aside.
For one instant I stood there, stunned by sudden activity. The glass exploded before my eyes. A horrendous crackling sound from glass splinters all about held me frozen. Behind me inside the living room a terrific thump sounded which made even the floor shudder. The curtain was snapped aside and upward, flicked as if it had been whipped by some huge force. I stared for quite three or four seconds, aghast at the immensity of this abrupt destruction, before my early training pulled me to the floor. There was blood on my face, warm and salty.
Something dripped from my chin onto my hands as I crawled on all fours back to the living room. I had lost one of the Mortimers but still held the torch. Broken glass shredded my hands and knees as I moved, a small incidental compared to the noise I was making. I rolled onto the divan to get my breath and see how much damage I'd sustained.
My face and hands were bleeding from cuts. They'd prove a handicap because they might dampen the black powder if I had to reload, but for the moment they were a detail. My handkerchief I tied around my left hand, which seemed in the gloom to look the darker of the two and was therefore probably bleeding more profusely. To my astonishment I was becoming calmer every second. The situation was not in hand but at least clearly defined. Even a dullard like me could tell black from white. The issue couldn't be clearer. He was outside shooting at me, and there was to be no quarter. Simple.
I crawled messily toward the telephone. Even as I jerked the receiver into my bandaged hand I knew it would be dead. The sod had somehow cut the wire. O.K., I told myself glibly, I'd wait until morning when the post girl would happen by and bring help. She came every day—rain, snow, hail, or blow.
And tomorrow was Sunday. And my neighbors opposite drove to Walton-on-Sea every Saturday for the weekend.
Depressed by that, I set to working out the trajectory of his missile. Naturally, in my misconceived confidence I'd not drawn a plan showing the position of his stump relative to the window. That would have helped. Knowing it roughly, however, I peered through the gloom at the corner farthest from the kitchen alcove and finally found it sticking half buried in the wall. A bolt, from an arbalest.
Bows and arrows are sophisticated engines, not the simple little toys we like to imagine. An arrow from a longbow can pierce armor at a short distance, and Lovejoy at any distance you care to mention. But for real unsophisticated piercing power at short range you want that horrid weapon called the arbalest, the crossbow. Often wood, they are as often made of stone, complete with trigger beneath the stock. Their only drawback was comparative slowness of reloading. By now though he'd have it ready for a second go.
He was a bright lad. No flashes, no noise, no explosions, even if they'd been audible to any neighboring houses. And I was still no nearer guessing where he might be. My assets were that I was alive, was armed, and had enough food to last out the weekend and more. But I'd need to keep awake, whereas he could doze with impunity. I felt like shouting out that he could have the wretched turnkey.
At that moment I knew I was defeated. He had me trapped. And as far as I was concerned he could move about as he pleased, even go home for a bath, knowing I would be too scared to make a run for it in case he was
