House of Green Turf

The gold eyes never left her. His free left hand reached up laboriously, with the patience, she realised now, that belongs not to angels but to devils, until it got a hold on the latch of the door, and held fast. The right hand that held the gun, so carefully, so tenderly because it was the only treasure he had left, prised him doggedly up to his knees. He shifted the hand then with slow, drunken concentration to the door-frame, where it clung by the side and heel of the palm, frozen to the wood by the icy coldness of his will. Nothing else was now alive in him, except the deep, secret nerve that reacted only to hatred.

With infinite effort he had got one foot flattened to the floor, and with clinging hands and sweating agony he was levering himself upright. It was impossible. But for the burning determination he had to kill her as she had killed him, he would have fallen down long ago and stayed down, and died where he fell. Instead, inch by inch he drove himself upright, and even as she watched him, he took one lurching step away from the wall.

Gently and regretfully she laid down Francis out of her arms, on his face, that the wound might bleed less. Rising, she stepped over his body, and stood between him and their enemy. In this last encounter she had to meet Robin on equal terms. This whole affair had begun with the two of them, and with them it must end.

Neither of them heard the renewed grating of metal at the lock, the shattering gunshot, the impact of massed bodies against the barrier. There was no one left in the world but Maggie, erect and motionless in the centre of the cellar, and Robin Aylwin, propelling himself in dogged agony almost to within touch of her. The levelled gun, as heavy as the world, wavered upwards by inches towards her heart, sank irresistibly twice, and twice was recovered and forced onwards towards her heart, level with her heart.

With abnormal clarity she saw the crooked finger on the trigger struggling to command the strength to contract, and put an end to her. For an age the muzzle quivered, leaned, sagged from her breast, reared again and shook again, straining and ravenous for her.

The flame went out abruptly. The gun and the hand that held it trembled and sank, in spite of all his almost disembodied fury, sank and reached for the flagstones, subsiding into the dark. He pitched forward at her feet, and lay still. The bright blood from his lips stained her white slipper. The hand with the gun was buried under him.

The lock gave, the police flooded into the room. They saw her standing like a statue in ice and blood, her face as white as the ground colour of her own housecoat, blood on her breast and sleeve, blood on her shoe, where her enemy lay prone as if in worship, his curled lips kissing her instep. George Felse put his arm round her, and she crumpled into it with a huge, hapless sigh, and he picked her up bodily and carried her away, out into the air and the clean night emptied of enemies.

Behind him others at least as expert as he converged upon Francis Killian, and took charge of him until the ambulance came to rush him into hospital at Bregenz, where they would pump into him pints of blood, and stop the loss of his own.

But it wasn’t a hospital this one needed. George thought, as he always thought when the world closed in, of Bunty. He made for the nearest car of the several that had somehow gathered, and commandeered it without scruple, police driver and all. On the journey back into Scheidenau he held Maggie in his arms like the daughter he and Bunty had never had, and promised her the world and Francis, too, and never stopped holding her until he gave her to Bunty at the Goldener Hirsch.

So it was not until half-way through the next day that he provisionally closed his own case. They had excavated the sitting tenant of the wine cellar by then, naked, almost a skeleton, young, male, the errand-boy who knew better how to run the business than did the managing director. Maggie would clear up the references later, but up to then Maggie was a limp, wondering convalescent just coming to life in Bunty’s charge, living on bulletins from the hospital in Bregenz, and not yet fit to be questioned. What mattered about the young man from under the flagstones was that his more durable parts, notably the teeth, bore certain unique characteristics which were ultimately to identify him beyond doubt as Peter Bromwich, the art student of Comerbourne.

And that, combined with the capture of four of the international gang which had been plaguing this corner of Europe for so long, made the nocturnal siege of Scheidenau Castle a highly profitable operation. All the more so as three of the four showed signs of being willing to talk for their own sakes, and possibly to bring in, indirectly, at least half a dozen others from the shattered brotherhood.

Not to mention, of course, their lord and master, Robin Aylwin, sometime ’cellist of Freddy’s Circus, listed by the hospital at Bregenz as ‘Dead on arrival.’

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

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I quite understand,’ said Maggie, picking abstractedly at the keys on her piano and frowning at the music before her, ‘that he doesn’t want to see me, after all that’s happened. What did I ever do for him, except make use of him, involve him against his better judgment in… all that horror… and nearly kill him? I don’t blame him if he never wants to see me again. I haven’t any right to force myself on him. Are you sure he’s all right?’

‘Right as rain.’ Bunty stood by the window, looking out upon the placid surface of the lake, pale in a still midday, bright but sunless. It was the ninth day since Helmut’s night carnival, and the clear, chill peace of autumn lay over Scheidenau. ‘They wouldn’t be discharging him in two days’ time if they weren’t satisfied, especially after all the fuss and all the reporters. Six pints of blood they’ve got staked in Francis, they’re not going to waste that, you may be sure.’

‘Bunty, I owe you so much, you and George. Bunty, help me!’

‘Did I ever say,’ wondered Bunty, ‘that he didn’t want to see you? I said he said he didn’t want to see you. In fact, I rather gave him to believe that you were going home with George and me, to- morrow. So he’s due to come out of care the next day on his own, just the way he claims he wants it. He’s ordered a taxi already, to take him back to the Weisses Kreuz. Most of his things are still there. He’ll stay overnight, and then arrange his exit. He’ll think he’s clear of the lot of us. You, too!’

‘Bunty, couldn’t you find out for me what time?’

‘I know what time. The taxi’s ordered for ten in the morning. Maggie, are you absolutely sure you know what you want?’

‘Yes, quite sure. Yes, quite sure! Oh, Bunty, pray for me!’

‘Both of us will be doing that, naturally. For both of you!’

‘Your car is here,’ they told him, and made their good-byes with warmth and ceremony, for he had been their prize patient for ten days, and when were they likely to get such another sensation? He packed his few toilet things in the briefcase George Felse had brought in for him from Scheidenau, along with a newly-pressed suit and clean shirt and underclothes to replace the ruins they had stripped from him and burned on arrival. He went down the stairs beside a gay little chattering nurse, and picked up at the desk his wallet and papers, with a note left for him by George and Bunty, wishing him luck and hoping to see him at home in England. Yes, perhaps. Nice people! They