War Game

He dropped the loop into place and turned his full attention to the setter.

'Here, girl,' he commanded conversationally, extending the licked hand for further examination. 'Have a good smell, eh?'

The bitch strained forward towards the hand, first sniffing and then slobbering over each finger in turn, tail beating with excitement. When he was confident that she was sure of him Audley bent over her, slid his sticky hand over her head and eased the collar sideways so that he could read the name on the brass plate.

Burton, Castle Lodge, Standingham.

'There's a girl—there's a beautiful girl.' He stroked the sleek head. 'Aren't you a beautiful girl then?'

The bitch nodded at him, steadied and soothed by the sound and the touch. If only she could speak now she would have answered all his questions; instead she offered a dusty paw.

Audley shook the paw. 'Pleased to meet you.'

But where's your master, beautiful girl? Is this the way he comes down from the Lodge to take his evening pint? Is he close by now, beautiful girl?

The bitch cocked her head on one side, looked straight at him, and then looked directly over his shoulder.

dummy5

Audley straightened up slowly to give himself time to gather all his wits together, and then turned to look along her line of sight.

'Good evening,' he said.

The setter's master was a tall, thin man with an all-weather face and an upstanding brush of grey hair less well-groomed than his dog's coat.

''Evening.'

A quiet-spoken man too, though his voice seemed to release the setter from Audley's spell: she leapt up the side of the gap and came to heel obediently at the sound of it.

'You've got a good bitch there,' said Audley.

'Aye.' Absently, without taking his eyes off Audley, the man—

Mr. Burton, I presume—reached down to touch her head, and she quivered with pleasure at the touch.

'Maybe a little too friendly with strangers, though,' said Audley, smiling.

The grey brush shook disagreement. 'Not usually. If you were a bad 'un she'd set her teeth to you, likely.'

Well, that was a compliment. And if Burton trusted his dog's instinct perhaps David Audley should trust his own also—

and play to win when there was nothing left to lose. He was the wrong side of the wire after all, clear beyond the notice to trespassers.

He cocked his head on one side as the dog had done. 'Oh aye? Then I take it she's left her mark on Master Ratcliffe dummy5

already then?'

For a long moment Burton considered him. Then one corner of his mouth lifted. 'Would have done if I'd let her,' he admitted.

Audley nodded, first at the man and then at the dog. He'd made the gesture and it hadn't been rejected. But the next move wasn't his.

Another moment passed. 'You wouldn't be from a newspaper, I don't think?' It was more a reflection spoken aloud than a question. Or if a question, thought Audley, remembering his old Latin master, it was a num question, with the answer 120 built into it.

'No, I'm not from a newspaper. But I want to see what they weren't allowed to see all the same.'

For a second or two after he had spoken Audley was afraid he had gone too far too fast. But instinct was still in charge, and instinct was all on the side of frankness now.

The man took a step forward and offered his hand. 'Well then . . . you'd better come up out of there then, hadn't you?'

he said simply.

Help evidently didn't include conversation; Burton simply led the way along the path on the rampart, zigzagging between the trees in silence while the setter bitch rushed ahead in an attempt to discover the longest distance between two points. On their right the ditch was so choked with dummy5

undergrowth that the counter-scarp and glacis slope were almost invisible; on the left Audley caught occasional glimpses through the trees of the house itself, all windows and chimneys. On this south side it was quite close to the defences, he remembered from the Reverend Musgrave's map.

He could have found his way to the kitchen garden just as well on his own, and Sergeant Digby would be worried sick at Burton's failure to arrive on schedule, so this turn of events would have little profit to it if he couldn't persuade the man to talk. But however eloquent his agreement with his bitch—

that Charlie Ratcliffe was a bad 'un—he didn't look like a talkative man.

Audley quickened his pace. 'You know Master Charlie well, do you?'

For a dozen paces Burton gave no sign of having even heard the question. Then, without pausing, he spoke over his shoulder.

'Not really—since he was a nipper.'