million others which stared out of dummy5
group photographs on the walls of school studies and regimental messes, betraying nothing except self- confidence.
'What's all this then?'
'Master Ratcliffe? Master Charles Neville Steyning-Ratcliffe?
Or should I say Colonel Ratcliffe?'
'Who are you?'
'Colonel Hog, you might call me, if I'm to call you Colonel Ratcliffe.' Audley felt a trickle of perspiration run down the side of his face inside his cheek-guard. 'Hog would be your seventeenth-century name for me.'
'Hog?' The blue eyes were bright with intelligence, but just a shade too close together. 'I see! 'Hog' in the seventeenth century, so presumably 'Pig' in the twentieth—is that it?'
'Very good! I can see we're going to understand each other very nicely. But I'm a special breed of Pig, just as you are an unusual variety of Rat. And we do have one or two very important things in common which should help us to understand each other.'
'You don't say?' A good education had taught Charlie Ratcliffe the art of being insolent without trying. 'Such as what?'
'Gold, for one thing.'
Charlie Ratcliffe cocked his head on one side. 'Do we have that in common? Well, that's news to me. I didn't think it was gold that pigs wallowed in, you know.'
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A sudden ragged volley of musketry burst out below them in the valley.
'Ah! Now the battle's starting,' murmured Audley, looking at his watch. 'And not more than five minutes behind schedule, too. . . . Yes, gold is one thing —see those fellows down there?' He took a casual step sideways and caught Ratcliffe's left arm in a tight grip just above the elbow. 'I think it would be as well if we pretended to watch them.'
Ratcliffe tried to move his arm, wincing as the grip bit.
'You're hurting my arm,' he said in a surprised voice.
'Yes, I know I am. But the pain will help to concentrate your mind on what I'm saying—please don't struggle, you'll only hurt yourself more.'
Charlie Ratcliffe graduated quickly from surprise to incredulity. 'You're a fucking madman—
'No I'm not. But I am very strong, and if you don't relax and listen I'll cripple you.' Audley pointed with the telescope in his free hand. 'Now—see those pikemen with the blue flag?
They make a brave show, don't they?' He increased the pressure. 'Don't they?'
'Yes—bloody hell!—yes.'
'Good. First gold, as I was saying. Then treason. Then murder. And then gold again. That's what we've got in common, Charlie lad.'
'You're crazy.'
'Next time you say that I'm going to hurt you a lot, Charlie.
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So just look to the front and listen. What I have to say is very much in your interest, I promise you that.'
Charlie gritted his teeth. 'You have to be joking.'
'Joking is the very last thing I'm doing. I don't like you, lad—
but I need your help. And you need mine—look to the front!'
Charlie made the start of a sound and the first twitch of a movement, and then thought better of both. It was beginning to occur to him that if this was madness he was dealing with there might be method in it.
'Your gold first. I know all about it, from A to Z. I know where it came from, and how it was planted— understand?'
'I don't know what you're talking about.'
'Madrid - Cartagena - Tunis - Odessa -Moscow. . . .
Standingham.'
Ratcliffe still managed to register a proper mystification, but he couldn't control the muscles in his arm.
'I know how you set up Nayler, and I know about the Dawlish letter. And about the Paris meeting, and the other little side-trips—I know about them.'
The muscles were like whipcord now, tensed under his hand so that he had to tighten his grip to hold them.
'And I know about Swine Brook Field —that was my old friend Tokaev I presume—and about the Ferryhill Industrial Estate . . . which was a very much better organised operation
—the police haven't tumbled to it, I can tell you that. And you did me a good turn there too, getting rid of that nosey Special dummy5
Branch man—I'm grateful for that.'
The musketeers' fire-fight was reaching it's climax, with the dead being carried away behind the clumps of
