The Old Vengeful

Lieutenant Chipperfield, and Midshipman Paget, and Tom Chard, and Abraham Timms—they had all been trapped by misfortune, far from home and in a hostile land—

The car slowed.

'What is it?' asked Elizabeth.

'There's a phone-box just ahead.' Aske brought the car to a halt, and Elizabeth saw the dim-lighted box in the headlights.

'There's another routine call I've just remembered I ought to make, in case anyone phones the house. I won't be a moment, Miss Loftus.'

They seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, with no other light in sight through the rain-blurred windows of the car, and only a road sign warning 'Bend' picked out in the dipped beams as an evidence of civilisation.

She stared at the shadowy figure in the phone-box, and a terrible certainty consumed her, driving out everything else—

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a certainty built out of innumerable small happenings cemented to that one great lie by an instinct which was suddenly so strong that she could feel her hand on the seat-catch shake—

Treachery!

Treachery? But if not treachery—if she was wrong?

No. No, no, no, no, no— treachery!

'Well, that's all right, then!' said Aske cheerfully, glancing at her quickly as he let out the clutch. 'But you haven't put the seat down yet—you'll doze much better with it down.'

The car was accelerating fast. Elizabeth could see the red reflectors of the bend in the distance.

'I can't find the catch,' said Elizabeth hoarsely.

'I'll find it for you—' he took one hand off the wheel.

Faster—the rain slashed down on to the screen—

'No—I've got it now!' said Elizabeth.

'Fine. Sweet dreams, Miss Loftus, then.'

There were no sweet dreams, only nightmares in which the red reflectors burned like eyes, increasing in numbers as the car entered the bend.

Elizabeth released Aske's safety-belt and twisted the wheel into the red eyes.

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EPILOGUE:

The fate of the hero's daughter

THE CAR DOOR slammed outside, but Mitchell discovered that he didn't want to get up now, after having listened so attentively for so long for any slightest distant noise which might herald Audley's return: somewhere along the line of time marked by the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner he had ceased to expect good news and had started to fear the worst, his unwillingness told him.

And the fear only took hold of him more strongly as he glanced down at the papers on the desk in front of him: his own hand-written account of the untimely passing of Patrick Lawrence Donaghue, William Harold Fullick and Julian Alexander Carrell Oakenshaw, each of whom had died by the hand which had wielded the pen; and, beside it, impeccably-typed, Del Andrew's report on the three dead men— Copies to the Prime Minister's Office (restricted); the Home Secretary (restricted); the Director of Public Prosecutions (restricted); The Acting-Director, DI/R & D (Col.J. Butler, CBE, MC).

Everything was relative to the occasion, he thought. For the past three days he had been worried sick about all this, and it had been in the back of his mind, warping his judgement and disturbing his concentration the whole time except for that one hour with Elizabeth, when he had exchanged need for dummy3

need.

But now the bill for that one hour had been delivered, and he couldn't pay it: he didn't give a damn any more for the three men he'd killed, yet the thought of Elizabeth, whom he had failed to preserve, was a cure for the original sickness more expensive and painful than he could endure.

It was no good: he had to make himself get up—he couldn't put it off any longer. What was coming, was coming whether he wanted to hear it or not.

He got up, and walked to the door. He felt stiff with sitting, and very tired, and cold inside and out—the house itself was cold now, he could feel the chill of it on his cheeks and on the tip of his nose.

Not again, he prayed to himself, not again.

The sound of the door seemed unnaturally loud, as all sounds always did in the small hours. But it wasn't the only one loose in the Old House; there were other noises night-walking in it now.

Not Elizabeth— Frances he could accept, had learned to accept— but not Elizabeth too, for Christ's sake!

A board creaked loudly, and he saw Faith Audley halfway down the staircase, enveloped in a red velvet dressing-gown with a fur collar, her pale hair unbound, like a ghost out of the Old House's past. Then the kitchen door at the end of the passage ahead of him banged open, and Audley came through, and he was nothing like any sort of ghost: rain dummy3

glistened on his face and plastered down his hair, and he carried a bulging brief-case under one arm and an untidily unfurled umbrella under the other.

'What the hell's going on, David?' said Mitchell.