Gunner Kelly

mouth closed. He fumbled in the dark for it, feeling quickly for the rungs with his foot before the Irishman could change his mind.

“Easy now!” The moment he stepped off the ladder a hand grasped his arm tightly, swinging him round until he sensed that he was facing the pit again. A second later a flashlight from the other side of the pit blinded him. “Steady now!”

They weren’t taking any chances: one push and he was back in the pit. He tensed against the pressure.

Hands ran up and down him—they certainly weren’t taking any chances—practised hands, which knew where to look and how to look through questing fingertips—trained hands, which were never those of any Dorset countryman. But he should have known that even without the soft Irish voice in his ear: Gunner Kelly was British Army-trained, and the British Army had kept up its skills over the years, searching black, brown and yellow as well as white for concealed weapons.

“He’s clean.” Kelly completed his task by lifting Benedikt’s wallet, passport and spectacle-case from the inside breastpocket of the wind-cheater. “You can turn round, Herr Wiesehofer.”

There was something odd about the man’s voice. It varied slightly, oscillating between its native Irish brogue and the classless English which had been superimposed on it over two-thirds of the man’s lifetime: it was almost like listening to two different persons—the English-Irish soldier, trained and disciplined by his masters to automatic loyalty and obedience, and the soft-voice Irish boy who had crossed the sea all those years before, following his father in dummy1

that hard service which had nevertheless consumed and conquered him at the last, turning him to vengeance.

“Come on, then—follow the red light,” the voice commanded him, English-Irish.

There were two lights: one, from a powerful flashlight, transfixed him; the other, a weaker blob of red, bobbed up and down ahead of him.

“Joapey—you and Blackie cover this sector until you’re relieved.

An‘ no lights, mind you!”

Growl. “What we do that for? We got the bugger, ‘aven’t us?”

“We got this bugger, sure. But suppose he’s just a scout—one of a matchin‘ pair of buggers?” The Irishman paused eloquently. “You get it through your head, Joapey—we’re not playin’ games on this one, like with the Squire’s keepers in the old days, an‘ you get a belt on the ear an’ a kick up the arse if you lose. This one . . . you get careless, you lose like the rabbit loses—you get your bloody neck stretched.”

Growl. “I knows that. But you said they warn’t comin‘ yet, an’—”

“I said I didn’t reckon on ‘em comin’ yet.” Curiously, the Irishmen echoed the man’s accent now, in a third voice unlike his other two.

“An‘ I also said there’s nothin’ cert’n in this life ‘cept birth an’

death an‘ taxes—” the third voice graduated from scorn to gentle chiding “—man, this is your ground an’ you know it better than any stranger poachin‘ in it, but I don’t want Miss Becky pipin’ her eye for you . . . If you ain’t got the guts for it, then just you say so.”

Growl. “No! I never said that—now you’m puttin‘ words in my dummy1

mouth what I never said!”

“A’right, then . . . Now, Mister—” Discipline restored, the Irishman came back to Benedikt “—let’s not keep our betters waiting.”

‘Betters’ could only mean Audley and Miss Becky, and they were infinitely preferable to a shot-gun at his back. But the light blinded him, and he was still close to the pit.

He tried to shield his eyes. “I cannot see where I am going.”

“Put the light on his feet,” snapped Kelly, and the beam instantly followed his order. In the absence of those ‘betters’ there was no question about who was in command in Duntisbury Chase.

Benedikt remembered Thomas Wiesehofer. “Where are you taking me?”

“Just follow the red light, an‘ maybe you’ll find out.”

The red blob danced ahead like a firefly, and Benedikt stumbled after it. Captivity was a new and wholly disagreeable experience, but he must put this feeling of helpless anger out of his mind first, and at once—

A branch brushed his face, and he lifted his arm ahead of him to clear his way. Follow the red light—

Michael Kelly—

Michael Kelly was no simple Irish peasant—and no oafish unpromotable private soldier either, Colonel Butler was right: that handling of the recalcitrant sentry and the sure voice of command which went with it—more, those three voices which the man turned on and off at will—all of that marked him out as someone dummy1

more formidable in the reckoning.

The red light and the path at his feet twisted and turned; then he caught a glimpse of other lights, pale yellow, flicking on and off through the intervening trees on his left—now ahead—now on his left again: they must be approaching the manor house—

Colonel Butler had been right, but his rightness had hitherto been no more than logic and the shrewd assessment of experience and possibilities: young Miss Rebecca Maxwell-Smith might have the desire for vengeance, and the will to match it, but she surely lacked the stomach for this kind of work, and the certain knowledge to make the work worthwhile—

The lights were brighter now, diffusing through the trees into light itself—

And Audley . . . Dr David Audley ... he had the expertise, or the perverse trickiness,