'Well, no, we'd have to do it after dark.'
Glodstone gnawed on the stem of his pipe and tried to control himself. 'Listen,' he said finally, 'if you're seriously suggesting that we try to climb what amounts to the north face of the Eiger, on a miniature scale, in pitch darkness, you must have less between the ears than I thought you had. We've come here to save the Countess, not to commit bloody suicide. Why do you think the Chateau is walled on three sides but there's only a balustrade above the river?'
Peregrine considered the question thoughtfully, 'I don't suppose it's very safe to build a high wall on top of a cliff,' he said, 'I mean you never know with cliffs, do you? I've an auntie in Dorset and she's got a bungalow near some cliffs and she can't sell it because some of the other bungalows are slipping over and '
'To hell with your blasted aunt,' said Glodstone, savaging a can of corned beef with a tin-opener. 'The reason there's no wall on this side is because they don't have to protect it. Only a blithering idiot would try to scale that precipice.'
'Clive did,' said Peregrine unabashed.
'Clive? What on earth are you talking about now?'
'When he captured Quebec. He sailed his '
'Wolfe, for God's sake. Can't you get anything right?'
'All right, Wolfe then. I never was much good at history.'
'So I've noticed,' said Glodstone, skewering bits of corned beef into the billycan. But Peregrine hadn't finished.
'Anyway, it's not really a cliff. And we wouldn't have to start at the bottom. There's a ledge near the top and we could get onto it from the drive.'
'Which they've left unguarded just to make things easier for us, I suppose,' said Glodstone.
'We could always make our way round to the south and climb up there,' Peregrine continued. 'That way we'd be coming down the drive from the top instead of the other way round. They'd never expect us to do that.'
'I'll grant you that,' said Glodstone, absentmindedly putting the billycan on the Calor-gas stove and lighting it, 'and if I were in their shoes I wouldn't expect anyone to do such an asinine thing either.'
'Then once we're on that ledge ' He stopped and stared at the smoking billycan. 'I say, I've never seen corned beef cooked like that before. Shouldn't you stir it round a bit?'
Glodstone wrenched the pan off the stove and burnt his hand in the process. 'Now look what you've made me do,' he said lividly.
'I didn't make you do it,' said Peregrine, 'all I said was '
'Once we were on that bloody ledge. That's what you said. Well, let's get something straight. We're not going anywhere near that ledge. That cliff is unclimbable and there's an end to the matter.'
'What I meant was I didn't tell you to fry that corned beef like that. Major Fetherington always taught us to put cans in hot water and heat them that way. You open them first, of course, otherwise they might explode.'
'And doubtless he also taught you to climb cliffs in the middle of the fucking night too,' said Glodstone, resorting to foul language as a safety value against exploding himself.
'Well, actually, yes,' said Peregrine. 'Mind you, we used tampons.'
'You used what?' demanded Glodstone, momentarily diverted from his burnt hand by the extraordinary vision this conjured up.
'Steel things you hammer into the rock,' said Peregrine.
'For your information they're called crampons. Otherwise known as climbing-irons.'
'That's not what the Major calls them. He said always to call them tampons because if you didn't ram them into some bleeding crack really tight you'd end up looking like a jam-rag
