Tales of Adventurers (5 page)

Their destination was a disused mine-shaft with a tumble-down building above it. Colonel Fayze had given them the map reference, assuring them that Smith had visited the spot already and that
the building was unlocked. Two of the planks which covered and completely hid the mouth of the shaft had been loosened, said Fayze with an obscene wink, and could be lifted out. He had shown pride
– a legitimate pride from the point of view of his office chair – in the excellence of his arrangements. The disposal of Dupont on paper had had his personal attention.

After an hour’s run, Smith stopped the car below the mine-shaft. Nothing was to be seen but an isolated hut of timber and corrugated iron, with a strong door from which the padlock had
recently been wrenched loose; no derrick or abandoned machinery revealed the purpose of the building and the dark emptiness beneath the floor. Fayze had well chosen his theater for the operation.
There was no need for any bumping through country lanes into a suspicious remoteness, or for scrambling on foot through dense woods with a reluctant victim. The hut was within fifty yards of a main
road. A carful of men could stop on the verge for a short while without arousing uneasiness in Dupont or other curious but less essentially interested travelers.

The only disadvantage was the frequent passing of traffic on the road which ran, level and clear, for a hundred yards past the hut and a little below it. At one end of the straight was a blind
hill, and at the other a corner. To ensure privacy, both those points would have to be watched.

Dupont was left in the car with Smith, while the four others got out for consultation at a decent distance.

“If Medlock stays at the corner,” said Virian, “and I go to the top of the hill, we shall be able to signal to you when the road is empty.”

The French major appeared suddenly forlorn, his face that of a man who had known all along that he was an unreasoning optimist.

“I thought that you …” he began.

“No,” Virian answered firmly. “My instructions are just to keep the ring. It was definitely understood that you …”

“I could not myself … my honor as an officer …”

“Naturally,
mon commandant,
” Virian replied, and looked questioningly at the other, so sad and wirily small and determined.

“I have had my orders,” that second Frenchman murmured, “to accord to M. Dupont the justice he has so richly merited. I shall obey. I beg you to believe that I do not say it
with pleasure. But –” he sought their eyes with a simple honesty that, in the circumstances, was monstrous “– he is a heavy man, and I shall need some help.”

“This Smith,” Medlock suggested. “The colonel said he was to make himself useful.”

True, Fayze had airily assured them that the mysterious driver was ready to do whatever he was told; but Virian was unwilling to force such responsibility upon any human being till there was
some evidence of a real lack of sensitivity.

“I’ll get hold of him and see what he says, if you’ll just stand by the car, Medlock, and keep an eye on Dupont.”

He took Smith a little apart, and asked him what exactly his orders were.

“To assist you in every possible way, sir,” Smith answered.

Virian was uneasy. There was a light in the young eyes which looked uncommonly like hero worship. Yet Smith’s expression was tough and set. The very smoothness of the skin hid emotion more
absolutely than the mobile lines of an older face.

“You understand, of course, just exactly what the job is?”

“I did the reccy with the colonel,” Smith assured him.

He produced the word
reccy
with a certain pride, which suggested to Virian that he had not been long in the army. Well, God knew what some of these young commando chaps, quickly,
violently trained, must have seen and done already!

“Then will you go up with that gentleman and the prisoner to the mine-shaft? He, of course, is going to – to take the necessary steps. And, look here, Smith, refuse if you want to!
This is no part of your duty as a soldier.”

“I understand that, sir.”

There wasn’t any shaking that firm professional. His attitude was so matter-of-fact that Virian began to doubt the value of his own scruples. He gave full credit to Fayze for choosing a
murderer’s mate whose cold-blooded morale was an example to them all.

They took Dupont out of the car. The polite smile with which he had brightened his formal conversation was fixed at half its full extent. He looked at them, his eyes searching each face in turn
with the uneasy instinct of an animal at the shambles gate.

The French major reassured him with deliberate ambiguity.

“This is the rendezvous,” he said. “It is here that you will shortly meet certain Free Frenchmen.”

Dupont again anxiously reviewed the faces. What he saw relieved him – for their orders were to keep him quiet, and even their eyes were obedient. His smile returned to its natural
mobility. Two big drops of sweat trickled down his fat cheeks, shaved to a piglike smoothness for the morning inspection of his person and his cell.

Smith, Dupont and the executioner walked up over the grass towards the hut. The French major remained by the car, torturing a cigarette between his fingers. Medlock went to the curve of the
road; Virian to the top of the hill. So long as both held their hands in their pockets, the road was clear. When their hands were exposed, it was a sign that traffic was approaching. Smith stood by
the door of the hut, relaying their gestures to the interior.

Virian could see quarter of a mile of empty road. He put his hands in his pockets, dismissing quickly a thought of Roman thumbs. On a distant slope was a small convoy moving down towards him,
but the job would be over by the time it arrived.

Medlock, at his end, kept his hands very plainly in sight. A baker’s van came round the corner, along the straight and up the hill past Virian – who now also revealed his hands, for
the approaching convoy was too close. A motorcycle, a truck and six heavy lorries bumbled interminably past at regulation intervals and twenty miles an hour, adding to Dupont’s store three more
minutes of October noon.

Medlock put his hands in his pockets. Virian waited for a faraway car, and damned the wheels that flashed in the sunlight for not turning more slowly. They passed, and he found his hands playing
noisily with the coins in one pocket and keys in the other. He waited for the shot. It didn’t come. He was furiously angry. What were they doing inside the hut? After all this trouble! Why
couldn’t they get on?

Ten minutes went by with no movement on the road but the lumbering, swift shadow of a carrion crow impatient to return to his perch. Then Medlock’s hands came out with a gesture as if he
were flinging at the hut the contents of his pockets. An oldish man, instantly recognizable as a retired colonel or general, deprived – and no doubt uncomplainingly – of petrol, drove
round the corner in a dogcart with his two little granddaughters. He called in cheerful comradeship that it was a lovely day. Bitterly Virian put him down as a merciful and honorable man. He could
afford those virtues in the simpler wars that he had known.

Again both ends of the road were clear for long minutes, and again there was no shot. Medlock came striding back from his corner, his face that of a sergeant-major who was about to tell his
paraded and incompetent squad exactly what he thought of it. Virian, too, hastened back to the car in fear lest his companion should hurl some blunt protest or, worse still, some unfeeling denial
of protest, into so delicate an occupation.

“Man doesn’t know his job!” Medlock stormed.

“Would you expect him to?” retorted Virian.

The French major at the car turned on them, illogically angry as themselves. Some cutting irony at the expense of the English came beautifully shaped from his lips and died away as he became
conscious of the brutal absurdity of any blame.

While they were staring at the hut, a melancholy procession came down the hill towards them – Dupont, Smith and the Frenchman, more sad than ever. Even Dupont looked disappointed. Very
likely, he was. The Free French detachment, the larger public among which he would, for a little while, be safe, had not turned up.

Dupont was again left with Fayze’s tame tough, while the other four went aside.

“Couldn’t Smith relay the signals to you?” Virian asked.

“Yes,” the French civilian replied. “Yes.”

“Well, then? Well then, for God’s sake?” the major demanded.

“The hut is too small. I cannot get behind him. Perhaps he will not let me get behind him. And to draw the pistol before his eyes – no, I cannot do it.”

“Well, we daren’t hang about here any longer,” said Virian. “Someone may get inquisitive, and start watching us. We had better drive off now and come back
later.”

The party packed into the car, still unexpectedly six. Dupont conversed with polite, tacit sympathy, identifying himself with the unknown derangement of plans which all had suffered. He behaved
as if he were an embarrassing but useful prisoner – a double agent, for example, about to be sent off on some dangerous journey. He may even have persuaded himself that such a destiny was
possible.

He addressed himself particularly to the French civilian, perhaps trying to allay his own suspicions. Dupont was a type to be successful, Virian decided, as minor businessman or major traitor,
for he had an insistent cunning. He talked and talked, closely watching with eyes that held a decent pretense of geniality the impact of his words. The failure in the hut was very understandable.
Dupont was tiresome; Dupont’s fat face was that of a crook; but it was impossible to treat him with anything but courtesy. To draw a gun before his face was a task as awkward as to get him
out of the office without giving him a small order.

Smith had been pale and self-controlled when he returned from the hut. He now returned to his puzzling and casehardened temperament. He asked sharply where he was to go.

Well, where? Just a drive. Out for a drive. A pleasant occupation for a family on Sunday afternoon. Such aimlessness was intolerable. An order had to be given, some destination found.

“Oh, stop at the first pub when we’re off the downs,” Virian replied, his voice military and exasperated.

It was a considerable place, more of a roadhouse than a pub, which had no doubt been gay enough before the war with thirsty and fast-driving youth. Now, however, the long lounge was vacant and
frustrated of purpose. Fireplace and imitation beams had been excitably decorated with paper flags and regimental badges. All this dust-laden patriotism, exposed to sunlight, had the depressing
unreality of a night club on the morning after. Smith, Dupont and the Frenchman sat down at once and together, as if bound by a hard, common experience, in a corner of the room.

“I won’t drink with him,” Medlock whispered. “God damn it, there are limits!”

Virian carried three drinks to Dupont’s table, and himself remained with Medlock and the French major at the bar. For once he found himself in wholehearted sympathy with Medlock. A curious
atavism, to refuse to drink with a man you were about to kill. He couldn’t remember that there was any such law of hospitality in the Christian religion; it was wholly pagan – a rule of
Viking hovel or Arab tent. Where the devil, he wondered, had he inherited it? And why should Medlock observe it, too?

The French major seemed also unwilling to join Dupont, either from the same scruples or because he was busy disassociating himself from the whole affair and its mismanagement. The three of them
drifted through the door to a bench on the clean stone flags outside. After a while the other Frenchman joined them, confidently leaving Smith alone with Dupont.

“I must offer my excuses,” he said. “I did not anticipate—”

Here, away from the victim, his character no longer appeared of any extraordinary determination. He admitted nothing (and one could hardly put the direct question) but plainly for him as for
them this was a first experience.

“Look here!” Virian exclaimed, suddenly as compassionate for the civilian as for Dupont. “I am prepared to go back and report that this can’t be done.”

“But, alas, it must be done.”

“Why? We can keep the blighter in prison for you. If they can’t find a way of holding him, it’s their business to think of one. What do you say, sir?” he asked the French
major.

“Me? I have not the right to interfere. It is your service which took Dupont, and your service which has requested us to get rid of him. Sooner or later our duty as Frenchmen must be done,
but I admit I should prefer it to be by due process of law.”

So, even to him, there was no point in immediate punishment. There was a more complex, far more insistent motive for Dupont’s death than mere justice. Fayze and his precious colleague in
Spain were terrified lest their too impulsive act should become known to the enemy, with whom they had a rogues’ agreement that kidnaping and assassination were barred. Such unsporting
practices would have interfered with the daily game of collecting information. The end of all fun and promotion – like placing a bomb on a football field. Fayze didn’t at all want his
agents kidnaped by way of retaliation; so Dupont could never be allowed to mix with other internees, to appear on any list, to write a letter or answer a question. He had to vanish for good.

It was the uncleanness of this necessity which revolted Virian. For this, for the sake of what in the end was nothing but inefficiency, he and Medlock and young Smith – it was the youth of
Smith which appalled him, whether or not the man was callous – were to be turned into murderers.

“What about our orders?” Medlock asked.

“Damn our orders! If we report that the thing is too risky, they must accept our opinion. I’m not saying that Dupont doesn’t deserve to be shot. I’m saying that we
can’t take the responsibility.”

“That is between you and your superiors,” the French major remarked unhelpfully.

“And mercy – doesn’t that come in?”

“One can have too many scruples,” added the other Frenchman, his voice bitter with longing for the simplicities of peace.