The Mouse That Roared (12 page)

He was heard to shout to the policeman with him, “Knock over that tall guy in the fancy-dress costume for me.”

The policeman, who had a carbine with him, got out of the car for better aim and Tully called to Will, “Take off the fellow’s hat. He lacks respect.”

There was hardly a noticeable movement, hardly as much as the taking of aim, before the arrow sped from Will’s bow like an angry bee. The policeman had only just raised his carbine when the yard-long shaft lanced through his hat, whipped it off his head and carried it a further hundred feet down the street, before plunging into the asphalt. The shaft remained there, standing at an angle, the policeman’s hat dangling from it, as the first trophy of war for Grand Fenwick.

The policeman himself fired at the moment that the arrow struck, but his aim was entirely spoiled and his round flung upwards at least twenty yards over Tully’s head. Tully, in the meantime, took a bow from the man nearest him, and with the same casual unconcern displayed by Will, looking almost away from his target, whipped off General Snippett’s hat with an arrow. This shaft also continued down the street to drop within a few feet of that fired by Will.

It was this last arrow, fired by Tully, which was unwittingly the cause of placing the lives of some millions of people, unconscious all of them of the battle, in jeopardy. For in order to take the bow, Tully had passed the quadium bomb to the bowman to hold, and the latter, unconscious of its true nature, paid it scant attention. In the minutes that followed, Tully himself forgot about the bomb. He knew, with an instinct for military tactics, bred in him through the generations, that this was exactly the right moment to strike a vital blow at the enemy.

“One flight,” he cried, “fifty feet this side of their lines. And then charge with sword and buckler.”

The volley sped like a shower of hail down the street--a small compact bundle of arching arrows which threw a leaping shadow along the buildings, reached their zenith and then slipped down to the earth to thud into the road surface a few feet from the cars drawn up behind General Snippett. The arrows had hardly left the bowstrings before the men of Grand Fenwick had drawn their swords and, with bucklers thrust before them, hurled down upon General Snippett’s car and the others to the rear. The General’s automobile was quickly captured by Will, who jerked the chauffeur out of the seat and snatched the carbine away from the policeman and flung it through the window of a nearby building. He then fetched the General himself a cuff which, gallant man though he was, put him out of action for the remainder of the encounter.

The three cars composing the main American lines, however, were not so readily dealt with. The occupants of one, the canteen car, seeing a howling mob of men descending upon them, swords wheeling in bright circles in the sunlight, fled. The two policemen, however, stood their ground, though uncertain for a second what to do. One raised his carbine and fired a shot which struck one of the Fenwick bowmen in the chest. The bowman fell, got up, and fell again, to remain quiet and still upon the street. He was a small farmer named Tom Cobley, a man of forty-five years of age, and that day he achieved more honour than had come to any of his countrymen in five centuries. For Tom Cobley was the first to die for Grand Fenwick in over five hundred years. His body, pickled in a barrel of brine, was later taken to his homeland and buried in a crypt next to that of Sir Roger Fenwick, in the heart of Fenwick Castle.

The stout defence of the American policeman was sufficient to give heart to the remainder of his comrades, who commenced to fire into the approaching horde. But there was no time for the Americans to aim, and the bowmen were upon them before they could loose more than two or three ineffective rounds. In the short melee that followed, the Fenwickian soldier who had been given the quadium bomb to carry, being, because of his burden, deprived of the use of any other weapon, decided to hurl it at one of his opponents. His arm was jostled as he threw, so the bomb flipped up in the air for about twenty feet. Tully caught a glimpse of it as it sped upward. He was standing on the hood of one of the automobiles, perhaps ten feet from where it would fall and, in falling, destroy most of the major cities on the east coast of America.

He flung himself forward towards it, grasped it in his two hands as it came down, and rolled to the ground, the bomb held firmly to his chest. When he got up, New York and all its inhabitants had been saved, the forces of Grand Fenwick had won a decisive victory over their enemies and were in possession of their four automobiles; and Dr. Kokintz, who had been entrusted to the care of two men, had fainted. It was some minutes before he could be revived, and when his consciousness was restored, he took one look at the quadium bomb, which Tully held reassuringly before him, and fainted again.

The battle had lasted no more than five minutes from the initial parley with General Snippett to the capture of all the American equipment plus the General himself, his chauffeur, and four policemen. The remainder of the American force had fled the field, and Tully ordered his men to get into the American cars, and follow him down to the Cunard dock where the brig
Endeavour
awaited them. Since Tully was the only man in Grand Fenwick who knew how to handle an automobile, the other cars were driven by the captured Americans, swords pressed to their sides to ensure that they attempted no escape.

During the journey to the dock, General Snippett recovered consciousness to demand what the hell everybody thought they were doing.

“You’ll pay for this with the rest of your lives in gaol,” he thundered. “Let me out of here, or I’ll call all the cops in New York out after you.” After he had fumed for a while without anyone paying any attention, he assumed a more reasonable tone and asked once again what it was all about.

Tully explained to him patiently that he was prisoner of war of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, that he would be taken back to Grand Fenwick, treated according to his rank, which he judged to be that of a captain, and held there for ransom, according to the procedures of civilized nations. This produced another explosion from the General and when he had again subsided, he asked what or where was the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, and what was the cause of the war.

The reply to this, that the duchy was an independent nation five miles long and three wide, contained in the northern slopes of the Alps, and that the war had been brought about as a result of the enterprise of some California wine makers, reduced the General to a stunned silence, for which Tully was grateful, for he had a number of things to think about and only a short while in which to make his decision.

His first problem was to get Dr. Kokintz and the quadium bomb to Grand Fenwick safely. The only transportation at his disposal was the brig, which would take three weeks at least to get to the port nearest to the duchy. In that three weeks it might be set upon in the high seas and sunk by American craft, since a state of war existed between the two countries. He toyed with the idea of driving to the nearest airfield and commandeering a plane to fly the doctor and the bomb to Grand Fenwick. But there were potent arguments against such a plan. In the first place, it might prove impossible to find a plane and a pilot capable of making the transatlantic flight. In the second place, they might encounter in the drive to the nearest airfield, which he judged to be Idle-wild, such superior forces of the enemy that he would be unable to defeat them.

He decided to trust to the brig. Despite the fact that it was almost incapable of defence, and would take so long to reach a home port, there was one factor in their favour. And that was the strange circumstance that the United States apparently did not know that it was at war with Grand Fenwick. Indeed, Tully now doubted that more than a handful of people in New York were aware that an invasion force had entered the city, marched to Columbia University, breached the building, and stolen the most valuable military secret which the United States possessed. Thus there was a strong possibility that all would arrive safely home in the duchy before the truth was discovered.

The next point was whether he should remain with some of the men to carry out the original plan for an attack upon the White House and the seizure of the President. He decided against this. It was, he argued, unnecessary. The Fenwick forces had already seized, in the person of Dr. Kokintz and the quadium bomb, far greater booty, far more capable of bringing the United States to terms, than the person of the President.

Thinking of Dr. Kokintz, he was reminded that the scientist
i
had said he was from Grand Fenwick. Tully turned to Will,
who sat on the other side of the General’s car, the General being between them.

“Will,” he said, “do you ever recall a family by the name of Kokintz in Grand Fenwick?”

Will thought solemnly upon the matter for a minute or two. “I don’t remember them myself,” he said at length, “but my father once spoke of some people called Kokintz. There was a man and a woman. They were gypsy folk, travelling through, and the woman was pregnant, and couldn’t go any further. The two were permitted to stay in Grand Fenwick until the baby was born.

“My father said the woman died, and the Duke took pity on the man and said he could remain in the duchy as long as he pleased. He stayed about three years or maybe more, then he left, I believe, for America, taking his son with him. That’s all I ever heard of it.”

“The name seems more familiar than that to me,” said Tully. He looked at the doctor, who was sitting between guards in the back seat of the convertible. He had the cage with his canary on his lap and was talking to the bird.

“That’s it,” said Tully, suddenly. “Birds. Kokintz is the man who challenged my father when he wrote his book about the native birds of Grand Fenwick. He said that Grand Fenwick was too small to have any native birds. I remember now. Hey, you,” he called to the scientist, “didn’t you once write a paper saying that there were no native birds in Grand Fenwick?”

“I did,” Kokintz replied, mildly.

“Well, you’ll soon have an opportunity to correct your error,” Tully said grimly. “You’ll learn all about the native birds of Grand Fenwick starting with this one”--he pointed to the double-headed eagle on his surcoat--”and ending up with sparrows. Sparrows in Grand Fenwick have a tuft of feathers on the top of their heads.”

“Probably nut-hatches,” said Dr. Kokintz, blinking through i his thick glasses.

“You can call them nut-hatches if you like over here,” retorted Tully, “or eagles if you want to. But in Grand Fenwick they’re sparrows and they have a tuft of feathers on the top of their heads.”

By this time they had arrived at the Cunard dock. Pedro and his crew of five were lolling around the deck, dozing in the spring sun. A hail from Tully brought them quickly to their feet.

“We’re coming aboard,” he said. “Prepare to cast off and make sail.”

“How about a few hours’ shore leave?” asked Pedro. “Some of the boys haven’t seen an American girl in four or five years.”

“Cast off,” roared Tully, “this is no time to think of wenching.”

Pedro shrugged and signalled to the men who commenced to busy themselves with the fore and aft moorings. Dr. Kokintz, the General, the four policemen and the chauffeur were hustled down ropes to the deck of the brig and then put below in the main cabin. The rest of the Grand Fenwick force followed them. Tully remained alone on the dock after they were all aboard.

“Stand by until I come down,” he said. “There is one thing more for me to do.” He took a grappling iron on the end of the rope and flung it to the roof of an adjoining building. On top was a flagstaff displaying the Stars and Stripes. This he lowered and bundled under his arm. Then he bent on the banner of Grand Fenwick, with the eagle which said, “Aye,” from one beak and “Nay” from the other, and raised it to the top of the staff.

He then returned to the brig, which cast off, and was soon running under all plain sail down the river.

Pedro at the wheel, still disgruntled that his crew had been denied shore leave in the sailors’ paradise of New York, said sarcastically, “Well, you were away about five hours. How did the war with the United States go?”

“We won,” said Tully, calmly. Pedro was so surprised he swallowed his quid of chewing tobacco.

The Secretary of Defence decided to call off the great air raid alert of the east coast after only six hours, and that for a number of reasons. The most potent of these was that the people would not stand for it lasting any longer, and he really had no choice in the matter. No portion of a nation, which in all its long history had been dedicated to individualism, to the proposition that there should be the least amount of law to govern the greatest number of people, would submit to being arbitrarily and indefinitely shut up in houses and in cellars, in subways and in shelters, forbidden the comforts of radios, of television, of refrigerators and iced drinks, of cups of coffee, and of slugs of whisky or glasses of beer.

Risk of death after a while became preferable to this, which was, for such a people, a form of living death. Mothers who had been separated from their children, stood the separation for two hours, and then would stand it no more. All the pleadings of wardens, all the threats of police, all the appeals to their patriotism and the assurance that their offspring were being as well cared for as if they were in their own homes would not solace them. At the risk of being reduced to a spoonful of ashes on the moment, they left their homes, to demand, with that appalling anger of which only women are capable, to be taken to their children immediately.

Against their wrath, the forces of the Civil Defence Organization were of no avail. The women won, and in the suburbs and residential areas, the air-raid alert, though still officially on, faded gradually away. This happened, not only in the New York area, but in Boston and Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., and Providence, Rhode Island. For the first time in the history of the United States, if not in the world, women, in effect, cancelled a war.