White Eagles Over Serbia (14 page)

Precious stones! Machine-guns! Sophia Marie! For a while Methuen's brain was in a whirl. What was to be made of all this reported activity in a landscape which offered not a living soul to the view? The larks were rising from the dewy meadows as he walked outside to think the whole thing over. The landscape slept as if it had been freshly painted by the hand of a master. He yawned as he drank some hot cocoa and read the transcript through slowly. He had still two days before the next rendezvous. How should he spend them? “It is really incredible that I haven't put up anything at all,” he told himself despondently. “There must be something to show for all this activity somewhere.” But where?

He retired to the cave and slept for a while. At midday, after some food, he set off and walked due west along the range until dusk without result. The quietness of the landscape was no illusion for the wild life of the place told him the same tale. It was completely undisturbed by man. In his despondency he even shot a hare with his pistol, regretting as he did so that he had no receptacle suitable for jugging a creature which has such comparatively large bones. Nevertheless he slung it round his waist in a pocket and carried it home with him to the cave.

That night he slept free from alarms and woke to find that a storm had settled over the valley. The dark sky was suffused with clouds, and lightning played among the pines; the river too had turned white as a scar and was full of drifting logs being whirled down by the current. He spent a joyous hour fishing in the rain before returning soaked to his cave, which was by now as warm and dry as an airing cupboard. Here he disposed his catch, the rosy silvered trout, on moss and counting them decided that he had enough for the day if he was to be penned up by bad weather. “I'm really in danger of overeating,” he thought, thinking of the hare which he had hung for the night over his chimney.

The rain slashed and the thunder boomed the whole morning long and he was glad for an excuse to lie up and think of his plans. Despondency gave place now to resignation. After all, he had done his best. If there was nothing to report it was not his fault. He could not be expected to go out of his way to search for trouble. Dombey would have to be content.… But, and here he swore under his breath, what were the soldiers doing, converging upon this area from so many directions? Damn it, he could not believe that they were out to hunt for him. How would Dombey ever equate his report with that of the military movements?

He retired to bed early that night and the following morning he set out once more, walking due north; he climbed the high saddle of mountains between this valley and the next, and spent some hours with his glasses combing the fells and downs for signs of movement. In vain. The following day he repeated the same journey only travelling due south this time, vaguely in the direction of Rashka. He encountered a few wood-cutters but nothing else; a gang of platelayers worked in spasmodic fashion on the railway; two fishermen sat immobile on the distant banks of the Ibar. That was all. That was absolutely all.

Wednesday (the day of the rendezvous) dawned bright and clear, and conscience bade him once more repeat the long trudges of the last two days. But he had as yet not decided how to respond to the Ambassador's request. Should he stay or should he return? That was the question. If he were to stay until Saturday he might well take one day off to devote to his passion. “I'll stay,” he said after a long interior debate. “Damn it, I must.” And once the decision was made his spirits rose again. He wrote a fairly detailed report for Dombey, and then made his way down to the river to find the little screened nook from which he fished in the evenings. As he settled himself he repeated the last words of his report aloud, shaking his head sadly as he did so: “I can guarantee a complete quiet in an area of five miles radius around this point.”

It was radiantly sunny and the air was full of summer scents; he leaned easily against a bush, screened from both man and fish, and began to scribble his watery patterns, moving from time to time to explore a new piece of watery territory.

As he worked the polished surface of the river he fell into that pleasant contemplative mood, born of deep thought—but not conscious thought—that anglers and perhaps chess-players also regard as the greatest reward of their efforts. The sun shone brightly in the sky and the woods around were alive with bird-song. In a corner of a pool he discovered once more a special trout that he had swom to take, and was tempting it to the fly by every means at his command when something caught his glance which made him dive for cover.

He had seen the reflection of someone in the water some ten yards away—moreover the reflection of someone who was holding a tommy-gun to his shoulder in an attitude of alertness. In the same blinding flash of recognition he also recognized that the reflection had been pointing in his direction, though not exactly at him. He pressed himself to the ground, thrusting his precious rod as far into the bushes as he could, and coaxed his pistol out of its sling. His dive for safety had taken him into deep cover and he was confident now that he was out of sight, but so was the unknown. He remembered now noticing that the man wore the grey soldier's tunic and the flat cap with the red star.

All was silent, and after a moment's pause he worked his way quietly back to the shadow outside the cave. The tree was like a great eyebrow in the shadow of which he could squat unobserved and look out upon the bare hillside opposite.

The silence, so ominous now with hidden dangers, possessed him like a drug. He listened to it, gradually sifting it for known sounds like bird-song or the noise of the water: like the ripple of wind-blown foliage and the croak of frogs: sifting it for some other indications, however slight, of trespassers. There had been no mistaking the meaning of that reflection. And he was wondering whether perhaps his cave had been discovered when a burst of rapid fire brought him to his feet.

The foliage danced and shook on the hillside opposite as the spate of bullets struck the branches of an arbutus; and at the same time a figure broke cover and began to run with clumsy zigzag steps across the river bank opposite. “God,” said Methuen. The tommy-gunner altered his angle of fire and a jumping rain of bullets cracked the polished surface of the river as they sped after the running man. It was now that Methuen had a dream-like sensation of unreality, for the fugitive was dressed exactly like him in every detail from the moth-eaten fur cap to the heavy peasant boots. It was as if some absurd travesty of himself were being pursued by that hail of bullets over the green sward across the river.

A whistle sounded over the hill. The man in the heavy boots lurched and bounded towards the trees with the bullets kicking up the ground at his heels. “He's done it,” said Methuen as he saw him reaching safety; but just as he reached the edge of the wood he staggered and crashed out of sight into a bush. “He's hit.” Methuen felt a sense of identification with him. He shrank back into cover as there came the sound of running feet, and a soldier crashed through the undergrowth below the cave, holding his tommy-gun above his head as he plunged into the river in pursuit of the fugitive.

At this moment two more soldiers came over the brow of the hill at the double and they all converged on the spot where the man in the heavy boots had gone to earth. “Only three of them,” said Methuen. “Shall I shoot them?” but he restrained so wild an impulse, for the range was by now too great for his weapon. Instead he focused his glasses on the spot and watched in an agony of excitement. The three soldiers were hulking peasant lads and showed little aptitude for tracking their man; nor did they seem to have any officer with them. They walked stolidly through the bushes, making a prodigious noise, and occasionally firing a rapid burst into places which they suspected of harbouring the fugitive.

As they advanced in a ragged line down the hill Methuen started with surprise, for he had seen something else; a head had appeared at the further end of the copse they were beating—the head of the man in the fur hat. He gazed about him quickly, like a snake, and began a slithering sliding movement down and away from that stolid row of grey figures; in a few moments he had put a maize-patch between himself and bis pursuers and rose from his hands and knees. But now Methuen could see that he had been wounded for he lurched and staggered, clutching his side, his feet continually giving way under him. He reached the bottom of the dell and started making for the river when his strength gave out and he fell face downward on the grass, breathing in hoarse strangled gasps.

In a flash Methuen was out of cover and down the hill. He crossed the stream and reached the side of the fallen man in a matter of moments. He gripped his shoulder and turned him face upward and saw at once that he had been badly hit; a contorted swollen face stared up at him in fear and anger. “Come,” said Methuen, “I'll get you out of this. Can you walk?” But the man was past walking—indeed all but past speaking. His eye were glazed with pain. He was heavily built but Methuen took him up in a special grip of his own and with a vast expenditure of effort hoisted him slowly across the stream and up the hill. “Hurry!” the man kept whispering. “Hurry!” and indeed Methuen needed no bidding. He was in a sweat of apprehension lest the soldiers return before he reached the cave-mouth.

He achieved the journey safely, however, and carried his burden into the cave where he laid it down on his bracken bed. The man groaned from time to time. He had been shot in the stomach, and Methuen had experience enough to recognize a mortal wound when he saw one. He would not live very long. Nevertheless he busied himself to make him as comfortable as possible and after a swig at his flask the man recovered some colour and was able to speak in a whisper: “Brother,” he said, “I was trying to make contact for days, but you did not give the signal. I wanted to be sure it was you.” Methuen stared at him and said nothing; but the man went on slowly, talking it seemed, as much to himself as to his rescuer. “I waited for the signal. Now I am dying so I shall tell you the message quickly. Listen.” Methuen washed his face in warm water and said soothingly: “I listen. I listen.”

“Mules. I got the mules. All of them. They will come over the mountains and must be met at the old border wall on the top of Rtanj. Then you will lead them to Black Peter at the Janko Stone. Tell him to load without delay and start for the coast.” His voice tailed away into a mumble and Methuen seized a pencil and jotted down the place-names, excited beyond measure to have discovered something concrete. “No delay,” the man repeated. “There must be no delay. The police have smelt a rat. Sixty armed men of the Eagles will join Black Peter at twilight tomorrow and they must march at night without a halt.” He groaned again and closed his eyes.

Methuen was wrestling with the momentous meanings which could lie behind this message when he heard voices outside the cave. In a flash he was at the entrance in time to see the three soldiers come over the hill towards him, and ford the river. “He must have gone up here,” one was saying in a loud drunken voice. They crashed across the shallows and began to climb the slope towards the cave-mouth. Methuen shrank back, pistol in hand, into the deeper shadow. “Keep silent,” he whispered to the wounded man. “They are coming.”

They advanced in straggling fashion up the hill, arguing loudly, and came to the knoll below the great tree before one said: “Not up here, surely.” The second of the three, whose voice was the loudest, replied: “Looks like a cave up there. I bet you'll find him in there.”

It looked like the end of everything; Methuen's only consolation was that he might kill all three without giving them time to “hose down” (in the picturesque army phrase) the cave in which he crouched. He waited grimly, listening to the sound of their heavy boots crunching and slipping outside. Then there was a sigh and a voice said: “It's a cave all right.”

It was at this moment that the snake saved the day. It slithered into the sunlit patch at the entrance and took up its usual position, waiting no doubt for lizards to creep out and sun themselves unsuspectingly on the nearby rock-face. Methuen heard it hiss loudly; and the scrabble of boots outside, accompanied by a gasp, told him that the party had recoiled. “Look out!” said a soldier, “the snake.”

Another began to laugh. “Well,” he said, “he can't be living with a brute like that. Shall I kill it?” There was a long pause during which the snake hissed again. One of the soldiers coughed and said: “There is probably another inside. Don't fire.”

They stood irresolutely in a circle, and peeping round the corner Methuen realized that he could drop all three without difficulty. Nevertheless he waited. One took off his cap and scratched his head. Then he said with conviction: “Snakes are unlucky. I'm not going in there. Are you?” The other two laughed harshly and Methuen heard them click on the safety catches of their weapons. “Nor me,” said the one with the loud voice. Then he turned away, adding: “Come on, we'll lose him altogether if we waste time.”

In the relief from the tension Methuen heard his own even heart-beats above the noise of their heavy boots retreating. He heaved a sigh and thrust his pistol back into its sling, turning once more to the wounded man. There were one or two vital points to be cleared up. But the man had sunk into a coma from which there was no rousing him and Methuen took the opportunity to write a brief account of this latest incident. “I propose”, he added, “to meet the mule-team to-night and lead them up to the so-called Janko Stone—which is a sort of obelisk set up long ago to mark the border between Serbia and Bosnia. It is on the furthest plateau, six thousand-odd feet above sea-level, a barren stretch of mountain which I've studied through glasses but not climbed. I'll try for the Sunday morning rendezvous. By then I should know what it is all about.”

His spirits rose now at the prospect of something concrete to do, and he turned his attention to his patient, trying to bandage the gaping stomach-wound, from which a fragment of red intestine was trying to escape, with strips cut from his shirt. He also made a little warm soup and tried to force some between the clenched teeth of the wounded man. In vain. He was tempted to try a surgical repair of the wound with the needle and thread which he had with him and had gone so far as to swab the area of the wound with acriflavin when the man's breathing abruptly changed to a heavy gasping snore punctuated by ghastly hiccoughs. Only his extraordinary physique had kept him alive so long. But now the colour drained from his face and his teeth began to grind as if with cold.