Алистер Маклин - South by Java Head

“We passed a high wall on this side about twenty paces back?”

“We did,” Telak nodded.

“With trees growing up behind it, close to the wall?”

“I noticed that also,” Telak nodded.

“Let’s get back there.” Nicolson turned and padded softly along in the shelter of the hedge.

It was all over inside two minutes, and no one more than thirty or forty yards away could have heard the slightest whisper of sound. Nicolson lay on the ground at the foot of the high wall and moaned softly, then more loudly, more pitifully still as his first groans had attracted no attention at all. Within seconds, however, one of the guards started, straightened up and peered anxiously down the road, and a moment later the second guard, his attention caught by an especially anguished moan, did the same. The two men looked at one another, held a hurried consultation, hesitated, then came running down the road, one of them switching on a torch as he came. Nicolson moaned even more loudly, twisted in apparent agony so that his back was to them and so that he could not be so quickly identified as a Westerner. He could see the flickering gleam of bayonets in the swinging light of the torch, and an edgy guard would be just that little bit liable to prefer investigating a corpse to a living enemy, no matter how seriously hurt he might appear to be.

Heavy boots clattering on the metalled road, the two men slithered to a stop, stooped low over the fallen man and died while they were still stooping, the one with a flame-shaped dagger buried to the hilt in his back as Telak dropped off the high wall above, the other as McKinnon’s sinewy hands found his neck a bare second after Nicolson had kicked the rifle out of his unsuspecting hand.

Nicolson twisted swiftly to his feet, stared down at the two dead men. Too small, he thought bitterly, far too damned small. He’d hoped for uniforms, for disguise, but neither of these two uniforms would have looked at any of the three of them.

There was no time to waste. Telak and himself at wrists and ankles, one swing, two, a powerful boost from McKinnon in the middle and the first of the guards was over the high wall and safely out of sight, five seconds more and the other had joined him. Moments later all three men were inside the grounds of the mansion.

The well-lighted pathway was flanked on both sides by either high bushes or trimmed trees. On the right-hand side, behind the trees, was only the high wall with the electric fence on top: on the other side of the drive-way was a wide, sloping lawn, bare in patches but well-kept and smooth, dotted with small trees irregularly planted in circular plots of earth. Light reached the lawn from the drive-way and the front of the house, but not much. The three men flitted soundlessly across the grass, from the shadowed shelter of one tree to the next until they reached a clump of bushes that bordered the gravel in front of the portico of the house. Nicolson leaned forward and put his mouth to Telak’s ear.

“Ever been here before?”

“Never.” Telak’s murmur was as soft as his own.

“Don’t know about any other doors? Never heard if the windows are barred or live-wired or fitted with intruder alarms?”

Telak shook his head in the darkness.

“That settles it,” Nicolson whispered. “The front door. They won’t be expecting visitors, especially visitors like us, through the front door.” He groped at his belt, unhooked the parang Telak had given him and began to straighten up from his kneeling position. “No noise, no noise at all. Quick and clean and quiet. We mustn’t disturb our hosts.”

He took half a pace forward, choked a muffled exclamation and sank back to his knees again. He had little option. McKinnon, for all his medium height, weighed almost two hundred pounds and was phenomenally strong.

“What is it,” Nicolson whispered. He rubbed his burnt forearm in silent agony, certain that McKinnon’s digging forefingers had torn off some of the skin.

“Someone coming,” McKinnon breathed in his ear. “Must have guards outside.”

Nicolson listened a second, then shook his head in the gloom to show that he could hear nothing. For all that he believed the bo’sun – his hearing was on a par with his remarkable eyesight.

“On the verge, not the gravel,” McKinnon murmured. “Coming this way. I can take him.”

“Leave him alone.” Nicolson shook his head strongly. “Too much noise.”

“He’ll hear us crossing the gravel.” McKinnon’s voice sank even lower, and Nicolson could hear the man coming now, could hear the soft swish of feet in the wet grass. “There’ll be no noise. I promise it.”

This time Nicolson nodded and gripped his arm in token of consent. The man was almost opposite them now, and in spite of himself Nicolson shivered. To his certain knowledge this would be the soft-spoken Highland bo’sun’s fourth victim that night, and only one of them, so far, had managed to get even a breath of sound past his lips. How long one could live with a man – three years in this case – and not really get to know him…

The man was just a foot past them, head turned away as he looked towards the two lighted windows and the far-off murmur of voices from behind them, when McKinnon rose to his feet, noiseless as a wraith, hooked hands closing round the man’s neck like a steel trap. He was as good as his word. There was no noise at all, not even the faintest whisper of sound.

They left him behind the bushes and crossed the gravel at a steady, unhurried walk, in case there were still some guards in the grounds to hear them, mounted the steps, crossed the portico and walked unchallenged through the wide open double doors.

Beyond lay a wide hall, softly lit from a central chandelier, with a high, arching roof, walls panelled in what looked like oak, and a gleaming parquetry floor, finely tesselated in jarrah and kauri and some light-coloured tropical hardwoods.

From either side of the hall, wide, sweeping staircases, a darker-coloured wood than that of the walls, curved up to meet the broad, pillared balcony that ran the full length of both sides and the back. At the foot of either stairway was a set of double doors, closed, and between them, at the back, a third, single door. All the doors were painted white, lending an incongruous note to the dusky satin of the walls. The door at the back of the hall was open.

Nicolson gestured to McKinnon and Telak to take up position one on either side of the double doors to the right, then padded cat-footed across the hall to the open door at the back. He could feel the cool, hard floor under the pads of his feet; that gruelling cross-country run must have torn off most of what charred remains of canvas soles had been left him after he had carried Van Effen out of the burning council house. His mind registered it automatically, but disregarded it, just as it disregarded the pain of the raw, burnt flesh. There would come a time for suffering, but that time was not yet. That feeling of ice-cold indifference coupled with its razor-edged calculation was with him still, more strongly than ever.

He flattened himself against the far wall, cocked his head in listening, his eyes turned towards the open doorway. At first he could hear nothing, then faintly he caught the far-off murmur of voices and the occasional chink of crockery. The kitchens and the servants’ quarters, obviously – and if the men behind these double doors were eating, and they might well be, this being about the hour of the late evening meal, servants would be liable to be coming down that long passage and across the hall at any moment. Nicolson slid noiselessly forward and risked a quick glance round the edge of the door. The passage was dimly lit, about twenty feet in length, with two closed doors on either side and one at the far end, open, showing a white rectangle of light. There was no one to be seen.