Джон Пристли - The Doomsday Men

He arrived at the doorway only to find himself confronted by the bleached young man he had knocked out in the hut at Baker. And once more that young man was pointing a gun at him, and this time he looked as if he were only too anxious to use it. There he had to stay, sobbing for breath, until the others came up. No sign of Deeks or the Mexicans, but Jimmy felt they would be useless in such a crisis.

“You stole a package, friend,” said Brother Kaydick sternly. “What have you done with it? No, before you begin to lie or evade the question, I will tell you this. We are not ordinary men going about our ordinary business. We do not work for gain. We have been set apart from other men because we have been given a little insight into the mysterious ways of our Lord. We are his faithful servants. In a little while all things known to you will come to an end. Therefore it is nothing to us if we should have to make an end of you now, or if, to make you speak, we should be compelled to give you a foretaste of what you will soon suffer in Hell. Nor would it seem hateful to us to destroy everything here, leaving not a stone standing, because it would only be going the way of all worldly things. Friend, you have heard me combat your lies with lies of my own invention. But now you hear the solemn truth. Where is the thing you stole from us?”

Jimmy had not led an easy and sheltered life; in many rough places he had been compelled to listen to many rough speeches; but he could not recall one that had impressed him as this of Kaydick’s did now. The man might be living in some mad world of his own, lit by the gleams of hell-fire; but he was terribly in earnest and was not making idle threats. Jimmy knew that so far as that piece of apparatus was concerned, the game was up. These cool madmen were desperate. He was glad Rosalie was out of it.

“I opened it,” he told Kaydick, “and all that there was inside is in there.”

They took him into the living-room with them and he showed them the large fat tube with the curious metal fittings.

“Is that all there was?” demanded Kaydick sternly.

“Yes. Nothing else at all.”

“Where are its wrappings?”

Jimmy was not sure but thought they might have been dumped into the shed at the back. Fortunately, one of the men found them there, all but some of the straw and stuff; and this seemed to convince Kaydick that Jimmy was telling the truth. They made another secure package of the apparatus, while one of them began to make a second secure package out of poor Jimmy, who had both his hands and feet tied. They sat him at the back of the car, between two of them; and then after Kaydick, who took charge of the apparatus, had made Jimmy swear again that they had all that was in the package he had taken, they drove off, without carrying out their threat to destroy the ranch-house, much to Jimmy’s relief.

They drove quickly over the rutted and rocky tracks, and Jimmy, so trussed up that he could not adjust himself to all the bumping, had a horrible time of it. Nor was it long before the thin rope began to cut into his wrists and ankles. Where they were going, he did not know, and it was difficult to see out from where he was at the back; but he had an idea, not very carefully considered because his misery was too absorbing, that they went back along the road to Barstow and then turned off, up a steep side-track, to avoid the town and the main roads. The pain was becoming unendurable, and Jimmy implored them to untie him. For a weary long time they ignored his outcry, but then, just as he was about to faint, Kaydick gave the order that he should be loosed. In the vast relief of this freedom, and in spite of his chafed and aching wrists and ankles, Jimmy, leaning back and vaguely seeing the sunset glow all round them, began to nod and droop, and finally in his utter weariness fell fast asleep.

It was dark when they shook and roused him, though there were lights coming from somewhere. He crawled out shakily into the delicious cool air of early night, saw deep indigo hills against the stars, and high in front many lighted windows; and he knew without being told that they had brought him to the very place at which he had stared from the plane about six hours before; for this could only be the secret headquarters of the Brotherhood, the home of the MacMichaels. Yes, dimly rising there, ghostly beneath the stars, was the white tower.

Yes, it was Andrea. Malcolm rose and went slowly towards her. She was wearing a black sombrero, a coloured shirt, trousers and boots, as if for riding. She stepped back, staring, and he came slowly out, and they looked at one another, standing there in the sunlight. Her face was heavily shadowed under the broad brim, but he fancied it went suddenly white, and she certainly put up a hand, as if to stop her heart pounding. And it seemed quite a long time before they spoke.

“I didn’t know until this morning,” she said, speaking with some difficulty, “and even then I couldn’t believe it was you.” She waited a moment. “Oh!-why did you come here?”

“I came to see you again.”

“Yes-but why, why?”

“You see,” he explained carefully, “I managed to get that job-of seeing our client out in Hollywood-I think I told you about that-and then I felt I had to find out where you were and to try and see you again. As a matter of fact, that’s why I came to America at all. To see you again, and if possible to talk to you and to try and find out what’s the matter.”

“Why should there be anything the matter?”

He seemed to know a lot of reasons now, but this was not the moment to bring them out. He hesitated a moment, and lost the chance of replying.

“I didn’t ask you to come here.” And she gave him a sombre reproachful look, out of eyes that now he saw he had not remembered properly at all.

“No,” he replied, trying to keep a careful level tone, “you didn’t. In fact, you discouraged me from ever finding out anything more about you. In spite of that telegram.”

“I shouldn’t have sent that,” she said quickly. “That was silly. I was sorry afterwards.”

He waited a moment, still looking at her. “Probably you’re not interested now, but I might as well tell you that since that telegram, or since that night at Beaulieu, I don’t think I’ve spent three waking hours together without remembering you, thinking about you.”

She swung away, and stared-or appeared to stare-down into the empty valley.

“That’s why I came,” he went on, not pleading, not giving his tone any more warmth. “I’ve probably made a fool of myself, but that can’t be helped.”

She did not reply to this, did not even turn to look at him for a moment or two, then said frowningly: “I still don’t understand. I-tore up-in such a hurry. You were with some other man, weren’t you, that my uncle wanted to see?”

He explained, briefly, about Hooker, and pointed out, to bring her back to where they really left off, that Hooker had nothing to do with them. “We happened to meet at Barstow, that’s all,” he concluded.

“You needn’t have gone on thinking about me,” she said, with a very feminine lightning dive into the very heart of the real topic. “Need you?”

“No, and I tried not to. After all,” he added, so grandly that he suddenly realised he was simply being pompous, “I don’t particularly want to spend all my time thinking about mysterious young women from California.”

“Oh-young women ?”

“Well,” stiffly, “one young woman then.”

She regarded him calmly. “You’re very silly, and very British, and somehow rather sweet, when you’re like that,” she announced, to his astonishment. “I remember you like that-before.”