Hammond Innes - Attack Alarm

I glanced at him. It was incredible. A coward in the face of bombs, yet here was the spirit that made British Tommies go in fearlessly with rifle and bayonet against an enemy armed with light automatics. Again I hesitated. He looked as though he might be useful in a rough-house — small and tough, probably a dirty fighter. I had no illusions about my own abilities in a fight. He might be very useful.

‘All right,’ I said, and slipped the lorry into gear again.

‘But there may be no scrap and no gang of Nazis. I may be wrong.’

I changed quickly up into top and kept the engine ticking over, so that we made little noise as we ran over that flat open heath. The road was nothing more than a rough gravel track. And in the dim moonlight the country ahead and on either side looked desolate. There were no trees, and the only relief from the interminable heather was the gnarled and twisted skeleton of gorse bushes, black and flowerless from a recent fire. My uneasiness grew with my surroundings.

‘Cor, don’t ‘alf seem creepy,’ Micky muttered, voicing my own thoughts. I couldn’t help remembering Childe Rolande to the Dark Tower Came. There was a very slight mist and the place reeked of desolation. When last I had seen Ashdown Forest it had been in sunlight, and it had seemed warm and friendly, with autumn tints glowing in the heather. I had been motoring down to Eastbourne to spend a week-end with some friends. Now it was no longer friendly, and I thought of the Ancient Britons who had fought and died here in their hopeless attempt to stem the tide of Caesar’s advancing legions. So many of the more desolate parts of Britain seem to house the ghostly memory of that tragic race.

The track forked. Evidently I was on the right road. I swung right. The road was now definitely no more than a cart track, grass-grown in the middle and full of pot-holes. At the end of it should be Cold Harbour Farm.

I passed an even smaller track leading off to the right. Then a patch of gorse bushes seemed to jump up at me out of the pale mist. I braked and swung the lorry off the track. It was time, I felt, to carry out some sort of reconnaissance. I stopped so that the lorry was screened as far as possible from the track and climbed out.

Micky followed. ‘Where do we go now?’ he asked in a hoarse whisper.

‘Up this track,’ I said. ‘It should lead us to a place called Cold Harbour Farm.’

‘Cor, stone me, wot a name!’

We went on in silence, two shadows slinking through the pale ethereal light, our canvas shoes making no sound on the baked surface of the path. About a quarter of a mile farther on we passed through a gate. It was open and its rotting timbers hung drunkenly from rust-eaten hinges. Painted roughly on it was the name — Cold Harbour Farm.

The track swung away to the left, and a little farther on we had our first glimpse of Cold Harbour Farm, a low, rambling building with a jumble of outhouses and a big barn at the farther end.

‘Sort o’ spooky, ain’t it?’ whispered Micky. It was one of those buildings that look dilapidated even at a first glance — an untidy place, with gables. There was still no sign of a tree, only the stunted gorse bushes. Neglect had allowed them to encroach to the very door.

We moved stealthily now, leaving the path and crossing what seemed once to have been a garden, for there were vestiges of rhododendrons and even roses amongst the choking growth of heather and gorse. We took the building in the flank and came out upon what had once been a gravel terrace. The gabled wing of the house looked dark and deserted. The roof tiles were green with moss and broken in places, and the woodwork of gables and windows was rotting. Everything was deathly still in the damp air. We crept round to the front. It was a long building and must at one time have been owned by quite a prosperous family. The sweeping outline of a drive was still visible amidst the chaos of the advancing heath. I gazed along the whole length of the decaying building. No chink of light showed in any of the windows. No sound disturbed the stillness of the night. Ivy had taken a stranglehold everywhere. Undisturbed, it billowed up even to the roof.

My heart sank as I looked at the place. I just couldn’t see Vayle making it his headquarters. London seemed a much more likely place for him to meet other agents. Out here in this God-forsaken spot every visitor would be bound to be noticed and commented upon by whatever local inhabitants still existed in the neighbourhood.

In any case, the house, being quite a big one, would in itself be a subject for gossip.

I went up to the front door. It was clearly not the original door, for it was of cheap deal with a brass handle. The brown paint was cracked and peeling. I tried it, and to my surprise it gave to my pressure, creaking slightly as I pushed it open.

We went in and I closed it behind us. All was silent in the darkness of the house. No, not quite. Faintly came the ticking of a clock. It sounded somehow homely, suggesting that the place was inhabited. I switched on my torch. We were in a big low-ceilinged hall. In front of us was a flight of narrow stairs covered with a threadbare carpet. The hall itself was flagged with here and there a tattered rug. There was a fine old refectory table with straight-backed chairs. The rest of the furniture was Victorian. The place looked dirty and neglected. The huge open fireplace was littered with fallen plaster, and the ceiling, which showed in strips between the heavy oak beams, was blackened and in places had crumbled so that the laths were visible.

I opened the door to. our left and flashed my torch round. It was a big room with Victorian furniture of the ugliest and most uncomfortable type, the walls covered with photographs and texts and every flat surface a jumble of knick-knacks. French windows led on to the terrace by which we had just approached the house. The heavy plush curtains were undrawn. There was no blackout and several panes were missing. The air felt damp and stale. The room was obviously not lived in.

‘Puts me in mind of one of them smash-up-the-‘appy-‘ome tents at the fair,’ whispered Micky. ‘I couldn’t ‘alf do something to all them little bits of china wiv a couple of cricket balls.’

I closed the door and we crossed the hall to the door at the far end. This led to a smaller and more homely room. The Victorian furniture had been blended with additions from Drages, and in the far corner a rather fine grandfather clock ticked away impassively, the brass of the pendulum nicking back and forth across the glass porthole of its case. The time was twelve-fifteen. There were the burnt-out cinders of a recent fire in the grate.

Back in the hall I tried the only door we had not yet looked through. This was to the left of the hearth and led to a cold brick-floored passage. I went down it full of a wretched feeling of depression. Either there had been nothing in the coincidence of Elaine Stuart and the injured workman both talking of Cold Harbour Farm whilst unconscious or else I had picked on the wrong one. I felt suddenly hot and chaotic with anxiety. If I had picked on the wrong one and something did happen this morning, it would be horrible. Looking back, my efforts to defeat Vayle seemed so puny and haphazardly organised — much too haphazardly organised.

I stopped before a door. Micky followed me, bumped into me. I suppose he must have put out his hand to keep his balance, for out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of something white falling, and the silence of the house was splintered by what seemed to be the most appalling crash. I turned the beam of my torch downwards. On the red brick floor lay the shattered remains of a white vegetable dish patterned with blue flowers. We stood motionless, listening. Not a sound disturbed the stillness of the house save the gentle ticking of the clock in the small room. In the quiet it had seemed shatteringly loud. If there were anyone in the house it must surely have woken them.