Dennis Wheatley - Black August

Gregory paused for a moment further along, where Silas was leaning against a traverse, hands in pockets, near a Lewis gun.

'Keep a look out this side,' he warned him, 'but it wasn't a landing party only some farmers, and I should think they've had their belly full.'

'If that's so I'd best go out and see if Fane's among the wounded.'

'That's nice of you, Silas,' Kenyon stumbled forward, 'but by a miracle I got through.'

'My hat! Then there's a God in heaven yet.' The big man's voice came warm and cheerful as he gripped Kenyon by the arm.

'Don't,' moaned Kenyon. 'For God's sake I'm hit.'

'Sorry brace up, old chap but tell me, did you see the kid, or did they pinch you before you got to Orford?'

'What, Ann! Yes and I was bringing her back with me, but we were separated I I'd hoped that she was here.'

Gregory shook his head. 'No I'd know of it if she'd turned up on her own.'

'Then she's lost somewhere out on these cursed moors,' Kenyon passed his hand across his throbbing forehead wearily. 'Oh, God! I'm sick with worry for her.'

'Take a pull,' Silas tried to comfort him. 'She's full of pluck so she'll make Shingle Street some time before the morning.'

A third explosion sounded from the beach and Gregory turned away quickly. 'Come on, Rudd, that Martello was never built to resist modern shells once they get the range they'll pound the place to pieces.'

He climbed out of the trench and with Rudd's aid Kenyon followed. Three minutes later they were in front of the Anchor.

'Is Veronica in?' Kenyon asked Gregory.

'I expect so.'

'Then I'll get her to patch me up feel about all in.'

That's right, I expect you need a meal as well. Get Andrews to cook you something and open up one of his remaining bottles. If you feel fit enough you may be able to give us a hand later.' With a quick smile Gregory hurried on into the darkness.

Andrews stood in the porch of the inn watching the bombardment. 'Why, sir, we'd given you up for lost,' he exclaimed as he saw Kenyon.

'Had you well, I'm back again, thank God. Where's my sister?'

'You'll find her in the sitting room. I tried to persuade her to come out here and see the fireworks but she wouldn't. Still, I mustn't stay here talking when you've had no supper. I'll get the girls to cook you something.' With a friendly grin on his chubby face the little man went off towards the kitchen while Kenyon pushed open the sitting room door.

Veronica lay back in a low arm chair, her feet cocked up on the fire guard, showing a long length of leg, browned by three weeks' exposure, to excellent advantage. She was reading and did not turn her head but gave a little gurgle of laughter.

'Andrews, isn't Dickens too divine do you think people ever really made love like that?'

'I don't know or care.' Kenyon closed his eyes and dropped on to the sofa.

'Darling!' At the sound of his voice she cast the battered volume on the floor and jumped to her feet. 'Oh, Kenyon, we've been worried stiff about you. I couldn't even watch the fighting for fear you were mixed up in it somewhere outside the camp so I've been trying to sink myself in David Copperfield.'

'I was,' he murmured. 'They damn near killed me too.'

Instantly Veronica was beside him, her long fingers tenderly investigating the cuts upon his head, and the wound which still ebbed blood in his shoulder. 'My poor lamb, what have they done to you I'll get some water to bathe that horrid place.'

As she left him Kenyon sank back on the pillow, his bodily distress momentarily submerged, now that he had time to think coherently again, in fear for Ann. She must have escaped when he was captured but what had happened to her since? Perhaps she was lost and crouching in some ditch, desperately frightened by those ghoul like creatures who prowled the lanes, or worse, she might already have fallen prisoner to some gang of roughs. He knew that men had become crazed by their misfortunes; morals and all sense of decency had been flung aside, so it was hideously possible that these men turned brutes might seize upon any diversion which offered even temporary forgetfulness of their hunger. His tortured brain began to visualise the drama that might be proceeding in some lonely wood if half a dozen of them came upon a lovely girl alone and unprotected fine sport for the night, to satiate at least one appetite.

His terrible forebodings were cut short by Veronica's return. She bathed his wounds and sought to comfort him, as he told her of events at Orford, the return journey, and his fears for Ann.

No bones seemed to be broken in his shoulder, and by the time she had bandaged the gash and plastered up his head, his supper was on the table. His anxiety had driven away all appetite but she forced him to eat it, telling him meanwhile about the arrival of the destroyer.

'Crowder's not with them,' she declared, 'he and a dozen others took the second boat and made for Harwich. For a time it seems they've been playing pirate up and down the coast, raiding the smaller places for supplies, and now they want to take possession here.'

'How do you know all this?' 'Kenyon asked dully.

'Gregory got it out of them this afternoon at a sort of pow wow. They sent a boat ashore.'

'I wonder that they thought it worth while risking their skins.'

'Worth it, my love?' She took him up quickly. 'Twelve hundred chickens in the poultry farm, and a hundred head of cattle in the corral; Gregory adopted no half measures when he turned cattle thief.'

’Yes I suppose so, but what happened at the parley?'

'They said at once that they meant to land a party and seize all our stock.'

Kenyon nodded. 'I suppose Gregory threatened to turn a machine gun on them if they didn't sheer off at once.'

'Got it in one, my sweet, but luckily for them they were halfway back to the ship before Silas arrived with the arsenal.'

'I wonder they didn't attack the place right away.'

'No, they flagged a message saying that they would give Gregory until nine o'clock tomorrow to capitulate, and that if he wouldn't they'd blow the lot of us to hell, but he was afraid they might start in on us tonight.'

'I see, that's why you were all up and dressed when I came on the scene then!'

Every few moments a deafening explosion punctuated the conversation with clock like regularity, and Kenyon, his nerves keyed up but feeling a different man after his meal and Veronica's attentions, decided to go out and see how the sailors' marksmanship was progressing.

On the doorstep of the inn with Andrew and Veronica beside him he watched the bombardment. As they opened the door a shell pitched at the foot of the tower and even from that distance they could hear the whine and "rattle of pebbles, as they sang through the air and bounded along the beach. The next shell fell slap on the roof of the old fortress, bursting with terrific impact and hurtling lumps of stone in all directions.

'Put out that ruddy light,' cried a voice they recognised as Rudd's from further along the foreshore, and a few moments later he loomed up out of the darkness beside his master.

'It looks like a hectic night at the Albert Hall.' Veronica used Rudd's nickname for the Martello which they had all adopted.

'Yes,' Gregory agreed grimly. 'If they keep this up for half an hour the place won't be even fit shelter for the chickens in the morning. I got all our stores but we've lost poor Thompson.'

'Is is he dead?' Veronica hesitated.

'Yes a fragment of the third shell caught him.'

'What filthy luck such a decent fellow too, but couldn't we do something?' Kenyon stepped forward from the doorway. 'I'm pretty groggy still, but I'm game to have a cut at them.'

'I'm afraid there's nothing we can do against shell fire, that's just the devil of it.'