Dennis Wheatley: Black August

'Shoot!'

There was a rattle of shots. A groan went up from the crowd; three Greyshirts dropped from sight, but their leader still stood unharmed. With a sudden shout he flourished the Proclamation and charged up the steps.

'Down with the Reds,' bellowed Kenyon. 'Long Live the Prince!'

A hundred faces in the crowd turned to stare at the windows whence this clarion call had come, and another voice took it up. 'Down with the Reds! Come on, chaps foller me!' It came from a burly carter in a leather apron.

The cry was taken up on every side. A little phalanx of blue clad policemen had appeared from somewhere and, with an inspector at their head, were thrusting their way towards the Town Hall.

The reports from the rifles of the Red soldiers echoed sharply again. The Greyshirt leader fell backwards, shot through the head, but the rest were fighting at close quarters seeking to wrest their weapons from the guards.

A solitary rifle cracked from a window at the side of the square and the woman who had urged on the Communists clutched wildly at her chest, her mouth dropped open as though to shriek, then she pitched forward under the feet of the struggling mob.

'It's jus' turned seven o'clock,' said Rudd.

Next minute a body of Communist cavalry came charging out of a side turning into the crowd. Two were pulled from their saddles, a third fell from his horse, struck on the head by a brick, but the rest cleared a wide lane through the mass and, turning at the far end of the square, galloped at full tilt again into the shrinking, struggling mob of people.

The troops on the steps poured another volley into the fleeing pedestrians, and in another minute the square was empty except for the Soviet soldiers and the wounded.

'Blimey!' exclaimed Rudd bitterly, 'if we ain't sunk after all.'

Kenyon nodded sadly. 'I'm afraid that was our last chance, and they may come for us any minute now.'

'No,' cried Ann. 'Listen! What's that?'

The sound of wild cheering came from somewhere out of sight along the street. The mob surged back into the square, and in their midst a lorry nosed its way into view.

'Troops!' yelled Veronica shrilly. 'Hell's bells! we've won!'

A machine gun stuttered, checked, and then burst into a violent chatter. The horses of the Red cavalry reared, plunged and fell: another lorry came into view, a third, a fourth, a fifth all packed with khaki figures. Under the death dealing zip of the machine gun bullets the Soviet infantry fled, jostling and fighting among themselves to be first through the doors of the Town Hall.

Careless of the barbed wire at the windows the prisoners leaned out waving and shouting wild encouragement; then Rudd's voice came above the din. 'There 'e is I knew 'e'd come back fer us. Go on, sir give 'em 'ell!'

'It is it's Gregory!' Veronica cried, almost oft her head with joy.

As he caught Rudd's stentorian shout Gregory, still in his tattered khaki, the golden oakleaves on his scarlet banded hat now frayed and grimy, looked up from the leading lorry and waved a smiling greeting. Ten minutes later he was with them in the room, answering a hail of excited questions.

'I couldn’t have done it if you people hadn't given me the chance to get away,' he told them, 'and finding out the real situation was a bit of luck, the rest was dead easy.'

'Tell us, tell us!' Veronica insisted.

'Well, when I got into that lane beside the Town Hall I knew I was certain to be hunted through the streets if I was spotted in this rig out, so I shinned up a fire ladder and scrambled over the roofs as hard as I could go, but I slipped on a loose slate and pitched, feet foremost, through a skylight that's where the luck came in!'

'Go on,' urged Ann. 'Go on!'

'Be patient, pansy face,' he chaffed her; 'the place happened to be the temporary hiding place of an Ipswich policeman. He wasn't in his uniform of course, but as soon as he saw me he came out of his shell and he was a remarkably intelligent chap. He joined a secret organisation, composed mainly of reliables in the old force, early in the troubles, and with half a dozen others had been keeping an eye on things here, and then passing on his reports to people higher up for transmission to Headquarters at Windsor. Naturally I had been racking my brains as I came over the roofs as to how to get you out of it, but this chap had all the dope about the Counter Revolution having taken place this morning; and he said that having secured the great industrial centres they would be mopping up the other towns tonight. I didn't dare to wait though, and when he told me he felt certain loyal troops would be in Colchester already, I borrowed his push bike and beat it. I was chivvied through the streets before I got out of the town but the rest was easy.'

'Easy?' echoed Veronica, raising her eyes to Heaven.

'Yes.' He smiled with his old air of superb self confidence; 'I flung my weight about a bit and, seeing all my blood stained bandages, they thought me no end of a tiger so I go away with half a company.'

'Won't you get into awful trouble now that the Government is restored?' asked Kenyon anxiously.

He laughed gaily; 'No, Old Soldiers never die. I'm just going over to the Town Hall to see that the job has been properly completed, then I propose to shed the purple, and as the song has it, gently Fade Away'

They followed him downstairs and at the entrance to the hotel he turned and smiled at them. 'You'd better stay here for the moment, I won't be long.' Then he shouldered his way into the press.

For a few moments they stood on the pavement watching the cheering jostling crowd, then Veronica seized Kenyon's arm and pointed to another lorry that was slowly entering the square.

'Look, look! on the box!' she cried, 'there's Alistair!'

"Why, so it is, old Hay Symple by all that's wonderful.'

'Alistair you brute!' shrieked Veronica; 'I adore your ugly face, come here!'

Major Hay Symple heard her shout, looked his amazement in seeing her there and, jumping down, pushed his way towards them. As he stepped on to the pavement Veronica flung her arms round his neck and Kenyon thumped him on the back; but he took it all quite calmly, surveying their ragged clothes and the unshaven faces of the men with mild amusement. His own attire was as faultless as if he had just come off the parade ground; his firm chin seemed newly shaven, and his moustache was brushed stiffly upward as of old.

'My dear, where have you been, I'm terribly glad to see you,' he smiled affectionately at Veronica.. 'Oh, everywhere,' she waved her arms, 'all over England, and Scotland too I think!'

'By Jove!'

'But tell us,' she urged, 'what's been happening, we've only heard the Proclamation on the wireless.'

'Well really, I don't know,' he stroked the fine brown moustache. 'We've just been carrying on, most of us. It's all been done from Windsor; we occupied Maidenhead for a few days, ordered there you know, then last night we were ordered back to London, and there yea are.'

'You maddening person, surely you were in the fighting?'

'Oh, rather, if you call it that, but of course it was of no value as experience to a soldier, beastly work and the men hated it as much as we did.'

Hark at him!' Veronica appealed wildly to the darkening sky. 'To hear you talk anyone would think that there had never been a revolution at all!'

'Oh, well, there was a nasty patch in the middle of last week but the sailors did most of the er laying on of hands, if you know what I mean!'

'The sailors? but I thought they'd all mutinied?'

'There was a little trouble with them in the earlier part, but when things began to look really sticky they turned themselves into special police.'

'Well done the Navy!' laughed Kenyon.

'Yes, good show, wasn't it? But tell me about yourselves quickly because I've got a job to do.'