4

Steenhold sat in his place at the council table. He looked sullenly amused. He was reflecting upon the change in his relation to Rud. He had wanted to make a friendly remark to him and he had not made it—out of deference! He was surprised at himself and everything.

There had been a time, not so many years ago, when he had been a sort of patron–philosopher to Rud, when he had disputed with him, quarrelled with him, said anything he liked to him. And paid the bills. Now one waited to be told. This revolutionary business had become real, very real. When he had played at World Revolution in Camborne Square, reality had seemed a hundred worlds away. And yet, had it not been for his helpful money in those early days…

The door of the little room opened and Rud, an exalted Rud, appeared. His scowl was at its most masterful and vicious and his mouth was tight drawn in at its left corner, with resolution.

"Listen," he said. "Everything has to be short and quick. The moment is nearer than we thought."

Bodisham turned an attentive face, saying nothing.

"Olders," said Rud, "radio Bellacourt G.G.G. and then wait ten minutes, then repeat and go on until you have the code answer."

"What does that mean?" said Chiffan.

"He'll know."

"H'm," said Chiffan, and his eye met Steenhold's for a moment.

Rud advanced to the table and spoke, standing.

"Reedly's lost his nerve," he said. "He's put his Putsch on—a month perhaps. And here we are. He means to strike. He's got a trainload of French troops coming here from Antwerp, but that may get switched on to the frontier. Evidently he means to grab this place and us. That's for the transport section, Steenhold. What can you do? Thirp doesn't know exactly what he has in the town—but I doubt if it's ready. He's got no guns—anywhere. Neither at Antwerp nor in Amsterdam. Thirp thinks he has some of the groundsmen here…That's the situation. There's no doubt he's moving now. We may have a raid here at any time. But we've got those planes out there? He may have stuff for the four or five he has at Constance. You'd better pack up, Bodisham—in case…We'll keep one plane for you…But that's by the way…

"First of all, the situation here. I want you, Steenhold, to take charge of all this. The police here don't number four hundred, there's only a youngster in command—we don't know anything about him—and Thirp will hand over the command to you. You must have got a section of your transport corps at Rotterdam and some at the port here. They're scattered, I suppose. Can you get them together? We want the aerodrome and the radio station held—and all this. Dreed had better go to the radio station forthwith. You'll assist him to improvise a defence. It's very important to keep the radio going. Steenhold—if you will go with Thirp to the door—your second in command is outside. Thirp and Olders and I are going to vanish. You'll hear from us soon enough."

He went and sat down beside Bodisham and began to talk to him rapidly in undertones. Bodisham nodded quickly and approvingly.

Steenhold felt anxious. Where was Rud going? Oughtn't there to be some sort of council of war?

"I don't understand," he began.

"Steenhold," said Rud, "you've got your orders. Things can't wait for explanations now. You must do something about those French troops from Antwerp. They have to be held up. There's not much time if they are really entrained. Does the line come through Rotterdam? I don't know."

"Gee!" said Steenhold, blew, and then got up and saluted. He had never saluted Rud before.

Rud went on talking to Bodisham.

"That's Rud. That was," said Steenhold as he left the room with Thirp.

They found a bright young officer of police outside, who saluted. Thirp led the way to the ground floor where there was a large–scale map of the aerodrome and its surroundings. "Show the Minister where your men are," he said.

"Is there a siren or anything handy," said Steenhold, taking hold of the situation, "to call the men to quarters?"

The first intimation that Reedly's Federalist friends in Amsterdam had of trouble afoot was the siren at the Aerodrome. Thirp's secret police were already in possession of the Antwerp telephone exchange and were intercepting Reedly's calls to action and taking down the names.

Most of them were caught unawares. But not all.

"This is a damned great place to hold with only four hundred people," said Steenhold, standing on the steps of the main building and surveying his area of responsibility. In the afternoon sunshine it looked tranquil almost to drowsiness. "I wonder what one ought to treat as vital points and just where the trouble will come from and what shape it will take."

Steenhold had a lively but receptive mind, he had never been a man of action. He did not feel like a man of action now. He had always looked on at life, egged people on, enjoyed the results of their initiatives. Rud had been his great discovery, his staple entertainment. Now suddenly, an hour after lunch, he found himself with a recalcitrant bunch of disconnected responsibilities thrust into his hands and no one to observe but himself. Hold this place? Hold it how? Hold it against what? Away there by the air station were half a dozen planes lined up and a small one some way off in the corner of the field. These, he supposed, would have to be guarded—the pilots were probably standing by and they would be Bellacourt's men, but there ought to be some police to support them. Rud had said something about disloyal groundsmen. The machines had to be protected from sabotage, A man with a bomb might play havoc there. Then half–hidden by the main building was Dreed's radio station. Dreed would be warned and would see to the defence of that, but he ought to be reinforced.

"Three essential points," Steenhold told himself, "headquarters, the planes and the radio. No way of consolidating a central position that I can see. But think—where will the attack come? First there are those French troops from Antwerp. If they come discreetly with pilot engines ahead and a revolver at the ear of every engine–driver, it won't be so easy to switch them out of action. But coming discreetly means coming slowly. They'll come along the line and detrain where it is most convenient. Can they afford the time to come discreetly? They'll have to rush. If they rush, they must rush into trouble."

"How near is the railway?" he asked, and then had a bright idea. Even if he couldn't switch those French troops off to some remote destination, as he had imagined at first, he could get a dozen engines or more if necessary from Amsterdam, put them on the line, and simply smash up that troop train as it came up. Before they had time to detrain. He must see to that in a minute, as soon as he was clear about everything else.

Something else? There might be some sort of attack in unknown force from the town. That would come by road in cars. It might come first. It might wait for the arrival of the French. It might not come at all. Nothing might come. He ticked off the items on the fingers of his open hand. Then he asked his second in command how many men he had.

"Seventy–six on duty. The rest are falling in over there by the hutments. About two–hundred–and–ninety–odd."

"Good," said Steenhold. "We join them."

And as they walked across the Aerodrome he arranged for a squad of men under a competent sergeant to go towards the town, hold up any cars and wire the road, while another squad was to reinforce the radio guard, if there was a radio guard, and put itself at the disposal of Dreed. The road party paraded, six men went off to get wire from the stores and the rest marched briskly towards the Amsterdam road in the most business–like way. Steenhold ordered a dozen men to strengthen the force in the main building and stationed the remainder of a hundred and twenty men in front of the main building as a reserve force that could be turned in any direction to meet whatever trouble might arise. He went through the motions of an inspection of their arms. "We've just got to prevent any disturbance," he told the young officer. Then he went to the planes to assure himself that the pilots and mechanics were on the alert.

He did all this methodically, watchful of his second in command and the two orderlies they had annexed, to see from their behaviour whether he seemed to be doing things right. They seemed to think he was doing things right.

The pilots seemed satisfied with themselves and anxious to learn what was expected of them. He told them to be ready to go up at any moment and they said "Aye, aye, sir," very reassuringly. Within he felt that faint stirring of derision for the whole business of life which is the salt of the American mentality. Outwardly they are sentimental and enthusiastic and inwardly they are profoundly cynical. All over the world for generations, he reflected, this solemn sort of preparatory business has been going on; commanding officers, with an air of conviction, making their dispositions, sentries being put, passwords fixed, challenges arranged, all the stiffly silly formalities of warfare, everyone being as wooden and regulation–ruled as possible, and the officer never quite sure of himself and carrying it off with an air.

Americans generally have never loved this saluting, uniform–wearing business. They over–did it when they had a chance, because fundamentally they could not believe in it. Probably it was necessary. Probably you could only keep the thing going with all this routine. But what a quantity of fuss, of saluting, heel–clicking, running about, before ever you begin to have anything real happening!

It was just the same with religion. Setting about things, that, in ninety–nine cases out of a hundred, took you nowhere and did nothing that mattered, with the gravest of faces. Being stern, sharp, emphatic—violent if necessary. Before it was necessary. "'Shun!" "As you were!" "On the knee!" Why did every human concern clog itself up in a tangle of routines, formalities, disciplines, imperatives? Why couldn't one be free? Really free? Guarding one's freedom, wasn't freedom at all. Why couldn't one win one's freedom for good and all, and get on with life?

He wished he knew more of the situation. Had Reedly got hold of some planes? If so, would they appear presently? Where was Bellacourt? What had Bellacourt got away there in Sweden? Was Bellacourt playing some game of his own? Why didn't we have our own planes in the air here? When the war began there had been tens of thousands of planes fighting in the air, and then as the enemy had their factories and aerodromes destroyed and their planes beaten out of the sky, there had been this air cessation. Possibly Bellacourt's air strikes had not been altogether unwelcome to the over–strained governments of the Democratic Allies. It had given them an excuse for relaxing their exhausting efforts to produce material and for bringing back the war from three dimensions to two. Yet it was curious we had not made one crowning effort to end the war? Our planes, such as remained, went about looking at things and doing nothing, and the war, which had begun in an uproar of destruction, was dying of inanition. Was there some catch in the business and was it true that the air arm cannot end a war?

Anyhow here we were, it seemed, with war back on the ground again, and Reedly trying to play Napoleon to our revolution, quite in the best tradition…

Steenhold wrenched his mind away from these questions and gave himself up to the railway problem. He spent an active and useful half–hour with a very competent subordinate and then he emerged upon the air–field again.

"And now what is there to be done?" he asked the officer.

"Nothing, sir, that I can see, until something happens." The young officer seemed to think that everything was going according to plan in this best of all possible worlds…

Wouldn't do to ask him what he thought would happen…

Then suddenly the central part of the main building became active. One of Bellacourt's men with a megaphone appeared on a little balcony high up and began giving orders to the pilots. They became exceedingly active and a truck of petrol appeared out of an archway below. Three of the men went off at a run to the smaller plane. Two more pilots on bicycles shot round the wing of the main buildings and joined them.

It looked all right.

Then Rud and Thirp and Olders appeared upon the steps of the main building, in the company of two airmen. The planes, one after another, began to tune up. Their propellers leapt to activity with a happy shudder.

Something was happening now. The drowsy afternoon woke up. But what was happening?

They were going off somewhere and he did not know where they were going. He felt like a little boy who for some inscrutable reason has not been asked to a party. Where were they going? To Reedly? Perhaps Rud had been talking to Reedly and something had been patched up. Or to Sweden where perhaps Bellacourt was in control of things? Or in flight before Reedly struck?

"Why can't I know?" asked Steenhold, with a feeling like tears of vexation in his eyes. "He might have told me. I stood by him in the old days…"

A sound as though someone had snapped a brittle metallic rod and a shiver in the air.

Then a shout from among the planes and revolver shots. Three or four men were moving about very quickly there.

Rud was holding up his hand as if to forbid some action. Sabotage among the planes? Steenhold ran towards the scuffle, pulling out his revolver as he ran, and signalling to the knot of world police who were standing or sitting in front of the main building. There was no further shooting, and two of the pilots seemed to be holding a man, the man, no doubt, who had fired the shot at Rud. A man in pilot's uniform dodged round the head of the nearest machine, and he had something in either hand like a cricket ball. He threw one of these objects under the plane, and seemed to hesitate about the other. Steenhold was running at an angle to the disturbance so that he alone saw this man clearly. He was evidently unobserved by either the spray of police who were running towards the plane or by the men actually about the machines. Steenhold shouted to confuse his attention and fired his revolver. A pilot's face appeared in the cabin of the machine.

The bomb under the machine burst loudly and the machine came tilting over towards Steenhold in a deliberate, drunken fashion as if to meet and welcome him. The pilot behind the glass seemed an inactive, an indifferent spectator of these events. The spinning propeller caught the bomb–thrower's head as he turned and stepped back to confront Steenhold, and the bomb he held dropped from his hand and rolled and burst six yards in front of Steenhold's feet.

Steenhold had an extraordinary sense of being struck back and front at once, as though vast aerial hands clapped themselves upon him, and that he had lost his balance as he had never lost his balance before. His feet were off the ground. The plane, with its propeller whirling up the red–brown trophy it had slashed from his scalped antagonist, waved and sank down out of sight and he was staring at the sky…

Everything which had been moving with incredible rapidity now moved with unprecedented deliberation. It was clear to him that Rud had to go somewhere and that he had to prevent any interference with Rud. But nobody was telling him anything. Nobody ever told him anything nowadays. In the past it had been different.

Some sort of mental blank ensued.

He was doing something for Rud.

Had they got Rud? Had he got away? Where was he going?

It was a nuisance to have been hit so that he had to lie flat on his back like this. He dragged a hand across his chest and it was wet. He raised a hand, which had suddenly become very heavy, and it was bright red. He couldn't be badly hurt because there was not the slightest pain. But this blood! There seemed a frightful lot of it. And the taste of blood in his mouth. Where did it all come from? You couldn't possibly go on bleeding like this…

Somebody was saying: "You hurt much?" Somebody with a face upside–down looking at him. "You hurt much?" Bloody fool!

His chest blown in? Some of it anyhow. Mortally wounded? There ought to be a breast bone somewhere if one could raise a hand to feel it. But his hand had gone dead now.

It couldn't be! Presently perhaps, but not now. Not in the very middle of a scrap. Pinned to the ground like this. He'd get up in a minute.

But he knew better. He felt a wave of childish frustration.

He spoke, almost inaudibly.

"Not to see the end of it! That's too bad…"

They were Steenhold's last words. He felt as though he was being diluted very rapidly. Numbness radiated from his chest in waves. He had a dim idea that he was straining his neck up to look for Rud, but there was no Rud, only blue sky and little white clouds sailing in two columns ahead, V–wise, across the sky, and then that last faint impression faded.