After an interval of minutes that seemed like hours the sight of a little green lizard darting from side to side along the sun-warmed stone of the balustrade caused him to remember that when animals were ill or poisoned a natural instinct led them to a herb the eating of which provided an antidote to their complaint; yet, there again, he was stuck. As he could not get up he could not reach anything to eat even had he known of a plant in the garden which would have served as a remedy.
The golden-green lizard sat there now, basking in the sunshine and watching him with cautious curiosity from its little dark, beady eyes. Suddenly a small, crested bird dropped out of the sky. Fearing attack, the lizard instantly dived for cover, but as it shot along the stone its foreleg caught in a crevice, flinging it right over on its back so that for a second its pale-green tummy was exposed. In a single wriggle it was up again and had streaked away out of sight. Its tumble gave Gregory the germ of another idea. He could not stand up but he might be able to fall out of his chair.
Once more concentrating all his mental strength he got one foot up until it rested on the leg of the table in front of him; then, after pausing for a moment, he flung every ounce of willpower that he had into a sideways thrust. The chair tipped, hovered for an instant and crashed sideways, sending him rolling along the ground.
When he recovered from the fall he found that he was within a few inches of the yew hedge and, lifting his head, he began a titanic struggle to eat some of the sprigs of yew. He had no idea if they would serve his purpose but he felt that if he could get a few mouthfuls of the prickly herbage down they might upset him or irritate his throat to the point of causing him to vomit.
He seemed to have more strength in his jaws than in his lips and his teeth were good. The yew tasted horrible and when he strove to swallow the first mouthful it stuck in his gullet. With growing hope he tore some more sprigs from the hedge with his teeth and, filling his mouth, tried to force them down. Suddenly the muscles of his throat contracted, his stomach heaved and to his incredible relief the sprigs of yew came choking up with some of the liquid that he had drunk.
For a few moments he lay there panting and exhausted but he knew that he was as yet very far from having saved himself, as the great bulk of the poison must still be in his stomach. Sweating, straining, he forced himself to fresh exertions. Every time he opened and shut his mouth it was as though he was striving to shift a ton weight with his teeth, but such was his tenacity of purpose that three times more he filled his mouth with the prickly shoots of yew, tried to force them down and was sick in consequence, before he collapsed and passed into a stupor.
When he came round it was night, and from a faint jolting he knew that he was moving, but his mind was practically a blank; he was conscious only that he felt desperately ill without being able to remember how he had become so. After a time he realised that he was half-sitting, half-lying, on the back seat of a car, but he had no idea where he was being taken or even what country he was in. His eyes ached intolerably and his head seemed to split in half with every jolt of the vehicle, which was moving at high speed.
He lay there comatose until the car suddenly pulled up and he slid off the seat on to the floor. The door was flung open, hands seized and shook him, then as he pleaded to be left alone a voice addressed him urgently in French:
'It is I, Collimard—Collimard, the barber. I went back at ten and the butler said that you had left hours before but that he had not seen you go. I felt certain then that something had gone wrong so I held him up with my gun and forced him to tell me what had happened from the moment that you entered the house.
He led me to the lower terrace and we found you there. What happened? You do not appear to be wounded. Did she suspect and give you a doped cigarette?'
'Poison,' Gregory moaned, as the whole series of events came back to him, 'poisoned wine.' Then the realisation that he had spoken, and all that it meant, dawned in his tortured brain. If he had got back the use of his facial muscles sufficiently to speak, the effects of the poison were wearing off, but, even so, he felt almost as though he were in extremis as he muttered: 'Doctor—get me to a doctor.'
'Listen,' said Collimard swiftly; 'Mussolini spoke at six o'clock. It is war. Italy will be at war with France and Britain on the stroke of midnight, and it is already nearly eleven o'clock. We are just outside the air-port. Desaix will be waiting there. If you can make the effort to pass the officials we still have time to get away in the plane, but if we delay to try to find a doctor we shall be caught here and arrested as enemy aliens. How bad are you? Do you feel that you could survive the journey, or are you so bad that if you do not have proper attention in the next few hours you will die? It is for you to judge, and we will stay or go—whichever you decide.'
Gregory closed his eyes and tried to think. It was nearly eleven o'clock. Then, some seven hours had elapsed since he had drunk the poison. If he had survived so long, the odds were that a doctor could do little for him but ease his pain and it was now only a matter of time before the poison worked itself out of his system. He would have given a fortune, had he possessed one, to have had cool poultices placed round his aching head, with a soothing drink to ease his parched throat, and to have been able to relax his tortured limbs between clean sheets, but there were Collimard and Desaix to think of as well as himself; and even had they not been involved his every instinct would have been to face any agony rather than become the inmate of an Italian concentration-camp.
He nodded and gasped. 'I'll be all right; we must get off— at once.'
'Can you stand?' asked Collimard anxiously. 'The airport people may not let you through if they think that you are desperately ill or perhaps drugged, and that Desaix and I are taking you somewhere against your will.'
Gregory tested his limbs, knelt up and managed to struggle back on to the seat. 'I'm pretty groggy,' he muttered, 'but I'll manage somehow. Knees may give a bit, an'—difficult to hold up my head. Better tell them I've been on the binge—drunk.'
Collimard shut the door of the car, got back into the driver's seat and drove on for a few hundred yards until he reached the entrance to the airport. Getting down again, he opened the door to help Gregory out and, as he did so, he began to sing The Marseillaise.
Two Italian policemen came hurrying up with a small crowd of other people and one of the officers addressed Collimard indignantly, asking him how he dared to sing the national anthem of France when in little over an hour France and Italy would be at war.
Collimard hiccoughed and declared drunkenly: 'I sing because I am a Frenchman and I go home to fight for la belle France. This'—he thumped Gregory hard on the chest—'is my gallant ally. He goes to fight by my side although he is a clergyman. But he is no ordinary clergyman—he is as drunk as I am. No; he is much more drunk than I am, because he can no longer sing. Rule, Britannia! Britannia rule the waves.
Come! let us pass—lead me to my fiery steed—bring me my bow and my arrows tipped with gold—we'll show you—we'll show all of you.'