‘Of course not.’
‘So, as I was saying, they put their heads together, and ran downstairs, saying “Fall in at the double”, and the sergeant knocked at the Colonel’s door—your door, sir—and he came out in his pyjamas—and said, “What the hell is this?” And the Sergeant said, “It’s someone down by the river, sir. He’s acting very suspicious. We think he may be a German spy.” The Colonel cursed, but he got into his coat and trousers—it was a cold night—and went with them—about three dozen of them—down to the river bank. And what happened afterwards no one seemed to know. You know what men are like when they get angry and excited. It spreads from one to another—a dozen men would do what one man wouldn’t—and the Colonel was a heavy drinker—but anyhow the upshot was he fell into the river, and was found drowned at the weir below your house. The river was low, so he wasn’t carried over it.’
‘Dear me,’ said Philip, though a stronger expression would have suited his feelings better. ‘Do you think any of this is true?’
Alfred smiled and shrugged his shoulders. ‘They’re that uneducated in these parts.’
A few nights later at the same hour as before, five o’clock, Philip was awakened by a knocking at his door. ‘Come in!’ he shouted, still fuddled with sleep, and still unaware if he was awake or dreaming, ‘Come in!’ he repeated, and it was then he heard the thrice-given order, ‘Fall in at the double, fall in at the double, fall in at the double,’ followed by the clatter of heavy footsteps on the bare boards of the staircase.
So intent was he on listening to this that he didn’t see his bedroom door open—it may have opened of itself as it sometimes did when not securely latched—but at any rate it was open, as he could tell from the moonlight from the hall window, above the staircase, struggling into the densely curtained room. Faint as it was, the moonlight showed him that someone had come in when the door opened, for he could dimly descry the head and the back of a tall man, edging his way round Philip’s bed, apparently looking for something. It was more like a presence than a person, a movement than a man, the footsteps made no sound on the thick carpet, but it seemed to stop in front of the wardrobe, and fumble there.
A burglar? If it was a burglar, and if all he wanted was a few clothes, well and good; he might be armed, and Philip was in no state to resist an armed man. Some said—the police even said—that in certain cases, in this age of violence, it was safer not to ‘have a go’ at a man who might be desperate.
The telephone was at his left hand, the switch of the bedside lamp at his right: yet he dared not use either, he dared not even stir, lest the intruder should realize he was awake.
After what seemed an unconscionable time, he heard or thought he heard, sounds of groping in the recesses of the wardrobe. This activity, whatever it was, ceased and a silence followed which Philip took to mean that the burglar (for who else could he be?) had finished his search and was taking himself off. Philip pressed the back of his head against the pillow and shut his eyes, for the man was now coming towards him, face forwards. But Philip’s pretence of sleep hadn’t deceived him; he stopped and peered down at him. Philip’s eyes opened: they couldn’t help themselves, and he saw the stranger’s face. Mask-like, the indistinct features kept their own secret, but their colour was the colour of the moonlight on them. Drawing nearer, stooping closer, outside the moonlight’s ray, they were invisible; but a voice which must have come through the unseen lips, though the whole body seemed to utter it, said:
‘Fall in and follow me. At the double, mind you, at the double,’ and a shadow, momentarily blotting out the moonbeams, slid through the doorway.
Seized by an irresistible inner compulsion, Philip jumped out of bed and without waiting to put a coat over his pyjamas, or slippers on his feet, followed the visitant downstairs in a direction he knew as well as if it had been directed to him by a radar beam.
On the wall that separated the garden from the river he saw first of all a line of heads, he couldn’t tell how many, wearing Army caps, turning this way and that, bobbing and nudging, and heard an angry buzz of talk, as of bees, whose hive is threatened. At the sign of his precursor, only a few yards ahead of him, silence fell, and they drew apart, leaving a gap between them in the shallow river-wall. But they were still leaning towards each other, some of their faces and silhouettes moonstruck, the rest in darkness.
‘Now, boys, what is all this?’ asked their Colonel, for he it must have been, in a cheerful, would-be rallying tone. ‘Why have you got me up at this time of night? There isn’t an air raid.’ And his moonlit face, revolving slowly in its lunar circuit, scanned the night sky.
‘No sir, you know what it is,’ said a voice, a low, level voice charged with menace. ‘We’re fed up with you, that what it is.’
They were beginning to close in on him, their hands were already round his legs, when he called out, ‘You’ve done this before. Take him, he’s my double!’ And he pointed to Philip, shivering behind him on the lawn.
‘Shall we, Jack? Shall we, Bill? He’s one of them, we might as well.’
Their strong hands were round him and Philip, hardly struggling, felt himself being hoisted over the garden wall, to where, a few feet below, he could see his own face mirrored in the water.
‘Let’s get rid of the bastard!’
The next thing Philip knew was a hand on his shoulder, and he heard another voice, saying:
‘Good God, sir, what are you doing here? You might catch your death of cold.’
He couldn’t speak while Alfred was helping him over the wall.
‘Thank you, thank you,’ he gasped, when he had got his breath back. ‘I might have been drowned if it hadn’t been for you. But where are the others?’
He looked back at the depopulated garden wall, no dark heads bobbing and whispering, neck to neck, no limbs bracing themselves for violence; only the moon shining as innocently as that de-virginated satellite can shine.
‘But how did you know?’
‘I have my ways of finding out’, said Alfred darkly. ‘A hot bath, a hot bottle, a whisky perhaps, and then bed for you, sir. And don’t pay any attention to that lot, they’re up to no good.’
THE PRAYER
Anthony Easterfield was not really religious, unless the word ‘religious’ is capable of the widest and vaguest interpretation, but he was religious to the extent of not being a materialist. He was sure he was not a materialist, and if the word was mentioned in his presence, or if he came across it in a book, or if it occurred to his mind unbidden (as words will), he at once chased it away. Materialist indeed! Perish the thought! The human race was dying of materialism. Better a drunkard’s death which did at any rate result from some form of spirit.
At the same time he was aware that many of the phenomena of which he specially disapproved, ‘the worship of the motor-car’, for instance, had a relish of spirit, if not of salvation in it, besides the petrol to which motorists were addicted, for in one sense they were alcoholics all.
He himself had a car, and a man to drive it—for Anthony couldn’t drive, and he knew, from mortifying efforts to pass the driving test, that it was much better for himself and everybody else that he shouldn’t try to.
The car was a convenience to him, but to his driver it was much more than a convenience, it was an emblem of religion. His driver was not satisfied with it, or with its performance in many, if not in all, directions—as many people are dissatisfied with their religions (if any), feeling that their religions have let them down. Anthony’s car had often let Copperthwaite down, and it was anything but the status-symbol that he coveted; at the same time the creed of automobilism was in his blood, and nothing could eradicate it.