And so my luck held until I reached the outskirts of East Grinstead, once a pretty little village which I had known well as a boy, but now a wasteland of blasted vegetation and torn masonry. As usual I inspected the place from cover, noting the presence of what seemed to be a crudely made stockade of tree-trunks near the northernmost end of the village. From this armed men came and went regularly, and I was surprised to see that many of them carried rifles and shot-guns and were dressed in rather more adequate rags than the people I had seen to date. The community itself seemed to be a larger one than the others, and better organized, settled in one place rather than roaming about a small area of countryside. I heard the distinctive sounds of cattle, sheep and goats and surmised that a few of these animals had survived and were being kept for safety inside the stockade. Here was 'civilization' indeed I considered the possibility of making my presence known and seeking aid from the inhabitants, who might be expected to behave in a somewhat less aggressive manner than the people I had observed up to now. But, warily, I continued to keep watch on the settlement and see what information I could gather before I revealed myself.
It was a couple of hours later that I had reason to congratulate myself on my caution. I had hidden in a small brick building which had somehow survived the bombing. It had been used, I think, as a woodstore and was barely large enough to admit me. A grill, designed for ventilation, was the means by which I could look out at the stockade without being seen. Three men, dressed in a miscellaneous selection of clothing which included a black bowler hat, a deerstalker and a panama, a woman's fur cape, golfing trousers, a leather shooting-coat, a tailcoat and an opera cloak, were escorting a prisoner back along the path to the gate. The prisoner was a young woman, tall and dressed in a long black military topcoat which had evidently been tailored for her. She had a black divided skirt and black riding-boots and there was no question in my mind that she, like me, was some sort of interloper. They were treating her roughly, pushing her so that she fell over twice and struggled to her feet only with the greatest difficulty (her hands were tied behind her back). There was something familiar about her bearing, but it was only when she turned her head to speak to one of her captors (evidently speaking with the greatest contempt, for the man struck her in the mouth by way of reply) that I recognized her. It was Mrs Persson, the revolutionist whom I had first met on Captain Korzeniowski's airship, Tie Rover, and whom I understood to be Korzeniowski's daughter. That could not be true now, for this woman was approximately the same age as Korzeniowski. I had had enough of speculating about the mysteries and paradoxes of Time - they were beginning to become familiar to me and I was learning to accept them as one might accept the ordinary facts of human existence, without question. Now I merely saw Una Persson as a woman who was in danger and who must therefore be rescued, if at all possible. I had my carbine and several magazines of ammunition and I had the advantage that none of the inhabitants of the stockade was aware of my presence. I waited for nightfall and then crept out of my hiding-place, thanking Providence that the full moon was hidden behind thick cloud.
I got to the stockade and saw that it was an extremely crude affair - no savage would have owned to its manufacture - and easily scaled, so long as the timber did not collapse under me. Slowly I climbed to the top and got my first sight of the interior.
It was a scene of the utmost barbarity. Una Persson hung spreadeagled and suspended on a kind of trellis in the centre of the compound. In front of her, cross-legged, sat what must have been the best part of the 'tribe' - many of them bearing the deformities marking them as recipients of various plague viruses. Behind the scaffold was a sort of dais made from a large, oak refectory table, and on the table there had been placed a high-backed, ornately carved armchair of the sort which our Victorian ancestors regarded as the very epitome of 'Gothik' good taste. The velvet of the chair was much torn and stained and the woodwork had been covered with some sort of poorly applied gold lacquer. A number of fairly large fires blazed in a semi-circle behind the dais and oily smoke drifted across the scene, while the red flames leapt about like so many devils and were reflected in the sweating faces of the gathered inhabitants of the stockade. This was what I saw before I dropped to the other side of the fence and crept into the shadow of one of the ramshackle shelters clustered near by.
A sort of hideous crooning now issued from the throats of the onlookers, and they swayed slowly from side to side, their eyes fixed on Una Persson's half-naked body. Mrs Persson herself did not struggle, but remained perfectly still in her bonds, staring back at them with an expression of utter disgust and contempt. As I had admired it once before, now I admired her courage. Few of us, in her position, could have behaved so well.
Since she did not seem to be in any immediate danger, I waited to see what would next develop.
From a hut larger than the rest and set back behind the semi-circle of fires, there now emerged a tall and corpulent figure dressed in full morning-dress, with a fine grey silk hat at a jaunty angle on his head, his right thumb stuck in the pocket of his waistcoat, a diamond pin in his cravat, looking for all the world like some music-hall performer of my own time. Slowly, with an air of insouciance, he ascended the dais and seated himself with great self-importance in his gold chair while the crowd ceased its humming and swaying for a moment to greet him with a monstrous shout whose words I could not catch.
His own voice was clear enough. It was reedy and yet brutal and, for all that it was the uneducated voice of a small shopkeeper, it carried authority.
'Loyal subjects of East Grinstead,' it began. 'The man - or woman - who pulls their weight is welcome here as you well know. But East Grinstead has never taken kindly to foreigners, scroungers, Jews and loafers, as is also well known. East Grinstead knows how to deal with 'em. We have our traditions. Now this here interloper, this spy, was caught hanging round near East Grinstead obviously up to no good - and also, I might add, armed to the teeth. Well, draw your own conclusions, my subjects. There is not much doubt in my -our - mind that she is by way of being a definite foreign aviator, probably come back to see how we are getting on here after all them bombs she dropped on us did their damage. She has found a flourishing community - bloody but unbowed and ready for anything. Given half a chance, I shouldn't be surprised if she was about to report back to her compatriots that East Grinstead wasn't finished - not by a long shot finished - and we could have expected another lot of bombs. But,' and his voice dropped and became ruthless and sinister, plainly relishing Una's pain, 'she won't be going back. And we're going to teach her a lesson, aren't we, about what foreign aviators and spies can expect if they try it on over East Grinstead again!'