He continued in this vein and I listened in horror. Could this man once have served behind a counter in an ordinary village shop? Perhaps he had served me with an ounce of liquorice or a packet of tea. And his 'subjects', who growled and giggled and trembled with blood-lust, were these once the decent, conservative folk of the Home Counties? Did it take so little time to strip them of all their apparent civiliza-tion? If ever I returned to my own world I would look on these people in a new light.
Now the King of East Grinstead had risen from his chair and someone had handed him a brand. The firelight turned his plump, unshaven face into the mask of a devil as he raised the brand above his head, his eyes glowing and his lips drawn back in a bestial grin.
'Now we'll teach her!' he yelled. And his subjects rose up, arms extended, screaming to him to do what he was about to do.
The brand came down and began to extend towards Una Persson's head. She could not see what was happening, but it was obvious that she guessed. She struggled once in the ropes, then her lips came firmly together and she closed her eyes as the brand moved closer and closer towards her hair.
Scarcely thinking, I raised my carbine to my shoulder, took aim, and shot the King of East Grinstead squarely between the eyes. His face was almost comic in its astonishment and then the great bulk fell forward off the dais and lay in a heap before its astonished subjects.
I moved quickly then, thankful for my army training.
While those hideously ravaged faces looked at me with expressions of stunned horror, I ran to the trellis and with a few quick strokes of my knife cut Mrs Persson free.
Then, quite deliberately, I shot down three of the nearest men. One of them had been armed and I signed to Mrs Persson to pick up the rifle, which she did as quickly as she could, though she was plainly still suffering a good deal of pain.
'This place is surrounded by men,' I told them. 'All are crack shots. The first man to threaten us with his weapon will die as swiftly as your leader. As you can see, we are merciless. If you remain within the stockade and allow us to go through the gate unhampered, no more of you will be harmed.' A few of the people growled like animals, but were too nonplussed and alarmed to do anything more. I could not resist a parting speech as we got to the gate.
'I might tell you that I am British,' I said. 'As British as you are and from the same part of the world. And I am disgusted by what I see. This is no way for Britons to behave. Remember your old standards. Recall what they once meant to you. The fields remain and you have stock. Grow your food as you have always grown it. Breed the beasts. Build East Grinstead up into a decent place again…'
Mrs Persson put a hand on my arm, whispering: "There is not much time. They'll soon realize that you have no men. They are already beginning to look for them and not see them. Come, we'll make for my machine.'
We backed out of the gate and closed it behind us. Then, bent low, we began to run. I followed Mrs Persson and she plainly had a good idea of where she was going. We ran through a wood and across several overgrown fields, into another wood, and here we paused, listening for sounds of pursuit, but there were none.
Panting, Una Persson pushed on until the forest thinned. Then she bent over a bush and without any apparent effort seemed to pull the whole thing up by the roots, revealing the faint gleam of metal. She operated a control, there was a buzz and a hatch swung upwards.
'Get in,' she said, 'there's just about room for both of us.'
I obeyed. I found myself in a cramped chamber, surrounded by a variety of unfamiliar instruments. Mrs Persson closed the hatch over her head and began turning dials and flicking switches until the whole machine was shaking and whining. She peered through a contraption which looked to me rather like a stereoscopic viewer, then pulled a large lever right back. The whining sound increased its pitch and the machine began to move - heading downwards into the very bowels of the earth.
'What sort of machine is this?' I inquired in my amazement.
'Haven't you seen one before,' she said casually. 'It's an O'Bean Mark Five tunneller. It's about the only way to move these days without being spotted. It's slow. But it's sure.' She smiled, pausing in her inspection of the controls to offer me her hand. 'I haven't thanked you. I don't know who you are, sir, but I'm very grateful for what you did. My mission in this part of Britain is vital and now it has some chance of success.'
It had become extremely hot and I fancied that we were nearing the core of the planet!
'Not at all,' I replied. 'Glad to be of service. My name's Bastable. You're Mrs Persson, aren't you?'
'Miss Persson,' she said. 'Were you sent to help me, then?'
'I happened to be passing, that was all.' I wished now that I hadn't admitted to knowing her name - the explanation could prove embarrassing. I made a wild guess, remembering something of what I had been told about her when I flew with The Rover. 'I recognized your photograph. You were an actress, weren't you?'
She smiled, wiping the perspiration from her face with a large, white handkerchief. 'Some would say that I still am.'
'What sort of depth are we at?' I asked, feeling quite faint now.
'Oh, no more than a hundred feet. The air system isn't working properly and I don't know enough about these metal moles to fix it. I don't think we're in any immediate danger, however.'
'How did you come to be in East Grinstead, Miss Persson?'
She did not hear me above the shaking of the machine and the weird whining of its engine. She made some sort of adjustment to our course as she cupped her hand to her ear and had me repeat the question.
She shrugged. 'What I was looking for was near by. There was some attempt to set up a secret centre of government towards the end. There were plans for an O'Bean machine which was never perfected. There is only one of its type - in Africa. The plans will clarify one or two problems which were troubling us.'
'In Africa! You have come from Africa?'
'Yes. Ah, here we are.' She pushed two levers forward and I felt the tunnelling machine begin to tilt, rising towards the surface. 'The ground must have been mainly clay. We've made good speed.'
She cut off the engines, took one last glance into the viewer, seemed satisfied, moved to the hatch, pressed a button. The hatch opened, letting in the refreshing night air.
'You'd better get out first,' she said.
I clambered thankfully from the machine, waiting for my vision to adjust itself. The ground all around me was flat and even. I could just make out the silhouette of what at first appeared to be buildings arranged in a circle which enclosed us. There was something decidedly familiar about the place. 'Where are we?' I asked her.
'I think it used to be called The Oval,' she told me as she joined me on the grass. 'Hurry up, Mr Bastable. My airboat should be just over here.'
It was a ridiculous emotion to feel at the time, I know, but I could not help experiencing a tinge of genuine shock at our having desecrated one of the most famous cricket pitches in the world!