Setting his back against the slope and bracing his feet against a large rock, Peregrine grasped the rope and began to haul. For a moment the oil drum seemed to resist his efforts and them with a surge it was out into the mainstream and swirling away almost as fast as Glodstone. Certainly it followed the same course, and Glodstone, who had just taken his sodden pipe out and was sucking it morosely, was suddenly aware that a new and possibly more dangerous element than the river itself had entered his limited domain. With a metallic thud the drum slammed into the rock he was crouching on and it was only by throwing himself to one side that he avoided having his legs crushed. Then as he glared at this latest threat, the thing moved away upstream leaving him to ponder on its purpose. Clearly whatever it was that had attempted to kill him couldn't be making headway against the current unless it was being pulled...Glodstone got the message but it was too late to grab the drum. In any case the notion that Peregrine's idea of trying to rescue him consisted of letting heavy metal objects batter the ledge he was on suggested that the lout was insane. Standing well back against the cliff he waited for the next attempt. It never came.
Having pulled the drum up the bank Peregrine hurriedly unloaded it, untied the rope and stowed it on the rocks. Only then did he begin to wonder what to do next. If Glodstone had gone ahead he would presumably come back or send a signal for Peregrine to join him. But as the minutes went by and nothing happened a new and more ominous thought came to mind. Perhaps Glodstone had walked into a trap. He'd said they wouldn't be watching this side of the Château because it was too well protected but that was just the opposite of what Major Fetherington had taught. 'Remember this,' he had said, 'the one place you don't expect the enemy to attack is the one they'll choose. The secret of strategy is to do what your opponent least expects.' But Glodstone hadn't seen it that way. On the other hand, why hadn't they waited to capture him too? Again Peregrine found an easy answer: the swine had thought Glodstone was on his own and didn't know there were two of them. Besides, his fieldcraft was hopeless and you could hear him coming a mile off. And he'd definitely got across because there had been that tug on the rope.
With all the stealth of a dangerous predator Peregrine put the coil over his shoulder, stuffed one revolver in his belt, cocked the other one and began the slow ascent of the hillside. Every few yards he stopped and listened but apart from a goat that scurried off across the rocks he heard and saw nothing suspicious. At the end of twenty minutes he had reached the top and was standing in the dry moat under the walls of the Château itself. To his left was the cliff while to his right was a corner tower. For a moment he hesitated. The notion of climbing in by way of the cliff still appealed to him but it was too easy now. He was about to move round the tower when he found what he wanted to make a genuinely dangerous entry. A metal strip ran down the wall of the tower. A lightning conductor. Shoving his hands behind it, he pulled but the copper strip held. Five minutes later he had reached the top of the tower and was on the roof. He crawled forward and peered down into the courtyard. It was empty but a few windows on the first floor were still alight and opposite him under the archway that led to the main gates a lamp shone down on the cobbles. That put paid to his idea of letting himself down on the rope. He'd be seen too easily.
He got up and moved across the roof towards the tower, and saw a square box-shaped trap protruding from the lead. Kneeling down beside it, he eased the top up and peered down into the darkness. It was obviously a means of access to the roof but what was below? Shoving it still further over, he lay down and put his head through the opening. Silence. Nothing stirred below and after listening carefully he took out his torch and flashed it briefly down. He was looking into a corridor but, best of all, some metal rungs were set into the wall. Peregrine switched off the flashlight, swung his legs over the edge and, hanging onto the top rung, eased the cover back over the trap. Then he climbed down and moving with the utmost caution, crept along the passage to a door at the end. Again he waited with every sense alert for danger but the place was silent. He opened the door and by the light shining through a slit window found himself at the head of a curved turret staircase.
Keeping close to the outer wall, he went down until he came to another door. Still silence. He opened it a fraction and saw a long corridor at the end of which a light was shining on a landing. Peregrine closed the door and went on down. If Glodstone was imprisoned anywhere it would be in an underground cell. Perhaps the Countess would be there too. Anyway it was the first place to look. Peregrine reached the ground floor and, ignoring the door into the courtyard, followed the steps down below ground. Here everything was pitch-dark and after taking the precaution of waiting and listening again, he switched on his torch. The base of the turret had brought him to the junction of two tunnels. One led off to his right under the east wing while the other disappeared into the distance below the main body of the Château. Peregrine chose the latter and was halfway along it when through an open doorway on one side be heard the murmur of voices. That they didn't come from the room itself was obvious. It was rather that people in the room above could be heard down there. He flashed his torch briefly and saw that the place had once been a kitchen.
An old black iron range stood in the chimney breast and in the middle of the room a large wooden table stood covered with dust. Beyond it was a large stone sink and a window and a door which led out into a sunken area. To one side of the sink, a chain hung down over the walled lip of what seemed to be a well. A wooden lid covered it now. Peregrine crossed the room, lifted the lid and shone the torch down and very faintly saw, far below, its reflected light. It might come in handy for a hiding place in an emergency but in the meantime he was more interested in the voices. The sound of them came, he realized, from what looked like a small lift-shaft set into the wall at the far end of the kitchen. Peregrine switched off his torch and stuck his head through the opening. Two men in the room above were engaged in heated argument.
'You're not reading me, Hans,' said an American, 'You're taking a non-power-oriented standpoint. Now what I'm saying is that from the proven experimental evidence of the past there is no alternative to Realpolitik or Machtpolitik if you like...'
'I don't like,' said a man with a foreign accent, 'and I should know. I was there at the Battle of the Kursk. You think I liked that?'
'Sure, sure. I guess not. But what happened there was the breakdown of Machtpolitik powerwise.'
'You can say that again,' said the German. 'You know how many Tigers we lost?'
'Jesus, I'm not talking logistically. You had a pre-War situation which was unbalanced.'
'We had a man who was unbalanced too. That's what you fail to take into account. The human psyche. All you can see is the material, the non-personalistic and dehumanized product of an economically dependent species. But never psychical impulses which transcend the material.'
'That is not true. I admit the interdependency of the individual and the socio-economic environment but the basis remains the same, the person is the process.'
The German laughed. 'You know, when I hear you talk that way I am reminded of our Soviet colleague. The individual is free by virtue of the very collectivity which makes him unfree. With you the collective imposes a freedom on the individual which he does not want. In the Soviet case there is the stasis of state capitalism and in the American the chaos of the free-market economy, and in both the individual is tied with the halter of militaristic power monopolies over which he has no control. And that you rationalize as Realpolitik?'