Doctor Who_ War Games - Malcolm Hulke [15]
He went no further. Carstairs’s gun was now pointing directly at his chest.
‘Carstairs, are you out of your mind? Point the gun at the prisoners, not at me.’
‘Sorry about this, sir,’ Carstairs replied. He turned to Jamie. ‘Get the Captain’s revolver. Please don’t do anything foolish, sir. Doctor, the bandages.’
While Jamie unholstered Ransom’s service revolver, the Doctor produced rolls of bandages from his pockets.
‘We’re going to tie you up,’ he explained. Before we gag you, would you care to tell us where the General keeps his maps?’
‘You’re a German spy,’ said Ransom. ‘I shall tell you nothing. As for you, Carstairs, you’ll be court martialled for mutiny.’
‘Why not leave him with me a few minutes, I’ll get him to tell us everything,’ Jamie suggested.
The Doctor shot him a withering look. ‘Really, Jamie, we don’t do that sort of thing. All right, Captain, hands behind your back, please.’
Within thirty seconds the captain’s wrists and ankles were tied in bandages, his mouth gagged sufficiently to keep him quiet without causing suffocation. Carstairs dragged him to a dark corner of the office.
‘I’m really very sorry, sir,’ he said to the mute figure.
‘But I believe this is for the best.’
The Doctor was already trying to pick the lock of the steel safe when Carstairs joined him in the general’s bedroom. The Doctor was using a piece of wire that he had produced from his voluminous pockets.
‘You’ll get nowhere with that wee piece of wire,’ said Jamie. ‘It keeps bending.’
The Doctor straightened up. ‘You’re right. Lieutenant, since this is a military establishment, could you lay your hands on any explosives?’
‘I could try,’ said the lieutenant. ‘Let me hunt around.’
He hurried from the room. When Carstairs had gone, Jamie told the Doctor what was on his mind.
‘Doctor, this is a terrible war and a terrible place to be.
Why don’t the three of us try to get back to the TARDIS
and leave them all to it?’
‘Are you afraid, Jamie?’
‘Och away, no,’ Jamie said, trying to hide his nervousness. ‘But it’s such a miserable place.’
‘I believe something very evil is going on here, Jamie.
Not just this war. In any case, we now know there is more than one war—the British against the Germans in about 1917, the English against your people in 1745, even the Romans fighting two thousand years ago. How have all these soldiers been brought here and yet kept in their different time zones? And why? We can’t run away without discovering what’s behind all this.’
Jamie smiled. ‘You never do run away, Doctor. You always want to put things right.’
‘I am of an interfering nature,’ the Doctor agreed amiably. ‘Mind you, I’m not supposed to interfere.’
‘Who says you shouldn’t?’
‘Well,’ the Doctor said mysteriously, ‘perhaps I may tell you one day.’
‘And at this rate, perhaps we’ll all be shot dead. Tell me now, who says you mustn’t interfere. I thought you were your own master?’
‘But I am,’ the Doctor said. He turned back to the safe and tried again with his piece of wire. ‘You’d think the lieutenant would have found some explosives by this time...’
‘Doctor,’ Jamie persisted. ‘You were going to tell me something about yourself. Who are you really? Where do you come from?’
‘Another time, Jamie.’ The Doctor turned the wire. ‘I’ve almost got it...’
‘It’s bent again,’ said Jamie, exasperated. ‘Aren’t you going to tell me—please?’
The Doctor turned and looked at him. ‘We’ve travelled together a long time, Jamie, so perhaps I should let you know who I really am. You see—’
Lieutenant Carstairs hurried back into the room. ‘I’ve found this.’ He held up a small metal object shaped like a pineapple. ‘It’s a Mills Bomb. I thought we could hang it on the front of the safe and let it off.’
The Doctor took the bomb and examined it. ‘That would blow up the room and might not harm the safe at all. We need to concentrate the explosion in the lock itself.
If I remove the charge from