Doctor Who_ War Games - Malcolm Hulke [7]
‘Quick,’ said the Doctor, springing to his feet. ‘We’ve got to stop that.’
‘How?’
But the doctor was already racing down the slope of grass towards the road. By the time Zoe reached him he had signalled the car to stop and was talking in an imperious voice to the startled corporal driver.
‘About time! Where have you been?’ the Doctor demanded.
The driver looked at him blankly. ‘Sir?’
‘Don’t argue. We’re from the War Office. Take us to the military detention centre immediately.’
The driver gulped. ‘The prison, sir?’
‘Come along, my dear.’ The Doctor helped Zoe into the back seat. ‘The lower orders have no idea of punctuality.
We have to do all the thinking for them.’
The driver was still looking at the Doctor. ‘I was sent to meet you, sir?’
‘Of course you were,’ said the Doctor. ‘Any more lip from you, my man, and it’ll be the cells with only bread and water for three months, followed by twenty lashes while you are tied to a gun wheel, and after that you will be posted to the front line.’
The corporal cringed. ‘Yes, sir. I was sent to meet you.’
He put the car into gear and drove forward along the winding road.
The Doctor looked sideways at Zoe and grinned.
Beneath the chandeliers and cracked ceiling, Captain Ransom and Lieutenant Carstairs stood poring over maps of the area. Ransom was a very worried man.
‘We’ve searched everywhere around the château,’ he said. ‘Not a trace. General Smythe will be furious.’
‘Incidentally,’ asked Lady Jennifer, ‘where is the general?’
‘He’s...’ Ransom was always forgetting things these days.
‘He’s attending a conference at high command. Look, I’d better take a search party towards the German lines. That’s where these spies will be making for.’
‘And I had better return to my unit.’ Carstairs reached for his cap.
‘Must you? I would rather leave an officer in charge here.’ Captain Ransom picked up his swagger cane. ‘Be a good fellow and stay until I get back, will you? Perhaps you could telephone all command posts and tell them to be on the look out for these people.’ He hurried out of the office, terrified of what General Smythe would say when he heard the news of the escapes.
‘I wouldn’t like to be in his shoes,’ said Carstairs when Ransom had gone. ‘Better the front line any time than be adjutant to a general.’
Lady Jennifer regarded Carstairs a few moments before saying what was on her mind. ‘Didn’t you think there was something strange about that court martial, Jeremy?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said, cheerfully. ‘I suppose military justice can be a bit rough, not like the Old Bailey.’
‘How much do you know about General Smythe?’ she asked.
He tried to remember. ‘Can’t say I’d heard of him till I arrived here. What are you getting at?’
‘Things have started to come back to me,’ she went on.
‘I can remember joining the Volunteer Ambulance Drivers and coming out to France to drive ambulances. I remember driving through a forest, then all of a sudden I was in a strange mist or fog. After that I was in a field dressing station, tending some wounded soldiers. But where was I between that mist and the field dressing station?’
‘The mist you mentioned...’
‘Yes?’
Carstairs smiled. At last his memory seemed to be returning. ‘I remember a mist, but I don’t know when.
Perhaps the Germans have invented a new type of poison gas, one that affects our minds.’
‘Do you really believe that?’ she asked. ‘And do you believe that was a fair court martial?’
He looked worried. Then his face cleared. ‘Good gracious, the Captain asked me to telephone the command posts about those escapees. I’d better get on with it.’
He picked up a field telephone and cranked the handle to get attention. Jennifer watched him.
Colonel Gorton stood at his office window while an orderly poured his afternoon tea. His view was pleasant: lush green fields and beyond, swathes of long grass gently rising up one side of the valley. If he cared to look down at a more acute angle he could see the barbed wire entanglements of the detention centre’s outer periphery, and even closer