The Ghosts of N-Space - Barry Letts [77]
‘If the weather holds,’ he said and openly belched.
Louisa finished writing her note so quickly that it was hardly worth while picking up the Ann Radcliffe book.
Sarah just had time to check out that, as she half remembered, there was no mention of the long lost son’s return from the wars. As she came up to Louisa’s room, she had seen Guido’s portrait, looking exactly the same as three hundred years before (though a touch browner in colour), now hanging in the gallery with the other paintings. But there seemed to be no clue anywhere as to what had happened to him. She let the book drop and closed her eyes, 268
the better to remember what his father had been saying the last time she saw him.
‘La! It is so hot. I’ll warrant there’ll be thunder before the night is through.’
Louisa’s voice startled her; she realized that she had been on the point of dropping off.
‘I believe I shall go outside to discover if the air is fresher in the garden,’ Louisa continued casually – but quite incapable of keeping the underlying excitement from her voice.
‘I think it’s going to teem with rain.’
‘That will not signify; I shall be all the cooler.’
‘I’ll come too,’ said Sarah.
‘No, no,’ replied Louisa, a little too quickly. ‘You must go to bed and rest your arm.’
Okay, she’d got the message. There was a lovers’ tryst in the offing.
‘You’re quite right,’ she said. ‘I do feel a bit tired.’
Ripping knackered, more like, though her arm hardly hurt at all now – after all, as far as she was concerned it got bashed getting on for two or three days ago; or was it four? It was hard to work out when you tried to count the time in the TARDIS. But it certainly would have been great to get her head down.
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However, when duty called… And duty was telling her very firmly that while the lovers were busy trysting, she must be behind the hedge on surveillance, to see what she could pick up about the plans for digging the non-existent treasure out of the wall.
She’d let Louisa get ahead a bit and then follow. If it was a bit Nosy-Parkerish or even Peeping-Tornish (though she was convinced that the two kids were absolutely innocent; so far, at any rate), well, it was all in a good cause.
‘Goodnight then, dearest Sarah Jane. Sleep well. I trust your shoulder will be quite healed by morning.’
Turning firmly back to her book, Sarah threw an abstracted ‘Sure. Thanks. See you later,’ over her shoulder and listened for the click of the door as Louisa left.
But she heard more than a click. She heard the key being turned in the lock.
She leapt to her feet and tried the door. But it was true.
Louisa had locked her in; and there could be only one reason for her to do a thing like that.
Tonight was the night it was all going to happen.
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Twenty-One
After the fiend had gone, there was utter silence in the castle. The Brigadier took a quick look round. There was nobody to be seen. The tiny garrison had done its best to hide and nobody would take the risk of calling attention to himself Even Jeremy’s sobs had died.
The Brigadier’s attention was brought back to the immediate situation by a shout from Maggie. ‘Come back, you lily-livered skunk!’
Certainly, when he looked, it seemed to the Brigadier too that Max, who had come out from the cover of the woods, was running away. His retreat was covered by the two remaining henchmen, both with the automatic rifles the others had carried.
But then, out of the stillness came the sound that the Brigadier had been dreading to hear: the hammer-throb of a helicopter.
It was approaching from the south. He could see its lights in the twilight. Of course, he thought. Max was no one’s fool. Once he had seen that the original plan might fail, he’d radioed to the mainland for backup.
The chopper was coming in to land on the stony field just below the orange grove. Already the small herd of goats 271
which browsed on the scanty vegetation was scattering, to a chorus of terrified bleats.
When Maggie saw that Max was about to disappear into the shelter of the orange trees,