Travers broke off to stare at Nick. “I suppose you can fake a convincing brogue? It’s not much good if you can’t.”

  Nick grinned wearily at him. “Don’t worry about that atall, atall! I’m a broth of a boyo and I hate the English worse than I hate sin or Protestants! Sure and I’d love to blow up Buckingham Palace, I would that!”

  Ian Travers smiled faintly. “Not too bad. But don’t overplay it. Alfie McTurk is pretty stupid, a big dumb murderous lout, but he’ll be on his guard. He’s worried, as well he might me. He’s in trouble with us and he’s in more trouble with Pendragon and the Druids. Their discipline is stiff and McTurk has broken the rules—but I told you ah that.”

  As they talked Nick had been slipping out of the late Major Camberwell’s good quality shirt and tie. He donned the sleazy, dirty blue ad white striped shirt that was handed him. He knotted a soiled handkerchief around his neck and pulled on the greasy cloth cap.

  Travers nodded in approval. “You’ll do. Just don’t shave or wash until you absolutely must. You should get by. Insofar as we know the Lady Hardesty is the only one in the Druid organization, alive, who knows what you really look like.” The Special Branch man looked inquiringly at Nick. “You haven’t any pictures floating around, by chance?”

  N3 shook his head. He could not resist just a touch of the rapier. “You should know better than that, sir. When I joined AXE even my baby pictures were burnt!”

  “There are such things as street photographers,” Travers said dryly, “but we’ll have to risk it. Externals aren’t too important anyway, as long as they serve to get you into Blackscape. If you make it they’ll strip you down and put you into a Druid uniform in any case—which reminds me, give me your weapons! You’re going to have to go into this pretty naked. Weapons would make them suspicious at once. Hard lines, I know, but there it is. Come on, give!”

  Nick slid the Luger across the table. “Goodbye, Wilhelmina,” he murmured. “Be faithful to me.” He unbuckled the chamois sheath from his arm and tossed it after the Luger. Travers was right. He did feel a little naked without the Luger and the stiletto.

  Travers was watching him. “That’s all?”

  “That’s all.” Nick lied easily. There was one more shot of napalm in the cigarette lighter and he meant to keep it. It was hands across the sea and all that, of course, but sometimes one kept secrets even from cousins. The lighter wouldn’t compromise him—he could always say he stole it.

  Travers scooped the weapons into his bag. “I sincerely hope,” he said matter of facdy, “that I can give them back to you one day soon. Now take off your shoes, please. And hurry.”

  Nick handed over the Major’s well worn walking boots. Travers took a pair of shoddy black oxfords from the suitcase. “Observe closely,” he told Nick. “Both heels twist off. Just so.”

  He twisted the rubber heels off both shoes. The heels were hollowed out. Travers pointed to the right heel. “Wiring and detonaters. Very fine wire—they’ve gotten twenty feet of it packed in there.” He picked up the left heel and showed it to Nick. “Fulminate caps. I shouldn’t advise you to bounce too hard on your heels!”

  “I’ll try to remember.”

  Travers screwed the heels back in place and tossed them to Nick. “Put them on. Now I’ll show you the piece de resistance, as it were.”

  From his pocket he took a worn leather tobacco pouch and a scarred, filthy smelling cutty pipe. “From now on,” he said, “you’re a pipe smoker. Get rid of all your cigarettes, if you have any. And give me the Major’s wallet while you’re at it.”

  Nick did so. Travers handed him another wallet, thin and ragged. “No need to check it now. It’s an expert job, got everything you’ll need or should have. Now about this tobacco pouch—”

  He zipped open the pouch. A smell of cheap burley came from it. “Watch,” said Travers. “If you have to do this at all you’ll have to do it fast.” He inserted three fingers into the pouch and lifted. The inner lining and tobacco came out in his hand. He tilted the pouch to show Nick what was in the hollow below the false lining. It was neatly and firmly packed in and looked like a child’s modeling clay.

  “Plastique,” said Travers. “Enough to blow up half of London. You know how to use it, of course?”

  N3 nodded. He did indeed. AXE had run a special course for the top men in the use of plastique.. He remembered it only too well. They had lost a very good agent who had used it carelessly.

  “Good. I only hope to God you get to use it—in time!”

  Travers put the outer skin and tobacco back in the pouch and handed it and the scurvy pipe to Nick. “I guess that’s it. Now we’ll have a look at the map. Then I’ll check you over a last time and then you can go down to the bar and get arrested. Remember you must make it look genuine! Our chaps are expecting it. We’ve got special men laid on for the job. Don’t be afraid of hurting them!”

  “I won’t,” said Nick. “I have to protect myself, don’t I? No fancy work, I suppose? No karate or judo or savate?”

  Travers looked annoyed. “God, no! You’re just a big dumb Irish renegade! Just your fists, man! You’re not supposed to know any of the sophisticated nonsense! Now stand up and let me take a last look at you, check you out.”

  Two minutes later the Special Branch man nodded. “I guess you’ll do. Better get on with it now. Luck and God bless!” He shook hands with Nick and watched him out the door.

  Five minutes later N3 was sitting at the frowzy bar of the Drum and Monkey again, drinking yet another pint of bitter. He was exchanging a few words with the bar maid, practicing his accent, when he saw her eyes widen. She was looking over his shoulder. She leaned forward to whisper.

  “Busies, love! Tecs. I can tell by their bloody feet. Mind your manners now.”

  A big hand was clapped on Nick’s shoulder. He was spun around. A hefty looking plain clothes detective with a hard face was smirking at him.

  “Your name Mitchell? Sean Mitchell?”

  His new name. Nick scowled at the man. “That’s as might be,” he said in his best low Irish brogue. “And what’s it to yer anyway?”

  The hand tightened on his shoulder. “Might be a lot, mate. Come along. You’re wanted for a few questions.”

  Nick shook off the hand and stood up. Every eye in the pub was on him. “That will be the bloody day,” he said harshly. “That will be the bleeding day, when Sean Mitchell goes along peacefully with any ruddy English copper!”

  He hit the detective squarely in the face.

  Chapter 9

  FOUL DEED

  The prison van left London at midnight, heading for the grim prison of Dartmoor in Devonshire. The fog had come up as expected and the going was agonizingly slow as the van groped its way through the yellowish pea soup. It would be after dawn, at least, before they left the plain and climbed to the stark and rolling moor where the accident was to occur. Travers had planned it for a place called Two Bridges, just to the northeast of Princeton and the prison. A truck was to smash into the prison van there. The guards and the truck driver—also a policeman in disguise—were to feign injuries and unconsciousness. Nick— now Sean Mitchell—and his comrade in manacles, Alfie McTurk, would be afoot on the moor. Escaping. Nick was to take it from there.

  Alfie McTurk was a Druid, a Centurion in fact, one of Pendragon’s tough boys. It seemed logical that he would immediately contact hits organization and ask for help. It was the thin edge of the wedge, the shoehorn in the heel. Or so Travers hoped.

  One thing had worried the man from Special Branch. He explained it to Nick. Alfie McTurk was on the spot! In deadly trouble with the Druids. He had gotten drunk and pulled a smash and grab job on his own and gotten caught. A serious breach of discipline. And Druids who disobeyed orders were punished swiftly and without mercy. The question was—did Alfie McTurk realize just how much trouble he was in?

  “He’s got the body of an ox,” Travers had explained. “And the brain too! Still he may realize that he’s safer away from the Druids! He may not try to contact them. It’s for you to guide him a bit, N3.”

  Now, as the prison van rolled slowly southwest through the night and fog, Nick coverdy studied the huge man seated across from him. They had hardly spoken so far. Nick was playing the silent and sullen bit, and McTurk stared at the floor of the van most of the time, twisting his big gnarled hands and scowling. He did, Nick thought now, look remarkably like a gorilla! He was tall and wide shouldered and thick in the chest. His dark hair was thick and grew low on his forehead. His eyes were small and cunning and set too close together. He was as roughly dressed as Nick himself, still in his civilian clothes. They would not be given prison garments until they reached Dartmoor.

  Nick glanced at the steel netting over the rear door of the van. They weren’t going to reach Dartmoor, of course, but Alfie McTurk didn’t know that. The doors were padlocked, right enough, but the lock had been filed three quarters through.

  “If the doors don’t burst of their own accord,” Travers had explained, “just give them a good kick. They’ll give.”

  Nick thought it was about time to make a move. He had to win McTurk’s confidence. The van hit a hole in the road and sent both men flying and Nick seized the opportunity. He loosed a string of fearful Irish curses and kicked at the walls of the van. He slammed his fist against the partition separating them from the two guards in front.

  “Sure and whyn’t yer watch yer ruddy driving, you gutless spalpeens! Yer trying to break our screwing necks. Stupid bloody English sods!” He slammed the partition again with his fist.

  McTurk was watching him. Nick thought he detected a glint of admiration in the little eyes. It was about time. When they had been loaded into the van Nick had put up a terrific scuffle, hitting and kicking the guards, but McTurk had not appeared to be impressed. Now he seemed to be. He fished a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his pocket, lit one, and tossed the pack across the van to Nick. “Yer a rough one and that’s for sure,” said Alfie McTurk. “What’s yer name, cock?” He had the whine of Bow Bells in his voice. Travers had explained that the man was a Cockney.

  Nick flung the pack of cigarettes back at the man, hoping he wasn’t overdoing it. But he could not appear too anxious to make friends.

  “Keep your ruddy cigarettes,” he snarled in his best Irish tones. “If it’s cigarettes I’m wanting I’ll have me own, thank you.”

  McTurk picked up the pack and proffered it again. He now seemed anxious to talk. Over his beede browed, pushed in face—his nose had been badly broken and badly set—crept an expression that Alfie probably thought of as friendly.

  “That’s no wye to be, mate! Come off it now. We’re gorn to clink together, ain’t we? We might even be cell mates. So might as well be friendly, I sye. Might even do each other a bit of good, comes the chance. And it might come, it might.” A cunning look stole over Alfie’s concave features. “I got friends, I ‘ave. I’ve no mind to spend seven years in the bleeding Moor!”

  Nick glared at him, but he was heartened. It was a hint, nothing more, but a hint that Alfie would welcome any chance to escape. He reached for a cigarette, still growling curses. “Me name is Sean Mitchell, if it’s anything to do with you atall!”

  Alfie nodded. He relaxed, crossed his thick legs and blew smoke. “I’m Alfie McTurk, I am. The Beak give me seven for smash and grab. A jewelers in the Strand. I’d a gotten away with it, too, only I was drunk at the time. A real skinful, I had.”

  Nick looked at him with contempt which was not hard to produce. “Fool! Only a bloody fool would operate when he’s drinking. But then you bloody Limeys never could drink proper—takes an Irishman to do that!”

  McTurk chose to ignore that. He was now determined to be friendly with this big renegade Irishman with the burning bloodshot eyes. The truth about Alfie McTurk was that he was a natural bully, and at heart a coward, and he was lonely and frightened. Nick sensed all this and let the big hoodlum talk on and on. It was mostly braggadocio. Nick sat and smoked and listened to the endless stream of boasts and thought, with a sly quirk of his mind, that a modern psychiatrist would have stamped Alfie as basically insecure! Nick had to chuckle at that. Even Alfie didn’t suspect just how insecure he was at the moment!

  The ride was interminable. It began to rain, sloshing at the top and sides of the van with gray whips and blowing in the two small windows. It got very cold in the van. Nick turned up the collar of his ruined tweed jacket and pretended to sulk. Impatience buzzed in him like an electric current. Let’s get this show on the road!

  At last they were through Exeter. Moretonhampstead. Grimspound. Postbridge.

  Nick was alert now for the signal. The driver was to sound his horn in a certain manner when they were a mile east of Two Bridges. Nick peered out a window and, as the road curved, he could see a faint line of daybreak behind them. It was still raining lightly.

  The driver sounded his horn. Two longs, a short, two longs. One mile to go!

  Nick looked across at Alfie McTurk. The big man had fallen into silence at last and was staring morosely at the floor. Bragging or no, he seemed at last to have realized that he was headed for Dartmoor and seven years hard labor.

  “You got another cigarette?” asked Nick. He was bracing himself as best he could. The collision was coming up now, any moment, and Travers had promised it would be a good one. Authentic. “You’ll know it,” he had said grimly. “They’ll bowl you arse over endways!”

  Alfie reached into his pocket and brought out a crumpled packet. He flung it to the floor in disgust. “All gorn! Whyn’t yer bring yer own bleeding fags, mate? I ain’t no ruddy tobacco shop, I—”

  It came! A long squeal of tortured brakes and then a slamming jolt of truck meeting van! Nick was expecting it, still he was hurled across the van to land on top of Alfie. The van veered into a ditch and turned over with a crash.

  N3 saw that McTurk was dazed. He grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the rear doors. “Come on!” he yelled. “Maybe we got a chance! Let’s run for it!”

  The steel mesh doors still held. Nick gave them a vicious, well directed kick and they flew open. He crawled out into the ditch, pulling Alfie after him. It was barely light and the rain was falling heavier now. The van was on its side in the ditch, its two topmost wheels still spinning. Across the road a heavy truck was slewed into another ditch, nose buried, lights still blazing across the moor. There was no sign of life from either vehicle. The police were playing their roles well.

  Nick grabbed at Alfie’s arm. No time to waste. He didn’t want to give the man time to think. “Run!” Nick yelled. “Run, damn it. We can hide out on the moor!”

  To the west he saw a scattering of houses and a church steeple. Two Bridges. A mental photostat of Travers’ map flashed through his brain. He wanted to go north! Into the most desolate sector of the moors.

  Nick ran across the road and leaped the ditch near the wrecked truck. He glanced over his shoulder. Alfie McTurk was coming after him. Nick concealed his grin and began to run for all he was worth.

  N3 was in superb condition, as he always was, and so had to trim his pace to suit the blundering Alfie. Even so it was fifteen minutes before he paused and flung himself down in the heather on the far side of a gentle ridge that would conceal them from the road. There would be no pursuit, but McTurk couldn’t know that.

  McTurk was utterly spent. He lay in the sodden heather and sobbed for breath. The rain had increased, a miserable gray net, and heavy mist was rolling in from the south. Nick left Alfie to catch his breath and crawled to the top of the opposite ridge, adjusting himself to the role of hunted creature. Alfie McTurk was the key to Pendragon! An unlikely key, but the only one they had. One mistake could ruin everything. And there was the terrible and incessant pressure of Time!

  Nick peered over the ridge. Something dark moved along the little valley below him. Nick tensed, then saw what it was and relaxed. Moor ponies. Wild creatures, as desolate and alone in the rain as himself and Alfie. He raised his eyes again and began searching the forlorn horizon. For a moment the rain slackened and Nick saw something glimmering white in the distance. A house? A cottage? He couldn’t be sure. But it was worth a try. He went back to where Alfie was still gasping in the heather. He kicked the big man roughly in the ribs.

  “Sure and ‘tis all day yer going to spend there? Come on, man! They’ll have the warders and the dogs out by now. We daren’t loaf here. Come on—time to run again!”

  Alfie got slowly to his feet, holding his side. “Me breath’s gorn, cock! Gorn for fair, it is. I got a stitch as is killing me! What say we just walk it, easy like?” He glanced around at the mist rolling in. “They’ll never find us in this pea souper.”

  “Ar,” said Nick savagely. “They’ll not find us! And we’ll never find our way off the cursed moor, either! I say come on now, or I’m leaving you. Maybe I’d better anyway— I’ll be better off alone! You’re not man enough to keep up!”

  “No, mate!” Alfie glanced around fearfully at the rain and mist. “Don’t leave me, cock! I’ll keep up.”

  “Then come on. We’ll head north. I thought I saw a house that way. Might be we can find some help there—or help ourselves! That’s as may be. So come or stay!” Nick swung around and began to walk rapidly to the north. He could hear Alfie puffing along behind him.

  Alfie saved his breath to climb the next ridge. But on the descent he said, “You seen an ‘ouse, mate?”

  Nick nodded curtly. “I thought I did! Mist has hidden it now, but I got a line on it.”

  Silence. Heavy breathing. Then, with a note of low cunning in his voice Alfie said, “Yer suppose an ‘ouse out here would have a blower? A ruddy telephone?”

  “Not likely,” Nick said. But he was pleased. Very pleased. Alfie was thinking along the right lines at last. Thinking about making a contact, asking for help! Nick found himself hoping the house did have a phone! Otherwise he would have to stick to plan and walk all the way to the tiny village of Tavy Cleave where there was a public phone. Fifteen miles. With the chances good that they would lose their way in the mist and circle back. No man without a compass could keep his bearings in a moor mist! And of course he had not brought a compass—it would have made even a stupid ox like Alfie suspicious.