Red In The Morning by Dornford Yates Page A

engine which must have been twenty years old, almost directly beside me I heard Punter’s voice.
    “All right. In a quarter of an hour.”
    “Yes,” said Lousy, “I know your quarter of an hours. I’m leaving this — town at half-past ten. ‘Back at eleven sharp,’ was wot he said. An’ from here to the — shatter’s just over twenty miles. If you–”
    “All right, all right,” said Punter. “I’ll be there.”
    I heard the slam of his door.
    Now, thanks to the work we had done, I knew the road they must take to bring them from Sarrat to Arx, and since it was now exactly a quarter-past ten, I had only to rejoin Bell, take that road before them and choose the spot at which we would hold them up. I, therefore, began to move backwards without delay; but hardly had I begun, when the lorry’s clutch was let in with a jolt that shook the teeth in my head. I can only suppose that the traffic had opened before it. Be that as it may, before I knew where I was, the lorry was pounding along at ten or twelve miles an hour: then its driver swung to the left and changed into top…
    I scrambled up to the cab – leaned out and round to the window and called upon the fellow to stop. So far from expressing surprise to see me there, he merely shouted back that he was already late and would be fined twenty francs if he did not get back to ‘the depot’ by half-past ten. I replied that I’d give him a hundred, if he would let me get down.
    “Show me the money,” he roared – and actually put down his foot.
    Between the speed and vibration, at least a mile had gone by, before I could pull out the money and thrust the note under his nose. And then he applied his brakes and brought his conveyance to rest by the side of the road.
    But of course my cake was dough. I was fully two miles from Sarrat, and the time was twenty minutes past ten. As I made my way back on foot, I could not help reflecting that the adjective ‘fickle’ suits Fortune down to the ground. At a quarter-past ten that morning she had delivered the enemy into my hands: precisely five minutes later I was myself in balk.
    At eleven o’clock I found Bell, who had carefully ‘covered’ Lousy, seen him joined by Punter and watched them drive out of the town. By twelve, the fault in the wiring had been found out and repaired. And just before one o’clock, I threw myself down beside Mansel in the hollow from which we observed the Château of Arx.
    I related what had occurred.
    “And there you are,” I concluded. “If I had been quick off that lorry, you wouldn’t have had the pleasure of seeing Lousy return.”
    John Bagot was bubbling, but Mansel lifted a hand.
    “William,” he said, “you have a most remarkable trait. You take your reverses so gently that Fortune relents.”
    I raised my eyebrows.
    “I don’t understand,” I said.
    “I know,” said Mansel. “How should you? The point is this. We’ve never had our eyes off that château, but Lousy has never returned . So unless he is two hours late – and that I find hard to believe – you have proved that there is another way into the Château of Arx.”

4
An Afternoon Call
     
    Now though we had decided that we must give Arx a wide berth, I do not think we should have been human if we had not desired to find out where this second entrance might be; and as soon as we reached our farm, we began to study the map.
    This proved that it lay to the west, as did the town of Sarrat; for, had it lain to the east, the distance must have been more than Lousy had said. More. There was only one road, so far as we could make out, upon which such an entrance could lie, and that was the road which served the village of Arx. But this we had not surveyed, except from our post to the north; and from there we could only see the last of its run.
    What kind of entrance there was we could not conceive, for the château was standing upon a mountainside; and when you are facing a mountain, as we had been, there can