Operation Pax Read Online Free PDF Page B

didn’t trust them. After all, in an environment which made the lion mild was it not very conceivable that a croquet player upon being appealed to for protection might simply swing his mallet and dash one’s brains out?
    But on all this there was only a moment for reflection. Squire swung round a wing of the house and the croquet players disappeared.

 
     
7
     
    Routh now lost his bearings. Continuing to skirt the main building, Squire led the way into a walled garden and out again, using a key each time. Beyond this lay a kitchen garden, empty except for a bent old man culling cauliflowers, and they passed on to a sort of narrow alley of which one side was formed by a high beech hedge and the other by a long, low building of modern appearance and indeterminate length.
    Presenting to the world nothing but a succession of frosted glass windows, this building ran slightly downhill, so that the level dropped as by broad, shallow steps. And presently Routh caught a glimpse of its other end. It had been run out from the house as far as it could go – to the margin, in fact, of a small lake. In the middle of the lake was an island, seemingly entirely occupied by a large, blank and improbable temple. Although such fantasies were unfamiliar to Routh, he guessed at once that there was nothing out of the way in it. Much odder was the fact that this ancient absurdity was now directly linked to the new raw wing he had been skirting by a wooden bridge – a bridge lightly constructed but entirely enclosed, so that it was, in fact, a species of tunnel, relieved only by a few small windows.
    But all this Routh only glimpsed. For Squire had stopped before a door near the end of the building, unlocked and opened it, and pushed Routh unceremoniously inside. He locked the door from within, while Routh took stock of a long, bleak corridor.
    ‘Well, here we are.’
    In Squire’s voice Routh again caught a momentary note of uncertainty. He derived what comfort he could from it in a situation that he increasingly disliked. His isolation with the alarming Squire appeared to be complete. There was not a sign of life down the length of this narrow corridor. There was not a sound from the succession of rooms they were now passing. A modern monastery must be like this – the kind in which you take vows to keep your mouth shut. The unlikely comparison, floating through Routh’s mind, increased his uneasiness, for there is a whole popular mythology of the hidden horrors of the cloister. Forty Months in a Flagellant Order. By the Author of A Short History of Torture (Illustrated). Momentarily overborne by these new imaginings, Routh looked about him in the expectation of seeing walls hung with scourges and a floor dripping blood. But the walls were pervasively blank, and on the floor of the long corridor was nothing more remarkable than a thick, green rubber that deadened every sound.
    ‘And you can wait here.’
    Squire was unlocking and opening a door. Routh looked at him warily. ‘What d’you mean – wait here?’ he demanded.
    ‘There’ll be an interview.’
    The words were perfunctory, and Routh sensed that they were quite meaningless. He made to back away. Squire grabbed him, swung him effortlessly off his feet, and pitched him through the doorway.
    ‘An interview with my colleagues, my dear fellow, quite soon. Did I say we were magicians? Alchemists would be a better description. You will no doubt make yourself as comfortable as you can.’
    Routh picked himself up in time to see the door closing and to hear a key turn in its lock. It was his first confused impression that he was in a small kitchen, but in a moment he realized that it was a laboratory. He recognized it – as even the most ignorant can now recognize virtually any material creation of man – from the cinema. There was a bench, a sink, an affair with various gas burners and a small flue above. There were rows of bottles behind sliding glass doors. The only movable