He said, idly, without turning to his men: “Any more ‘rumors’ lately, boys?” And laughed forcedly.
Grandon came to him, and Durant glanced up. His glance had been quick; that knife-flash had appeared and disappeared on Grandon’s face in a single instant. The young lieutenant grinned. “Why, sir, you said not to repeat ‘rumors’ to you, so maybe you won’t be interested in hearing a ‘rumor’ that a warship, the Sea Runner, was blown up yesterday at a loading dock in New York. There’s nothing about it in the papers this morning; there wouldn’t be, of course.”
Durant frowned. “If it isn’t in the papers, of course it isn’t true. What does ‘rumor’ say about any deaths, or anything, on the warship?”
“All the crew dead, including the captain. Whole harbor full of wreckage. Saboteurs. They found remnants of explosives. Must have been riddled with them; the whole ship. Funny, if it’s true, that saboteurs got on board to do the job without being seen.”
Durant was silent. Brave men, many of the sailors! Heroic men, dying anonymously in a blaze of hell. Dying, these young men, for the Republic of the United States of America. Durant felt humble and prayerful; he had maligned all of the young. Thousands of parents, everywhere, were not too tired, too frightened, too beaten and oppressed, to whisper the stories of old freedom and God and human dignity, to deliver their sons up to voiceless death in order that the world might be free of the madness. The oppression which had stifled Durant since the execution of Alex Sheridan, and particularly since his conversation with Sheridan, began to lift. “The children of light” might not be so wise in their generation as “the children of darkness,” but they had courage and faith and nobility.
Durant’s thoughts continued. If these acts of “sabotage” were being perpetrated in Section 7, then they must be occurring in all the other Sections, too. They were not mere spontaneous violences; they were acts of decision and planning. The hour was almost here.
His head began to ache with the fury and excitement of his thoughts. He looked at his watch. It was almost four o’clock. He said: “I’ve got a headache. I think I’ll go home.”
When he reached the lobby, with his Guards, he found it unusually full of soldiers, not gossiping and laughing as usual, but grim and attentive. Now he remembered that this phenomenon was not a recent thing. Who had ordered this extra guard? Bishop? Edwards? The order had not come to him. Perhaps it had just come about because of the turn of events, but Durant doubted it.
His car was waiting, and he crossed the sidewalk to it, shivering in the wet and heavy wind. He paused a moment, feeling for a cigaret. It was then he noticed that the innocuous sheet of paper which he had put into his pocket to replace the letter from Carlson was gone. He had a momentary sensation of shock. Who, during his passage from his office down the corridor, or in the elevator, or in the hotel lobby, had removed that sheet? Who, perhaps, in his very office? Friend or enemy? Spy or traitor? Minute Man or agent of the FBHS? Sadler and Beckett were looking at him inquiringly. He shrugged, and entered the car, his mind in a renewed fury of thought. Someone had wanted that letter very badly, perhaps had had orders to steal it, had been in possession of the code. Or wished to destroy it, if Durant semed careless, and had not obeyed instructions.
As the car rolled away, Durant examined Sadler’s face. It was impassive. If Sadler had taken the sheet he would have indicated so, for he had seen Durant’s searching of his pocket. But Sadler gave no indication. Therefore, it was not Sadler. Beckett? Durant examined that smooth lean face minutely, and was convinced it was not Beckett. He had passed through a crowded lobby; it was very possible that, in the press, the sheet had been taken. Someone, then, in the office, had notified the thief.
Not Grandon, who had plotted with Bob Lincoln in the darkness of a spring night against him, Durant; not Keiser, who was “one of ours.” Bishop? Edwards? Durant recalled their typical military faces, their typical military thinking. He knew their history well. They were professional soldiers of many years. Then, who? He came back to Grandon, who had shown more curiosity about the letter than any of the others. It was quite possible that Grandon, in addition to being a soldier, was also a spy for the FBHS.
Durant was not afraid any longer. There was too much danger all about him, now, for fear. He saw that Beckett and Sadler had their guns in their hands. “Why the guns?” he asked. “Expecting an ambush?”
Beckett explained with patience: “If the colonel had been noticing, lately, he’d have seen that we’ve been carrying our guns openly, in our hands, for over a month.”
“Orders from the Chief Magistrate,” added Sadler.
“On account of the ‘rumors’?” said Durant, with sarcasm.
“On account of the rumors,” agreed Sadler.
The yellow sky was darkening as the car raced through the suburbs and then out into the country. Durant smoked thoughtfully. His Guards did not smoke; they watched constantly through the windows, guns in their hands, fingers on triggers. The wind, gathering force out in the open places, roared against the car, made it shiver and shake. The bare trees along the road, and on the farms in the distance, twisted and whirled in the increasing gale. At times the car had to slow down, to negotiate around a fallen limb. Durant, the city-bred, had never heard such primal thunder before, and he was awed by it and vaguely disturbed. Rain began to lash fiercely at the windows, yellowish rain, and the driver again slowed. He turned on the headlights, which revealed the tide of water falling from the sky. It glittered dully in the lights, swept up and around, blindingly.
Then the driver halted the car, trying to peer through the muddy windshield. “Big tree fallen on the road,” he announced. Sadler and Beckett leaned forward to peer, also, and so did Durant. A huge trunk stretched across the road, barring their passage, its empty branches lying on flooded ground. There was no way to leave the road and crawl over the fields on either side. “We’ll just have to haul it out of the way,” said Sadler. He and Beckett opened the doors of the car and went outside, pulling up their collars. The driver got out, and the three men studied the tree gloomily. Durant could see them in the headlights, just faces or a shoulder or a hand, in the howling rain.
Apparently they were somewhat discouraged, for they made no effort to struggle with the monstrous tree. They talked together; Durant could not hear them. The interior of the car became too warm for him, and he wanted information. He rolled down the bullet-proof window. “What are we going to do?” he shouted.
But Sadler had begun to wade almost knee-deep in the water to the right, holding his small flashlight. He was examining something: the stump of the tree. Then Durant glimpsed his face; it had become grim and understanding. He shouted something to Beckett and the driver, and they rushed back to the car. At that instant Durant saw a vivid flash of light, brilliant against the watery and yellowish dusk, and simultaneously he felt a burning and smashing blow on his right shoulder. Beckett turned, ran toward Sadler, and standing side by side, the two men fired into the near distance where a dim tree thrashed in the wind. The crash of the guns echoed back and forth in the windy twilight, and Durant, stunned by the bullet which had struck him, and deafened by the noise, painfully, almost without consciousness, rolled up the window at his side.
His eyes blurred, and he saw the shadowy figures of his Guards splashing further into the field, and he heard another shout. The driver, now in the car, was screaming at him. A great weariness fell over him, and he leaned back in his seat and fainted.
“He’s hit!” exclaimed Sadler.
“Bleeding like all hell. We’ve got to get a doctor fast,” replied Beckett excitedly, from the front seat.
Durant opened his eyes with a great effort, and could not focus them for a moment. The driver had turned off the headlights, and a foggy darkness lay outside. Somewhere, somebody groaned and retched, and then there was the sound of a blow and a curse.
Swimming in a dream of indifference and tiredness, Durant tried to remember what had happened to h
im. He moved on his seat, and Sadler said quickly: “All right, Colonel? The bastard got you on the shoulder. We don’t dare turn on our flashlights. Easy there; don’t move too much. Johnny, don’t punch that rat any more; we’ve got to question him before he kicks off, and the way you’re punching him he’ll die on our hands.”
“A good thing for him,” replied Beckett savagely. “Hell, he’s bleeding all over me!”
Consciousness was returning swiftly to Durant. He felt the car backing, then turning. He said weakly: “Vossen’s farm. Adjoins Lincoln’s. Who’s in the front seat with Beckett?”
“The fellow who shot you,” said Sadler. “One of us got him in the belly. Faster,” he said to the driver, who, much shaken, was proceeding slowly back the eighth of a mile to the Vossen farm. He said to Durant. “One of Vossen’s sons, I think.” And again to Beckett, more angrily than before: “Are you trying to kill him, Johnny? He’s got to be questioned first.” Beckett muttered something and the wounded prisoner groaned again and again so that Durant winced.
“If he dies before I talk with him, I’ll put the blame on you, Beckett,” he said; and his voice was strong and hard.
Sadler supported Durant gently. “Just a flesh wound, we hope. Just before you were conscious, sir, you moved the arm, so nothing’s broken.”
Durant said: “It’s my own fault; I let down the window. He was aiming at me, not you.”
Sadler grunted. “He sure was. He could have got Johnny or me if he’d wanted to. Good shot, and only about two hundred feet away. I knew something was wrong when I saw the tree had been sawed, and that it hadn’t fallen in the wind. It was a road-block, so we’d have to stop, and he’d have his chance at you, sir. And you gave it to him, free and clear!”
I’m certainly a stupid damn fool, thought Durant. The wound in his shoulder had become pure white anguish. The prisoner was silent now, except for an occasional gasp. His head lolled within reach of Durant’s hand, and all at once Durant was sick with a sickness that was only slightly connected with his wound. The violence had come face to face with him, and it was only beginning. He said: “I hope he doesn’t die—Vossen.”
“I hope so, too, sir,” replied Sadler. He added slowly: “Until we can question him, anyway.” Beckett, in the front seat with the prisoner, muttered again. The car was moving faster now, splashing up noisy tides of water, and the darkness was increasing.
“They’re getting bold,” Durant commented.
There was a little silence, then Sadler replied quietly: “Yes.” Suddenly, he put his hand over Durant’s mouth in an urgent gesture, then removed it.
There was something dangerous in the car with them, Durant thought. Who? The driver? Beckett? The prisoner? He smelled the danger. Now the pain in his arm reached a crescendo, and he groaned, himself. Beckett turned his head alertly. “The colonel, Chard?”
“Just beginning to feel the pain; just a flesh wound,” answered Sadler. “Can’t we go a little faster?”
The Vossen farmhouse appeared through the darkness, well lighted, solidly built of local fieldstone, its square bulk big and gracious. The car turned up the driveway toward it and water and mud sucked at the wheels. It was very rough going, and Sadler braced Durant strongly. The prisoner was silent now, evidently unconscious. The car stopped at the white doorway, and Durant said in a tone of authority: “Sadler, you’d better go in and call a couple of our Army doctors, and a squad of soldiers, before you help me into the house. That’ll prepare the family. And, Beckett, search around the house before I get out; I’m staying right here, with my gun, until you’re sure everything is safe. And you, George,” he said to the soldier-driver, “cover Lieutenant Sadler’s rear.”
“What if this bastard wakes up?” demanded Beckett, “and you all alone, sir?”
“I’ve got my gun; I suppose he doesn’t have his? Well, then, I’m safe, and I’ll keep the windows up and the door locked.”
The men were unwilling, but they obeyed. Durant watched until he was sure they had gone, then he leaned forward and spoke quickly and quietly to the man in the front seat. “Can you hear me? It’s important. I’ve got to talk to you while we’re alone—”
The head stirred painfully in the back of the seat, and a faint but surprisingly young voice answered: “I can hear you. I never passed out.” The voice added, without rage or much interest: “God damn it, I thought I’d killed you.”
“You almost did,” said Durant, laughing drearily. “How old are you? Who are you? Why did you do it? Hurry, or they’ll be back.”
The head tried to lift itself. Durant took his pencil flashlight from his left hip pocket and threw the beam briefly on the other’s face. Why, a kid, not more than twenty, if that! A dying child, too, if that wet lividity was any indication; Durant had a glimpse of large black eyes and a desperate young face, a boy’s face.
The boy could only whisper hoarsely: “What do you care? I’m plugged; I’m going to die in a few minutes. Leave my family alone; they don’t know anything about this. Good people. Stupid people. Except Dad.” Now the whisper became harsh. “I’m eighteen; I’m Ken Vossen. Help with the farm work. I thought you should die—”
“Why?” pleaded Durant.
The boy was silent a moment; Durant could feel rather than see that he was pressing his hands convulsively against his abdominal wound in an effort to stop the blood and the pain. Then the boy was whispering: “Because you’re the Military. Because you’ve killed this country. Because The Democracy is bad and we’ve got to get rid of the men in Washington—”
Durant said urgently: “Listen: did you have these ideas before I started putting the pressure on the farmers?”
“Yes,” and now the voice had become stronger. “I had them when I was a kid. I tried to talk to Dad about them, and he was mad. Said the State was the friend of the farmers, and we had everything, and I was to shut up or I’d land in jail or in front of a firing squad.” The head moved in an access of agony, and the boy groaned. “God damn you, why should I talk to you, anyway? You can’t do anything more to me.”
Durant said: “Ken, please talk to me. How many of you young people think as you do?”
The boy gave a ghost of a bitter laugh. “Want me to give you names, eh, so you can kill all of us? Well, I won’t. But I can tell you this,” and the voice was strong with passion, “you’re finished. There’s millions of us, millions! I know it. I hear the other kids talking when I go to the city.”
Durant was silent. He touched the top of the young head very gently. “Have you been baptized?” he asked. The head moved abruptly under his hand, and the boy tried to twist a little to look up into Durant’s face. But it was too dark. “Baptized?” he muttered. “I don’t know; never heard I was. It’s illegal, you know.” All at once he began to sob, the long, deep-drawn sobs of a hurt child. “Who are you?” he cried.
Durant glanced through the windows swiftly; there was no sign of his men. He fumbled with the left door of the car, leaned down to the road and scooped up a handful of the flood water. He pulled the door closed after him, shutting his eyes against his own pain for a moment. Then he flowed the little handful of water over the boy’s forehead and murmured: “—in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.”
The boy lay very still, his head unmoving. Then, all at once he began to gasp raggedly. Durant put his hand against the cold cheek. “Listen to me, Ken. The time’s almost here, when America shall be free. Take that with you, kid. Have that to remember.”
Something was fumbling at the back of the seat, and Durant caught the boy’s hand. There was no life in it, but Durant, almost weeping, pressed the icy fingers. “God bless you,” he whispered. “God bless and help all the kids like you. We need you, for the future.”
The hand became limp in his; a convulsion shook the young body in the seat ahead. There was a long and sobbing groan, and the boy collapsed. Utter silence filled the car; now Durant could hear the fresh onslaught of the rain
on the roof, the rattle against the windows. He was alone; he knew that the boy was dead. But what he was had not died. “Millions of us!” No, but enough, perhaps, to help rebuild the future, to be leaders, to be the core of the Republic. Durant bent his head, prayed for the young soul so violently separated from its body, prayed that the courage of the children like Ken Vossen would not be diminished but would grow indomitably in the years ahead. Not all the children had been corrupted; here and there, throughout the whole world, perhaps, the young were thinking, the young were plotting, the young were willing to give up their lives for the dignity and liberty of men. Durant marveled, with deep humility. Was it indeed true that the human spirit could not be entirely killed, even in chaos and death and oppression, even without the assistance of those who had once known freedom and peace? There was something mysterious in outbursts of spontaneous vitality and fortitude, however scattered they might be, something miraculous, something that could not die or be smothered.
There was a hard tapping on the window, and Durant saw that Sadler had returned. A gush of light from the open door outlined his figure. Durant opened the car door, and Sadler thrust his head inside. “All right, Colonel. Let me help you out. I called the office, but the officers had gone; they’ll be flagged on the road, somewhere, and they’ll turn in here. Better than just soldiers. They can’t get beyond the road-block, anyway. Here’s Beckett, too. Looks like this man was alone.”
Durant said hurriedly: “He wasn’t a man; he was just a boy. And he’s dead.”
Beckett came up to the car, his shoulders wet with rain. “Left the driver at the back. Here, I’ll give you a hand with the colonel, Chard. And then we’ll haul out that bastard.”
“He’s dead,” Durant repeated.
Beckett began to curse savagely. “Now we can’t question him! I ought to have stayed here, Colonel. I’d have gotten some information—”