At Swords' Point Read online

  All things come to an end. The van stopped so suddenly that Quinn lost his balance and fell almost across van der Horne's feet.

  “Ah — gently. Do not try to soften the dockside with your head. Now, when the door I have loosened, be quick. It is not wise to be seen emerging —”

  Quinn was as quick as his stiffened leg would allow but evidently not swift enough to suit his companion. For van der Horne, Quinn's bags again in his grip, shoved the American along with his shoulder after the manner of a sheep dog dealing with an especially stupid and reluctant member of his flock.

  There was little chance to see anything of the quayside. Instead they plunged down a ladder into a small skiff. And van der Horne's force with the oars sent them through the mist-covered water of very early morning toward a small sailing yacht so white and pure of paint that it might just have issued from the boatyard.

  “Welcome aboard the Beleefd Politie-agent,” van der Horne broke the silence of their short journey.

  “The Polite Policeman, now I wonder why anyone should name a ship —”

  His companion laughed. “Speculations are idle, Quinn. Is it after all so strange that a man of the law should be said to be courteous? Now up on deck with you —”

  Quinn sneezed. His cold was appearing on schedule. He hoped that the rest of Mr. Of Ditto's arrangements were in as good working order.

  7

  THE CRUISE OF THE ‘POLITE POLICEMAN’

  Sunshine fell heavy and warm across Quinn's shoulders. He sniffed the light wind which carried a faint tang of salt and the slight taint of canal water, along with the pleasant suggestion of new growing things. Then he blew his stuffy nose vigoroulsy. Except for Mijnheer van t'Zelfde's officousness in the matter of the cold, he was enjoying the present hour more than any he had spent for months.

  They had upped anchor and sailed away from St. Maartensgat opposite the great church before the sun was showing, slipping easily by the pocket-sized harbors and ship wharves which lined both sides of the river beyond the fringes of the city proper. Now the south bank was all wilderness, a tangle of reeds, breakwaters, trees — with sometimes the merest scrap of beach. One could forget about the buildings on the north bank and believe that one was free of the twentieth century entirely. And now for the first time in his life Quinn found that thought a relaxing one.

  Dirk van der Horne was their steersman, but he discharged the duties of his office with so little visible effort that he might have been as much of a useless sightseer as his latest guest. In fact the crew of the Polite Policeman, now sprawled at their ease in the sun, showed few signs of ever indulging in hard work.

  The thick-shouldered, full-chested, round-faced Baumgarde was frankly and full-voicedly asleep. His tousled white-blond head had been pillowed on Kemp's knees, then pushed to the deck as that enthusiast became fully abosrbed in his hobby. For Kemp nursed with loving hands and a full heart a new movie camera. So far he had not actually used this treasure. It was enough just to sit crosslegged and examine minutely all the glory of its workings.

  Joris Maartens’ pen moved across a tablet in a jerky rhythm. There were long pauses in composition while the writer favoed the passing shore with a scowl which even that somewhat monotonous scenery had done nothing to deserve. He was the oldest of the ship's party, and there was an angular curved scar across his left forearm. Its white puckered seam showed plainly as his hand moved on the paper. Quinn wondered where he had acquired it.

  “The muse, she must be wooed.” Dirk's amused voice carried down the deck. “Joris, he is a big man, you must understand. He writes for newspapers, and the editors thereof are misguided enough to print his effusions. Now he wishes to try a book — though he will make no money out of that — !”

  “No?” Joris looked up. “Am I then such a bad merchant of my wares, sniping-tongue? What Joris Maartens writes shall be read —”

  “But will it also be paid for?” Baumgarde's snore became words. He asked the question, however, without opening his eyes.

  “Loafer!” Joris nudged the big shoulder with a brown toe which protruded from worn native sandals. “When you are slapping flies to death under those jungle palms of yours, or paddling up your murky rivers — say two — three years from now — you shall be glad to take your mind from your calamities by reading the new Maartens!”

  “So? Then you can also come to me in those jungles and see how true men live. There are still wild creatures in those palm groves, I am told. You might try to charm them with your words —”

  “And Kemp shall go with you to record your exploits in more enduring fashion,” prodded Dirk with just enough cheerful malice in his voice to keep the ball rolling.

  Kemp had been sighting the empty camera at a clump of mud-clogged weeds. Now he flashed a grin at them.

  “Kemp would be very glad to go anywhere, gentlemen. But where may he go? Here is Baumgarde who once we thought did not have brains enough to climb out of a canal if he fell in —”

  “Baumgarde,” returned that worthy, his eyes still closed and a peaceful calm making a somewhat heavy mask of his features, “was the clever one all along, my friends. He knew that engineers would be of worth —”

  The fingers of Kemp's free hand took a good grip of white-blond hair and jerked up the head on which it grew to bump it down on the scrubbed planking.

  “That was not the result of intelligence on your part, rhinoceros. It was only the following of the easiest path. You were born with a head which holds figures and nothing else. Now because of that you are bound overseas while the rest of us must sit on our tails and wonder if there will ever be a future at all!”

  There was a sober thread in that statement which was very true. What future was there for his present companions, Quinn suddenly wondered? The Indies were lost. Thousands upon thousands of men who had lived overseas all their lives — and their families before them for generations — had been thrown back upon a crowded mother country where there were not enough jobs, enough space to go around. Baumgarde was lucky indeed if he had been able to get an appointment in the West Indies which would take him out of the almost hopeless future facing his contemporaries at home.

  “We were born, you see,” Dirk had turned to Quinn, “a hundred years too late. I was educated to serve in Java. Joris had promise of a post in the Outer Islands — did you not?”

  The writer shrugged. “A promise, yes. Far away and long ago was that promise made. I was yet in school then. Came the war and — poof!” He snapped his fingers. “I can tell you,” he turned his head to the rest, “we should have set up as pirates. Take a German patrol boat and —”

  Kemp gave an exaggerated sigh as if they were now about to hear some argument long worn threadbare. “In De Biesbosch no doubt?”

  Dirk added to the needling. “This is how we won the war, my sons!”

  For a second Joris’ lips quirked as if he tasted something bitter. Then they loosened, and he laughed ruefully. “So the old soldier becomes a bore with his reminiscences —”

  “Please,” for the first time Quinn broke in, “take pity on the ignorance of an outlander — what is De Biesbosch?”

  “Ah,” Dirk grinned. “He is all yours, comrade Joris. Enlighten his darkness on that subject — but not in stale detail, I beg of you!”

  Joris jerked an ink-stained thumb south over the wilderness of mud, reeds, and wild green ground. “There lies De Biesbosch. And it has engulfed in its time better men than this boatload of juvenile minds. It is marsh threaded by a maze of streams. Once it had importance to us — the roads — water roads — which ran through it carried underground contacts on their way to rendezvous with the allies, spies in and out of the country, escaping airmen on their way Horne, transports of medicine and supplies. We had a fleet of small canoes to make those trips, and we went by night. Then there were the ‘akes’ — houseboats where underground workers lived when necessary —”

  “And where were also kept German prisoners,” interpolat
ed Kemp, intent upon his camera again. “Werkendam was the center of one of the main ‘crossings’. An interesting period in history — but now past.”

  “Yes, as dead as the Dodo or the East Indies Company,” added Baumgarde sleepily.

  But was it ‘dead'? Quinn thought he would question that.

  “However we may be taking to it again.” Dirk's tone, light as it was, picked up that thought of his. “Come the Others.”

  Joris capped his pen. “The next generation may well turn into underground cave dwellers, unless we end by blowing ourselves up,” he commented almost cheerfully. “It is a great world — ninety-nine and nine-tenths mud —”

  “But still we struggle to gain that last tenth —”

  “Optimist and dreamer.” Joris scoffed at his host and began to read what he had written.

  The water road to s'Hertogenbosch was not a deserted one. Waves set up by motor freighters bound for the Rhine — their short fat funnels and high living quarters giving them an odd outline — rocked the Polite Policeman. And the yacht glided out of the path of the tugboats pulling almost endless rows of river boats.

  Just before they reached Gorinchem they were signaled by one of these. A man wearing the peaked cap of the captain waved a hand vigorously at the yacht, and Joris leaped to his feet to return the salute. Quinn had an excellent sight of the captain's face. That devil-may-care cock of the cap, the scar-dimple on the left cheek could never be forgotten. That was Corny Smits, one of the men van Norreys had deemed important for him to recognize.

  Dirk looked at his watch. “On time,” he commented mildly.

  Joris nodded. “As always. And a good run to him!”

  Quinn asked no questions. But he was doubly sure now that those he sailed with were linked with the organization represented in Dordrecht by the Jonkvrouw and Mijnheer van t'Zelfde. He was, the American concluded, in good hands and could allow himself to be borne along without struggling — even as the river was taking them to the town with the tongue-twisting name.

  Gorinchem was in sight, and Kemp loaded his film — shooting some feet of the trees waving in a thin spring sheen of green from the tops of the ancient bastions above a harbor crowded with small ships.

  “Scenic tour,” Dirk broke the silence some time later. “If you will turn your eyes to port, my American friend, you will see just beyond that row of poplars an authentic castle — Loevestein.”

  “It should be of particular interest to a scholar,” Joris added his bit, “since it was from there that Hugo Grotius, the founder of international law, made his escape in the seventeenth century — immured in a case of books —”

  “Only good use for a library that I ever heard of,” was Baumgarde's comment. “Kind of rough traveling I would say — books can't make the easiest of beds.”

  Quinn dutifully regarded the distant view of Loevestein. His cold germs had stepped up their attack, and he was secretly glad he was not required to go ashore for more formal sightseeing.

  In time the Polite Policeman took itself through the lock at Andel. They ate and slept. Kemp shook his head over the unrewarding side vistas of dikes with villages perched on them, pieces of flood land choked with fantastic willow growths, and the low red roofs of factories, each over-topped with a towering chimney. Empty and loaded sand barges chugged by them constantly.

  Then came a second fortified city with tree-grown walls — Heusden — and again Kemp was busy with film. Another lock gate at Bokhoven brought them into the River Dieze and so to s'Hertogenbosch.

  There the party broke up. Kemp and his camera, and a very badly tied bundle of personal effects about which he seemed to care very little, went off with the methodical Baumgarde who had donned before parting both a meticulously tailored suit and the manner of a captain of industry who had been the chairman of the board at least five years. But their farewell to their companions was a casual one.

  Quinn was left to suspect that there might have been more to the voyage of the Polite Policeman than he had seen on the surface. The four rather ill-assorted shipmates had those easy manners with each other which come only from shared past campaigns.

  Joris Maartens shouldered ashore a battered bag and a briefcase which bore little kinship to the piece of similar luggage which was Quinn's property. But van der Horne carried nothing at all but Quinn's bags. They found a car waiting for them on the wharf, and the driver saluted Dirk.

  “You will like the chateau.” Joris kicked aside his briefcase to make room for his feet, now sensibly shod in thick soled, rather clumsy looking shoes. “Do not hesitate to display to Anders the oubliette, Dirk. Of course it is no longer connected with the moat, but that should not in any way deprive it of its historical value —”

  “My father,” Dirk supplied, “will undoubtedly look upon you as the rarest find I have yet brought Horne. He is writing a history of the van der Hornes and, to my certain knowledge, is still caught fast in the tangle of the fourteenth century, a time when our forefathers appear to have held extremely odd ideas concerning their rights over the persons and property of less well-armed neighbors. The oubliette does not date back farther than that period, but I cannot help believing that it was in use from time to time. By all means you shall see it. Only we will rescue you when necessary from my revered father's clutches — he never knows when to stop talking when he is riding his hobby —”

  “On the other hand,” Joris broke in, “the van der Horne kitchen is under the command of a cook whose lightness of hand and trueness of taste is surpassed only by her girth. Invitations to the van der Horne board are treasured by gourmets.”

  “I am overwhelmed by my good fortune,” Quinn found his voice. “An oubliette and a cook!”

  The van der Horne chateau was an uneasy mixture of rather drab and formal barracks and manifestly older and even less inviting medieval keep.

  “Cozy, isn't it?” asked the heir as they came up the drive to stop before what might once have been a postern gate. “Ugliest pile in the province!” he added with fond pride.

  “And the coldest,” Joris reminded him. “Be thankful, Anders, that you are not arriving in the depths of winter. As it is you shall be deep-freezed — or is it frozen? — if you pause anywhere in the halls. It is best to pass from room to room at a brisk trot.”

  Within a few minutes Quinn stood before a dim mirror in a high-ceilinged, panel-walled bedroom. He could see the reflection of the two-step dais which held what could be nothing but a bed-of-state, its heavily worked curtains still intact. And he hoped, as he sneezed twice, that those curtains were going to keep out any wandering drafts haunting the room at night. Somewhere along the way in his immediate and hectic past he had lost the capacity for being surprised. He could now accept a state bedroom in his stride, and if he should suddenly discover himself at the bottom of the famed oubliette he would not turn a hair. He must have achieved at last the proper detachment necessary for a secret agent.

  Of course he had yet to cope with those two faithful standbys of the business, the drugged coffee or the poisoned cigarette, and as far as he knew he was not carrying on his person a two-inch strip of microfilm which was earnestly desired by — say — Gorum of the Thousand Faces. Quinn laughed, coughed, and called ‘come in’ to the tap on his door.

  Dirk surveyed his guest critically. “Well, you're not blue yet. Americans continue to uphold their reputations — you are, as you are so fond of pointing out, tough. Do you feel in the mood to absorb some sustaining nourishment? My mother is in Den Haag with my sister — so we do not wait for the ladies, Ha, Joris —”

  The stocky Mijnheer Maartens shifted his weight impatiently from one foot to the other. When they joined him in the hall he plunged away at a pace not far removed from the trot he had earlier suggested.

  A flight of stairs, which would have accommodated without crowding ten guardsmen marching abreast, led in polished uncarpeted steps to a massive hallway hung with unattractive displays of maces, swords and shields. There was a
lso a fireplace at one end, large enough to engulf practically an entire tree trunk. And in this blazed a token fire, palm size in comparison with the cavern which held it.

  Standing with his hands outstretched to this was a slender man whose dark wine velvet jacket was slightly threadbare and rubbed at the elbows and whose cockatoo crest of hair was pure silver. He turned quickly as they came across the stones of the flooring.

  “Goeden Avond, Mijnheeren,” he began in a soft voice which held some of the same quiet amusement that often colored his son's tones. Then he frowned as if at his own forgetfulness and switched easily into an English which was almost without accent. “Good evening, gentlemen.”

  “This is Quinn Anders, Vader,” Dirk made introductions. “Quinn, my father, Graf van der Horne.”

  “Now this is a happy meeting, Mr. Anders. And to you, Joris, greetings.” He nodded to Maartens. “But, Mr. Anders,” the Graf turned back to the American, “you are, my son tells me, the son of Dr. Anders. This is so much a pleasure for me. I have in my library your father's Organization of the Knights of St. John and his Inquiries into the Military Defenses of the Teutonic Knights. His research into the subject has been rewarding. I, myself, once sent to him a small commentary on the Templars — a van der Horne of the thirteenth century became one. I shall show you —”

  “Vader!” Dirk touched the worn velvet sleeve lightly. “There is the matter now of food.”

  The Graf looked at his son in real surprise, then he laughed.

  “Jerk the old man from the saddle of his hobby horse, is it? But you are right. There is a time for study and a time for eating. Let us then go to the refreshment!”

  The food was served on the upper end of a long gleaming table, and it was as superlative as Joris had promised. Quinn expanded happily. He answered the Graf’s flow of questions to the best of his ability and found himself outlining the task of writing which had brought him overseas.

  The Graf van der Horne laid down fork and knife. “The Sternlitz family! But that is a task which will not be easy for you. They are all gone you know —”