Where Eagles Dare

“Is that damned radio working yet?” he asked Smith. “Not a hope. Six tries, six failures. Why?”

“I'll tell you why,” Thomas said bitterly. “Pity we couldn't get the Admiral to change his mind about the paratroops. A full troop train just got in, that's all.”

“Well, that's fine,” Smith said equably. “The old hands will think we're new boys and the new boys will think we're old hands. Very convenient.”

Thomas looked thoughtfully at Smith.

“Very, very convenient.” He hesitated, then went on: “How about loosening up a bit, Major?”

“What do you mean?”

“Come off it,” Carraciola said roughly. “You know damn well what he means. It's our lives. Why do we have to go down into that damned village? And how do you intend to get Carnaby out? If we're to commit suicide, tell us why. You owe us that.”

“I owe you nothing,” Smith said flatly. “I'll tell you nothing. And if you know nothing you can't talk. You'll be told when the time comes.”

“You, Smith,” Torrance-Smythe said precisely, “are a cold blooded devil.”

“It's been said before,” Smith said indifferently.

The village railway station was a small, two-track, end-of-the-line depot. Like all end-of-the-line depots it was characterised by rust, dilapidation, the barest functionalism of design and an odd pessimistically-expectant air of waiting for someone to come along and finish it off properly. At any time, its air of desolation was total. That night, completely deserted, with a high, gusting wind driving snow through pools of light cast by dim and swaying electric lamps, the ghostly impression of a place abandoned by man and by the world was almost overwhelming. It suited Smith's purpose perfectly.

He led his five snow-smock clad men quickly across the tracks and into the comparative shelter of the station buildings. They filed silently past the closed bookstall, the freight office, the booking office, flitted quickly into the shadows beyond and stopped.

Smith lowered the radio, shrugged off his rucksack, removed snow-smock and trousers and sauntered casually alongside the tracks—the thrifty Bavarians regarded platforms as a wasteful luxury. He stopped outside a door next to a bolted hatch which bore above it the legend GEPACK ANNA H M E. He tried the door. It was locked. He made a quick survey to check that he was unobserved, stooped, examined the keyhole with a pencil flash, took a bunch of oddly shaped keys from his pockets and had the door opened in seconds. He whistled softly and was almost at once joined by the others, who filed quickly inside, already slipping off their packs as they went. Schaffer, bringing up the rear, paused and glanced up at the sign above the hatch.

“My God!” He shook his head. “The left luggage office!”

“Where else?” Smith asked reasonably. He ushered Schaffer in, closed and locked the door behind him. Hooding his pencil torch until only a finger-width beam emerged, he passed by the luggage racks till he came to the far end of the room where a bay window was set in the wall. It was a perfectly ordinary sash window and he examined it very minutely, careful that at no time the pinpoint of light touched the glass to shine through to the street beyond. He turned his attention to the vertical wooden planking at the side of the window, took out his sheath knife and levered a plank away to expose a length of twin-cored flex stapled vertically to the wall. He split the cores, sliced through each in turn, replaced the plank and tested the lower sash of the window. It moved easily up and down.

“An interesting performance,” Schaffer observed. “What was all that in aid of?”

“It's not always convenient to enter by the front door. Or, come to that, leave by it either.”

“A youth misspent in philandering or burgling,” Schaffer said sadly. “How did you know it was wired for sound?”

“Even a small country station will have valuables stored in its left luggage office from time to time,” Smith said patiently. “But it will not have a full-time baggage attendant. The attendant, booking clerk, ticket-collector, porter and station-master are probably all one man. So it's kept locked. But there's no point in barring the front door if your bag-snatcher can climb in through the back window. So your back window is grilled or wired. No grille—and a badly-fitting plank. Obvious.”

“Obvious to you, maybe,” Carraciola said sourly. “All this—ah—expertise with skeleton keys and burglar alarms. The Black Watch you said you were in?”

“That's right.”

“Very odd training they give you in those Scottish regiments. Very odd indeed.”

“‘Thorough’ is the word you're searching for,” Smith said kindly. “Let's go and have a drink.”

“Let's do that,” Carraciola said heavily. “Remind me to get mine down in one go or ten gets you one that I'll never live to finish it.”