Ossian's Ride by Fred Hoyle Read Free Book Online Page A

secrets?”
    “That’s exactly what I was after telling you, if only you wouldn’t always be taking the words out of me mouth.”
    It crossed my mind that I had yet to meet anyone in parsonage’s outfit who could tell a straight tale.
    “The rest of us, British, Americans, Russians, Germans, work maybe a little for the excitement and maybe a little for patriotism, but P.S.D. works only for money. It’s business, big business. I can see you’re wondering where I come into the picture. Don’t make any mistake about me; I’m English, born within the sound of Bow Bell. I’ve been an operative over here for well-nigh thirty years now.”
    So this was the explanation of the slight aroma of leprechaun that enveloped all the man’s remarks. He was a synthetic Irishman. My determination not to get caught up in Colquhoun’s affairs was somewhat weakened by this revelation.
    “So I suppose P.S.D. decided to eliminate all potential rivals. How did they go about it?”
    “By offering big money to our operatives. When they had pieced together sufficient information against us, all they had to do was turn it over to the guards. They bought out three key men that we thought we could trust.”
    “How very typical of what happens in all secret organizations. Your so-called friends sell you down the river,” I remarked.
    Colquhoun looked me over unsympathetically. “See here, mister, sooner or later the Irish are going to close in on this house, maybe tomorrow, or maybe next week, or next month. It’d be easy for me to get to hell out of here, but I don’t because I’ve got a job to do, five jobs in fact. Yours was one of ’em. Where would you have been if you’d found the guards sitting here instead of me? I’ll tell you. You’d have been due for a ten-year stretch of hard labor, mister.”
    He took a smallish notebook from his pocket. “This book has to be got into the hands of the best man left. We’re nearly wiped out, but a few pockets are still intact here and there, particularly to the west. These must be reorganized immediately. Information, names, codes are needed. They must reach the right man without delay.”
    He tossed the notebook at me. “I can’t move meself, and I can’t send any of the boys, because the guards are certainly on the lookout for ’em. That leaves you, Mister Cocksure. You are to deliver that little book to Shaun Houseman, who keeps the Unicorn Hotel at Longford. I want it there within twenty-four hours. I can have a car ready for you at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. You say you have a good memory—Houseman, the Unicorn Hotel, Longford.”
    I put the notebook on the table. “See here, Colquhoun, we’d better understand each other a little more clearly. In the first place I have explicit instructions from London not to get embroiled in your affairs.”
    “That may be, but this is the gravest possible crisis, and the unwritten law is that we must all do what we can to safeguard the others, just as I stayed here at my post to safeguard you.” There was now very little trace of the Irish in Colquhoun’s manner of speech. This was not his real name, I had no doubt. Morally he seemed three times the man he had been before. Whether this was really so, or the effect of a liberal dosing with Power’s whiskey, I couldn’t say.
    “And although I might be able to deliver the notebook, I certainly couldn’t guarantee to do so within twenty-four hours. Your idea of a car is ridiculous anyway. I’m here in this country ostensibly as an impoverished student, and I’ve no business to be found driving a car. If I were stopped by the police I should be under immediate suspicion. And if I were not stopped—well then, you might just as well have sent Liam instead.”
    I never learned Colquhoun’s reply to this argument. We were interrupted by a furious pounding of feet on the stairs. The Irish stage character erupted into the room.
    “They’ve taken Liam,” he gasped.
    “Where?”