The Peculiar Exploits of Brigadier Ffellowes by Sterling E. Lanier Read Free Book Online Page B

helping me to get into my clothes. 'What do you mean "a sick spell," and what was that about my aunt?'
     
                  "As he assisted me, I saw for the first time a small, blue sports car, of a type unfamiliar to me, parked on the road at the head of the beach. It was in this, then, my rescuer had appeared. Half carrying, half leading me up the gentle slope, he continued his questioning, while I tried to answer him as best I could. I had just mentioned the lorry and the furniture as he got me into the left-hand bucket seat, having detailed in snatches my fainting and belief that I had had a mild stroke or heart spasm, when he got really stirred up.
     
                  "He levered his great body, and he must have been six foot five, behind the wheel like lightning, and we shot off in a screech of gears and spitting of gravel. The staccato exhaust told me why I thought I had heard a machine gun while fighting that incredible thing in the water.
     
                  "Well, we tore back up the road, into and up his driveway and without a word, he slammed on the brakes and rushed into the house as if all the demons of hell were at his heels. I was left sitting stupefied in the car. I was not only physically exhausted and sick, but baffled and beginning again to be terrified. As I looked around the pleasant green lawn, the tall trees and the rest of the sunny landscape, do you know I wondered if through some error in dimensions I had fallen out of my own proper space and landed in a world of monsters and lunatics!
     
                  "It could only have been a moment when the immense figure of my host appeared in the doorway. On his fascinating face was an expression which I can only describe as being mingled half sorrow, half anger. Without a word, he strode down his front steps and over to the car where, reaching in, he picked me up in his arms as easily as if I had been a doll instead of 175 pounds of British subaltern.
     
                  "He carried me up the steps and as he walked, I could hear him murmuring to himself in Swedish. It sounded to me like gibberish with several phrases I could just make out being repeated over and over. 'What could they do, what else could they do! She would not be warned. What else could they do?'
     
                  "We passed through a vast dark hall, with great beams high overhead, until we came to the back of the house, and into a large sunlit room, overlooking the sea, which could only be the library or study. There were endless shelves of books, a huge desk, several chairs, and a long, low padded window seat on which the baron laid me down gently.
     
                  "Going over to a closet in the corner, he got out a bottle of aquavit and two glasses, and handed me a full one, taking a more modest portion for himself. When I had downed it—and I never needed a drink more—he pulled up a straight-backed chair and set it down next to my head. Seating himself, he asked my name in the most serious way possible, and when I gave it, he looked out of the window a moment.
     
                  " 'My friend,' he said finally, 'I am the last of the Nyderstroms. I mean that quite literally. Several rooms away, the woman you met earlier today is dead, as dead as you yourself would be, had I not appeared on the road, and from the same, or at least a similar cause. The only difference is that she brought this fate on herself, while you, a stranger, were almost killed by accident, and simply because you were present at the wrong time.' He paused and then continued with the oddest sentence, although, God knows, I was baffled already. 'You see,' he said, 'I am a kind of game warden and some of my charges are loose.'
     
                  "With that, he told me to lie quiet and started to leave the room. Remembering something, however, he came back and asked if I could remember the name of the firm