Novel 1986 - Last Of The Breed (v5.0) Read Free

few outside of a limited circle had any idea what he was doing. Something in chemistry, they believed. He had always had a bent in that direction. Only three men in England knew that one of his projects had achieved a startling breakthrough, and that one aspect of the breakthrough could revolutionize chemical warfare.
    Only three men in England, but one of them had a talkative wife. “Something very hush-hush,” she said, “so the Admiral won’t be coming.” And the Admiral
always
came, so it was something very important, indeed. The Baroness, who had a way of life to maintain, commented, “Surely he will be here for the Finals?”
    “Not likely,” the talkative woman replied. “He’s gone off to some place outside Glasgow. Oh, he’ll miss it! He’ll miss it frightfully!”
    A few hours later the Baroness was on the telephone. “Yes,
the
Admiral.” A pause. “Nothing but the Second Coming would keep him away.”
    The man on the other end of the line knew enough about the Admiral to know she was right. And the Admiral was a top authority in chemical warfare. Outside Glasgow was a small chemical plant engaged in insecticide research, a plant with no military significance.
    Within the hour The Man On The Other End was on a train for Glasgow, and the morning after he arrived he knew where the Admiral was staying and was himself having a drink in a pub near the chemical plant, a pub where workers at the plant dropped in for an evening libation before going home.
    “Lots of bustle,” he heard a man say, “like somebody kicked over a hive of bees.”
    “It’s the new contract,” another was saying, “the one with Commonwealth. Keep us busy for months, they say.”
    “Who was the white-haired gent? The way they was treatin’ him he must
own
Commonwealth.”
    “Nah,” the first man replied, “ ’e was in to see Pennington. Not likely Pennington would have aught to do with Commonwealth. ’E’s pure research.”
    “There was two others come in, too. Nobody I’ve seen around before, an’ it’s Parkins ’o handles Commonwealth.”
    The Man On The Other End needed little more, although he finished his bitter and ordered another. The white-haired man would be the Admiral. He and two others had come to see this man Pennington, in “pure research.”
    That was how it began, and the Baroness received a neat packet of bank notes, dropped in her mailbox in a candy box: something to help her maintain her position, as it might be put. It helped to have a listening post where the mighty gathered, and it was so expensive to live, these days.
    He was in the pub at the inn where the Admiral had put up when the Admiral came in. Two men were with him, and The Man On The Other End recognized one of them—another bigwig in chemical warfare. So it was something. Trust the Baroness. Her intuition was good.
    Three weeks later, Pennington disappeared.
    Chapter 2
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    I NSIDE THE PRISON barracks a row of eight cell doors faced a blank wall. In the door of each cell was a window four inches square crossed by two upright bars. The window remained open at all times.
    Inside each cell there was a narrow cot, a small table, a chair, and toilet facilities. Another type of cell awaited him, no doubt, if he failed to cooperate.
    The walls were of logs, squared and perfectly fitted. The lock on the outer door was a simple one. Those on the cells were only slightly more complicated. Obviously they depended on the electrified barbed wire and the guard towers. Also, beyond the wire lay the enormous length and breadth of a friendless land.

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    H E HAD NEVER lived on a reservation. His one white grandparent had left considerable property to the Makatozi family in the Snake River country of Idaho, most of it high country in the mountains, a land of rushing rivers, of small meadows and forest. Most of the land lay far from any highway, completely cut off in winter, isolated even in summer. It was land nobody wanted, a land without