The Sergeant nodded.

'Now then, get out.'

Sergeant de Kock dashed downstairs and as he went Miss Hazelstone fired one shot by way of warning down the passage. Its results justified every expectation the Sergeant had entertained about the gun's lethal capacity. Sixty-four large holes appeared suddenly in the bathroom door.

Miss Hazelstone surveyed the holes with satisfaction and went back into the bedroom. Then having fastened the Kommandant by his wrists to the head of the bed with the handcuffs he had noted in the chest of drawers, she walked quietly along the corridor. Five minutes later she had collected a small arsenal from the walls and had erected two formidable barricades which would stop any attempt to rush her long enough for her to start using the scatter gun and other assorted weapons she had piled outside the bedroom door. Finally and for good measure she dragged several mattresses and a chaise-longue down the passage and built herself a bullet-proof barricade.

When she had finished, she surveyed her handiwork and smiled. 'I don't think we're likely to be disturbed just yet, Toby,' she said to the Dobermann which had climbed on to the chaise-longue, and patting the dog on the head she went into the bedroom and began to undress Kommandant van Heerden.

Chapter 11

Downstairs Konstabel Els was having a heated argument with Sergeant de Kock.

'I tell you,' he kept shouting. 'I'm no more like a flaming bishop than-'

'Than he is?' suggested the Sergeant, pointing at the manacled figure of Jonathan. 'He doesn't look like a bishop either.'

Konstabel Els had to admit that this was true. 'I don't care. I'm still not going to walk down the drive dressed up in his clothes. She'd spot me a mile off.'

'So what? She's only an old woman. She couldn't shoot straight if she tried,' said the Sergeant.

'Are you mad?' Els shouted. 'I've seen what that old bird can do with a gun. Why she blew that Zulu cook of hers to pieces without batting an eyelid. I should know. I had to pick the bugger up.'

'Listen to me, Els,' said the Sergeant, 'she won't have time to take a pot shot at you. She'll go to the window to have a look and-'

'And the next moment I'll be scattered in little bits over half the fucking Park. No thank you. If anyone has to pick the bits up afterwards, I'll pick up yours. I've had more experience.'

'If you would let me finish,' said the Sergeant. 'As soon as she goes to the window, we'll rush her down the passage. She won't have time to take a shot at you.'

'In that case, why not make him walk down the drive?' asked Els. 'I'll keep him covered, and as soon as you've got his sister, we'll take him in again.'

Sergeant de Kock wasn't to be persuaded. 'That sod's killed twenty-one men already. I wouldn't let him out of those handcuffs if you paid me,' he said.

Konstabel Els had an answer to that one, but he decided not to use it.

'What's going to be happening to the Kommandant while all this is going on?' he asked. 'She'll kill him for sure.'

'Good riddance,' said the Sergeant. 'He got himself into her clutches, let him get himself out.'

'In that case, why don't we just sit tight and starve the old bag out?'

Sergeant de Kock smiled. 'The Kommandant will be pleased when he hears you wanted to let her knock him off. Now then, stop messing about and get into his clothes.'

Konstabel Els realized his mistake. Without Kommandant van Heerden's incompetence he was likely to have to answer a charge of killing twenty-one fellow officers. Els decided he had better see to it that the old man didn't get killed after all. He didn't want an efficient officer taking his place. He started to put on the Bishop's clothes.

Upstairs Miss Hazelstone had been having almost as much difficulty getting Kommandant van Heerden out of his clothes as the Sergeant was in getting Els to put on the Bishop's. It wasn't that he put up any resistance, but his bulk and unconscious lack of cooperation hardly helped. When he was finally naked, she went to the wardrobe and picked out a pink rubber nightdress with a matching hood and squeezed him into them. She was just putting the finishing touches to her own ensemble when she heard a movement on the bed. Kommandant van Heerden was coming round.

In the days to come the Kommandant was wont to say that it was this fresh and horrifying experience which had led to the trouble with his heart. As he regained consciousness, the first thought to enter the disordered labyrinth of his mind was that he would never touch a drop again. Nothing less than a bottle of Old Rhino Skin could account for the pain in his head and the horrible sensation of something hot and sticky and tight adhering to his face. It was even worse when he opened his eyes. He had evidently gone down with the DTs or perhaps the fever he had suspected in the night had finally struck him down delirious. He shut his eyes and tried to work out what was wrong. His arms appeared to be tied to something above his head and his body dressed in something very tight and elastic. He tried to open his mouth to speak but some horrible stuff prevented a sound coming out. Unable to move or to speak he lifted his head and peered at the apparition that sat down on the bed beside him.

It appeared to be an elderly man with unspeakable feminine characteristics and it was dressed in a double-breasted suit of salmon-pink rubber with a yellow pinstripe. As if that wasn't bad enough it had on a shirt of off-white latex and a mauve rubber tie complete with polka dots. For a moment the Kommandant gaped at the creature and was horrified to see it leer at him. The Kommandant shut his eyes and tried to conjure the apparition away by thinking about the pain in his head, but when he opened them again it was still there, leering for all it was worth. Kommandant van Heerden couldn't remember when last he had been leered at by an elderly gent but he knew that it must have been a long time since and certainly when and if it had last happened, it had not produced anything like the degree of aversion he felt now. He was shutting his eyes for the second time when he opened them again hurriedly and in horror. A hand had settled gently on his knee and was beginning to tickle his thigh. In his revulsion from its touch the Kommandant jerked his legs into the air and for the first time caught a glimpse of what he was wearing and realized what he was not. He was wearing a pink rubber nightdress with frills along the bottom. The Kommandant shuddered and, aware that he had left himself open by his seizure to whatever depredations the ghastly old man had in mind, he straightened his legs abruptly and vowed that no temptation would make him open them again. The apparition continued to leer and to tickle, and the Kommandant turned his head hurriedly away from the leer and faced the wall.

Directly in front of his face was a small table and on it lay something which made the leer seem preferable if not actually alluring, and which forced the Kommandant into an attempt to scream. He opened his mouth, but nothing like a scream came out. Instead he sucked in a mouthful of thin rubber which immediately popped out again and left him gasping and he was just recovering from the attempt when a growl from the passage attracted the old man's attention. He rose from the bed, picked up a gun and went to the door.

Kommandant van Heerden seized the opportunity to try to break loose from the bed. He bounced and thrashed, oblivious of the pain in his head, and as he thrashed he saw the barrel of the gun point round the door at him. In the face of its menace he lay still and tried to forget what he had seen lying ready for use on the table by the bed. It was a hypodermic syringe and an ampoule marked 'Novocaine'.