Free Web of Discord by Norman Russell

eighteenth-century church. To right and left rose the blank walls of commercial buildings. The old man with the medal, apparently preoccupied with his own thoughts, limped across the graveyard, and disappeared through a small door into the church.
    Sitting in the stone shelter was a slight, sandy-haired man with a mild, clean-shaven face. He was wearing a long overcoat with an astrakhan collar, and his tall silk hat and ebony walking-cane reposed on the bench beside him. He treated Box to an almost apologetic smile.
    ‘Good morning, Mr Box,’ he said. He managed to invest the simple greeting with a tone of sardonic weariness.
    ‘Good morning, Colonel Kershaw. So it’s like that, is it?’
    ‘Yes, Box. It’s like that. At least, I think it is. Will you smoke a cigar with me?’
    ‘I will, sir.’
    Box sat down beside Kershaw on the stone bench and looked at his companion. Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Adrian Kershaw RA was rumoured to be one of the powers behind the throne. Box was one of a small number of people, who, through personal experience, knew that the rumour was true. Colonel Kershaw was a man feared by his enemies. It was, perhaps, more illustrative of his powers to know that he was feared, too, by his friends.
    Colonel Kershaw took a stout cigar case from his pocket, opened it, and offered it to Box. Three slim cigars reposed in the case, and beside them a rolled-up spill of paper secured by a loop of twine. Kershaw’s pale-blue eyes caught Box’s for a moment. Box took a cigar, and also the spill of paper, which he slipped into his overcoat pocket. The two men lit their cigars, and smoked in silence for a minute or two. Then Kershaw spoke.
    ‘I’m glad you came, Box,’ he said. ‘Evidently old Wilson hasn’t lost his talents to persuade. I didn’t think we’d meet again so soon after that Hansa Protocol business, but there it is. Let me first congratulate you on your brilliant solution of the Courteline case. Very commendable.’
    Kershaw smiled, and drew thoughtfully on his cigar. Box regarded him quizzically. Something tantalizingly abstruse lay behind the colonel’s words.
    ‘But I didn’t solve it, Colonel Kershaw. I laid hands on the villain who fired the shot, and holed him up in his den. Somebody else – somebody quite unknown to me – blew Killer Kitely to Kingdom Come.’
    ‘Well, yes,’ said Kershaw. ‘I suppose that’s true, as far as it goes.’
    ‘And there’s another mystery, sir, that I haven’t solved. Sir John Courteline was dressed and ready to go out somewhere at the time of his murder, but no one seems to know where he was going. More to the point, no one has come forward to say thatSir John failed to keep an appointment.’
    ‘Well, you see, Mr Box,’ said Kershaw, narrowing his eyes against the invasive smoke of his cigar, ‘people don’t like being involved unnecessarily with the Law. I don’t myself. But Courteline’s whereabouts on that fatal day – fatal for him ,you know – brings me very conveniently, to my business with you today.
    ‘Earlier this year, in the company of a man called Captain Edgar Adams RN, I went down to Cornwall, to a place called Porthcurno, the little spot where some of the major submarine telegraph cables come up out of the ocean and on to the British mainland. And there, Mr Box, Adams and I detected the stirring of yet another international hell’s brew—’
    ‘Not the Germans again?’
    ‘No, not the Germans. From all appearances, it’s the Russians this time. From what we saw at Porthcurno, Captain Adams and I deduced that Russia is about to step out of line, and wreak havoc with the balance of power in Europe and beyond. I’ve been thinking about Russia for the last two months, and so has our friend Sir Charles Napier at the Foreign Office. Captain Adams, by the way, belongs to Naval Intelligence. He was lent to me by Admiral Holland, on the understanding that he was to be given as free a range as possible.’
    Box felt the