Sergeant de Kock was doubtful. 'Go carefully, Els,' he said, 'and try not to shoot the Kommandant.'

'I'll try, but I can't promise anything,' said Els, and when the four Browning machine guns had been taken out of the armoured cars, he silently stole up the stairs with them. He laid the four guns on a small coffee table pointing down the corridor and tied them down. Konstabel Els had learnt the value of overwhelming firepower up at the blockhouse and he was putting his experience of it to good use. True, the Brownings hadn't anything like the power of the elephant gun, but what they lacked in calibre they made up for in rapid fire.

'Five thousand rounds a minute pumped down the passage will make matchwood of all that furniture and mincemeat of the old girl,' he thought happily, and went downstairs to collect more belts of ammunition. On his return he fastened a cord to the triggers of the guns and prepared his next move.

The Dobermann lying asleep on the chaise-longue and dreaming of his battle with Els smelt the Konstabel coming. It had long entertained the hope that it would be able to renew the challenge Els had thrown down to it on the lawn and now it sensed that the chance had come. It stretched lazily and dropped to the floor. With no warning growl and with a stealth and silence surpassing even that of the Konstabel it crept down the corridor and threaded its way through the barricades of furniture.

Miss Hazelstone had not been in the least put out by the Kommandant's rejection of her attempts to get him into an interesting position. The very violence and strength of his effort had increased her admiration for him.

'What a strong boy you are,' she said picking herself up off the floor. 'Quite the little judo expert,' and for the next few minutes the Kommandant had to resist the manual encouragement to virility Miss Hazelstone seemed determined to administer. By dint of concentrating on Konstabel Els as a sexual object, the Kommandant even managed to maintain his lack of interest and finally Miss Hazelstone had to admit herself defeated.

'One can see you're no great shakes as a ladies' man,' she said to the Kommandant, and before he could expostulate with so much as a meaningless grunt that if she must dress as a man she couldn't expect anything else, she had picked up the hypodermic again. 'Perhaps an injection of novocaine will put lead in your pencil,' she said. 'You'll probably feel like a new man afterwards.'

'I feel like a new man now,' the Kommandant shouted through the hood, squirming furiously, but Miss Hazelstone was too intent about her business to take any notice of his protests. As the needle approached the Kommandant shut his eyes and waited, already numb with terror for the jab and at that moment all hell broke loose on the landing. Miss Hazelstone dropped the syringe and seizing her gun made for the door. The sounds emanating from the passage indicated that some terrible and bestial encounter had just begun, and the Kommandant, stung into action by the hypodermic which Miss Hazelstone had dropped in her haste and which had landed like a dart in his groin and was leaking novocaine into some artery or other, made one last desperate attempt to escape. With a herculean effort he managed to reach the floor and dragging the bed behind him leapt out of the window.

If Kommandant van Heerden and Miss Hazelstone were astonished at the extraordinary turn events had taken, Konstabel Els was even more surprised. He had just finished putting the final touches to what he hoped was going to be Miss Hazelstone's execution when he was vaguely aware that something unforeseen was in the air. Like some dark premonition he glimpsed a black blur as the Dobermann leapt through the mist of powdered plaster that filled the corridor. The dog's mouth was already open and its eye was fastened prematurely on Els' jugular vein. Els dug his chin firmly into his chest and butted the beast's nuzzle with the top of his head. The dog's teeth, missing the vein, fastened on Els' shoulder and a moment later the two animals were locked in their interrupted struggle for supremacy.

As they rolled across the landing, knocking chairs and tables over left, right and centre, as Miss Hazelstone opened up with the scatter gun and the barricades began to disintegrate above them, the Browning machine guns, thrown off target and now pointing up at the ceiling began to pour tracer bullets at the rate of five thousand rounds a minute out through the roof of Jacaranda House. A lame vulture which had only a few minutes before managed to take off after a long and painful run and was flying gamely above the house which had already provided supper, breakfast and very nearly lunch, evaporated in the hail of bullets with an explosion of feathers and odds and ends. It was the only casualty of the gun-battle that raged in Jacaranda House.

The only other person who nearly received a burst of gunfire in his vital parts was Kommandant van Heerden. The sudden eruption of violence on the landing which had allowed him the opportunity to eject himself with double bed attached, out of the window of the bedroom, had found Sergeant de Kock waiting in the garden in the hope of getting a chance to take a pot shot at Miss Hazelstone from below. The Sergeant had been regretting his decision to allow Konstabel Els to use the machine guns and was fully expecting the plan to end in disaster. As the roar of gunfire erupted in the house, the Sergeant threw himself to the ground, and was lying there when there was a clatter of breaking glass followed by an awful thud just above his head. He got to his feet and stared up at the thing that hung dangling from the window above him.

The Sergeant was by no means a squeamish man and not in the least averse to shooting women. Plenty of Zulu widowers could attest to that. And had he been able to imagine for one moment that the corpulent creature in the pink nightdress who squirmed and struggled against the wall of the house some twenty feet up was Miss Hazelstone, he would have shot her without a moment's thought. But it was all too apparent that what was dangling there was not the old lady. She wasn't fat like that, she wasn't hairy like that, and above all, he felt sure she didn't have reproductive organs like that. It was difficult enough for the Sergeant to believe that anything could look like that. Sergeant de Kock stood and wrestled with the problem of the thing's identity. He peered up at its face and saw that it was wearing a mask.

Of all the queer comings and goings Sergeant de Kock had seen since he arrived at the house, this was undoubtedly the queerest. And queer was the word that sprang most naturally to mind. Whatever was hanging hooded and partially dressed up there was exposing itself to him in a manner that was shameful and indecent beyond belief. The Sergeant didn't like pansies at the best of times and he certainly didn't relish being solicited by one in this disgusting fashion. He was just making up his mind to put an end to the obscene display by a burst from his Sten gun when he was stunned by something that dropped out of the sky on to him. Enveloped in a cloud of feathers and draped with what appeared to be the half-digested contents of a stomach that had recently indulged in an enormous meal of raw meat, Sergeant de Kock staggered about the garden in a state of shock.

As he tried desperately to disentangle himself from the mess of entrails and feathers, he was temporarily put off his idea of ridding the world of the raving transvestite jerking spasmodically below the bedroom window. The discovery in the detritus that covered him of several brass buttons and a South African Police cap badge was making him wonder what the hell had hit him. He was still debating the point when a new burst of gunfire above his head told him that the gun-battle was by no means over. He glanced up and saw the mattress above the hooded figure erupt into an enormous cloud of feathers, and as they floated down and adhered to the blood and guts covering him, Sergeant de Kock turned and ran. Behind him a muffled voice yelled 'Chicken'.