Tales of the R.I.C.

by Unknown

Joyce’s sister’s house stood back from the main road about eighty yards, was one-storied, very strongly built, and had a tremendous thatch of straw; to the front there were four small windows, heavily shuttered, and a stout oak door, and at the back only a door of the same kind. At a distance of about thirty yards from the house a low stone wall ran round the sides and back, enclosing a small cabbage garden and the haggard, which gave excellent cover for the police.

The lorries stopped within 400 yards of the house, and the police quickly and silently surrounded it without raising the alarm. They then waited for the arrival of the Crossleys, when the Auxiliaries and the remainder of the police formed a second cordon outside the first one.

The leading lorry was now brought into the lane which led up to the house, and left there with the acetylene lamps shining full on the front door and windows, and at the same time the lamps of the second lorry were taken to the back of the house and mounted on the wall, so that any one attempting to leave the house by the doors or windows would be in the full glare of the powerful lamps.

Approaching the house from a gable-end, Blake crawled along the front until he reached the door, on which he hammered with the butt of his revolver, and called on the inmates to surrender, telling them that they were surrounded and that resistance only meant death. Receiving no answer, he called out that if they did not come out at once with their hands up, he would open fire on the house, and for reply there came a volley of bullets through the lower part of the door. He then crawled back to cover, and ordered his men to open fire on the front door with a machine-gun.

The concentrated fire of a machine-gun will cut a hole through a nine-inch brick wall in a very short time, and in a few minutes the oak door was in splinters. While the machine-gun kept up a continuous fire at the height of a man’s chest, four policemen endeavoured to get into the house by crawling up to the door, but when a few feet away two were shot, and the remaining two only escaped by rolling to one side.

All that the police had to do now, provided that Joyce was in the house—and the resistance offered made this a certainty—was to wait until daylight, when the certain capture of the gunmen would only be a question of time. But by now Blake was excited, and remembering how O’Hara had slipped through his hands, he determined to burn the rats out and finish the show. After getting a tin of petrol from one of the cars, he again crawled up to the gable-end, set a light to the tin, and flung it on to the thatch, which at once took fire, burning fiercely.

Only a few days previously this part of the thatch had been renewed, and as the weather had been fine it was bone-dry. But after a few minutes the fire reached the old and wet thatch, and as there was a gentle breeze blowing from the front, very soon the back of the house was completely hidden by a cloud of smoke.

Realising the mistake he had made, Blake ordered his men to keep up a continuous fire on the back door, and at the same time rushed the machine-gun round to that side; but so blinding was the smoke by now that it was impossible to know where the back door was.

Hearing shouts from the front, on going there he found a young woman standing in the doorway with her hands up, who told him that all the men in the house were wounded and unable to move. On entering they found three of Joyce’s bodyguard and his brother-in-law lying in pools of blood on the kitchen floor, but not a sign of Joyce or the fourth man.

There was still a chance that the missing two might be found wounded outside the back door, which was ajar, but the smoke was still so dense that no one could approach. After a time the smoke abated, and they found the fourth man dead a few yards from the house, but not a sign of Joyce.