![]() ![]() He was trying to do me great harm and all I thought about was the trouble he'd be in if he succeeded.He shoved the last under the mattress, then leaned back and looked up at the ceiling, where the W's danced drunkenly across the plaster. I pressed down onto him solidly with all my weight and in my mind I was saying "Don't do it, don't do it, you bloody fool" and I was saying it for his sake, which seemed crazy to me at the time and even crazier in retrospect. He moved across the pavement with stunning speed, the stab already on its upward travel.īoth of his hands were under my chest and I could feel him trying to get space enough to up-end the knife. ![]() I had almost to guess at whom he was staring with such deadly purpose, and no time even to shout a warning. He nodded and smoothly changed the subject. You're talking to a walking gold mine with a heart like a wet sponge."Ĭalderjust ahead of me walked in front, the helmet curls bent kindly over Bettina, the strong voice thanking her and Dissdale for "a most enjoyable time." Dissdale himself, not only fully recovered but incoherent with joy as most of his doubles, trebles and accumulators had come up, patted Calder plumply on the shoulder and invited him over to "my place" for the weekend. "She's not just 'a' pharmacist," she said. I had an impression of dark eyebrows and white skin and I could hear the breath hissing between his teeth in a tempest of effort. He was lying on his back, his face just under mine, his eyes like slits and his teeth showing between drawn-back lips. He writhed under me, all muscle and fury, and tried to heave me off. I kicked furiously backwards and turned my head, and only then realized that the new assailants wore navy blue. With peremptory strength they hauled me off, one of them anchoring my upper arms to my sides by encircling me from behind. It seemed to be only I, with unoccupied eyes, who saw at all what was about to happen. Judith and Pen were talking to each other and Lorna was graciously unbending to Dissdale's friends. Henry and Gordon, undoubtedly the most sober of the party, were fiddling in their pockets for car keys and throwing their race cards into wastebins. ![]() The whole party pressed out onto the balcony to watch the race, and because it was a time out of reality Burnt Marshmallow romped home by three lengths. The boy fell beneath me and I thought in horror that somewhere between our bodies he still held that wicked blade.ĭissdale's friends returned giggling to disrupt the incautious minute and shortly Gordon, Henry and Lorna crowded in. I hit the boy's arm with my body in a sort of flying tackle and in a flashing view saw the weave of Calder's trousers, the polish on his shoes, the litter on the pavement. The steel was almost in Calder's stomach when I deflected it. They were incongruously calling me "sir" while treating me with contempt, which if I'd been calm enough for reflection I would have considered fairly normal. ![]() I stopped struggling but the policemen didn't let go. "How's your cartoonist?" he said genially. Through there he would escape to the cheaper rings and simply walk out of the lower gate. He rolled over onto his feet, crouched for a split second like an athlete at the blocks and without lifting his head above waist-height slithered through the flow of the crowds still pouring out of the gates and disappeared out of sight inside the racecourse. The boy comprehended the situation in a flash. ![]()
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