Colonel Butler's Wolf

'Why Dick's? Who is Dick?'

'Who was, you mean. Our Sovereign and Stupid Lord King Richard II, our illustrious founder. We're supposed to spend half our time saying perpetual masses for the souls of his equally stupid grandfather Edward II and for his queer friend Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford—for God's sake, Polly, slow up! This little railway bridge is a deathtrap —'

There was a sharp crack and the whole windscreen went opaque. The little car lurched and bucked, the tyres beginning to slither on the loose gravel on the edge of the road.

'Hold her steady!' McLachlan shouted, instantly swinging his fist and whole left forearm into the window in a blur of action, shattering the glass and sweeping it outwards in thousands of fragments. The brick parapet flashed into view, horribly close. 'Don't brake—hold her steady, Polly—'

There was a clang on the nearside, turning into a rending metal screech as the car shuddered along the brickwork. Then the bricks were gone like a dream and the car was bumping and tipping to the left—

tipping—and crashing into branches—

Everything stopped suddenly, with a last convulsive jerk that rammed Butler forward against the front seats. There was a single long moment of incongruous silence which was broken by the clatter of a whole section of the fragmented windscreen on to the bonnet.

Butler drew a deep breath and sat back thankfully in a confusion of tea packets, cornflakes and lettuce leaves. He had been lucky for the second time in two days.

'The bastard, the bastard,' McLachlan was muttering thickly, '—the mad, blerrie bliksem!'

He wrenched fiercely at the car door, found that the hedge held it firmly closed, and turned savagely on Polly, who sat gulping air. 'Get out, Polly—get out—move!'

'Hold on, McLachlan,' snapped Butler. The boy had kept his nerve admirably at the moment of danger

—indeed, it had been his reflex action which had saved them from disaster. But now he was behaving badly. 'We're quite safe now.'

'Safe!' McLachlan spat the word angrily, reaching over Polly to get at the door handle. 'Get out, Polly—

the mad bastard—get out—'

He practically pushed the shaking girl out of the car, and wriggled furiously after her.

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'McLachlan !' Butler commanded. 'Get hold of yourself.'

'It's him I'm going to get hold of, Colonel—by God I am!'

'Him—?'

'The bastard with an air rifle on the edge of the cutting.' McLachlan started to move off towards the bridge, back the way they'd come. 'I'll teach him to use us for target practice.'

'McLachlan—stop!' Butler pushed the seat forward frantically and stumbled out of the car, scattering groceries left and right. Five minutes earlier he had disdainfully agreed to watch over this angry boy, and now, damn it—it was Eden Hall all over again: he'd been slow as well as careless this time, though.

'McLachlan—get down!'

The young man was standing at the beginning of the brick parapet, searching the far side of the railway cutting.

'Get down!'

He turned back towards Butler, an angry, puzzled frown on his face. 'What the hell— ?'

Another crack, sharper and louder, cut off the question. A bullet chipped the brickwork just ahead of McLachlan and whined away over their heads. Butler swept an arm round him and dragged him down into the shelter of the curving end of the parapet.

A .22 rifle, thought Butler: sufficient for the job as it had been planned, and still sufficiently lethal.

But the rifleman had missed his chance and he would now know that there were two men between him and the girl. Nor could he dare assume the men were unarmed; the bridge and cutting that divided them protected each side equally from direct attack.

'What the hell's going on?' McLachlan whispered.

'I would have thought that was obvious enough,' Butler murmured crossly. 'Just keep your head down.'

'But—'

'Ssh!' Butler looked around for inspiration. 'You don't think he missed you by accident? You're just surplus to requirements—if it'd been Miss Epton or me it would have been very different. But don't try your luck twice.'

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They were safe enough where they were. It might even be possible to creep back to the car unseen, for the road was embanked up to the bridge and if they kept down and on the road they would probably be out of the rifleman's sight. But he couldn't risk the skin of Sir Geoffrey Hobson's most promising scholar on that probability, and equally he couldn't leave him here alone.

Besides, it had been true about that aimed-off shot most likely, so McLachlan had unwittingly saved his skin not once, but twice in the space of so many minutes . . .

'Look here—' he tried to sound reassuring—'we're all right here. He's not going to try and cross the bridge while we're here—'

'Why not? He's got the ruddy gun!'