'Luverly mornin'.' He beamed at them over his spectacles.
No reply. Tall and Thin wore a neat grey suit, Thickset the rumpled overalls of a working man. Harry Finsterwald showed no sign of recognition. Range, maybe eight or nine yards.
'Church is open to visitors,' he said. Thickset was holding his right hand rather awkwardly behind his back.
Tall and Thin nodded, returning his smile. 'Thank you. But we're just looking around.'
Mosby cupped his ear with his free hand and stepped off the path towards them. 'Beg your pardon?'
'I said 'we're just looking around',' repeated Tall and Thin clearly.
'Looking round?' Mosby echoed the words vaguely. Thickset swayed nervously, but held his ground, one eye firmly fixed on Harry. 'Looking round… I see…' He bobbed his head at Tall and Thin, half turning his back on Thickset and Harry as though he had written them off as sources of conversation.
'Must see the interiah of the church, then—can show you round if you wish.' He slid the banner from his shoulder as he spoke, letting the shaft rest on the grass. 'Stained glass very fine.'
Tall and Thin looked at him for a moment with just the beginning of a frown creasing his brow. It could be he'd exaggerated the accent too much, or it could be simple annoyance at his inconvenient appearance. The next few seconds would show which.
'That's very good of you, sir.' There was a slightly guttural quality to the 'g' which reassured Mosby more than the words themselves; a foreigner would be far less likely than a native Englishman to question his authenticity. 'But we must be on our way very soon, I am afraid.'
Anthony Price - Our man in camelot
Mosby smiled and shrugged. 'Of course, of course… quite understand… some other time, perhaps…
Well, good day to you, then.' He nodded to the man, lifting the banner with both hands as he did so as if about to set it back on his shoulder. At the same time he began to turn slowly towards Thickset and Harry.
'And good day to you—' he continued, still smiling.
Thickset's attention was still divided by the need to watch Harry, and as if he understood Mosby's intentions Harry chose that precise instant to take a larger share of it by shifting his feet.
As Thickset's eyes left him momentarily, Mosby sprang towards him, swinging the banner off his shoulder in a great sweeping arc. For one terrible fraction of a second, as the man's reflexes triggered him backwards, it looked to Mosby as though the swing would miss by inches—and as he moved, Thickset's gun hand came into view, swinging from behind his back on the opposite course.
But fast though he was, Thickset couldn't quite make up for that lost moment: the gun was still short of its target when the accelerating banner struck him just above the ear. Mosby had put every last ounce of strength into the sweep for the sake of speed as much as force; he felt the shaft bend and then snap like a rotten branch. The pistol flew out of Thickset's hand and Harry Finsterwald dived for it like an Olympic swimmer. Tall and Thin came back into view, clawing inside his waistband as Mosby reversed his momentum. He ducked as Mosby hurled the broken stump of banner at him and got his gun clear just as Harry squeezed off his first shot. The bullet spun Tall and Thin round and threw him against a tombstone in a tangle of windmilling arms and legs. For a moment the stone supported him, then he rolled off it on to the grass.
Mosby turned back towards Thickset, but saw no sign of movement. He felt suddenly drained of energy, and more frightened than he had been even during the walk down the gravel pathway from the church.
Now that it was over he could see the risk he had taken: he had allowed his better judgment of the odds to be overturned by a sudden harebrained idea which had seemed smart, but which had been plain madness. And he had been delivered from the consequences of his folly by good luck and Harry Finsterwald's snap-shooting.
He watched Harry examine the ruin of Tall and Thin.
Finally Harry straightened up and turned towards him.
'This guy's had it,' he called across. That was no surprise to Mosby. There had been something about the way Tall and Thin's body had behaved after the bullet had struck which had suggested a puppet with all the strings irrevocably cut. The only surprise was that Harry's voice was cracked and shaky.
He was glad that he'd had the banner instead of the gun.
Not that Thickset wasn't going to have one hell of a headache, he decided as he walked towards the recumbent figure. The blow had spun him halfway back to the path, so that he'd come to rest face down almost in the shadow of Geo. Pratley's tombstone, and he was still out cold.
He knelt beside the body with a sigh. An unconscious prisoner was also going to be a headache for them too, much more so than a conscious, self-propelled one—
He stared in horror at the one eye he could see, an eye that was open and staring.
The man couldn't be dead, he couldn't be. The blow had been hard, but the tightly-furled banner itself ought to have cushioned the shock, and the snapping of the shaft ought to have taken the killing force out of it. He couldn't be dead.
Anthony Price - Our man in camelot
Harry came up beside him.
'What's the matter, Doc?'
Mosby swallowed the sickness in his throat. 'I think he's dead too.'
Harry knelt down on the far side of the body and gently felt the neck pulse. Mosby heard him breathe out.
They stared at each other.
'That's about as dead as you can get,' admitted Harry huskily.
'He can't be.'
