Sherry screamed again as her fingers were forced down remorselessly towards the hissing blue flames.
“Go ahead, luv, shout your head off,” laughed the blond. “There isn’t anybody to hear you.” “Only me,” I said, and they spun to face me, with expressions of comical amazement.
“Who,” asked the blond, releasing Sherry’s arm and reaching quickly for his back pocket.
I hit him twice, left in the body and right in the head, and although neither shot pleased me particularly - there was not the right solidness at impact - the man went down, falling heavily over a chair and crashing into the cupboard. I had no more time for him, and I went for the one in the cloth cap.
He was still holding Sherry in front of him, and as I started forward he hurled her at me. It took me off- balance and I was forced to grab her, to save both of us from falling.
The man turned and darted out of the door behind him. It took me a few seconds to disentangle myself from Sherry and cross the kitchen. As I barged out into the yard he was halfway to an elderly Triumph sports car, and he glanced over his shoulder.
I could almost see him make the calculation. He wasn’t going to be able to get into the car and turn it to face the lane before I caught him. He swerved to the - left and sprinted into the dark mouth of the lane with the skirts of the camel-hair coat billowing behind him. I raced after him.
The surface was greasy with wet clay, and he was making heavy going of it. He slid and almost fell, and I was right behind him, coming up swiftly when he turned and I heard the snap of the knife and saw the flash of the blade as it jumped out. He dropped into a crouch with the knife extended and I ran straight in without a check.
He didn’t expect that, the glint of steel will stop most men dead.
He went for my belly, a low underhand stroke, but he was shaky and breathless and it lacked fire. I blocked on the wrist and at the same time hit the pressure point in his forearm. The knife dropped out of his hand and I threw him over my hip. He fell heavily on his back, and although the mud softened the impact I dropped on one knee into his belly. it had two hundred and ten pounds of body weight behind it and it drove the air out of his lungs in a loud whoosh. He doubled up like a foetus in the womb, wheezing for breath, and I flipped him over on to his face. The cloth cap fell off his head and I found that he had a thick shock of dark hair shot through with strands of silver. I took a good handful of it sat on his shoulders and pushed his face deep into the Yellow mud.
“I don’t like little boys who bully girls I told him conversationally, and behind me the engine of the Triumph roared into life. The headlights blazed out and then swung in a wide arc until they burned directly up the narrow lane.
I knew I hadn’t taken the blond out properly, it had been a hurried botchy job. I left the man in the mud and ran back down the lane. The wheels of the Triumph spun On “the Paving of the barnyard and, with its headlights blazing dazzlingly into my eyes, it jumped forward, slewing and skidding as it left the Paving and entered the muddy lane. The driver met the skid and came straight at me.
I fell flat and rolled into the cold ooze of a narrow open drain that carried run-off water through the tall hedge.
The Triumph hit the side a glancing blow and the hedge pushed it slightly off its line. The “nearside wheels spun viciously on the edge of the stone coping of the drain inches from my face, and mud and a shower of twigs fell on me. Then it was past.
it checked as it came level with the man in the muddy camel-hair coat. He was kneeling on the verge of the road and now he dragged himself into the Passenger seat of the Triumph. Just as I crawled out of the drain and ran up behind the sports car it pulled away again, mud spraying from the spinning rear wheels. In vain I raced after it, but it gathered speed and tore away up the slope. I gave up, turned and ran back down the lane, groping for the keys of the Chrysler in my sodden trouser pockets, and realized I had left them on the table in Jimmy’s room.
Sherry was leaning in the open doorway of the kitchen. She held her burned hand to her chest and her hair was in tangled disarray. The sleeve of her jersey was torn loose from the shoulder.
“I couldn’t stop him, Harry,“she gasped. “I tried.” “How bad -is it?” I asked her, abandoning all thought of chasing the sports car when I saw her distress.
“Slightly singed.”
“I’ll take you to a doctor.”
“No. It doesn’t need it,” but her smile was lopsided with pain.
I went up to Jimmy’s room and from my travelling medicine kit I took a Doloxene for the pain and Mogadon to let her sleep.
“I don’t need it, she protested.
“Do I have to hold your now and force them down?” I asked, and she grinned, shook her head and swallowed them. “You’d better take a bath,” she said, “you are soaked,” and suddenly I realized I was sodden and cold. When I came back to the kitchen, glowing from the bath, she was already whoozy with the pills, but she had made coffee for us and strengthened it with a tot of whisky. We drank it sitting opposite each other.
“What did they want? I asked. “What did they say? “They thought I knew why Jimmy had gone to St. Mary’s. They wanted to know.” I thought about that. Something didn’t make sense, it worried me.
“I think-” Sherry’s voice was unsteady and she staggered slightly as she tried to stand. “Wow! What did you give me?” I picked her up and she protested weakly, but I carried her up to her room. It was chintzy and girlish, with rosepatterned wallpaper. I laid her on the bed, pulled off her shoes and covered her with the quilt.
She sighed and closed her eyes. “I think I’ll keep you around,“she whispered. “You’re very useful. Thus encouraged, I sat on the edge of the bed and gentled her to sleep, smoothing her hair off her temples and Stroking the broad forehead; her skin felt like warm velvet. She was asleep within a minute. I switched off the light, and was about to leave when I thought better of it.
I slipped Off MY own shoes and crept in under the quilt. In her sleep she rolled quite naturally into my arms, and I held her close.
It was a good feeling and soon I slept also. I woke in the ”
dawn. Her face was pressed into my neck, one leg and arm thrown over me and her hair was soft arid tickling against my cheek.
Without waking her, I gently disengaged myself, kissed , her forehead, Picked up my shoes and went back to my own , room. It was the first time I had spent an entire night with a beautiful woman in my arms, and done nothing but sleep. I Puffed up with virtue.
The letter lay upon the reading table in Jimmy’s room where I had left it and I read it through again before I went to the bathroom. The pencilled note in the margin B Muse. 6914(8)” puzzled me and I fretted over it while I shaved.
The rain had stopped and the clouds were breaking up when I went down into the yard to examine the scene of the previous night’s encounter. The knife lay in the mud and I picked it up and tossed it over the hedge. I went into the kitchen, stamping my feet and rubbing my hands in the cold.
Sherry had started breakfast. “How’s the hand?” “Sore,” she admitted.
“We’ll find a doctor on the way up to London.”
“What makes you think I’m going to London?“she asked carefully, as she buttered toast.
“Two things. You can’t stay here. The wolf pack will be back.”
She looked up at me quickly but was silent. “The other is that you promised to help me - and the trail leads to London.”
She was unconvinced, so while we ate I showed her the letter I had found in Jimmy’s file.
“I don’t see the connection,” she said at last, and I admitted frankly, “It’s not clear to me even.” I lit my first cheroot of the day as I spoke, and the effect was almost magical. “But as soon as I saw the words Dawn light something went click-” I stopped. “My God!” I breathed. “That’s it. The Dawn light” I remembered the scraps of conversation carried to the bridge of Wave Dancer through the ventilator from the cabin below.
“To get the dawn light then we will have to—2 Jimmy’s voice, clear and tight with anticipation. “If the dawn light is where-Again the words repeated had puzzled me at the time. They had stuck like burrs in my memory.
I began to explain to Sherry, but I was so excited that it came tumbling out in a rush of words. She laughed, catching my excitement but not understanding the explanations.
“Hey!” she protested. “You are not making sense I began again, but halfway through I stopped and stared at her silently.
“Now what is it?” She was half amused, half exasperated. “This is driving me crazy, also.”
I snatched up my fork. “The bell. You remember the bell I told you about. The one Jimmy pulled up at Gunfire
