Dick Francis - Odds against

‘He squirms, doesn’t he?’ said Doria cheerfully.

I squirmed and struggled a good deal more; until they began getting savage with frustration, and I was panting. It was my wretched stomach which finished it. I began to feel too ill to go on. With a terrific jerk Kraye dragged my hand out.

‘Now,’ he said triumphantly.

He gripped my elbow fiercely and pulled the jersey sleeve up from my wrist. Doria let go of my right arm and came to look at their prize. I was shaking with rage, pain, humiliation… heaven knows what.

‘Oh,’ said Doria blankly. ‘Oh.’

She was no longer smiling, and nor was her husband. They looked steadily at the wasted, flabby, twisted hand, and at the scars on my forearm, wrist and palm, not only the terrible jagged marks of the original injury but the several tidier ones of the operations I had had since. It was a mess, a right and proper mess.

‘So that’s why the Admiral lets him stay, the nasty little beast,’ said Doria, screwing up her face in distaste.

‘It doesn’t excuse his behaviour,’ said Kraye. ‘I’ll make sure he keeps that tongue of his still, in future.’

He stiffened his free hand and chopped the edge of it across the worst part, the inside of my wrist. I jerked in his grasp.

‘Ah…’ I said. ‘Don’t.’

‘He’ll tell tales to the Admiral,’ said Doria warningly, ‘if you hurt him too much. It’s a pity, but I should think that’s about enough.’

‘I don’t agree, but…’

There was a scrunch on the gravel outside, and Charles’ car swept past the window, coming back.

Kraye let go of my elbow with a shake. I went weakly down on my knees on the rug, and it wasn’t all pretence.

‘If you tell the Admiral about this, I’ll deny it,’ said Kraye, ‘and we know who he’ll believe.’

I did know who he’d believe, but I didn’t say so. The newspaper which had caused the whole rumpus lay close beside me on the rug. The car doors slammed distantly. The Krayes turned away from me towards the window, listening. I picked up the paper, got to my feet, and set off for the door. They didn’t try to stop me in any way. They didn’t mention the newspaper either. I opened the door, went through, shut it, and steered a slightly crooked course across the hall to the wardroom. Upstairs was too far. I shut the wardroom door behind me, hid the newspaper, slid into Charles’ favourite armchair, and waited for my various miseries, mental and physical, to subside.

Some time later Charles came in to fetch some fresh cartons of cigarettes.

‘Hullo,’ he said over his shoulder, opening the cupboard. ‘I thought you were still in bed. Mrs Cross said you weren’t very well this morning. It isn’t at all warm in here. Why don’t you come into the drawing-room?’

‘The Krayes…’ I stopped.

‘They won’t bite you.’ He turned round, cigarettes in hand. He looked at my face. ‘What’s so funny?’ and then more sharply, looking closer. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Oh, nothing. Have you seen today’s Sunday Hemisphere?’

‘No, not yet. Do you want it? I thought it was in the drawing-room with the other papers.’

‘No, it’s in the top drawer of your desk. Take a look.’

Puzzled, he opened the drawer, took out the paper, and unfolded it. He went to the racing section unerringly.

‘My God!’ he said, aghast. ‘Today of all days.’ His eyes skimmed down the page and he smiled. ‘You’ve read this, of course?’

I shook my head. ‘I just took it to hide it.’

He handed me the paper. ‘Read it then. It’ll be good for your ego. They won’t let you die! “Young Finch”, he quoted, “showed much of the judgment and miraculous precision of the great Sid”. How about that? And that’s just the start.’

‘Yeah, how about it?’ I grinned. ‘Count me out for lunch, if you don’t mind, Charles. You don’t need me there any more.’

‘All right, if you don’t feel like it. They’ll be gone by six at the latest, you’ll be glad to hear.’ He smiled and went back to his guests.

I read the newspaper before putting it away again. As Charles had said, it was good for the ego. I thought the columnist, whom I’d known for years, had somewhat exaggerated my erstwhile powers. A case of the myth growing bigger than the reality. But still, it was nice. Particularly in view of the galling, ignominious end to the rough-house in which the great Sid had so recently landed himself.

On the following morning Charles and I changed back the labels on the chunks of quartz and packed them up ready to return to the Carver Foundation. When we had finished we had one label left over.

‘Are you sure we haven’t put one stone in the box without changing the label?’ said Charles.

‘Positive.’

‘I suppose we’d better check. I’m afraid that’s what we’ve done.’

We took all the chunks out of the big box again. The gem collection, which Charles under protest had taken to bed with him each night, was complete; but we looked through them again too to make sure the missing rock had not got among them by mistake. It was nowhere to be found.

‘St Luke’s Stone,’ I read from the label. ‘I remember where that was, up on the top shelf on the right hand side.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Charles, ‘a dull looking lump about the size of a fist. I do hope we haven’t lost it.’

‘We have lost it,’ I remarked. ‘Kraye’s pinched it.’

‘Oh no,’ Charles exclaimed. ‘You can’t be right.’

‘Go and ring up the Foundation, and ask them what the stone is worth.’

He shook his head doubtfully, but went to the telephone, and came back frowning.

‘They say it hasn’t any intrinsic value, but it’s an extremely rare form of meteorite. It never turns up in mines or quarrying of course. You have to wait for it to fall from the heavens, and then find it. Very tricky.’

‘A quartz which friend Kraye didn’t have.’

‘But he surely must know I’d suspect him?’ Charles protested.

‘You’d never have missed it, if it had really been part of your cousin’s passed-on collection. There wasn’t any gap on the shelf just now. He’d moved the others along. He couldn’t know you would check carefully almost as soon as he had gone.’

Charles sighed. ‘There isn’t a chance of getting it back.’

‘No,’ I agreed.

‘Well, it’s a good thing you insisted on the insurance,’ he said. ‘Carver’s valued that boring-looking lump more than all the rest put together. Only one other meteorite like it has ever been found: the St Mark’s Stone.’ He smiled suddenly. ‘We seem to have mislaid the equivalent of the penny black.’

Two days later I went back through the porticoed columned doorway of Hunt Radnor Associates, a lot more alive than when I last came out.

I got a big hullo from the girl on the switchboard, went up the curving staircase very nearly whistling, and was greeted by a barrage of ribald remarks from the Racing Section. What most surprised me was the feeling I had of coming home: I had never thought of myself as really belonging to the agency before, even though down at Aynsford I had realised that I very much didn’t want to leave it. A bit late, that discovery. The skids were probably under me already.

Chico grinned widely. ‘So you made it.’

‘Well… Yes.’

‘I mean, back here to the grindstone.’

‘Yeah.’

‘But,’ he cast a rolling eye at the clock, ‘late as usual.’

‘Go stuff yourself,’ I said.

Chico threw out an arm to the smiling department. ‘Our Sid is back, his normal charming bloody self. Work in the agency can now begin.’

‘I see I still haven’t got a desk,’ I observed, looking round. No desk. No roots. No real job. As ever.