Dick Francis - Straight

It fell out of my reach.

I stretched for it and rolled and scrambled but he was upright and much faster, and he bent down and took it into his hand again with a tight look of fury as hot as my own.

He began to lift his arm again in my direction and again I whipped at him with the crutch and again hit him. He didn’t drop the gun that time but transferred it to his left hand and shook out the fingers of his right hand as if they hurt, which I hoped to God they did.

I slashed at his legs. Another hit. He retreated a couple of paces and with his left hand began to take aim. I slashed at him. The gun barrel wavered. When he pulled the trigger, the flame spat out and the bullet missed me.

He was still between me and the door.

Ankle or not, I thought, once I was on my feet I’d smash him down and out of the way and run, run... run into the street...

I had to get up. Got as far as my knees. Stood up on my right foot. Put down the left. It wasn’t a matter of pain. I didn’t feel it. It just buckled. It needed the crutch’s help... and I needed the crutch to fight against his gun, to hop and shuffle forward and hack at him, to put off the inevitable moment, to fight until I was dead.

A figure appeared abruptly in the doorway, seen peripherally in my vision.

Clarissa.

I’d forgotten she was coming.

“Run,” I shouted agonizedly, “Run. Get away.”

It startled Rollway. I’d made so little noise. He seemed to think the instructions were for himself. He sneered. I kept my eyes on his gun and lunged at it, making his aim swing wide again at a crucial second. He pulled the trigger. Flame. Phut. The bullet zipped over my shoulder and hit the wall.

“Run,” I yelled again with fearful urgency. “Quick. Oh, be quick.”

Why didn’t she run? He’d see her if he turned.

He would kill her.

Clarissa didn’t run. She brought her hand out of her raincoat pocket holding a thing like a black cigar and she swung her arm in a powerful arc like an avenging fury. Out of the black tube sprang the fearsome telescopic silvery springs with a knob on the end, and the kiyoga smashed against the side of Rollway’s skull.

He fell without a sound. Fell forward, cannoning into me, knocking me backward. I ended on the floor, sitting, his inert form stomach-down over my shins.

Clarissa came down on her knees beside me, trembling violently, very close to passing out. I was breathless, shattered, trembling like her. It seemed ages before either of us was able to speak. When she could, it was a whisper, low and distressed.

“Derek...”

“Thanks,” I said jerkily, “for saving my life.”

“Is he dead?” She was looking with fear at Rollway’s head, strain in her eyes, in her neck, in her voice.

“I don’t care if he is,” I said truthfully.

“But I... I hit him.”

“I’ll say I did it. Don’t worry. I’ll say I hit him with the crutch.”

She said waveringly, “You can’t.”

“Of course I can. I meant to, if I could.”

I glanced over at Nicholas Loder, and Clarissa seemed to see him for the first time. He was on his back, unmoving.

“Dear God,” she said faintly, her face even paler. “Who’s that?”

I introduced her posthumously to Nicholas Loder, racehorse trainer and then to Thomas Rollway, drug baron. They’d squirted cocaine into Dozen Roses, I said, struggling for lightness. I’d found them out. Rollway wanted me dead rather than giving evidence against him. He’d said so.

Neither of the men contested the charges, though Rollway at least was alive, I thought. I could feel his breathing on my legs. A pity, on the whole. I told Clarissa, which made her feel a shade happier.

Clarissa still held the kiyoga. I touched her hand, brushing my fingers over hers, grateful beyond expression for her courage. Greville had given her the kiyoga. He couldn’t have known it would keep me alive. I took it gently out of her grasp and let it lie on the carpet.

“Phone my car,” I said. “If Brad hasn’t gone too far, he’ll come back.”

“But...”

“He’ll take you safely back to the Selfridge. Phone quickly.”

“I can’t just... leave you.”

“How would you explain being here, to the police?”

She looked at me in dismay and obstinacy. “I can’t... »

“You must,” I said. “What do you think Greville would want?”

“Oh...” It was a long sigh of grief, both for my brother and, I thought, for the evening together that she and I were not now going to have.

“Do you remember the number?” I said.

“Derek...

“Go and do it, my dear love.”

She got blindly to her feet and went over to the telephone. I told her the number, which she’d forgotten. When the impersonal voice of the radio-phone operator said as usual after six or seven rings that there was no reply, I asked her to dial the number again, and yet again. With luck, Brad would reckon three calls spelled emergency.

“When we got here,” Clarissa said, sounding stronger, “Brad told me there was a gray Volvo parked not far from your gate. He was worried, I think. He asked me to tell you. Is it important?”

God in heaven...

“Will that phone stretch over here?” I said. “See if it will. Push the table over. Pull the phone over here. If I ring the police from here, and they find me here, they’ll take the scene for granted.”

She tipped the table on its side, letting the answering machine fall to the floor, and pulled the phone to the end of its cord. I still couldn’t quite reach it, and edged round a little in order to do so, and it hurt, which she saw.

“Derek!”

“Never mind.” I smiled at her, twisted, making a joke of it. “It’s better than death.”

“I can’t leave you.” Her eyes were still strained and she was still visibly trembling, but her composure was on the way back.

“You damned well can,” I said. “You have to. Go out to the gate. If Brad comes, get him to toot the horn, then I’ll know you’re away and I’ll phone the police. If he doesn’t come... give him five minutes, then walk... walk and get a taxi. Promise?”

I picked up the kiyoga and fumbled with it, trying to concertina it shut. She took it out of my hands, twisted it, banged the knob on the carpet and expertly returned it closed to her pocket.

“I’ll think of you, and thank you,” I said, “every day that I live.”

“At four-twenty,” she said as if automatically, and then paused and looked at me searchingly. “It was the time I met Greville.”

“Four-twenty,” I said, and nodded. “Every day.”

She knelt down again beside me and kissed me, but it wasn’t passion. More like farewell.

“Go on,” I said. “Time to go.”

She rose reluctantly and went to the doorway, pausing there and looking back. Lady Knightwood, I thought, a valiant deliverer with not a hair out of place.

“Phone me,” I said, “one day soon?”

“Yes.”

She went quietly down the passage but wasn’t gone long. Brad himself came bursting into the room with Clarissa behind him like a shadow.

Brad almost skidded to a halt, the prospect before him enough to shock even the garrulous to silence.

“Strewth,” he said economically.

“As you say,” I replied.

Rollway had dropped his gun when he fell but it still lay not far from his left hand. I asked Brad to move it farther away in case the drug man woke up.

“Don’t touch it,” I said sharply as he automatically reached out a hand, bending down. “Your prints would be an embarrassment.”

He made a small grunt of acknowledgment and Clarissa wordlessly held out a tissue with which Brad gingerly took hold of the silencer and slid the gun across the room to the window.