Дик Фрэнсис - Rat Race

I shut the bottom drawer with a caution which seemed silly when I remembered the casual way I’d tilted the whole cabinet over to open it. But then the bomb wouldn’t get the signal where it was, not with those precious documents in the cabinet just above.

I wiped my hand over my face. Stood up. Swallowed.

I’d found everything I came to find, and more. All except for one thing. I glanced round the office, looking for somewhere else. Somewhere to hide something big...

There was a door in the corner behind Carthy-Todd’s desk which I assumed connected with the secretary’s office next door. I went over to it. Tried the handle. It was locked.

I let myself out of Carthy-Todd’s office and went into the secretary’s room, whose door was shut but had no keyhole. Stared, in there, at an L-shaped blank wall. No connecting door to Carthy-Todd. It was a cupboard, with the door on his side.

I went back to Carthy-Todd’s office and stood contemplating the door. If I broke it open, he would know. If I didn’t, I could only guess at what was inside. Evidence of a fraud committed, that would spur the Board of Trade to action. Evidence that would make the Duke rescind his covenants, or at least rewrite them so that they were no longer death warrants...

Carthy-Todd hadn’t been expecting trouble. He had left the key to the cupboard on his desk in the tray of pens and pencils. I picked up the single key which lay there, and it fitted.

Opened the cupboard door. It squeaked on its hinges, but I was too engrossed to notice.

There he was. Mr Acey Jones. The crutches, leaning against the wall. The white plaster cast lying on the floor.

I picked up the cast and looked at it. It had been slit neatly down the inside leg from the top to the ankle. One could put one’s foot into it like a boot, with the bare toes sticking out of the end and the metal walking support under the arch. There were small grip-clips like those used on bandages sticking into the plaster all down the opening. Put your foot into the cast, fasten the clips, and bingo, you had a broken ankle.

Acey Jones, loudly drumming up business for the Fund.

Acey Jones, Carthy-Todd. Confidence tricksters were the best actors in the world.

I didn’t hear him come.

I put the cast back on the floor just where it had been, and straightened up and started to shut the cupboard door, and saw him moving out of the corner of my eye as he came into the room. I hadn’t shut the office door behind me, when I’d gone back. I hadn’t given myself any time at all.

His face went rigid with fury when he saw what I’d seen.

‘Meddling pilot,’ he said. ‘When the Duke told me he’d given you the key...’ He stopped, unable to speak for rage. His voice was different, neither the Eton of Carthy-Todd, nor the Australian of Acey Jones. Just ordinary uninflected English. I wondered fleetingly where he came from, who he really was... a thousand different people, one for every crime.

Unblinking behind the black-framed glasses the pale blue grey eyes all but sizzled. The incongruous white eyelashes, which Matthew had noticed, gave him now a fierce fanatical ruthlessness. The decision he was coming to wasn’t going to be for my good.

He put his hand into his trouser pocket and briefly pulled it out again. There was a sharp click. I found myself staring at the knife which had snapped out, and thought with a horrific shiver of Rupert Tyderman tumbling down dead beside the railway line...

He took a step sideways and kicked shut the office door. I twisted round towards the mantelshelf to pick up whatever I could find there... a photograph, a cigarette box... anything I could use as a weapon or a shield.

I didn’t even get as far as taking anything into my hand, because he didn’t try to stab me with the knife.

He threw it.

It hit me below the left shoulder and the jolt threw me forward on my twisting legs so that I hit my forehead solidly on the edge of the marble slab mantelshelf. Blacking out, falling, I put out a hand to stop myself, but there was nothing there, only the empty black hollow of the fireplace, and I went on, right down, smashing and crashing amongst the brass fire irons... but I heard them only dimly... and then not at all.

I woke up slowly, stiffly, painfully, after less than a quarter of an hour. Everything was silent. No sound. No people. Nothing.

I couldn’t remember where I was or what had happened. Not until I tried to get up. Then the tearing soreness behind my shoulder stung me straight back into awareness.

Had a knife sticking in my back.

Lying face down among the fire irons I felt gingerly round with my right hand. My ringers brushed like feathers against the hilt. I cried out at my own touch. It was frightful.

Stupid the things you think of in moments of disaster. I thought: damn it, only three weeks and one day to my medical. I’ll never pass it...

Never pull knives out of wounds, they say. It makes the bleeding worse. You can die from pulling knives out of wounds. Well... I forgot all that. I could see only that Acey-Carthy-Todd had left me for dead and if he found me alive when he came back he would most certainly finish the job. Therefore I had to get out of his office before he came back. And it seemed incongruous, really, to walk round Warwick with a knife in one’s back. So I pulled it out.

I pulled it out in two stages and more or less fainted after each. Kidded myself it was concussion from the mantelshelf, but I was crying as well. No stoic, Matt Shore.

When it was out I lay where I was for a while, looking at it, snivelling weakly and feeling the sticky warmth slowly spread, but being basically reassured because I was pretty sure by then that the knife had not gone through into my lung. It must have been deflected by hitting my shoulder blade: it had been embedded to three or four inches, but slanting, not straight in deep. I wasn’t going to die. Or not yet.

After a while I got up on to my knees. I didn’t have all the time in the world. I put my right hand on Carthy-Todd’s desk: pulled myself to my feet.

Swayed. Thought it would be much much worse if I fell down again. Leant my hip against the desk and looked vaguely round the office.

The bottom drawer of the second filing cabinet was open.

Shouldn’t be. I’d shut it.

Open.

I shifted myself off the desk and tried a few steps. Tottered. Made it. Leant gingerly against the wall. Looked down into the drawer.

The cardboard boxes were still there. The empty tin was still there. The small heavy tin wasn’t.

Realised coldly that the future no longer meant simply getting myself to safety out of that office, but getting to the Duke before the bomb did.

It was only four hundred yards... Only...

I’d have to do it, I thought, because if I hadn’t searched the office Carthy-Todd wouldn’t now be in a tearing hurry. When I didn’t turn up to ferry home the White knights, or turn up anywhere again for that matter, except with a stab wound in a ditch, the Duke would say where I had been last... and Carthy-Todd would want to avoid a police investigation like a slug shrinking away from salt. He wouldn’t wait for that. He would obliterate my tracks.

There was something else missing from the office. I didn’t know what it was, just knew it was something. It niggled for a moment, but was gone. Didn’t think it could be important...

Walked with deliberation to the door. Opened it, went outside. Stopped dead at the top of the stairs, feeling dizzy and weak.

Well. Had to get down them somehow. Had to.

The handrail was on the left-hand side. I couldn’t bear to lift my left arm. Turned round, hung on tightly, and went down backwards.