Dick Francis - The Danger

I started to say 'Wait,' but the door closed with a slam, and while I hovered indecisively it opened again to reveal the business end of a pistol.

'Go away,' she said. 'Get away from here, or I'll shoot.'

I thought she might. I looked down at myself and didn't altogether blame her. I was streaked with mud and handcuffed and bare: hardly a riot as a visitor on a darkening November evening.

I backed away, looking as unaggressive as I could, and presently felt it safe to slide away again into the trees and reconsider my whole boring plight.

Clearly I needed some sort of covering, but all that was to hand easily were branches of evergreen laurel. Back to Adam and Eve, and all that. Then I'd got to get a householder - a different one - to talk to me without shooting first. It might not have been too difficult in the Garden of Eden, but in twentieth-century suburban Washington D.C., a proper poser.

Further down the hill there were more lights. Feeling slightly foolish I picked up a twig of laurel and held it, and walked down towards the lights, feeling my way as it grew darker, stubbing my toes on unseen stones. This time, I thought, I would go more carefully and look for something to wrap round me before I tackled the door: a sack, a trash bag… absolutely anything.

Again events overtook me. I was slithering in darkness under a sheltering canopy-roof past double garage doors when a car came unexpectedly round a hidden driveway, catching me in its lights. The car braked sharply to a stop and I took a step backwards, cravenly ready to bolt.

'Stop right there,' a voice said, and a man stepped out of the car, again bearing a pistol. Did they all, I thought despairingly, shoot strangers? Dirty naked unshaven handcuffed strangers… probably, yes.

This native wasn't frightened, just masterful. Before he could say anything else I opened my mouth and said loudly, 'Please get the police.'

'What?' He came three paces nearer, looking me up and down. What did you say?'

'Please get the police. I escaped. I want… er… to turn myself in.'

'Who are you?' he demanded.

'Look,' I said. 'I'm freezing cold and very tired, and if you telephone Captain Wagner he'll come and get me.'

'You're not American,' he said accusingly.

'No. British.'

He came nearer to me, still warily holding the gun. I saw that he was of middle age with greying hair, a worthy citizen with money, used to decision. A businessman come home.

I told him Wagner's telephone number. 'Please,' I said. 'Please… call him.'

He considered, then he said, 'Walk along there to that door. No tricks.'

I walked in front of him along a short path to his impressive front door, the rain stopping now, the air damp.

'Stand still,' he said. I wouldn't have dreamt of doing anything else.

Three orange pumpkin faces rested on the steps, grinning up at me evilly. There was the sound of keys clinking and the lock being turned. The door swung inward, spilling out light.

'Turn round. Come in here.'

I turned. He was standing inside his door, waiting for me, ready with the gun.

'Come inside and shut the door.'

I did that.

'Stand there,' he said, pointing to a spot on a marble-tiled hallway, in front of a wall. 'Stand still… wait.'

He took his eyes off me for a few seconds while he stretched a hand through a nearby doorway; and what it reappeared holding was a towel.

'Here.' He threw it to me; a dry fluffy handtowel, pale green with pink initials. I caught it, but couldn't do much with it, short of laying it on the ground and rolling.

He made an impatient movement of his head.

'I can't… ' I said, and stopped. It was all too damn bloody much.

He parked the pistol, came towards me, wrapped the towel round my waist and tucked the ends in, like a sarong.

'Thank you,' I said.

He put the pistol near an adjacent telephone and told me to repeat the number of the police.

Kent Wagner, to my everlasting gratitude, was in his headquarters half an hour after he should have gone off duty.

My unwilling host said to him, ''There's a man here says he escaped…

'Andrew Douglas,' I interrupted.

'Says his name is Andrew Douglas.' He held the receiver suddenly away from his ear as if the noise had hurt the drum. 'What? He says he wants to give himself up. He's here, in handcuffs.' He listened for a few seconds and then with a frown came to put the receiver into my hands. 'He wants to talk to you,' he said.

Kent 's voice said into my ear, 'Who is this?'

'Andrew.'

'Jee… sus.' His breath came out wheezing. 'Where are you?'

'I don't know. Wait.' I asked my host where I was. He look the receiver temporarily back and gave his address, with directions. Three miles up Massachusetts Avenue from Dupont Circle, take a right onto 46th Street, make a right again on to Davenport Street, a quarter mile down there, in the woods.' He listened, and gave me back the receiver.

' Kent,' I said, 'bring some men and come very quietly. Our friend is near here.'

'Got it,' he said.

'And Kent… bring some trousers.'

'What?'

'Pants,' I said tersely. 'And a shirt. And some shoes, size ten English.'

He said disbelievingly, 'You're not…?'

'Yeah. Bloody funny. And a key for some handcuffs.'

My host, looking increasingly puzzled, took the receiver back and said to Kent Wagner, 'Is this man dangerous?'

What Kent swore afterwards that he said was, 'Take good care of him,' meaning just that, but my host interpreted the phrase as 'beware of him' and kept me standing there at gunpoint despite my protestations that I was not only harmless but positively benign.

'Don't lean against the wall,' he said. 'My wife would be furious to find blood on it.'

'Blood?'

'You're covered in scratches.' He was astonished. 'Didn't you know?'

'No.'

'What did you escape from?'

I shook my head wearily and didn't explain, and waited what seemed an age before Kent Wagner rang the doorbell. He came into the hall half grinning in anticipation, the grin widening as he saw the pretty towel but then suddenly dying to grimness.

'How're you doing?' he said flatly.

'OK.'

He nodded, went outside and presently returned with clothes, shoes and impressive metal cutters which got rid of the handcuffs with a couple of clips. 'These aren't police issue handcuffs,' he explained. 'We've no keys to fit.'

My host lent me his cloakroom to dress in, and when I came out I thanked him, handing over the towel.

'Guess I should have given you a drink,' he said vaguely; but I'd just seen myself in a looking glass, and I reckoned he'd dealt with me kindly.

'You're not doing that,' Kent said.

'Yes I am.'

He gave me a sidelong look. 'You're in no shape…'

'I'm fine." A bit tattered as to fingers and toes, but never mind.

He shrugged, giving in. We were out in the road by the police cars, silent as to sireas and lit only by parking lights where I'd been telling him briefly what had happened.

'We'll go back the way I came,' I said. 'What else?'

He told his men, shadowy in the cars, to stay where they were and await orders, and he and I went up through the woods, up past the house I'd waited in, and up past the one with the frightened lady: up to the top of the slope, over onto flat ground and through the wire fence.

We were both quiet, our feet softly scuffling on the sodden leaves. The rain had stopped. Behind broken clouds the moos sailed serene. The light was enough to see by, once we were used to it.

'Somewhere here,' I said, half whispering. 'Not far.'

We went from laurel clump to laurel clump and found the familiar clearing. 'He came from that way,' I said, pointing.

Kent Wagner looked at the uprooted tree for a frozen moment but without discernible expression, and then delicately, cautiously, we passed out of the laurel ring, merging with the shadows, a couple of cats stalking.