High stakes - By Dick Francis Page 0,69

we were not the only couple groping about in the dark. I saw substance in shadows and reached out fearfully to touch objects which were not there, but only darker patches in the pervading black. We spent five or ten minutes feeling our way, listening, taking a few steps, listening, going on. We completed the tour of the outlying rows of boxes, and saw and heard nothing.

‘This is no good,’ I said quietly. ‘There isn’t a sign of them, and has it occurred to you that they are hiding from us, thinking we are the intruders?’

‘Just beginning to wonder.’

‘Let’s go back to the main yard.’

We turned and retraced our steps, taking this time a short cut through a narrow alleyway between two sections of boxes. I was in front, so it was I who practically tripped over the huddled bundle on the ground.

I switched on the torch. Saw the neat navy uniform and the blood glistening red on the forehead. Saw the shut eyes and the lax limbs of the man who should have been sitting on the empty kitchen chair.

‘Oh God,’ I said desperately, and thought I would never ever forgive myself. I knelt beside him and fumbled for his pulse.

‘He’s alive,’ said my friend in the grey flannel suit. He sounded reassuring and confident. ‘Look at him breathing. He’ll be all right, you’ll see.’

All I could see was a man who was injured because I’d stationed him in the path of danger. ‘I’ll get a doctor,’ I said, standing up.

‘What about the horse?’

‘Damn the horse. This is more important.’

‘I’ll stay here with him till you get back.’

I nodded and set off anxiously towards the house, shining the torch now without reservations. If permanent harm came to that man because of me…

I ran.

Burst in through Rupert’s front door and found him standing there in the hall talking to the lady magistrate and the colonel, who were apparently just about to leave. She was pulling a cape around her shoulders and Rupert was holding the colonel’s coat. They turned and stared at me like a frozen tableau.

‘My guard’s been attacked. Knocked out,’ I said. ‘Could you get him a doctor?’

‘Sure,’ Rupert said calmly. ‘Who attacked him?’

‘I didn’t see.’

‘Job for the police?’

‘Yes, please.’

He turned to the telephone, dialling briskly. ‘What about the horse?’

‘They didn’t come in a horsebox.’

We both digested implications while he got the rescue services on the move. The colonel and the magistrate stood immobile in the hall with their mouths half open and Rupert, putting down the telephone, gave them an authoritative glance.

‘Come out into the yard with us, will you?’ he said. ‘Just in case we need witnesses?’

They weren’t trained to disappear rapidly at the thought. When Rupert hurried out of the door with me at his heels they followed more slowly after.

Everything still looked entirely quiet outside.

‘He’s in a sort of alley between two blocks of boxes,’ I said.

‘I know where you mean,’ Rupert nodded. ‘But first we’ll just check on Energise.’

‘Later.’

‘No. Now. Why bash the guard if they weren’t after the horse?’

He made straight for the main yard, switched on all six external lights, and set off across the brightly illuminated gravel.

The effect was like a flourish of trumpets. Noise, light and movement filled the space where silence and dark had been total.

Both halves of the door of box fourteen swung open about a foot, and two dark figures catapulted through the gap.

‘Catch them!’ Rupert shouted.

There was only one way out of the yard, the broad entrance through which we had come. The two figures ran in curving paths towards the exit, one to one side of Rupert and me, one to the other.

Rupert rushed to intercept the smaller who was suddenly, as he turned his head to the light, recognisable as Jody.

I ran for the larger. Stretched out. Touched him.

He swung a heavy arm and threw out a hip and I literally bounced off him, stumbling and falling.

The muscles were rock hard. The sunglasses glittered.

The joker was ripping through the pack.

Jody and Rupert rolled on the gravel, one clutching, one punching, both swearing. I tried again at Muscles with the same useless results. He seemed to hesitate over going to Jody’s help, which was how I’d come to be able to reach him a second time, but finally decided on flight. By the time I was again staggering to my feet he was on his way to the exit with the throttle wide open.

A large figure in navy blue hurtled straight at him from