Decider - By Dick Francis Page 0,70

go on to my house. We all change for racing. At noon precisely I drive you back to the paddock. Understand?’

The boys were near to saluting. Roger, the peak of his tweed cap well pulled down over his eyes like a guards officer was, with his clipped, very civilised voice and his spare decisive manner, the sort of senior soldier it was natural to obey. I could see I was never going to achieve such effortless mastery of my children’s behaviour.

We returned to Roger’s office to find a flourishing row in full progress out on the tarmac. All the protesters from outside the gate were now inside, all of them clustered round Henry who held Harold Quest’s elbow in an unyielding grip. The fierce woman was using a placard saying ‘ANIMAL RIGHTS’ to belabour Henry as with a paddle. Four or five others howled verbal abuse with stretched ugly mouths and Henry shook Harold Quest without respect or mercy.

When he saw us Henry yelled, his voice as effortlessly rising above the screeching din as his height above everyone else, ‘This fellow’s an imposter! A bloody imposter. They all are. They’re rubbish.’

He stretched out the hand not busy with shaking Quest and tweaked the placard away from the harpy attacking him.

‘Madam,’ he roared, ‘go back to your kitchen.’

Henry stood eighteen inches above her. He towered over Quest. Henry’s beard was bigger than Quest’s, Henry’s voice mightier, Henry’s strength double, Henry’s character – no contest.

Henry was laughing. Harold Quest, the scourge of entering vehicles, had met more than his match.

‘This man,’ Henry yelled, shaking Quest’s elbow, ‘do you know what he was doing? I went over to the Mayflower and when I came back I found him eating a hamburger.’

My sons stared at him in perplexity. Eating hamburgers came well within normal behaviour.

‘Animal rights!’ Henry shouted joyously. ‘What about hamburgers’ rights? This man was eating an animal.’

Harold Quest squirmed.

‘Three of these dimwits,’ Henry yelled, glancing at the screeching chorus, ‘were dripping with hamburgers. Animal rights, my arse.’

My boys were fascinated. Roger was laughing. Oliver Wells came out of Roger’s office primed to disapprove of the noise only to crease into a smile once he understood Quest’s dilemma.

‘This jacket he’s wearing,’ Henry yelled, ‘feels like leather.’

‘No.’ Quest shook his head violently, tipping his woolly hat over one ear.

‘And,’ Henry yelled, ‘when I accused him of eating an animal he put the hamburger in his pocket.’

Alan jumped up and down, loving it, his freckled face grinning.

Henry flung the ‘ANIMAL RIGHTS’ placard far and wide and plunged his hand into the pocket of Harold Quest’s leather-like jacket. Out came a wrapper, a half-eaten bun, tomato ketchup and yellow oozing mustard and a half-moon of meat with the Quest bite marks all over it.

Out of the pocket, too, unexpectedly, fell a second ball of plastic wrapper which had never seen a short-order cook.

In the general mêlée, no one saw the significance of the second wrapper until Christopher, from some obscure urge to tidiness, picked it up. Even then it would have meant nothing to most people, but Christopher was different.

‘Come on,’ Henry yelled at his hapless captive, ‘you’re not a real protestor. What are you doing here?’

Harold Quest didn’t answer.

‘Dad,’ Christopher said, pulling my sleeve, ‘look at this. Smell it.’

I looked at the ball of wrapping material he’d picked up, and I smelled it. ‘Give it,’ I said, ‘to the Colonel.’

Roger, hearing my tone of voice, glanced at my face and took the crumbled ball from Christopher.

There were two brown transparent wrappers scrunched together, with scarlet and yellow printing on them. Roger smoothed one of them out and looked up at Henry who, no slouch on the uptake, saw that more had been revealed than a hamburger.

‘Bring him into the office,’ Roger told Henry.

Henry, receiving the message, roared at Quest’s followers, ‘You lot, clear off before you get prosecuted for being a nuisance on the highway. You with the leather shoes, you with the hamburgers, next time get your act right. Shove off, the lot of you.’

He turned his back on them, marching Quest effortlessly towards the office door, the rest of us interestedly watching while Quest’s noisy flock collapsed and deserted him, straggling off silently towards the way out.

The office filled up again: Oliver, Roger, myself, five boys trying to look unobtrusive, Harold Quest and, above all, Henry who needed the space of three.

‘Could you,’ Roger said to Henry, ‘search his other pockets?’

‘Sure.’

He must have loosened his grip a little in order to oblige because