Appleby Plays Chicken by Michael Innes Page A

have been all right – he might have formed, that is to say, some reasonable design for coping with his situation – if there hadn’t been another man.
    David supposed the man in knickerbockers to be coming up behind him, but this man was straight in front. And quite clearly he was out of the same stable – another country gentleman sort of thug. David didn’t stop to think that this Point to Point was stuffing with country gentlemen, and that it was rationally certain that ninety-nine per cent of them were utterly authentic and uninteresting. For one thing, this new man had a close-clipped moustache – a circumstance massively suspicious in itself. For another, he was looking at David not only with concentrated attention but also with something that powerfully suggested itself as knowledge. And for yet another, he communicated an instant impression of being formidable – of being intellectually formidable. What came oddly up in David’s mind as he shied away was the feeling he’d get when knocking on old Pettifor’s door with the consciousness that he had a woefully inadequate essay in his notebook. David turned aside and ran. He had an impression that his old acquaintance of the knickerbockers had momentarily lost the scent, but that his new one was coming with long strides after him.
    He dodged round a tent, and was vaguely aware of a large vehicle and a couple of men in uniform. There was a second tent dead ahead, with an open flap and then a screen that prevented a view inside. David bolted into its shelter, rounded the screen, and almost stumbled over a stretcher. There was a man on it, covered with a rug up to the chin. David gave a gasp. It was Ian. It was Ian Dancer.
    Ian grinned wanly. He was pale, and he had a bandage round his forehead. ‘Hullo, you great goon,’ he said. ‘Did you see me take it?’
    David stared at him stupidly. ‘Take it?’ he asked.
    ‘The hell of a purler. A horse crossed me at the second bloody jump. And now the hell-hounds have got me.’
    ‘The hell-hounds?’ David, although he said this on a note of interrogation, hadn’t the least doubt that Ian referred to the enemy. There must be a general disposition abroad in England to have Pettifor’s luckless reading party rapidly and comprehensively eliminated.
    ‘The ambulance chaps – and the usual apology for a doctor.’
    ‘Oh – I see.’ David’s mind cleared a little. ‘Nothing bad, I hope? Collarbone?’ He had a dim memory that Ian broke a collarbone from time to time.
    ‘Nothing of the sort. Chipped shoulder blade, if you ask me.’ Ian spoke from matter-of-fact acquaintance with these matters. ‘But they’re always convinced, you know, that one’s concussed and dangerous. They’re carting me off to the morgue. The ambulance is out there now.’
    David nodded. He still felt dazed – just as if he had taken the hell of a purler himself – but he was conscious of some enormous and unreasonable relief. It arose, he realized, from the simple fact that he was talking. Since his long and ghastly colloquy with the man on the Tor, and his half-dozen words with the girl in the car, he hadn’t had occasion to utter a sound. ‘Bad luck,’ he said vaguely. He spoke partly just for the delight of further speech, and partly because he remembered that a flow of solicitous remarks was, oddly enough, the correct English response to people tumbling from horses.
    Suddenly Ian sat up. His dark eyes sparkled, and his pale face showed its wickedest grin. ‘I say, David – do you think I could give them the slip?’
    ‘Just clear out?’ David remembered that this was precisely what he himself wanted to do. ‘Would it be quite the thing?’
    Ian threw back the sheet, and in consequence suffered some stab of pain that set him swearing. Then his face went obstinate. If David had spoken out of a deep calculation his words couldn’t have had a more definitive effect. ‘David Henchman’, Ian said, ‘is the best type of