Appleby Plays Chicken by Michael Innes Page B

public schoolboy. He makes me sick. And I’m going to do my vomiting quietly elsewhere. Quite the thing! My God.’ He was on his feet and peering round the screen. ‘Damn. It’s too late. Here are the ambulance chaps coming now.’
    ‘Get out under the flies at the other end.’ Inspiration had come to David. ‘And I’ll take your place.’
    ‘Take my place?’ Ian stared at him. ‘But that would be a bit steep. They’d make a row.’
    ‘Never mind the row. It’s what I want. It’s important.’
    Ian’s eyes rounded. ‘Are you right up the creek, David?’
    ‘Don’t argue. Clear out.’
    Ian gave him one more look – and David remembered thankfully that he was enormously intelligent. Ian had tumbled to the fact of real, if obscure, crisis. Without a word he turned away and vanished – with just a small yelp of pain – beneath the wall of the tent. David flung himself on the stretcher and drew the blanket up to his nose. There was no time to do anything about a bandage for his head, for the entrance to the tent was already darkened. He turned his head sideways and just hoped for the best. He had a notion that ambulance men treated you with a profound disinterest anyway.
    And they carried him out. The ambulance had been backed up to the tent, and its doors were beautifully and comfortably yawning for him. But even so, he thought he caught a glimpse of his new enemy. All orthodox shooting stick and binoculars and pork-pie hat, he was striding towards the vehicle. In the nick of time, as it seemed, the doors closed on David. His muddied shoes, dangling over the end of the stretcher, were last in. Nobody had got in with him. He felt there ought to be a nurse – and, although her presence might have been fatal, he was unreasonable enough to resent the absence of this orthodox attendant.
    They weren’t moving. He had an uneasy sense of some conversation – even perhaps of an argument – going on outside. There were local accents – that would be the men in charge of the ambulance – and once he heard another voice that was clipped, quiet, and authorative. He distrusted it at once. He wondered whether somebody had perhaps pounced on Ian making his illicit exit, so that the row was going to come here and now. And then he heard the engine start to life, and the ambulance moved off.
    David wanted to give a shout of triumph. This was better than the hay wagon, by a long way. He had achieved a major fault in the trail, and with luck it would defy an army of men in knickerbockers to pick it up again. It was, of course, going to be slightly awkward at the other end of his journey. They just wouldn’t know whether to treat him as a criminal or as a lunatic. But that didn’t greatly matter. Authority would be called in, and the astounding truth would assert itself.
    He lay back in great luxury and gave himself up to idle fantasy. This was no doubt reprehensible, since he ought to have been considering how most rapidly and effectively to bring the forces of the law to bear upon the grim enigma which he had been obliged to quit so unceremoniously on the summit of Knack Tor. But instead it amused him to spin himself a number of improbable pictures of what would happen when he arrived in hospital. He heard a bell ringing – already it was only faint in the distance – and knew it must be for the next race; he reflected on his own recent equestrian appearance with placid satisfaction. And when he grew tired of that he entertained himself with sundry imaginary adventures of Ian’s since they had parted. It occurred to him that his horse had in all probability been Ian’s too. This amused him very much. He wondered if he was light-headed. Certainly he was again ceasing to take any very accurate account of the passage of time. It might have been within ten minutes, or it might have been after an hour, that he felt the ambulance draw to a halt.
    Well, that had been that. Now he must brace himself for those difficult