Bland Beginning by Julian Symons Page B

thought you were convinced about the booklet. Hullo, what’s this?”
    A man was standing in the middle of the road, waving his hands. Anthony came to a stop. The man was youngish, and a dark moustache made a thin line across his upper lip. His eyes flickered quickly over Anthony, Ruth and the Bentley. He said in a Cockney voice, “Could yer lend a hand, chum? Sorry to bother yer, but we’ve just ditched our car up a lane.”
    “Right-oh,” Anthony said. He got out of the car. The lane was a few yards up the road. By the side of a large car three men were lounging. They straightened up when Anthony and the man with the dark moustache turned the corner. The face of one man seemed vaguely familiar to Anthony. The car was a grey tourer, and it was not in the ditch. Anthony turned to the man by his side and said, “I don’t –” Then he saw the raised blackjack in the man’s hand and threw himself to one side so that the blow landed on his shoulder and not on his head. Even so it forced him to his knees. He caught the man’s leg, jerked him to the ground, and put a fist in his stomach. The other men were running up. A voice – and again it had a familiar sound – said “I’ll take ’im.” Anthony moved up and away, but he was too late. A vivid flash of lightning seemed to split his skull, and then there was blankness.
     
    When he regained consciousness his head was aching, and an electric hammer seemed to be at work in his skull. He was lying on the grass by the side of the road, and Ruth was shaking his shoulders gently. “Do you feel all right?” she asked. “You’ve got a great lump on the back of your head.”
    Anthony stood up and the electric hammer in his head began to work faster. “I think I can walk to the car,” he said faintly.
    She was triumphant. “There isn’t a car. They’ve taken it. But that’s not what they were after. They’ve got the booklet. Now perhaps you’ll believe me when I say there’s something fishy about – oh, you poor darling.” Anthony, overborne by this news, and by the electric hammers, had sunk down again on to the grass, and was holding his head in his hands. He was conscious that he did not present a positively heroic figure.
    “Just sit there. I’ll stop a car,” she said, and within five minutes she had done so. She seemed to have told the driver, a facetious commercial traveller, a tale about a lover’s quarrel, for he kept casting glances at them in the back and roaring with laughter. When they had been driving for half a mile Ruth suddenly said, “Stop.” There, driven just off the road, was the Bentley. “There’s our car.”
    The commercial traveller looked bewildered. “But you didn’t say you had a car.”
    “Didn’t I? Well, we have. I hope it’s in working order.” She got in, sat in the driving seat and let out the clutch. The Bentley moved. “Splendid. Come along, Anthony.” Slowly and painfully, Anthony made his way over to the Bentley. “We just left our car here,” Ruth said airily.
    “You did?” The commercial traveller looked at her with his mouth open. “But then why did he – I mean why did you ask for a lift?”
    “You wouldn’t ask a sick man to walk all that way, would you?” Ruth asked indignantly, and he was abashed. “But thanks very much, anyway,” she said as she moved past him in the Bentley.
    “How far are we from Barnsfield?” she asked. “You’ll have to guide me.”
    “About ten miles. Straight road. Right turn at crossroads.”
    “Do you want to call in and see a doctor?”
    The electric hammer, which had quietened down, started up again fiercely as Anthony thought of his head being probed by Edward Rawlings’ unsympathetic hands. “No.”
    “Right. We’ll talk when we get to your place.” Anthony grunted.
     
    Sitting in an easy chair from which her feet hardly touched the ground, Ruth told her story while Anthony reclined on a sofa with a wet towel round his head. The man with the dark