Ossian's Ride by Fred Hoyle Page A

canon was already abroad. He was seated at the dining table. When I came in he looked up with a placid smile. By his side was Shaun Houseman. Then I saw the enormity of what I had done. I had walked unawares into the headquarters of P.S.D.
    I remember once playing in a game of cricket in which my side was called on to face up to a couple of quite ferociously skillful bowlers. Before we started our innings one member of the team marched around the pavilion advising us all that the one hope was “to take up a hostile attitude.” We duly took up a hostile attitude and were dismissed for a total of less than thirty.
    In a rather similar way I now felt that my one hope was to seize the initiative. “Well, well, Mr. Houseman! And did you manage to recover all those papers from the bog?”
    Houseman scowled at this mock-cheerful greeting, but the canon looked carefully at his manicured nails and said, “As a matter of fact one or two pages are missing, Mr. Sherwood. I am hoping for your own sake that you will be able to tell me what was in those pages.”
    “What particular piece of nonsense have you in mind?”
    The canon was still looking at his hands. “I would advise you to explain very clearly what you mean by that remark, Mr. Sherwood, or you may find that I am a less patient man than I seem.”
    “There isn’t the least uncertainty about my remark,” I said with a bold show of confidence. “The manuscript was an obvious tissue of rubbish from beginning to end.”
    I suppose he stood to lose several millions on the matter, so it was scarcely surprising that this last statement brought the examination of his fingernails to an abrupt end. “Houseman, get me the case.”
    Houseman fetched a brief case to the table and took out a file, which he handed to the canon.
    “Now show me exactly what you mean.”
    I opened up the file. These were the papers all right, considerably stained from their wind-swept flight across the bog. I started reading quite slowly from the beginning.
    “I am not prepared to sit waiting for very long, Mr. Sherwood. If I lose my patience with you I shall call for Tiny,” announced the canon. This was the psychological crisis. I had but a single card in my hand, my technical competence. I must seek to get this one card rated at its highest possible value.
    “Look, sir, I’ve already given you a quick assessment of this document. Now I’m going to give you a detailed assessment. But you’ll have to wait my time for it, not your own.”
    He gave in, as of course he had to, if he wanted to get any decent information. Once he had the information, it would be soon enough to send for Tiny.
    I set to work neither too hastily nor too slowly. Breakfast was brought for Houseman and the canon.
    “I’ll have mine too, Mrs. O’Reilly,” I said, without looking up. My breakfast was brought. By playing my one good card at least I had won the first round. But would I win any more than the first?
    Someone brought in my rucksack. The canon went through the contents. He was interested in the books, which he examined rather closely. I have the habit of annotating my books with marginal comments.
    When at length I had finished, I pushed the file across the table. “Well, there it is. I won’t guarantee that I’ve found all the mistakes, but you can see for yourself that the ones I have found show up the whole thing for a piece of complete nonsense.”
    Instead of attempting to understand anything of what I had written, the canon simply compared my handwriting with the annotations. The two being the same, the evidence against Houseman’s document must now have looked very strong, particularly since spoof documents were presumably fairly common anyway.
    Something else in the rucksack interested the canon: my only weapon—a packet of magnesium flash powder. He opened it up, lit a match and set the stuff off in one big puff.
    “Very pretty indeed. By the use of some such material a person unknown (as the