Free Watcher in the Shadows by Geoffrey Household Page A

shoulder or shoot his gun out of his hand — and I was too long out of practice to be sure of either —my .22 wouldn’t stop him.
    “You must have full police protection at once,” Ian insisted. “Don’t you care whether you’re alive or not?”
    “Very much. I have a lot of work still to do on the red squirrel.”
    I am told that was what I answered. It seems unlikely but possible. At that time I felt that my executioner had a good deal of perverted right on his side. The same memories which obsessed him were, after ten years, still present in my own mind too. So I was not then in love with life for its own sake. Being a healthy animal I was afraid of death. Indeed I was never far from the edge of panic. That can be taken for granted; I needn’t describe it over again. But I found it hard to give a good reason — beyond the red squirrel — why I should live.
    I asked him to forget about the police for the moment. What I needed was a witness, preferably him. And then I drew him the sketch map which I reproduce here:

    “The trap is timed for the very last of the light,” I explained. “That is when he will come, for he can’t see to shoot later. Here is the layout:
    “I am sitting in the alder at A, pretending to watch badgers. He will not take the footpath from the Stoke-Hernsholt road because I could see him as soon as he could see me. He is assuming that I feel well hidden in this bit of country and pretty safe — but I should not be feeling so safe that I would allow an unknown person to approach me after dark.
    “He won’t come across the stream because the banks are boggy and he would make a lot of noise. So he will come down the footpath from the north. He has soft turf under foot, and he is hidden from the alder all the way. So he has only to put his hand round the edge of that patch of thick stuff where the badger sett is in order to drop me out of my tree with absolute certainty at a range of five yards. If no one pays any attention to the shot —and why should they? —he has all night at his disposal to finish me off.
    “But this is going to be the catch in it. You will work your way back into the brambles at B. It’s all dead stuff, and you can cut out a hole with a pair of garden clippers. Get your legs on soft earth down the badgers’ back door and pile their old bedding — there’s plenty of it about — underneath your body. You won’t be too uncomfortable.
    “You will see him long before I do. In fact I shall never see him at all till we’ve got him. When he raises his revolver or automatic to fire, order him to drop it and put his hands up. He won’t. I am sure of that. So you’ll have to let him have it with a twelve-bore. I’m afraid he is bound to lose a hand or a foot at that range and I’m not too sure of my law. But I take it we are only using reasonable force when the intention to murder is plain.”
    Ian refused to play without the presence of the police. Naturally enough. I had no reason — beyond my own need —to expect him to have preserved a wartime mentality.
    “I’ll telephone the chief constable at once,” he said. “He’s a personal friend. At the shop with me.”
    I replied that I had no objection provided the chief constable could, at such short notice, provide us with a policeman guaranteed to he fairly motionless for four hours and not even slap at a midge for the last two of them. What he would give us would be a detective who was very good indeed at sitting in a car or standing inconspicuously on a street corner.
    “But he can trail the man,” Ian said, “now that you have predicted his movements.”
    I ridiculed that. “‘Good evening, sir, I am a police officer and it is my duty to inquire your business.’ ‘I am enjoying the cool of the evening, officer.’ ‘Your name and address?’ ‘With great pleasure.’
    “And he will give it,” I went on, “the correct address where he is staying and the false name he is staying under.