Free A Rough Shoot by Geoffrey Household Page B

away.
    We cleared out, back along the hard road where our footprints wouldn’t show, then over a wire fence onto firm grass and so across country to Blossom’s land, which we hit near his hilltop barn. The glare lit up our eastern horizon. I don’t know what the party at the northern end of the down did when they saw it. I would have liked to hear Pink’s remarks to Hiart on the subject of wasting time over useless precautions.
    The suitcase was recovered without difficulty. Lex, however, was not. I could have sworn that I knew where I put him! but every time I went confidently up to him, he either got up and turned out to be a sheep, or lay still and was a patch of dead weeds. There was no time to lose, for we had to be out of the neighborhood before police got busy on the down and the two roads–and very busy they would be.
    “We’ll have to leave him,” I insisted at last. “What does he know?”
    “Enough to recognize us both, and swear to anything Heyne-Hassingham tells him.”
    Well, we found him in the end. The silly blighter had partly recovered from the drug, walked a hundred yards or so, and tumbled down to sleep again by the stream. He came round when we lifted his slack body and shook it.
    “It’s all right,” I encouraged him. “You’re out of trouble now, you know.” .
    He replied vaguely that he was very tired. Even with one of us on each side of him, he was too comatose to walk. He kept on grabbing at his bag and mumbling about his papers.
    “How soon can you get your car?” Sandorski asked.
    “Not enough time. The road may be watched in half an hour. Have you got any more in the bottle?”
    He had another ampoule. Lex couldn’t help seeing him bring out the syringe. He stuttered “No! No!” in a cracked, terrified voice, but his will was completely paralyzed. He even held out his arm.
    Then began a melancholy procession across the road and up into the hills on the opposite side. I led the way, holding his ankles, and Sandorski followed with his shoulders. We tied his case onto his stomach. It was the only way to carry it.
    I had determined to go to my house. I might have found a better refuge–at any rate, for long enough to examine Lex and look at his papers–but it was essential I should go home. I had at once to confess the whole truth to Cecily, or leave the most horrid doubts and worries in her mind as soon as she heard–and, with the morning milk, she would–of the burned car and its unrecognizable driver. I needed the general to back up my story. My future was at stake in a very different way to that which I had feared for the last three weeks.
    It was close on dawn when we entered my back gate. I put Sandorski and Lex in the shed at the bottom of the garden, with some brandy and a kerosene stove. Lex had a luxurious overcoat; I hoped that he also had a tough constitution. It had been a cold night for sleeping in the open.
    Then I went upstairs and woke Cecily. I pulled the curtains and turned on her bedside light and told her I needed her help and patience.
    She started up, with that glow upon her of a woman who loves and is loved. It can’t be analyzed. I remember parading an opinion in bachelor days that the test of a girl’s beauty was what she looked like when she woke up. A truth, but a shallow truth. The real test is what you think she looks like.
    I said that I had a long story to tell her, and that I wanted hot food and blankets for two men in the shed.
    “But why the shed?” she asked.
    “Until the children go to school. They might talk.”
    “Nothing wakes the children,” she smiled. “They will be fast asleep for another hour. Why not the spare bedroom?
    “Well, it’s just possible that the house might be searched. I don’t for a moment think it will be.”
    “Seriously searched?”
    “No. But just a look-round on some excuse.”
    “Put them in the roof space under the gable. It’s warm up there. And if they don’t move about, but stay over our