Free Appleby Plays Chicken by Michael Innes Page A

something he must discover at once. Had they merely tricked that girl, or had they used violence? In either case, his own encounter with her had been unfortunate, to say the least, and he owed it to himself to investigate. Anyway, the thugs were now between him and the village, so there was nothing that could be called quixotic in his changed direction. It was true he hadn’t a great deal more running in him – but there wasn’t the slightest reason to suppose that his enemies had either. He turned and took a look at them as he made once more for the brow of the hill. If they proposed to come after him, they hadn’t yet got down to it. They were still standing beside the car, and the stranger seemed to be rubbing or feeling his leg. With any luck, they’d both got a much worse jolt out of the late proceedings than David had.
    He was back on top of the rise, and for a moment he thought he had spotted the girl, walking towards him a little more than two hundred yards away. But it wasn’t the girl. It was a man.
    David stopped. He was discovering that he didn’t any longer like men. He distrusted them. And particularly when they were equipped with firearms. Perhaps this man wasn’t. But perhaps he was. David could see something under his arm. It might be a fishing rod. It might even be no more than a walking stick. But there could be no doubt that it might be a gun.
    The man was sauntering down the road. If he had seen David, he gave no sign. He was tall. He was in knickerbockers – and already you could guess that those garments, although rural, were not rustic. A country gentleman, you would say… At this point it was revealed to David that he had come to dislike gentlemen even more than just plain men. He suspected the figure advancing upon him of having another well clipped moustache and a disposition to murmur that this was a good or that was a bad show. And now he was certain of what was under the chap’s arm. Or rather he wasn’t. Probably it was a shotgun. But it might very well be a rifle.
    The man – gentle or simple – steadily advanced. Sometimes he looked to his right and sometimes to his left – as if, David thought, in some hope of a hippo or a tiger. What he didn’t seem to do with any intensity or even interest was to look ahead. Already David felt himself being rather pointedly ignored. And this, somehow, was an attitude he didn’t at all like.
    He tried to take hold of himself and make some contact with common sense. It was really inconceivable that here could be another of them . Since he left Nymph Monachorum that morning the English countryside couldn’t suddenly have been given over en bloc to desperadoes. The vast probability was that this approaching figure was harmless. And that was to put it too mildly. Here, almost certainly, was a law-abiding citizen – but one, happily, who was at the moment bearing arms. Whether rifle or shotgun, his weapon could certainly give that idiotic little pistol points.
    David moved forward again. As he did so, the advancing figure took his gun from under his arm and appeared casually to examine it. That ought to be all right. But for some reason it wasn’t. David, although not particularly expert at that sort of thing, felt there was something wrong with the approaching sportsman and his actions. And there was now not much more than a hundred yards between them. That made him, he supposed, already a sitting target for anybody who knew one end of a rifle from another.
    Clearly he must do his best to find the girl as soon as he could. That was only common decency. But, even if he could get round this fellow in knickerbockers, he wouldn’t be in much of a position to help. Supposing no harm had come to her yet – which remained the substantial probability – it might be disastrous to lead these fellows back to her. In fact his only reasonable course seemed to be immediate evasive action. If he was wrong about the man in front, and that action robbed him