Free Going It Alone by Michael Innes Page A

forwards bearing down on him. Tim dropped his torch, stepped back, and unslung his shotgun. Averell found himself disliking this action very much, since he knew that the intruder, be his intentions ever so nefarious, ought not to be despatched out of hand. Averell, the beam of his own torch waving wildly in air, even tried to push the weapon away. A moment of deepened confusion resulted, and of this the ruffian took instant advantage. Turning tough, he punched Averell on the nose. Averell, who had not been entertained in any such fashion since leaving his private school, was much surprised and cried out in an undignified manner; he was also, for the moment, blinded by a watery suffusion of the eyes accompanied as by an effect of suddenly ignited fireworks. The ruffian then got in a sufficiently well-directed hack at Tim’s shins to send him sprawling. And then he just disappeared. By the time the discomfited investigators had recovered themselves and their torches there was simply no chance of catching up with him.
    They made a sober return to the front door. But, just before reaching it, Tim stopped and pointed upwards.
    ‘There’s your window, Uncle Gilbert,’ he said. ‘There’s still a light in it. But no other lights. So they haven’t woken up.’
    ‘Which is at least something,’ Averell said. His nose was still hurting a good deal. ‘And I’ve come round to your view, Tim. We’d better get them all away.’
    ‘And look! That’s what he used to get up to your window.’ Tim’s torch had circled, and revealed a ladder that lay slanted on the lawn. ‘You heard it tumble, didn’t you? He pulled it down after him when he heard you coming at the window. He probably felt you might shin down it behind him.’
    ‘I’d only have got it on the nose a few minutes earlier if I had, I suppose.’ Averell felt that this was a sadly feeble philosophical reflection. ‘Why should he want to climb up to my window, anyway?’ he asked. ‘There’s no sense in it.’
    ‘Because he thought it was my window, of course.’ Tim spoke impatiently and as if asserting something self-evident. ‘The flash you saw was the chap turning on a torch and scanning the room through that chink at the bottom. You’d left it open, hadn’t you? When he saw he’d got the wrong man he began to retreat. And that was when you jumped out of bed and made after him. Or in a fashion, you did.’
    ‘In a fashion, yes.’ Averell knew that he was unconvinced by this interpretation of the affair, but didn’t quite know why. ‘That wasn’t quite the effect,’ he said. ‘Of the turning on of a torch, I mean. Of course I’d woken up on the instant. But it was much more like lightning. As I told you.’
    For a moment Tim made no reply. He might even not have been listening. Then he pointed again at the ladder.
    ‘I’d better tell you,’ he said quietly. ‘Two attempts on my life. And now this.’
    They went back into the house. Tim locked the door and shot a couple of heavy bolts.
    ‘Go to bed again, Uncle Gilbert,’ he said with authority. ‘I’ll keep watch. And in the morning we’ll do as we said. And we’ll get the bastards – by God, we will!’
    Averell heard a faint click – and was now so unnerved that he jumped at the sound.
    ‘Always think of the safety-catch,’ Tim said with a certain air of humour, ‘before you walk upstairs with a gun. That’s in the book of rules.’

 
     
9
     
    It might well be true that Ruth Barcroft, like her daughters, adored last-moment plans. But there was nothing feather-headed about her, and her brother thought poorly of the chances of getting her abruptly out of Boxes and off to Rome. This would be particularly so if it had to be represented to her that the idea sprang from the notion of removing her from some obscure danger which her son and his uncle would be remaining to confront. Any such project was a non-starter of the most obvious sort.
    On the other hand – Averell thought as