Free The Old Vengeful by Anthony Price Page A

remembered having said it several times before, and decided against a further repetition “—he didn’t say, actually.”
    He stood up suddenly. “You stay here—just stay where you are, and don’t move. Okay?”
    She blinked at him, unaware that she had shown any sign of wanting to move. She didn’t even think that she could move , even.
    The front-door bell pealed out before he was half-way across the room.
    In the doorway he turned back towards her. “It’s all right. Just you stay put, Elizabeth,” he said soothingly.
    She watched the door close. For a few seconds his words reassured her, then her brain began to work again, and she was no longer reassured.
    He had heard something which she had missed—that was why he had moved before the bell rang: she had been listening to her own voice—she had been talking too much— God !
    And —God! She couldn ’ t just sit here like a dummy!
    This was the reinforcement he’d been waiting for—it had to be that, because burglars’ friends would surely never ring the bell. But even so, when she heard the safety-chain rattle before the clatter of the latch it was evident that he was still taking his precautions.
    There came a faint murmur of voices, and then the chain rattled again as he released it. Elizabeth almost sank back into the chair with relief, but the spark of her curiosity refused to let itself be extinguished: she still couldn’t be sure that it was relief she ought to be feeling, and this might be her only chance of confirming it on her own account.
    Levering herself out of the chair was more difficult than she had expected, and her knees wanted to fold under her so that she had to support herself from one piece of furniture to the next for the first few steps, until she could stumble the last yard to reach the wall beside the door.
    Leaning against it, she put her ear to the crack—
    “I wish to God that I did!” That was Paul Mitchell’s voice, but it was no longer soothing. “Only that’s the least of our problems at the moment. You’d better send Bannen to the nearest phone—that’s the one I phoned you from, about a mile down the road, just where the houses start … I don’t fancy using the one here. We need an ambulance—gunshot wounds, two in the chest, one in the lung by the look of him … and one in the leg … and Bannen must get on to the local Special Branch to get him put under wraps, wherever they take him—no, wait!”
    “What?”
    “We need a meat waggon too. And we’d better have that first.”
    “Christ!”
    “For two. One’s in the room there … the other’s in the garden at the back, in the bushes by the back-gate—“
    “ Christ !” The second voice graduated from surprise to consternation. “What the hell’s happened?”
    “Sssh! I’ve got the woman in there. I don’t want her to hear all this.”
    “You haven’t shot her too, by any chance?”
    “Don’t be funny, Aske. Just tell Bannen to get moving.”
    Two?
    Two ! Elizabeth’s knees weakened, and only the wall supported her. She wanted to get back to the safety of the armchair in case he came to check up on her, but her legs had mutinied.
    She heard the car start up, and then the front door closed again. Relief flooded over her as she heard the second voice again.
    “What the devil have you been doing, Mitchell? You said this was just routine, damn it!”
    Paul Mitchell half-grunted, half-groaned. “So it was! If I hadn’t spotted Novikov … my God, man—I’d have walked in here like a lamb to the slaughter!”
    There was a moment of silence. Then she heard the study door open with its characteristic squeak.
    Again she wanted to move, but couldn’t.
    In the garden at the back, in the bushes—
    Lamb to the slaughter— meat waggon —
    The door squeaked shut. “Who the hell’s that?”
    “Don’t ask me—I don’t know any of them, they’re not in any files I’ve ever seen.” Paul Mitchell sounded as though he disbelieved himself.