Free All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By by John Farris Page A

over the North Sea beyond the scan of coastal radar.
    In the early afternoon, help arrived—in style: Kellow looked up from a hedgerow he was investigating to see a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce Phantom III Sedanca de Ville bearing slowly down on him. His first angry impulse was to order it out of the area; then he noticed the distinctive red mudguards and the blue filter over the near sidelight and guessed correctly that a legend had appeared.
    Sir John de Roke Massenglil, 14th earl of Luxton, 10th earl of Sattersfleld, M.P., a fellow of the Royal Society, was a youngish man of fifty who had voluntarily attached himself to the Department of Scientific Research and had a number of men from the Bomb Disposal Experimental Unit under him. He'd made it his business to investigate the unusual, and he specialized in defusing unexploded bombs under the most urgent and perilous conditions, including, recently, one that had landed within the confines of the National Physical Laboratories, threatening a number of top-secret research projects. The hands of a safecracker, extraordinary patience and intuition and, of course, pure good fortune through the grace of God Almighty had saved him from being atomized on a number of occasions. In an emergency he'd once put a delayed-action fuse out of commission by firing a pistol bullet through the fusehead. Nervy, that.
    Lord Luxton didn't appear the least daring: His features were regular enough, but he had vague eyebrows and a pale pencil mustache; a pained, shy smile diverted attention from his eyes, which were intelligent and softly curious. They'd said his lordship despised protocol in the field, but Lieutenart Kellow stood at attention until Lord Luxton was forced to salute. It seemed to embarrass him.
    "I'd heard you were in Cardiff, my lord."
    "I motored to Ripon yesterday to read a paper at the Engineering School. Word came down about your funny; thought I'd have a look."
    "Delighted, my lord." Kellow gestured toward the house and grounds. "But I haven't come up with a thing." He had to make an effort not to stare at Lord Luxton's hands, which were oddly without nails, the end of each finger blunt and pink as a cow's muzzle, of no use for labor. His lordship had the habit of carrying his hands protectively against his body, snuggled beneath the breastbone, as if they'd just been born. They did look exquisitely sensitive, which may have accounted for his success in handling intricate detonating mechanisms.
    Luxton looked with interest at the great white house as they descended into the park. On the veranda a man in a wheelchair was placed in the sun by a nurse who wore a severely ecclesiastical pale-blue-and-black uniform.
    "Fullerites, aren't they?"
    "Yes, my lord. A vanishing sect, but still active among the heathen. They're well endowed with estates such as this one."
    "I know. Cousin of mine left them a vast sum many years ago."
    "Do stay within the flags, my lord; we haven't ruled out the possibility of something lethal in the ground hereabout."
    "Sorry."
    Luxton took his time within the devastated circle, fingering leaves and studying browned blades of grass. He stared at the clear blue sky, then summoned Kellow.
    "Where was the body found, Mr. Kellow?"
    Kellow pointed to an oak tree with a branched trunk that stood thirty feet away. "Wedged nearly upside down in the crotch of the great oak. All clothing blown away, some bits of it embedded in the flesh. The shoulders and arms were partly flayed, undoubtedly from being driven with such force halfway through the tree."
    "Is there a reliable description of what the blast, or flash, looked like?"
    "One of the children survived a parachute mine that went off not far from her home in Manchester. She said our blast was similar to that of the mine, but without the terrible growling, the concussion waves and pressure on the eardrums."
    Lord Luxton nodded. "A large ball of shimmering light, with, perhaps, concentric rings of