horn blared as she slowed down.
“Better not stop,” Paul said. “Keep in the centre of the road so they can’t pass, but keep
moving.”
The car continued to crawl forward.
“It’s clearing ahead,” she told me. “We’re coming up to the gates.”
I looked up. The car was moving a little faster now. Through the window I caught a
glimpse of a man in a peak cap looking right at me.
“Hey! You! Just a minute …” he said excitedly, and wrenched open the door.
I grabbed the inside handle, slammed the door shut as Della trod down on the accelerator.
The Bentley surged forward as the guard yelled again. I was sitting up now. Ahead of us was
a car, blocking the way out. She swung the wheel and we bumped up on to the grass verge,
missing the other car’s fenders by inches, then we shot out on to the highway.
“Now …” she said, and increased speed.
“They’re right on our tail,” Paul cried furiously. “Goddamn it! I told you not to fool with
this!”
Her reply was to push the accelerator to the boards. The needle of the speedometer began to
flicker up to ninety. It hesitated, then crept up to ninety-two … three and hovered at ninety-four.
The glare of the following headlights receded.
“Losing them now,” she cried, her eyes fixed on the pool of light that rushed before us from
the Bentley’s headlamps. “They can’t catch us now.”
“Watch the road or you’ll have us over!” Paul shouted, and sat forward to look over her
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shoulder through the windshield. “The road curves ahead. You’ll have to slow down before
long.”
“Don’t pester me!” she snapped. “I know this road as well as you do!”
I looked behind. The pursuing car wasn’t all that far in the rear: not more than two hundred
yards, and as Della was forced to reduce speed as the road began to curve around the
palmetto thickets that lay on either side, the big Cadillac began to creep up on us.
Della held the car in the middle of the road. The speedometer showed seventy-six now: too
fast on a road like this.
“Watch out! Car ahead!” I exclaimed as I spotted the distant glare of approaching
headlights.
Della dipped her lights and her foot eased off the accelerator.
The approaching car was coming like a bat out of hell. It flashed into view. I heard a high,
squealing sound of tyres biting into tarmac behind us, and looking round saw the Cadillac
was stopping. I felt the Bentley swerve to the right. I swung round. The car coming towards
us sat right in the middle of the road, and its huge blinding lights hit us as it roared down on
us.
Della pulled more to the right. The offside wheels banged and jumped along the grass
verge. I saw her struggling frantically with the wheel, trying to keep the car straight. The
driver of the approaching car just didn’t seem to see us. I heard Paul yell. The car was on us
now. It side-swiped us as it went past. Della screamed. There came a crunching, ripping
noise. The car that had hit us slewed across the road, then crashed into the thickets. I grabbed
hold of the dashboard as I felt the Bentley lift. The windshield suddenly turned into a spider’s
web of cracks and lines. There was a grinding noise of splintering wood, then a hell of a jolt,
and a scorching white light burst before my eyes. Above the grinding, tearing sounds, I heard
Della scream again, then the white light snuffed out and darkness came down on me.
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PART TWO
FOG PATCH
I
THE smell of iodoform and ether told me I was in hospital. I made an effort and
rolled back eyelids that weighed a ton. A tall, thin guy in a white coat was standing over me.
Behind him could see a fat nurse. There was a bored, harassed expression on her face.
“How do you feel?” the thin guy asked, leaning over me. “Do you feel better?”
He seemed so anxious I hadn’t the heart to tell him I felt like hell. I screwed up a grin and
closed my eyes.
Lights flickered behind my eyelids. I felt myself swimming off into misty darkness. I let
myself go. Why bother? I thought, you can only die once.
The darkness crept down on me. Time stood still. I slipped off the edge of the world into
mists, fog and silence.
It seemed to me I was down in the darkness for a very lone time, but after a while lights
began to flicker again and I became aware of the bed in which I was lying and the tightness of
the sheets. A little later I became aware of the screens. There were tail white screens around
the bed, and they worried me. I seemed to remember they only put screens around a bed when
the patient was going to croak.
I also became aware that a thick-set man was sitting beside me. His hat rested on the back
of his head, and he chewed a tooth pick, a bored, tired expression on his fleshy, unshaven
face. He had copper written all over him.
After a while he noticed my eyes were open, and he shifted forward to peer at me.
“I wouldn’t win a dime with a double-headed coin,” he said in disgust. “Talk about luck!
So you have to come to the surface just when I’m signing off.”
A nurse appeared from behind the screen. She also peered at me: not the fat nurse. This one
was blonde and pretty.
“Hello,” I said, and my voice sounded miles away.
“You mustn’t talk,” she said severely. “Just lie still and try to sleep.”
“Sleep — hell!” the copper said. “He’s gotta talk. Keep out of this, nurse. He wants to talk,
don’t you, pal?”
“Hello, copper,” I said, and closed my eyes. When I opened them again the thin guy in
45
white was standing over me.
“How am I doing, doc?” I asked.
“You’re doing fine,” he told me. “You’re a miracle.”
I blinked him into focus. He was young and eager and interested. I liked him.
“Where am I?” I asked, and tried to lift my head, but it was too heavy.
“You’ve had an accident. Just take it easy. You’re coming along fine.”
The copper appeared from behind him.
“Can I talk to him?” he asked, an exasperated note in his voice. “Just one or two questions.
That can’t hurt him.”
“Make it short,” the doctor said. “He has a bad concussion.”
He stood aside and the copper took his place. He had a notebook in his hand and an inch of
blunt pencil in his thick fingers.
“What’s your name, pal?” he asked. “Don’t bear down on it. We just want to get things
straightened out.”
“John Farrar,” I told him.
“Address?”
“I haven’t one.”
“You gotta sleep somewhere, haven’t you?”
“I was hitch-hiking.”
He blew out his fat cheeks and looked up at the ceiling as if he were praying.
“Well, okay, you were hitch-hiking. Got a father or a mother or a wife or someone?”
“No.”
He turned and looked at the doctor.
“Now do you believe I never have any luck? Of all the guys who get snarled up in a car
smash I have to pick me an orphan.”
“You’d better cut this short,” the doctor said, his fingers on my pulse. “He’s not fit to talk
yet.”
46
“Wait a minute; wait a minute,” the copper said, licking his pencil. “I’ve got to get this
straightened out.” He turned to me again. “Okay, pal. So there’s no one to claim you. Well,
how about the dame you was with? Who was she?”
A picture of her floated into my mind with her jet-black hair, her hungry look and the shape
she had on her.
“I don’t know. ‘Call me Della if you must call me something That’s what she said.’ She