Shouts pursued him. He limped and stumbled, but soon out-distanced the sounds. He could tell he was on a path. It felt like a cart-track. His chief hope was that it did not lead back to the farm. He crashed against a stile and bruised his shins. Thankfully, he climbed over. Ahead of him he could see the lights of houses. There was another stile to cross, and then he was on a high-road. Regardless of his stiff ankle, he now began to run as fast as he could. He was dogged all the time by the nightmare feeling that he made no progress at all. He redoubled his efforts, and at last came in sight of the friendly lights of a pub.
Encouraged, he flung himself onward, and reached the welcoming glow. Oblivious of the spectacle he must by this time present (for, besides being muddy, he was also soaked to the skin) he pushed open the door and went in. A group of men regarded him stolidly for a minute or two. Then the barman said wonderingly:
‘Bless ee, young fellow, ’ave ee bin killin‘ a pig?’
Chapter Three
—«♦»—
… and rode so quickly that he did not even see the golden road, but went with his horse straight over it.’
Ibid. (The Water of Life)
« ^ »
O’hara glanced down at his shorts, once white, now very grimy. Apart from the mud, however, from waist to knee on the left side he was an unpleasant mess of dark blood washed brownish by the rain.
‘Good Lord!’ he said. ‘I helped to carry a man…! Here, give me a drink!’
‘Been mixed up in an accident, I doubt?’ said the barman, eyeing the bottles dubiously. ‘What be goin’ to have?’
‘Whisky—a double,’ said O’Hara. He unpinned a pound note from inside the breast of his running-vest and placed it upon the counter. ‘I helped to lift the fellow on to the back seat of somebody’s car to get him to hospital,’ he added. The implied suggestion that he had been mixed up in a road crash seemed the best explanation of his plight.
‘Must have been in a bad way to bleed on you like that,’ said one of the men at the bar. O’Hara nodded, and took the end seat on a bench.
‘He was pretty bad,’ he said briefly. ‘I didn’t see the accident, though.’ He hoped there would be no further questions, and, having drunk his whisky in three gulps, he asked whether it was possible to telephone to the Royal Hotel at Welsea. He then rang up his cousin, the hare, presuming rightly that he would have finished the course.
‘I say, Gerry,’ he said. ‘I’m in rather a spot. Could you possibly send somebody with a car and an overcoat to the Spotted Lion, Upper Deepening? That’s where I seem to be. No, I’m all right. Yes, more when we meet. Too long to tell you over the ’phone. No, I’m not injured. Turned my ankle, that’s all.’
‘Well, you are an old ass!’ said his cousin cheerfully. ‘Bad luck, though, all the same. All right, I’ll come myself. We’ve reached the strawberry ices, and I don’t mind missing the speeches if I have to. Jolly glad you rang through. We couldn’t think what had happened!’
O’Hara went back to the bar and ordered a pint of beer and some bread and cheese. The curiosity of the customers and the barman appeared to be sated. They were discussing League football. O’Hara had just finished his very belated meal when the handsome Gascoigne walked in, carrying over his arm an overcoat and a pair of grey flannel trousers.
‘I’ve got Featherstone’s bus outside,’ said Gascoigne. ‘Feathers wants to get back to Town to-night, so I promised I wouldn’t be long. I suppose you’ve seen nothing of Firman? He said he probably shouldn’t be able to finish. I expect he got a train at Cann’s Crossing and went to his uncle’s. He said he probably should if his gammy leg gave up. How bad is your ankle? Can you manage to hop to the car?’
While his cousin drove him into Welsea, O’Hara recounted his adventure. Gascoigne made no comment except to say:
‘It’s odd they told you the fellow had an infectious illness if he’d really met with an accident. And why give him hot water bottles? Although that might have been their idea of treatment for shock. And—I don’t know! Oh, well, you missed a jolly close finish.’
‘You got in first, I suppose?’
‘By about a hundred yards. Had to put my head down and sprint like the devil to make it. Eaves nearly caught me. He’s very persistent, that bloke. Says he shall try for the marathon next season. I wouldn’t be surprised if he won.’
‘I’m glad you won,’ said O’Hara. ‘Can I get any dinner, do you think?’
‘Sure. I took care of that before I came away. And they’re giving us some quite decent port, unless it’s all been finished before we get there.’
They arrived when the dinner was nearly over, but food was procured for O’Hara, and the port was all that Gascoigne had promised. O’Hara was the butt of a number of crude jokes because of his late appearance, and he made such responses as seemed necessary, but his adventure was in the forefront of his mind. The party broke up at last, and he went rather thankfully to bed.
The cousins had booked a twin-bedded room, and at just after midnight O’Hara was able to give his cousin a complete account of his afternoon and evening.
A comparison of times, distances and places produced, not greatly to O’Hara’s surprise, the unassailable fact that the runner he had seen from the vantage point of the prehistoric fort could not possibly have been Gascoigne. It remained to be seen whether it could have been Firman.
After considerable discussion, Gascoigne closed the matter in the early hours of the morning by saying drowsily :
‘Look here, then, I suggest we sleep on it, and, if you feel the same ’orrid doubts in the morning, we’ll go out and have a look-see. But I expect you saw Firman. I suppose he was packing up the run. Nothing very odd about that.’
‘Nothing odd at all. Where does his uncle live?’
‘I don’t know exactly. Somewhere around these parts, from what he said when he told us he might not finish.’
‘Oh, well, I don’t suppose it matters. By the way, I haven’t any clothes except my running togs. I sloshed them about in the bath a bit when I’d taken them off, but they don’t look too good even now, and probably won’t be dry first thing in the morning. Of course, there’s my soup and fish, but I can hardly career about the countryside on a fine Sunday morning in braided bags and a dinner jacket. We weren’t proposing to spend the night here, you know.’
‘Oh, that’s all right! I’ve collared Bodger’s tweeds. He’s near enough your height… a bit broader in the beam, but that won’t matter. He went off by car in his evening clothes, very tight. I’d have had to send the things on to him, any old way, so you might as well wear ’em first. And I’ve borrowed Smithson’s for myself. He took Bodger with him.’
‘You are the very pineapple of politeness,’ said O’Hara gratefully. ‘But what will Bodger say when he’s sobered up?’
‘Oh, he won’t mind at all. Well, let’s sleep on it, shall we? And then we’ll go over to the farm, or whatever it is, after breakfast. Good thing it will be Sunday. People will be the less suspicious of a couple of ignorant hikers.’
O’Hara was soon asleep, but Gascoigne lay awake for some time, thinking over the story his cousin had told him. The more he thought about it, the more unaccountable became the conversation and actions of the persons involved, and the less he liked the thought of O’Hara’s adventure.
‘A good thing for him he slid out of it when he did,’ was the final conclusion he reached before falling asleep.
They breakfasted at nine, and by ten were out on the road. The borrowed tweeds fitted O’Hara well enough, the morning was crisp and sunny, and the cousins, who had no car, stepped briskly along the road which led north from Welsea Beaches. It was well past opening time when they reached the Spotted Lion at Upper Deepening, so they went in and called for beer.