From London Far by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online

preventive homicide ?
    Some fraction of a second before reaching this point in his speculations Meredith had raised Bubear’s revolver (an engine of which he had no understanding whatever), had aimed it, compressed the trigger, and shot Vogelsang dead. The body lay sprawled on the carpet and Meredith noticed that the effect was rather that of the sort of sensational dust-cover to be met with on railway bookstalls. There was blood, and what must be brains – and this on a carpet which, being genuine Aubusson, it was to be presumed Mr Bubear had detained by way of perquisite from his employers. Meredith felt sorry that he had spoilt this carpet. He also felt very sick. But neither of these things prevented his wheeling round upon Bubear and crying out harshly, ‘You fool, it’s the police!’
    Bubear was puzzled. Probably he was terrified too. And, unfortunately, terror lent him wit. He ran to the body, stooped over it, and in a moment had straightened up with some weapon taken from the dead man in his hand. The tragi-comedy, Meredith saw, must at once reach a further pitch of bewilderment. ‘Clear out,’ he called. ‘Clear out with that damned girl!’ And, racing across the room, he pressed himself against the wall by the door through which Vogelsang had come, thrust his right arm through the aperture, and continued to discharge the firearm with which Fate had dowered him. As he was now facing the long subterraneous corridor which led to the tobacconist’s shop, the resulting echoes and reverberations were innumerable and yielded a most convincing impression of a large-scale gun-fight. He took a quick glance into the antechamber. The secretary was crouched under her ebony and chromium desk. The bank attendant was vindicating his character as a well-armed and resolute man by lying down behind the massive masonry of the Giotto. But from certain further passages over to the left the sound of advancing voices and running feet could be heard. Meredith slammed to the door, shot a bolt and raced back across the room. ‘Dozens of them!’ he panted. ‘Why haven’t you got away?’
    Even as he spoke Bubear, who was fumbling at a farther wall, stepped back and revealed what appeared to be a small sliding panel masked by a system of pipes which ran down the brickwork. This he had pushed back, and he was now thrusting the girl through the narrow bolt-hole thus revealed. Bubear himself followed and Meredith tumbled through after him; the panel immediately closed and they were left all three standing in a narrow, whitewashed corridor, dimly lit by small electric lights, and virtually identical with that through which Meredith had first come.
    And here Bubear paused. ‘But the police–’ he began. He looked full at Meredith and the arm with Vogelsang’s weapon stirred at his side. ‘Why, you–’
    ‘Look out!’ The girl, who had moved a few steps in advance down the corridor, shouted in sudden apparent terror; Bubear, momentarily distracted, swung round towards her; Meredith, as if the concerted action had been long practised for performance on a stage, brought the butt of his revolver hard down on Bubear’s head. Bubear made a nasty noise in his throat and fell on the ground. Meredith, not pausing to contemplate the issue of this second stroke of violence, took the girl by the hand and hurried forward. A distant hammering and thumping assured him that some assault had begun upon the room from which they had just fled.
    The girl had taken the lead. She must, Meredith thought as he was swung down a side corridor and up a flight of stairs, be what is called an adventuress, and used to this sort of thing. Certainly for one who was to be presumed recently escaped from some species of third degree – But there again, surely, was an obsolete phrase. Perhaps given the works was correct, although it rather suggested being handed the complete plays of Shakespeare on a school speech day. For one so recently in a state of evident