She Died a Lady by John Dickson Carr Read Free Book Online Page B

policeman.
    ‘Slow down!’ Ferrars was bellowing, in a choking voice which made heads appear at windows. ‘That’s a steeper grade than it looks! For the love of Mike slow …’
    Upon the face of the man in the wheel-chair was now a lordly sneer. As though conscious of his prowess, he made the chair swerve left and right in graceful fashion like a master of the art of skating. Even then, Tom maintains, things would have been all right if it had not been for the dogs.
    Our dogs in Lyncombe, as a rule, are a mild-mannered lot. Motor-cars they understand. Wagons and bicycles they understand. But the spectacle of a joy-riding invalid, in a chair apparently equipped with a supercharger, was beyond comprehension and therefore maddening to the canine soul. As though conjured by magic, they came pouring over fences into the foray.
    The din of their barking rose deafeningly above the pop-pop-pop of the chair. The Andersons’ Scotch terrier Willie was so excited that he turned a complete somersault, landing on his back. The Lanes’ Airedale made a daring dash under the wheels. Roused from his scientific absorption, the man in the chair attempted reprisals. He leaned out and made a face at them. It was, indeed, a face so terrifying that the more timorous shied back again, barking frantically; but a so-called Manchester terrier sprang on the front of the chair and attempted to get his teeth in the steering-apparatus.
    The invalid replied in spirited fashion by picking up a crutch and aiming a vicious swipe with it. This was good as terrorism but bad as tactics. The steering of the chair was already under dispute. Now proceeding at a pace truly alarming, it sailed gracefully up Hicks’s driveway to the pavement; swept along the pavement at a time when – I regret to say – Mrs McGonigle, our esteemed laundress, was coming backwards out of her gate with the week’s washing; and returned to the road again by way of Pinafore’s drive.
    ‘Cut off your motor !’ Ferrars was screaming from behind. ‘For the love of Mike cut off your motor !’
    This was good advice, which the invalid either could not or would not heed. Surrounded by dogs, the speeding wheel-chair swept past Molly and me as we stood at the gate. The invalid’s malignant expression never changed as his chair lurched over a crown in the road, described a sweeping arc in front of the ‘Coach and Horses’, and disappeared, majestically, through the open doors of the saloon-bar.
    In went the dogs, in went Ferrars in pursuit, in went Tom, and in went the constable already taking out his notebook.
    ‘My word!’ Molly said again.
    ‘Gentleman seems in a hurry to get a drink,’ observed the postman.
    From the pub, it is true, issued sounds suggesting that this dipsomaniac was already climbing over the counter to get at the bottles behind the bar. The crashing of glassware, the thudding of chairs, the barking of dogs, mingled above all with the profane protests of men whose beer has been spilled as they lift it to their lips.
    The ensuing fifteen minutes were perhaps the most lively ever spent in Harry Pierce’s bar. One by one the dogs were shot out. Though peace was restored by liberal largesse, one powerful voice – that of the man in the wheel-chair – thundered above everything. When he reappeared, wearing a look of savage martyrdom, Ferrars was pushing his chair.
    ‘Now listen, test-pilot,’ Ferrars was saying. ‘This thing is a wheel-chair.’
    ‘All right, all right!’
    ‘It’s for helpless people to ride in. You’re not supposed to treat it like a new Spitfire. Do you realize we could never have squared that charge of driving a motor vehicle to the public danger, if you hadn’t been a friend of Superintendent Craft?’
    An expression of hopeless and passionate misunderstanding went over the face of the malignant gentleman.
    ‘Looky here,’ he said. ‘Burn it all, all I was tryin’ to do was see what she’d do flat out on an open road. And