The Runaways by Victor Canning Read Free Book Online Page A

among the dead leaves. She covered twenty yards of ground before the bird saw her. It took off too late and was brought down in a burst of feathers by one sweep of her taloned right forepaw. She ate. While she did so she heard the sound of children laughing and playing away across the river, heard the whine of cars on the not too distant main road running from Warminster down to Mere. She was outside, by at least a mile, of the triangle of roads joining Frome, Warminster and Mere. That afternoon, late, she ran down another hare on the downland above the river woods.
    The frost had held all day and as the winter sun began to drop and the air turned even colder Yarra came off the downland. She was passing through a thicket of trees, studded here and there by tall, rank growths of wild rhododendrons, when a keeper, shotgun under his arm, stepped out on to the path ten yards ahead. Man and beast saw each other at the same time. Startled, Yarra backed away, lowering head and shoulders threateningly, and gave a slow snarl. The keeper, seeing her threatening stance, acted instinctively. He swung his shotgun to his shoulder and fired.
    The swift movement of the gun, although she had never been fired at before, was warning enough for Yarra. Sudden movement marked something you either hunted or avoided. This was a large human, not something she hunted. She leaped sidewards into the cover of a patch of young birch. The keeper fired, first one barrel and then the other as Yarra disappeared into the gloom of the birches. The gunshots echoed through the wood. A few pellets from the spread of shot that rattled against tree trunks and the hard ground caught Yarra on the left flank, stinging and biting into her. Then she was gone at top speed through the woods.
    The keeper stood in the centre of the path trembling with shock. No fool, he began to move quickly back up the path towards the open fields at the top of the wood. The wood was no place to stay in with an animal like a cheetah about. Recognition had come to him only after he had impulsively fired. Ten minutes later he was telephoning from his cottage to the Warminster police station.
    That morning, after Yarra had gone, Smiler stayed in the loft. He waited patiently to see if the postman was going to call or perhaps Mrs Bagnall, come to do some morning housework in the cottage. Eventually he saw the postman ride by the cottage on his bicycle, but he did not deliver any letters.
    An hour later Smiler was in the cottage, the back door locked with the key on the outside so that he would have warning if anyone came. He had a drink of water from the tap, sluiced himself for toilet over head and neck, and then opened a tin of baked beans and ate them with a spoon from the can. He tidied up meticulously and then started another inspection of the house.
    The hallway running to the front door was red carpeted and hung with small, coloured pictures of birds and flowers. There was a big oak chest in it with a wide shallow glass bowl on top. The bowl was full of odds and ends. On either side of the hall were a dining-room and a large sitting-room, one wall of which was covered entirely with bookshelves. In the window stood a flat-topped desk. Its surface was inlaid with red morocco leather and tooled around the edges in gold-leafed designs. It was as nice a room as Smiler had ever been in in his life. The chairs and settees were comfortable and well-worn. He was sure there would be no fuss if you put your feet up on them.
    On the top floor, which you went up to by way of an open staircase with roughly carved bannisters and supports were three bedrooms. One was large with two beds in it. The others had a single bed each. Leading off the big bedroom was a bathroom. The bathroom, wide and spacious, had a long window that looked out over the well-yard at the back. The bath was blue and tiled on two sides. Each tile had a picture of a fish on it. Smiler had never seen a bathroom like it, and it had a