Menace by John Creasey

Author:John Creasey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ipso Books

Chapter 12

Bad for Matthew Horn

Five hours sleep, a moderately satisfying meal, treatment of minor burns, and cold compresses on a twisted ankle, did a great deal to make Bob Kerr feel capable of working.

He asked for his clothes so that he could get up. The nurse and the doctor refused. He was not well enough to get up: it would in fact be madness for him to get up, and if he put any weight on the injured ankle he would be in bed for a week.

Without a trace of that delirium that had worried Craigie, Kerr eased himself up in bed and regarded both nurse and doctor.

‘I’m getting up,’ he said. ‘If my clothes aren’t here within three minutes, I’ll get up without them. You’re probably quite right and I’m probably a ruddy fool, but I’m getting up.’

The doctor wanted to swear at him. Sir Wilfred Mayer had gone off duty, and the other had no idea who Kerr was. He had been told he was the famous flying ace, but fame outside medical research meant nothing to that earnest physician.

‘Now, Mr Kerr –’

Kerr flung the bedclothes off, and climbed out of bed, careful to stand only on his left foot. He grabbed a small chair, and using it as a walking stick he started for the door.

The doctor shrugged helplessly.

‘All right. As we’re short of strait-jackets you may have your clothes. But I take no responsibility.’

Kerr smiled disarmingly.

‘I really do appreciate your efforts. I’m all wrong, I know, but I can get about at a pinch, and I’ve a desperately urgent reason for wanting to be off right now. By the way, my friends in the other ward – Davidson and Carruthers.’

The doctor unbent a little, and the nurse slipped out for Kerr’s clothes and a crutch. What an astonishing change in the man when he smiled!

‘Mr Davidson will be all right, there’s no question of it. Three or four days here, and then a week or two’s rest. Mr Carruthers – well, there’s every chance, but he’s not out of danger yet. The throat wound went very deep. I wonder’ – the doctor looked at Kerr curiously – ‘how it happened. Not suicide, surely?’

Kerr laughed.

‘Certainly not suicide, doctor. Murder attempted but murder not done, thank heavens. Ah, nurse, you’re a friend in a thousand.’

She helped him dress, and he hobbled out of the ward with the help of a crutch. He felt damned silly, but he supposed it was wise to use the thing. He spent five minutes in Wally Davidson’s ward, thankful to find Davidson able to speak and smile.

‘What happened at Criff’s, Wally?’

‘That blasted little runt of a servant,’ said Davidson with a scowl. ‘I’ve told Trale. Carry and I took the beggar for granted, I’m afraid, and he pulled a gun on us. A couple of minutes later that Kryn fellow came in, and a brace of others. We were hit over the head so effectively that we neither saw nor felt what happened next.

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