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No doubt I made a quite remarkable sight, standing there rather a mess, grasping a large wooden hammer, when it must have been accepted by Sneijder and his confederates that I had fled far away into the fog. That probably accounted somewhat for the rather satisfying look of open-mouthed astonishment that appeared on Sneijder’s face as soon as he set eyes on me, standing on the threshold to his den of evil. He seemed rooted to the spot, as if frozen by shock. I could have danced a merry jig of celebration, so pleased was I with the impact I made.
However, there was no time for gloating and complacency, for there was still work to be done and I had no desire to hand the initiative back to Sneijder when it belonged, as it did then, entirely to me.
“Quite a pleasant evening, wouldn’t you say, Sneijder? Things seem to have turned out rather splendidly, after all.”
Giving him no chance to reply, I took the hammer in both hands, brought it up swiftly in front of me, then pushed it with some force into the Doctor’s chest. He stumbled backwards into the hallway, only just able to keep himself upright, his arms waving wildly at his sides. I stepped over the threshold, pushed the Doctor a little further back, so as to give myself space to enter the hallway, and closed the door behind me with the heel of one foot. I smiled at Sneijder; although some might say it was more of smirk.
“Not expecting me back so soon, eh?”
Sneijder looked alarmed, as well he might, his face rather pale and his eyes flicking down at the hammer, still tightly in my grasp, then back up at me, no doubt wondering what I had in mind. It may not have been the gentlemanly thing to do to make sport of him, but I struggled with myself not to so do as I recalled the enthusiasm with which he had locked me in the cellar and threatened to put a permanent end to my meddling in his affairs.
“Not to worry, I don’t expect to be staying long. In matter of fact, I aim to conclude my business here very promptly.”
I shifted the hammer up and down three or four times in my hands, as if I might be weighing it up, ready to strike a blow. Sneijder took half a step further back, glancing again at the hammer.
“You won’t get away with this, Templeman,” he replied, the wobble in his voice betraying his nervousness.
“Won’t I? And who will stop me?”
I knew full well what was on his mind by way of salvation and the hopelessness of such a thought, but I couldn’t help continuing the game a little longer.
“Selkman,” shouted the Doctor, recovering his voice and straightening his posture a little. “Selkman, come to the hallway at once.”
I smiled again and tilted my head to one side, as if trying to pick out the sound of an approaching man, his running feet heavy on the carpets. Of course, there was no such sound.
“You appear to have been abandoned,” I added innocently. “Whatever could have happened to the charming Selkman?” Again I weighed the hammer in my hands, to emphasise my point.
“Selkman,” he yelled again, though this time there was more hope than expectation in his voice.
“Selkman won’t be running along to help you,” I stated in a matter-of-fact manner. “I’ve put your giant out of action. You are on your own now, Sneijder.”
Alarm blossomed on Sneijder’s face, his eyes wide. He looked hard to his right, along the hallway, then back at me as he stepped still further away. I closed the gap to its original distance, happy now that I had enjoyed my little bit of fun and an element of revenge. My position of strength was now clearly established in Sneijder’s mind and it was time to bring matters to a conclusion, starting with the whereabouts of Elizabeth.
“Now, tell me where you’ve locked up Miss Fitzsimon,” I demanded, jabbing the head of the hammer towards Sneijder’s midriff.
“She’s in her room,” he stammered.
It was quite the transformation that had come over Sneijder, his pasty face filled with fear and all the self-assurance and authority he had possessed before gone in a moment. I suppose some men are like that; bullies, full of themselves when things are wholly in their favour, then a shallow, empty vessel when the world takes a turn against them. But I kept my guard up all the same, anxious not to be caught out by any ruse on the part of my opponent, a man I felt it best not to trust so much as an inch.
“Do you have the keys to the room?” I demanded.
“They are on my desk.” He looked towards his surgery.
I flicked the hammer in the direction of the surgery to direct him there and he did as he was bid, with me following two yards behind, confident now that I would be able to bring things to a successful conclusion. That made it all the more of a shock when I heard an ugly, thick-accented command thrown at me from the sitting room doorway.
“Stop where you are, sonny boy, or I’ll shoot you dead.”
They do say that a man is at his most vulnerable when he is overly-confident and it seemed I was guilty of that very crime, for I had grossly under-estimated the threat from the housekeeper. Indeed, I had not considered her any threat at all to my well thought out plan. But as I stopped and turned around, I found myself staring down the length of the hallway at the figure of an evil-looking woman hunched over a revolver which she held in a way that suggested she had some familiarity with the thing. It was, of course, pointing directly at me.
There was now a roar of delight from behind me as Sneijder realised the tables had turned again. I was caught in a pincer movement, nowhere to go but up the stairs, if I could make it without being shot down. It was a strange sensation, standing there in mortal danger and with little chance of escape, as my mind raced through a cold, careful calculation of my chances of success under several scenarios in little more than a second or two. I felt my senses heighten and my body tense for action, but there was, oddly, no overwhelming sensation of fear of imminent death, which I might have expected under the circumstances.
I do not even remember consciously kicking my body into action when my mind was made up, for it all seemed to happen in some peculiar world of which I was more a spectator than an active participant, though of course, I was very much involved indeed.
Not wishing to allow Sneijder the opportunity to disarm me, I acted swiftly and swung the hammer at him. Just as I intended, the blow caught him solidly on the side of the knee, which brought from his mouth a scream of anguished pain. In the very moment of doing so, my legs began to drive me forward and I picked up speed faster than I thought possible as I hurtled down the hallway, my target as clear to her as it was to me.
I don’t recall the sound of the gun firing, but I do remember the flash from the muzzle, bright as the sun for the briefest of moments. I was doing my level best to dart first left, then right, so as to make myself a more difficult target, but at such close range I was heavily relying on the housekeeper not being the best of shots. I don’t recall whether I saw the flash from the gun or felt the pain in my right thigh first, but I don’t suppose it matters a great deal. The bullet ripped through the material of my trousers and tore a line across the skin underneath. The burning sensation that flared up in my leg was instant and considerable and, for a brief moment, I lost a little of my momentum. But I couldn’t stop, for to do so would be fatal, and, breathing heavily now, blood rushing through my veins as fast as my heart could pump it, I ran on.
It would have been an interesting question to debate, as to whether it was the housekeeper or I who was the more surprised that I reached her before she could aim a second shot at me. The weapon did fire again, but it happened at the precise moment I crashed into the woman and the bullet buried itself safely in the ceiling of the hallway as the two of us went crashing and sprawling across the sitting room floor.
The force of the impact was so great that it took me a moment, lying there on the carpet, to regain my senses. My right shoulder ached terribly and for a moment I feared I might have dislocated it, but I managed to roll it a little, which confirmed it was nothing more than sore. The pain was pretty bad as I climbed back on to my feet, breathing deeply and blinking my eyes so as to refocus them.
A groan, then a foul-mouthed complaint, arose from behind the sofa opposite me. I quickly looked about me, hoping to spot the revolver, but there was no sign of it, which had me on edge at once, since there was now every possibility the housekeeper still had it in her possession. As a woman’s hand appeared on the back of the sofa, I was, I have to admit, taken somewhat by a sense of panic, fearful in the extreme that the woman would bring the revolver over the top of the sofa and aim it squarely at my person. It was a silly thing to do and would have been of no real aid in even the least threatening of situations, but I grabbed hold of the only thing within my reach: a book on Scottish birdlife that lay on top of a small side table to my left.
To my utter astonishment, the damned woman was up on her feet like a shot, despite the collision she had suffered, her face wild with fury and hurling the most venomous insults at me. Even before I could make a move towards her, the housekeeper’s right arm arced up over her shoulder and a lump of firewood hurtled towards my head. Ducking at the last moment, so the wood did no more than brush my hair, I swooped down into a crouch, then launched myself towards the sofa and the housekeeper, intending to knock her back to the ground.
But she was quick enough to side-step my assault and, as I knocked over the sofa and tumbled away across the floor, she grabbed hold of a wooden chair and came at me with it, her eyes unnaturally large and filled with hatred, while her hair had turned into some astonishing tangle that even the most untidy of birds would refuse to nest in. My shoulder continued to hamper my movements, but I tried not to let that show for fear it would encourage the woman’s thoughts of victory, and we were by now both breathing heavily from our exertions.
A bead of sweat began to trickle down the side of my face and I would have liked to wipe it away, but I kept my hands raised up in front of me, ready to grab hold of one of the chair’s legs if the housekeeper should make a mistake and let me get close enough. But she kept a distance, prodding and jabbing the chair legs at me, trying her best to tease a false move out of me, so she could take advantage and strike me down. It was a tense affair and I don’t mind saying that I feared the worst.
Then, quite out of the blue, from somewhere towards the Doctor’s surgery, came the sound of glass breaking. It was only a fleeting distraction, but it was enough to take away the housekeeper’s attention, as her eyes darted towards the source of the noise. Seizing my opportunity, I lunged forward, intending to pull away the chair she held, but she was obscenely powerful for a woman and held her grip, wailing and screaming her curses all the time. We struggled for supremacy and the chair jolted this way then that, several times over, until I realised I had another option. As the chair shifted back towards the housekeeper, I put all my weight behind it and knocked her a second time to the floor.
As the woman fell on her back, the chair buried itself in my chest, lifting my feet from the ground before tipping me away to the right, where I came crashing down on the far end of the sofa. My word, my ribs took a pounding and I lay there a moment or two gasping for breath as the pain seemed to fill my whole chest. Still struggling to breathe as stabs of pain burned up my left flank, I staggered to my feet, bent over and unsteady, my head giddy.
“Ah, I’ve got yeah now,” I heard the woman cackle, the delight clear in her voice.
Lifting my head, then slowly straightening my back while doing my best to ignore the pain in my chest, I looked at the woman, now standing behind the armchair nearest the door. In her hands she held the revolver again and it was, of course, pointed at me. I had not the energy or speed of movement left to make another dash at her and it seemed all I could do was prepare myself as best I could for the inevitable.
“You be going to meet yer maker now,” she spat.
I started on an effort to compose myself, thinking I could at least depart the world with my self-respect intact and avoid giving the housekeeper the pleasure of hearing me plead for mercy, for she clearly believed this was not a time to take prisoners. She raised the revolver a little further, to sharpen her aim. I saw her right index finger caress the trigger and I thought to pray, when, in a blur of action, something rushed at her from the hallway and a length of timber came crashing down on her head. As the housekeeper’s eyes glazed over and closed, the gun slipped from her grasp, before she slumped to the floor in a crumpled heap.
Now the housekeeper was no longer on her feet to obstruct the view, I found myself looking into the startled, though undeniably determined, eyes of Elizabeth Fitzsimon, still holding a length of timber in her hands. We said nothing, merely stared at each other for a short while until I began to laugh, despite the pain it brought to my chest; a release, no doubt, for the appalling tension I had experienced as death had seemed certain to strike me down.
Elizabeth let the timber fall to the ground, then smiled at me as I dropped on to the nearest sofa and let my head rest against its back. If I had not been laughing, it is entirely possible I would instead have cried, such was my relief.
