Tales: Short Stories Featuring Ian Rutledge and Bess Crawford by Charles Todd Page A

them. I wouldn’t go walking far, if Sister asks you to start exercising your legs again.”
    “I’m grateful, sir. Truly I am.”
    Rutledge stayed at the base hospital another day, walking through the wards, speaking to the patients, keeping an eye open for Private Jones and Private Lloyd. On the third day, his ambulance was set to leave for the Front and he had no choice but to be aboard, if he was to rejoin his company.
    He spoke to Williams a last time, and five minutes later he was settling himself in the uncomfortable seat beside a different driver when he heard a commotion in the ward he’d just left.
    “Wait for me,” he ordered the man as he got out and sprinted back the way he’d come.
    He found a Sister bleeding from a blow to the face, and down the ward, where Williams had been lying just minutes before, he could see an overturned chair and bedclothes dragged out into the aisle. Men were sitting up in their cots, shouting to Rutledge, pointing back the way he’d just come.
    He bent over the Sister, asking her, “What happened here?”
    “Two men—they took away Private Williams. I couldn’t see their faces. They were wearing hospital masks. I don’t know where they’ve taken him.”
    He shouted for help, but didn’t stay to explain to the staff rushing to the Sister’s aid, his mind already busy with the problem of where the three men might be. Had his own presence at the hospital precipitated this attack? Or the fact that he was seen to be leaving?
    And then he heard one of the ambulances roaring into life, men shouting, and someone firing a shot.
    He raced toward the line of ambulances he’d just left, saw his driver lying on the ground, dazedly trying to raise himself on his elbow. An orderly was already kneeling beside him. Rutledge ran on to the second ambulance in the line and called to the driver, “We’ve got to stop them.”
    But the driver leapt out of his door, shaking his head. “They’ve got a weapon.”
    Rutledge took his place behind the wheel, gunned the motor, and pulled out of line, turning in the direction of the fleeing ambulance heading fast toward the main road to Calais.
    The ground was wet from recent rains, and he could feel his tires slipping and sliding in the viscous mud. Holding grimly to the wheel, he drove as fast as he dared, and then, when he saw he was making no headway, faster than was safe.
    He was gaining, even as the ambulance bucketed across what passed for a road, narrowly missing a column of men marching toward the Front. He could hear the big guns behind him, opening up for another punishing marathon of shelling. And then the ambulance ahead of him skidded wildly, spun around, and missed a yawning ditch by inches. The driver got control again, but it had given Rutledge his chance. Praying that the tires would hold, he rammed his foot down on the accelerator and came up even with the fleeing vehicle.
    Someone swung open one of the rear doors, and Rutledge could see Private Lloyd kneeling there. Behind him lay Williams. Lloyd was raising a revolver, pointing it toward Rutledge. But Williams somehow managed to use the rigid brace on his shoulder to spoil the man’s aim just as he fired. Furious, the man backhanded him, sending Williams hard against the metal side of the ambulance, just as Rutledge sped past, cut in front of the vehicle, and forced it into the low wall that was all that was left of what had been the approach to a French barn.
    The ambulance hit the wall at speed and came to a jarring stop, throwing Private Jones, the driver, into the wheel and then the windscreen. By the time Rutledge had braked and got out, he could see blood running down Jones’s face. But it was the man with that revolver who was his main target.
    He ran to the back of the ambulance and flung open both doors. Williams and Lloyd lay on the floor in a jumble of legs and arms.
    Rutledge could hear another vehicle coming after him, but there was no time to wait. He climbed