Thought before action; if one had time.

Thought could be flash fast. I had time. It would be an unexpected bonus for us if the damage were the other way round.

He had iron-pumping muscle power. It would indeed be damage.

Oh well…

I rolled my head a shade sideways and he punched me twice, quite hard, on the cheek and the jaw. I went back with a crash against the nearby wall, which wasn't all that good for the shoulder blade, and I slid the bottom of my spine down the wall until I was sitting on the floor, knees bent up, my head back against the paintwork.

Filmer was above me, lunging about and delivering another couple of stingingly heavy cuffs, and I thought, come on guys, it's high time for the arrival of the Cavalry, and the Cavalry-the Mounties-in the shape of George Burley and Bill Baudelaire obligingly grabbed Filmer's swinging arms and hauled him away.

I stayed where I was, feeling slightly pulped, watching the action.

The Brigadier pressed a button on the desk which soon resulted in the arrival of two large racecourse security guards, one of whom, to Filmer's furious astonishment, placed a manacle upon the Julius Apollo wrist.

'You can't do this,' he shouted.

The guard phlegmatically fastened the hanging half of the metal bracelet to his own thick wrist.

One of the Vancouver top-brass spoke for the first time, in an authoritative voice. 'Take Mr Filmer to the security office and detain him until I come down.'

The guards said, 'Yes, sir.'

They moved like tanks. Filmer, humiliated to his socks, was tugged away between them as if of no account. One might almost have felt sorry for him… if one hadn't remembered Paul Shacklebury and Ezra Gideon for whom he had had no pity.

Daffodil Quentin's eyes were stretched wide open. She came over and looked down at me with compassion.

'You poor boy,' she said, horrified. 'How perfectly dreadful.'

'Mr Burley,' Bill Baudelaire said smoothly, 'would you be so kind as to escort Mrs Quentin for us? If you turn right in the passage, you'll find some double doors ahead of you. Through there is the reception room where the passengers and the other owners from the train are gathering for cocktails and lunch. Would you take Mrs Quentin there? We'll look after this crewman… get him some help… And we would be pleased if you could yourself stay for lunch.'

George said to me, 'Are you all right, Tommy?' and I said, 'Yes, George,' and he chuckled with kind relief and said it would be a pleasure, eh?, to stay for lunch.

He stood back to let Daffodil lead the way out of the far door, and when she reached there she paused and looked back.

'The poor boy,' she said again. 'Julius Filmer's a beast.'

The Vancouver Jockey Club men rose and made courteous noises of sympathy in my direction; said they would hand Filmer on to the police with a report of the assault; said we would no doubt be needed to make statements later. They then followed Daffodil, as they were the hosts of the party.

When they'd gone, the Brigadier switched off the machine that had recorded every word.

'Poor boy, my foot,' he said to me. 'You chose to let him hit you. I saw you.'

I smile a little ruefully, acknowledging his perception.

'He couldn't!' Mercer protested, drawing nearer. 'No one could just let himself be… -'

'He could and he did.' The Brigadier came round from behind the desk. 'Quick thinking. Brilliant.'

'But why?' Mercer said.

'To tie the slippery Mr Filmer in tighter knots.' The Brigadier stood in front of me, put a casual hand down to mine and pulled me to my feet.

'Did you truly?' Mercer said to me in disbelief.

'Mm.' I nodded and straightened a bit, trying not to wince.

'Don't worry about him,' the Brigadier said. 'He used to ride bucking broncos, and God knows what else.'

The three of them stood as in a triumvirate, looking at me in my uniform, as if I'd come from a different planet.

'I sent him on the train,' the Brigadier said, 'to stop Filmer doing whatever he was planning.' He smiled briefly. 'A sort of match… a two-horse race.'

'It seems to have been neck and neck now and then,' Mercer said.

The Brigadier considered it. 'Maybe. But our runner had the edge.'

Mercer Lorrimore and I watched the races from a smaller room next to the large one where the reception was taking place. We were in the racecourse President's private room, to which he could retire with friends if he wanted to, and it was furnished accordingly in extreme comfort and soft turquoise and gold.

The President had been disappointed but understanding that Mercer felt he couldn't attend the lunch party so soon after his son's death, and had offered this room instead. Mercer had asked if I might join him, so he and I drank the President's champagne and looked down from his high window to the track far below, and talked about Filmer, mostly.

'I liked him, you know,' Mercer said, wonderingly.

'He can be charming.'

'Bill Baudelaire tried to warn me at Winnipeg.' he said, 'but I wouldn't listen. I really thought that his trial had been a travesty, and that he was innocent. He told me about it himself… he said he didn't bear the Jockey Club any malice.'

I smiled. 'Extreme malice,' I said. 'He threatened them to their faces that he would throw any available spanner into their international works. McLachlan was some spanner.'

Mercer sat down in one of the huge armchairs. I stayed standing by the window.

'Why was Filmer prosecuted,' he asked, 'if there was such a poor case?'

'There was a cast-iron case,' I said. 'Filmer sent a particularly vicious frightener to intimidate all four prosecution witnesses, and the cast iron became splinters. This time… this morning… we thought we'd stage a sort of preliminary trial, at which the witness couldn't have been reached, and have it all on record in case anyone retracted afterwards.'

He looked at me sceptically. 'Did you think I could be intimidated? I assure you I can't. Not any more.'

After a pause I said, 'You have Xanthe. Ezra Gideon had daughters and grandchildren. One of the witnesses in the Paul Shacklebury case backed away because of what she was told would happen to her sixteen-year-old daughter if she gave evidence.'

'Dear God,' he said, dismayed. 'Surely he'll be sent to prison.'

'He'll be warned off, anyhow, and that's what he wants least. He had Paul Shacklebury killed to prevent it. I think we will have got rid of him from racing. For the rest… we'll have to see what the Canadian police and VIA Rail can do, and hope they'll find McLachlan.'

Let McLachlan not be eaten by a bear, I thought. (And he hadn't been: he was picked up for a stealing tools from a railway yard in Edmonton a week later, and subsequently convicted with Filmer of the serious ancient offence of attempted train-wrecking, chiefly on the evidence of a temporary crew member in his VIA Rail clothes. VIA put me on their personnel list retroactively, and shook my hand. Filmer was imprisoned despite his defence that he had not given specific instructions to McLachlan on any count and had tried to stop him before the end. It was proved that he had actively recruited a violent saboteur: any later possible change of mind was held to be irrelevant. Filmer never did find out that I wasn't a waiter, because it wasn't a question his lawyers ever thought to ask, and it went much against him with the jury that he'd violently attacked a defenceless rail employee without provocation in front of many witnesses even though he knew of the broken scapula. The Brigadier kept a straight face throughout. 'It worked a treat,' he said afterwards. 'Wasn't Daffodil Quentin a trouper, convincing them the poor boy had been brutally beaten for no reason except that he'd saved them all from being killed in their beds? Lovely stuff. It made nonsense of the change-of-heart defence. They couldn't wait to find Filmer guilty after that.' McLachlan in his turn swore that I'd nearly murdered him, out on the track. I said he'd tripped and knocked himself out on the rails. McLachlan could produce no X-rays and wasn't believed, to his fury. 'Broken bone or not, that waiter can fight like a goddam tiger,' he said. 'No way could Filmer beat him up.' Filmer however had done so. It had been seen, and was a fact.'