Skylark Read Free

brown
pinstripe eeled out of the car. With a final stare--at Milos, I thought--the ferrety tout stepped out
onto the platform and the doors slid together. As the train began to move I saw him vanish into
the mass of waiting commuters.
    "Lark..."
    The train lurched and Milos fell against me. I let go of my skyhook and clutched at him,
staggering back.
    "Bloody foreigners," said the woman with the Evening Standard .

Chapter 2.
    "Stop, thief!" the Maggie Thatcher clone was shrieking. "The bugger stole my bag! Pull
the emergency lever!"
    No one responded, but the murmurings grew louder. Newspapers rustled. The train sped
on.
    I had regained my balance, but Milos was heavy. "Are you all right? What's the
matter?"
    He said nothing at all, and he was slipping slowly to the floor.
    "Somebody help me! He's fainted." I went down on one knee, and then fell to my side,
cracking my elbow, as the train rounded a curve. I fell with Milos on top of me.
    "Christ, missus, he's bleeding!" A male hand assisted me to sitting position.
    Various murmurs.
    "Pull the lever."
    "Better not, love. It'll just stop between stations. Wait for South Ken."
    "Give 'em air, please."
    "Back off."
    I heard the chatter, but I was staring at Milos's gray face. A thin trickle of blood seeped
from one corner of his mouth. His eyes were half closed, the whites showing.
    "Oh God, let me through! What's wrong, Lark?" Ann fought her way to my side and
knelt beside me. Her bag thudded to the floor. "Lordy, he's passed out."
    "He's in shock," I said tightly. "Skin's clammy."
    She drew in a sharp breath. Above me the Thatcher clone was telling everyone the thief
had stolen a silver trivet she had just bought for her niece's wedding and wasn't it disgraceful.
She'd had a good look at the villain, and she meant to report him to the police.
    "Is he dead, lady?" the kid in the gray blazer asked me. He spoke with an American
accent. So much for Lincoln's Inn.
    Ann began chafing Milos's hands. "Oh, God, tell me he's not dead."
    I shifted so I could hold his head and torso in my lap, Pietá -fashion. "I
can't find a pulse. Is he breathing?" It was too noisy to tell.
    The man who had helped me sit up was kneeling opposite me, by Milos's head. "He
looks bad, love. Trouble with his heart?"
    I started to tell him I didn't have the faintest idea. Then we pulled into the South
Kensington yard, edging toward the crowded platform.
    "Will somebody hold the door and call for the station master?" I looked up.
    Pandemonium. The doors opened and impatient commuters were pushing on as our
    lot--the uninvolved, at any rate--tried to slip away.
    "Let me off! Make way!" The Thatcher woman battled out the door, followed by the
devotee of the Evening Standard .
    "Somebody do something," I ordered in my best basketball coach voice. I coach a
women's team for the junior college at home. We had had a successful season. The helpful
man--he was fiftyish and wore the cap and tweed jacket of an older working man--began urging the
crowd to move back. The kid in the blazer stood wringing his hands.
    Ann got up and used her enormous bag as a battering ram. "Get back. A man has
fainted. We need room here."
    Other voices joined the chorus. The doors stayed open. At last, the waiting horde parted,
and a small white-haired man in the black London Transport uniform bustled up.
    "Here, now, what's the fuss?"
    The man in the tweed jacket began to explain. I concentrated on Milos. It couldn't be a
simple faint. He should have come around. And why blood? Had he bitten his tongue? He didn't
look like a heart attack victim, but I was not a paramedic, so what did I know?
    "We'll have to move him, missus. The train..."
    "Do you have a stretcher?"
    He looked blank, and I wondered what the right word was. Hurdle? Surely not. Gurney?
"Uh, a litter to carry him on."
    "Right." The official stepped back to the platform and spoke into a walkie talkie. I heard
him say something about a heart attack victim.
    I hugged Milos to me,