My Pandora's Box

The man wearing a black bowler hat leaned over the field gate and peered   intently at the solitary house in the hamlet.  It was a hot sunny morning  and his attention  was drawn to  Mr  Luck  who was sitting alone  in the garden ,  and fruitlessly searching for winners in the Racing  Gazette . He also appeared to be distraught   at the   ultimatum   from his turf accountant, which had just arrived in the post. It read that “Joe (his clerk) will be calling to collect payment of your outstanding account without further notice.”  Joe was known to be a ruthless debt collector who employed drastic methods of persuasion.

 Mr Luck felt in his pocket for a cigarette to calm his shattered nerves but the packet was empty.  He then noticed   his wife’s handbag on the garden table   in which he found cigarettes as well as two new £5 notes, which he quickly extracted and put in his pocket.

He had just closed and replaced the bag when his wife came out from the house with a tray of tea and refreshment. She noticed her husband’s guilty expression but assumed it was alarm at the bookmaker’s   letter; which she carefully read before volunteering some comforting words of advice.  “I can well understand why you are so worried but I am sure that Joe will be most reasonable   if you are frank.  Explain that you have had an unlucky   spell but will soon pick some winners; and then the debt will be paid. So drink your tea, and   you will then feel much better.”

She happened to glance towards the gate and spotting the man wearing a bowler hat   remarked, “George, there is a man coming up the front path. I think that it must be Joe.”

 Her husband recalled meeting a man with a broken nose, another with two   black   eyes, and one blind man with a broken jaw ; all of whom Joe had been pressing  for payment. Suddenly he felt an irresistible urge to get up and go, so jumped out of his chair and escaped through the garden back gate.

Mrs Luck was completely nonplussed but then noticed that the stranger was now ringing the front door bell.

So she went over to him and said, “If you have come to see my husband you have just missed him. He left by the back gate.” and pointing one finger towards the lane remarked, “There he goes.”

The stranger spun round, just in time to catch a brief glimpse of his quarry and then rushed off in hot pursuit. But in the winding lane he could only catch   intermittent glimpses of Mr Luck, so when at a fork junction Mr Luck turned left he mistakenly turned   right.  So both men were now sprinting down diverging lanes and increasing the gap between each other.

 Mr Luck began to imagine that he had shaken off his pursuer and   strolled complacently down his lane in blissful ignorance.  But then the two lanes converged into one and he suddenly became aware that the man in the bowler hat was right there beside him.  His instant reaction was to panic and dive through a gap in the hedge and sprint across country.

Simultaneously the man in the bowler hat became aware of his quarry and followed hotly in pursuit.

The chase continued until Mr Luck reached a small copse where he felt he could safely take cover. A signpost   read Waylen’s Smithy which he seemed to remember was an ancient monument connected with the occult. 

He sank down with a sigh of relief behind a small heap of stones, desperately short of breath