Читать книгу Grey Shapes - E. Charles Vivian - Страница 8

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TWEED-JACKETED, and wearing a pair of jodhpurs he had thought at the last moment to thrust into his suitcase before leaving London, Gees mounted a stubby little pony and urged it to catch up with Tyrrell, who in breeches and leggings was already riding a similar pony away from the long frontage of Dowlandsbar. They rode down the graveled drive and out to the rutted lane, where Tyrrell turned east, away from Locksborough Castle and Odder. It was a still morning with some of the warmth of summer about it, and a bluish haze veiling the rugged ridges among which they rode. Glancing back before they began their descent into the first deep hollow, Gees saw the two monoliths which marked the entry to McCoul's habitation, and the castle itself, ruinous except for the square, massive grey keep, a rambling jumble of broken-down walls set on its little height, and surrounded by grass-grown earthworks which reminded him of Maiden Castle in Dorset, though they were of not such tremendous proportions as that old stronghold.

"And this lane leads where?" he asked, noting the grass that grew between the ruts, and evidence of little care and less use.

"It will bring you out on to the main Carlisle road," Tyrrell answered, "about eight miles away. You can give your pony his head—he won't let you down. But with that car of yours, I'd advise you to go back the way you came. This lane is no joke for a car, in this direction. There are only two farms, and it gets worse as it goes on."

"I'd call it one big joke all the way," Gees comment sourly. "Why don't you do something about it—make a road of it, say?"

Tyrrell shook his head. "I want it kept like this," he explained. "Otherwise, tourists and char-à-bancs, and all the rest of it."

"Something in that, of course," Gees remarked. "Look here, I did some thinking over the early tea your maid brought me. Has anyone beside you been losing sheep or are you the only one?"

"As far as I know, I'm the only sufferer," Tyrrell answered.

"Umm-m! And how does your land run—who are neighbors?

"Toward Odder, McCoul is next me," Tyrrell explained. "About two hundred acres go with the castle, most it useless ground, heather and stones. On this side, a man named Bandon is tenant of the farm that joins on to land, and he doesn't run sheep—he has a dairy farm of sorts, and you can't graze cattle on land that sheep have been over, as probably you know. And both north a south is waste land—as is a good deal of mine, for that matter. We turn off, here."

He swung his pony to the right and passed through an opening in the low stone wall, and Gees, following noted the rough three- barred gate that guarded the opening—it was no more than a rude hurdle—laid against the farther side of the wall. They faced a declivity of—for one unused to the country, appalling steepness, and Gees drew rein.

"Give him his head," Tyrrell advised. "I'll show the way."

And they rode down, while Gees queried inward whether he would slide along his pony's neck and over its head, but, with Tyrrell leading, came safely to comparative level, a sheltered area of three or four acres of rich grass land, cropped close inside a large sheep fold that was empty, now, except for a small, dark man and a patient dog, and two woolly things lying beside one of the hurdles that formed the fold.

"That's Cottrill," Tyrrell stated as he dismounted at the entrance to the fold, and Gees followed suit. They tied their reins to one of the hurdles. "I told him to leave those carcasses—wanted you to see them and get some idea—we'll have a word with him, first."

He led on, and Gees, following, found himself facing a sturdy, honest-looking little man of nearly middle age, with dog-like brown eyes and close-clipped black beard and moustache, who touched his hat at Tyrrell and gave this stranger an inquiring glance.

"Cottrill—my shepherd, Green," Tyrrell stated. "Cottrill, this is Mr. Green, who is going to put an end to our troubles. I brought him to have a look at these two carcasses before you burn them."

Gees offered his hand, and the man gripped it firmly, while Tyrrell let his eyebrows go up at this acknowledgment of the introduction.

"Glad to see you, sir," Cottrill said, in a pleasant voice with hardly any trace of dialect in it, "and I hope the master's right about you."

"He's a bit optimistic, perhaps," Gees remarked. "You have had six months of this trouble, I understand, and all the killings in pairs."

"That's so, sir. A sort of what you might call method about it. I've come across sheep-worrying dogs in my time, but never anything like this. It's got on my nerves, to tell the truth. I'm—well, scared."

"Ah!" Gees observed. "Any special reason for being scared?"

"Yes, sir." Cottrill glanced at his master, and caught a nod which invited him to be as frank as he liked. "The devilish calculation of it—not like ordinary sheep-worrying. I've sat up night after night, and the master's sat up, and even Mr. McCoul from the castle has watched with him this summer, and as long as we watch—nothing! But as soon as we don't watch—well, there's another two done in. As if them things had knowledge, not like animals, but more like humans. And it's gettin' me down. Because, you see, the sheep are my people, as you might say."

"I know," Gees said. "You take it as against yourself."

"I'd trust Cottrill to do his damndest," Tyrrell put in.

"I've done it, sir," the man said. "But—they're too much for me."

"They?" Gees asked. "More than one, then?"

"Two, sir," Cottrill answered. "I sighted 'em, back in May."

"You never told me this." Gees turned to Tyrrell, accusingly.

"I thought it better for him to tell you," Tyrrell answered. "He's the one who saw them. Tell that tale, Cottrill."

"It'd be about the middle of May," the shepherd said. "I'd begun this folding, of course, and we'd had a fortnight clear of these things, with me watching every night—that was after we'd put the police on to it, and much use they are, too! Mr. Tyrrell said I needn't watch, that night, so I was on my way home—there was a bit of mist come in off the sea, and it was gettin' dark, and dimmish like as I went off to my home. About a couple of miles away from where I was folding 'em, then—another bit of grass rather like this, only away over there"—he pointed up to the summit of a ridge away from the lane—"and I hadn't a gun with me, that night. And I saw 'em, two of 'em—grey shapes away in the mist—just glimpsed 'em for a moment. Great things like donkeys."

"Long-eared, eh?" Gees surmised thoughtfully.

"No, I couldn't say I saw any ears. The size of donkeys, I mean. They showed up against the sky, and I went after 'em, but, of course, I couldn't find anything. Then I went off back to the fold as quick as I could, and got there in time to find two carcasses all mangled like the two over there"—he nodded at where the two carcasses lay—"and no sign of pad-marks nor nothing to tell me where them things come from or where they went—and there's never been any sign to guide us, either. That sight of 'em I got—just the grey shapes, and no more."

"And you went back," Gees observed, marveling at the courage of the man who had thought nothing of going back to his sheep when two ravening beasts, "the size of donkeys," had been abroad.

"As I'm tellin' you, sir," Cottrill said. "But Jimmy here"—he gestured at his dog, which looked up at mention of his name— "I've never known him act as he did then. Turned reg'lar coward, he did—stuck his tail between his legs and whined and cringed— didn't you, Jimmy?"

The dog stood up to wag his tail at being addressed, and then again sat down and gazed at his master. He was of nondescript breed, Gees saw, more collie than anything, sturdily built and shaggy.

"Something he didn't like facing, eh?" Gees suggested.

"Something he would not face, sir," the man amended. "Stuck behind me, and when I touched him he was all quivering with fright. I tell you, sir, just as I've told the master, them grey things are more than dogs. They're devils, and know as much as devils know. Lord, if only I'd had my gun, that night! If only to make a blood trail to follow."

"Put that more plainly, Cottrill," Gees invited. "Devils, you say—what do you mean by devils?"

"Well, sir, I've had Jimmy here from a pup, and trained him up to his job. The sweetest tempered dog in a hundred mile, and as brave as a lion, against anything he can understand—things that live like him and me and you, sir, if you don't mind my puttin' it that way. And if he puts his tail between his legs and goes all trembly, it's because of something he can't understand, if you get me, sir. Unearthly, I'd say."

"Things that live like him and me and you." Gees picked out the words and echoed them thoughtfully as he gazed at the dog.

"There you are!" Tyrrell exclaimed, with a note of exasperation. "Cottrill's got it—even Moore, the policeman, looks at it like that, I believe! They're all set on believing there's something unearthly about this—but ghosts don't go in for material killings like those." He nodded at the two carcasses lying beyond them, inside the fold.

"And you're bitten by the same bug yourself," Gees accused.

"I don't know what to think," Tyrrell owned.

"You're not a native of this district, are you?" Gees turned to the shepherd and addressed the question to him.

"Why, yes, sir," the man answered with a smile. "Born an' bred here, an' my father was shepherd at Dowlandsbar before me."

"But you don't talk like a native," Gees persisted. "What have you done with your Cumberland dialect, if you were born here?"

Again Cottrill smiled. "Well, you see, sir, there was the war—I was just a bit of a boy when I joined up in time to do a bit—"

"Military Cross," Tyrrell put in, "and recommended for a commission."

"Which I didn't want," Cottrill went on, "and after I got demobbed I thought I'd see a bit of the world. So I went out to the States and did a bit of roving there, got off to Peru down the west coast an' went across the Andes to Buenos Aires—fooled about, as you might say, sir, on this job an' that job. But all the time I could see these fells—they pulled me back at the finish, an' here I am an' here I'll stop."

"Believing that some things don't live like him and me and you." Gees stooped and patted the dog as he spoke.

"Not exactly, sir, but keepin' an open mind. These fells—

He did not end it, but looked up at the heights about them. They were in a basin-like depression, pierced at its northern end by a narrow cut, along which flowed the tiny rivulet which had its source in a spring on the eastern hillside. And, as Cottrill ceased speaking, Gees felt the utter silence as a thing almost tangible: there was no breath of wind, no token of life of any kind on the hills that shut them in-until a solitary carrion crow sailed over them, a black and ominous thing against the hazed and cloudless sky.

"You were saying—?" Gees asked, after a long pause.

"An open mind, sir," the man answered. "Here we've got sunshine— full day—and it's difficult to believe anything but what you see. But after nightfall it's different—the fells have their own secrets. Before Mr. McCoul took the castle an' had it repaired to live in, I doubt if you'd get anyone in Odder to come past that gateway in the dark. It's old, a graveyard of the very old dead, the people who were here in the very beginning of things, an' they say they can feel—"

"Rank superstition, Cottrill!" Tyrrell broke in impatiently. "As a man who has seen the world, you ought to know better than to give heed to those old women's tales. And we came here for Mr. Green to see these carcasses—the way they were killed is real and material enough, with no ghastliness about it. You can't accuse a ghost of—"

"Wait, though," Gees interrupted in turn. "What tales do they tell of the castle, Cottrill? What was it—did anyone see a ghost there?"

Cottrill shook his head. "No, sir—I never heard of anyone seeing anything. But the feel of it—even in daylight."

"That is, until Mr. and Miss McCoul came to live there, and humanised it again?" Gees suggested, ignoring Tyrrell's evident impatience.

"I suppose so, sir. I haven't heard so much about it since they came to live in it. Not that that would have anything to do with our losin' sheep like this, though. I just told you because you asked."

"Yes—thank you very much, Cottrill. Now we'll look at these sheep, since that was the idea in coming here—eh, Tyrrell?"

"It was," Tyrrell answered shortly, and moved toward the carcasses.

The other two followed him, and the dog got up and padded sedately beside his master until they had walked nearly halfway across the fold. But then, abruptly, Jimmy stopped, whined, and sat down, looking up at Cottrill with eyes as nearly human as a dog's can be, and in them an expression half-fearful, half- pleading. Gees stopped to observe him.

"That's curious," he remarked.

"He's been the same every time, sir," Cottrill said.

"I'd have to carry him to get him near them corpses, and even then he'd fight to break away from me an' darned near bite me to do it. An' him that'd tackle anything on four legs or two, if I set him at it. Jimmy!"

With the last word he called to the dog, and both Gees and Tyrrell stopped to watch. But Jimmy crouched down fearfully and whined, evidently more fearful of obeying the call than of what might happen to him for refusing. Cottrill went back and patted him, and he thumped the ground with his tail once or twice, as if glad of this absolution.

"Now, Jimmy—come on, old chap!" Cottrill adjured him.

But again the dog crouched and whined, in abject fear.

"All right, then," Cottrill said reassuringly, and turned to go on. "He's never disobeyed me about anything else," he explained, "an' I'd trust him with anything, anywhere. But this is—well, too much for him to stand, by the look of it. He won't go near 'em."

Following him and Tyrrell, Gees looked down at the two horribly mangled carcasses. "I don't wonder," he said rather grimly. "But"—he bent over one of them—"ripped and torn like that, and no blood?"

"There never is, sir," Cottrill said.

Bending down, Gees took hold of a foreleg and turned the stiff carcass over so that it lay on its back. There was a great, ugly tear beginning at the throat of the animal, and running back to its shoulder, and the flap of fleece and skin hung loosely back, showing the bloodless flesh torn and gnawed—where the meat should have been thickest, bone gleamed whitely. And the mangling of the rest of it was sickening to see.

"They always drink all the blood like that, sir," Cottrill said in a matter-of-fact way, "an' then have a feed off the meat."

Gees straightened himself. "Two killed like this, every time?" he asked, gazing at the other, equally mangled carcass.

"No more, an' no less," the shepherd confirmed him.

Gees looked back at the dog, down with his head on his forepaws, now, faced toward them and watchful. Again the silence wrapped round him like a fourth presence here. Then Tyrrell moved, impatiently.

"Well, what do you make of it?" he demanded.

"Nothing, yet," Gees answered imperturbably. "Give me time."

He snuffed at the air as might a hound seeking a scent.

Then he took a petrol lighter from his pocket, flicked it, and held it up. The tiny flame stood straight—there was no breeze to deflect it.

"Do you smell anything?" he asked of Cottrill.

"Ah, I wondered if you'd get it too, sir," the man said.

"What do you get?" Gees asked, putting his lighter away.

"It's like—an' yet not like—the wires in front of Passchendaele, sir," Cottrill said slowly. "I was there, an' the corpses hung an' rotted on the wire, an' the smell, when the wind drove it—like what I get after one of these killin's, and yet not like it. This is fouler."

"Very faint, but foul, as you say," Gees confirmed him. "But it doesn't come from those." He nodded at the carcasses before him.

"No, sir, not from them," Cottrill said gravely.

"What the devil are you two talking about?" Tyrrell demanded. "I can't smell anything unusual." And he too sniffed, and shook his head.

Gees disregarded him. "Cottrill," he said, "when the police took it up—at least, I suppose they took it up—what did they do?"

"Had a search for dogs all round," the shepherd answered, "an' couldn't find one they could blame, anywhere, let alone two. Then Inspector Feather—he's the big noise around here—he asked me to let him know instantly the next killing happened, an' he brought a blood-hound to see if he could track the things that did it."

"And the bloodhound?" Gees asked—though he felt he knew the answer.

"Just like Jimmy there." Cottrill nodded at his waiting dog. "They couldn't get it near the killings, an' when they made a cast round with it, it just shivered an' crouched an' wouldn't work—wouldn't even try for a scent. An' I remember that scent you picked up—just now was much stronger, then—it was fair hellish. But the hound wouldn't take it."

"I must see this Inspector Feather," Gees half-mused. "What are his views now—I suppose you still report the killings."

"I do," Tyrrell put in, "and I've raved at him. Also he's had six men on watch for a week on end, all with shotguns, and never a trigger was pulled. While they watched, nothing happened—as always."

"Well, what does he do now?" Gees persisted.

"Comes up and sees me, and regrets. To hell with his regrets! Offers to keep men on watch as long as I like and what's the use? He could keep men on for six months, if he would, and the night after they go off it would happen again. It always does, when Cottrill gets a night's sleep. I feel like rounding up every sheep I own and putting them into a sale yard, except that I hate being beaten."

"You're not beaten, yet," Gees said thoughtfully. "Neither am I."

"Do you mean you're going to put an end to it, then?" Tyrrell asked.

Gees gave him a whimsical sort of smile. "As I asked before—give me time," he answered. "I want to see several people, including this Inspector Feather and some of his men, and"—he turned to Cottrill—"for awhile I'm going to leave you alone, as far as looking after the sheep is concerned. You may have one or two more killings before I come in to stop them, but I may want to talk to you at times."

Cottrill shook his head. "The sheep are my people," he said.

"I know," Gees assented, "but—without being irreverent—it is expedient that two should die—or four should die—for the rest. For the present, I am not watching sheep, but going straight for the things that play hell with them, and—as you've noted already—drink blood."

"Vampires?" Cottrill only half-questioned.

"No. You're a thinking being, Cottrill, so it's safe to tell you I'm not sure what they are. I've got to find out, first."

"Good luck to you, sir," Cottrill said earnestly. "I wouldn't wonder if you did get to the bottom of it. I'll do just as you say."

"Then carry on, you and Mr. Tyrrell, as if I were not here—until I feel like getting busy at the sheep end. I'm on the other end, first."

"Not dogs?" Again it was only half a question.

Gees smiled. "Perhaps dogs," he said. "Except—that smell."

"I get you, sir," and Cottrill smiled. "Half-dogs, say."

"And what the hell all this means—" Tyrrell began, and broke off.

"There's a good deal of hell about it, as Cottrill has found out," Gees told him. "Or rather, a state between earth and hell— this is about the most interesting business I've run up against since I ditched an airplane in the sea off Worthing—and made money out of it."

With a last glance at the two carcasses, he turned away.

"I've seen enough, and heard more," he remarked. "I've got a hunger I wouldn't sell, and I suppose you do have lunch, at Dowlandsbar—what a glorious name for any place! Do we go back, or do we go back?"

Tyrrell, making no reply, walked beside him. As they neared the dog it stood up, gazing anxiously up at its master.

"Good old Jimmy!" Cottrill said encouragingly, and the dog wagged his tail vigorously. "We're both scared, an' you're honest about it."

"By the way"—Gees stopped abruptly—"what do you do with those?" He turned his head to nod at the two carcasses they had left.

"Burn 'em," Tyrrell answered. "They'll be carted to a heap of brushwood and stuff at Dowlandsbar, and a few cans of paraffin make sure of their being altogether destroyed. Nobody would touch that meat."

"Which goes to show that the bug has bitten you too," Gees observed. "Well, Cottrill, we shall meet again. I don't blame you for being scared. It's natural, considering everything."

"Glad to've met you, sir," the man said, with a hint of earnestness.

"And I you," Gees answered sincerely.

He untied his pony and mounted to return, his feet looking bigger than ever as they hung down below the turn-ups of the jodhpurs. Tyrrell led the way up to the lane.

"Think you've got to the bottom of it, do you?" he asked as Gees came abreast of him beyond the stone wall. There was a trace of derision in the query.

"As far down as the neck," Gees answered imperturbably, "and I've got to get all the way down to the feet and the ground under them. Don't be so damned impatient—I've not been here a day, yet."