Читать книгу Grey Shapes - E. Charles Vivian - Страница 9

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EXTERIORLY, as Gees decided when he came out from the house after a huge and satisfying lunch with his host, Dowlandsbar was utterly devoid of architectural pretensions: it was no more than a big, oblong stone box, divided into compartments by the interior partitioning walls and dumped on a ledge of a hillside so that it faced south-west—if the ledge had been artificially terraced in the side of the hill, the work had been done so long ago that no trace of it remained. The thickness of the grey stone walls was that of a fortress, and, as Gees had already noted, the interior walls were of little less solidity. Slate-roofed above its two stories, it was a grim- looking habitation—but inside was a treasure house of the handicraft of past ages. There was a huddle of outbuildings tucked away at the inner end of the house, viewing it from the lane, and before it, over the ridge that it faced, showed the ragged tops of Locksborough Castle's ruined walls, with the boxlike keep rising apparently undamaged in their midst, its arrow-slit windows and even the machicolations that crowned it intact. No other dwelling-house or building was in sight.

"I want to ask you some things," Gees stated, as Tyrrell came to stand beside him. "To begin with, how many men do you employ?"

"Six—eight, altogether, and three maids in the house—which is including the cook," Tyrrell answered. "You're an odd sort of inquiry agent, Green," he added, with amusement evident in his tone.

"Not an agent at all—a principal," Gees dissented. "I like the way you've taken me in as a brother, too, instead of putting me out to board or leaving me to fend for myself. But where do your men live?"

"You'll find their cottages quite near by—two of them in the glen just outside the gate, but on the other side of the lane."

"M'yah! Houses have a way of hiding themselves in country like this, of course. How old is this house of yours, by the way?"

"Does it matter to your inquiry?" Tyrrell countered dryly.

"I don't know what does matter, yet," Gees said. "Never mind, if it pains you. Magnificent weather for September, isn't it?"

"The newest part of the house—that is, the end nearest to the outbuildings, which you can see is an addition if you look closely at this front wall—is not less than three hundred years old," Tyrrell explained rather morosely. "This main doorway is much older."

"Much," Gees agreed, turning to look at the house and taking out his cigarette case. "Have one—no? I will, then. It looks to me as if the original builder made it a one-story fabric, and then a later occupant lifted the roof and put another floor under it— and a still later one put that new end on, three hundred years ago, you say. Bless me, how time flies! And yours is an old family, I gather?"

"I don't know how you gather it," Tyrrell said, "but you happen to be right. A relative of my ancestors achieved some distinction in the New Forest with a bow and arrow, not many years after the Conquest."

"Saxon, eh?" Gees conjectured thoughtfully.

"Mainly Danish, my branch of the family," Tyrrell dissented.

"And settled here? But the Danes stuck to the East coast, surely?"

"Oh, no! They allied with the Irish, in the early days, and came across the Irish Sea to see what they could find on this West coast, quite a few of them. Vikings used to winter at Dublin, and hire themselves and their men for the wars between Irish chiefs, and some of them came over here and settled. Also, this was part of Northumbria in those days, and that was nearly all Danish."

"Quite so," Gees agreed. "There was a chap named Siward, earl or something of the sort. I must look it all up, some time."

"And what has all this to do with my sheep?" Tyrrell inquired acidly.

"I don't know, yet," Gees answered with unruffled placidity. "I'm getting the feel of the place. Do you know who built that castle?" He nodded at the ruined walls beyond the ridge that they faced.

"Yes, it was William de—Guillaume, he called himself, Guillaume de Boisgeant." He spelt out the surname after speaking it. "Why?"

"Umm-m!" Gees took no heed of the final query. "I'd hate to be called wooden giant, myself. Would that be—when did he build?"

"In Stephen's time, and the name is supposed to imply that he came from somewhere near Ghent, or his ancestors did. Spelling was a mere wild amusement in those days. But he built on the site of something much older—that hillock where the castle stands is peppered with Roman brick, and even the Romans built on older earthworks. And now have you had enough of archaeology, or shall I go inside and fetch out a few volumes of the Britannica? You've only to say the word."

"Put that differently, and I ought to be thinking sheep, dreaming sheep, and talking sheep," Gees observed thoughtfully. "Slaughtered sheep, that is, bled white by what killed them. Well, perhaps. Tyrrell, if you don't let me tackle this in my own way, it won't get done. If you do—well, I'll amend the terms we made in London—in my office. I'll accept fifty pounds for putting an end to your trouble, whether it takes a week or seven months, and nothing at all if I don't end it."

"Then you're sure of success?" Tyrrell asked eagerly.

"No. I don't know yet what is killing your sheep, but I've seen for myself that these are no normal killings, which simplifies it, enormously. The abnormal is bound to declare itself, if you look for it long enough and in the right way. And I haven't asked you a single question that does not bear on the problem, though you may find that hard to believe. But—who's that coming through the gateway?"

"Inspector Feather—the one in civilian clothes," Tyrrell answered after only a glance at the small touring car advancing along the drive, "and that copper with him is Constable Moore, our local muddler. I telephoned Feather about this last killing as soon as Cottrill reported it to me—I've telephoned him each time it happened, and he's come out each time to show me how useless he is about it."

"I didn't suspect the existence of a telephone," Gees observed. "What is it, a Marconi contraption? You've got no wire visible."

"Since the wire came down with the snow every winter, and put me out of communication, I had it laid underground," Tyrrell explained. "It comes up to join the ordinary wires at the end of the lane."

"You're not a poor man, are you?" Gees remarked abruptly.

"Well?" Tyrrell asked, and smiled amusedly.

"And yet you live in a place like this?"

"You heard Cottrill say how the fells pulled him back," Tyrrell said. "So with all of us who belong here—and my people have lived in this house for centuries. It's in the blood of us to stay."

"There is no escape," Gees reflected aloud. "And you mean to marry Gyda McCoul and rear up successors to feel like that—and stay here."

"I've not asked her to marry me, yet," Tyrrell admitted, "but— yes, I do mean that. Does it also bear on the problem of the sheep?"

"Call it a mere statement of what I saw as obvious last night," Gees countered. "And now—the inspector. Let us be practical."

The final observation was a fruit of his survey of the man who got out of the car after pulling on his handbrake at the corner of the house, instead of driving up to stop abreast the main entrance. A very large man, though still active in all his movements, clad in a suit of grey tweed that fitted him none too well, he looked more military than police with his squared shoulders, brownish-red face in which his grey eyes were deeply set under bushy brows, and big, cavalry moustache hiding his mouth. Following him came Constable Moore, equally large, but of a slow, lumbering type—Hercules with sciatica, Gees mentally dubbed him. The inspector, approaching Tyrrell and Gees as they stood on the graveled frontage, saluted by touching his soft felt hat.

"Afternoon, sir," he said to Tyrrell. "I thought I'd just look you up over this last outrage, to see if there's anything different about it."

"In fact," Tyrrell interrupted savagely, "to show your damned incompetence once more. I'm utterly fed-up with you, Inspector Feather."

For some seconds, the inspector appeared as if about to choke, and his reddish face took on a purplish tinge. Then he achieved control over himself, and spoke in a way that Gees admired.

"Very good, sir. I'm sorry to have intruded on you. I hope you have no objection to my seeing your shepherd, Cottrill, about it?"

"See him by all means," Tyrrell snapped back. "And after that, what are you going to do about it? Go home and dream again?"

"Mr. Tyrrell," Feather asked coolly, "if a man of yours has bungled some piece of work, do you castigate him in front of others?"

"I'm sorry, Inspector," Tyrrell said frankly, realizing his own lack of decency, "and I take it all back. Green, this is Inspector Feather, who has tried to get to the bottom of this trouble—though with no success, so far. Inspector, Mr. Green, from London, who—"

"Is just looking round your wonderful country and admiring it, and enjoying my friend's hospitality," Gees put in. "Though I've not seen much of it yet, having only arrived last night. I expect your duties take you over a fairly extensive territory, Inspector?"

"Some few miles to cover, sir," Feather answered, far more placably than he had spoken to Tyrrell, so far. "It's a sparsely populated area, this, and I do a good bit of driving about in the course of a week."

"And in all your driving, I suppose, you've never come across a case like this," Gees suggested. "One so difficult, I mean."

"That is the case, sir. It's—well, baffling, say, I find it."

"Yes, very, I should think," Gees assented encouragingly. "Mr. Tyrrell has been telling me all about it, and we went to see the carcasses of these last two sheep this morning. I suppose you've tried everything? I know a little about police work, by the way."

"Is that so, sir?" The inspector accorded him a slight increase of respect, and Tyrrell frowned heavily, but did not interrupt them. "Yes, I think I've done everything possible. Drummed up six men this summer—though it's difficult for me to spare as many— and put them on watch over the sheep—and the very night after they were taken off it happened again. Moore, here, has watched with Cottrill, too. I've had a census of dogs taken all over my district, and exonerated every one of 'em, and last June we had that drive, you'll remember, Mr. Tyrrell."

"Drive?" Gees echoed. "How do you mean that, Inspector?"

"Got every man we could, and two troops of boy scouts, and started early in the morning to beat all the countryside for miles—I had an idea it might be an animal or animals escaped from some menagerie or something—they're big beasts that do this, as you can see from the carcasses, and I had an idea there might be something hiding in the fells and coming out to play this devil's game with Mr. Tyrrell's sheep. But we found nothing—except for one wild cat that one of my men shot."

"Which was not big enough to do damage of that sort," Gees observed.

"Not by a long chalk, sir. Mr. Tyrrell"—he turned from Gees as he spoke—"I propose to organize another drive. We may find something if we do, and I can get more men into it, this time."

Tyrrell made a slight grimace. "Do what you like," he said, "but if you stop to reflect, you'll remember that these killings have all been exactly alike, pointing the fact that the same beasts have done them all the time. Add to that, there has been as much as a fortnight interval between two killings—and if those things are hidden in the fells, what do they live on? Do they starve for a fortnight?"

"Well, there are rabbits, sir," Feather ventured.

"Do you think, in six months, we should not have come across some sign if they had been killing rabbits?" Tyrrell demanded. "Do you think Cottrill or somebody would have gone all this time without finding some sign of the things themselves? He, for one, tramps every bit of the fells with that dog of his—and he's seen nothing at all."

"Yes, sir, but I'm suggesting they may lie up outside the bounds of your land, and come in to kill. I propose a twenty-mile drive from north to south, and adding in the boy scouts we can get, there'll be between one and two hundred people beating the country, this time."

"With intervals of fifty yards, and the size of these things that do the killings, they ought to find them if they're there," Gees put in.

"At least, it seems to me worth trying," Feather said hopefully, "and it's got to be done while this weather lasts, if at all. Once the autumn rain and fogs begin, it would be a mere waste of time."

"When do you propose to undertake it, then?" Tyrrell asked.

"Well, today's Tuesday—Friday, I'd say. I can get my crowd together and out here by about eleven on Friday morning, if you agree."

"And do I feed them, or pay them?" Tyrrell asked acidly.

"No more than you did before, sir," Feather answered, and Gees sensed the resentment that his quiet tone concealed—he was a genius at keeping his temper, evidently. "The boys will bring their own food and treat it all as a lark, and I shall look after the rest of them—that is, the county will have to stand the expense. But"—he turned to address Gees—"it'll be more than fifty yards intervals, sir. With that, you'd only cover a front of five thousand yards, not the full width of Mr. Tyrrell's own land. From one to two hundred yards apart, I want them—and those things are big enough to see at that distance."

"You're going by Cottrill's glimpse of them and his description," Gees suggested, after a moment's pause for thought.

"To some extent, sir. But if you see things like these by night, with probably a bit of haze about, they're bound to look bigger than reality. Cottrill said they were as big as donkeys, but anything the size of a Great Dane would be big enough to do what they're doing."

"Still doing," Tyrrell amended for him, sourly.

"Mr. Tyrrell," he said gravely, "if you can suggest anything I have not done in connection with this case, I shall be most happy to do it."

There followed an awkward minute or so, and Gees feared lest Tyrrell should break out into open rage. But, instead, he laughed.

"You win, Inspector," he said. "No—I'm sore over it, as you'd be if they were your sheep, but I haven't an idea in my head beyond what you've done and propose to do. You want to see Cottrill, I suppose?"

"I'd like to see him, and inspect the carcasses, sir."

"Well, he'll be over in Anker's Glen—and you'll find four of my men carting the hurdles to make him a new fold. That is, unless he's gone out on the fells to see to his sheep, and in that case the men making the new fold will tell you where to find him. If this keeps on much longer, there will be nowhere to put fresh folds for him."

"You mean that you move the sheep each time?" Gees asked.

"Necessarily," Tyrell answered. "Sheep are the worst fools of all animals, but you won't get them down on to that ground where the killing took place for another two months, at least. Cottrill knows he can't, now, and so he folds in a fresh place after a killing."

"You get that, Inspector?" Gees asked.

"The smell of blood, I expect," Feather said. "In the same way, I've seen sheep go nearly mad over being driven into a slaughter house. All animals are the same when there's blood about."

But, Gees thought and did not say, there had been no blood at the scene of this last killing. Instead, there had been a faint reek that had a sickening, loathsome quality, a scent he could no more forget than define. He nodded a grave assent to the inspector's statement.

"That is so," he said. "Well, I shall be here to take part in your drive—and good luck to it. This is a ghastly affair."

"It's against my professional pride, sir," Feather said, "and I'd do anything to put an end to it, as Mr. Tyrrell knows."

He took his leave, and the stout constable, who had stood in the background and said nothing throughout the interview, though he had heard it all, followed his superior and climbed unhandily into the car. Gees watched meditatively as the inspector started his engine, reversed and turned, and eventually went off down the drive toward the gateway.

"His professional pride," he observed thoughtfully.

"What do you make of him, Gees?" Tyrrell inquired.

"Ah! That's real friendliness, calling me that," Gees answered, and smiled. "I make less of him than I do of you, over it."

"Explicate?" Tyrrell asked, after a thoughtfully frowning pause.

"Well, he lived up to the best traditions of the force, took all your insults as if they had been compliments," Gees explained, "and you didn't show up as the world's most perfect little gentleman against him, either. I'm being frank, and you can kick me out, if you like."

"No, I won't. Feather's a sound officer, really, but I'm so sore over this that I say more than I mean, probably," Tyrrell admitted.

"Well, say a little less about me, from henceforth," Gees urged gently. "You were about to tell him I'd come here to investigate this business when I broke in and stopped you at it. I don't want a board put up at the gateway to say Gees is investigating something between mumps and murder on this spot. I don't want you to shout my purpose in being here at any more of your friends or retainers, but just to play the simple innocent with a vast interest in Cumberland, which I'm now seeing for the first time. And if you tell the police I'm conducting a private investigation for you, you put the police's backs up—see?"

"With consequent loss of interest on their part," Tyrrell suggested.

"Possibly," Gees admitted. "Wow, but that was a whale of a lunch! Do you know what I feel like doing, at this moment?"

"Haven't the faintest idea," Tyrrell answered.

"Going to my room, pulling down the bed cover, and settling down for an hour or so before tea. It must be this air, I think."

"Just as you like." He sounded as if the idea did not appeal to him.

"Permission granted, obviously," Gees remarked. "You're thinking I ought to be up and about, of course, doing my damndest. But, as I told you, the terms of the contract are now fifty all in if I succeed, and nothing if I fail—and I do it in my own way."

"I'll see that you're wakened for tea," Tyrrell promised, far less stiffly. "And—you think well of Inspector Feather, apparently?"

"As a police officer—yes," Gees answered. "Trained to routine work and employing all the best police methods—more than he told you or me, almost certainly. Feather is no fool, within his limitations."

"Meaning—?" Tyrrell queried interestedly.

"I told you, the abnormal is bound to declare itself if you look for it long enough and in the right way—but you mustn't look for it in normal ways. Which is why I'm going to climb on to my little bed and either think or not—I think I want some more material to think over, before I really begin thinking. We'll see."

He turned toward the house and made for the entrance.

Tyrrell, unmoving, watched him go, and smiled.

"You can't help liking the chap," he told himself.