Читать книгу The Road to Nowhere - Maurice Walsh - Страница 8

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Paddy Joe sat in the stern, elbows on knees, and smoked steadily for a while; his shoulders swayed easily to the slow kick of the oars.

‘A nice lad yon,’ suggested Alistair presently.

‘He was in my thoughts,’ said Paddy Joe.

‘The look—something back of the eyes—deep in head—like ice-water down my back. What was it, Paddy Joe? You know?’

‘I do, God help me. That damned writer’s memory of mine!’

‘No weakling either—wine, woman——?’

‘Not ever! Two years ago he was as vigorous a man as ever donned the blue rugby jersey of Scotland, and that’s saying a mouthful. I saw him stop big Con Dolan flat as a flounder five yards from the line, and Con’s fifteen stone, like a fifteen-inch shell.’

‘Two years is a hell of a long time—you said that like a funeral.’

‘So I did. Think! Rogan Stuart! Does the name stir a memory?’

‘Rogan Stuart! No-o! I’m not a rugby fan.’

Paddy Joe looked down at the chess-board framework of the coracle and frowned. ‘My Norrey—your red-head,’ he half-mused, ‘and the young ones—God guard them——!’

‘What are you driving at?’

‘Suppose something happened—some accident——?’

Alistair lunged at the oars. ‘Drop that, Paddy Joe! Blast you, what a hellish thought! Do you want me to go tearing across Ireland and all Scotland——’

‘That is what happened to Rogan Stuart.’

‘When—how?’

‘Not so long ago. He lives in Dublin—or did. His wife and two-year-old daughter left the North Wall by the night-boat last winter and the boat sank in a collision in a Mersey fog.’

‘Both of them?’

‘Trapped in their berth. There was some rumour of scandal too—there always is. Some said the wife was running away from her husband, and others added that she was fleeing to the arms of another man——By the Powers! that’s queer.’

‘What is?’

‘We saw that man in the village yesterday.’

‘That tall good-looker you pointed out to me?’

‘Yes—Eudmon Butler, known as the Black Captain—a terror on two feet in love or war.’

‘Perhaps Stuart is on his trail?’

‘It could be—and what a hell of a fight at the end of it! But leave it, lad, leave it! Let the dead rest. Rogan Stuart must dree his own weird. That’s enough for you and me at this minute, and if more is required of us we’ll not be backward. Watch what you’re at! Pull your right, or you’ll bump the point.’