Читать книгу Nine Strings to your Bow - Maurice Walsh - Страница 4

I

CON MADDEN was wakened at five o’clock in the morning by the crowing of a cock greeting the sun. Con was farm-bred, and, for a little, thought he was back in his own bed in the house where he was born, and that it would be time to get up for school in a few more minutes. He looked at his watch and swore.

When he got down to breakfast he found the dining room empty and the table laid for two. So Peter was still abed. Ah, well! he needed a clean rest between clean sheets with no dreams to trouble him.

The dining room was a good-sized square room with a high mantel over the big devon fireplace. The mahogany sideboard, table, chairs, and wall-clevee of blue delft were solidly antique.

A comfortably plump woman of more than mature years came in carrying a dish-covered tray under an ample bosom. This was Mrs. Johan Bartley, the cook-housekeeper, and Con had made her acquaintance on the previous night. Now he was not in the least hungry. He never was, for breakfast.

“Good morning, sir!” Mrs. Bartley greeted him.

“Good morning to you, ma’am. Hope I’m not too early for you?”

“Misther Peter was lazy this morning and had his breakfast not more than an hour ago. He couldn’t wait. Denis was up at five and will be in any minute for his. But you’re in grand time, sir.”

“I forgot I was back on a farm,” Con said. “So Peter is in harness already. It is good to have him back?”

“It is God’s own blessing, sir.” Mrs. Bartley spoke positively. “Lookat, sir! If an angel from heaven told me that Misther Peter had done what they said he did, I wouldn’t believe one single word of it. He did no wrong, and that is what we all say in this place.”

“The whole world will say it shortly, loyal woman.”

Mrs. Bartley looked at him with lively interest. “Glory be to God, sir! and more power to your arm.”

Hobnails sounded from the tiled back-passage, and Denis Buckley came clumping into the dining room. Con had not met him the previous night. He was a big lumbering man and unsmiling—not stern so much as dour, almost uncouth. He was not so tall as Con, but thicker and wider. His thatch of hair was a reddish grizzle, and his straight cut stub of a moustache was definitely red against a red-weathered heavy face. One might wonder how such a man was the father of a golden woman like Muriel Gordon.

“Denis, this is Mr. Madden, Peter’s friend,” Mrs. Bartley said.

“He told me,” he said in a surly bass, and forthwith sat down to breakfast. Buckley ate steadily and made no effort to be courteous to a visitor. Con considered an opening that might interest a glum farm foreman.

“A promising season, Mr. Buckley?”

Mr. Buckley chewed steadily and swallowed. “ ’Tis not then,” he said and refilled his mouth.

“Of course not!” Con laughed. “May was too harsh, with not enough wet and wind in it, and if we don’t get some more rain we’ll have to resow the neeps, while the hay crop is doomed—short and with no bottom. My dad was a farmer too.”

“A poor way of living,” said Buckley.

“Sure as you’re born,” Con said. “Every season is a bad season, and no season is a good season until it is two years behind. I hear you are leaving soon, Mr. Buckley.”

“I am.”

“Not a good time to be leaving.”

“The crops are all in.”

“I mean your leaving looks like forsaking Peter Falkner? He might need your moral support?”

“I am going in a month.”

“You might not be going in a month,” Con said smoothly.

“There is nothing to stop me.”

“I might.”

Buckley lifted his red eyes and fixed them on Con. “Young man, I had nothing to do with Mark Aitken’s death.”

“Had Peter Falkner? If you or he hadn’t, someone had,” Con said. “Are you afraid that you know?”

Denis Buckley laid his fork down, shoved his plate away, and lumbered out of the room.

Con Madden drank the last of his tea, lit the first cigarette of the day, inhaled luxuriously, and strolled out into the hall. On the left wall near the door two big curved hooks were screwed into the wall. That’s where the fatal weapon rested, for anyone to see and lift, was Con’s thought. Doubtless the police were still holding the gun.

Con saw through an open baize door the tiled back passage. He lounged, and Mrs. Bartley’s voice came from her kitchen. “You’ll find Misther Peter in the bawn, sir.”

“On my way,” Con called.

Con lazed across and through to the bawn, with the long line of lime-washed steadings at the back. There was no one about. The cattle were at pasture, and the men in the fields after the breakfast hour. Not even a dog barked.

He found Peter sitting on the crotch of an old apple tree, recharging his sound and polished briar pipe. He was wearing uncreased flannel trousers and open-necked shirt, and his forearms carried no tan, and his face was too lean and too white. But the grim, line was vanished from his mouth this morning, and his blue eyes smiled at Con.

“Sitting under his own vine and fig tree,” Con remarked. “Are we the only idlers on a fine farm morning?”

“I was waiting till you had breakfast.”

“My first in years.”

Peter looked at Con’s waistcoat.

“Go to blazes!” Con said. “That’s only beer.”

“There’s some about when you want it. Shall we scout round and see the boys sowing swedes?”

“I want to do some talking first.”

Peter laughed. “Talk away then. This is a slack week. In ten days we cut the crop meadows and you’ll talk as you work.”

“I might not be here in ten days’ time,” Con said, and gestured a hand widely. “How do you find things?”

“Ship shape. Denis is sound but conservative.”

“Is that why he is leaving you?”

Peter frowned. “I don’t think so. His sort like to die in harness.”

“That was my impression. I had breakfast with him.”

“You did not gouge any small talk out of him?”

“Two useful words at a time.”

“When I came here first I did my best to make him talk. After that I got to like his silences—a comfortable old grizzly to live with, and Johan Bartley talks enough for two.”

“That’s a loyal woman.”

“Sure—if she would not croon over me.”

There was a short silence before Con again spoke.

“What have you on this afternoon?” he asked then. “Could I do some fishing?”

“Taking time off?” Peter laughed.

“You might think so,” Con said. “Any chance of a real fish?”

“Salmon.” Peter shook his head. “Not enough rain, but you could try. We’ll get Barbara and Hughes to come along.”

“I brought a few flies with me,” said Con. “You might look them over and pick one or two for the Doorn water.”

Con reached across the paper twist. Peter opened the top and inserted a careful finger and thumb. The fly he brought up was big and gaudy. He looked curiously at Con.

“It is a salmon fly,” he conceded, “but you did not expect to rise a fish with it in June water?”

“An ig’orant cuss, ain’t I? On the big side?”

“By a mile.”

The second was just as big. He brought the fly up to his eyes, spread the wing, and examined the set of the barb and loop. Then he stared up at Con, and his eyes were hard and wide and blue.

“You are a quick worker, Mr. Madden,” he said. “I’ll say that for you.” He laid three flies on his palm and pointed a finger at them. “A Jock Scot, a Silver Doctor and a Popham, but jungle cock swopped for Chinese pheasant.”

“They look over-winged to me,” Con said judiciously.

“Maybe! I dressed them. My own tricks and variations.” His finger pointed out. “The set and knots and wax, and the way I turn the loop skeways.”

“You lost them somewhere.”

“They were lifted, and you know it. In that fishing book that went missing that—that bad morning a year ago.”

“It was a valuable book?”

“The contents were. The book was a nuisance—as big as a street directory. My father’s—and I had a sentiment about it.”

“I know where to look for your book, and I know where to put a finger on a certain man. We are moving nicely, Mr. Falkner, but I cannot tell you any more for the present.”

“That goes with me,” Peter said. “I have to apologize to you, Mr. Madden. In falling for your proposal I had no illusions about success. At the back of my mind I knew that I would have to carry on against something that will not give a man a hold. But, now, I have a sneaking hope that you will come back some day with the bacon on you.”

“Ready for hanging,” Con said.

“Gosh, son! I believe in you. This is the place I want to work for, to root for. You clear my name and watch me make Danesford a place worth living in for the men and women who work on it. Mark you! for the people who do the work. I have no use—”

“Easy all!” cried Con. “To-night about midnight, over a drink, I’ll go to the mat with you on sociology.”

Peter stepped back and considered the big lazy smooth-faced man. “Appearances are deceptive, big fellow,” he said, “but you’ve got the goods on you somewhere.” He grinned. “Should I call you Con or Cornelius?”

“You are aiming towards a thick ear, young Peter. Only one man calls me Cornelius, and I can’t stop him.”

Peter flexed his arms. “Right! In a month’s time I might call you Cornelius for devilment. At your service, Con. What can I do for you?”

“Take me fishing this afternoon,” Con told him. “My real object is to get you and Everitt and Miss Aitken into a quiet place and hold converse with you.”

Peter looked up at him quickly, and Con nodded. “Yes, I am taking you three into my confidence.”

“That is good hearing. You don’t know—”

“I do. You were afraid, and are now relieved. We four make the working team. There may be another at a distance, but he need not concern you. Don’t let your cousin, Tobias, come along this afternoon!”

“Don’t need to. He’s off at the West Coast tournament—golf, you know! He is a whale at golf.”

“Are you going to make him hum too?”

“I’ll kick him out on his ear, if he keeps on sponging on Barbara,” said Peter.

“Just one other item,” Con said, straightening lazily from the fork. “Do you tote a gun?”

“Should I?” Peter asked.

“Have you one?”

“Best automatic there is—Toronto made. Barbara had it, but I saw it back in the desk drawer this morning.”

“There is no danger, I think,” said Con slowly, “but we can’t make too sure. Don’t you prowl about much in lonely places, but if you have to, take along the gun. I am taking one too. That’s all!”

II

The Doorn is an excellent fishing river. It is famed for spring salmon and autumn grilse, and the sea trout keep coming in and up from June onwards, but this is not a fishing record. The four young or youngish people landed three nice sea trout. Con caught two; Barbara the other; Peter, the best angler there, only wet a line occasionally. Hughes Everitt did not fish at all, and came trailing along with the picnic tea basket.

About five, Barbara made tea.

Barbara looked good in her breeches and knee boots, a new measure of contentment in her dark eyes. A tan greyhound sat couchant at her side and Barbara was pleased with Peter to-day. The rigid line of his mouth had softened, and his eyes were no longer watchful.

She could not understand the presence of this Mr. Con Madden. She thought she knew all of Peter’s friends by name or in person. Her curiosity got the better of her. She said:

“Peter, you have a secret life?”

“Which one?”

“The one out of which Mr. Madden has stepped—as a Nemesis or something.”

“That gate-crasher! Ain’t you, Con?”

“When you come to think of it, I am,” Con agreed. “I gather that the time has come to hold forth. Peter and I plotted to bring you out here to talk and be talked to. I’ll do the talking to begin with. I talked to Peter for a day last week and he agreed to bring me down here to do a job of work. Now you know?”

“A job of work?” Barbara repeated.

“I am only the junior partner in a firm of two in a small private detective organization. A sort of a freelance organization, and we sometimes choose our own cases. The Aitken case is a famous one—”

“Notorious is the word,” Peter amended.

“Notorious for its mishandling. My partner and I had a look at it from various angles, and we decided that it was a case made to order. That is all.”

Barbara pointed a finger at him. “Mr. Madden, you would not have got into touch with Peter unless you were convinced of his innocence?”

“It is like this,” said Con. “The firm decided that Peter was a thoroughly incompetent practitioner of murder as a fine art, or that there was a nigger in the woodpile who lacked subtlety. It would be nice exercise to bring that nigger into the open.”

“Then you must assume that Peter is not guilty,” persisted Barbara.

“He assumes more than that, Barbara,” said Hughes Everitt. “He must assume that you and I are guiltless also, otherwise he would have told us nothing. What is on your mind, Mr. Madden?”

“Co-operation,” Con told him. “I want an exchange of confidences. This is a case for team-work, and I cannot choose a better team than Peter and his two best friends.”

“You have enlisted an accomplice, Mr. Con Madden,” Barbara said.

“I am entirely on Peter’s side,” Hughes Everitt said, “but I do not know you, Mr. Madden. If I think you are running around in circles I shall tell you so.”

“Fair enough!” said Con equably. “You could not say less as a loyal friend—though I naturally prefer a certain young lady’s attitude. Let it lay. I have chosen my team.”