[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
indicated that a hose with plenty of pressure behind it was the only means by
which cleanliness could be regained without scratching the gloss of the
surface, and he gave it up.
He went out and along the winding branch of lane that would take him as far as
the church. He wanted to see the church. By-and-by, when he got rid of his
present almost somnolent indifference, he would plan what to do next to make
Naylor regret stopping payment of that cheque. When he had got the eighteen
guineas, he would entrust it to Todd with instructions to dole out pints to
the worthies for as long as it lasted. They need not know who was responsible
for the munificence or why it was bestowed on them: a sort of fund, with Todd
as trustee&
The church proved uninteresting. There had been brasses, but no more than the
studs in the stone remained. Of memorial tablets he could find none. As nearly
as he could tell, the fabric dated no farther back than the sixteenth century.
In all probability, when the castle of the Warenns had existed where the
Hall now stood, there had been a place of pre-Reformation worship as part of
the establishment. This church had replaced that earlier gathering-place.
Well, that was that. Some Naylor had put in a stained glass window to the
Page 64
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
memory of Eleanor his wife, and, knowing a little about the colour-values of
medieval stained glass, Gees felt that this squire of
Troyarbour had done his early-Victorian worst or the craftsman who had done
the work had done his worst. There was a collecting box for foreign missions
in the porch, and Gees grinned at it. Sam Thatcher and his friends treated
furriners warily. So would he, Gees.
He saw a curly tail, termination of a line of bristles, whisk past the nearest
buttress of the church as he emerged to the mugginess of outer air, and
remembered Firth s remark to the effect that Ira Warenn came near the church
once a year, to place a branch of hawthorn on her father s grave. An odd sort
of tribute, but no concern of his she did as she liked. And bringing a boar
pig into the churchyard well, it was her boar pig. Nothing whatever to do with
him.
He went slowly, thoughtfully, back toward the inn. Should he leave Naylor to
his own devices apparently there was no means of getting at the man and run
the car out and go back to
London forthwith? He could be discussing fourth-dimensional experiences with
Miss Brandon soon after lunch time he could discuss anything on earth or out
of it with that girl, he knew, and she never let him
down. And Naylor and his eighteen guineas meant nothing, in reality: only the
humiliation if it were that of being done had fetched him, Gees, back here.
It was a petty reason for coming all this way, when one thought it over. Yes,
he would go back, rule out Troyarbour and all in it from his scheme of things,
and find something more worthwhile in some one of the inquiries that reached
his office by each day s post.
With that resolve he quickened his pace. Merely to throw his pyjamas and other
belongings back into the suitcase, back the car out of the shed after settling
up with Todd, and
In the after days, he never cared to think much of what followed on that
resolve: it was too ugly, too nightmarish&
Jerome St. Pol Naylor came riding on a big chestnut hunter, riding down from
the Hall toward the main village and the frontage of the inn. It was a
powerful beast that he rode, up to far more than his weight, and, following
him, came the hound to which the worthies of the inn had alluded in their talk
the preceding evening. A hound with a muzzle that, Gees estimated, would touch
him at the waist-line and he was just over six feet in height. A vast-chested
brute, with tapering, almost borzoi fineness of jaw-line but behind the muzzle
were eyes deeply sunken, bloodshot and furtive. And on its great paws the
beast slouched heavily, as might an overfed Great Dane it was no
lightly-stepping hound, but the mastiff build, powerful and formidable.
The girl Phyllis came out from the post-office, just as Naylor rode past the
doorway. Looking up at him as he passed, she had almost missed sight of the
great hound, until it nosed up to her, sniffing at her as she went across the
grass toward the inn. At that Gees was just emerging from the lane toward the
church, then she screamed and struck at the brute, and her open hand landed on
its muzzle.
On the instant it leaped and had her down, screaming horribly: its long teeth
fastened in her shoulder, and it shook her slight form as a terrier shakes a
rabbit and Naylor swung his horse about, his crop raised while he
shouted Rollo!
Rollo!
He might as well have shouted to the wind or the racing clouds over him: the
hound had something to worry, and took no heed of him.
RUNNING toward the prostrate girl and the great beast that worried her, Gees
heard behind him a voice it was not loud, but had a carrying power that threw
the words down into his consciousness Dolph! Kill that dog! Kill, I say! The
dog! Kill!
A ridiculous pattering of tiny hooves, the split hooves of swine, and the boar
Page 65
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
went past Gees he himself was running, but that lightning charge left him as
if he might have been standing still. He saw the line of bristles on the
boar s back stand up as it passed him, saw its charge, and saw that the great
hound released its hold on the now unconscious girl to face this assailant and
Naylor tried to strike at hound and boar, but could not get the horse to face
them. It swerved and wheeled about, and Gees had time to think the rider a
poor horseman while he saw the fight between hound and boar.
A brief fight. Adolphus charged in, a flying fury, and from the snapping of
his jaws a tusk took the hound low and behind the thorax, disemboweling him so
that his entrails fell and tangled under him. Yet he lived, and, living, got a
jaw hold on the boar s hide, just behind the shoulder, where he hung on and
worried, dying as he was till Adolphus, with an incredible turn of his thick
neck, got the hound s muzzle between his mighty jaws, and crushed it with a
sound of splintering bones. Blood poured from the wound the hound had made in
his shoulder, and pig-like, he squealed at the pain and sight of his own
blood, but took a fresh grip after squealing, farther back toward the hound s
neck, and crushed its head to pulp. By that time, both Gees and Ira Warenn
were abreast the combatants, and she said, Well done, Dolph!
Oh, well done! Brave Dolph! Well done!
Bent over the unconscious girl, by that time, Gees was aware that Firth, the
ex-doctor, was bending over her too. Firth said, Get your hands under her,
Mr. Green. Lift her and hand her to me both lift, and get her up into my hold.
I ll carry her home and dress this bite. And, on that, Gees lifted, and got
the limp body into Firth s arms, to see him walk off with it toward his
double-fronted house as if he had been carrying a small child.
A sound of trampling, thunderous hooves Gees started up and back, and saw that
Naylor was trying to ride down Ira Warenn. Stark murder looked out from the
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]