Fallen Into the Pit

In the light of the torch they examined, large-eyed, a small irregular oval of silver, mottled and discolored now, but showing gleams of clean metal; a little shield for engraving, but never engraved, dinted a little, very thin, apparently from long use and sheer old age, for all the lines of its pattern were worn smooth and shallow. Round the outline of the shield curved decorative leaves, the flourish of the upper edge buckled and bent a little. It bore five tiny holes for fastening it to a surface, and by the strong round curve of its shape they could guess what kind of a surface.

“It’s like on that walking-stick we gave to old Wilman when he left school two years ago,” said Dominic in a hushed voice, “only a different pattern, you know. And a bit smaller, not so showy. But you can see it is off a stick. I can’t think of anything else that would make it curve like that.”

“Or an umbrella,” said Pussy. “It could be.”

“Yes, only people don’t often give umbrellas for that sort of present, and put names on them, and all that. They’re such stupid things it would look too silly. But lots of walking-sticks have these things on. And—we were looking for something that might belong to a walking-stick.” He looked up at her across the tarnished glimmer of his treasure, and his eyes were enormous with gravity. She stared back, and asked in an almost inaudible whisper:

“But how did it get there?”

“I think it was like I said. He did shove the weapon in there to wash off the traces. And this plate had worn very thin, and the top edge was bent up, like you see, so the water had something to press against there, and it tore it right off and washed it down among the stones there, and it lodged tight. And when he grabbed up the stick again to make his getaway—because he wouldn’t want to hang around, when for all very few people do come here, somebody easily might—he was in too much of a hurry to notice that the shield was gone. Or if he did notice it, he didn’t think it safe to stay too long looking for it, and so there it stayed. Well, it’s reasonable, isn’t it? How else should a silver plate off a stick get in a place like that?”

How else indeed? Pussy said with awe: “Then we have found it! After all, we didn’t come out for nothing. And now if we can find the stick this shield came off—” She shivered in her turn, remembering the strange pale island of Helmut’s hair in the center of the brook’s channel; and suddenly she didn’t at all like this place by night, and wanted to be anywhere out of it. She clutched urgently at Dominic’s arm with a thin, strong, dirty hand, and besought him in a low voice: “Let’s go, Dom! We’ve found it, now let’s get home. You ought to get it to your father, quickly—and anyhow, it’s awfully late, I’m sure it is.”

He could not tear himself away too easily, now that he had something to show for it, something to advance as sure proof that he had real ideas about the case which they wouldn’t allow to be his, that he wasn’t just being inquisitive in a totally aimless way. He was torn two ways, for he had an uneasy feeling that he had let time slip by more rapidly than he had realized, and it would be well for him to make all haste to placate his parents. But also he wanted to pursue success while he had hold of her skirt. What more he could expect was not certain. He knew only that he was on, an advancing wave, and to turn back seemed an act of folly.

“And you’re terribly wet,” said Pussy. “You will catch cold if we don’t run for it.”

So they ran, taking hands over the rough places, he with the little shield clutched fiercely in his left palm in his damp trouser-pocket, she with the beam of the torch trained unsteadily on the path ahead of them. Halfway down the mounds, Dominic remembered the other item of information he had to pass on to his father, the odd decision of Charles Blunden to reverse his policy toward the Coal Board. Not, of course, that that had anything to do with the Helmut affair, or could compete in importance with the silver plate; but still it was, in its way, interesting.

Four

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Dominic arrived blown and incoherent at the back door just as the church clock chimed the half-hour, and wondered, as he let himself in with unavailing caution, whether it was half-past nine or half-past ten. It couldn’t really be only half-past nine, though the thought of the later hour made his heart thump unhappily. What on earth had made him forget to put on his watch? But he had a talisman in his pocket, and a tongue in his head; and anyhow, they were always willing to listen to reason.

He had no time to steel himself, for the kitchen door opened to greet him, though he had made no noise at all; and there was George bolt upright in front of the fire looking distinctly a heavy father, with one arm still in the sleeve of a coat which he had just been in the act of putting on, and was now in the act of taking off again, with some relief; and there was Bunty at the door, with a set, savage face like angry ice, and eyes that made him wriggle in his wet clothes, saying as he halted reluctantly: “So you decided to come home, after all! Come in here, and be quick about it!”

Quite ordinary words, but a truly awful voice, such as he had never heard from Bunty in the whole of his life before.

Dominic’s heart sank. Suddenly he was fully aware of every smear of grime on his face, of his encrustations of clay, of his appalling lateness, of the fact that George had been about to come out and look for him, and, into the bargain, of every undiscovered crime he had committed within the year. The scrap of silver clutched in his hand no longer seemed very much to bring home in justification of all these enormities.

He stole in unwillingly, and stood avoiding Bunty’s fixed and formidable eye. In a small, wan voice he said: “I say, I’m frightfully sorry I’m late!”

“Where,” said Bunty, levelly and coldly, “where have you been till this hour? Do you see that clock?”

Now that she pointed him to it so relentlessly, he certainly did, and he gaped at it in consternation. But it couldn’t be true! Half-past ten he could have believed, though even that seemed impossible, but half-past eleven! He said desperately: “Oh, but it can’t be right! It was only seven when I went out, it just can’t have been as long as all that—”

“And what have you been doing? Just look at you! Come here, and show yourself!” And when he hesitated discreetly among the shadows in the doorway, his heart now somewhere in his filthy shoes, she took two angry steps forward and hauled him into the light by the collar of his jacket, and like any other mother gasped and moaned at the horrid sight. “George!” she said faintly. “Did you ever—!”

George said blankly: “My God, what an object! How in the world did you get into that state?”

“I’m most awfully sorry,” said Dominic miserably, “I’m afraid I am a bit dirty—”

“A bit!” Bunty turned him about in her hands, and stared incredulously, despairingly, from his ruined gray flannels to her own soiled fingers. “Your clothes! They’ll never clean again, never! Why, it’s all over you. It’s even in your hair! How on earth did you get like this? And where? Nearly midnight, and you come strolling in as if tomorrow would do. And filthy! I never saw anything like you in my life. And you’re wet!” She