way clean through something which had hung between them for so long that she had almost forgotten how he looked when he was not obscured by it. She did not feel the eyes of every soul in the bar converging upon them, with a weight of speculation which would have hurt her only ten minutes ago. She was not aware of the sudden silence, and the equally sudden discretion of voices veiling it, rather too quickly, rather too obviously. She did not stop to argue, but did exactly as he asked her; she had been ready to do exactly as he asked her for quite a long time, and the real trouble had been that he had never asked her. She turned, and flashed through the rear door, holding it open for him to follow; and the surprising creature, turning to run a critical eye over the whole company assembled in the bar, singled out Jim Tugg as the most potentially useful and the most proof against astonishment, and jerked an abrupt head at him to join the conference in the kitchen.
“Lend us a hand on a job, Jim?”
Jim left off leaning on the corner of the bar, and hitched his muscular length deliberately after them, the collie padding at his heel soundlessly. The men of Comerford, glasses suspended in forgetful hands, watched his dark, shut face pass by them, going where Chad Wedderburn called him, uncommitted, apparently incurious, certainly unsurprised. They fell silent again, their eyes following him until the door closed between. Joe, rolling back from the snug with an empty tray, looked them all over and asked blankly: “Who’s been through? The Pied Piper?”
When they told him, he shrugged his wide shoulders, and went on drawing beer. He was at sea already with Io; better to keep his fingers crossed and leave her alone.
In the kitchen Io turned on Chad and Pussy wide-eyed. “What is it? What’s the matter? Where did you find her, Chad, and what’s wrong with her?”
Chad looked at the clock; it was twenty-five minutes to nine. He looked down at Pussy, whose green eyes were blazing again hopefully, almost gleefully. “Now, then! Get your breath back, and tell all that tale again in less than five minutes. No interruptions, there isn’t time. If you or he are pulling our legs, look out afterwards, that’s all. But now, we’re listening!”
Pussy recounted in rather less than three minutes the instructions she had received from Dominic, and the way he had looked and acted at that interview. Io and Jim kept their eyes on her throughout the recital, but Chad’s were on Io, and when Pussy’s breath and facts gave out together Io seemed to feel the compulsion of his glance, for she looked directly up at him, and both of them smiled. A rather anxious, grave, and yet very peaceful smile, confirming, where there was no time for more, that while what was about to happen was extremely uncertain, what had just happened was the most certain thing in the world, and neither accident nor mistake.
“Well, what’s the verdict?” asked Chad.
“We must go, of course,” said Io. “I don’t say he’s really on to anything important, but almost certainly he’s going to be in some sort of trouble if we don’t fish him out of it. Either way, he needs rescuing.”
Jim said: “What is there to lose? If the kid’s father isn’t here to lug him out of mischief, somebody else better take over. All the more if there’s more to it than mischief.”
“There is,” said Pussy earnestly. “I tell you, he’s dead serious. I think he was a bit scared, really, but he’s got some clue, I’m sure he has. Let’s go, quickly! There’s only just time.”
They slid out from the scullery door to the yard, Io clawing a coat from the hooks in the passage as she went. It was the mackintosh she wore when feeding the hens, but she didn’t care. And suddenly in the half-lit scullery Chad turned and caught her hand restrainingly as she struggled into it.
“No need for you to come, Io. Stay here! We shall come back.”
“What do you take me for?” she demanded indignantly, and remained at his shoulder as they scurried across the yard. “This may be something real—have you thought of that? You know Dom. He isn’t a fool. He doesn’t go off at half-cock.”
“Yes, I’ve thought of it. So go back and help your old man, and take Pussy with you. Who’s going to look after the bar if you quit?”
“Damn the bar!” said Io. “If Pussy and I stay behind, who’s going to look after you?”
Two
« ^ »
Dominic went up the last fifty yards of dark birch-coppice with his heart bumping so heavily that it seemed to him its impact against his ribs must be clearly audible a long way ahead, like a clock with an enormous tick. If it went on like this, it would be difficult to talk. He tried to restrain its leaping, breathing deeply and slowly, clenching his hands and bracing his muscles to struggle with the pulse that shook him. It was ten minutes to nine. He had just seen the smoke of the train, a pallid streak along the line with a minute rosy glow at its forward end, proceeding steadily in the direction of Fressington. It would take the old man the full ten minutes to walk up the lanes from the station and reach his forest gate. So Dominic had time to think, and time to breathe slowly.
He came to the gate and waited there. Behind him the absolute dark of the first belt of conifers, beyond which the older mixed woods began; but in both, darkness enough, only the wide drive making a perceptible band of pallor until it lost itself among the tree’s. Very close to the pathway the bushes and trees leaned. He thought of them, and felt comforted. Before him, across the green track, the clumsy, crumpled mounds, half-clothed in furze and broom and heather, blundering away into a muddle of birch trees once more. On his left, the winding lane dipping down into meadows and coiling to the station; and on this side it seemed almost light by comparison with the blackness of the firs within the Harrow fence. On his right, grass-tracks meandering to the bowl of the well, autumnally filled now with coppery ocher-slime and stained, iridescent water.
Dominic’s feet were caked to the ankle, and felt too heavy to lift. He groped along the dark ground for a broken end of stick, and began to clean the worst accumulations from under the waists of his shoes. The little notebook he was clutching, still damp to the touch, and soil-colored almost to invisibility in the last remains of the light, could hardly suffer by such smears as found their way to its covers. It was already a disintegrating mess. But he had better keep his face and hands fairly presentable. The former he scrubbed energetically with his handkerchief, the latter he rubbed even more vigorously on the seat of his flannels. The moist October night settled deeper about him, an almost tangible silence draping his mind like cobweb, when his wits had to be so piercingly clear. He pulled the little torch out of his pocket, and tried the beam of it. Not too big a light, not so bright that it made vision easy even when held to the page. The faint, faded ink-marks in the book, widened and paled by soaking in water, sunk into the swollen texture of the pulpy leaves, winked and seemed to change and shift under the light, sometimes to vanish altogether with his intent staring. But here and there a word could be read, and here and there a column of figures, conveying its general significance but not its details.
Down the lane from the station there began the sound of footsteps, heavy but fairly swift, though the old man was climbing a decided slope. Presently there was a bulky, increscent shape vaguely discernible against the sky, gradually lengthening to a man’s full height; and Selwyn Blunden, puffing grampus-like, and leaning heavily on his stick, came laboring to the gate.
