The Dancing Druids

Ibid. (The Giant with the Three Golden Hairs)

« ^ »

Neither Mrs. Bradley nor her son Ferdinand had very much spare time; neither was their scanty leisure coincident. It happened, however, that a new grandchild had been born, and Mrs. Bradley had attended the christening; thus she was at her son’s house, three miles from Cuchester, when two handsome boys turned up to see Ferdinand and to ask his advice.

‘I suppose I throw them out?’ suggested Mrs. Bradley’s young and competent secretary, Laura Menzies, when, having been apprised by the butler of the presence of Gascoigne and O’Hara, she had confronted Mrs. Bradley with the news. ‘It seems a pity. They’re easy on the eye and ear, and come from what the cognoscenti call Oxford College.’

‘Admit them,’ said Mrs. Bradley, leering horribly at her grandchild who happened to be lying in her lap.

‘But doesn’t our native honesty compel us to explain that Sir Ferdinand is in London defending the public- spirited murderer of six G.I. brides?’ demanded Laura.

‘True, child. But do not stress the fact of his absence just at first. Do I know these boys?’

‘I don’t… at least, I didn’t until they introduced themselves. They are Irish, I should think, from their names. Let’s see.’ She closed her eyes, opened them, and recited, ‘Mr. Patrick Michael Brian Maurice Bennett Sean O’Hara. Mr. Gerald Fitzgerald Gascoigne. And very nice, too. As a Scot, I appreciate aristocratic nomenclature, and they’ve got it in gobs.’

The baby blew a series of congratulatory bubbles and Mrs. Bradley swabbed these away with absentminded efficiency. A moment later the two tall young men, one as black as Saturn, the other fair as Apollo, were shown into the room by the butler in accordance with Laura’s instructions.

They looked apprehensively at the baby, critically at Laura, and with evident interest at Mrs. Bradley, who scarcely did justice to the ninety years with which she had been credited.

‘Sit down and speak freely,’ said she, handing the baby to Laura much in the manner of the Duchess in Alice handing over her sneezing child. ‘Be bold. Confess—for only the walls have ears.’

‘We came,’ said Gascoigne gravely, ‘to… to put a hypothetical case, as it were, to Sir Ferdinand Lestrange. I… er… that is, my mother used to know him. It’s… well, it’s Michael’s… my cousin’s… story, really. Go on, Mike. Speak up.’

‘Begorra!’ said Mrs. Bradley, fascinated by the lordly Hibernians and anxious to do them honour by employing what she affected to believe was their idiom. ‘Arrah, now, be aisy, wouldn’t ye?’

This last remark, apparently addressed to the baby, achieved its object. The young men laughed, with some constraint but to their own relief. Laura rang the bell, passed the buck (in her own words) by giving the baby to the nurse who answered the summons, and seated herself at the table with notebook and pencil.

‘Go on, please,’ she said, ‘but make it snappy. We have to catch the three o’clock train.’

‘Well,’ began Gascoigne, ‘as I say, it’s really Mike’s story, and, to tell you the truth’—he turned to Mrs. Bradley again— ‘it isn’t too easy to explain.’

‘I see,’ Mrs. Bradley observed. ‘You haven’t, by any chance, committed murder, I suppose?’

‘No,’ said O’Hara, coming in boldly at this. ‘But I’m wondering whether, perhaps, I’m an accessory after the fact.’

‘Interesting,’ remarked the elderly lady. ‘Well, go on. Don’t leave out any details, however unimpressive they may seem, and don’t cut a long story short, whatever you do. The three o’clock train doesn’t matter.’

‘Step high, wide and handsome,’ agreed Laura, licking her pencil and looking expectantly at them.

‘Well, it was like this,’ said O’Hara. He told the story of the hare and hounds cross-country run, and of his experiences at the lonely farm. ‘And I’m now quite certain that the man was dead,’ he concluded, ‘and from the fact that he was said to be suffering from something infectious, but actually bled all over me, I’m wondering whether there wasn’t something rather peculiar, in fact, something rather nasty, about the business, and, if there was, well—I’m involved, I suppose. I’d rather like to know what to do.’

‘It might be better if my son did not advise you. Not, at the least, face to face. I will put the facts before him myself, if you desire it, and, if you will give me an address to which my secretary, Miss Menzies, can write, I will let you know his unofficial views.’

‘I say, that’s awfully good of you,’ said O’Hara. ‘You see, when we found that the fellow had not been admitted to hospital…’

‘I do see. Now, there are just one or two points which my son may want to have clear. First of all, tell me, how many of you were running across country that day?’

‘Eleven, including Gerald. He was the hare.’

‘Had you only one hare?’

‘Yes, only one.’

‘So there were nine others besides your two selves, and all nine of these were hounds. Was anybody missing from the reunion at the end of the day?’

‘No, we were all there. I got in late, of course, but… Oh, one fellow didn’t finish. A bloke called Firman. He’d told us he probably wouldn’t, though. We met him next day while we were messing about at the farmhouse. He turned up in a car and gave us a lift. That was—well, just a bit queer. That he should have been there, I mean. But I don’t suppose there was anything in it, you know.’

‘Was there any untoward incident, other than Mr. O’Hara’s extraordinary adventure, on the day of the race?’ Mrs. Bradley asked, turning to Gascoigne.

‘Not that I heard of. But I didn’t see any of the others during the run. At least, not to speak to. We were pretty close at the finish, but I was running my hardest then, and wouldn’t have had much breath to spare for gossip.’ He paused for a moment, laughed, and very soon added, ‘But there was plenty of chance at dinner for the men to swop stories, and I didn’t hear of anything unexpected.’

‘There was that fellow, though, that I took to be you,’ said O’Hara.

‘Oh, but that must have been Firman, as we said. You must have spotted him after he’d decided to give up.’

‘Yes, I know. Still, it doesn’t altogether fit in with the rest of his story. His uncle doesn’t live in that direction, and he was hanging round that farm in his car next day.’

‘And it couldn’t have been any of the others, because they were all in a bunch for the whole of the run. We know that.’

‘Who were these others? Were they all particular friends of yours? And were they members of your University?’ Mrs. Bradley enquired.

‘It’s nothing to do with the Varsity,’ Gascoigne explained. ‘It’s an athletic club. They don’t bar anyone so long as he can run a bit and pays his subscription and isn’t a bounder. I expect you know the sort of thing. We joined while school was evacuated during the war, and now turn out when we can.’

‘Ah,’ said Mrs. Bradley, scanning the plaintiffs narrowly, and ignoring most of their remarks, ‘and what interpretation are we to put upon the word “bounder,” I wonder?’

The cousins exchanged glances ; then Gascoigne said :

‘Rotter, I suppose. I don’t know quite how one’s…’ he smiled ‘one’s aunts would interpret the word. I meant that anybody can join, and they keep him in unless they find they don’t like him, and then they bung him out. That’s all there is to it. Unless you’re a bounder you’re welcome for as long as you like.’

‘Does it ever happen that a member is asked to resign?’

‘Hardly ever, but they did give a miss last year to a fellow who pinched money from the dressing-rooms. It’s awkward, you see, if the fellows can’t leave their loose change in their trousers’ pockets. Then there was a chap just before the war who was blackballed for dirty running.’

‘It was more dirty temper than dirty running, I think,’ put in O’Hara. ‘At least, that’s what I was told. He used to spike fellows round the bend behind the water jump—very malicious, I believe. Two other clubs complained to the secretary, and chaps don’t complain about that sort of thing for nothing. I mean, anybody is liable to get spiked if there’s manoeuvring for position going on, especially in a tight race and with a big field. Fellows get boxed in, you know—it’s all tactics in the longer races unless you’ve got the legs of the rest of them, and even then you’ve got to keep your wits about you. But with this chap it was a bit nasty, apparently, so he came off the books. Can’t have bad blood between one club and another. Ruins the whole thing. The committee were quite right to sack him.’