Death by the Gaff E-Book

John Haslette Vahey

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

“The Horn Hotel,
“Pengellert.
“Friday.
“DEAR OLD MAN,
“Thanks for your note. I thought my description of the sewin fishing would fetch you, but I didn’t know you would rise so smartly, and propose to put yourself on the bank here next Monday. You should have a good time, for the water is just right after the floods, and the sewin are running. I saw two salmon yesterday in a pool, and the ‘Teal and Silver’ is the fly to fetch ’em!
“Unfortunately, we have a snag here. It isn’t in the water, as you might imagine, but in this hotel. Its name is Solly Hayes, and it is very rich, very high-and-mighty, and a perfect pig. Let me expound!

Leseprobe

DEATH BY THE GAFF

John Haslette Vahey

1932

© 2022 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782383832942

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 1

Notes from the Scene

A Letter Received by Mr. Henry Wint

“The Horn Hotel,

“Pengellert.

“Friday.

“DEAR OLD MAN,

“Thanks for your note. I thought my description of the sewin fishing would fetch you, but I didn’t know you would rise so smartly, and propose to put yourself on the bank here next Monday. You should have a good time, for the water is just right after the floods, and the sewin are running. I saw two salmon yesterday in a pool, and the ‘Teal and Silver’ is the fly to fetch ’em!

“Unfortunately, we have a snag here. It isn’t in the water, as you might imagine, but in this hotel. Its name is Solly Hayes, and it is very rich, very high-and-mighty, and a perfect pig. Let me expound!

“This is an Association water, as you know. Inhabitants and visitors take tickets, and most of the anglers (bless ’em!) are decent sorts, with an idea of give-and-take, which is absolutely necessary in this kind of water. Solly isn’t imbued with the common ideals!

“From the first day, he got ‘upsides’ with half a dozen people; for he suffers from an obsession about his rights, and appears to want a clear bank for half a mile above and below him when he condescends to woo the fish. In other words, he is the sort of chap who ought to take a private preserve, or give up fishing.

“Then he came down here with the idea that all the inhabitants are rank poachers, and he an honorary keeper; he ‘high-hats’ the natives, as our American friends call it, and has already threatened one of them with some fishing protection association which only exists in his own mind!

“This last chappie is a tough lot, a jolly good angler, but a local artisan who is not the type to stand bullying. I hear he was with difficulty dissuaded from throwing Solly into the river; a feat which the rest of the guests here would have applauded, had it come off. One or two of them have already told the proprietor that they go, or Solly does, for he’s a crabbed beast even among his fellows in the hotel.

“However, as I think I must leave on Tuesday, I shall soon be rid of the wasp. I thought you might like a warning, for Solly has booked his room for another three weeks, and the landlord doesn’t like to turn him out.

“Well, I’ll see you on Monday. Take my tip and get in a stock of ‘Teal and Silver,’ medium size, and small hooks; and fine, tapered casts. You can’t catch sewin here with heavy casts.

“Till then, old dear,

“Yours,

“BOB.”

A Letter Received by Mrs. Solomon Hayes

“The Horn Hotel,

“Pengellert.

“N. Wales.

“DEAR CAROLINE,

“Sport continues to be good, in spite of the rascally ways of some of the so-called sportsmen here. I have had to warn one or two already that this type of thing has got to stop. I am afraid that, had the fishing not been so good, I should not have remained here another day, for the men in this place are a common lot, and I do not, and have never cared for vulgar society, as you know.

“I am, of course, not referring to two of the guests when I speak of vulgarity, or lack of breeding, as distinct from lack of manners. One of these exceptions is a man called Robert Chance, whom I met some years ago. I have reasons for disliking him, and do not converse with him or recognise him. He is decently brought up, and of respectable family, though his ideas of sporting etiquette are far from those I was inculcated with in my youth.

“The other man is called Edward Bow. He went to one of the best public schools, but I know more about him than he imagines. However, that is not a subject which can interest you. I like to write of those things in which we take a common interest.

“Yesterday I hooked and lost a salmon, owing to most unwarrantable crowding by one of the ruffians here— an artisan, my dear, who does not know his place. I was, however, fortunate enough to get half a dozen sewin, ranging from one pound to two and a quarter.

“Your husband,

“SOLOMON.”

A Letter Received by Mr. James McTaggart

“The Pub,

“Pengellert.

“DEAR MAC,

“All nice here; landlord one of the best, fish running in their liveliest style; every prospect pleasing, and but one ‘gentleman’ who is vile.

“I knew him years ago. I must not say how many, but not many, as Edgar Allan Poe observes. He knows me, and I him. But what I know about Mr. Solomon Hayes is neither here nor there. Cryptic? So be it! There are laws of libel, my son, and various obscure torts (a lawyer’s touch after your own heart) I have no intention of committing.

“I wish you could throw over your conveyancing for a week or two, come down here, and, in your inimitable Scots’ way— for wha’s like ye!— convey a few sewin to bank. Incidentally, you might remember the boxing at which you were such a dab in the old shop, and uppercut Solly into the middle of next week; at any rate, out of here— into the everywhere, if you like.

“But sure to bring a supply of the ‘Professor,’ on medium hooks. That’s the fly for the beasties in this water, though an awfully decent bloke here has the lunatic idea that ‘Teal and Silver’ is the right thing. He means well, but you stick to the ‘Professor,’ if you come. And bring down a Jock Scott or two in a small size. The saumon are aboot, man!

“Cheerio,

“NED.”

A Letter Received by Miss Arna Payson

“The Hotel,

“Pengellert.

“MY DEAR ARNA,

“Here I am, among the sportsmen, and anglers at that! They seem almost human, in spite of your idea that only denizens of another world would waste their time trying to make fish rise by throwing a worm at them. By the way, it appears that they don’t. Such a nice young fellow here spent yesterday evening explaining it to me. It seems that only common people throw worms, the others cast flies. As I tried to tell him, as they are both insects it is the same thing. But he would not agree. He says the fly is an insect, but the worm is a bactrachian, or mammal, or something.

“At any rate, it was all very interesting and exciting, and I am to have a lesson to-morrow. His flies are charming, red and blue and all colours, with silver and gold bodies, and the absurdest names. One is called ‘Major Bather,’ but the young man could not tell me if that meant a fat man in the water or a senior officer.

“When I say the anglers are almost human I mean that they quarrel just like the rest of us over the smallest thing. And one dear old gentleman, with a bottle-nose which even his enemies admit is due to indigestion, was frightfully cheery all evening because he had caught a sewin— or sea-trout— an ounce bigger than the man with no chin. An ounce! The man with no chin does not require comment. He is an obvious dud. But I haven’t come to the exciting part.

“There is a man here called Solomon Hayes, and he looks just as wise as his first name. He says I am the only intelligent creature in the hotel, just because I agreed with him that as he is the oldest guest it is not fair for the younger men to get up earlier, and so be on the best pools before him.

“I admit that I like him, but no one else does. He almost had a fight with a local fisher— Mr. Hayes says he is nothing but a poacher— and he has had several rows with two men here. One is called Edward Bow. He is about thirty, and I am sure he is engaged, or a misogynist. At any rate, he only cares about fishing. He is rather good-looking, but I see very little of him, so it is wasted. The other enemy of Mr. Hayes is a Mr. Robert Chance. He is six feet high, blond and smiling, but Mr. Hayes says he is supercilious. He is always fishing, too, or else sitting smoking outside, and plotting against Solomon with the Bow man.

“It is a pity two presentable men waste themselves on the ungrateful fish, but they will not look my way, and Mr. Solomon Hayes generally gives me his company after dinner, and tells me what he did, and what the other people ought to have done. I may say he is forty or more, so don’t be alarmed! He is very rich, I hear, and looks distinguished, but has the makings of a terrible snob.

“By the way, what justifies you in being one? I often wonder, for it generally turns out that such people are nobodies. Perhaps to be a nobody properly you have to treat other people as minus that. Still, Solomon is rather a dear, and it may only be his way.

“Lastly, darling, the anglers’ wives. I admit that they are not so hardly done by as golfers’ wives, but how patient they are! One always carries her husband’s gaff— a big steel hook on a stick— to land a salmon if he gets one. But they say he has come for ten years and his wife is still posing that gaff, and hoping to stick it into something before they die. It sounds cruel, but she is quite jolly, and removes worms from the path before she walks on them.

“I like them all and admire them immensely. Between ourselves the Major Bather young man has a look in his eye at times which suggests that he wonders how many years I would carry a gaff before I broke down! He has now joined the conspiracy against Solomon, and the other day I heard him murmuring something about vieux marcheurs. What can he mean?

“He says there is a— a sinister feeling in the air, and makes cryptic jokes about someone having to make a good effort to swim out of one of the nasty deep pools here. When I asked him if he was being personal, he said years ago some poachers had thrown in an interfering old ass, and as they couldn’t get him out in time, he conked out. I though his way of telling the story callous. He might have said expired!

“Now I must cut off short. The young man, whose name is Peter Hoad, wants to show me a fly he has made.

“Ever yours,

Chapter 2

The Double Crusade

WHEN Harry Wint turned into Hedon’s, the fishing tackle makers, that Saturday morning, he found himself on heels that he thought he recognised; or, to be more correct on ankles, and a straight back, and the glimpse of a shingled dark head, which appeared to him properly to belong to Joan Powis.

He was not surprised to see her there, for she was an ardent angler too, and he followed softly and smilingly behind her, until she went to the counter, and asked the assistant for two dozen “Teal and Silver” sea-trout flies.

“Size six,” he said, over her unconscious shoulder to the assistant, who looked at him with bewilderment. “Morning, Joan!” he added, as the girl swung indignantly round.

She was pretty, but not alarmingly so. For beauty can be alarming, and the average man with sense likes a face which satisfies his æsthetic sense without alarming his advance-proprietary one, if such a phrase may be coined.

She smiled suddenly. “You’ve been shadowing me!”

He grinned. “Pure coincidence; but I can tell you of a better one. I turned in here to get some ‘Teal and Silver.’ What do you think of that?”

The assistant turned to his cases to get the required flies. Joan shook her head. “Coincidences are rare, Harry, and this isn’t one of them. I heard you talking of Pengellert last time you came round, and Dad said you had the straight top about some sewin fishing there. He knows the place, and said ‘Teal and Silver.’”

“I’m going there on Monday,” said Wint, raising his eyebrows.

“I’m going on Tuesday,” she said. She shook her head. “The place will be full of the fishermen’s wives. These places always are. But how ripping! Still, I had better go down alone. I hate broadmindedness, don’t you?”

“Loathe it!” said he. “Generally a sign that you’re trying to pretend you know your world. But here we are.”

The assistant showed them the flies, took their orders, packed them up separately in neat cardboard boxes, and sold them some casts. Then they left the shop together.

“We’ll go to my club for lunch,” said Joan; “I want to hear more about this place.”

They turned that way. “I can tell you all about it,” he replied. “I had a letter from Bob Chance this morning. He’s down there, and it seems decidedly exciting.”

“What, big fish?”

“Yes, but a sort of uncivil war as well. You must hear that before you decide.”

He told her all about it on the way to the club, but she did not seem dismayed.

“Your mountain is a horrid little molehill,” she protested, as they entered her club. “When Dad and I went to that unpronounceable Scottish place, the hotel there was full of ravening wolves, ready to cut throats for preference. You know what a lamb Dad is? Well, even he had to get on his hind legs once, and make a stand. Bob Chance is rather pugnacious, I always think.”

“Well, now you know, and the consequences will be on your own head, Joan. I’m delighted, of course. And, of course, you’re right. I expect Solomon is just the usual pompous mug one runs across everywhere.”

They lunched then he saw her home, and went back to his own rooms. He had rods to pack, and tackle to get ready, lines to attend to, reels to oil, and the thousand and one labours of love that an angler has on his hands before he goes on a foray. When he reached home he found awaiting him a steel telescopic gaff, which he had sent previously to Hedon’s to have the spring-protector mended. If the salmon were running at Pengellert, he might need it.

He was tremendously pleased to hear that Joan was going there too. There was only one hotel in the place, so they would be able to enjoy each other’s society in the evenings. The trouble in Town was that Joan’s home was infested with people. Her father was a very gregarious individual, and very popular; her mother was on all the committees that commit in London, and friends, helpers, and secretaries buzzed like bees about her.

Always, when he called, he would find meetings installed in the library; secretaries, and subscribers, and social workers, burbling in the morning-room. Her father would be hastening from one room to another, in search of friends, or quiet, sitting in the drawing-room where “no winds came,” as Joan put it (referring to the breezes which seem to play so freely over committees), or venturing into the billiards-room, to find the new “Benevolent Flat Building Association” examining plans spread on the green cloth.

But at Pengellert there would be no benevolence; only a bit of Joan to himself, and an opportunity to improve their friendship.

He was never sure whether it was Joan or he who was difficult; or, perhaps, diffident would be the better word. A few years back he had been famous for the way he tackled fierce forwards in the hottest Rugger match, but he was notably timid, or “sticky,” as some of Joan’s slangy friends put it, when it came to dealing with women.

He was not the fashionable caveman, and he was, while not overpowered by Joan, decidedly awed at the prospect of asking her to belong to him. A girl like Joan, who could face social workers without a tremor, and cast fly like a magician, was not rudely to be snatched at. There was, as he always reflected, the chance that she might turn him down. Girls weren’t outwardly sentimental nowadays; though he guessed that they were much the same within. Man had an easier job when he was chiefly regarded as a potential husband, and father was turned on to you promptly if you happened to suit.

The Sunday seemed long, as all days before fishing do. But he got through it, and on Monday was on his way, already debating, as the train hurried through the summer countryside, if he should stick to the old wet style, or try this upstream salmon fishing some chap in the North had started.

And by the evening, he came to Cwyll, and got into the bus for Pengellert.

It was at Cwyll, on a blue bay, that the river of the same name entered the sea, by way of a winding estuary that extended four or five miles inland. It ran through flat, lush meadows, and was fringed with reeds and bulrushes there. Just above the tidal water, the flanks of two mountains descended from right and left, and closed the view above, the bus passed through a narrow defile at the edge of the river, and presented a wonderful vista of a green vale, transected by tumbling waters, with a huddle of mountains making a purple background.

The Horn Hotel stood on the banks of the Cwyll, and its garden was bounded on the south-west by the stream. It was an unpretentious but comfortable inn, and when the bus stopped to unload Wint and his traps, there were half a dozen anglers and their womenkind sitting in the porch, talking earnestly.

It seemed to Wint that they were not as much interested in his appearance as hotel visitors usually are on the advent of a new rod. They glanced at him as he went in, followed by the Boots, carrying his rods and bag, and then the buzz of conversation started again.

He did not see Bob Chance, which made him wonder why. He had assumed that his friend would be there to welcome him. Neither did he see any man who corresponded to the description of the high-and-mighty Hayes. Perhaps both were out on the river.

The Boots appeared to be conversationally inclined. He seemed to be suffering from some sort of repressed excitement, and when Wint reached his bedroom, and asked if Mr. Chance was out, the reason for it became plain.

The fact was that the place had been the scene of a row, or, more correctly, two rows, though the last and worst had begun in the hotel and finished “off” as murders do in stage plays. Mr. Hayes had been a central figure in both.

The first trouble had taken place in the morning, when Mr. Hoad an impulsive young man, had accidentally taken Hayes’s landing-net as his own, and had been practically stigmatised as a thief by the excitable and tactless owner. But that affair, after a nasty beginning, had not come to fisticuffs, Mr. Hoad declaring that Mr. Hayes’s age saved him from a thrashing, and Mr. Hayes grabbing his net and marching off, murmuring something about Hoad’s youth saving him from gaol.

The second business was more serious. Chance and Hayes were on opposite banks, when Hayes objected to Chance fishing the same pool. Chance had got out his copy of the rules, and pointed out that he was entitled to fish his own bank on any pool. Mr. Hayes told him he was no sportsman, and no gentleman, or he would not speak of rules, and Mr. Chance retorted that his opponent was a damned old fool, who was looking for trouble.

Mr. Hayes, triumphant over Hoad in the morning, chanced his age, and waded across to argue the point; putting down a fish which had just risen to Chance’s fly. Chance, irritated by this, and thoroughly fed up with the tiresome fellow, told him to get back to his own bank. Hayes refused, Chance took him by the arm, and that, strictly illegal, assault so infuriated the other that he struck out at Chance, and was promptly laid flat on his back by a not too heavy uppercut.

Wint laughed when he heard that part of the account.

“I’m sure that ended it,” he told the Boots. “Mr. Chance is a friend of mine, and not a bully.”

“He’s a very nice gentleman, sir,” was the reply. “He picked t’other up, I hear, and said he was sorry he hit him, but Mr. Hayes he went off, and down to the police, and made a charge of assault, and the constable here hardly knew what to do with it. Anyway, Mr. Hayes went off to Cwyll this afternoon to see a lawyer, and Mr. Chance he went off there, to get some flies, he said. He took his rod with him anyway. So I suppose he meant to fish coming back.”

Wint smiled. “Very likely. Do they fish late here?”

“Mostly they do, sir, these bright days. The sewin won’t rise well till dark. Some of them stays right till midnight.”

“Then I’ll have a shot at it for an hour or two this evening,” Wint told him, “it keeps light pretty late, I know.”

Neither Chance nor Hayes was at dinner that evening, when Wint went down. His place had been laid at the table for two, one seat being usually occupied by his friend; so that he had no nearer neighbours than a pretty girl, and a young man, at a table about six feet away. The former was Miss Celia something; her companion was apparently the hero— or villain— of the morning scene, Mr. Hoad.

Several genial people at other tables greeted him with smiles or bows, then the soup was served, and he began his dinner, and a general, quiet inspection of his fellow guests. When he had finished, and drunk a hasty cup of coffee, he ran upstairs to get out his rod and tackle, and when he went down once more, only three women were in the porch. The men were in the smoking-room, with the exception of Hoad and another, who had gone off with their rods.

Wint began to fish at a point just above a bend in the river. There was no one in sight, and at first no fish rose, so he had leisure to survey the scene about him, and reflect on what was to him the strange nature of the fishing. This was the first time he had set out within half an hour of dusk, proposing to stay on the river till eleven or so. If it were true that some of the anglers stayed till midnight, and after, it was amusing to think that, invisible in the dark of night, a later hour might find a dozen to eighteen fishermen all busy on the various pools, unseen by the others.

Wint was not quite sure that he cared for the idea, but, being assured that the sewin did not take well till night in such low water, he went on, hoping to come across Bob Chance, and forgetting that the latter might leave the river, turn on to the road, which ran alongside it in places, and return to the hotel.

The scenery, as he admitted, was glorious. The stream ran in a rift, with alternating runs, pools, torrents and miniature waterfalls. On one side, the road separated it from the flanks of the mountains to the south, on the other side rose cliffs, with pines growing in the crevices, and a precipitous and stony path hanging on its lower rim. Above him he heard the mewing of a pair of buzzards and watched with keen interest the high circling of these great hawks above the crags.

As he made down a little, another sight struck him. It was a little bay in the cliff face, and the black mouth of a tiny tunnel. Puzzled for a moment, he remembered the mountain railway that ran under the flank of Cwyll Fawr, and emerging here and there for a few yards into the light, gave its passengers a brief and glorious glimpse of quick vistas of green, and silver and gold, and black; the slopes of the mountain opposite, the gleam of the tumbling river, the bright glare of the sunlight, the dark rocks that lay tumbled in the river-bed, as if giants on the summit of the crags had been playing pitch and toss with boulders.

Thrice the little railway emerged into the light in the two miles below the village, until it finally left the womb of the mountain, and had a new birth above ground.

Looking down river again, Wint wondered that he saw no other fishermen. He had understood that the locals fished, but he did not realise yet that many of them only went out when the floods freshened the appetites of the sewin already in the pools, and brought up fresh shoals from the sea. There had been no rain for a fortnight, and the water was clear as crystal, beautiful in its glassy clarity, but irritating to a man out for fish.

Wint was using a Teal and Silver fly of a large size, and, hoping he might chance on a salmon, had brought the gaff with him. But he saw no salmon, and not a single sewin vouchsafed a glance at his fly as he went on.

But now the dusk had come, and the mountains lost their hard shapes, and became soft and amorphous; their purple tops darkening towards night, and the shadows lying deep over the pools. Then the night came at last. Wint reflected. Should he go home? To make up his mind for him he felt a sudden pull, and tightening his line, found himself fast in a gleaming fish. He landed it, a pound bar of silver, chuckled happily, and stayed!

Chapter 3

Wint Loses a Gaff

WINT HAD ALREADY seen that the river could be dangerous to a stranger after dark. The shallows might be only eighteen inches deep here and there, but the water ran suddenly into dark pools ten to fifteen feet deep, where a mis-step might be an angler’s undoing. Once in the white whirling rush of a rapid, or down in the slow oily whirlpools in mid-stream a man, encumbered with waders, and blinded by night, would have little chance to save himself.

So, coming to a long pool as the last light faded, he settled down to fish it carefully, and having got nothing in the first essay, returned to the head of the pool, lit a pipe, and rested, preparatory to a second bout of casting.

Half an hour later, something rose, and he raised the rod top, and knew that he was into a big one. He never saw it, and was unable to say if it was a large sewin, or small salmon. But it ploughed up and down near the bottom for five minutes, then took to leaping and splashing, and finally went down, to jag viciously at the line.

When the jagging stopped, it lay at the bottom and sulked.

Gratified, but anxious, on account of the fine cast he was using, Wint played it carefully until it took that sulking fit. Then he threw in a stone or two to shift it, but without success. At last he decided to wait and see if it would move on again, with the line slightly slackened.

Suddenly it did move! It ran downstream, like a racehorse turned amphibian; down to the tail of the pool, into the rapid below, making for a welter of whirling waters in a maze of rocks. Wint followed it as best he could, stumbling over stones, barging into boulders, to the detriment of his shins and temper, until at last he had to stop in face of a nine-foot rock on the bank.

He tried to check his fish there, but failed. He let it run. The reel clacked furiously, nearly all his line was out now. He gave the brute the butt once more, in sheer desperation, and the rod doubled up.

Then the gut parted, the rod-top flew back, a rejoicing fish slid down into the deep pool below, and Wint swore and panted behind his rock.

Sufficient for one night was the evil thereof, he reflected, as he wound up his line, took down his rod, and began to climb cautiously up the bank in the direction of the invisible road. As he got up ten feet, there was the humming of the engine of a motor; a car, with headlights stabbing the gloom above, shot by. He made for that line, and found himself in a few moments astride a low wall that skirted the ravine, and was the protective boundary to the narrow road.

Pleased to have proved that the Cwyll fish were catchable at least— even if one beastie had eluded him, he began to walk back to the hotel. He met only one man all the way, and that was to him only a dark figure that went by him walking fast, without vouchsafing any reply to his speculative “Good night.”

It was a quarter-past eleven when he got in, and left his fish with the Boots, who told him that neither Mr. Chance nor Mr. Hayes had come back.

Wint nodded. “Well, I’m tired and will go to bed,” he said. “Let Mr. Chance know. I’ll see him in the morning.”

“He’s leaving to-morrow at eleven, sir.”

“Right. But I’ll be down at half-past eight— I expect these little troubles will fizzle out when the men cool down.”

He went to his room. Meanwhile, in the smoking-room, there was a mixed council of war going on, of which he was quite unaware.

There were three men and two women. There was the old man with the noticeable nose, called Harmony, Jane Harmony, his wife; a man with an unnoticeable chin called Gayte, another man called Bone, and, lastly, the pretty girl Wint had noticed on his arrival, Miss Celia Mason.

Mr. Harmony had a deep voice and a portentous manner. He had listened quietly for a while to the speculations of the others, and now made a pronouncement in a tone so funereal that Celia involuntarily smiled.

“And Mr. Hayes has not returned yet!”

There are some people who can remark that it is a hot day in such a manner as to produce an illusion that the flames of hell are leaping about their hearers. Mr. Harmony had that art. No one really cared if Mr. Hayes never came back, but Harmony’s dire way of turning a phrase, for a moment, almost cast the shadow of a tragedy over the informal council.

Mr. Gayte recovered himself first, raised what chin he had, tilted his head back till that inconspicuous feature looked Mr. Harmony right in the eyes, and then observed mildly that Hayes— might be fishing.

“Without a rod?” said Mr. Harmony. “Without a rod?”

“And in such a temper,” murmured his wife.

Celia laughed. “But the fish wouldn’t know he was in a temper, and if he did treat ’em rough when hooked, all the better,” she said.

Bone, who was normal in every way, including his voice, struck in: “By the way, where is his rod?”

Everyone sat up. Mr. Hayes had two rods, but he kept them locked in a case when he was not using them; being one of those people who treat their fellows as potential criminals, and their rods as celestial tools no one else could procure honestly.

“That’s true,” said Mr. Harmony, and glanced at his wife. “I know he sent off one to the makers yesterday, and the case is open. I saw it myself.”

“But he didn’t take the other to Cwyll,” said Gayte.

“He didn’t bring it back this morning,” said Celia.

Mrs. Harmony looked surprised. “Are you sure?”

She nodded. “I am quite sure. I was in the porch and saw the procession arrive. Mr. Hayes came in first, holding a grotty handkerchief to his nose; and Mr. Chance was behind him, trying to look solemn and sorry. Mr. Chance had his rod, but I am sure, now I think of it, that Mr. Hayes hadn’t. I remember he tried to raise his hat to me with one hand, while staunching the vital fluid with the other.”

“Then he left it at the keeper’s cottage,” said Bone.

“I bet he left it on the bank,” interrupted Gayte. “He had that scrap with Chance, and, never having run against a fellow tartar before, forgot his precious property.”

“Someone would have found it and brought it in,” remarked Harmony.

“I am not sure,” Celia said, “I don’t think anyone else was fishing that pool to-day, and the local people were not out. At any rate, they are as honest as the day down here, and it won’t hurt.”

Mr. Gayte nodded. “My impression is this: I expect the lawyer chap down at Cwyll told him not to make a mountain out of a molehill, and that he had no witnesses to make a case. Then he came back, stopped by that pool, and won’t be in ’til morning. You know he creeps out at dark to fish some special place no one else thinks of, the spot where he says he saw, or hooked, a twenty-pounder.”

They fell in with that view after a little. Night was the festive and successful portion of the twenty-four hours at Pengellert, and the Horn Hotel was popular because it served out latchkeys, and catered for people who might take a fancy to try for a trout in the small hours.

“I expect he is all right,” Mr. Harmony observed, more cheerfully. “But we are far from right. Speaking for myself and wife, I say that I have thoroughly enjoyed myself here, and the company as much as the fishing.”

“Here, here!” Celia murmured.

“Absolutely,” said Mr. Bone.

“With an exception as to the latter,” boomed Harmony, while Caroline nodded vigorous assent. “I have never quarrelled with anybody before, and I hope not to again, but I cannot and will not stand that man Hayes! If he does not leave, I shall— at the end of the week!”

There was a chorus of agreement. Mr. Gayte tilted his portion of chin again, and murmured “A Round-robin!”

This proposal received such support that the gratified Gayte at once got out paper and pen, and proceeded to frame the petition. It was regretfully admitted that it would not be a very agreeable job for the proprietor of the hotel to receive it, or put it into commission, but that could not be helped.

“I think,” said Mr. Harmony, when he and his wife had signed their names, “we should omit Mr. Chance and Mr. Bow from the thing— also Mr. Hoad. Their personal friction with Haynes might spoil it, and we have enough here to carry the day. This is my tenth year at this hotel, and without boasting I may say that I am as good a client at Mr. Hayes— doubly as good, if one counts my wife.”

“Who would dare not to count her?” said Bone, smiling, for Jane Harmony was popular.

“I certainly should not, especially as we are about to retire to bed,” said Harmony, rising and beaming at his wife. “Well, that is done. To-morrow, I’ll hand the Round-robin over, and hear what is said. I have your permission to put it strongly if there is any objection, eh?”

“Hot and strong,” said three voices promptly. “Let Solomon in all his glory depart!” added Bone.

The meeting broke up forthwith, the members of it crept to their room with the quietness of sewin fishers who are allowed privileges too precious to abuse, and in twenty minutes the hotel was quiet.

Half an hour after that, a tiny but important fraction of it awoke to life. A bell rang, after premonitory noises had half-aroused the sleepy porter. The noises were those of the engine of a car, which he trusted would pass on into the night. But the noises died out, and were succeeded by the bell.

The porter huddled on some clothes. He spoke Welsh and English fluently, but it was in his native tongue that he murmured the equivalent of: “One of those blinking fishers forgot his key again!”

Still, as he pondered on his way to open the front door, few if any of their guests took their cars out at night. The hotel water was not more than two miles distant even at its furthest bounds. During the day people used the bus, and by night they walked.

If this was a late arrival who had booked by wire or telephone, the proprietor would have warned him. It must be a belated traveller, tired of driving in the dark on those hilly and narrow mountain roads, who decided to stop at the “Horn.”

When he opened the door, the porter saw that a woman stood there. She did not seem very old, or very young; very plain, or at all pretty. She was of middle height rather buxom, and spoke in what the man instantly thought of as a high-toned accent. Her voice betrayed some excitement, and nervousness, which seemed, to the porter, to be accounted for by her explanation that she had had a slight accident on her way.

She had, it seemed, mistaken a road opening, and tried to turn back a fraction too late, with the result that her car had bumped into a wall, and only been saved by a quick use of the brakes from an almighty smash.

“That’ll be all right ma’am,” said the porter. “There’s a garage here has a mechanic will soon put that to rights. I’ll come out again and bring your car into the yard.”

She put a half-crown into his palm, with a hand which was notably unsteady, thanked him, and stepped into the hall.

“I am Mrs. Hayes. My husband is staying here,” she said, to the surprise of the porter. “If you will take my bag, and show me up to his room—”

“He’s out ma’am.”

“Out? At this time of night?”

Her voice was severe. The porter chuckled inwardly. “You see, ma’am, the gentlemen that fishes all go out late. The sewins take best after dark when the water’s low.”

“Oh, I see,” she said, though her voice did not sound mollified. “At any rate I shall go up. Show me the way, please.”

He turned on an electric light on the stairs, and showed the way. As he opened the door of Hayes’s room, he had a look at the visitor. She had been pretty in her youth, but she looked hard and imperious now. She was about fifty, well-dressed, commanding, very pale. In the morning, when he saw her again, the porter wondered at that; for he knew then that she was normally a woman with a fresh complexion.

But he saw more than that, and spoke of it at once.

“I never thought to ask were you hurt ma’am,” he said, staring at some spots of blood on her skirt, “if it’s anything serious, I could get the manageress up.”

“Don’t bother,” she replied hastily. “When I had the accident, I bumped myself on something, and my nose bled. Thank you. That will do.”

“I could find you something cold in the pantry, ma’am,” said this willing man. “I expect you have come a long way.”

She may have been impressed by his offer but did not show it.

“Thank you; no. I am tired, and will go to bed immediately. Put my bag in the corner.”

He left at once, and strolled out to get the car into the garage. It was a tiresome job at that time of night, with an early rise ahead of him, but Mrs. Hayes had shown early signs of generosity, and that was hopeful.

As he glanced at the car, prior to handling her, he saw that one of the wings was slightly crumpled in front. Otherwise there seemed no damage.

Driven by curiosity, and at the last moment, he glanced inside the car, and lit a match. It struck him that the lady’s nose had not bled very extensively. Putting the vehicle into the open garage, he yawned, and turned into the hotel once more.

Chapter 4

Head Down

SOME WAG, speaking of the anglers at the Horn Hotel, had once said that the day hands there never knew what the night hands were doing. If he had added: “Until next morning at breakfast” he would have spoken the whole truth.

They generally balloted for pools, and each stuck to his own, fished as long as he chose, and came back when he wished. Every man, encaged in his silent sport, fished in the dark compartment furnished by the night, and the records of his catch, and the excitements of it, were only canvassed over the eggs-and-bacon which the Briton expects to see greeting him in the morning.

When Harry Wint, unaccustomed to fishing late, came down at half-past nine, the dining-room was buzzing with speculation. And this speculation had two foci; the wife of Mr. Hayes, who sat at Hayes’s proprietary table, looking very cold and angry, and Mr. Hayes, who was not at breakfast, not in the hotel at all, but somewhere unknown not only to the guests, but also to the angry woman at her lone table.

Since she was Mr. Hayes’s wife, the buzzing had to be low buzzing. The other guests could not canvass her arrival, or her husband’s absence, in voices which might reach her ears. Not so the waiter who came suddenly into the room, stopped by Mrs. Hayes’s table, and announced that he had rung up the solicitor at Cwyll.

“And what did he say?” she inquired impatiently, as if bidding him not to make a song about it.

“He said, ma’am, Mr. Hayes had been in yesterday to see him on business, but he was out first, and Mr. Hayes came again about five, and talked to him, and Mr. Hayes left at half-past for here, so he said.”

Mrs. Hayes nodded. “I see.”

But obviously she did not see, for she bit her lip, and stared round at the other guests. It was difficult for any wife to understand how her husband could go a few miles to see a lawyer, leave him at half-past five to go home, and be still absent at half-past nine next day.

Wint went at once to his table, where he now saw his friend Robert Chance. The latter greeted him warmly, but was, to Wint’s mind, somewhat preoccupied. At another table were Bow and Hoad. They were eating their breakfast in silence, and their voices had not contributed to the buzz which Wint had heard on his entry into the room.

“I went out for an hour or two last night, Bob,” he told his friend. “I hoped I might run across you, but the bally dark came on, and I didn’t want to risk it among the rocks.”

“Quite right,” said Chance. “They’re damn slippery in places, and you want to know your ground. Did you have any luck?”

“I lost a salmon, or a very big sewin,” Wint replied. “And as I found out this morning, I must have lost my gaff. I’m afraid the sling was loose.”

Chance smiled faintly. “You’ll get it again. Someone is sure to find it.” He looked over his shoulder in the direction of Mrs. Hayes’s table, lowered his voice, and added: “We’ve lost a guest; which is worse!”