Grey Shapes E-Book

Jack Mann

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

1 Gees' First Case
2 Grey Shapes
3 Nightmare Farm
4 The Kleinart Case
5 Maker of Shadows
6 The Ninth Life
7 The Glass Too Many
8 Her Ways are Death

Leseprobe

GREY SHAPES

Jack Mann

1936

© 2022 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782383833079

Contents

1: A Matter Of Sheep

2: Beyond Odder

3: Cottrill

4: Inspector Feather

5: Bar Talk

6: Attack

7: Amber

8: Madeleine Amber

9: At Dowlandsbar

10: Missing

11: Found

12: Vain Vigil

13: A Survey

14: Implications

15: Carlisle Interlude

16: Dinner For Three

17: Dinner For Five—And After

18: Change At Dawn

19: Four Letters

_________________

1: A Matter Of Sheep

A LITTLE pile of opened letters, with their neatly-slit envelopes pinned to them, lay beside the typewriter on the desk: the girl who sat back from the desk in her comfortable chair, reading a novel, was tall, but not too tall; she had piquantly irregular features, brown hair with reddish shades in it, and deep, blue eyes, long-lashed. Her principal attraction was expressiveness, both of eyes and lips, though she could render her face as wooden as a doorpost if she chose.

She put the novel down on the desk as a tall, youngish man, with exceptionally large feet and hands, came into the doorway of the room and, paused for a moment, reflected as he always did when he first saw her for the day that he had been wise in his choice of a secretary. He looked ungainly, at a first glance, by reason of those feet and hands, but a second glance would convince anyone that he was nothing of the sort. Clean-shaven, pleasantly ugly, he gave the girl a smile as she looked up at him.

"Morning, Miss Brandon," he said.

"Good morning, Mr. Green," she answered. "There are—yes, twenty-two inquiries, none of them very interesting."

"We'd better get an editorial regrets done, I think," he said.

She looked a question at him, and he explained:

"You know. Not—'the editor regrets'—in our case, but the same sort of thing. 'Messrs. Gees have given careful consideration to your case as stated in your letter, and regret they are unable to offer any advice.' Something like that—get it engraved in copperplate and run on to decent paper. It'll save you answering each one individually."

"But I've so little to do, as it is," she pointed out.

"I know," he assented gravely. "It's growing into weeks since we wound up the Kestwell case, and I put the balance of that twelve thousand pounds away in the safe. And we've spent over two of the twelve thousand already, including my new car."

"We?" she queried stiffly.

"Well, I saw you putting a new typewriter ribbon on a couple of days ago," he said, "and I suppose you paid the window cleaner. I didn't."

The telephone bell rang before she could reply. She removed the receiver and listened, and then replied:

"Yes, I should think eleven o'clock would be all right. Will you hold on while I ask one of the principals?"

With her hand over the mouthpiece she looked up at Green—or Gees, as his intimate friends always called him:

"A Mr. Tyrrell from Cumberland is in London—his letter is among those on the desk—and wants to see you at eleven o'clock, Mr. Green."

"Okay by me," he answered. "Tell him I also yearn."

"Yes, Mr. Tyrrell"—she spoke into the receiver—"our Mr. Green will be pleased to see you at eleven o'clock."

She replaced the receiver, and turned over several of the letters, eventually picking out one which she handed to Gees.

"Yes," he said, "it will be as well to see what he wants before he gets here, and there's half an hour to go. I hope the poke contains a real pig—we get so many silly inquiries."

He glanced at the sheet of paper. Pinned at the top left-hand corner was a small clipping, evidently from some agony column. It read—

"Consult Gee's Confidential Agency for everything, from mumps to murder. Initial consultation, two guineas—37, Little Oakfield Street, Haymarket, London, S.W.I."

"Ah," Gees observed complacently. "Our old 'mumps to murder' is still pulling 'em in, then, even from the wilds of Cumberland. But—Oh! What the—? Am I a goat? The man's daft!"

"He enclosed a check for two guineas," Miss Brandon remarked.

"Yes, I said he was daft, didn't I? Sheep? Does he think we're a veterinary establishment, or a dumb friends' league?"

"I suppose sheep come between mumps and murder," she said reflectively, "and he is the only one who sent the two guineas in advance."

"Well, then, I'll talk to him, wurzel-worrier from the wilds though he may be, and unless he stops the check he won't see his two guineas any more. Now what about the rest of them, Miss Brandon?"

He drew up a chair, and, seated at the end of her desk, went through the other letters. As he put the last one down, he shook his head.

"Editor's regrets are strongly indicated, Miss Brandon," he observed, "and in the next advertisement we'll put a note to the effect that a stamped addressed envelope must accompany all inquiries. We shall be three bob and more down by the time you've told all this lot that I don't feel inclined to take up their cases. And that—" as the doorbell rang "—will be our sheepist, I take it."

Rising, he went to the next room, which formed his own office, and left her to admit the visitor. Presently she opened his door.

"Mr. Tyrrell to see you, Mr. Green," she announced.

"Ah! Come in, Mr. Tyrrell. Take that chair—it's comfortable."

The visitor lowered six feet of bone and muscle into the leather-upholstered armchair at the end of Gee's desk—he did not know that he was directly facing a concealed microphone, the wires of which terminated in a pair of earphones which Miss Brandon could fit on in her room if Gees put his foot on a buzzer stud under his desk. The net effect of him, Gees decided was brown: brown tweed suit, well cut, with brown brogue shoes, and he had brown eyes and a sun-browned, pleasant sort of face. An open-air man, and a good sort, with a pleasant, honest smile.

"You got my letter, I hope, Mr. Green?" he asked.

Gees nodded at his desk. "It's here," he answered. "All I can gather is that you want my advice about losing sheep—or rather, about how not to lose sheep. To begin, now—have you advertised?"

Tyrrell shook his head. "Not that sort of loss," he answered.

"You'd better state the case," Gees advised. "The where and the how and the why, and make it as full as you like. Though I must warn you in advance that I know next to nothing about sheep—on the hoof, that is. Saddle of mutton at Simpson's—yes. Otherwise—but tell me all about it, since you've come for a consultation."

His visitor smiled, thought awhile, and then began.

"You know Cumberland, Mr. Green?"

"I have a hope of visiting the lake district some day," Gees answered, "but it hasn't materialized yet. That is—no."

"Not the lake district—I can see Skiddaw from my bedroom window, but if you don't know Cumberland that conveys nothing to you. I own about two thousand acres, Mr. Green—Tyrrells have owned it for centuries and the greater part of it is sheep run, though there is some arable land as well. But, in the main, sheep farming. A far-flung country—my nearest neighbor is well over a mile away—was, rather, until McCoul took Locksborough Castle and decided to rebuild enough of it to live in. Rather wild country, it would seem to you, I think. And, since last March, I have lost over fifty sheep."

"And where do I come in?" Gees inquired.

"Those sheep have been killed—mangled horribly—by some great dog or dogs," Tyrrell proceeded. "I've had the police on it, of course, but with no result, except that they have proved to me that no dog capable of doing the damage is kept within twenty miles of my land—that is, no dog which is not kept under proper control."

"In that case, what do you think I could do?" Gees asked again.

"I don't know. But there's this about it. Sitting here talking to you, the whole thing seems incredible, preposterous. My head shepherd, a man named Cottrill, is a straight, practical, unimaginative man of about forty, but—well, in such a district as that old legends survive, and there is a vein of superstition in the most practical of the people. He says it's unearthly, and that no dog as we know dogs is responsible for the damage. I've been out nights with him, watching—to no purpose, of course. They were the nights when nothing happened."

"Still, what could I do?" Gees insisted.

"Find what is destroying my sheep," Tyrrell answered promptly.

"When the police who know the district have failed?" Gees pointed out, and shook his head. "I'm afraid, Mr. Tyrrell—"

"But they have merely approached the problem on routine lines," Tyrrell interrupted. "Checked up all the dogs within a reasonable radius of my flocks, and virtually proved them innocent. After that, they own, they are at a standstill. And I know this is no ordinary dog."

"The specter hound of Man, eh?" Gees observed meditatively.

"Something like that, I honestly believe," Tyrrell assented with a hint of nervous earnestness. "Oh, I know it sounds damned silly, sitting here with a telephone handy and cars honking outside—all the twentieth century round us. If you come to undertake this problem for me, you'll step back a couple of centuries, back into a world where people still believe that solid, material things are not all of life."

"As you believe, evidently," Gees suggested.

"I have an open mind," Tyrrell admitted. "Look here, Mr. Green— first of all, though, would this fall to you, or would any other member of your firm undertake it, if it is undertaken?"

"It would fall to me. I am the firm—all of it."

"But—your secretary said one of the principals would see me," Tyrrell pointed out. "So I assumed—and the name of the firm is plural. You mean—you are Gees? All of it?"

"Gregory George Gordon Green," Gees said solemnly. "Therefore."

"Well, look here, then. So far, I've lost fifty sheep, and if this goes on for another six months, I shall not only lose fifty more, but Cottrill will go, and so will others of my men. They regard it as a curse on the place, especially those who have seen the carcasses. If you'll undertake to kill this dog or whatever it is—put an end to the trouble for me, I'll pay you fifty pounds."

Gees considered it. "I will undertake a week's investigation for that sum," he offered. "That is, on the understanding that the fee is paid whether I lay the ghost or no—even if it's merely a matter of sitting up a night or two with a gun and shooting a dog."

"Umm-m!" Tyrrell grunted doubtfully. "And yet—"

"Well?" Gees asked in the pause.

"Well," Tyrrell echoed, with an air of decision, "I'll pay that, and another fifty to hold you a second week if the first is not enough to solve the mystery. I'll go that far, for I read all that Kestwell case and know what you did in it, and now I see you—well!"

"For these bouquets, much thanks, Mr. Tyrrell," Gees said gravely. "Shall we say—if I arrive the day after to- morrow?"

"That will suit me," Tyrrell assented. "I'll meet you at the station—it's an eight mile drive to my place—Dowlandsbar."

"Oh, but I shall drive all the way," Gees said. "I run a Rolls-Bentley, and can do it in the day comfortably. Stay—where?"

"You'd better let me put you up," Tyrrell answered. "The only inn, the Royal George, is the better part of two miles from me, and the accommodation there is—well, rather primitive. Yes, I'll put you up."

"Very good of you, I'm sure," Gees told him, and rose to his feet to indicate that the interview was at an end. "Expect me in time for dinner, the day after to-morrow, at—yes, Dowlandsbar." He glanced at the address at the top of Tyrrell's letter to get the name right.

Tyrrell, risen too, held out his hand. "I'll do my best to make you comfortable in the wilds," he promised. "Since seeing you, I've got faith in you, Mr. Green. I believe you may be able to solve my problem."

"We'll see. I make no promises. But I'll do my best."

"A likeable chap," Gees observed to Miss Brandon after his caller had gone. "Public school type, but not too much so. And I've always had it in mind to have a look at the lake district, though he's rather out of it, by what he says. Still, I can move on, after killing the dog, or dogs. It's a dog killing his sheep, that's all."

"And you say he's going to pay you fifty pounds to go and kill it?" she asked, with patent incredulity.

"Ah, but he's got a bee about it being a ghost dog," Gees pointed out. "The local police have exonerated all the dogs in a twenty mile radius, he says—but I know from the time I spent on my father's Shropshire estates that if a dog gets the sheep-worrying habit, he'll travel far more than twenty miles in a night to gratify his tastes."

"Then—" she began, and stopped, thinking it over.

"It's got him down," Gees explained. "There was a point in our talk when I could see belief in the supernatural in his eyes. I don't wonder. He lives eight miles from a station, and his local is the best part of two miles from where he lives—Dowlandsbar, heaven save us!"

"His local?" she asked curiously.

"Short for pub—the nearest bar to lean against," he explained. "And his next door neighbor is half a mile away and named McCoul, so what have you? I start early in the morning the day after to-morrow."

"And—and I remain in charge here?"

"Obviously. Go over the inquiries as they come in each morning— open all the letters whether they're marked 'Personal' or no. I've no low intrigues on, just now, so you won't get shocked. Send editor's regrets in every case where you feel it's possible, and if you come across anything interesting write and say the matter is receiving consideration, and on receipt of our initial fee of two guineas we shall be happy to communicate further. Then send that particular inquiry on to me, and I'll see what I think of it. Of course, if Tyrrell's right—"

He broke off, and stood thoughtful by her desk for awhile.

"You mean, about the supernatural?" she inquired eventually.

"It would be sub-natural, if anything, in a case of this sort," he answered. "I'm going to spend the rest of the day in the British Museum library, Miss Brandon, and when you've finished discouraging the rest of our inquirers you can get on with your novel. One of these days, there may be some work for you again, and till then I like the decorative effect of having you here. If I'm not back at your usual time for closing down, just put the cover on your typewriter and go."

"Very good, Mr. Green. Do you—do you think this is super—no, sub-natural, as you called it?"

"I'll tell you when I come back from Dowlandsbar." he answered, "and since I don't start till the day after to-morrow, that's some while ahead. But a nice holiday in the lake district—or somewhere near it—before the end of September, and a check for fifty pounds for taking it—well, what have you? I'd be sub-natural myself if I didn't. See you tomorrow morning, if not this evening, Miss Brandon."

"Very good, Mr. Green."

2: Beyond Odder

THERE was a one-armed, crankily-sagging signpost beside the road, and, glancing up at it as he slowed, Gees read on its decrepit arm

ODDER 3

DOWLANDSBAR 6

and, having got too far past it by the time that he read his destination thereon, braked to a stop, reversed, and then swung the long bonnet of the Rolls-Bentley into the narrow, uneven way indicated by the sign.

"The shades of night were falling fast," he quoted to himself, "and if that lad had had to drive along a lane like this, it's not 'Excelsior' he'd have been shouting to the landscape, but Gordelpus."

The nose of the car went burrowing down and down, and the narrow lane wound snakily until there appeared a hump-backed bridge of grey stone, just wide enough to admit the car between its weathered parapets. But, short of the bridge, Gees braked suddenly to a standstill, for, looking down the bonnet into the gathering gloom of evening, he saw the vanguard of a flock of sheep on the hump of the bridge, and beyond them, as far as the next bend of the lane, was a greyish mass of their fellows. They went scuttering past the car, enveloping it in a woolly flood, and darkness had advanced perceptibly when the shepherd, a tall, gaunt, black being with a patient dog walking beside him, came abreast.

"Good evening," Gees saluted him. "Am I right for Dowlandsbar?"

"Aye, ye're right," said the shepherd, "an' can't go wrong. Through Odder, an' 'tis but a step. Ye'll see the slats of the roof above the trees. A long hoose—Squire Tyrrell's place. Gude night to ye."

"Good night, and thank you," Gees answered, and went on.

As it had burrowed down to the bridge, so the nose of the long car now sought heaven for awhile. The hard-pumped tires—Gees always traveled with tires ten pounds above the recommended pressure—bumped and scraped in the ruts of the lane, and even with the perfect springing and steering of this car ten miles an hour was the limit for safety. The crest of the climb gave place to descent with such abruptness that Gees feared lest his exhaust pipe should scrape on the summit of the ridge: again he dipped down and down and down, until he saw four cottages of grey stone, two on each side of the way, and beyond them an inn which declared itself as the Royal George, with, almost facing it, a slightly larger cottage with a brightly lighted window in which were displayed bottles of old-fashioned sweets, packages of much-advertised soaps, and cigarette placards, together with a festoon of sausages.

"Odder," said Gees to himself, noting the white-lettered, blue enamel plate which declared this emporium as a post office and gave the name, "but it should be Much Odder".

By this time, he had switched on his headlights, and the village slid into darkness behind him as the car wheels splashed through a tiny rivulet that crossed his way without the formality of a bridge.

He traveled another tortuous mile or so, dipping and lifting, and then into the long ray of his headlights came a man who kept to the middle of the lane and, as the car approached him, raised his right hand above his head. Recognizing Tyrrell, Gees braked to a standstill.

"It is you, of course," Tyrrell observed as he came abreast the car. "I thought I'd come along and act as guide."

"Kind of you," Gees answered, and opened the near side door. "I know now why you talk about fells in this part of the world."

"Yes?" Tyrrell seated himself in the car as he spoke. "Why, then?"

"Because when my radiator wasn't pointing horizontally upward along this trail, it fell, and I wondered if I were going to fall too—out over the windscreen. Yes, fells by all means, here."

"That's an old one," Tyrrell told him. "I suppose you know nearly everyone in the district has one leg longer than the other?"

"I'll buy it," Gees offered. "Hereditary disability?"

"Not exactly. Walking along the slopes of the hills does it."

"They never come back, then," Gees reflected. "Well, I don't wonder at it. What do I do—just go ahead?"

"Yes—keep straight," Tyrrell bade.

"Since this lane would break a snake's back, I'll forgive you for that advice," Gees promised. "But why guide me, if I can't go wrong?"

"Because Locksborough Castle gateway is half a mile this side of mine, and you'd probably have turned in at it if I hadn't come along."

"If there's a borough round here, it's a rotten one," Gees declared solemnly. "A sound one would have gone off to level ground long ago."

"It never was a borough," Tyrrell told him. "Amber—he's our vicar and a bit of an archaeologist—he explains it as a corruption of barrow, Danish or more ancient, and the Norman occupation didn't destroy the name, though they built a castle on the site. Here—this is the gateway. No—bear to the right, don't go in. That's why I met you."

Two rugged monoliths reared up almost directly in front of the car, and Gees swerved sharply to the right to pass them and keep to the uneven, narrow main way. Beyond them, as he passed, he caught a glimpse of rugged, jagged-topped walls rising against the clear night sky.

"Ruins," he observed. "I thought you said somebody lived there?"

"It was possible to restore the keep—three floors of it—to a habitable state, and McCoul bought the place and did the restoring," Tyrrell explained. "The rest of it is still ruinous. If he hadn't taken it, I think the ancient monuments people would have taken it over. You know—the National Trust. But McCoul is a bit of an antiquarian."

"And your nearest neighbor," Gees remembered, and felt that his London flat and office, in which he had talked with this man only two days before, was already several worlds and centuries away.

"Yes. I—er—I hope you don't mind, but he and his daughter Gyda are dining with us tonight. It was arranged before I went to London, and I forgot about it when we arranged for you to come today."

"Well, I packed a tuxedo, thank God," Gees reflected piously.

"Well, really!" Tyrrell protested. "Did you think I wanted you to bring your own provisions when I asked you to stay with me?"

"A tuxedo," Gees explained, "is an apology for not dressing for dinner—respectability without tails. You'd call it a dinner jacket."

"Oh, sorry," Tyrrell apologized. "Here—turn in here. Left."

Gees swung the wheel in time, and found himself on a graveled drive which, after the bumpy, rutted lane, made driving a pleasure.

"The term is American, I believe," he explained. "My father wants to brain me every time he hears it, being a soldier of the old school."

"Yes?" Tyrrell queried interestedly. "What regiment?"

"Oh, some obscure crowd of footsloggers for a start—Coldstreams, as a matter of fact. But being a general with a K.C.B., he doesn't brag about his regimental service. I went for distinction when I joined up—the Metropolitan police was my mark. But their discipline was so strict that I chucked it after two years, and wished I'd gone for the army instead, as the old man did. Still, it was useful for my present business. What I don't know about police methods—well!"

He swung the car alongside a long frontage of grey stone, a two-storied mansion with deeply set windows—most of it showed plainly in the ray of the headlights before he swerved to halt beside the deeply-receded, wide main entrance. A pendent electric bulb in a quaint old lantern revealed a great oaken door with vast hinges of scroll worked iron—it was an antique in itself, that door, as Gees realized.

"Well, constable," Tyrrell observed, "you'll have good time for a bath and change before dinner, if you feel like it. We'll get your traps out, and then I'll show you where to stable this beauty."

Gees followed him out from the car, and went to the back to open it up and haul out his big suitcase. Then he turned to Tyrrell.

"You're a good scout, and I like you," he said.

THE FLOOR BOARDS of the room were old as time, with wide cracks between them, and the floor sloped as, in a past age, the foundations of the house had settled. The furniture was plainly Jacobean, all but the full-length mirror, which, Gees decided, was more probably Tudor, re-silvered. There was a press in which he dared not hang his clothes lest he should never find them again, so vast it was. And, like the floor, the ceiling beams were black with age.

He made a final adjustment of his tie before the mirror: the electric light by which he had dressed was incongruous in such an apartment, and he could hear the engine, by which in all probability the light was provided, pulsing somewhere. Beat, beat—miss—beat—miss—beat, beat, beat. Suction gas plant, he decided, and, opening his door, switched off the light and passed along the corridor until he came to the head of the staircase. There, for a moment or two, he paused.

The staircase itself was magnificent. Wide stairs curved down to the big entrance hall of Dowlandsbar, and there was a balustrade which was pure renaissance, black, like the floor and ceiling beams in his room, with age, and so delicately carved as to appear the work of a Cellini or Da Vinci. The hall into which he gazed as he stood, for the moment unnoticed by the people occupying it, had an oaken floor black and old as the rest of the house's woodwork that he had seen so far, and there were rugs, and little tables, and a great fireplace inside which Tyrrell stood warming himself at a log fire, while, nearly facing him, stood a man and a woman who for the period of this little pause absorbed all Gees' attention.

The man, he decided, was somewhere in the fifties, and stood well over six feet in height. His hair was iron grey, as was the half of moustache that Gees could see—both the man and woman were in profile to him. Of greyhound leanness, and with an almost regal pose, the man accentuated his own height. Tyrrell was tall, as was Gees himself, but this man appeared to stand over him, look down on him—such was the impression Gees gathered in this first view—and the profile was hawk-like, finely, even beautifully molded. An arresting type, this man, and, if his mentality were equal to his appearance, one worth knowing.

And the woman, at a first glance, would be about the same age, for her hair was snow-white, a crown of little ripples that shone softly, like old satin in the lighting of the big hall. Gees saw her more nearly three-quarter face than in profile, and saw that, like the man, she had classically fine features—gazing down from his height, he could not see their eyes—with richly red lips almost too full for such a face, and daintily molded chin over a neck that Praxiteles might have rejoiced to model. She too was of unusual height, almost as tall as Gees himself, and very slenderly-fashioned, with beautiful, ringless hands. "Give her a bow and arrow," said Gees to himself as he began to descend the stairs, "and there's Artemis—in grey crêpe-de- chine or something of the sort. But what a pair!"

But, as he faced her and was introduced to Gyda McCoul, he found his estimate of her age was wrong—the white hair had misled him as he had looked down, for she was obviously still in her twenties. Her eyes were amber and green—he could never determine their real color, or whether they were green-flecked amber or amber-flecked green. Either way, they completed as bizarre an attractiveness as he had ever seen, though, as for a moment he took her hand, he felt a sense of—was it fear? Or was it that faint thrill that comes with the sight and realization of something utterly new, an unhoped experience to be faced? He could not tell, and he turned for his introduction to the man and met the gaze of a pair of eyes as nearly black as any he had seen. Here again was new experience: McCoul's eyes held all the fire and light of youth, while his faintly-lined face was that of one who has known all things—the face of a disillusioned cynic and old, past belief.

These were first impressions, and then Tyrrell spoke:

"Mr. Green has driven all the way from London, so he ought to be the hungriest of us all, if he isn't. But it's poured ready for you, Green." And, with the final statement, he indicated a cocktail glass on the occasional table by the corner of the fireplace—the others, as Gees noted, already had their glasses in their hands.

"I don't know that I'm superlatively hungry," he said as he took up the glass and turned again to face the woman—or girl, perhaps. "At present, I'm rather lost in amazement over this miracle of a house. The little I've seen of it so far, that is. What do you think of it, Miss McCoul? Don't you envy him his collection of antiques?"

"She need not," Tyrrell put in, before she could reply.

"But I do," she said, after a brief pause in which Gees took in Tyrrell's remark and prayed that he himself was not destined to act alone in the matter of the sheep while his host went love- making. And she smiled, revealing perfectly-even, shining white teeth.

"From London in a day," McCoul remarked, and Gees glanced at him to meet the gaze of his uncannily dark eyes—so dark that there was no distinguishing between iris and pupil. "I wonder what the legionaries marching north to the wall would have thought of it?"

"We are not far from the old Roman wall, I suppose?" Gees inquired.

"It's a goodish step," Tyrrell told him. "Mr. Green has come here to help me with my sheep mystery," he explained to the other two. "To put an end to the trouble, I hope. Two more killed last night, Green—"

A voice from the side of the hall announcing that dinner was served interrupted him, and the four of them passed through a doorway under the staircase to a dining-room lighted only by the candles on the table, and, like all the rest that Gees had seen of the house, furnished in a way that would have made an antique- collector choke with jealousy. As they seated themselves, Tyrrell looked at Gees.

"Very plain feeding, you'll find," he observed. "My cook is no Brillat-Savarin. You're in the wilds, here—all primitive."

It was difficult of belief, Gees felt as he glanced at Gyda McCoul's grey dinner frock, and then at her father's perfectly- tailored jacket. A dumpily-built maid waited on them, and evinced good training as she did it. But for the absence of a waiter in tails, they might have been in one of the better class London restaurants, and both soup and fish were as good as the service and table appointments. A remark by Gees set them all talking of place names—Oswaldstwhistle, Odder, Much Hadham, Nether Wallop, Wig-Wig, and other curiosities of naming, provided light chatter through which Gees observed that neither McCoul nor his daughter appeared to appreciate the really good plain cooking of the first two courses. Then the maid placed a dish before Tyrrell, and, removing the cover, revealed a large joint of beef.

"Plain fare, Green, as I warned you," Tyrrell observed. "Also as a warning, it's underdone—very, because—well!" He gave Gyda McCoul a glance which said she would understand and appreciate what he meant.

"Specially for me and my father," she said, with pleasure in her voice. "Oh, but you shouldn't, Mr. Tyrrell! Quite possibly Mr. Green doesn't like it as underdone as we do—do you, Mr. Green?"

"You can save a spot of the outside when it comes my turn, Tyrrell," Gees counseled. In actuality, he hated underdone meat.

Then he watched, and saw red slices—half-raw, they looked to him—laid on the plates of the other two, while Tyrrell reserved a portion of more fully cooked meat for himself and Gees. And there was a hard glitter in McCoul's black eyes as he looked down at the plate set before him: he may not have been hungry at the beginning of the meal, but, if his expression went for anything, he was avid for that red flesh, and the girl, too, seemed to rouse to greater appreciation of her meal. Tyrrell, himself, like Gees, took an outside cut.

"I did remark that I lost two more last night, didn't I?" he asked as he helped himself to vegetables.

"You did," Gees assented. "I suppose you fold them at night since this trouble started? Or do you leave them out and take the risk?"

"Oh, they're folded, of course," Tyrrell answered, as if surprised at the question, "and Cottrill—that's my shepherd— he's kept watch night after night, but nothing happens the nights he's on watch. Then, immediately he relaxes—the very first night he thinks the trouble is over—two more are killed. Always two— it's not the promiscuous harrying and mangling you usually get when a dog takes to sheep-worrying, but just two carcasses, and no trace of what did it. More beef, Mr. McCoul?"

"I will have another slice, thanks," McCoul assented, and Gees took his plate to pass it while Tyrrell carved red, dripping stuff, nauseating to Gees' sight. It was not merely underdone, but almost raw.

"And you, Miss McCoul?" Tyrrell asked, poising his carving knife.

"Yes, thank you, even at the risk of being thought greedy."

Again Tyrrell carved, and Gees got a glimpse of the girl's teeth—beautiful, even teeth, between full, red lips that needed no artificial coloring. She was innocent of make-up of any kind, Gees decided, except for the powder that all women use.

"Always two, eh?" Gees observed, and shook his head as Tyrrell gestured the invitation of a second helping at him. He emptied his glass, and the maid refilled it with a burgundy that bespoke a fine taste in vintages and careful ageing. "Clockwork regularity."

"A fiendish sort of instinct," Tyrrell amended, "as if there were more than instinct in it—some human knowledge behind the mad things that do this. I've sat up all night with a gun, and Mr. McCoul has kept watch with me several times this summer, but— nothing. No sign of trouble, as long as there's anyone about, and Cottrill is getting tired of constantly folding the sheep in fine weather. It's no joke, rounding up the flock on these hills night after night—and to no purpose."

"Except that you might have lost more, if you didn't," Gees said.

"There is that, of course," Tyrrell assented moodily.

"Are you an expert at this sort of thing, Mr. Green?" the girl asked.

"Well, my father has a little place in Shropshire—runs one of the few surviving herds of aurochs on it, and some sheep," Gees explained, though he hated the sight of the general's Shropshire estate. "I would hardly call myself an expert—just cognizant, say."

"General Sir George Green, that is?" McCoul asked interestedly.

"Why, yes—he is ex-service," Gees answered, "though most men of his age are, nowadays. Why, do you know him, sir?"

McCoul shook his head. "The aurochs," he explained. "I had the pleasure of seeing the herd, once. No, I have not met your father."

"Oh, Mr. Green!" Gyda McCoul laughed, and something in the laugh reminded Gees of the sound he had made as a child by tapping pendent glass lusters with a long nail. "A little place, you call it. I was there with my father to see the aurochs, and it's a wonderful estate!"

"That's exactly what the income-tax people think," he conceded without enthusiasm, "which makes my father's life one long strain on two ends that refuse to meet. An estate is the very deuce, and when my turn comes to inherit—heaven keep it away and the old chap alive for years yet—I shall sell it and give the aurochs to the Zoo, or something."

"Then you must be the Mr. Green who calls himself Gees—the one who became famous over the Kestwell case?" McCoul suggested.

Gees gave him a steady stare, and not a friendly one—it was not McCoul he hated at that moment, but himself, for betraying his identity, and Tyrrell for revealing his purpose in being here to these people.

"Quite accidentally," he said. "I didn't do anything, really."

"Enough to make me feel you'd be the man to save the rest of my sheep," Tyrrell put in. "Though there's no similarity in the cases, of course—Anarchists, or whatever you like to call that gang you ran to earth, are not exactly like mad dogs with extra intelligence."

"I fail to see any difference," Gees dissented.

He saw McCoul nod appreciation of his remark. The talk flowed on, and all the while Gees watched and studied this amazing pair. For they were amazing: there was a vitality about McCoul which belonged to a world-beating athlete in his early twenties rather than to a grey-headed man with a grown-up daughter, and the girl herself, equally vital and alive, betrayed ever and again a range of knowledge and worldly-wisdom more characteristic of a middle- aged woman than one of her age. And in the mellow light of the candles, that white hair of hers was like ripples of purest sea- foam on wave crests, and her eyes deepened to a darkness that was more amethyst and emerald than mere amber and green—Gees saw or imagined a wistful tenderness in them, once, as she gazed across at Tyrrell, and felt anew that he must go dog-hunting alone.

"Gyda?" he echoed the name after McCoul had spoken it in addressing her. "What an unusual name—unusually attractive, I mean."

"A corruption of Bridget," McCoul explained as she smiled at Gees. "Or rather, of Brigid, which is the form I prefer."

"And I suppose you trace descent from Finn McCoul?" Gees half- asked, with the very faintest hint of amusement in the query.

"There is no reason why Finn should have been given more prominence than many others," McCoul said with a frown. "We were kings in Ireland before the O'Neills had won to chieftainship."

"Was Eochaid one of the family?" Gees inquired thoughtfully.

"Eochaid?" Gyda fired out the name sharply, almost fearfully.

He gave her a steady look. "Married Etain of the fairy folk," he said, "and had his year. Dalua warned him at the start, I believe—the whole story has been told by Fiona McLeod, which is how I know."

"I see." She relaxed, patently relieved by the explanation, and McCoul gave an audible sigh, as might a man after passing a dangerous moment. Tyrrell offered liqueurs, and a discussion of the relative merits of Cointreau and old liqueur brandy swept away a brief but not less real tension. For a moment, Gees knew, Gyda McCoul had been definitely afraid. Of what, he questioned inwardly?

ANOTHER brief moment of tension arose later, just before father and daughter set out for home, when Tyrrell observed that the neighborhood was rich in antiquities, and Gees, remembering a previous remark of his in connection with archeology, questioned:

"You said the vicar was strong on it, I believed? Amber, isn't it?"

"It is," Tyrrell answered, after an awkward silence.

"There is a feud, Mr. Green," Gyda explained, coming to the rescue. "My father and Mr. Amber hate each other—you didn't know, of course."

"I see," he said. "It was evident that I'd dropped a brick of some sort, but naturally I didn't know anything about it."

Being by this time very much alive to impressions, he sensed more in the momentary tension than the mere quarrel between the two men. An expression in Tyrrell's eyes indefinable beyond that it was a decidedly unhappy look, went to show that he was involved, in some way. Then McCoul decided on going, and Tyrrell offered to walk as far as his gateway with him and his daughter.

"In that case," Gees remarked, "I'd like to act escort too."

"Oh, but you must be tired, after driving from London today," Gyda protested. "And we don't need an escort at all, really."

But Gees saw Tyrrell's gaze at her, and knew he would be doing the man a good turn if he could manage to pair with her father. "I insist," he said, "if only as exercise after sitting still all day."

Eventually they set out, and Gees' maneuvering placed him ahead beside McCoul, with the other two following. The September night was mild and fine, and they went coatless and hatless into the light of the moon a day or two past its full, along the graveled drive and out to the rutted lane. At first, Tyrrell's and Gyda McCoul's voice sounded to Gees and her father as they walked, but McCoul took long strides, and the voices in rear faded out—as Gees knew they would.

"Not your first visit to Cumberland, surely, Mr. Green?" McCoul asked in consequence of a remark Gees had made on the quality of the lane.

"Not the first—no," he answered, "for I went through Carlisle in a sleeping berth on my way to Aberdeen and that's Cumberland, of course. Came back east coast, so I didn't see much of the district."

"No, you wouldn't," McCoul observed, and his tone suggested that he resented having his leg pulled.

"It would be an interesting county, if it were ironed out," Gees said.

"I don't quite understand," McCoul admitted stiffly.

"Well, there'd be so much more of it if it were flattened," Gees pointed out brightly. "So much is up-ended. A hill or two here and there—yes, but when it's all in roof sections—well, where are you?"

"In Cumberland, apparently," McCoul said coldly.

"That's how it struck me," Gees assented. "And eerie, too, especially in moonlight like this. As if one might see the Daoine Shih peering from behind a crag like that." He pointed, as he spoke, to a hump of grey rock showing a score yards beyond the low stone wall that bounded the lane. "And a crock of gold under the rock," he ended.

"What do you know of the Daoine Shih?" McCoul demanded sharply.

"Oh, one picks up things, here and there," Gees evaded with surface carelessness. "Legends, you know, and all that sort of thing. I've always felt sorry for Eochaid—any human would, I think."

"You seem to have that legend on your mind," McCoul accused.

"Not more than a good many others. I'm merely interested, and Tyrrell told me you had antiquarian tastes. Lived here long?"

"We arrived in March," McCoul answered. "I bought the castle last year, but it took some time to make any of it habitable. There was nothing but the bare walls when I bought it."

"And the servant problem?" Gees asked. "How does Miss McCoul manage about that? It's difficult to get servants in a place like this, surely—that is, I don't really know if it is, of course."

"I brought a kern from the wilds of Gallway, and he does nearly everything for us," McCoul explained. "One of my own clan."

"Galway, eh?" Gees reflected aloud. "I must go to Ireland, some day. The wild and woolly part of it, I mean—get impressions."

"Then you don't know Ireland either?" McCoul inquired sarcastically.

"Well, nothing to speak of," Gees confessed. "I've done the ritual tour of Killarney and drunk Guinness in Dublin, and I own to having been in a faction fight near Cork, long ago, but the real Ireland, the land of the Daoine Shih—no. I must look it up."

By that time, they had come in sight of the two stone pillars beyond which the rugged walls of Locksborough Castle reared upon a hillock, distinct and ruinous in the moonlight. McCoul halted and looked back: Tyrrell and Gyda were just in sight, and her silver-white head was very close to her companion's, Gees saw as he too looked back.

"Now what do you know of the fairy folk?" McCoul demanded—there was a trace of menace in the query, as Gees realized.

"Legend only, as I told you before," he said cheerfully. "But— these pillars." He nodded at the two gigantic stones which marked the entrance to the castle grounds. "Never used as posts, surely?"

"I really couldn't say," McCoul answered stiffly.

"Stonehenge would be far more perfect if the people of a century or two ago hadn't broken up some of the stones for road making," Gees pursued meditatively, ignoring his companion's resentment. "And Avebury—Avebury is a tragedy, from the point of view of anyone with a respect for the old beliefs. These pillars remind me of Avebury—they belonged to something much bigger, once. In the days when the Daoine Shih were not afraid to show themselves—but men feared instead."

"You're a strange man, Mr. Green," McCoul said with odd abruptness.

"What man isn't?" Gees retorted, gazing straight into the black eyes—in that light they were quite black—that searched for hidden meanings in his words. "We're all strangers to each other."

McCoul gave him no answer. The other two came up with them, and Gyda McCoul smiled at Gees—she looked unearthly, a slender, perfect figure with her uncovered white hair shining in the moonlight.

"What a wonderful night, Mr. Green," she said softly.

So very softly, almost as if the words embodied a temptation, and yet, to him, her voice was like metal striking on glass lustres, a glassy tinkling—or the touch on a knife blade on a plate on which half-raw beef dripped redly. He could not forget that beef.

"Marvelous," he assented. "I'd like to roam about these hills— except that I should probably get lost and caught by the fairy folk."

"Mr. Green has the fairy folk on his brain," McCoul put in coldly. "For tonight, he appears able to talk of nothing else."

"But it is none too warm," the girl said with an abrupt change of manner—to Gees it seemed that she shrank from him suddenly. "So many thanks to you for a delightful evening, Mr. Tyrrell. Good-night, Mr. Green—we shall meet again, I expect. Father, we must go."

It was dismissal, and Tyrrell, realizing it, took her hand and kissed it before bidding good night to McCoul—Gees contented himself with a more formal parting. Then the two stood and watched while father and daughter walked between the monoliths and on toward the old castle. Not till they were within the shadow of its wall did either speak. Then—

"Pretty far gone, aren't you?" Gees queried acidly.

"It was not for that I agreed to your coming here, was it?" Tyrrell retorted, with a trace of real anger.

"Possibly not," Gees said equably, "but I managed you a tête-à-tête with the lady, and I'm so dog-tired I wouldn't care if you carried me back. I haven't had such an interesting evening since I ditched an airplane in the sea off Worthing. Let's go home, shall we?"

"By all means," Tyrrell assented coldly.