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Title: Grey Shapes
Author: E. Charles Vivian
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.: 0608171.txt
Language: English
Date first posted: November 2006
Date most recently updated: November 2006

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Grey Shapes
E. Charles Vivian



Chapter I 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."



Chapter II 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 crepe-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 _tete-a-
tete_ 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.

"No good, like that," Gees said, and did not move. "You fetched me
here--at fifty pounds a week, to get at the bottom of a mystery for
you, and I've started on the job already. If you're going all icy,
I'll forego my wage and start back to-morrow. Do we carry on, or do we
carry on? You're the finance of the business."

"You mean--?" Tyrrell asked, evidently mystified.

"That I am the hired man," Gees told him. "Do I carry on?"

"Oh, don't be a blasted fool, man!" Tyrrell adjured with sudden
heartiness. "Of course you carry on. I'm sorry--I ought to have known
you took this walk because of me, and you must be nearly falling
asleep as you talk, after that drive today. What have you-?"

"Nothing," Gees interrupted ruthlessly. "Give me a few hours to
arrange my impressions. I believe I've jumped into something big, big
and old. And I haven't been here ten minutes, yet. Let's go home."

But, before turning to go, he gazed up at the reared stones that
marked the gateway, and at the part-ruined castle on its mound beyond.



Chapter III COTTRILL



TWEED-JACKETED, and wearing a pair of jodhpurs he had thought at
the last moment to thrust into his suitcase before leaving London,
Gees mounted a stubby little pony and urged it to catch up with
Tyrrell, who in breeches and leggings was already riding a similar
pony away from the long frontage of Dowlandsbar. They rode down the
graveled drive and out to the rutted lane, where Tyrrell turned east,
away from Locksborough Castle and Odder. It was a still morning with
some of the warmth of summer about it, and a bluish haze veiling the
rugged ridges among which they rode. Glancing back before they began
their descent into the first deep hollow, Gees saw the two monoliths
which marked the entry to McCoul's habitation, and the castle itself,
ruinous except for the square, massive grey keep, a rambling jumble of
broken-down walls set on its little height, and surrounded by grass-
grown earthworks which reminded him of Maiden Castle in Dorset, though
they were of not such tremendous proportions as that old stronghold.

"And this lane leads where?" he asked, noting the grass that grew
between the ruts, and evidence of little care and less use.

"It will bring you out on to the main Carlisle road," Tyrrell
answered, "about eight miles away. You can give your pony his head--he
won't let you down. But with that car of yours, I'd advise you to go
back the way you came. This lane is no joke for a car, in this
direction. There are only two farms, and it gets worse as it goes on."

"I'd call it one big joke all the way," Gees comment sourly. "Why
don't you do something about it--make a road of it, say?"

Tyrrell shook his head. "I want it kept like this," he explained.
"Otherwise, tourists and char-a-bancs, and all the rest of it."

"Something in that, of course," Gees remarked. "Look here, I did
some thinking over the early tea your maid brought me. Has anyone
beside you been losing sheep or are you the only one?"

"As far as I know, I'm the only sufferer," Tyrrel answered.

"Umm-m! And how does your land run--who are neighbors?

"Toward Odder, McCoul is next me," Tyrrell explained. "About two
hundred acres go with the castle, most it useless ground, heather and
stones. On this side, a man named Bandon is tenant of the farm that
joins on to land, and he doesn't run sheep--he has a dairy farm of
sorts, and you can't graze cattle on land that sheep have been over,
as probably you know. And both north a south is waste land--as is a
good deal of mine, for that matter. We turn off, here."

He swung his pony to the right and passed through an opening in
the low stone wall, and Gees, following noted the rough three-barred
gate that guarded the opening--it was no more than a rude hurdle--laid
against the farther side of the wall. They faced a declivity of--for
one unused to the country, appalling steepness, and Gees drew rein.

"Give him his head," Tyrrell advised. "I'll show the way."

And they rode down, while Gees queried inward whether he would
slide along his pony's neck and over its head, but, with Tyrrell
leading, came safely to comparative level, a sheltered area of three
or four acres of rich grass land, cropped close inside a large sheep
fold that was empty, now, except for a small, dark man and a patient
dog, and two woolly things lying beside one of the hurdles that formed
the fold.

"That's Cottrill," Tyrrell stated as he dismounted at the entrance
to the fold, and Gees followed suit. They tied their reins to one of
the hurdles. "I told him to leave those carcasses--wanted you to see
them and get some idea--we'll have a word with him, first."

He led on, and Gees, following, found himself facing a sturdy,
honest-looking little man of nearly middle age, with dog-like brown
eyes and close-clipped black beard and moustache, who touched his hat
at Tyrrell and gave this stranger an inquiring glance.

"Cottrill--my shepherd, Green," Tyrrell stated. "Cottrill, this is
Mr. Green, who is going to put an end to our troubles. I brought him
to have a look at these two carcasses before you burn them."

Gees offered his hand, and the man gripped it firmly, while
Tyrrell let his eyebrows go up at this acknowledgment of the
introduction.

"Glad to see you, sir," Cottrill said, in a pleasant voice with
hardly any trace of dialect in it, "and I hope the master's right
about you."

"He's a bit optimistic, perhaps," Gees remarked. "You have had six
months of this trouble, I understand, and all the killings in pairs."

"That's so, sir. A sort of what you might call method about it.
I've come across sheep-worrying dogs in my time, but never anything
like this. It's got on my nerves, to tell the truth. I'm--well,
scared."

"Ah!" Gees observed. "Any special reason for being scared?"

"Yes, sir." Cottrill glanced at his master, and caught a nod which
invited him to be as frank as he liked. "The devilish calculation of
it--not like ordinary sheep-worrying. I've sat up night after night,
and the master's sat up, and even Mr. McCoul from the castle has
watched with him this summer, and as long as we watch--nothing! But as
soon as we don't watch--well, there's another two done in. As if them
things had knowledge, not like animals, but more like humans. And it's
gettin' me down. Because, you see, the sheep are my people, as you
might say."

"I know," Gees said. "You take it as against yourself."

"I'd trust Cottrill to do his damndest," Tyrrell put in.

"I've done it, sir," the man said. "But--they're too much for me."

"They?" Gees asked. "More than one, then?"

"Two, sir," Cottrill answered. "I sighted 'em, back in May."

"You never told me this." Gees turned to Tyrrell, accusingly.

"I thought it better for him to tell you," Tyrrell answered. "He's
the one who saw them. Tell that tale, Cottrill."

"It'd be about the middle of May," the shepherd said. "I'd begun
this folding, of course, and we'd had a fortnight clear of these
things, with me watching every night--that was after we'd put the
police on to it, and much use _they_ are, too! Mr. Tyrrell said I
needn't watch, that night, so I was on my way home--there was a bit of
mist come in off the sea, and it was gettin' dark, and dimmish like as
I went off to my home. About a couple of miles away from where I was
folding 'em, then--another bit of grass rather like this, only away
over there"--he pointed up to the summit of a ridge away from the
lane--"and I hadn't a gun with me, that night. And I saw 'em, two of
'em--grey shapes away in the mist--just glimpsed 'em for a moment.
Great things like donkeys."

"Long-eared, eh?" Gees surmised thoughtfully.

"No, I couldn't say I saw any ears. The size of donkeys, I mean.
They showed up against the sky, and I went after 'em, but, of course,
I couldn't find anything. Then I went off back to the fold as quick as
I could, and got there in time to find two carcasses all mangled like
the two over there"--he nodded at where the two carcasses lay--"and no
sign of pad-marks nor nothing to tell me where them things come from
or where they went--and there's never been any sign to guide us,
either. That sight of 'em I got--just the grey shapes, and no more."

"And you went back," Gees observed, marveling at the courage of
the man who had thought nothing of going back to his sheep when two
ravening beasts, "the size of donkeys," had been abroad.

"As I'm tellin' you, sir," Cottrill said. "But Jimmy here"--he
gestured at his dog, which looked up at mention of his name--"I've
never known him act as he did then. Turned reg'lar coward, he did--
stuck his tail between his legs and whined and cringed--didn't you,
Jimmy?"

The dog stood up to wag his tail at being addressed, and then
again sat down and gazed at his master. He was of nondescript breed,
Gees saw, more collie than anything, sturdily built and shaggy.

"Something he didn't like facing, eh?" Gees suggested.

"Something he would not face, sir," the man amended. "Stuck behind
me, and when I touched him he was all quivering with fright. I tell
you, sir, just as I've told the master, them grey things are more than
dogs. They're devils, and know as much as devils know. Lord, if only
I'd had my gun, that night! If only to make a blood trail to follow."

"Put that more plainly, Cottrill," Gees invited. "Devils, you
say--what do you mean by devils?"

"Well, sir, I've had Jimmy here from a pup, and trained him up to
his job. The sweetest tempered dog in a hundred mile, and as brave as
a lion, against anything he can understand--things that live like him
and me and you, sir, if you don't mind my puttin' it that way. And if
he puts his tail between his legs and goes all trembly, it's because
of something he can't understand, if you get me, sir. Unearthly, I'd
say."

"Things that live like him and me and you." Gees picked out the
words and echoed them thoughtfully as he gazed at the dog.

"There you are!" Tyrrell exclaimed, with a note of exasperation.
"Cottrill's got it--even Moore, the policeman, looks at it like that,
I believe! They're all set on believing there's something unearthly
about this--but ghosts don't go in for material killings like those."
He nodded at the two carcasses lying beyond them, inside the fold.

"And you're bitten by the same bug yourself," Gees accused.

"I don't know what to think," Tyrrell owned.

"You're not a native of this district, are you?" Gees turned to
the shepherd and addressed the question to him.

"Why, yes, sir," the man answered with a smile. "Born an' bred
here, an' my father was shepherd at Dowlandsbar before me."

"But you don't talk like a native," Gees persisted. "What have you
done with your Cumberland dialect, if you were born here?"

Again Cottrill smiled. "Well, you see, sir, there was the war--I
was just a bit of a boy when I joined up in time to do a bit--"

"Military Cross," Tyrrell put in, "and recommended for a
commission."

"Which I didn't want," Cottrill went on, "and after I got demobbed
I thought I'd see a bit of the world. So I went out to the States and
did a bit of roving there, got off to Peru down the west coast an'
went across the Andes to Buenos Aires--fooled about, as you might say,
sir, on this job an' that job. But all the time I could see these
fells--they pulled me back at the finish, an' here I am an' here I'll
stop."

"Believing that some things don't live like him and me and you."
Gees stooped and patted the dog as he spoke.

"Not exactly, sir, but keepin' an open mind. These fells--

He did not end it, but looked up at the heights about them. They
were in a basin-like depression, pierced at its northern end by a
narrow cut, along which flowed the tiny rivulet which had its source
in a spring on the eastern hillside. And, as Cottrill ceased speaking,
Gees felt the utter silence as a thing almost tangible: there was no
breath of wind, no token of life of any kind on the hills that shut
them in-until a solitary carrion crow sailed over them, a black and
ominous thing against the hazed and cloudless sky.

"You were saying--?" Gees asked, after a long pause.

"An open mind, sir," the man answered. "Here we've got sunshine--
full day--and it's difficult to believe anything but what you see. But
after nightfall it's different--the fells have their own secrets.
Before Mr. McCoul took the castle an' had it repaired to live in, I
doubt if you'd get anyone in Odder to come past that gateway in the
dark. It's old, a graveyard of the very old dead, the people who were
here in the very beginning of things, an' they say they can feel--"

"Rank superstition, Cottrill!" Tyrrell broke in impatiently. "As a
man who has seen the world, you ought to know better than to give heed
to those old women's tales. And we came here for Mr. Green to see
these carcasses--the way they were killed is real and material enough,
with no ghastliness about it. You can't accuse a ghost of--"

"Wait, though," Gees interrupted in turn. "What tales do they tell
of the castle, Cottrill? What was it--did anyone see a ghost there?"

Cottrill shook his head. "No, sir--I never heard of anyone seeing
anything. But the feel of it--even in daylight."

"That is, until Mr. and Miss McCoul came to live there, and
humanised it again?" Gees suggested, ignoring Tyrrell's evident
impatience.

"I suppose so, sir. I haven't heard so much about it since they
came to live in it. Not that that would have anything to do with our
losin' sheep like this, though. I just told you because you asked."

"Yes--thank you very much, Cottrill. Now we'll look at these
sheep, since that was the idea in coming here--eh, Tyrrell?"

"It was," Tyrrell answered shortly, and moved toward the
carcasses.

The other two followed him, and the dog got up and padded sedately
beside his master until they had walked nearly halfway across the
fold. But then, abruptly, Jimmy stopped, whined, and sat down, looking
up at Cottrill with eyes as nearly human as a dog's can be, and in
them an expression half-fearful, half-pleading. Gees stopped to
observe him.

"That's curious," he remarked.

"He's been the same every time, sir," Cottrill said.

"I'd have to carry him to get him near them corpses, and even then
he'd fight to break away from me an' darned near bite me to do it. An'
him that'd tackle anything on four legs or two, if I set him at it.
Jimmy!"

With the last word he called to the dog, and both Gees and Tyrrell
stopped to watch. But Jimmy crouched down fearfully and whined,
evidently more fearful of obeying the call than of what might happen
to him for refusing. Cottrill went back and patted him, and he thumped
the ground with his tail once or twice, as if glad of this absolution.

"Now, Jimmy--come on, old chap!" Cottrill adjured him.

But again the dog crouched and whined, in abject fear.

"All right, then," Cottrill said reassuringly, and turned to go
on. "He's never disobeyed me about anything else," he explained, "an'
I'd trust him with anything, anywhere. But this is--well, too much for
him to stand, by the look of it. He won't go near 'em."

Following him and Tyrrell, Gees looked down at the two horribly
mangled carcasses. "I don't wonder," he said rather grimly. "But"--he
bent over one of them--"ripped and torn like that, and no blood?"

"There never is, sir," Cottrill said.

Bending down, Gees took hold of a foreleg and turned the stiff
carcass over so that it lay on its back. There was a great, ugly tear
beginning at the throat of the animal, and running back to its
shoulder, and the flap of fleece and skin hung loosely back, showing
the bloodless flesh torn and gnawed--where the meat should have been
thickest, bone gleamed whitely. And the mangling of the rest of it was
sickening to see.

"They always drink all the blood like that, sir," Cottrill said in
a matter-of-fact way, "an' then have a feed off the meat."

Gees straightened himself. "Two killed like this, every time?" he
asked, gazing at the other, equally mangled carcass.

"No more, an' no less," the shepherd confirmed him.

Gees looked back at the dog, down with his head on his forepaws,
now, faced toward them and watchful. Again the silence wrapped round
him like a fourth presence here. Then Tyrrell moved, impatiently.

"Well, what do you make of it?" he demanded.

"Nothing, yet," Gees answered imperturbably. "Give me time."

He snuffed at the air as might a hound seeking a scent.

Then he took a petrol lighter from his pocket, flicked it, and
held it up. The tiny flame stood straight--there was no breeze to
deflect it.

"Do you smell anything?" he asked of Cottrill.

"Ah, I wondered if you'd get it too, sir," the man said.

"What do you get?" Gees asked, putting his lighter away.

"It's like--an' yet not like--the wires in front of Passchendaele,
sir," Cottrill said slowly. "I was there, an' the corpses hung an'
rotted on the wire, an' the smell, when the wind drove it--like what I
get after one of these killin's, and yet not like it. This is fouler."

"Very faint, but foul, as you say," Gees confirmed him. "But it
doesn't come from those." He nodded at the carcasses before him.

"No, sir, not from them," Cottrill said gravely.

"What the devil are you two talking about?" Tyrrell demanded. "I
can't smell anything unusual." And he too sniffed, and shook his head.

Gees disregarded him. "Cottrill," he said, "when the police took
it up--at least, I suppose they took it up--what did they do?"

"Had a search for dogs all round," the shepherd answered, "an'
couldn't find one they could blame, anywhere, let alone two. Then
Inspector Feather--he's the big noise around here--he asked me to let
him know instantly the next killing happened, an' he brought a blood-
hound to see if he could track the things that did it."

"And the bloodhound?" Gees asked--though he felt he knew the
answer.

"Just like Jimmy there." Cottrill nodded at his waiting dog. "They
couldn't get it near the killings, an' when they made a cast round
with it, it just shivered an' crouched an' wouldn't work--wouldn't
even try for a scent. An' I remember that scent you picked up--just
now was much stronger, then--it was fair hellish. But the hound
wouldn't take it."

"I must see this Inspector Feather," Gees half-mused. "What are
his views now--I suppose you still report the killings."

"I do," Tyrrell put in, "and I've raved at him. Also he's had six
men on watch for a week on end, all with shotguns, and never a trigger
was pulled. While they watched, nothing happened--as always."

"Well, what does he do now?" Gees persisted.

"Comes up and sees me, and regrets. To hell with his regrets!
Offers to keep men on watch as long as I like and what's the use? He
could keep men on for six months, if he would, and the night after
they go off it would happen again. It always does, when Cottrill gets
a night's sleep. I feel like rounding up every sheep I own and putting
them into a sale yard, except that I hate being beaten."

"You're not beaten, yet," Gees said thoughtfully. "Neither am I."

"Do you mean you're going to put an end to it, then?" Tyrrell
asked.

Gees gave him a whimsical sort of smile. "As I asked before--give
me time," he answered. "I want to see several people, including this
Inspector Feather and some of his men, and"--he turned to Cottrill--
"for awhile I'm going to leave you alone, as far as looking after the
sheep is concerned. You may have one or two more killings before I
come in to stop them, but I may want to talk to you at times."

Cottrill shook his head. "The sheep are my people," he said.

"I know," Gees assented, "but--without being irreverent--it is
expedient that two should die--or four should die--for the rest. For
the present, I am not watching sheep, but going straight for the
things that play hell with them, and--as you've noted already--drink
blood."

"Vampires?" Cottrill only half-questioned.

"No. You're a thinking being, Cottrill, so it's safe to tell you
I'm not sure what they are. I've got to find out, first."

"Good luck to you, sir," Cottrill said earnestly. "I wouldn't
wonder if you did get to the bottom of it. I'll do just as you say."

"Then carry on, you and Mr. Tyrrell, as if I were not here--until
I feel like getting busy at the sheep end. I'm on the other end,
first."

"Not dogs?" Again it was only half a question.

Gees smiled. "Perhaps dogs," he said. "Except--that smell."

"I get you, sir," and Cottrill smiled. "Half-dogs, say."

"And what the hell all this means--" Tyrrell began, and broke off.

"There's a good deal of hell about it, as Cottrill has found out,"
Gees told him. "Or rather, a state between earth and hell--this is
about the most interesting business I've run up against since I
ditched an airplane in the sea off Worthing--and made money out of
it."

With a last glance at the two carcasses, he turned away.

"I've seen enough, and heard more," he remarked. "I've got a
hunger I wouldn't sell, and I suppose you do have lunch, at
Dowlandsbar--what a glorious name for any place! Do we go back, or do
we go back?"

Tyrrell, making no reply, walked beside him. As they neared the
dog it stood up, gazing anxiously up at its master.

"Good old Jimmy!" Cottrill said encouragingly, and the dog wagged
his tail vigorously. "We're both scared, an' you're honest about it."

"By the way"--Gees stopped abruptly--"what do you do with those?"
He turned his head to nod at the two carcasses they had left.

"Burn 'em," Tyrrell answered. "They'll be carted to a heap of
brushwood and stuff at Dowlandsbar, and a few cans of paraffin make
sure of their being altogether destroyed. Nobody would touch that
meat."

"Which goes to show that the bug has bitten you too," Gees
observed. "Well, Cottrill, we shall meet again. I don't blame you for
being scared. It's natural, considering everything."

"Glad to've met you, sir," the man said, with a hint of
earnestness.

"And I you," Gees answered sincerely.

He untied his pony and mounted to return, his feet looking bigger
than ever as they hung down below the turn-ups of the jodhpurs.
Tyrrell led the way up to the lane.

"Think you've got to the bottom of it, do you?" he asked as Gees
came abreast of him beyond the stone wall. There was a trace of
derision in the query.

"As far down as the neck," Gees answered imperturbably, "and I've
got to get all the way down to the feet and the ground under them.
Don't be so damned impatient--I've not been here a day, yet."



Chapter IV INSPECTOR FEATHER



EXTERIORLY, as Gees decided when he came out from the house after
a huge and satisfying lunch with his host, Dowlandsbar was utterly
devoid of architectural pretensions: it was no more than a big, oblong
stone box, divided into compartments by the interior partitioning
walls and dumped on a ledge of a hillside so that it faced south-
west--if the ledge had been artificially terraced in the side of the
hill, the work had been done so long ago that no trace of it remained.
The thickness of the grey stone walls was that of a fortress, and, as
Gees had already noted, the interior walls were of little less
solidity. Slate-roofed above its two stories, it was a grim-looking
habitation--but inside was a treasure house of the handicraft of past
ages. There was a huddle of outbuildings tucked away at the inner end
of the house, viewing it from the lane, and before it, over the ridge
that it faced, showed the ragged tops of Locksborough Castle's ruined
walls, with the boxlike keep rising apparently undamaged in their
midst, its arrow-slit windows and even the machicolations that crowned
it intact. No other dwelling-house or building was in sight.

"I want to ask you some things," Gees stated, as Tyrrell came to
stand beside him. "To begin with, how many men do you employ?"

"Six--eight, altogether, and three maids in the house--which is
including the cook," Tyrrell answered. "You're an odd sort of inquiry
agent, Green," he added, with amusement evident in his tone.

"Not an agent at all--a principal," Gees dissented. "I like the
way you've taken me in as a brother, too, instead of putting me out to
board or leaving me to fend for myself. But where do your men live?"

"You'll find their cottages quite near by--two of them in the glen
just outside the gate, but on the other side of the lane."

"M'yah! Houses have a way of hiding themselves in country like
this, of course. How old is this house of yours, by the way?"

"Does it matter to your inquiry?" Tyrrell countered dryly.

"I don't know what does matter, yet," Gees said. "Never mind, if
it pains you. Magnificent weather for September, isn't it?"

"The newest part of the house--that is, the end nearest to the
outbuildings, which you can see is an addition if you look closely at
this front wall--is not less than three hundred years old," Tyrrell
explained rather morosely. "This main doorway is much older."

"Much," Gees agreed, turning to look at the house and taking out
his cigarette case. "Have one--no? I will, then. It looks to me as if
the original builder made it a one-story fabric, and then a later
occupant lifted the roof and put another floor under it--and a still
later one put that new end on, three hundred years ago, you say. Bless
me, how time flies! And yours is an old family, I gather?"

"I don't know how you gather it," Tyrrell said, "but you happen to
be right. A relative of my ancestors achieved some distinction in the
New Forest with a bow and arrow, not many years after the Conquest."

"Saxon, eh?" Gees conjectured thoughtfully.

"Mainly Danish, my branch of the family," Tyrrell dissented.

"And settled here? But the Danes stuck to the East coast, surely?"

"Oh, no! They allied with the Irish, in the early days, and came
across the Irish Sea to see what they could find on this West coast,
quite a few of them. Vikings used to winter at Dublin, and hire
themselves and their men for the wars between Irish chiefs, and some
of them came over here and settled. Also, this was part of Northumbria
in those days, and that was nearly all Danish."

"Quite so," Gees agreed. "There was a chap named Siward, earl or
something of the sort. I must look it all up, some time."

"And what has all this to do with my sheep?" Tyrrell inquired
acidly.

"I don't know, yet," Gees answered with unruffled placidity. "I'm
getting the feel of the place. Do you know who built that castle?" He
nodded at the ruined walls beyond the ridge that they faced.

"Yes, it was William de--Guillaume, he called himself, Guillaume
de Boisgeant." He spelt out the surname after speaking it. "Why?"

"Umm-m!" Gees took no heed of the final query. "I'd hate to be
called wooden giant, myself. Would that be--when did he build?"

"In Stephen's time, and the name is supposed to imply that he came
from somewhere near Ghent, or his ancestors did. Spelling was a mere
wild amusement in those days. But he built on the site of something
much older--that hillock where the castle stands is peppered with
Roman brick, and even the Romans built on older earthworks. And now
have you had enough of archaeology, or shall I go inside and fetch out
a few volumes of the _Britannica_? You've only to say the word."

"Put that differently, and I ought to be thinking sheep, dreaming
sheep, and talking sheep," Gees observed thoughtfully. "Slaughtered
sheep, that is, bled white by what killed them. Well, perhaps.
Tyrrell, if you don't let me tackle this in my own way, it won't get
done. If you do--well, I'll amend the terms we made in London--in my
office. I'll accept fifty pounds for putting an end to your trouble,
whether it takes a week or seven months, and nothing at all if I don't
end it."

"Then you're sure of success?" Tyrrell asked eagerly.

"No. I don't know yet what is killing your sheep, but I've seen
for myself that these are no normal killings, which simplifies it,
enormously. The abnormal is bound to declare itself, if you look for
it long enough and in the right way. And I haven't asked you a single
question that does not bear on the problem, though you may find that
hard to believe. But--who's that coming through the gateway?"

"Inspector Feather--the one in civilian clothes," Tyrrell answered
after only a glance at the small touring car advancing along the
drive, "and that copper with him is Constable Moore, our local
muddler. I telephoned Feather about this last killing as soon as
Cottrill reported it to me--I've telephoned him each time it happened,
and he's come out each time to show me how useless he is about it."

"I didn't suspect the existence of a telephone," Gees observed.
"What is it, a Marconi contraption? You've got no wire visible."

"Since the wire came down with the snow every winter, and put me
out of communication, I had it laid underground," Tyrrell explained.
"It comes up to join the ordinary wires at the end of the lane."

"You're not a poor man, are you?" Gees remarked abruptly.

"Well?" Tyrrell asked, and smiled amusedly.

"And yet you live in a place like this?"

"You heard Cottrill say how the fells pulled him back," Tyrrell
said. "So with all of us who belong here--and my people have lived in
this house for centuries. It's in the blood of us to stay."

"There is no escape," Gees reflected aloud. "And you mean to marry
Gyda McCoul and rear up successors to feel like that--and stay here."

"I've not asked her to marry me, yet," Tyrrell admitted, "but--
yes, I do mean that. Does it also bear on the problem of the sheep?"

"Call it a mere statement of what I saw as obvious last night,"
Gees countered. "And now--the inspector. Let us be practical."

The final observation was a fruit of his survey of the man who got
out of the car after pulling on his handbrake at the corner of the
house, instead of driving up to stop abreast the main entrance. A very
large man, though still active in all his movements, clad in a suit of
grey tweed that fitted him none too well, he looked more military than
police with his squared shoulders, brownish-red face in which his grey
eyes were deeply set under bushy brows, and big, cavalry moustache
hiding his mouth. Following him came Constable Moore, equally large,
but of a slow, lumbering type--Hercules with sciatica, Gees mentally
dubbed him. The inspector, approaching Tyrrell and Gees as they stood
on the graveled frontage, saluted by touching his soft felt hat.

"Afternoon, sir," he said to Tyrrell. "I thought I'd just look you
up over this last outrage, to see if there's anything different about
it."

"In fact," Tyrrell interrupted savagely, "to show your damned
incompetence once more. I'm utterly fed-up with you, Inspector
Feather."

For some seconds, the inspector appeared as if about to choke, and
his reddish face took on a purplish tinge. Then he achieved control
over himself, and spoke in a way that Gees admired.

"Very good, sir. I'm sorry to have intruded on you. I hope you
have no objection to my seeing your shepherd, Cottrill, about it?"

"See him by all means," Tyrrell snapped back. "And after that,
what are you going to do about it? Go home and dream again?"

"Mr. Tyrrell," Feather asked coolly, "if a man of yours has
bungled some piece of work, do you castigate him in front of others?"

"I'm sorry, Inspector," Tyrrell said frankly, realizing his own
lack of decency, "and I take it all back. Green, this is Inspector
Feather, who has tried to get to the bottom of this trouble--though
with no success, so far. Inspector, Mr. Green, from London, who--"

"Is just looking round your wonderful country and admiring it, and
enjoying my friend's hospitality," Gees put in. "Though I've not seen
much of it yet, having only arrived last night. I expect your duties
take you over a fairly extensive territory, Inspector?"

"Some few miles to cover, sir," Feather answered, far more
placably than he had spoken to Tyrrell, so far. "It's a sparsely
populated area, this, and I do a good bit of driving about in the
course of a week."

"And in all your driving, I suppose, you've never come across a
case like this," Gees suggested. "One so difficult, I mean."

"That is the case, sir. It's--well, baffling, say, I find it."

"Yes, very, I should think," Gees assented encouragingly. "Mr.
Tyrrell has been telling me all about it, and we went to see the
carcasses of these last two sheep this morning. I suppose you've tried
everything? I know a little about police work, by the way."

"Is that so, sir?" The inspector accorded him a slight increase of
respect, and Tyrrell frowned heavily, but did not interrupt them.
"Yes, I think I've done everything possible. Drummed up six men this
summer--though it's difficult for me to spare as many--and put them on
watch over the sheep--and the very night after they were taken off it
happened again. Moore, here, has watched with Cottrill, too. I've had
a census of dogs taken all over my district, and exonerated every one
of 'em, and last June we had that drive, you'll remember, Mr.
Tyrrell."

"Drive?" Gees echoed. "How do you mean that, Inspector?"

"Got every man we could, and two troops of boy scouts, and started
early in the morning to beat all the countryside for miles--I had an
idea it might be an animal or animals escaped from some menagerie or
something--they're big beasts that do this, as you can see from the
carcasses, and I had an idea there might be something hiding in the
fells and coming out to play this devil's game with Mr. Tyrrell's
sheep. But we found nothing--except for one wild cat that one of my
men shot."

"Which was not big enough to do damage of that sort," Gees
observed.

"Not by a long chalk, sir. Mr. Tyrrell"--he turned from Gees as he
spoke--"I propose to organize another drive. We may find something if
we do, and I can get more men into it, this time."

Tyrrell made a slight grimace. "Do what you like," he said, "but
if you stop to reflect, you'll remember that these killings have all
been exactly alike, pointing the fact that the same beasts have done
them all the time. Add to that, there has been as much as a fortnight
interval between two killings--and if those things are hidden in the
fells, what do they live on? Do they starve for a fortnight?"

"Well, there are rabbits, sir," Feather ventured.

"Do you think, in six months, we should not have come across some
sign if they had been killing rabbits?" Tyrrell demanded. "Do you
think Cottrill or somebody would have gone all this time without
finding some sign of the things themselves? He, for one, tramps every
bit of the fells with that dog of his--and he's seen nothing at all."

"Yes, sir, but I'm suggesting they may lie up outside the bounds
of your land, and come in to kill. I propose a twenty-mile drive from
north to south, and adding in the boy scouts we can get, there'll be
between one and two hundred people beating the country, this time."

"With intervals of fifty yards, and the size of these things that
do the killings, they ought to find them if they're there," Gees put
in.

"At least, it seems to me worth trying," Feather said hopefully,
"and it's got to be done while this weather lasts, if at all. Once the
autumn rain and fogs begin, it would be a mere waste of time."

"When do you propose to undertake it, then?" Tyrrell asked.

"Well, today's Tuesday--Friday, I'd say. I can get my crowd
together and out here by about eleven on Friday morning, if you
agree."

"And do I feed them, or pay them?" Tyrrell asked acidly.

"No more than you did before, sir," Feather answered, and Gees
sensed the resentment that his quiet tone concealed--he was a genius
at keeping his temper, evidently. "The boys will bring their own food
and treat it all as a lark, and I shall look after the rest of them--
that is, the county will have to stand the expense. But"--he turned to
address Gees--"it'll be more than fifty yards intervals, sir. With
that, you'd only cover a front of five thousand yards, not the full
width of Mr. Tyrrell's own land. From one to two hundred yards apart,
I want them--and those things are big enough to see at that distance."

"You're going by Cottrill's glimpse of them and his description,"
Gees suggested, after a moment's pause for thought.

"To some extent, sir. But if you see things like these by night,
with probably a bit of haze about, they're bound to look bigger than
reality. Cottrill said they were as big as donkeys, but anything the
size of a Great Dane would be big enough to do what they're doing."

"Still doing," Tyrrell amended for him, sourly.

"Mr. Tyrrell," he said gravely, "if you can suggest anything I
have not done in connection with this case, I shall be most happy to
do it."

There followed an awkward minute or so, and Gees feared lest
Tyrrell should break out into open rage. But, instead, he laughed.

"You win, Inspector," he said. "No--I'm sore over it, as you'd be
if they were your sheep, but I haven't an idea in my head beyond what
you've done and propose to do. You want to see Cottrill, I suppose?"

"I'd like to see him, and inspect the carcasses, sir."

"Well, he'll be over in Anker's Glen--and you'll find four of my
men carting the hurdles to make him a new fold. That is, unless he's
gone out on the fells to see to his sheep, and in that case the men
making the new fold will tell you where to find him. If this keeps on
much longer, there will be nowhere to put fresh folds for him."

"You mean that you move the sheep each time?" Gees asked.

"Necessarily," Tyrell answered. "Sheep are the worst fools of all
animals, but you won't get them down on to that ground where the
killing took place for another two months, at least. Cottrill knows he
can't, now, and so he folds in a fresh place after a killing."

"You get that, Inspector?" Gees asked.

"The smell of blood, I expect," Feather said. "In the same way,
I've seen sheep go nearly mad over being driven into a slaughter
house. All animals are the same when there's blood about."

But, Gees thought and did not say, there had been no blood at the
scene of this last killing. Instead, there had been a faint reek that
had a sickening, loathsome quality, a scent he could no more forget
than define. He nodded a grave assent to the inspector's statement.

"That is so," he said. "Well, I shall be here to take part in your
drive--and good luck to it. This is a ghastly affair."

"It's against my professional pride, sir," Feather said, "and I'd
do anything to put an end to it, as Mr. Tyrrell knows."

He took his leave, and the stout constable, who had stood in the
background and said nothing throughout the interview, though he had
heard it all, followed his superior and climbed unhandily into the
car. Gees watched meditatively as the inspector started his engine,
reversed and turned, and eventually went off down the drive toward the
gateway.

"His professional pride," he observed thoughtfully.

"What do you make of him, Gees?" Tyrrell inquired.

"Ah! That's real friendliness, calling me that," Gees answered,
and smiled. "I make less of him than I do of you, over it."

"Explicate?" Tyrrell asked, after a thoughtfully frowning pause.

"Well, he lived up to the best traditions of the force, took all
your insults as if they had been compliments," Gees explained, "and
you didn't show up as the world's most perfect little gentleman
against him, either. I'm being frank, and you can kick me out, if you
like."

"No, I won't. Feather's a sound officer, really, but I'm so sore
over this that I say more than I mean, probably," Tyrrell admitted.

"Well, say a little less about me, from henceforth," Gees urged
gently. "You were about to tell him I'd come here to investigate this
business when I broke in and stopped you at it. I don't want a board
put up at the gateway to say Gees is investigating something between
mumps and murder on this spot. I don't want you to shout my purpose in
being here at any more of your friends or retainers, but just to play
the simple innocent with a vast interest in Cumberland, which I'm now
seeing for the first time. And if you tell the police I'm conducting a
private investigation for you, you put the police's backs up--see?"

"With consequent loss of interest on their part," Tyrrell
suggested.

"Possibly," Gees admitted. "Wow, but that was a whale of a lunch!
Do you know what I feel like doing, at this moment?"

"Haven't the faintest idea," Tyrrell answered.

"Going to my room, pulling down the bed cover, and settling down
for an hour or so before tea. It must be this air, I think."

"Just as you like." He sounded as if the idea did not appeal to
him.

"Permission granted, obviously," Gees remarked. "You're thinking I
ought to be up and about, of course, doing my damndest. But, as I told
you, the terms of the contract are now fifty all in if I succeed, and
nothing if I fail--and I do it in my own way."

"I'll see that you're wakened for tea," Tyrrell promised, far less
stiffly. "And--you think well of Inspector Feather, apparently?"

"As a police officer--yes," Gees answered. "Trained to routine
work and employing all the best police methods--more than he told you
or me, almost certainly. Feather is no fool, within his limitations."

"Meaning--?" Tyrrell queried interestedly.

"I told you, the abnormal is bound to declare itself if you look
for it long enough and in the right way--but you mustn't look for it
in normal ways. Which is why I'm going to climb on to my little bed
and either think or not--I think I want some more material to think
over, before I really begin thinking. We'll see."

He turned toward the house and made for the entrance.

Tyrrell, unmoving, watched him go, and smiled.

"You can't help liking the chap," he told himself.



Chapter V BAR TALK



THERE had been five scones in the dish, all hot and buttery, when
Tyrrell had called Gees down from his room for tea. One remained, now.
Gees, who had had three, looked at the lonely survivor, wistfully.

"Take it," Tyrrell urged. "I'm turning on to cake."

"Then it would be a pity to waste this," Gees said, seizing the
scone. "It must be this air that's getting me down."

"Getting the scones down, too," Tyrrell gibed.

"I want to borrow a suit of clothes," Gees announced abruptly.

"Well"--Tyrrell surveyed his figure--"apart from hands and feet,
you and I are much of a size, I should say. Anything of mine--"

"No," Gees interrupted. "Good of you and all that, but have you a
man working for you of about my size? I want a working suit."

"There's Weelum," Tyrrell said, after a moment's thought. "He'd be
about your build if somebody hit him on the nose and pushed his head
back. You know--stoops. But I think a suit of his would fit you."

"A dirty suit," Gees explained. "Everyday, corduroy, reach-me-down
uglies. The uglier the better. Can you borrow one without his knowing
it's for me? And a cap or hat--I'll muddy a pair of my own shoes."

"Is this disguise?" Tyrrell asked. "I mean, if it is, you've got
to wear boots, not shoes. Farm hands don't, you'll find."

"Quite right," Gees assented. "I packed a pair of heavy boots,
fortunately. Experience of Shropshire mud made me do it. Well, suit,
and hat, to make a farm laborer of me. Can you do it, unbeknown?"

"I think so," Tyrrell assented rather dubiously. "For when?"

"This evening--to walk to Odder and mingle with the gay throng in
the _Royal George_ on terms of fraternity and equality."

"And is _that_ how you expect to discover what's killing my
sheep?" Tyrrell demanded with heavy sarcasm.

"Part of it," Gees answered placidly. "I wish you'd be a little
less anxious to keep my nose hard down on the sheepstone, but as a
matter of fact this is relevant to my idea of pursuing the abnormal by
abnormal paths. How do you approach this Weelum, as you called him?"

"I don't," Tyrrell answered. "I approach my cook. Weelum is her
son, and illegitimate at that. He lives on the premises with her, and
I expect I could persuade her to let me have a suit of his and say
nothing about it for the evening--say nothing to him, that is."

"Tomorrow, of course, she'll tell the world," Gees suggested, "but
it will be too late to damage me, then. All right, Weelum let it be.
Oh, one other thing, though. I want Cottrill with me."

"Cottrill?" Tyrrell echoed, in blank stupefaction. "But he'll be
watching by the sheep tonight, man. Always, after a killing--"

"There will be no killing tonight," Gees interrupted. "I want him
to come pub-crawling with me, as far as Odder and the _Royal George_."

"You'll never get him away from his sheep," Tyrrell prophesied.

"Well, will you get him to come here and see me after he's
finished his folding?" Gees asked. "Will he be near enough for that?"

"Yes, I can send and get him to come over before dark. But I
assure you it will be impossible to get him away from the flock."

"I'll take the assurance--and Cottrill too, after I've had a word
with him. Now will you go and see about a suit of Weelum's workaday
fustian? I may have to make alterations in it to fit it, or anything."

"It shall be done," Tyrrell promised, and, having finished his
tea, went off to that part of the house over which his cook ruled.

It came to pass some two hours later that Cottrill, arriving at
the house in answer to a summons, faced his master just as there
emerged from the house a being at whom he frowned in a puzzled way,
since, as nearly as he could tell, it was a stranger to these parts.
Soiled corduroy trousers over enormous feet, an old grey gabardine
coat of which the sleeves were too short by an inch or two, and which
was soiled as if its owner had gone ditching in it for years; a blue
striped shirt, a muffler of dark wool round the neck, and a dirty old
cap pulled well down over the eyes, completed the outfit.

"How do I look, Tyrrell?" Gees asked, and Cottrill first smiled
and then chuckled as he recognized the voice.

"Villainous," Tyrrell answered unhesitatingly.

"Splendid!" Gees remarked with deep satisfaction. "Now, Cottrill,
I suppose you blow along to the _Royal George_ at Odder occasionally,
if things are quiet enough to give you an evening off?"

"Well, sir, I have been known to do such a thing," the shepherd
admitted, with a twinkle in his eye.

"Well, we'll go along together tonight, and I'll be--"

"Not tonight, sir," Cottrill interrupted gravely. "I shall be
keeping an eye on the fold, after what happened night before last."

"Whether you do or no, there will be no more killings tonight,"
Gees told him with utter certainty in his tone, "and I assure you it
will be far more useful if you come and give me the freedom of the
bar."

"I'd be uneasy, sir. It's not as if--well, you see, the sheep are
my people. And to leave them alone in the fresh fold, tonight--"

His gesture implied refusal to think of such a thing. Then Tyrrell
spoke--his look at Gees' face determined him.

"They close at ten, Cottrill," he said. "I'll take a shot gun and
go down to Anker's Glen, and you can come and relieve me after knock-
out. Mr. Green is set on making this expedition tonight."

"Because, after today, too many people will know me--I should be
recognized by someone in spite of these clothes," Gees explained.

"Well, if you're sure, Mr. Tyrrell--" Cottrill began, and again
did not end it. Evidently he was reluctant to leave his sheep to the
care of any other. "And I don't see what use--" he began again.

"As I remarked to Mr. Tyrrell," Gees told him, "this is an
abnormal case, and you've got to use abnormal methods to get at the
cause of the trouble. It may be quite useless, this little jaunt, but
I want to try it--and if I go alone, the men in that bar will shut up
like oysters."

"An' I'm to be the oyster-knife," Cottrill suggested. "All right,
sir, since Mr. Tyrrell is goin' to keep watch. I'll come."

"Good! I'll be George--just George, for the evening. Friend of a
cousin of yours, shall we say? From down south--Sussex, for choice."

"I think I can back that amount of fiction, sir."

"Not sir--George." He looked at his watch. "If I meet you outside
the gate in about an hour's time, that will give you a chance to get
something to eat, and it will be very nearly dark by then, too."

"Right you are, sir. I'll be there," Cottrill promised.

"No--George!" Gees insisted. "Start practicing it now."

"All right, George. I'll be there in an hour from now."

He went down the drive, Jimmy following him. The dog was plodding
wearily, Gees noted, and Cottrill himself seemed none too fresh.

"I wonder how many miles they've done today already?" Gees mused.
He thought of how he had seen the sheep scattered to graze on the
hillsides, and what it meant to collect them all and fold them for the
night. "And Odder's nearly three miles away," he added.

"He'll be all right after a rest and some food," Tyrrell said,
"but I doubt whether this idea of yours will lead to anything."

"We'll see," Gees said. "No other idea has led to anything, so
far, so at the worst I shall merely come out even. But--dinner, eh?"

Tyrrell led the way inside, and then gestured Gees to precede him.

"You're sure that maid of yours can keep quiet--till to-morrow?"
Gees asked. "It would be a pity if a word from her got ahead of me."

"It won't," Tyrrell promised. "I've seen to that already."

 * * * *

Night had fully fallen when Cottrill and Gees went off toward
Odder: Tyrrell, with a double-barreled breechloader in the crook of
his arm and about a dozen cartridges loaded with number three shot,
had set out for Anker's Glen half an hour earlier. Since the moon
would not rise till after ten o'clock, and the haze was thicker than
on the preceding night, the darkness in the hollow to which the two
descended after leaving Dowlandsbar gateway was of such a quality that
Gees stumbled more than once in the ruts of the unkempt lane.

"This reek's comin' off Solway, I reckon," Cottrill remarked. He
halted, wetted his forefinger by sticking it in his mouth, and held it
up to test the air. "Yes," he added as they went on. "West, with a bit
of north in it--there'll be a fog by mornin', George."

"Ah! You oughter see what a Lunnon fog's like," Gees responded.

"Bad enough here, in winter," Cottrill said.

They passed over a stone bridge that Gees remembered from the
night before, since it had given him little more than a foot of
clearance on each side of his car, and bent to the steep ascent
beyond. The tall stones of the entrance to Locksborough Castle reared
ghostly in the haze, and Gees saw that Cottrill signed the cross on
himself as he passed the twin pillars. He was about to comment on it
when with a little thrill down the spine he realized that a specter-
like grey figure was showing above the low stone wall between them and
the castle lands, and advancing toward them. Then it resolved itself
into the form of a woman, and Cottrill uttered a cheery "Good night"
as they came abreast.

"Why, Mr. Cottrill, isn't it?" Gees recognized Gyda Mccoul's
voice.

"That same, miss," Cottrill said, and paused. "It's a foggy sort
of night--I'm afraid our good weather's breakin' up at last."

"Oh, I hope not!" As she spoke, she took a step forward, seemed to
stumble, and recovered herself within a yard of Gees--he could see her
snow-white hair, uncovered, and see, too, a half-luminous quality in
her eyes, before she backed away from him. "This awful lane!" she
exclaimed. "It makes an evening walk almost impossible. But surely you
should be watching the sheep tonight, Mr. Cottrill?"

"No, miss, I'm takin' a night off wi' George here--he's come all
the way from Sussex to have a look at us up here. There won't be
nothing happen to the sheep again as soon after the last killin' as
this."

"Well, you know best, of course," she said. "Good night, Mr.
Cottrill. And good night, George, too." And she went on toward the
monolith-guarded entry to the castle, while Cottrill and Gees resumed
their way. And, Gees realized, there had been a spice of mockery in
her voice when she had bidden him good night: she had recognized him,
he knew.

"They say she walks about a lot o' nights," Cottrill observed,
when be felt sure the subject of the remark was beyond hearing.
"Restless, like. Ever see a white head like hers before, George?"

"Not quite so striking," Gees admitted. "It's very attractive."

"Mighty pretty," Cottrill agreed, "but a bit uncanny. I saw one
like it in Valparaiso, but she had a face you could camp out on--got
some Arauco blood in her, and her hair was straight, not curly like
Miss McCoul's."

"There's a prospect that she won't be Miss McCoul much longer, I
understand," Gees observed after they had tramped some way in silence.

"Aye," Cottrill assented, and Gees divined from his tone that this
was a subject he was not inclined to discuss.

Again they went on in silence, topped the rise beyond the castle,
and went winding down into Odder. The village emporium was closed,
Gees noted: he saw, too, the squat steeple of a little church that he
had not observed from his car--it was set back from the lane and
tucked into a slope that rendered it inconspicuous. Then they turned
toward the _Royal George,_ from the frontage of which a band of light
lay out across the lane, and in it the thickening reek of the night
swirled smokily. Cottrill opened a door, and the two entered a big,
low ceilinged room, paneled shoulder-high with painted and grained
deal planking. There were settles round three sides, a plain deal
table with two scrubbed, backless forms as seats for it in the middle
of the room, a dart board hung in the corner by the window, and a bar
at which a red-faced man in shirt-sleeves presided. A dozen or so of
men dressed much as was Gees himself sat round on the settles, in twos
and threes, and against the bar lounged a well-dressed youngster who
screwed up his eyes to gaze at the new-comers in a way that suggested
he had been drinking freely. The sag of the pint tankard he held
suggested it, too.

"Why, it's Co-Cottrill!" he hiccupped. "Good old Cottrill! How-
how's sheep-killing going on, Cottrill? All-all dead yet?"

"Not all, Master Harold," Cottrill answered stiffly, as he
approached the bar. "Two pints, tankards, Mr. Querrett. I've got a
friend from Sussex come to see us. George, this is Mr. Querrett, an'
if you can find better beer between here an' Sussex--well, you're
clever. Why, hullo, Harry! How goes it, Ben? Taters all clamped yet?"

"Aye, an' a rare crop, too," Ben, a grey-headed ancient,
responded.

"They hain't begun clampin' of 'em yet, down in Sussex," Gees put
in, addressing himself to both Cottrill and the ancient.

"You jest coom from theer, then?" Ben inquired friendlily.

"Aye," he answered. "Come up through the sheers."

"Through what, mister?" The ancient put a hand to his ear for the
reply, and the rest of the men in the room listened too.

"The sheers," Gees repeated. "Lemme see, now. There was Birksheer,
an' Oxfordsheer, an' Shropsheer, an' Lancasheer--"

"Geography lesson, gentlemen all!" the youngster by the bar broke
in. "Counties of England in their or-order, by the man from Sussex.
Dirty county, Sussex, by the look of him. Refill, please, Querrett."
He slid his tankard across the bar and released it with the order.

"No, Master Harold, you get no more to drink here tonight,"
Querrett answered firmly, and put the empty tankard away after handing
two to Cottrill. Gees took one of the two and silently toasted the
shepherd with it before he drank, and discovered it was very good beer
indeed.

"No more t'-night?" the youth demanded harshly. "Why, 'ts'not
nine, yet! Not half-pas' eight. Don' be silly, man!"

"It's nearer nine than half-past eight," Querrett told him firmly,
"and if it were only seven you wouldn't get another drop across this
bar. It's time you went home. Good night, Master Harold."

Gazing round the room blinkingly, as if inclined to appeal against
the decision, the youth sensed that the landlord's suggestion was
approved. He stuck his hands in his pockets and walked unsteadily to
the door, pausing there to look back into the room as he held on to
the handle. He grinned, foolishly, and opened the door.

"Good nigh', ev'ybody," he said, and went out, slamming the door.

"If I'd had a boy like that, I'd ha' leathered him black an'
blue," Ben said solemnly. "Reckon he'll break Mr. Amber's heart, this
way."

"An' his sister's as well," said another. "She's fair worritted
over his ways. 'T'ain't as if he could carry his drink."

"The vicar's son, eh?" Gees asked of Cottrill.

"Aye. He's at college at Oxford--they give 'em far too long
holidays, an' don't discipline 'em when they're there," Cottrill
answered. "What d'ye think of our Cumberland beer, George?"

"Fine stuff," Gees said reverently. "You were right about it."

"That young feller oughter be leathered," Ben insisted to the
company in general. "If I had a son like him, I'd leather him, I
would."

"An' how are things down yure way, mister?" A brawny individual in
a shabby velveteen jacket put the question to Gees as he set a pint
glass on the bar and gestured Querrett to refill it.

"Oh, slow," Gees answered. "But I come into a bit o' money, so I
reckoned I'd travel a bit an' see me old friend here." He indicated
Cottrill by a nod. "An' havin' come into that bit o' money," he added,
"I reckon it's up to me to stand me footin', like. What'll everyone
have, now?" He looked round the room to see how the invitation would
be received, trusting to Cottrill's sponsorship to justify it.

"Well, that's very kind o' your friend, Mr. Cottrill," Ben said,
and finished his drink hastily. "I'll drink his health in another
pint, wi' pleasure, an' I reckon the rest of us'll do the same."

"Drink up, chaps," Cottrill admonished heartily.

"George is a warm member, an' he can afford it. Half for me this
time, Mr. Querrett--I don't want to make the pace too hot, an' we've
just had pints."

The landlord bustled between the bar and his taps--he had the beer
in casks at the back--and eventually every member of the party had a
fresh drink at Gees' expense. They toasted him, and old Ben smacked
his lips loudly as he lowered his tankard after a long draught.

"An' how d'ye like our part o' the world, mister?" he inquired.

"You've got too many hills, an' not enough trees," Gees answered.

"You don't want to be all smothered up in woods, do you?" Ben
demanded. "As f'r the hills, I reckon the Almighty put 'em there."

"An' trees," another observed, "there's a fine clump round Mr.
Tyrrell's place--reg'lar little wood, it is. Don't want trees
everywhere you go. It'd make it stiflin' like, besides the mess o'
leaves."

"All round that old ruin we passed on the way here, there's no
more trees'n hair on a baby's chin," Gees declared gravely.

"Ah, that'll be Locksborough," Ben remarked. "Well, there was some
fine rowans, but Mr. McCoul had 'em all cut down an' the roots
pizened. It beat us, that did--unless maybe he reckoned to use 'em as
firewood."

"That way, he wouldn't ha' had the roots pizened," another
suggested.

"Happen he wouldn't," Ben said, and dismissed the subject. "Well,
Mr. Cottrill, what's yure news? Yu're a bit of a stranger, these
days."

"Why, yes," Cottrill agreed. "It's some while since I called in
for a pint, ain't it? News? Nothing good, I can assure you, Ben."

"You hain't found out what's a-doin' of it yet, then?"

Cottrill shook his head. "Neither hide nor hoof," he answered.

"I was talkin' to Moore tonight," the velveteen-jacketed man put
in, "and he told me there's to be another drive, come Friday mornin'."

"Aye, an' if any o' them boys go tromplin' round my tater clamp,
I'll leather 'em," Ben promised.

"The things that kill them sheep ain't likely to hide in your
tater clamp, Ben," velveteen-jacket said slily, and won a general
laugh.

"Happen they don't," Ben snapped when the laugh subsided. "D'you
know where they do hide, since you talk so sure about it?"

"Happen you know as much as I do about 'em," velveteen retorted.

"What d'you chaps make o' these things, then?" Gees ventured,
opening the subject for which he had made this excursion. "I'm a
stranger about heer," he added apologetically, "an' know no more'n
what Mr. Cottrill told me, about losin' his sheep by dogs o' some
sort."

"Well, mister, that's what it is," Ben said, and suggested by his
tone that he intended to say no more on the subject.

"But you been callin' of 'em things, not dogs," Gees pointed out.

"It'd be back about the middle o' July, mister," the velveteen man
said slowly, after a pause in which nobody moved or spoke, "an' Jack
Baldwin--he ain't here tonight--Jack was comin' along from Dowlandsbar
way, same as it might be you an' Mr. Cottrill tonight. Top o' the rise
this side the old castle, he sighted two things t'other side the wall
alongside the road--things, he called 'em, not dogs. They was goin'
like all possessed across country, Jack said--it was nigh on dark, but
not quite. Jack said they loped over the wall a score paces in front
o' him, an' then took the other wall an' went outer sight in a dip
t'ords the castle. An' Jack said he'd take his oath they warn't dogs
nor yet nuthin' a dog'd come near, though they was four-legged."

"More like big cats?" Gees suggested.

"No. Like dogs, Jack said, but not dogs. Because, he said, there
was a smell went with 'em that made him nigh sick, a smell no dog
could live with--they was to wind'ard of him, an' he got the smell as
they went across his front. Ye know, sometimes a dog'll roll on a dead
rat or anything an' get a powerful stink on him, but Jack said it was
not a bit like that. More--more like bad chemicals, he reckoned..."

"I were here when he come in that night," another interrupted,
"an' he were white as a sheet, an' what he said about the smell were
that if any of us ever got to hell, it'd be what we'd find. The reek
o' the pit where the damned frizzle, he said, not bein' careful o' his
words at anytime, ain't Jack. An' if you went by the look o' him, he'd
seen the davvle hisself, that night. All to pieces, he were."

"An' they're what's killin' Mr. Tyrrell's sheep," the velveteen
man added. "An' 'tis my belief no mortal man can tackle 'em, even if
he could find 'em, any more'n ye could tackle the old dead risen."

"The old dead risen?" Gees echoed questioningly.

"The man's a stranger," Ben cut in, "or he'd know there's things
round these fells we don't talk about, lest we get their ill-will." He
tilted his tankard, and ceremoniously spilled a gout of its contents
on the sanded floor, and with amazement Gees saw that half a dozen
others, Cottrill among them, did the same. It was a sort of libation,
as if the men who made it feared lest the "old dead" should hear
themselves discussed, and so must be propitiated.

An odd quiet followed, and the occupants of the bar looked at each
other uneasily: there was fear in the atmosphere of the place, Gees
sensed, and a lad by the window let out a little yelp as the door went
clattering open and a wild-eyed, bare-headed man, his grizzled hair
all tousled, almost ran in and, steadying, approached the bar.

"Fr the love av the Virgin, Misther Querrett, gimme a double
whisky, an' make it big!" he pleaded rather than ordered.

"Shaun Ammon, Mr. McCoul's man at the castle," Cottrill whispered
explanatorily to Gees. "Why, Shaun, what's wrong?" he asked, as the
landlord took down a bottle and a man by the door shut it hastily.

"Ah, sure, I've seen an' smelt 'em," Shaun answered half-
sobbingly. "Beyant the church, waitin' be the wall o' the graveyard.
Eyes like fires glowin' at ye--great grey things crouchin', an' one
growled as I wint by. An' hell itself'll smell no worse than thim."

"There!" the velveteen man exclaimed. "Wasn't that what Jack said?
The reek o' the pit where the damned frizzle was his words."

"But how come you to be out this way so late, Shaun?" Querrett
asked. "You've never been here after dark before, I know."

The man finished his neat whisky and put the glass down. "I'll be
throublin' ye f'r the same again, Misther Querrett," he said, "F'r I
nade it, if iver a man did. How'm I here so late, ye're askin'? It was
the masther, Misther McCoul--Miss Gyda went f'r one o' her walks, an'
since she was out a long while, he sez to me--'Shaun,' he sez, 'I
mislike Miss Gyda bein' out alone so late, with all the happenin's
that happen these days--go find her, she wint t'ords Odder, an' ye'll
find her forninst the village, sure.' An' I kem out lookin' f'r her,
but divil a sight of her could I see. An' bein' so near, a dhrink
sthruck me as a frind in nade, an' I kem on past the churchyard--but
not f'r ten barrels av the craythur would I have kem if I'd known what
I'd see!"

Cottrill emptied his tankard and put it down. Then he turned to
Gees and gripped the stick--it was almost a cudgel--he had brought.

"I dunno how you feel about this," he said, "but if the grey
things are still there--but I wish I had my gun with me." And he moved
toward the door, while Gees, comprehending his intent, followed.

"Nay, come back!" Ben called to them. "Can ye face devils from the
pit wi' no more than a stick, man? Come back! Death's out there!"

"Aye, the old dead, mayhap," and Cottrill lifted his stick aloft,
"but I cut this from a mountain ash myself. And I'm going."

He went out to the night. Gees, following him, looked back and saw
a huddle of frightened faces as the occupants of the bar crowded round
the doorway. Cottrill, hurrying, glanced back too for a moment.

"If they had the guts of a louse among 'em, they'd come too," he
said. "Hullo! Tom Cotton's a man, at least. Comin' with us, Tom?"

The velveteen-jacketed man, running to catch up with them, eased
his pace to fall in beside Cottrill. "Aye," he said. "If so be as we
might track 'em down an' put an end to this devil's business."

They hurried on, and came to the low wall bounding the churchyard.
Again Gees caught the vile reek he had smelt that morning by the sheep
fold, but of whatever had caused it there was no sign, though they
searched all four sides of the quadrangle. Then, standing in the
misty, utter stillness to listen for a moment, vainly, Cottrill shook
his head.

"Might be anywhere, by this time," he said. "In the churchyard
itself, mayhap. There's hiding enough among the tombs."

"The old dead wouldn't go in consecrated ground," Tom Cotton said.

"Are they, then?" Cottrill turned on him and put the question
sharply, almost fiercely.

"This smell," Tom said. "That, or--" He did not end it.

"Ssh!" Cottrill cautioned him. "Don't speak of _them_."

"You goin' back home, or stoppin' the night here?" Tom asked after
another long silence in which they looked over the wall.

"Back home, of course," Cottrill answered. "Why?"

"It's more'n I'd do, tonight," Tom said. "But there's that poor
chap Ammon--he'll never dare go back to the castle alone. If--"

"Yes," Cottrill said, "he can come with us. Now, though. I'm not
stopping in there any longer, nor goin' in again. Tell him, will you."

Tom went off toward the inn, and Cottrill and Gees went a little
way back toward it. Presently Shaun Ammon came hurrying toward them.

"May the saints in glory look down an' reward yez, gentlemen," he
accosted them. "'Tis meself that'd niver dare go back alone, an' no
breakfast there'd have been for the masther in the mornin' av I'd
sthayed, an' Miss Gyda's hot wather to make tonight, too."

"You'll be rather late with it," Gees suggested.

"An' maybe I will, but Miss Gyda's a forgivin' sort. Ah, me head's
all rattlin' wi' the fright, an' I can't think. Av you two gentlemen
would come as far as the dureway, I'll remimber it in me prayers. The
divil is out tonight, sure, an' all his angels too."

"We'll see you home, Shaun," Gees promised.

"May the blessin' av Mary rest on ye, gentlemen," Shaun prayed
fervently. "'Tis no night to go alone, be the powers!"

As they climbed to the ridge between them and the old castle, Gees
could hear the Irishman drawing long, shuddering breaths, as if the
terror of what he had seen were still on him. And, until they had seen
him open a postern door at one corner of the old keep, and enter, no
more words were spoken except for the "Good nights" of all three.
Then, as the two turned to go back to the lane, Cottrill spoke.

"It looks as if they were coming out into the open at last," he
said. "God send it, before I go mad."

"Soon, now," Gees said soothingly.

"You mean that?"

Cottrill stopped to face his man while he put the question. But,
before Gees could answer, they both faced toward Dowlandsbar to
listen. Not from Dowlandsbar itself, but from beyond it, came the
faint report of a gun. Then again it sounded to them, and faint echoes
of the report volleyed among the fells and died out.

"The master!" Cottrill whispered. "Nobody else would be shooting
at this time of night. They're there among the sheep!"

He turned and ran, and Gees, following at first, caught him up and
kept beside him on the way to Anker's Glen.



Chapter VI ATTACK



FROM the top of Brownhill Scar, a humped mound or hillock on the
ridge over which a path led to Anker's Glen, Tyrrell paused to look
back at the last of the sunset afterglow, pink and emerald shading to
deepening turquoise between horizon and zenith. A little light
remained on such heights as this, but in the valleys the shadows were
deepening fast, and the light haze that would later become a misty
reek was thickening. Dowlandsbar, a mile and more to the west from the
Scar, was hidden by the intervening height; to the east, far off and
no more than a glimmering point, Tyrrell could see the coalesced
lights of the farmhouse where Bandon, whose land formed the eastern
boundary to Tyrrell's own, lived. There was no other sign of human
occupancy of the rugged landscape: cottages, what there were of them,
were set low down in the glens for the sake of water, and of winter
shelter too.

Nearly all Tyrrell's land was, like his homestead, on the north
side of the lane which formed his only way to main roads and the
urgencies of what claims to be the higher form of civilization, but
the glen in which the sheep were folded for this night was part of
some two hundred acres on the south side. The lane itself averaged an
east and west direction, though its persistent divergences from the
average as it followed the conformations of the ground made this hard
of belief to one who did not know the countryside.

Heather-clad, rock-scarred, the heights grew obscure and their
outlines softened with the coming of darkness: from this height on
which he paused Tyrrell could look down into Anker's Glen, a wide
valley of rich grass in which the new fold showed as a grayish oval in
the dimness, filled as it was with the fleecy backs of his sheep. He
broke his gun, slipped in two of the cartridges from his pocket, and
snapped the breech closed again before following the narrow sheep
track that led down the hillside toward the fold. There might be no
need of it--Gees had said there would be no killings--but fear had
lain over these fells for six months, now, and was over them tonight.
And Gees was a stranger who had been here but a bare twenty-four
hours--how could he tell what might happen in the hours of darkness?

There were scrubby clumps of broom on the hillside, any one of
which might have hidden a target for the breechloader, but appeared
void of any occupancy when Tyrrell passed them. Between him and the
fold, and less than a dozen yards distant from it, rose up a solitary
mountain ash, the only tree in sight, its red clusters of berries
black in the deepening gloom. As he came into the shadow of its boughs
a flapping sounded among them, and a lone carrion crow sailed off to
westward, a black blot against the very last of the sky's light.
Startled, even chilled by the sight, Tyrrell half raised his gun to
aim at the evil thing, but then lowered it again--it was too uncertain
a shot. But that lessening speck against the darkening west was
ominous, threatful: fear lay heavy over the fells, tonight.

He made the round of the fold, slowly, since it would be two hours
and more before Cottrill would relieve him of his watch, and came back
to the lone tree. The sheep were quiet, some of them cropping the
grass inside the fold, others placidly cud-chewing, but, Tyrrell
noted, not one of all the flock was lying down. With a sudden gust of
irritation he reflected that they ought to be out, scattered all over
the fells, on such a night as this, rather than cooped together to
scatter at dawn and be rounded up again in the next dusk. Cottrill had
stood the abnormal situation splendidly up to the present, had made no
complaint, though he could not have had a score nights in bed all this
summer, but he could not go on, Tyrrell knew. The mere physical strain
would be too much for him when winter approached, and, in addition to
that, the uncanny, almost unearthly nature of these killings would
break any man's nerve, even one with such unthinking courage as
Cottrill had shown--up to now!

Tyrrell, watchful of his man, was convinced that he would not
stand much more of it. He had agreed to Gees' suggestion of taking
Cottrill with him to Odder as much for the shepherd's sake as for
anything, believing that such an evening off, among the cronies he
would meet in the bar of the _Royal George,_ would have a tonic
effect. That Gees himself would get anything of value out of the
expedition, Tyrrell did not believe for a moment. A group of laborers
and the like, gossiping over their beer, could contribute nothing in
the way of enlightenment as to how the sheep were killed.

Leaned against the tree, his gun in the crook of his arm, he gave
himself up to reflection. Gees--what could Gees learn that others had
not learned--what could he do that had not been done already? Impulse
alone, at first, had led him--Tyrrell--to send that two-guinea check
in response to the semi-comic advertisement that had caught his eye,
and then the man himself--Tyrrell had wanted to know more of him, and
had so far believed in one who might prove an utter charlatan that
there, in London, he had agreed to risk fifty pounds for a solution of
the mystery.

There, in the heart of civilization, the problem had appeared
utterly different from what it did here. The superstition it had
wakened had seemed a foolish thing, but here on the scene of the
killings Tyrrell was not so sure that it was foolish. In ordinary
times, his men were common-sense beings: for years he had heard no
more than old tales told half-skeptically, in the way that grownups
regard children's fairy tales, stories of interest and no more. But in
these last six months all that had altered, and even Cottrill,
traveled and common-sense man that he was, seemed to believe in the
presence of something un-human, evil, fearsome. Others made vague
allusions--Tyrrell had heard the phrase--"the old dead," and noted a
sudden change of subject if he came on two men talking. Did they
believe the old dead could rise and do evil on earth again? He had
seen Jack Baldwin, one of his workmen, seated under a wall and eating
his midday snack of bread and bacon, and had seen the man carefully
cut off a piece of his meal and throw it over his shoulder--not
cutting out something unfit for his own eating, but choosing a morsel
of the best to throw away. Propitiating ... what? For there was
something, not the "old dead," but something else that these men
believed existed, and they would never speak of it in Tyrrell's
hearing.

And all this superstitious belief had grown up in the past six
months, he reflected. Before the killings began, his men and their
neighbors had been quite normal in their outlook. Was there a fire
behind this smoke, or were they all silly and credulous over something
that had a perfectly natural and reasonable explanation? And why the
devil should he himself go cold with superstitious fright when a
carrion crow flapped out from a tree and flew off into the night? He
had seen carrion crows flying over the fells all his life, and had
regarded them as part of that life, birds that had their uses, foul
though they might be. Was this folly infecting him?

What would Gyda think of him, if she knew he yielded though ever
so little to credence of these fantastic beliefs? For as long as he
could remember, the inhabitants of the district had shunned
Locksborough Castle ruins in all but the brightest of daylight, feared
it as a haunt of the "old dead," whoever or whatever they might be,
and as a place of ill-omen, but Gyda's father had bought and restored
it, and now he and she lived there with no sign of fear of their
surroundings. A little thrill of another sort took Tyrrell as he
recollected her walking beside him in the darkness toward her home,
her shining head so close to his shoulder, her voice soft and
caressing--and the pulsing, wonderful vitality of her that stirred him
as did the strange, luminous softness of her eyes--such eyes as he had
never seen before. Soon, perhaps, he would have her as mistress of
Dowlandsbar, pillow that shining head on his shoulder and feel the
warm prisoning of her white arms. Gyda, his wife! From his first sight
of her, he had loved her.

The rattle of a displaced stone high up on the hillside startled
him from his long reverie. Darkness was heavy about him, now, and the
haze of the day had thickened to a misty reek in which the nearest
hurdles of the sheepfold, only a dozen yards distant from the tree,
had merged into an indistinct grayness. He must have been dreaming
here a long time, for that falling stone could only mean that Cottrill
was coming down to relieve him. And the sheep, surely, knew that
someone beside himself was here, for the grey mass of them was moving,
milling round and about--but _away toward the centre of the fold!_
They were crowding inward on each other with little "Urr's" and grunts
and coughings, and now there was quite a space between the edge of
their mass and the hurdles, and still they milled round, crowding in
to the centre of their mass. And Tyrrell knew--it was not Cottrill
coming down the hillside! A shudder of fear took him--not such fear as
men know in facing normal danger, but such unreasoning terror as grips
and holds a child that finds itself alone in the dark. He pressed his
back hard against the tree, felt for and found the safety catch of his
gun and slid it off, and waited through an eternity of stillness, save
for the rustle and grunts and coughs of the milling, frightened sheep.

Twenty yards away, or more, beyond the deeper shadow cast by the
foliage of the tree, something moved toward the fold, a grey blot on
the misty darkness. With his worst paroxysm of fear passed, Tyrrell
lifted his gun to his shoulder, but knew the muzzle was wavering--he
tried to grip the barrel and steady it, and so held his fire. Another,
more whitish shape joined the first, and now he had the gun steady on
them both, but a choking, hellish reek came to his nostrils, a
sickening smell as that of death itself. He wanted to cough, to cry
out, but could make no sound. The two shapes moved on toward the fold,
and from within it came a collective, moaning noise, such as he had
never heard from sheep or any animals--it was the last extremity of
terror expressed in sound. The two things leaped the hurdles, long,
gaunt shapes, they seemed, and then Tyrrell pressed the trigger of his
right barrel, heard the echoes of the shot go clattering along the
fells, and let off the left barrel too. There came to his singing ears
a low, angry howl, half-doglike, half-human, and the two things leaped
back out of the fold and came at him as he broke the gun and fumbled
in his pocket for fresh cartridges when the empty shells dropped at
his feet. But he could not get at the cartridges: his pipe and tobacco
pouch would get in the way of his fingers.

At just such a distance as the branches of the tree reached over,
the two things stopped, and, fumbling feverishly for cartridges,
Tyrrell saw four eyes gleaming at him like points of fire. He got out
two cartridges, but in his clumsy, fumbling haste dropped them both
when he tried to insert them in the breech of the gun. The two things
turned their heads so that he could see only two points of light, and
at that a sudden rage and fear lest they should escape took him. He
snapped the gun breech shut, clubbed it, and charged out at them--here
were real things, no ghosts, his brain told him in that moment. The
slight downward slope from the tree trunk gave him pace for his rush.
Now he saw the things clearly, almost as if it were day instead of
darkness-as if, his brain told him, they were luminous. Gaunt grey
things with little, pointed ears, and the one that shrank back from
him was more nearly white than the other. That other sprang at him as
his foot dropped into a hole, and as he fell the impetus of his rush
carried him sliding face downward over the short, thick grass. And now
it was over him, on him. The poisonous reek of its breath came to his
nostrils as he saw white teeth dropping toward his face--a snarling
growl, and the whitish beast charged its fellow and knocked him in the
ribs with such force that he rolled over and over, and Tyrrell heard
the grating tear of his coat and felt a stinging pain in his shoulder.
He saw the two beasts rolling over and over close beside him, heard
that snarling growl again--and then consciousness left him.

"Master! Master, for God's sake wake up! Say something! No, he's
not dead, an' I can't find any hurt except this scratch. Master!"

Tyrrell sat up, slowly, with Gees kneeling beside him and holding
his arm. Then, with Gees still holding him, he began retching, and was
violently and horribly sick. As he put up a hand to his forehead at
the end of the paroxysm he realized that his hair was sodden with dew:
he could not remember losing his hat: it must have fallen off when he
made that rush from under the tree, and he had lain here a long while.
All that had happened was clear in his mind, intolerably, awfully
clear.

"Feel better, now?" Ge