by Jack Mann
“Not at all, Mr. Green. My wife will be pleased to hear you are back among us, if only for a short stay. Are you staying—but I won’t keep you talking now. We shall look forward to seeing you to-morrow.”
He went his way, and Gees, getting into the car, damned coincidence most heartily, and bestowed a curse or two on old Martha Evans for getting the rector out at this time of night. For, after this meeting, Perivale would certainly tell his wife that Mr. Green was back in Denlandham, and Mrs. Perivale would lose no time in passing the information on to Squire Hunter—and the very last thing Gees wanted was that Hunter should know of his presence before he had had a chance of going to Nightmare Farm. But the mischief was done, now, and he could not have asked Perivale to keep his presence in the village from Mrs. Perivale’s knowledge: such a request would have set the rector thinking, trying to puzzle out the reason behind it: it had been out of the question. The stable door was open, he found, and the hens roosting inside. Therefore, he put up the hood of the car and fixed the side-curtains as well: eggs for breakfast were admissible things; eggs laid on his upholstery or floorboard rugs were altogether different, matter decidedly out of place. Moreover, on leaving the stable he carefully closed the doors: the hens might mistake the darkness for a continuation of night, and remain roosting as they were now until Nicholas or himself arrived to open the doors again in the morning: it was a slender chance, but a chance all the same, and he would not neglect to take it.
But when, in the beginnings of the dawn, he heard the cockerel issuing his challenge to all other cockerels in Denlandham, after the manner of his kind, Gees abandoned all faith in closed doors as a means of prolonging the slumbers of domestic fowls. Those cussed birds knew it was morning, he reflected, as he sat up in bed and reached for his cigarette case. And, after a few moments of reflection, he got out of bed, put on trousers and a dressing gown over his pyjamas, and in slippers went down and out by the back door of the inn. He opened the stable doors, chased the chirrawking and chuttering fowls out from their resting place, closed the doors again, and went back to bed, but not to sleep. For the cockerel, out of resentment, perhaps, crowed persistently and raucously until human time for rising, and, eyeing him out of the bedroom window, Gees meditated throwing boots and hairbrushes, but refrained. Not out kindness, but because he knew he would miss: the cockerel crowed from an eminently safe distance. /
CHAPTER XIV
UNLAWFUL ENTRY
“I MUST APOLOGISE for appearing as early as this, Mrs. Cosham—”
“Early, sir?” A smile of amusement entirely altered the vinegary-faced woman’s expression, and made her almost attractive.
“Half-past nine early? You don’t know anything about a farmer’s life, I can see. We had breakfast and finished with it an hour ago. And if there’s anyone welcome in this house at any hour, it’s you. Do come in, Mr. Green.”
“Just a word with Norris, if you’d be so kind,” he asked, entering the hallway, and pausing to note that the grandfather clock had been made by J. Pollexfen, of Truro, in 1756. He was still wondering what connection the Coshams had with the West Country when May Norris appeared and held out her hand to him with a dignity—even a sort of reserve, he would have said—that contrasted strongly with her attitude when he had parted from her at the end of Nightmare roadway.
“How nice to see you again, Mr. Gees,” she said. “Do come into our special room—the one you know. Daddy won’t be a minute.”
He followed her into the room, and received Mrs. Norris’s greeting, a hearty welcome back to Denlandham, and a hope of seeing him often.
“My husband’s gone to look at a cow with Cosham, but he won’t be more than a minute or so. Do sit down, won’t you? May, look after Mr. Green while I go and see why your father isn’t here yet. Perhaps that girl couldn’t find him, but I know where to look.”
“No, don’t trouble, Mrs. Norris,” Gees began to protest, but she left the room without heeding him or waiting for the end of his sentence even. He looked at the girl, standing aloof and cool—inexplicably so!—by the claw-legged table. Lovelier than ever, he thought her.
“I expect you know a little about farming, Mr. Gees?” she asked.
“To quote your doctor, empirically more than by precedent, Miss Norris,” he answered, with a flashing memory of dapper Haverstock.
She smiled. “He’s just a fool,” she said, and moved from the table to seat herself on a carved-back chair which, even for Gees, made the tenth commandment a mere futile restriction. “If I don’t sit down, I suppose you won’t,” she observed. “But it’s a cow that calved the day before—before I came back. And it looks like milk fever. I don’t know if you realise it—it takes only a very little time to get attached to animals, even a cow. And though it isn’t daddy’s cow, I’m troubled!”
“I can quite understand it,” he assured her. “What’s the bother, anyhow? I’ve got a way with animals, if I could help.”
“You?” She looked as nearly contemptuous as May Norris could look. “It’s not a Pekingese, nor even an Alsatian. It’s a cow.”
“Much more useful than either of the others,” he observed. “I wonder, just in case I could do anything—might I see the animal?”
“It isn’t even ours,” she pointed out. “Daddy’s only gone to see it with Mr. Cosham out of the goodness of his heart.”
“Credit me with a little of that quality,” he urged, “and take me along to look at this cow. Fools rush in to some purpose at times, though you might not think it.”
She shook her head. “If you talk of yourself like that, I can’t talk to you at all,” she said. “I’m not so forgetful—”
“But the cow, Miss Norris—the cow!” he interrupted.
“Very well, then.” She rose to her feet. “Come and see it, since you appear to insist. Though if two experienced farmers can’t—”
She broke off as Gees followed her out toward a back exit from the house.
“Once upon a time there were some experienced doctors,” he remarked. “But that had nothing to do with animals, only a particularly charming lady. Not a fair analogy, now I come to think of it.”
She turned to face him, all the colour gone from her cheeks.
“Do I keep on my feet to tell you that wasn’t fair, or say it on my knees, Mr. Gees?” she asked tremulously.
“Miss Norris, I’m terribly sorry,” he answered. “It was an unforgivable remark, I know. I do apologise, very humbly.”
“And meanwhile, you wanted to see the cow,” she reminded him, and turned to lead on toward the range of farm buildings.
“Since you say you’re troubled over it, I wouldn’t go without seeing whether a mere amateur can do anything,” he answered.
She went on, and he followed, to a small shed in which the cow had evidently been segregated. Inside the shed stood Cosham and Norris, and Mrs. Norris too, beside a cow obviously in great distress. Norris started at sight of his daughter and Gees.
“Why, bless my soul, Mr. Green! I was just coming along, but this cow—it looks as if nothing more could be done—”
“What has been done?” Gees asked, interrupting him, while Cosham offered a hand and Gees shook it, silently as far as he was concerned.
“Everything, I reckon,” Norris answered for the cow’s owner.
“The calf died, you see, and she won’t give her milk. We’ve tried even throwing her, but nobody can make her yield it. And maybe you know what that means, very soon, too, by the look of her.”
“I’d say I do,” Gees admitted. “Just a minute, though.”
There was an armful or so of green clover in the manger before the animal, and, moving up near her head, he took out a handful of the stuff and held it out to her. Yoked as she was, she could not get at him, but the flourish of her horns showed her opinion of his offer, and she moaned, rather than lowed, in her pain. Still holding the handful of clover, he scratched her neck gently, and worked forward t
o scratch behind her ears. The pained moaning ceased.
“Get some hot water, somebody,” he bade.
Mrs. Norris ran out. Gees went on with the gentle scratching, and began working backward of the animal, along her spine, and then down toward her udder. Norris and Cosham and the girl watched him.
“That’s wonderful,” Cosham said softly. “She wouldn’t let anyone go near her like that, before. Not even Bill Marsh, and he’s always milked her, ever since she had her first calf.”
“Temperamental repulsion between the cow and Bill Marsh, Mr. Cosham,” Gees told him. “Animals have a group-soul—but this is no time to talk theosophic maunderings. Ah! Thanks so much, Mrs. Norris.” He dipped first one hand and then the other in the jug of almost scalding water that she put down in the straw beside him.
“Now we’ll see. Coo, old girl! Yes, I’m talking to you. Coo!
Cooo-oo-o! Gently, now.”
He grasped a teat with his painfully-heated hand, stroked it, pressed it—and the milk flowed, a half-clotted, thin, yellowish stream. The cow mooed her relief before he had induced half a dozen of those streams to flow into the straw in which she stood, and Cosham breathed an audible sigh of satisfaction.
“Mr. Green, you’ve saved me forty pound,” he said.
“Then shut up and let me finish,” Gees ordered, in little more than a whisper. “She’s giving her milk—don’t interrupt.”
And, squatting on his heels with his head tucked into the cow’s flank, he milked her dry, while his four of audience—for they could hear the hissing streams of milk impinge on the straw—stood dumb. At last it was finished, and he went to the cow’s head, moving stiffly after remaining so long in one cramped position, and scratched behind her ears while she licked at his disengaged hand.
“Well, that’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen!” Cosham said.
“A mere matter of affinity,” Gees told him with a final stroke down the front of the cow’s head. “Probably, in some previous existence, I was a calf. I hope I made good veal, but it’s doubtful.”
May Norris leaned against her father, helpless with laughter.
“Nothing to laugh about, May,” Cosham said solemnly. “He’s saved that cow—forty pound, if she’s worth a penny.”
He looked surprised when Gees himself began roaring with mirth, and staggered out from the shed to lean against its wall and go on laughing.
“Well, I reckon you’re a genius, Mr. Green,” Cosham told him. Gees got his breath back. “Not that at all,” he said. “She recognised me. Obviously, a calf from way-back. But don’t tell anyone.”
He saw May Norris gaze at him, and took her father by the arm.
“Got those tools I told you about?” he asked.
“Well, sir, what do you think me, after what you done for us?”
Norris answered, with a hint of resentment in his tone.
“Sorry—I thought we should have had more time,” Gees said.
“Never mind. Come right along—don’t give that cow too much green stuff, Mr. Cosham. Dry food and a bran mash or two will suit her better. Come along, Mr. Norris, and we’ll see how much of a lawbreaker you are.”
“Even if it comes to that, whatever you ask, I’ll give,” Norris promised. “You said there might be a way I could repay you.”
“And you’ve got the tools. Well, we can get going, then.”
May Norris faced him, preventing his return to the house.
“Mr. Gees, you’ll be careful—for him?” she asked.
“So careful, that whatever he incurs, I’ll pay,” he promised.
“And—and for yourself? I can’t forget what you did for me.”
“The calf has grown into a bull, Miss Norris,” he told her solemnly. “A whale of a bull, in fact. Woe to any toreador that crosses its path. Stand back, and let your father and me proceed.”
He rejoined Norris and Cosham, neither of whom had heard the little interlude. May Norris took her father’s arm.
“Saved me forty pound, you have, Mr. Green,” Cosham remarked.
“According to Maurice Hewlett,” Gees responded, “that’s the sum which raised trouble between Richard Lion-Heart and the Duke of Burgundy, and spoilt a whole crusade. But that was gambling, not cows.”
“I’m much more concerned over the poor cow than the money,”
May remarked across her father. “How—what made you able to do it?”
“I suppose I’ve got to return thanks to my father—for once,” he said. “He made me go through the whole rigmarole of farming when he wanted to turn me into an estate manager, and I even learned to milk cows. Maybe my beefsteaks of hands help to make me a good milker, too. The experience comes in useful for once, as most of ’em do, sooner or later. Probably when I go to gaol I shall learn something useful.”
“No fear of that, Mr. Green,” Cosham dissented with energy.
“I dunno,” Gees retorted dubiously. “Mr. Norris and I are just going to qualify for about seven years apiece—but don’t tell anyone. If you collect those tools, Norris, we’ll get along. The sooner it’s over, the happier I shall be, I don’t mind owning.”
“Well, you’re a rum ’un, if you don’t mind my saying so,”
Cosham observed in a puzzled way.
“Rum is my middle name,” Gees assured him, and moved to enter the house. “But, as I said before, don’t tell anyone.”
He grinned at the rather mystified farmer, and followed May Norris into the house, while her father turned aside to get the required tools. In the room that he knew, she faced him—of her mother, he had as yet seen nothing since returning to the house, nor was Mrs. Norris present now.
“Nightmare?” May asked.
“Quite possibly it won’t deserve that name after we’ve finished there,” Gees told her soberly.
“It will be—my room,” she asserted rather than asked.
“There’s a little blue bow down on the floor,” he said. “I wondered when I saw it if it were yours. Is it?”
She nodded. “I remember throwing it away,” she answered.
“Soiled and spoilt—they must have left it when they packed my things.”
“When it was new, the colour was not one tenth as lovely as that in your eyes,” he said. “But tell me—what have I done?”
“Done, Mr. Green—Mr. Gees, I mean?” she asked in a puzzled way.
“Done,” he echoed solemnly. “You’re—well, different from what you were the other day, when we walked together to look at Nightmare.”
She shook her head and smiled. “There’s no difference, except in your imagination,” she said. “I mean all I told you then, just as much as I did then. There is no difference in me.”
Norris, entering then with the pickaxe and two crowbars across his shoulders, put an end to Gees’ questioning. With—“Well, we mustn’t waste time, Miss Norris, and I expect I shall be seeing you later,” Gees turned to the doorway, and Norris followed him out to the car.
He stopped, there, to get out two fairly large electric torches—“one for you and one for me, in case we need ’em—have to go up to the attics,” he explained—and a .32-bore Webley automatic pistol, all of which he had in readiness in the side pockets of the car. Then he relieved Norris of one of the crowbars and shouldered it.
