Female of the Species Read online

  The beer arrived, and then Drummond raised his hand as for some solemn rite. Slowly he waved it to and fro, and once more did the words of his favourite refrain burst forth with vigour:

  “The more we are together – together – together:

  the more we are together the merrier we shall be.”

  “A new music-hall song?” I enquired politely.

  And all they did was to roar with laughter.

  “When we start hunting, boys,” he said, “that shall be the war-cry. Don’t forget – once for the rally, twice for danger.”

  I suppose it was foolish of me, but I really couldn’t help it. There was something contagious about the spirits of this extraordinary gang which must have infected me.

  “I must learn the tune,” I said. “For if you’ll allow me I should very much like to join you in whatever is coming.”

  They all stared at me, and then, a little doubtfully, at one another.

  “Of course,” I said stiffly, “if you’d prefer I didn’t.”

  “It isn’t that,” interrupted Drummond. “Look here, Dixon, if you’re going to come in on this thing, you’d better be under no delusions. You got a taste last night of the sort of people we’re going to be up against. And believe you me that’s nothing to what we shall strike. I want you to understand quite clearly that if you do join us you’ll be taking your life in your hands at most hours of the day and night. I mean it – quite literally. It’s not going to be a question of merely solving little puzzles.”

  “I’ll chance it,” I answered. “As a matter of fact I dislike most strongly the implication behind the phrase funny little man.”

  Once more the whole lot burst out laughing.

  “Right,” said Drummond. “That settles it. But don’t say you weren’t warned if you get your ear bitten badly.”

  Chapter 6

  In which I get the second clue

  The village of Drayminster is one of the beauty spots of England. Somewhat out of the beaten track, it is as yet unspoiled by motor coaches and hordes of trippers. The river Dray meanders on its peaceful way parallel to the main street, and in the very centre of the village stands the Angler’s Rest. A strip of grass separates it from the water’s edge, and moored to two stakes a punt stretches out into the stream from the end of which the energetic may fish for the wily roach and perch. A backwater – but what a pleasant backwater.

  “Your lady friend,” I said to Drummond, “has undoubtedly an artistic eye.”

  We were sitting on the lawn after lunch, and he grunted thoughtfully. The others had departed on a tour of exploration, and save for the motionless figure of the landlord’s son at the end of the punt, we were alone.

  “If only I could be absolutely certain that we were right,” he remarked. “That we aren’t wasting our time sitting here.”

  “Unless the whole thing is a stupid hoax,” I said reassuringly, “I’m certain our solution was correct.”

  It was the inaction that chafed him, I could see. I think he had expected to find another clue waiting for us on our arrival. But there had been nothing, and gradually his mood of elation had left him. He had kept his eyes fixed so searchingly on an elderly parson and his daughter during lunch, that the poor man had become quite hot and bothered. In fact, it wasn’t until our host had assured him that the reverend gentleman had come to the hotel regularly for the last twenty years, that he desisted.

  “It’s not a hoax,” he said doggedly. “So why the devil, if we’re right, haven’t we heard something more?”

  “Quite possibly that’s all part of the game,” I answered. “They may know that that is a method of rattling you.”

  “By Jove!” he cried, “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  He looked quite relieved at the suggestion.

  “There’s one thing we might do,” I went on. “It may not be any good, but it can’t do any harm. Let’s find out if there are any houses in the neighbourhood that have recently changed hands. If they are hiding your wife, a house is the most likely place to do it in.”

  “Dixon,” he said, “you’re the bright boy all right. My brain at the moment is refusing to function altogether. Hi! John – or whatever your name is – cease tormenting fish, and come here a moment.”

  Obediently the boy put down his rod and approached.

  “Now, you know all the big houses in the neighbourhood, don’t you?”

  The boy nodded his head.

  “That’s right, mister. There be the Old Manor – that be Squire Foley’s. And there be Park House. That do belong to Sir James – but he be away now.”

  “Has there been any house sold round about here recently,” I put in.

  The boy scratched his head.

  “There be Widow Maybury’s,” he said. “She did sell her little cottage, and be gone to live with her darter near Lewes.”

  “Who bought it?” I cried.

  “They do say he be a writer from Lunnon, or sommat fulish like that. He just comes occasional like.”

  “Is he here now?” asked Drummond.

  “Ay,” said the boy. “He come last night. There was a young leddy with him.”

  I caught Drummond’s eye, and it was blazing with excitement.

  “They come in a motorcar,” went on the boy.

  “Where is the cottage?” said Drummond.

  “End o’ village,” he replied. “‘Lily Cottage’, it do be called.”

  Drummond had already risen to his feet, and the boy looked at him doubtfully.

  “He be a terrible funny-tempered gentleman,” he said. “He set about Luke Gurney with a stick, he did – two or three weeks ago. Had to pay Luke five pounds, he did, or old Gaffer Gurney would have had him up afore the beak.”

  “My lad,” said Drummond, “there is half a crown. You may now resume your occupation of catching fish.”

  He turned to me. “Are you coming?” he said.

  “Well,” I said a little doubtfully, “we’d better be careful, hadn’t we? This fellow may be a perfectly harmless individual.”

  “In which case we will withdraw gracefully,” he cried. “Damn it, man, I believe we’re on the scent. Why – Good God! Phyllis may be actually there now.”

  “All right – I’ll come,” I said. “Only – cautious does it.”

  But for the moment Drummond was beyond caution. The thought that possibly his wife was within half a mile of him had sent him completely crazy, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that I restrained him from bursting straight into the house when we got there.

  “You can’t, my dear fellow,” I cried. “We must have some sort of excuse.”

  It was a small cottage standing back a little from the road. A tiny patch of garden in front was bright with flowers, and two pigeons regarded us thoughtfully from a dovecot.

  “We’ll ask if it’s for sale,” he said, and then suddenly he gripped my arm like a vice.

  “Look up at the top left-hand window,” he muttered.

  I did so, and got a momentary glimpse of the saturnine, furious face of a man glaring at us. Then like a flash it was gone.

  “Dixon,” he said hoarsely, “we’ve done it. She’s in there. And I’m going through that house with a fine comb.”

  A little dubiously I followed him up the path. Nothing that I could have done would have stopped him, but even before he knocked on the door I had a shrewd suspicion that he was making a blazing error. It seemed impossible that, after all the chat and bother there had been, the solution should prove so simple.

  And a blazing error it proved. The door was flung open and the man we had seen peering at us through the window appeared. And to put it mildly he was not amused.

  “What the–” he began.

  “Laddie,” interrupted Drummond firmly, “something tells me that you and I will never be friends. Nevertheless I am going to honour your charming cottage with a call.”

  He extended a vast hand and the other man disappeared into the hat-rack
– an unstable structure. Drummond disappeared upstairs. And the scene that followed beggared description. The hat-rack, in falling, had pinned the owner underneath. Moreover, as far as I could see, one of the metal pegs was running straight into the small of his back. Then came a shrill feminine scream from above, and Drummond appeared at the top of the stairs, looking pensive. He was still looking pensive when he joined me.

  “I fear,” he murmured, “that someone has blundered.”

  A rending crash from behind announced that the hat-rack was still in the picture, and we faded rapidly down the street.

  “A complete stranger,” he remarked. “With very little on. Most embarrassing.”

  I began to shake helplessly.

  “But I maintain,” he went on, “that no man has a right to possess a face like that. It’s enough to make anyone suspicious.”

  A howl of rage from behind us announced that the battle of the hat-rack was over.

  “Pretend,” said Drummond, “that I’m not all there.”

  “Hi, you, sir,” came a shout, and we paused.

  “You are addressing me, sir?” remarked Drummond majestically, as the other approached.

  “You scoundrel,” he spluttered. “How dare you force your way into my house?”

  “My Prime Minister will raise the point at the next meeting of Parliament,” said Drummond. “Do you ever hit yourself hard on the head with a heavy spanner? Hard and often. You must try it. It’s so wonderful when you stop. The audience is terminated.”

  He turned on his heel, and strode off down the street, whilst I touched my head significantly.

  “Good God!” said the other. “Is he mad?”

  “Touched,” I murmured. “Result of shell shock. He’ll probably be quite all right in an hour or two, when he’ll have completely forgotten the whole incident.”

  “But the cursed fellow ought to be locked up,” he cried angrily.

  “His relatives don’t want it to come to that if it can be avoided,” I said. “I much regret the incident, sir – but…”

  “Bring me a mushroom omelette without…”

  Drummond had suddenly returned, and was staring fixedly at his late victim.

  “Without?” stammered the other nervously. “Without what?”

  “Without mushrooms, you fool. Damn it – the man’s not right in his head. What else could it be without? Come, fellow, I would fain sleep.”

  He seized me by the arm, and stalked off in the direction of the Angler’s Rest, leaving the other standing speechless in the road.

  “Did we put it across him?” he said when we were out of hearing.

  “More or less,” I answered. “He said you ought to be locked up.”

  “I really don’t blame him,” he conceded. “She was a pretty girl, too,” he continued irrelevantly as we arrived at the hotel. “Very pretty.”

  Darrell and Jerningham were both on the lawn, but the others had evidently not yet returned.

  “Any luck?” they asked as we pulled up a couple of chairs.

  “Damn all,” said Drummond moodily. “I pushed a bloke’s face into a hat-rack, and contemplated a charming lady with very little on, but we never got the trace of a clue. What’s worrying me, chaps, is whether we ought to sit still and wait, or run round in small circles and look.”

  “After your recent entertainment,” I remarked mildly, “I should suggest the former. At any rate for a time.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” he agreed resignedly. “All I hope is that it won’t be for long.”

  “But you don’t imagine, do you, old boy,” remarked Jerningham, “that Phyllis is likely to be round about here? Because, I don’t.”

  “What’s that?” said Drummond blankly.

  “This is but the beginning of the chase. And I don’t think Mademoiselle Irma would have run the risk of bringing her to the place where all of us would certainly be, granted we solved the first clue. All we’re going to get here is the second clue.”

  “And probably have a darned sticky time getting it,” said Darrell.

  He stretched out his legs and closed his eyes, and after a while I followed his example. The afternoon was drowsy, and if we were going to have a sticky time, sleep seemed as good a preparation for it as anything. And it seemed only a moment afterwards that a hand was laid on my shoulder, and I sat up with a start.

  The shadows had lengthened, and at first I saw no one. The landlord’s son had ceased to fish: the chairs that the others had occupied were empty.

  “You will, I am sure, excuse me,” came a pleasant voice from over my shoulder, “but your snores are a little disconcerting to the sensitive ear.”

  “I beg your pardon,” I said stiffly as I rose. “Falling asleep when sitting up is always dangerous.”

  He regarded me affably – a pleasant-faced little white-haired man.

  “Don’t mention it,” he said. “I do to others as I would they should do to me. And I feared you might collect a crowd, who would misconstrue the reason of the uproar, in view of the proximity of the Angler’s Rest.”

  He sat down in the seat recently occupied by Drummond.

  “You are staying long?” he enquired pleasantly.

  “That largely depends,” I answered.

  “A charming village,” he remarked. “A bit of old-world England, the like of which I regret to say is becoming all too rare. They tell me it was fifth – or was it sixth – in the competition for the most beautiful village.”

  He frowned.

  “How annoying. Was it fifth or sixth?”

  “Does it,” I murmured, “make very much difference?”

  For a moment or two he stared at me fixedly.

  “It might,” he said gravely, “make a lot.”

  Then he looked away, and I felt a sudden pricking feeling of excitement. Was he implying something? Was there a hidden meaning in his apparently harmless remark? Was he one of those people who really are worried by failing to remember some small, insignificant detail such as that – or was it the beginning of a new clue?

  “Only, I should imagine, to the lucky inhabitants,” I said lightly. “For my own part I am content with it whatever place it occupied in the list of honour.”

  He nodded.

  “Perhaps so. It is certainly very lovely. And the inn is most comfortable. I always feel that in such a setting as this the old-time English beverage of ale tastes doubly good – a point of view which was shared, I think, by a very large individual who was sitting in this chair half an hour or so ago.”

  “I know the man you mean,” I answered. “He is a very prolific beer-drinker.”

  “He crooned some incantation which seemed to assist his digestion,” he went on with an amused smile. “You are all one party, I suppose?”

  “As a matter of fact we are,” I said politely, restraining a desire to ask what business it was of his. If there was anything to be got – I’d get it.

  “We are here,” I added on the spur of the moment, “on a quest.”

  “Indeed,” he murmured. “How interesting! And how mysterious! Would it be indiscreet to enquire the nature of the quest?”

  “That I fear is a secret,” I remarked. “But it concerns principally the large individual of whom you spoke.”

  “My curiosity is aroused,” he said. “It sounds as if a lady should be at the bottom of it.”

  “A lady is at the bottom of it,” I answered.

  He shook his head with a whimsical smile.

  “What it is to be young! I, alas! can only say with the poet ‘Sole – sitting by the shores of old romance.’”

  Once again did he give me a peculiar direct stare before looking away.

  “At the moment,” I remarked, “the quotation eludes me.”

  “It may perhaps return in time,” he smiled. “And prove of assistance.”

  “In what possible way can it prove of assistance?” I said quickly.

  “It is always an assistance to the mind when a for
gotten tag is recalled,” he remarked easily.

  I said nothing: was I imagining things, or was I not? He seemed such a harmless old buffer, and yet…

  “As one grows older,” he went on after a while, “one turns more and more to the solace of books. And yet what in reality are words worth? ‘Si jeunesse savait: si vieillesse pouvait.’ The doctrine of life in a nutshell, my friend.”

  Still I said nothing: why I know not, but the conviction was growing on me that there was a message underlying his remarks.

  “Words may be worth a lot,” I said at length, “if one fully understands their meaning.”

  For the third time he gave me a quick, penetrating stare.

  “To do that it is necessary to use one’s brain,” he murmured. “You will join me in a little gin and vermouth?”

  “Delighted,” I said perfunctorily. Then – “May I ask you a perfectly straight question, sir?”

  He returned to his seat from ringing the bell.

  “But certainly,” he said. “Whether I give you a perfectly straight answer, however, is a different matter.”

  “Naturally,” I agreed. “Do you know why we are here, or do you not?”

  “You have already told me that you are in quest of a lady.”

  He raised his glass to his lips.

  “Votre santé, m’sieur – and also to the success of your search. If any stray words of mine have assisted you, I shall be doubly rewarded for having aroused you from your slumbers.”

  He replaced his glass on the table.

  “Exquisite, is it not – the gold and black of the colour scheme? But alas! the air grows a little chilly pour la vieillesse. You will pardon me, I trust – if I leave you. And once again – good hunting.”

  He went indoors and I sat on, thinking. More and more strongly was the conviction growing on me that the second clue lay in our conversation: less and less, could I see a ray of light. Was it contained in that quotation – ‘Sole – sitting by the shores of old romance’? He had said it might prove of assistance – and then had passed off his remark.

  Who had written it, anyway? It came back to me as a dimly remembered tag, but as to the author my mind was a blank. Had the well-known old French proverb any bearing on the case?