The Theft of the Iron Dogs

by E. C. R. Lorac

  Macdonald got to his feet as Bord got out of the police car with his young chauffeur – the latter trying to look cool and professionally unconcerned. Macdonald addressed the potter:

  “You got what you asked for, Gold. Next time you think of hitting a policeman, remember we’re taught a thing or two before we get talking. You’ll be charged with being in possession of a pair of waders stolen from a lock-up hut in the dales. I’ll be seeing you later, when you’ve had time to think things out.”

  He turned to Bord.

  “I think we can get him into your car. Better leave his ankles as they are. I fancy he can kick. Can you send a man back for the cart? That’s a very good pony. Never budged an inch. He’s seen a thing or two in his time.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  LEAVING BORD to deal with the silent potter and the imperturbable pony, Macdonald turned the car westwards. His mind was busy with those bits of orange curtain material, and the more he thought about them, the more he was disposed to believe that Giles Hoggett had hit the nail on the head when he suggested that the rags had been used to mark a trail. What then could be the explanation of the rag hanging from Reuben Gold’s pocket? A signal of sorts? Thinking it out, Macdonald came to the conclusion that here was a possible means of communication between illiterate folk. A fragment of the material could be handed on with the tacit message implied – follow this sign, or speak to the man who carries a similar one.

  Meanwhile, Macdonald determined to follow that route to Wenningby Barns from the main road which Giles Hoggett had described as the one most likely to be chosen by a person who wished to reach the river valley unobserved. He found the Upfields turning without difficulty – a narrow farm road, marked by the platform for the “kits” – the big milk cans which the lorry man collected every morning from all the farms round about. Macdonald ran the car on to some waste ground, locked it and pursued his way on foot. He could see the low stone buildings of the two farms, which constituted the “Middle Upfield,” and his way led between them, but he saw no signs of any inhabitants.

  Immediately beyond the farmsteads, the ground began to slope toward the river valley. Choosing his way between various gates, Macdonald followed the slightly worn track down the sloping fields and was soon out of sight of the farm buildings. The only creatures to note his passing were some dark-faced sheep, who looked at him with the inquiring and suspicious manner of their kind and bleated insults at him when he had passed.

  Macdonald passed through a gate into the woods above the Lune. He had been conscious of the loneliness of the path while he was still in the pastures: once in the wood he seemed infinitely far away from human beings. The trees were close and the undergrowth thick: it was obvious that the path had not been cleared for years and it was difficult to follow, overgrown with bramble and rose suckers and treacherous with sodden leaves and fallen branches. At one stage he stopped because he realized he had missed the track and looking around to reconsider he saw something which might have been dead beech leaves: certainly there was a broken branch with yellowed leaves clinging to it, but there was something else – a scrap of orange rag, impaled on a thorny branch.

  “Good for you, Giles Hoggett. . . but why? For what, and for whom?” he said to himself.

  Back on the right track he walked parallel with the river and crossed a rocky gill where the beck splashed merrily down its course, and found for the first time he had a clear view down to the river and across the valley to the fells on the southern side. It was a beautiful prospect and a natural resting place, where the path was level and clearly defined and Macdonald looked around carefully to see if there were any signs of others having passed that way. He soon found something which did not in the least surprise him – an empty tube of paint. It was a Windsor &Newton tube and it had once contained Flake White. Although the leaf-covered ground showed no traces of footmarks, the traces of an easel and camp-stool were clearly discernible, where the pointed legs had made holes in the rich black soil. Here also were some frayed threads of orange cotton, where a fragment of the curtain material had once been planted. He followed the track until it brought him down through the woods to the edge of the dales and found that he had arrived at the wide level stretches where Giles Hoggett had chased Vintner in the moonlight.

  Macdonald sat down on a stile, lighted his pipe and contemplated. It was clear that several people had used the woodland path of late; certainly Vintner had, as the empty paint tube and the marks of his easel testified. Almost equally certain one of the potters had, and left the trail marked by the scraps of curtain material. Macdonald could now see the usefulness of that particular stuff: its faded orange tone had camouflage value. It was possible to find the rags if you knew what to look for, but you could easily have passed them without noticing them, so well did the color tone in with the fading autumn leaves. Pondering over the matter, Macdonald hazarded a guess that Gordon Ginner had had nothing to do with blazing the trail with those rags; it indicated a craftiness which was quite foreign to a townsdweller whose lodgings had been described by Reeves as “Flash. All cheap, tawdry muck.” If Ginner had marked the trail, he would have used something much less subtle than those tawny rags.

  Sitting on the stile facing the dales Macdonald began to study the lie of the ground. Eastwards the track led to Wenningby Barns and the brow – a quarter of a mile upstream. Westwards there was no path along the river – it was necessary to go into the woods if you wished to walk in the direction of Caton and Lancaster. Nevertheless, it was obvious that fishermen would keep down by the stream and Macdonald decided to do some exploring off the track and see if they could find anything interesting in the pathless area between the woods and the river.

  It was heavy going over the pastures where no path had been worn. The ground was still water-logged from the recent floods, and the becks flowing down from the woods were still in spate, so that Macdonald was soon so wet that nothing could have made him much wetter, so far as the legs were concerned anyway. An incautious step resulted in being bogged almost to his knees, and he reflected that rock-climbing was preferable to mud-larking. For once the Lune was being captious with him.

  It was shortly after he had negotiated a particularly sodden stretch that Macdonald was aware that he was not alone in the valley, and his spirits went up with a bound. Up against the woods, some fifty yards distant, somebody else was investigating this sodden stretch of valley, and Macdonald was pretty certain he knew who it was. The man was short and sturdy, a rather paunchy figure topped by an old hard felt hat. None of the farmers wore a hat like that; it had been bought for town wear, and worn so long that it had become a favorite possession to its owner. Macdonald had noted Mr. Willoughby’s ancient hat when the latter had told Mr. Hoggett about the breaking open of his fishing hut. That hat sat on its owner’s bullet head as though it were part of it – and now the hat and its wearer were keeping well out of sight against the hedge bordering the woods.

  Macdonald plowed on, as quietly as he could, paddled cheerfully through another beck, and came on his fellow mud-larker while the latter was still trying to lean well back into an intractable and inhospitable hedge of thorns he could not penetrate.

  “Good morning, Mr. Willoughby,” said Macdonald. “Are you in trouble? If so, can I help you at all?”

  The stout little Yorkshireman glared back. “May I ask who you are, and why you are trespassing on private land?” he asked belligerently.

  “My name is Macdonald. I am an officer of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Metropolitan Police, and I am here on duty,” said Macdonald urbanely. “In the course of my duty, I must ask you to account for possession of the coat and the rod you have concealed in that hedge.”

  “By goom, lad,” began Mr. Willoughby wrathfully, and then subsided a little. “All right, all right. Not so much of the police officer to me if you please. It may look a bit queer, but it’s all right really.” He hitched his own coat clear of the thorn hedge and went on, speaking
excitedly: “I’ve been very much put out by the goings-on down here, and I thought I’d look into it myself. I remembered I’d caught a glimpse of an old gaffer along here a few weeks ago – looked like a tramp, but he’d got a rod and creel. You may have noticed when you look along the valley it’s sometimes difficult to see which bank an angler’s working on – the river winds such a lot you can’t follow its course.”

  “Aye, I’ve noticed that,” replied Macdonald.

  “I thought my old gaffer was on the other bank when I saw him,” went on Mr. Willoughby: “then, thinking it over, I wondered if he hadn’t been this side. This bit of land we’re on now isn’t Mr. Hoggett’s land – it belongs to the Garths. You’ll know the fishing rights? Mr. Hoggett and the Garths fish right along this bank, from Garthmere to the Knabb, where Mr. Shand’s water starts. However – to cut a long story short – after my hut was broken open I remembered seeing this old man on the Garthmere dales, and I thought I’d take the liberty of walking along to see if I could notice aught. I reckoned it was some poaching game that was afoot. I found this coat and the rod caught in the stones in a beck just up there. I reckon the coat had been hidden in a hole and the flood water had washed it down. It’s still soaked.” Mr. Willoughby poked at the coat with his rod and sniffed. “Reeks of somewhat,” he said.

  “Will you show me just where you found the coat?” inquired Macdonald.

  “Aye. You follow me. It’s no very far. That’s Mr. Hoggett’s coat. I must ask him when he missed it. I’m pretty sure it was the same coat that old gaffer was wearing when I saw him. It’s time this sort of thing was put a stop to. I don’t like it at all.”

  Mr. Willoughby led Macdonald about fifty yards downstream, splashing vigorously over the swampy ground, and he then halted and pointed to a recess in the bank at the edge of the woods.

  “It was there. You can see there’s a hole in the bank just beside the beck. It looks as though the ground gave when the water was in spate and the coat was washed out and caught on the branches there. There’s nought else there. I’ve looked already. The rod was thrust among the undergrowth.”

  Macdonald had a good look. While the chief inspector was studying the bank, Mr. Willoughby went on:

  “I tell you straight out, I’m a bit worried over all this. Seems there’s something behind it. Y’know, when I first saw that coat it gave me a bit of a shock. Turned my stomach right over. Looked like a corpse, the way it was caught on those thorns, by heck it did.” He chuckled uneasily. “Detection’s not in my line, officer, but I thought I’d hit on something rum. I reckon you thought you had spotted something rum when you saw me, eh?”

  “I certainly wondered what you were doing,” rejoined Macdonald. “I’d be obliged if you’d come along with me to Wenningby Barns, Mr. Willoughby. There are a few points I want to get cleared up, and it’s chilly standing here.”

  “Very good, officer. There are a few questions I’d like to put myself, I admit.”

  They went back and recovered the coat and tied it up with a length of line Mr. Willoughby obligingly produced from one of his pockets and carried it between them on a stout stick. They reached the cottage without incident, and Macdonald put on some dry sticks and blew the embers into a lively flame before he sat down note-book in hand to talk to Mr. Willoughby.

  “As I’ve no doubt you’ve thought yourself, Scotland Yard doesn’t send C.I.D. men to investiate cases of petty theft in the provinces,” began Macdonald and the other replied:

  “Eh – but I’ve thought of that – and it wasn’t petty thefts you were busy on over there by Jacob’s Buttery, officer. What you were after ‘twasn’t for me to ask – but I reckoned it was something amiss, and maybe the thievings haven’t been right out of the picture. Now what can I do for you in the way of information?”

  “First, I want a list of the dates when you’ve been in the dales since the middle of August,” said Macdonald. “I dare say that’ll take a bit of thinking out, and I’ll leave you to it after a bit. Next, I want to know the date you saw the old gaffer, as you described him, and I also want to know exactly who you’ve seen in the valley this past month.”

  “Eh, but I think I can tell you all that plain enough,” replied Willoughby. “Maybe you know I lease a cottage of Mr. Hoggett’s up yonder. My wife thinks nought of fishing, and not much more of Wenningby. So when I come here, I come by myself. Now let me think. The first half of August I wasn’t here at all. My manager was away on holiday and I was kept busy. ‘Twas the third week in August I came here, on the Friday evening, the 20th that was. Eh, it was lovely weather, but not for fishing. The river was low, and so clear the fish could see you a mile away. I mind I stood by that pool they call Jacob’s Buttery an you could see the river bed, ‘twas that clear. I stood there and watched a salmon waving his tail in by the bank there where the willow roots show. Eh, that was a fish – but catch him? No, not worth trying!”

  “Do you fish in Mr. Hoggett’s water?” inquired Macdonald. “Jacob’s Buttery comes in his reach, doesn’t it?”

  “Aye – that’s Mr. Hoggett’s water right enow. I didn’t say I was fishing Jacob’s Buttery, mind you, but I walked that way. Mr. Hoggett never takes amiss if I go over his land, altho’ it’s Mr. Shand’s water I fish. I told you that bit about the water being so clear thinking it might help you. That pool was clear as glass until the weather broke on September 15th. Now I came again the last week-end in August – the 27th – but the weather was still the same and the river so low you could walk across it by the ford. ‘Twas not that weekend I saw the old gaffer. No – I remember now. ‘Twas Saturday, September 4th. The weather was too good to stay indoors and I went down to the river after tea. I walked down the brow – that’s my favorite path – and I turned upstream toward Chough Close – where my hut is. As I told you the river was very low and I walked out to where the river takes that big turn. There’s a pool there – not a very deep pool, but it’s a favorite one for the trout. I’d got an idea I might try for a fish after dark. I’m telling you all this to explain how I saw the queer old chap in the long coat, because if you get on the top of the bank there you can see a long way down the valley.”

  Macdonald nodded. Despite Mr. Willoughby’s verbosity, his narrative was interesting to the detective.

  “That was Saturday, September the 4th,” Macdonald reminded the other. “You saw the old man that evening?”

  “Nay, nay! Now don’t you hustle me,” said Willoughby. “I’m not much of a hand at telling a story, but I must tell it my own way. Aye, I remember now. I lay on that bank thinking how I’d arrange things: if you’re hoping to catch a fish, ‘tisn’t much use to make a lot of noise first and startle every trout from here to Kirkby. What I didn’t think of at the time was that if I’d had a mind to hide, that bank was a good place to hide on. I reckon my old tweed suit’s much the same color as the stones. I mind I saw Mr. Shand walk past, and I chuckled a bit because he didn’t notice me, and he and I always have a crack when we meet. The next two people I saw were a couple of young fellows, town lads I’d say from the look of them.”

  “Can you describe them?” asked Macdonald, and Mr. Willoughby scratched his bullet head.

  “I’m none so sure I’m much of a hand at that,” he said. “One was brown headed and one was carrots, and I could see they’d got a towny color if you get me – palish faces that didn’t often get the sun. They came from downstream and I didn’t see them come back. Mr. Shand, he came from upstream, and I saw him come back, in about half an hour, maybe. You asked me to tell you everyone I saw, mind you,” added Mr. Willoughby, and Macdonald nodded.

  “Aye. Quite right. You’re doing just what I want you to do.”

  “ ‘Twas the next evening – the Sunday – first I saw the old gaffer,” went on Willoughby. “I hadn’t caught a fish on the Saturday evening, but I’d got a rise or two. There’s a canny owd trout in that pool, and I reckoned I’d have a go for him after sunset. ‘Twas then I noticed the old man
downstream – a long way off, mark you, but he looked a scarecrow because of that long coat. I couldn’t make out which bank he was on. I took it for granted ‘twas the south bank, because the Anglers”Association fish the water that side – but thinking it over, I’m none so sure.”

  He fell into a reverie, and Macdonald inquired sympathetically, “Did you get your fish?”

  “Eh, did I get him?” echoed Willoughby disgustedly. “I heard him rise, aye, I heard him surface, and then he touched my line. I’d’ve got him if it hadn’t been for some gert fool came blundering through the gate into Chough Close, making a row with that rusty chain on the gate. ‘Twas all oop then,” he said sadly. “That fish – well he didn’t wait. I was real put out, mark you. I hollered right out, ‘Damn you for a noisy lout!’ – and I reckon someone was startled. I heard ‘em run. ‘Twas a funny go, all right,” he chuckled. “I reckon they thought ‘twas a banshee, all in the dark. Like ma fish, they didn’t wait. But I never saw them, so I can’t tell you who ‘twas. I gave it up then and went home.”

  “But didn’t it strike you as odd – suspicious, even – that somebody should be down in the valley after dark?”

  “Nay, why sould it?” asked Mr. Willoughby. ” ‘Twas a real beautiful evening, warm and balmy. Maybe ‘twas one of the farmer’s sons come down to bathe after his long day in the harvest fields. As for them running, why ‘twas natural enough when a voice had roared at them from the middle o’ the river, seemingly. Of course they ran. I’d’ve run meself if it’d happened to me like that.”