The Bulldog Drummond Megapack

by H. C. McNeile

  “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 inquired 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 capacious 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 inquire 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 forgotten 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 sante, 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 roused 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 due 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?

  His voice from a window above me cut into my reverie.

  “I feel sure that you are tormenting yourself over the author of my little quotation,” he chuckled. “It has suddenly occurred to me that his name was actually mentioned in our conversation.”

  The window closed, leaving me staring blankly at it. Mentioned in our conversation! No author’s name had been mentioned: to that I could swear. And yet would he have said so if it was not the case? It seemed stupid and unnecessary.

  Once more I ran over it, trying to recall it word by word. It was maddening to think that I was now possibly in actual possession of the information we wanted, and yet that I couldn’t get it.

  I ordered another gin and vermouth: perhaps, after all, I had been mistaken. An old gentleman in all probability with an impish delight in the mysterious who was deliberately playing a little joke on me. And then the window above me opened again.

  “Goodbye, my friend. I am sorry to say that I have to leave this charming spot. And I trust for all your sakes that your brain will prove equal to my little problem.”

  I got up quickly: surely that remark clinched the matter. He was one of the others, and I’d make him tell me more. A Ford was standing by the door, and a minute or two later I saw him getting into it. “Look here, sir,” I said, “I must insist on your being more explicit. You do know why we are here; you have been giving me the second clue.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “You have told me why you are here,” he answered. “And as for the second clue, the phrase sounds most exciting. And as for me I have a train to catch. To the station, driver.”

  The car started, leaving me standing there blankly. And then he put his head out of the window.

  “Good hunting.”

  I suppose Drummond would have pulled him out of the car by the scruff of the neck: I wasn’t Drummond. I watched the car disappear up the road, then I went back to my neglected gin and vermouth, swearing under my breath.

  “Who,” I said to the landlord who came out at that moment, “is the old gentleman who had just driven off?”

  “He entered himself in the book, sir, as Mr Johnson of London. More than that I can’t tell you.”

  Evidently disposed for a chat he rambled on, whilst I pretended to listen. And suddenly—I don’t know what the worthy man was talking about at the moment—I fired a question at him.

  “Have you got any books of poetry in the hotel?”

  It must have been a bit disconcerting, for he stared at me as if I had taken leave of my senses.

  “I believe the missus has,” he said in an offended voice. “I don’t hold with the stuff myself. I’ll ask her.”

  He went indoors to return in a few moments with the information that she had Longfellow, Shelley, Wordsworth, Keats. I cut short the catalogue with a yell, and this time the poor man looked really alarmed.

  “Wordsworth,” I said. “Please ask her to lend me Wordsworth.”

  He again went indoors, and I sat there marvelling at my denseness. “And yet what in reality are words worth?”

  At the time the phrasing had struck me as peculiar, a little pedantic. And there it had been sticking out right under my nose. Now there was nothing for it but to go clean through until I found the quotation, and then if my reasoning was right we should find the clue in the context.

  Mine host handed me the book with an air of hurt dignity, and retired once more indoors whilst I started on my lengthy task. In couples the others came back looking moody and disconsolate, and disinclined for conversation. They took no notice of me, and I, for fear I might raise false hopes, said nothing. Plenty of time to talk if I proved right.

  Dinner came, and over the steak and kidney pie, I found it.

  ‘Lady of the Mere, Sole-sitting by the shores of old romance.’

  I stared at the page blankly. Lady of the Mere. What earthly good was that? Had all my time been wasted? Was the old man a harmless jester after all?

  “Everything to your satisfaction, gentlemen?” The landlord came up to our table, and a I drew a bow at a venture. “Tell me, landlord,” I said, “is there in this neighbourhood any place called the Mere?”

  He stared at me for a moment or two without speaking. “There is,” he answered at length, and his jovial expression had vanished. “May I ask why you want to know, sir?”

  “Curiosity,” I said, hardly able to keep the excitement out of my voice. “Is it a pond—or what?”

  “It’s a house,” he said. “An old house. About three miles from here.”

  “Who is the owner?” I cried.

  “Owner!” he gave a short laugh. “There ain’t been no owner, sir, for nigh on ten years. And there ain’t never likely to be.”

  “What’s the matter with the place?”

  “I bain’t a superstitious man, g
entlemen,” he said gravely, “but it would take more’n a bag of gold to get me across the threshold of the Mere—even by day. And by night, I wouldn’t go—not for all the money in the Bank of England.”

  “Haunted, is it?” I prompted.

  “Maybe—maybe not,” he answered. “There be grim things, sir, black things go on in that house. Ten years ago the owner, old Farmer Jesson, were murdered there. A fierce man he was: used to keep the most awful savage dogs. And they do say that he found his young wife with a lad—a powerful-tempered boy. And they had a terrible quarrel. The lad, so the story goes—’ e struck the old man and killed him after an awful struggle. And as he died he cursed the lad and his young wife. He cursed the house: he cursed everything he could think of. Certain it is that the lad and the lass disappeared: folks do say they died where they stood and then were mysteriously removed. As I say, I bain’t superstitious, and I don’t rightly hold with that story. But what I do know is that since then there be strange lights and noises that come from the old place—for I’ve seen ’em and heard ’em myself. And I do know that there come a young gentleman from London who heard the tales and didn’t believe them. He went there one night, and they found him next day on the ground outside, lying on his back and staring at the sky—as mad as a hatter. No, no, gentlemen—take my advice and give the Mere a wide berth, or you’ll regret it.”

  He bustled off to attend to a new arrival.

  “How fearfully jolly,” I remarked.

  The others were staring at me curiously.

  “Why this incursion into local superstition?” asked Darrell.

  “No particular reason,” I answered on the spur of the moment. “As I said, just idle curiosity.”

  CHAPTER VII

  In Which We Come to the Mere

  I really don’t know why I didn’t tell them at once. Somehow or other the whole thing seemed so terribly thin as I ran over it in my mind. And told secondhand it would have sounded even thinner. A tag from Wordsworth: the coincidence of a name. And that was positively all.

  I felt that something more definite was wanted, and there seemed only one way of getting it. I would go there myself and reconnoitre. I admit that I didn’t like the idea particularly: that bit about the man who was found on the ground outside, as mad as a hatter, was so wonderfully reassuring. At the same time I’d had three cocktails, and I was now having my second glass of port. And the suspicion that this cheery band regarded me as a rabbit rankled. Their opinion would change pretty rapidly if I came back with the next clue in my pocket.