The Dog It Was That Died

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘Thanks. I’m listening.’

  He looked sheepish.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I must sound very mysterious. And to tell the truth it is a bit mysterious. If you don’t mind, in fact, I’ll wait to tell you till we’re at your place.’

  She raised her eyebrows. Blonde eyebrows behind the blue spectacle frames.

  ‘I can hardly wait.’

  ‘I’m sorry. But it won’t be for long.’

  ‘All right. I thought nothing on earth would come between me and my new record-player, but I’ll have to know what all this is about first.’

  ‘Did you say: new record-player?’

  ‘Yes. Didn’t I tell you? It’s my great prime and joy. After all those years with that battered old soundbox I’ve suddenly come into a bit of money and lashed out on the very latest in radiograms.’

  The bottom falling out of the world.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘Why, whatever’s the matter?’ Etain said. ‘Have I put my foot in my mouth or something? You look as if you’d just heard the world was coming to an end.’

  ‘No,’ said Roger.

  ‘Well, what is it? Go on, tell me. If I’ve dropped a brick just tell me. It wouldn’t be the first.’

  ‘No, no. It’s not that at all.’

  Thoughts whirling.

  ‘It’s – It’s just that I’ve suddenly thought. This is Tuesday and not Monday, isn’t it?’

  The voice convincingly doleful.

  ‘Yes, of course it’s Tuesday.’

  ‘And I’ve been thinking all the afternoon it was Monday. You see, I’ve got an appointment for this evening if it is Tuesday.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, who with? What time is it you’ve got to be there?’

  Roger’s mind was working well now.

  ‘There’s a first night at the Gate tonight,’ he said. ‘It’s that play by Yeats and George Moore that somebody dug up. And I promised to meet George Wyndham there.’

  Etain looked at the thin gold watch on her wrist.

  ‘What time does it begin?’ she asked. ‘This doesn’t keep very good time, but I think you could be there by half seven easily.’

  ‘Then I’ll be all right,’ Roger said. ‘I could even take Cuchulain back to the flat. But what about you? I come all this way out with you and then let you down.’

  Etain smiled.

  ‘I’m not worried,’ she said. ‘It isn’t as if I had been going to be doing anything tonight anyway. I’d say I’d look after Cuchulain, only I’d be scared to. Now, what about tomorrow? That’s Wednesday, you know. Are you doing anything tomorrow night?’

  ‘No,’ said Roger.

  ‘You don’t sound too delighted.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I am really. I’d love to come, if you can forgive me for walking out on you tonight. It was just that I was thinking how absent-minded I’m getting.’

  ‘Don’t worry about – But, look, here’s a stop. You’d better jump off here. You’ll be all the quicker getting back.’

  ‘Yes, yes. You’re right. Thanks. Thank you. Come on, Cuchulain. I’m sorry.’

  Roger walking crab-wise down the aisle of the bus with Cuchulain unwilling to follow without taking a formal farewell of Etain.

  Roger tugged angrily at the leash as he hauled the big dog on to the pavement.

  ‘I’m looking forward to hearing the secret,’ Etain called to him.

  ‘Secret?’

  The bus jerked sharply forward and Etain was carried away looking back out of the lighted window and grinning and waving.

  Roger lugged Cuchulain grimly back to the flat and shut him in the little bedroom that made him a kennel of just about the right size. Cuchulain showed less than his usual patience over this, grumbling and wheezing like a disgruntled churchwarden.

  Roger knew quite well what the dog was feeling. His own bad temper and indecision were producing the same symptoms in Cuchulain.

  There was nothing he seemed able to make up his mind about. Had he suddenly been given proof that Etain herself was the Bosun’s Infiltraitor? Half the time it seemed plain to him that she had betrayed herself, that she had taken money from the Bosun for providing information and had injudiciously splurged out on a new record-player. And half the time it seemed incredible that she could be as light-hearted as she seemed if, as a sequel, the Bosun had bullied her into entering Eric’s flat and putting something into his stout.

  Yet, if she had decided to brazen things out, she was behaving in exactly the way she would have to make herself behave.

  Roger prowled up and down his sitting-room completely unable to make up his mind. And on the other side of the much-scratched door of the kennel room the enormous wolfhound, scorning the food Roger had put down for him, prowled back and forth in sympathetic parody.

  At last Roger grabbed at a decision. He looked at his watch and found that there might still be time to get to the Gate before the first night began. He had told Etain this was what he was going to do, and perhaps it would be worth doing after all. One thing was certain: George Wyndham would be there. A Dublin first night would draw him as surely as a magnet draws a stray iron filing;

  And, if Etain’s sudden acquisition of the record-player was after all merely a coincidence, then Wyndham might be the Infiltraitor. He had to be seen at once. He was one of the five that Professor O Nuallain did not trust.

  Perhaps he could be trapped into incriminating himself and clearing Etain at one and the same time.

  Roger succumbed briefly to a new bout of indecision about Cuchulain. With the formidable looking dog by his side he ought to be safe from attacks by the Bosun’s followers, but on the other hand whenever he took him into company there was almost always some sort of difficult scene.

  Eventually he decided to stick to his self-imposed rule and leave the hulking brute behind. After all, the Bosun did not know where he was going. Unless Etain was busy at this very moment on the telephone telling him …

  He slammed out of the flat and ran as quickly as he could all the way down to the Gate. The physical release from too complicated thoughts.

  When he got to the theatre – puffing, sweaty and feeling slightly sick – he found that at least his guess about George Wyndham had been right. He was standing in the foyer peering out through his impossibly circular hornrims at the bustle of late comers, like a being of a different species. In honour of the occasion he had reunited the dark blue jacket with the trousers it had started out together with on life’s long journey. But this was his sole concession to formality. The suit was accompanied by a soft plain green shirt and a loose tie of brown wool. His pockets bulged on either side with the hard outlines of slabby works of literature.

  ‘Why, hello,’ said Roger, stepping forward through the jostle.

  George Wyndham looked pleasurably surprised. It was not often that he was the one to be greeted.

  Roger felt slightly ashamed.

  ‘Have you got a ticket for this?’ he said.

  Heartily.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I have,’ Wyndham answered. ‘It sounds as if it ought to be most interesting. And awfully cheap too.’

  ‘Well, you’re a cleverer man than I am,’ Roger said. ‘Obviously I’ve left it much too late.’

  Wyndham fished in the inside pocket of the sagging navy blue jacket and produced a bulging wallet.

  ‘Let me see now,’ he said.

  He brought the circular austerity hornrims into close focus on the mass of cards and papers in the wallet.

  ‘Ah, yes, here we are.’

  He extracted a bright orange ticket and checked that it was for this occasion.

  ‘Yes. Look, would you like it? I can see this on any other night. I’ve no particular engagements.’

  Roger felt a hot blush starting up from his waist, rapidly sinking down to his knees, and slowly mounting up towards his chest. He concentrated on not letting it get into his face.

  At the level of his armpits he felt it beginning to slacken i
n intensity.

  ‘I couldn’t think of it,’ he said firmly. ‘It was entirely my own fault for not booking in good time. And I certainly won’t deprive you of the honour and glory of knowing all about the play before anyone else. But I’ll tell you what I will do. I’ll go and install myself in the bar and you can come and talk to me in the interval.’

  Amende honorable.

  Roger spent the time of the first act of ‘Diarmuid and Grania’ in the theatre bar, a gaudy place with an air of having been knocked up out of something else. He began thinking with care about what he was to say to George Wyndham. Occasionally snatches of dialogue floated in when an usherette came out of the auditorium.

  ‘… Hush, Child, love has made you wise as the bird in the wood that seeks a mate …’

  It would be no good tackling Wyndham with knowing the Bosun. He had only to deny it. There was no way of making him talk.

  ‘… I am weary of Conan’s bitter tongue, Finn. I would beat him from the table …’

  The thing to do would be to trap him somehow into saying something he ought not to know about.

  ‘… Diarmuid must go out against the boar and be killed. It was to kill him that the shepherd made the spell over his second son …’

  But what was there that he ought not to know about? Eric, obviously. He should scarcely have known Eric at all. Eric had always avoided him, so –

  ‘… we must tell him that they have gone eastward towards the sea.’ Evidently the curtain line. Applause. Hesitant, respectful, swelling.

  People began to come into the bar. George Wyndham was in the first wave.

  ‘What’ll you have?’ Roger said.

  ‘Oh, whiskey. Whiskey, please. It must be whiskey on a night like this. The wine of the country.’

  Roger ordered two whiskeys.

  ‘Now I would say that stout was the wine of the country,’ he said. ‘Do you drink stout, Mr Wyndham?’

  ‘Ah, it’s very interesting that you should say that. Because Yeats and Moore constantly refer to ale in the play. It struck me as being not quite proper Irish. I wondered if Moore –’

  This could not be allowed to go on.

  ‘Some of us coming over here take to stout in a big way,’ Roger said.

  With meaning.

  ‘Did you know Eric Smith?’ he went on. ‘Now he was a great stout drinker.’

  ‘Eric Smith? I don’t think I knew him. But that’s a curious thing. Now, you couldn’t possibly use the word stout in a poetic play of this sort. Think how the very sound would bring the level thumping down. No, this is rather a nice problem. Ale we are agreed is too English, and stout –’

  ‘I’m surprised you didn’t know Eric. He was a mathematician, you know.’

  ‘No, no.’

  Wyndham’s sharp interruption.

  Roger leant forward.

  ‘So you know what Eric’s work really was?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ Wyndham went on blithely, ‘mead wouldn’t do either. It’s Celtic all right, mind. But too Cornish, altogether too Cornish.’

  He stared dreamily at the two brightly painted little doors, marked one Mna and the other Fir.

  ‘I’m so sorry you didn’t manage to get a ticket,’ he said. ‘I think this is a really historic night, really historic. We are seeing – no, witnessing – the emergence of a magnificent drama imbued with the essence of a great dramatic revival years after it took place. It’s simply –’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Roger, ‘is your work over here nearly finished?’

  The brusque remark penetrated Wyndham’s cloud at last.

  ‘What was that?’ he said.

  ‘I asked if your work over here was near its end.’

  ‘My work?’

  ‘Yes, what you came over here to do.’

  ‘Oh, but I didn’t come over here to do anything in particular. I’ve got so much on hand one way and another. But luckily it doesn’t matter much where I am to do it. And when I happened to come over here for a holiday in the summer I was so much struck with the place. Well, to be frank I realized it would be much cheaper for me to live over here. I mean look at the price of my ticket.’

  ‘I thought you told me before that you came over here because Ireland was civilized. Now you’re telling me that it was because it is cheap. You don’t seem very sure of your reasons.’

  Behind the austerity hornrims George Wyndham blinked. His Adam’s apple bobbed two or three times in rapid succession.

  Roger crowded in.

  ‘I’m beginning to wonder what exactly you did come over here for,’ he said.

  ‘What exactly –’

  ‘Yes. First you talk about civilization. Then you invent another tale about cheapness. What was your real reason, I wonder, Mr Wyndham. Were you actually sent over here?’

  ‘Sent over? I don’t understand.’

  ‘Were you sent over with a mission to perform? Isn’t it nearly over? Look here, it’s no use trying to keep your secret from me: you’re just not good enough at it.’

  Wyndham was beginning to look acutely uncomfortable.

  ‘Listen,’ Roger said, ‘we’d better have a quiet talk. I’ve a feeling you’re going to catch a late night plane for England tonight.’

  Suddenly Wyndham banged down his glass on the narrow bar.

  ‘I shall do no such thing,’ he said. ‘I’m going back in to watch the rest of the play now. Ireland is just the place for me, and I’m certainly not thinking of leaving. I’d be very much obliged if you’d go away.’

  He glared at Roger through the circular hornrims. His pasty complexion had turned a shade whiter. He looked ready to lash out, but suddenly turned instead and scuttled through the knots of people back into the safety of the auditorium.

  Roger was tempted for a moment to give chase. But before he had time to set off doubts came rushing in again. Had Wyndham betrayed himself now? Or had his ambiguous replies been merely the result of his complete preoccupation with the correctness of his feelings over the collaboration of Yeats and Moore?

  It was impossible to tell.

  A sullen rage spread through Roger’s mind.

  Angrily he made his way back to his flat.

  The evening was not very cold. A mild wind was blowing in playful gusts from the west pushing huge untidy black clouds in front of it. Roger looked up. In the gaps between the clouds he could see a few stars.

  He walked more slowly, breathing in the fresh air.

  An early night would put things in a better light. And in any case he needed sleep. The slight ache in the small of his back. Lying in bed would deal nicely with that.

  He pushed himself to walk a little faster. He turned the last corner. The short length of shabby street lying ahead of him. The familiar combination of unspoilably fine architecture and the litter of slum rubbish on the pavements – old newspapers, a tin can or two, the remains of children’s abandoned toys.

  Collins was making no effort to conceal himself.

  He stood directly under the lamp almost opposite the door of the house Roger’s flat was in. He wore a belted overcoat but no hat. The light shone on the rounded slickness of the black hair above the dead white face. He carried a battered looking evening paper.

  Its possibilities long ago exhausted.

  Roger stopped in his tracks.

  The sound of his footsteps must have been quite clear in the deserted strip of narrow street, but Collins did not even look up at their abrupt cessation.

  He had no need to, evidently. If Roger wanted to get back to his flat he would have to go right into his line of vision. He had no need to bother himself with looking up at every chance sound.

  Roger turned away.

  He walked quickly back to O’Connell Street and the bright lights. He thought he could see what was in the Bosun’s mind: Cuchulain.

  He had been a fool not to keep Cuchulain with him all the time. What would a few awkward scenes have mattered? And now the Bosun was virtually holding the big wolfhound
to ransom. Luckily there was no immediate problem. He had had the sense to put down some food and Cuchulain would be perfectly happy until morning.

  But sooner or later the flat would have to be visited. And that would mean putting himself simply and quietly back into the Bosun’s hands.

  After a while he turned and approached the flat again. Collins had looked as if he had already had a long wait. Perhaps he might take a few minutes off. Just time to dart in and rescue Cuchulain.

  The man in Collins’s place was unfamiliar, but there could be no mistaking the fact that he was there for a purpose.

  A burly, solid figure. Long black overcoat falling straight from the shoulders, round black bowler hat with an unusually curly brim. In the lamplight it was not difficult to make out his features. A squarish face with a big straight nose and under it a black moustache with something of the same curl to its ends as the black bowler above. Altogether an air of ponderous respectability.

  Roger turned away. He walked fast through the crowded evening streets. He ignored the cheerful green buses threading their way through the happy-go-lucky traffic. It was not until he had gone all the way to Grafton Street that he stopped.

  A thought had struck him. There was not only Cuchulain. Where was he to sleep himself?

  He took out his wallet. The money he had given so gleefully to the docker had left him with only a single ten shilling note. In his trouser pocket besides a bunch of keys there were three sixpences.

  Of course, he could stay at a hotel and go round to the bank before paying his bill. Only, a person without any luggage whatsoever, in spite of a moderately respectable appearance, might not find it too easy to get into a hotel. And the Bosun could easily post someone outside his bank in the morning. It would be an obvious move. If he planned anything he would need money. Here was a way of finding him easily and economically.

  In the meantime there was the problem of his bed that night. He walked round the corner and went into Davy Byrne’s while he thought about it.

  When he had got his drink he settled down and looked round. He seemed to know one or two of the people in the bar by sight, which was not surprising in a city as small as Dublin, but he could certainly not put a name to any one of them. Much less go up and ask to borrow money.