It was invalid now. But to-morrow Johnnie came of age and his signature would be effective. And after this night’s work, Laxford had in his hands a weapon of coercion which might make it easy to extort a second signature, an effective one, from a cowed and repentant youngster.
Chapter Five
The Ha-Ha of Death
JIM BRANDON always began the day badly if he had less than eight hours of undisturbed sleep. His prolonged and anxious cogitation overnight had sent him to bed far in the small hours; time and again in the night he had wakened to a fresh consideration of his problem, and when a gentle knock on his door aroused him at an unaccustomed hour, he was in anything but good fettle for another day of strain and diplomacy. He got out of bed reluctantly at the summons, drew aside the window-curtains, and looked out disgustedly at a rainy, squally morning with heavy clouds racing over a leaden sky. A nice day for Johnnie’s coming-of-age, he reflected grimly.
Once fully aroused, he wasted no time but dressed quickly. The danger-period had begun. Johnnie’s signature to a document would now be valid; and it was essential, if possible, to prevent Hay or Laxford from contriving a private interview with the boy and inveigling him into signing anything.
When he was ready he made his way quietly along the corridor to his brother’s room, hoping to catch him before he went downstairs to join the others. When Jim passed it on the way to his bath, Johnnie’s door had been closed; but it was now half-open, and a glance inside showed that the room was empty. The untidiness of the place jarred on Jim’s orderly mind. On the previous night Johnnie seemed to have walked about as he undressed, flinging each discarded article of clothing on the chair which happened to be nearest when he stripped it off. The confusion was symptomatic of his mental perturbation when he returned after his interview with Mrs. Laxford. And the tumbled bedclothes, witnesses of long-continued turning and tossing, were proof enough that sleep had forsaken him even when he got between the sheets. Jim, from his own experience, could make a guess at how Johnnie must have felt as he lay there, confronting the first grave problem that he had ever had to face in his twenty years of life. Well, if cubs made damned fools of themselves, they had to pay for it; that was the way of the world.
Jim descended the staircase, and at the foot he encountered the butler.
“The other gentlemen are in the dining-room, sir,” the man informed him. “I brought them some sandwiches. If there’s anything you would like. . .?”
“No, nothing, thanks,” Jim answered. “Is Mrs. Laxford there?”
As he uttered the words he felt that his tongue had run away with him. No one would expect her to be downstairs at this time in the morning. He had merely blurted out his question because his thoughts had been running on her so much. Fortunately the butler’s answer relieved his mind.
“No, sir. Mrs. Laxford is breakfasting in her room. She is catching the early train, with the children, to do some shopping in Town; but she will not be down for some time yet.”
Jim nodded, and the butler threw open the dining-room door for him. His first glance showed him Hay recharging his glass of whisky and soda at the sideboard. Johnnie was sitting at the table, with a glass of milk and a plate of sandwiches beside him; but it was clear that he had made no headway with either of them. He did not look up as his brother entered the room, but kept his eyes on his plate with a hangdog air. Jim could not see his face. Laxford, leaning against the mantelpiece, seemed to be fidgeting slightly as though anxious to get started. There was no sign of any document; but Jim felt no reassurance at that. A fountain-pen makes no show, and a paper can be pocketed in a moment.
Laxford looked up as Jim came into the room.
“A miserable sort of morning, I’m afraid,” he greeted Jim with the same polite cordiality which he had shown overnight. “Edgehill’s hardly showing you its best side, Mr. Brandon. Would you care to have a sandwich . . . or biscuits, perhaps? This is a rather early start, and it’ll be a while before you get breakfast, you know.”
Jim shook his head.
“I’m not hungry, thanks,” he said curtly.
He watched with mild surprise the generous dose of liquor which Hay was pouring out for himself. It was beyond his experience to see a man beginning the day with whisky and soda on an empty stomach, and the sandwiches had been left untouched, apart from the one which Johnnie was making a pretence of nibbling. Hay caught Jim’s eye, grinned broadly, and lifted his glass as if giving a toast.
“Well, here’s to a good shoot up West, the night I get back to Town!” he said with a coarse guffaw. “This country air of yours is a fair corpse-reviver, Laxford, I’ll say that for it. Makes me feel like twenty-one again,” he added, with a sidelong leer in Johnnie’s direction.
At this thrust Johnnie lifted his head involuntarily, as if stung by some noxious insect; and in that instant Jim caught a glimpse of his brother’s face. It was hardly recognisable. Only a few hours ago it had been the face of a rather simple, trusting, and care-free youngster, ignorant of the seamy side of life. Now bitter experience had re-drawn its lines, transforming it into something with a different meaning. Shame, remorse, misery, fear, and despair: all seemed to have left their marks on those tragic lineaments. The whole agony of Johnnie’s sleepless night was written in his reddened eyes. He looked like some dumb creature, caught and tortured in a trap from which there was no escape. Even the faculty of resistance seemed to have faded out in him. “I’m at the end of my tether!” was the abject confession in his pose as he sat hunched in his chair. Without looking towards any of the other three he bent his head again and made a futile pretence of finishing his sandwich.
Hay gulped down his whisky, emitted a loud gasp of satisfaction, and replaced his empty tumbler on the sideboard.
“About time we were moving, eh?”
Laxford nodded and turned towards the door. Johnnie heaved himself clumsily to his feet. His whole bearing reminded his brother of a dog which has just been soundly thrashed for some fault. Jim bit his lip at the sight.
“Takes his medicine badly,” he reflected pitilessly. “If he’d any spunk in him, he’d keep a stiffer upper lip for the credit of the rest of us. Oswald wouldn’t have lost his grit like this.”
It never occurred to him that Oswald was a man of the world with hard experiences behind him, whereas Johnnie was suffering from an initial contact with a world of which he had never dreamed.
In the gun-room only one of the house-guns stood on the rack; the other one had disappeared. Jim picked up his own gun; Johnnie secured his private 12-bore.
“The keeper must have taken our other gun,” Laxford explained to Hay. “He sometimes uses it. This one I’m accustomed to myself, but you can have it if you like. It’s all the same to me.”
Hay grunted something in response, took down the spare gun, gave it a trial, and seemed satisfied.
“It’ll do me,” he said. “Keep your pet one if you want to.”
“Very well,” Laxford agreed.
Johnnie had gone to a drawer and was putting some cartridges in his pockets. Jim crossed to his side.
“What are you using?”
“Number Fives,” Johnnie mumbled.
“Number Sevens give you fifty per cent more chance of a hit,” Jim commented rather absently. “Still, it’s a gusty morning and Number Seven might be on the light side. Give me the same as you’re using.”
Johnnie obediently handed out a supply to him, and then served Hay and Laxford before he closed the drawer. With an unobtrusive movement Jim blocked his brother’s way until the other two had left the room.
“These fellows haven’t been getting you to sign anything this morning before I turned up?” he demanded roughly.
“No,” Johnnie answered dully.
He seemed as though he meant to add something to the monosyllable, but apparently changed his mind.
“H’m! Well, you’re of age now, Johnnie. Congratulations.”
Despite his relief at Johnnie’s
admission, Jim betrayed no warmth in his felicitation. Johnnie evidently felt his brother’s coldness, for he acknowledged the cavalier good wishes only with a gloomy nod, and, evidently glad to escape, followed the others out of the room. Hay and Laxford were at the front door, staring at the windy sky and apparently not too pleased with the weather.
“Are you taking the keeper with you?” Jim inquired as he joined them.
Johnnie shook his head without speaking. Laxford evidently agreed with him.
“Hardly worth while,” he explained. “Johnnie’s been shooting so much that it isn’t possible to drag a keeper about every time he goes out, and we’ve fallen out of the way of bringing him along. We’ll do without him this morning.”
Jim made a gesture of agreement.
“I was only thinking of someone to carry any rabbits we shoot,” he said indifferently. “By the way, Johnnie, if it’s all the same to the others, I’d rather go over the ground we covered yesterday afternoon. I know it, more or less, and it’s easier shooting when you know where you are.”
“Where was that, Johnnie?” Laxford demanded.
Johnnie muttered a word or two.
“Oh, you mean the Long Plantation?” Laxford continued. “I don’t mind, Mr. Brandon. Certainly, if you like it. We can walk down the road to the far end and do our shooting as we come up again through the wood. That suits you? Devilish rainy morning,” he added with a glance at the sky. “We can always shelter under a tree if it gets much worse.”
They moved off through the gardens and struck a rough wood road which ran more or less parallel to the edge of the Long Plantation. The track was narrow for four abreast, and Johnnie dropped behind the others. An awkward silence fell upon the group; even Hay’s coarse humour failed. This squally morning, with its heavy sky and burst of rain promised nothing to the shooting-party but a dreary fiasco.
After a time Jim glanced over his shoulder at the dejected figure lagging in the rear. Johnnie’s eyes were bent on the ground. Rapt in his miserable thoughts, he seemed heedless of the outer world and trudged listlessly along the track with his gun held so carelessly that it pointed straight towards the group in front of him.
“Damn you, Johnnie!” Jim protested sharply. “Don’t carry your gun at the trail like that. You’ll be holding it in your mouth, next. Have some pity on our feelings.”
At the fretful rebuke, Johnnie lifted his sombre eyes for a moment. Mechanically he shifted his gun to the ‘secure’ and then seemed to lapse again into his thoughts. Laxford and Hay had looked behind them as Jim remonstrated with his brother, but when they saw the gun in a safer position they turned again without comment and plodded on along the track.
As they came to the lower end of the plantation, where a little house abutted on the wood road, the rain suddenly broke on them in a heavy downpour.
“Better shelter in the porch of the gardener’s cottage,” Laxford suggested. “This won’t last long, and there’s no use standing out in it.”
They broke into a run and crowded under the cover of the little penthouse roof which screened the cottage door. Johnnie, coming last, had to stand partly in the lashing rain.
“I’d’ve had another go of whisky, if I’d guessed it’d be like this,” Hay declared regretfully. “I take back what I said about your air, Laxford. It’s mostly water. Fair drowns the miller, it does. Good for frogs and nothing else.”
The cottage door opened and a roughly-clad man appeared.
“Oh, it’s you, sir?” he said, as his eye fell on the group. “Won’t you step inside, out of the wet? The worst of it’ll soon be over,” he added, after casting a weatherwise glance skyward.
“It’s all right, thanks.” Laxford declined the invitation. “We’d make a mess of your floor, Stoke, with boots like these. Besides, as you say, it won’t be more than a short burst.”
They waited on the threshold, chatting aimlessly with the gardener, until a faint blink of whiter light heralded the end of the downpour.
“About time we moved on,” Laxford suggested, setting the example with a nod of farewell to the gardener.
The others followed him, Johnnie still lagging in the rear. The gardener watched them as they turned past his garden and made for the square end of the Long Plantation.
“We’ll need to spread out, here,” Laxford pointed out as they neared the edge of the wood. “The undergrowth’s fairly thick in parts, and we might be shooting into each other if we don’t keep well apart.”
Jim made a gesture of agreement.
“If it’s all the same to you,” he said, “I’ll take the east side, beyond that stream. I was over that ground yesterday afternoon and I’d rather have that beat.”
Laxford seemed to hesitate over this proposal.
“The Carron’s pretty full, with all this rain,” he pointed out. “It’s on the cards that the stepping-stones may be under water over there, and there’s no other way of getting across until you come to the foot-bridge just above the house.”
“I’ll manage it all right,” Jim assured him with a certain stiffness. “I’m not afraid of getting my feet wet.”
Laxford at once gave in.
“Very well, just as you please. Johnnie, you’d better walk up the line of the ha-ha. I’ll take the middle line up the wood. You can take the west side, Hay. If we stick to that, we shan’t poach on each other’s preserves.”
No one objected to this arrangement, and the party split up. Hay moved towards the western fringe of the plantation, Laxford went straight forward, whilst Jim, with Johnnie lagging at his heels, took an eastward direction. He had no need to appeal to his brother for guidance. The previous day’s excursion had taken him over this ground, and he had the gift of memorising unconsciously not only the general lie of a country-side but even individual landmarks.
From its crest near Edgehill the Long Plantation sloped down obliquely towards the south-east; but the incline terminated on the edge of an almost level tract bordering the little Carron, whilst the wood itself extended beyond the stream. The junction of high and low ground was demarcated by a ha-ha: a four-foot stone wall forming a tiny cliff, its top flush with the slope and its base resting on the horizontal stretch below.
The plantation was a mixed one, with patches of heavy undergrowth which impeded direct progress; but Jim had no difficulty in striking a path which led, he remembered, to the stepping-stones over the Carron. The track was narrow, winding in and out among the trees, and the brothers had to go in Indian file. When they came to the ha-ha Jim halted and turned to his brother.
“You’re going to walk along the top of the sunk fence, aren’t you? I go farther on, across the stream.”
Johnnie nodded rather absent-mindedly.
“Bet you five bob my bag’s bigger than yours,” Jim continued. “Take it?”
For the first time that morning Johnnie seemed to rouse himself. Apparently the inveterate sporting instinct momentarily conquered. Shooting was his favourite pastime, and even in his troubles it held its place in his mind.
“Done!” he agreed briefly.
Jim stepped to the edge of the miniature cliff and glanced down into the ditch running along the foot of the wall.
“Not much of a jump,” he commented. “But the landing-place looks pretty muddy. I can’t afford to sprain my ankle.”
He laid his gun down on the grass on the top of the sunk fence, chose his ground carefully, and made his leap, landing with a stagger on the far side of the ditch. Johnnie handed him his gun.
“See you later.”
Johnnie, standing on the higher ground at the crest of the sunk fence, watched his brother’s figure receding among the trees until it vanished behind one of the clumps of undergrowth. Then he turned northward and began to walk up the line of the ha-ha, keeping close to the edge so that he could overlook the lower ground on his right as well as the upward slope on his left. He did his best to concentrate his mind on the wager with Jim and to forget, even for a few minut
es, the troubles which beset him.
A white scut caught his eye, and he fired at the little scurrying brown thing just as it dodged behind the roots of a fallen tree. It reappeared momentarily and then vanished among some tall grass. Almost at the same instant two shots in rapid succession sounded from the left, where Laxford’s beat lay. Johnnie reloaded his empty barrel and continued his way along the top of the ha-ha.
Jim heard these three shots as he reached the stepping-stones. The little stream was in spate, bank full, and the stones were covered by a swirl of foam-flecked brown water. Jim stepped cautiously out on to the first stone, and a wave swept over his ankles, almost dislodging him from his foothold. He picked his way judiciously from stone to stone till he came to mid-stream, where he paused for a moment to gauge his next stride. As he stood poised he heard behind him the sound of people shouting—a brief dialogue. He guessed that the voices were Johnnie’s and Laxford’s, but the gusts which swept the plantation made clear hearing difficult.
He got across the stream without mishap. With the Carron in high flood like this there would be no chance of crossing it again until he came to the foot-bridge above Edgehill. He listened for a moment or two, but the voices had ceased; and without paying more attention he climbed the little bank before him and turned up-stream.
Within fifty yards he flushed a rabbit and brought it down with a clean shot. Then he was faced by a difficulty. To carry it was to hamper himself so much that he might give up any further shooting, whilst if he left it lying where it was, he might have to come back later to retrieve it, or else direct the keeper to pick it up. Without hesitation he decided to leave it behind.
He continued on his way, keeping a sharp look-out for the chance of a shot. Owing to a curve in the Carron’s course, he was drawing in towards the line of the ha-ha as he walked upstream; and when two reports reached his ears almost simultaneously, they were much louder than the earlier ones. From the relative intensities he guessed that Hay and Johnnie had fired. Then came another shot from the nearer gun. Johnnie seemed to have aroused himself, put aside his troubles for the time being, and bent his energies to winning his bet.
The Ha-Ha Case Page 10