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Authors: Ianthe Jerrold

BOOK: There May Be Danger
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“Then, if you think Sidney stuck that piece of tinfoil on the door to show that he was a prisoner at Hymns Bank, it follows that somebody else, not Dai Lewis, was keeping him a prisoner there?”

“Yes—I suppose so.”

“Then somebody else—not Dai Lewis—was using Hymns Bank for some secret purpose?”

“Yes, probably.”

“It would be very queer if two people, quite unconnected with one another, were using the same empty house for two different kinds of villainy, wouldn't it?”

“Yes, I suppose it would.”

“And queerer still if they didn't know of one another's existence.”

“Yes,” admitted Kate, feeling a little like a witness whom a clever barrister has driven into an uncomfortable corner. “But the only other thing one can think is, that Dai Lewis
was
signalling to the enemy, and that he
is
responsible for Sidney's disappearance. And I don't see how one can think that, if he'd wandered off into Breconshire before Sidney disappeared.”

Colin murmured:

“‘Here awa', there awa', wandering Wullie.”

Kate sat up suddenly.

“Say that again!”

Colin looked at her in some surprise.

“‘Here awa', there awa', wandering Wullie,” he repeated, rather sheepishly. “Why?”

“Say some more.”

“The rest of it isn't at all appropriate.”

“Never mind that! Say some more!”

“But why—oh, all right! ‘Loud blew the cauld winter winds at oor parting, It was nae the blast brought the tear in my e'e! Now welcome—'”

Colin, who, though not a Scotsman, was a Burns addict, was beginning to enjoy himself, but Kate had heard enough. She sprang to her feet.

“I know now what it was that worried me about Dai Lewis's accent!”

Scotch?”

Kate gave a little excited laugh. She had not time at the moment to tell Colin what she thought of his attempt at a Scots accent.

“Scotch! No! Phoney! Colin, you know—or perhaps you don't—how sometimes on the stage an actor who's doing a dialect part drops out of the dialect he's supposed to be using for a moment? Unless you really know a dialect well, it's a most difficult thing to keep it true! He'll seem to be getting along all right in his Irish, or American, or whatever it is, a bit hollow, perhaps, but you feel it'll pass muster with anybody but a
real
Irishman or a
real
American. And then suddenly for a few words he gets the intonation quite wrong, and you hear his ordinary accent quite plainly. He hears it, too, and snaps out of it at once, but the illusion goes for a second. Well, that was Dai Lewis last night. His local accent wobbled about. When he said ‘That's right,' he might really almost have been a north country comedian. And every now and then he might have been a coster.”

“Gipsies get about the world,” murmured Colin, looking at her thoughtfully.

“I know, but not into repertory companies!”

Colin also got slowly to his feet.

“Did this man
say
he was Dai Lewis, Kate?”

“He didn't contradict me when I asked him if he was.”

“What made you ask him?”

Oh—because when I asked him where he lived, he said he lived ‘nowhere partickerler.' And of course, the ferrets.”

“Did you see the ferrets?”

“No, as a matter of fact I didn't. Nor hear them, nor smell them.”

“And did Dai Lewis say he was in Breconshire the night Sidney went?”

Kate reflected: “No, I don't think he did. He just said he wasn't at Hymns Bank.”

“In fact, he didn't really say anything to suggest that he was Dai Lewis, at all?”

“No, I don't think he did, Colin! I just concluded he was, and he didn't deny it.”

The bracken wagon, empty, came lumbering out of the yard, with Mr. Davis at the horse's head. He had a companion with him now, Gwyn Lupton, his greenish hat at the back of his head, a pitchfork in his hand, his voice raised in a dignified monologue above the creaking of the axles.

Kate hailed the two, and ran down the side of the tumulus as Mr. Davis whoaed his horse to a standstill.

“Mr. Davis!” she cried impulsively. “Can you tell me—what is your cousin Mr. Dai Lewis like to look at?”

Mr. Davis looked a trifle surprised at this bald question and the eagerness with which it was uttered. He slowly took off his cap as if about to scratch his head, slowly decided not to scratch his head and put his cap slowly back again. Then he said slowly:

“Oh, ah, Missie! He be a tidy sort of a man to look at, I reckon. He do weigh well.”

“What height?”

“Ah, a lot taller than I be, Missie. A lot taller'n you be, too, though you be a tall un for a female. Six foot pretty near, Dai Lewis be, I reckon. Oh ah. Pretty near six foot.”

The man Kate had seen in Hymns Bank had certainly not been anywhere near six feet, but about her own height, which was five feet eight. However, before she could ask for further details Gwyn Lupton observed:

“Young lady, Dai Lewis and me is of a height, though we is not of the same girth, no, indeed, for he is more like an oak tree, and I am more like a spindle now that I am advanced in years, though when we was young it was the other way about. The years adds flesh to some men and wears the flesh off others, it is according to the constitution. Dai Lewis is a fine man to look at, a fine handsome man, and if you do not know him by anything else, you will know him by the limp he has, which he has had ever since he broke his leg getting off a tram in Llanfyn sixteen years agone. Sixteen years agone it was, I remembers, for I broke my leg the autumn following, falling off a stack where I was pitching bracken, as I might be doing this morning. But I had not the weight on me Dai Lewis had, and did not fall so fast, and so I mended proper and does not limp at all. For them that weighs well does not mend well, Missie, and a heavy belly is a deceiving thing.”

Kate was now certain that the man she had seen in Hymns Bank was not Dai Lewis. But they were all doomed, she feared, to hear a good deal more about the handsome Mr. Dai Lewis and about his inferiority, in spite of appearances, to Mr. Gwyn Lupton, unless she could find some means of stemming the flow of Mr. Lupton's sonorous discourse. He stood there, holding his pitchfork like Britannia's trident, his other hand on his hip, a look of rapt inspiration on his dark, distinguished face, with an eye upon Kate whose stern spell she positively feared to break.

Colin, however, held Mr. Lupton, whom he had reason to suspect of secret digging on Pentrewer Tump, in less awe, and, somewhat to Kate's relief, stemmed the flood for her.

“I'm told, Mr. Lupton, you took a mould of that coin you found on the tumulus, and I've been wondering whether you'd be so kind as to show it to me?”

“Yes, indeed, I will show it you with pleasure, if you will step along to my house,” said Mr. Lupton graciously, transferring his hawklike glance from Kate to Colin. “A very old ancient piece of money it is, older than the days before the Romans was here, I did believe, but Mr. Morrison at the Veault said that it was from after those days, but none the worse for that. Five pounds he gave me for it. It may have been worth more?” said Gwyn Lupton interrogatively. “Well, Mr. Morrison is a very pleasant gentleman, an antiquary gentleman he is,” he resumed, as Colin non-committally shook his head, “and I wass glad to let him have the piece of money for five pounds, since he wished it. It cost me nothing. I was taking up a snare upon the tump—and I had set my snares on the tump not only to get rabbits for myself, but also because the tump is a valuable ancient thing that the Government is interested in,” said Mr. Lupton virtuously, “and it iss a pity if the rabbits should make their burrows in it and disturb the bones of the kings that is decaying there—I was taking up my snare, look, and I put my hand to the ground, and in my hand I found the piece of money.”

He laid down his pitchfork and demonstrated in a very lively and graceful manner the casual stooping of the rabbiter, the delighted wonder of the treasure-finder.

“I wass not looking for treasure, I wass not thinking of treasure. It is when we is not looking that we finds treasure. When we is looking for treasure, it hides away from us,” said he improvingly.

Colin also felt that he might improve the occasion.

“There's no more treasure to be found in the tump, anyway,” he said firmly. “Just old bones.”

“I am sure I do not know about that,” said Gwyn Lupton with the greatest indifference. “I has never thought about it. But I knows, of course, that whatever treasure is there, belongs first to the king that is buried there, and after him to the king that is not buried, which is His Majesty King George.”

“His Majesty King George wouldn't thank you for an old clay pot, which is probably all you'd find, apart from the bones inside it.” Colin added quickly, as it was obvious that Gwyn Lupton was about to launch another and stronger repudiation of any further designs on the tumulus: “May I come and see the putty mould this evening?”

“You will be welcome, young gentleman, at any time you chooses to come. And I will show you at the same time some other curiosities which will interest you—an old book of the Bible, with pictures in it, that my wife had left her in a will, and a thorn tree root that is almost, but not quite, in the shape of a weazel,” said Mr. Lupton graciously, and, somewhat to Kate's surprise, allowed Mr. Davis to gee-up his horse, and strode off beside him across the field towards the brackeny upper slope.

“You seem to have a slightly damping effect on Gwyn Lupton, Colin.”

“He's wondering how much I know about his excavations on Pentrewer Tump.”

“Has he been digging there again, do you think?”

“No. He's waiting till I've departed, I expect. It's a great pity that Saxon coin couldn't have been found somewhere else! Nothing I can say will ever convince these people now that Pentrewer Dump isn't just full of silver pennies waiting to be dug up and exchanged for five-pound-notes! Well, I've reminded Mr. Davis he's laying himself open to heavy penalties if he allows digging to go on, so perhaps he'll do something to curb Mr. Gwyn Lupton's enthusiasm.”

“Perhaps he daren't. Perhaps he's got a skeleton in his own cupboard. Mrs. Howells says Gwyn Lupton is intimately acquainted with all the skeletons in the local cupboards, being a house-carpenter, you see, and having had a good deal to do with those same cupboards at one time and another in a professional way.”

Colin smiled.

“Yes, really, Colin. It never occurred to me before what a grand opportunity a carpenter has for knowing all about skeletons. But one day Miss Gilliam from the Cefn was making herself disagreeable in the shop. And Gwyn was there, and he fixed her with his beady black eye and made some vague remarks about an occasion when he had earned somebody's gratitude by not saying something he
might
have said. And Miss Gilliam crumpled up in the most dramatic manner and trickled out of the shop as if he'd put a spell on her. And when I was up at the Cefn a few days later, I guessed why. She's the uncrowned queen of food-hoarders, and Gwyn Lupton, you see, having worked at the Cefn recently, knows it.”

Colin laughed.

“Well, not being the owner of a skeleton in these parts, I stand in no awe of Gwyn Lupton. And I shall take the opportunity, when I go to see his mould to-night, of impressing him with the risks he's running in trying to acquire a skeleton of his own. If only I could make him believe that a skeleton is, literally, all he'll find!”

Some gruesome application of these last words to her own case took place in Kate's mind against her will. Stifling a sigh, she said buoyantly:

“Well, let him! Compared with other things, it doesn't matter much!”

Colin, unaware of the shiver Kate was stifling with these unusually philistine sentiments, remonstrated:

“It does matter, Kate, a good deal, if valuable antiquities are allowed to be destroyed by avaricious ignoramuses!”

“Compared with life and death, it doesn't matter!”

“Perhaps not. But nobody's life's in danger, is it?”

“Yes! Sidney Brentwood's is! And here we stand talking about bones that have been buried about three thousand years as if they mattered! Colin, that man I saw at Hymns Bank
wasn't
Dai Lewis!”

“So I gather.”

“Why did he pretend he was?”

“He didn't want you to know who he really was, I suppose. And he wanted you to go away without suspecting anything seriously wrong.”

“He didn't want me to see him. Was that because I should have recognised him if I had?”

“Either that, or he was afraid you might see him later and recognise him.”

“And he didn't want me to see into that upstairs room. What had he got there? Not ferrets!”

“Probably something more incriminating than ferrets.”

“Such as?”

“Well, say, an apparatus for signalling to the enemy. You saw a light flickering from the house, didn't you? Perhaps a secret radio transmitter too.”

“Ronnie said he heard a clicking noise coming from the house,” said Kate thoughtfully.

“Well, there you are. I doubt if whatever's going on there has anything to do with your Sidney, Kate.”

“But the green tinfoil! He had been there!”

“Perhaps. But keeping a small boy prisoner—if Sidney is being kept a prisoner—certainly isn't the
raison d'être
of what's going on at Hymns Bank.”

“Well, I'm here to look for Sidney, and I must follow up every possibility.”

“Kate,” said Colin earnestly, “if you want to find Sidney, the first essential is, not to lose yourself. Don't take absurd risks. Every soldier, everybody's who's got a serious job on hand, knows better than that. Don't go to Hymns Bank again alone. Let me go with you. Or let me go instead of you. But don't go alone. Promise.”

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