Tom Tiddler's Island, стр. 19
“Oh, all right, then,” Colin acquiesced. “If you want it, you must have it. Now let’s push on a bit faster or we won’t be back in time for a bathe.”
They continued their way to the eastern tip of the island. In the clear air they could make out the white cottages of Stornadale village on the mainland, and beyond them the smoke of a steamer, hull-down on the horizon.
“Not much traffic hereabouts,” Colin observed as he gazed out over the empty sea. “That’s the Fishery protection boat, most likely. I expect the fishing fleet’s somewhere round the corner.”
“Sniff hard and perhaps, you’ll smell the smoking of the herrings on board,” suggested Jean, who had not forgotten how he had tried to impose on her. “And when you’ve had your fill of that, suppose we turn home? We’ll keep along the coast, past Heather Lodge, and then we’ll have seen almost the whole of the shore.”
As they strolled along a rough path through the heather, there appeared over a ridge ahead a heavily-built man holding in leash an enormous hound, wiry-haired and grey. Jean started at the sight of it and moved closer to Colin.
“Oh, Colin! Look at that dreadful creature!” she exclaimed nervously. “It’s as big as a baby donkey. What is it? Is it safe?”
“Let’s run!” Colin proposed, in mock panic. Then to reassure her, he explained: “Irish wolf-hound, by the look of it. Nothing to worry about, dear. Gentle as lambs, really, though they look fearsome brutes. But I shouldn’t like to have one set on me. Immensely strong beasts, able to tackle a wolf single-handed, they say. Knock a man over as easy as look at him.”
“Well, I hope it won’t take a dislike to me as we pass it. Wouldn’t it be better to go off the track a bit till it’s gone by, Colin? I don’t really like the look of it.”
“Nonsense! The last time I saw one of that breed it was being led down the street by a little girl, a kiddy not half the size of the hound. You mustn’t let yourself get into a funk about it.”
“I suppose it must be one they keep at Heather Lodge,” said Jean, still eyeing the hound mistrustfully.
She found her fears quite groundless when the hound and its keeper came abreast of them. Colin, determined to satisfy her, hailed the man as he drew near.
“Nice dog you’ve got there.”
The man stared at him intently for a few seconds before replying. Evidently he had noticed Jean’s momentary panic.
“It would not hurt anybody. Ze lady can feel quite safe. Zere is no danger from it,” he explained genially.
Colin had no difficulty in fitting Dinnet’s description to this stranger. This was the “big, burly man with the brown moustache.” Although his words were quite correct and his pronunciation was good, he gave himself away by those modulations of the voice and a slight misplacement of those stresses which form traps for anyone speaking a foreign language. One glance had satisfied Colin of one thing: this was not the stranger of the previous night.
Encouraged by her husband, Jean nervously made an attempt to grow friendly with the gigantic hound. It showed no hostility, only a gentle indifference to her advances; but at least she became convinced that it was nothing to be afraid of. The keeper watched her performance in moody silence. He was evidently a person of few words and with no gift for enlivening casual meetings. When they at last moved on, his relief was more obvious than polite. He led the hound on down the path, and Jean turned to watch it as it went.
“I was rather a fool to be afraid of it,” she admitted at last. “But there was some excuse for me. Anyhow, I’m glad I met it first in broad daylight, Colin. Fancy seeing that great grisly brute loom up on you out of the dusk, if you weren’t expecting it! It would have scared me stiff. Like The Hound of the Baskervilles. I wonder if they let it loose at night,” she concluded, rather nervously.
“Shouldn’t think so. Ask your girl-friend. She ought to know. It wouldn’t hurt you, anyway.”
In a short time they reached Heather Lodge.
“A walled garden!” Jean exclaimed as they came up to it. “I didn’t expect that, somehow.”
“Well, old Arrow evidently means to keep it to himself,” Colin pointed out. “Broken glass on top of an eight-foot wall. Fairly fresh, too, by the look of the mortar it’s fixed on with. No road this way, that’s clear. Let’s have a squint at the front of the house.”
They passed along the side-wall, and Colin was the first to turn the corner. The wall was continuous, except for a small gateway which gave admission to the garden. Beside this gateway, on a wooden chair, sat a small figure in riding-breeches and leggings; and Colin had no difficulty in identifying him as Dinnet’s “red-haired, ferret-faced man.”
At the first glimpse of Colin he sprang to his feet and faced round in their direction with a cat-like swiftness. He made a sudden movement rather like the Japanese salutation, crouching slightly and bringing his hands down to his thighs. Then, as Jean appeared, he relaxed again and seemed to have realised a mistake.
As he straightened up once more, Colin was amazed by his accoutrement. Down the side of each thigh ran a great flap of leather, depending from a belt, and at the lower tip of this a second flap was sewn to the first, forming a huge holster. In that peculiar movement the man’s hands had gone down into the holsters with automatic accuracy, but, to Colin’s relief, they had come out again empty.
“By jove!” Colin reflected in surprised admiration, “that’s a cute notion. You can’t miss an opening that size to start with, and as soon as your hand’s in