DANCING BEGGARS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21277, 2 September 1932, Page 19

DANCING BEGGARS

fey E. BRETT YOUNG ' Author of M •* Jhe Murder at Fleet," ** Undergrowth," " The Medlar Tree, etc., etc.

CHAPTER V RAIN Turning over the known facts in my jnind, I decided that if the mystery of Bentlev's death were to be solved by pure reason the solver would not be I. I needed something to bite on and I went in search of it to the Church Farm. Pasco was in the farmyard in the rain; piling seaweed in a great heap, with the help of old Samson. He seemed glad enough to straighten his back and talk. "Got nid of your rheumatism?" " It don't double mo in summer," he said. The man's manner was perfectly natural, and I was at a loss to go on without showing more of my hand than I cared Ho show. I had resolved not to be the first to speak to Dr. Brookes. " I was afraid," I went on quickly, •*' that Nancy and her mother might be a bit 'upset by this shocking business down at the harbour." He ran the toe of his boot along a ehining oily ribbon of weed. " They /may have been," he admitted. " I don't blame them," I hurried 011. * The thing was a shock to all of us, and most of all, I expect to yourself." " That's very true," said Farmer Pasco, and picked up his fork. 1 ignored the hint and 'prattled on desperately. " It has always been one of my nightmares," I said, "to stumble over something in the dark and discover that it's » dead man." 1 "A dying man," he corrected me, and our eyes met. It was only for a split second, but I could have sworn that I caught a gleam of amusement. I began to lose my temper. " I had better be frank with you, Pasco. I / suppose you know that people are talking about Mr. Bentley and your daughter:' He stuck his fork deliberately into the glistening pile and turned to face me. He was frowning now and his eyes were bard.

" What! are they saying?" " They're saying thhi. Bentley came eourting your daughter." He turned on his heel and without a ■word walked to the open door of the farmhouse. A moment later Pasco came back with Nancy. The girl couriesied to ma with a smile, and then stood with her hands folded over her pinafore like a little girl in Sunday School, the more so that she held a Bible in them.

" You'ro to listen, Nancy," said her father. " Mr. Gosling has something to say to 'ee." 'She raised her dark lashes and looked at me in token that she was listening. It was a beastly moment. I stammered and blushed, but I got it out somehow. " I hate to repeat it, Nancy, but perhaps you don't know .that there's been soma trilk about you arid Mr. Bentley." The dark eyes were unreadable. " I don't say for a moment," I went or, ' v that there'd be any harm in it." " That's for me to say," put in Pasco, quietly. " Ask her if it's true." " I don't want to press it," I said. " Never mind what you want. Ask her if it's true that Bentley came courting her." • I put the question. I wished myself five fathoms deep in the Atlantic. " No,'J said Nancy. " Did Bentley ever make love to you ?" her father demanded. " No," she said. " That's enough for me," I said hastily. But Pasco was not satisfied. " No, parson, it's not enough. If Bentley was alive you'd care little enough whether he went courting or not. Listen, girl. Do' you know anything—the least little thing—about how Bentley came to be killed ? Hold ud the Book ?" She held it up. '' Nothing," she said. " Now kiss the Book." She lowered tho Bible and kissed it, looking at me over its edge. " Now kiss me," said her father, " and get along into your work. Mr. Gosling," fie said, " I've brought my child up to speak the truth and to fear God. Do you believe what she's just told you ?" " 1/ do," said I. And I did.

" I've gof work to do," said Pasco, and turned away from me.-I believed I sputtered some kind of apology to his back, but ha took no notice, and I left him, purfined by a malignant cackle from the old labourer.

I wandered home in the rain, miserable enough to get what comfort I might from Janes.

, He was just where I had left him, but barely visible in an acrid -fog of tobacco smoke. I) tossed my hat on the' table and threw up the window. " I suppose you're right," he said, yawning. " I've been too busy to notice it." Busy ?" I echoed disagreeably. " Well, pleasantly submerged. I've finished ' Spindrift ' and I'm half way through ' Foam o' the Sea,' which the publisher rightly describes as being racy ■with the tang of the -Atlantic Ocean, so X shut/ the window to avoid mixing my tangs—hence the fog." I told him the whole wretched story of my visit to the Church Farm. He sat up and looked grave. " I advised you not to tackle Pasco yet," he said. " I know that," I confessed, " but you Eaid something about visiting the sick." " Did I?" But since apparently there ■weren't- any sick—or were there?" He looked at me inquiringly. "The girl's all right," I said. " In that case .your visit was unnecessary." "Unnecessary be bothered!" I said. *' At least I've found out something that vre didn't know before." •' Meaning that Keynes is a liar." " Keynes is mad with jealousy. He's got it all wrong." Janes nodded thoughtfully. " It certainly looks like it," he said. " At least his conclusions don't agree with the Bible.truth as sworn to by Miss Nancv Pasco. Hence two new facts which seem to block a promising avenue of inquiry. First, Bentley didn't make love to Nancy; second/ Nancy knows no more than you or I how Bentley came to be killed. Starting with these facts, Gosling, what arc your deductions?" "Deductions be hanged!" I said. " I'm going for a walk in the rain." There are only four feasible walks from Polblaze, and I chose the one that promised to be windiest and wettest. T surrendrd to the elementary pleasure of fighting my way against the wind and filling my lungs wiMi salt air. I sang next Sunday's hymns and set the sheep scampering. I shouted and awoke a crashing response from an invisible choir of gulls below the cliff's edge. I walked half a mile before I noticed that I was not alone. Somebody wis coming towards me a hundred yaids away and, seeing me at the same mument, left the path as though to avoid me, and made towards the brow of the cliff with a stride that I knew at once for Molly Lupin's. Now I felt that for one day I had been sufficiently snubbed. I had come up the cliff to be alone, but it was none the to find myself avoided. I struck off in pursuit. She reached the cliff edge and at once d'sappeared. For a moment I was terrified. Then I remembered the little underhung ledge to which I had scrambeld to retrieve my hat. She must be there and, being there, she could not get away. I joined her. She was hatless and her thin oilskin clung to her, gleaming liko seaweed and sending trickles down her bare legs. She looked at me when I stood beside her, and nodded coolly,' with a faint sm.le. " You're wet," she said. She had a way of saying the obvious thing in the plainest words as though she dreaded being accused of a flight of fancy. This I rather liked. ; . " You too," I said.' " I can be dry in two minutes. You'll have 'to change everything." Her oiled coat buttoned at the neck, and she wore the kind of shoes they call plimsoles. Only her bright hair would need towelling.

(COPYRIGHT)

AN INTRIGUING DETECTIVE MYSTERY

" Why dodge me? " I said. " I thought you were a religious maniac." " A natural mistake," I admitted, " though I happen to be saner than usual. But 1 didn't mean now in particular. You always dodge me." " I was coming here in any case," she said. I did not ask why." " Bentley liked this place," I said. She nodded without looking at me and then asked: " How did you know that ? " -I told her then the story of Janes' reconstruction which she had not stayed to hear on the cliff path. Her comment was a question: "Is Mr. Janes always as clever as that? " " Not always," I admitted. " Is he trying to find out who killed Mr. Bentley ? " " I suppose we all want to know that. Yes, he's very interested." "Has he found anything?" I said it was difficult to discover how much Janes knew about anything, but in this case I suspected that he knew no more than the rest of us. She asked how long he should stay in Polblaze, and I said that he would probably be gone in a week. She seemed relieved, though she said nothing. It looked as if she had been afraid that Janes would turn up again at the bungalow and oblige her to be polite and conversational. She hates company, but I walked back to the village with her. If I am blamed for recording this very ordinary conversation it must be remembered that I did not at this time have a chance of talking to Molly Lupin very often. CHAPTER VI SACRILEGE I felt happier for my walk, or my wetting, or perhaps my meeting with Molly, and when I got back to my lodgings I was prepared to make up to Janes for my ill temper. He got his apology in first. " And you were right about Claira Huntly," he said. "Her girls ar» dolls; her foam is tinsel, and her waves are cardboard, and she's an extremely attractive person. I'm longing to meet her again. Let's go." " To the bungalow ? They'll be having dinner."

" I suppose so, then how about a ride ? I'm stifled." " There isn't a car in the village, except the Rector's, which is a sacrosanct." " A walk then." " I've had one, and I'm wet to the skin." I thought he was going to suggest a plunge in the harbour, but he only told me to go and change. The queer fellow seemed to have shaken off all his langour along with his interest in amphibious romance. There was un excited gleam in his eye, and he could not keep still for two minutes together. He herded me up to the bathroom and brought up the hot water himself—our plumbing is elementary —and when I had soaked he came and played valet while I put on dry clothes. " Gosling," he said, " we've slumbered too long. The time has come to act." " That suits me," said I. His excitement was infectious, though I had not the faintest idea what it was about. " We must get our noses to the ground," he said. I agreed that it was time. I had already forgotten my resolve to have nothing more to do with sleuthing. I asked to what particular patch of ground he intended to apply his nose first. " I leave that to you, Goose. We'll reserve the order of nature and the parson's nose shall lead the way." This had to be avenged. He worked off some of his stored energy in selfdefence, and then consented to sit quietly on the bottom of the bed while I finished dressing. He. made me put on a grey flannel suit, and a preordination soft collar. He also routed out an" old check cap that he pretended to recognise as a relic of our Trinity days. I looked like one of those semi-smart loungers at street corners in the East End whom one assures—perhaps too hastily—to be thugs. " Now you can go anywhere," he said approvingly. I begged him to be more precise. Where did he want to go ?" " Wherever things are most likely to happen," he said. I was going to say that nothing ever happened in Polblaze after dapk but I remembered something that had happened a week ago. " Ask yourself," said Janes, " what is the most puzzling point about this whole affair. I mean the most obviously puzzling." I had to admit that it was all equally puzzling to me, and that even the puzzles weren't definite enough to be obvious. " Yes, it's a dark business," he said soberly, " and full of contradictions. So much the better. Do you keep up your Plato ? Oh, you should. Here's good rea,ding and much more exciting than most novels, even than Claire Huntley's. Well, I ought not to have to remind you that the old sorcerer nourished his wisdom on contradictions. In other words he believed the recognition of two conflicting truths was the beginning of science because the human mind isn't satisfied until it has resolved the contradiction. You see a direct conflict of facts gives you something to bite on." " Bite away," I said patiently. " Well, it seems to 'me that in this case we've got two sets of obviously conflicting facts that we'll assume for the moment to be true. The first is rather vague. We feel —at least I do —that Valina and his friend the doctor are crooked. On the other f and all the evidence points to their having been aboard the Dido when Bentley was killed. That's the first conflict, and of course it ceases to be one as soon as we're convinced either that Brookes and Valina are as innocent as they don't look, or that one or both of them did have an opportunity of slipping off the yacht unobserved, and getting back again." " I don't see much to bite on there," 1 said. Neither do I. Then let's try the second contradiction. Keynes says that Bentley used to go up to the farm courting Nancy. Nancy says that he didn't. We both believed Keynes, and I rather gather that you believe Nancy." " I do, when she swears on the Bible. That still means a lot to these people, thank Heaven." " Then there's a more promising contradiction'on. Let's go up to the farm." I jumped up in alarm. " Not on your life! I've had one rap over the knuckles to-day from Fanner Pasco, and I don't want another." " I'm not suggesting that we should invite ourselves to {supper. As a matter of fact 1 was thinking of something al fresco, a visit that stopped short at the front door. Under the hedge, for ifistance. " This time last night," said Janes, "Mr.. Pasco had a visitor.. Witness Keynes." " But we don't believe Keynes." " On the contrary we do believe Keynes. We're building on the truth of Keynes, and the truth of Nancy." He looked suddenly anxious. " You didn't by any chance ask Nancy if Brookes had been ttf see her ? " "No." " Thank God for that, though I should love to know if she'd have denied it on the Bible. Anyway Nancy and Keynes don't conflict on this point and if somebody's' really ill up there it's more than likely that the doctor will repeat his visit. Logic suggests, therefore, that we should be there to see." " Which is what you meant to do all along," I challenged him. " Perhaps I did." " Then you might have spared m® the lecture on Plato. All right I'll come." (To be continued daily')