Two of Abel’s regular cronies had come in: Dick Oates, the Ottercombe policeman, and Arthur Gill, the grocer. A little later they were joined by Mr. George Nark, an elderly bachelor-farmer whose political views chimed with those of the Left Movement and who was therefore a favourite of Will Pomeroy’s. Mr. Nark had been a great reader of the liberal literature of his youth, and had never got over the surprise and excitement that he had experienced, thirty years ago, on reading Winwood Reade, H. G. Wells, and the Evolution of Man. The information that he had derived from these and other serious works had, with the passage of time, become transmuted into simplified forms which, though they would have astonished the authors, completely satisfied Mr. Nark.

The rain still came down in torrents and Mr. Nark reported that Coombe tunnel was a running stream.

“It’s a crying shame,” he said, gathering the attention of the Private. “Bin going on for hundreds of years and no need for it. We can be flooded out three times a year and capitalistic government only laughs at us. Science would have druv a Class-A high road into the Coombe if somebody had axed it. But does a capitalistic government ax the advice of Science? Not it. It’s afraid to. And why? Because Science knows too much for it.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Gill.

“That’s capitalism for you,” continued Mr. Nark. “Blind-stupid, and arrogant. Patching up where it should pitch-in and start afresh. What can you expect, my sonnies, from a parcel of wage-slavers and pampered aristocrats that don’t know the smell of a day’s work? So long as they’ve got their luxuries for themselves—”

He stopped and looked at Miss Darragh.

“Axing your pardon, Miss,” said Mr. Nark. “In the heat of my discourse I got carried off my feet with the powerful rush of ideas and forgot your presence. This’ll be all gall and wormwood to you, doubtless.”

“Not at all, Mr. Nark,” said Miss Darragh cheerfully. “I’m myself a poor woman and I’ve moods when I’m consumed with jealousy for anybody who’s got a lot of money.”

This was not precisely the answer Mr. Nark, who was a prosperous farmer, desired.

“It’s the Government,” he said, “that does every manjack of us out of our scientific rights.”

“As far as that goes,” said P. C. Oates, “I reckon one government’s as scientific as the other. Look at sewage, for instance.”

“Why?” demanded Mr. Nark, “should we look at sewage? What’s sewage got to do with it? We’re all animals.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Gill, “so we are, then.”

“Do you know, Dick Oates,” continued Mr. Nark, “that you’ve got a rudimentary tail?”

“And if I have, which I don’t admit—”

“Ask Mr. Cubitt, then. He’s an artist and no doubt, has studied the skeleton of man in its present stage of evolution. The name escapes me for the moment but we’ve all got it. Isn’t that correct, sir?”

“Yes, yes,” said Norman Cubitt hurriedly. “Quite right, Mr. Nark.”

“There you are,” said Mr. Nark. “Apes, every man-jack of us, and our arms have only grown shorter through us knocking off the habit of hanging from limbs of trees.”

“What about our tongues?” asked Mr. Oates.

“Never mind about that,” answered Mr. Nark warmly. “Do you know that an unborn child’s got gills like a fish?”

“That doesn’t make it a monkey, however.”

“It goes to show, though.”

“What?”

“You want to educate yourself. In a proper government the State ’ud educate the police so’s they understood these deep matters for themselves. They know all about that in Russia. Scientific necessity, that’s what it is.”

“I don’t see how knowing I’ve got a bit of a tail and once had a pair of gills is going to get me any nearer to a sergeant’s stripe,” reasoned Mr. Oates. “What I’d like is a case. You know how it happens in these crime stories, chap,” he continued, looking round the company. “I read a good many of them and it’s always the same thing. The keen young P.C. happens to be on the spot when there’s a homicide. His Super has to call in the Yard and before you know where you are the P.C.’s working with one of the Big Four and getting praised for his witty deductions. All I can say is, I wished it happened like that in the Illington and Ottercombe Riding. Well, I’d best go round the beat, I reckon. Down the Steps and up again is about all this drowned hole’ll see of me to-night. I’ll look in again, chaps.”

Mr. Oates adjusted his helmet, fastened his mackintosh, looked to his lamp, and went out into the storm.

“Ah, the poor fellow!” murmured Miss Darragh comfortably from inside the inglenook settle.

“In a properly conducted state—” began Mr. Nark.

His remark was drowned in a clap of thunder. The lights wavered and grew so dim that the filaments in the bulbs were reduced to luminous threads.

“Drat they electrics,” said old Abel. “That’s the storm playing Bobs-a-Dying with the wires somewhere. Us’ll be in darkness afore closing time, I daresay.” And he raised his voice to a bellow.

“Will! Oi, Will!”

Will’s voice answered from above. The lights brightened. After a minute or two, Decima and Will came downstairs and into the Private. Each carried an oil lamp.

“Guessed what you were hollowing for,” said Will, with a grin. “Here’s the lamps. We’ll put ’em on the two bars, Dessy, and matches handy. Bob Legge’s fetching the other, Dad. Ceiling in his room’s sprung a leak and the rain’s coming in pretty heavy. The man was sitting there, so lost in thought he might have drowned. I’ve fixed up a bucket to catch it, and told him to come down.”

Will stared for a second at Watchman, and added rather truculently: “We told Bob we missed his company in the Private, didn’t we, Dess?”

“Yes,” said Decima.

Watchman looked at her. She turned her back to him and said something to Will.

“Let us by all means have Mr. Legge among us,” Watchman said. “I hope to beat him; all round the clock.”

And in a minute or two Mr. Legge came in with the third unlit lamp.

iii

On the day following the thunder storm, the patrons of the Plume of Feathers tried very hard to remember in some sort of order, the events of the previous evening; the events that followed Mr. Legge’s entrance into the private taproom. For one reason and another their stories varied, but no doubt the principal reason for their variation might be found in the bottle of Courvoisier ’87 that Abel Pomeroy had brought up from the cellar. That was after Mr. Gill had gone home, and before Mr. Oates returned from a somewhat curtailed beat round the village.

It was Watchman who started the discussion on brandy. Watchman apparently had got over whatever unfriendly mood had possessed him earlier in the evening, and was now as communicative as he had been silent. He began to tell legal stories and this he did very well indeed, so that in a minute or two he had the attention of both bars; the patrons of the public taproom leaning on the bar counter and trying to see into the other room. He told stories of famous murder trials, of odd witnesses, and finally of his biggest case before he took silk. He did not give the names of the defendants, only describing them as the embezzling experts of the century. He had led for the defence of one of them and had succeeded in shifting most of the blame to the other who got, he said, a swinging big sentence. He became quite exalted over it all.

Sebastian always said that his cousin would have made an actor. He was certainly an excellent mimic. He gave a character sketch of the judge and made a living creature of the man. He described how, after the verdict, when the defendant’s house was sold up, he had bought three dozen of brandy from the cellar.

“Courvoisier ’87,” said Watchman. “A superb year.”

“Me cousin Bryonie,” said Miss Darragh, looking round the corner of her settle, “had the finest cellar in County Clare, I believe. Before the disaster, of course.”