“The way out is down here,” he said, and passed on.
Their car was in his drive. They had driven it into the flower-beds in turning it; he took the number; he meant to learn the lady’s name. He then hurried on to Tibb’s Cross.
Nearly all the crowd had scattered now. The gate which he had chained and wired had been lifted off its hinges and left against the hedge. The chain and padlock were gone; the wire fastenings had been cut.
He walked rapidly across the field, towards the wood. An old man, whom he had not before seen, was standing in the field, staring, as men will, at the scene of some event, even long after the event has finished.
“Morning, sir,” the man said, touching his forelock. “They’m off for the wild west.”
“Yes, so it seems,” he answered.
He was raging still at the insolence of the Hunt in disregarding his wishes. Yet he knew that Bynd could never have countenanced such disregard? Who had arranged this? He was pretty sure that it had been arranged. As he crossed the field, he remembered suddenly how the hounds had given tongue outside the covert. It was one of those mild autumn days in which all scents hang heavy, almost like weight and warmth together upon the palate. What if the scent of fox had reached the pack overwhelmingly from outside the covert, and that they had dashed off uncontrollably, at head? He knew nothing of fox-hunting, but remembered the American’s remark, that a hunting dog doesn’t give a damn for conscience. As to the huntsman, well, he was one of the pack on a hunting morning; if the hounds were off, he would probably go with them, and ask nothing better.
At this point, he stopped dead. On the warm air a waft came upon his open mouth; he smelt again the anise of which the woman had partaken.
“That’s the explanation, is it?” he muttered. “Aniseed; an aniseed drag, to take the Hunt through Spirr.”
He stooped towards the ground; at one point a few feet from him aniseed must had been spilled; the place was rank with it. He went on to the covert, noting the damage to the fence. Tim, his warden, was not in his cottage. Three boys and two men were strolling in the wood; he told them to be out of it. The smell of aniseed led him through the wood, over the stream by the little bridge, and out of the wood on the far side to a point where several horsemen had waited for some time. Fusees, two half-cigars, and some cigarette-butts lay on the poachings of the hunters’ hooves.
“They were in the know,” he commented. “They knew that the hounds would run through Spirr, and break just here. This is all planned.”
There was no need to go farther. Occasional wafts of anise reached him. The tracks of the Hunt were printed plain across the field; they had gone off for Joys Bridge and Wicked Hill, as in the ballad. Lines of the ballad, which he had now seen, came into his mind.
His mind meditated evil, but he saw that it might be difficult to catch the culprits and do evil to them. After all, could it be an offence to trail a bit of old rabbit or herring dipped in aniseed along the ground? This had every symptom of being a rag, devised by a few bright young things. That hard-mouthed jade in his drive, who stank of anise, was one of the contrivers, no doubt; she and a few of her set had probably laid the drag, given a wink and a tip to the Hunt servants and all had followed, as the night the day.
He thought, also, that it was possible that the rag had not been devised against, or at least not wholly against, himself. Why should they not have devised it against the crusted old sports who swore by the Tunster Tradition? Might it not have been fun to a queer kind of fool to hear these fellows blethering later about “a wonderful run, sir, over the very line taken on the Spirr Wood Day?” But he put this thought from him. His shutting of Spirr had angered every sportsman in the Tunster country. And anyhow, the Hunt had known that he wished the Wood to be respected. Anyone who had seen his gate, chained, padlocked and wired fast, would have known that it was devised to keep people from passing through. Instead of regarding it, they had burst it open by force, lifted it from its hinges and left it unshipped. The Hunt had done that. Those fellows, whom he had seen urging two men to break his fence, would not have scrupled to bid others to lift the gate out of the way. Well, what he could do, he would do to trace the guilty. In any case, the hounds had trespassed; the Hunt was responsible for that. If he could make them squirm for it, he would. But he knew that poor old Bynd had nothing to do with it. Tilter was the lad, Annual-Tilter. His heart was raging for a victim, and at this point he thought of Timothy, his caretaker. Where was Timothy that morning of all mornings? Why had not Timothy seen the drag being laid and come to report? “He’s nothing but a damn young slacker,” he thought. But had the young slacker been bribed by the bright young things to be out of the way? Had he been lured out of the way? Well, after all, if he had gone to Stubbington to shop, it would have been no great sin. Anyhow, one young man could hardly have stopped a pack in full cry with their heads up.
However, he would deal with Tim later; he had some sleuthing to do. He meant to take casts of the footprints at the point where the hounds had “found” and gone off.
There was one point, where aniseed had been lavishly spilled. At this point, there were footprints in the soft soil. He was used to making and taking plaster casts; he took good plaster casts of these. Two women and a tall man, all wearing expensive boots or shoes, had loitered for a moment there. It was not very helpful. After all, many people had been at Tibb’s Cross all the forenoon; fifty or sixty such might have been in the field.
“Those two birds who were at my pond were the women,” he muttered. “I’ll now get the prints of their feet in my flowerbed and near that bench.”
He did so, and found that undoubtedly the two women from the car had been the two who had loitered in the field. He took his casts to his study and telephoned to the police, to say that the Hunt at Tibb’s Cross had broken open and unhinged his gate, and run through his preserve. He wished them to enquire into this, because he meant to prosecute. All these things took him until nearly two o’clock; he lunched then, still raging, composing, as he ate and raged, a letter to the Hunt Secretary.
After lunch he was busy with other matters. After tea, he thought: “I’ll get along, now, to Spirr, to find what Timothy knows of all this.” But Timothy hadn’t returned to the warden’s lodge in the covert. “Nothing for it, but to do a pub-crawl,” he thought. He judged that shopping would have taken perhaps an hour and a half, shopping and a haircut, two hours; but this absence meant a binge. “Rotten young ass,” he growled.
He drove first to the Hare and Hounds Inn, near Weston Mullples. He noted, as he pulled up, that Timothy had repainted the inn-sign.
“Did it for a bottle of gin, probably,” he growled, but had to admit that he had done it with a certain go.
However, Timothy hadn’t been there lately, not since week afore last, the man thought; but Mr. Mansell might find him along at The Adventure. Frampton called at the Prior’s Arms on the way to The Adventure, but drew the covert blank. The Adventure was a big old inn standing well back out of the traffic on the Stubbington road. As Frampton pulled up in that recess or bay in which the inn stood, he noticed the battered little run-about, which Tim called his tin-lizzie. From inside the bar, the clear and pleasant voice of Tim rang out in a ballad.