The Plague Dogs

Wednesday the 10th November

Need information urgently rat and flea-borne diseases also background one Goodner ex-German wartime scientist employed A.R.S.E. prospects story excellent Driver.

“Oh, hooray!” said Mr. Skillicorn, rubbing his hands. “Izzy wizzy, let’s get busy. Desmond, dear boy, with any luck this is going to break big.”

“There’s a lot could go wrong with it,” replied Mr. Simpson, shaking his head. “A lot!”

“Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I hope I’ll be proved wrong, Quilliam. It’s just that I’ve got such an incurably suspicious mind, you know.”

Thursday the 11th November

“—And then there’s this,” said the Under Secretary, picking up a press cutting, “which you may already have seen. It may prove entirely negligible, but I don’t much like the look of it. A little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand.”

“I’ll advise the Parliamentary Secretary to prepare his chariot.”

The Assistant Secretary sighed inwardly and tried to assume an eager and co-operative air. The two of them had already spent an hour in discussing three matters on which the necessary action could have been decided in as many minutes. If ever there was a case of Parkinson’s Law, thought the Assistant Secretary morosely—only there ought to be a corollary in this case. “Work expands in direct proportion to the loquacity of the senior officer responsible for it.”

Outside, in Whitehall, evening was falling and over Horse Guards Parade the sunlit air was flecked and alive with starlings’ wings. By the thousand they flew in, whistling, strutting, chuckling to one another on the jutty friezes of the Government offices, their pendent beds and procreant cradles. The light reflected, from their glossy plumage, swift, glancing greens, blues and mauves. O happy living things! No tongue their beauty might declare. “I wish my kind saint would take pity on me,” thought the Assistant Secretary, taking the press cutting which the Under Secretary was holding out to him. Whatever it might be, he ought already to have seen it himself, of course—it was he who ought to have drawn it to the Under Secretary’s attention, not the other way around. The Under Secretary was making this point by the act of refraining from making it.

Mystery Dog Raiders at Large in Lakeland, he read. A report from the Orator’s Man-on-the-Spot—Digby Driver. He skimmed quickly down the item. With any luck, and if he could absorb the gist of it quickly enough, he could say that he had already seen it, but hadn’t thought it worth mentioning to his busy Under Secretary.

“Yes, I did see this, Maurice, actually, but it didn’t seem to amount to a great deal. I mean, even if Animal Research were to admit that they’d let a dog or dogs escape, and even if one of those dogs had caused the death of this poor chap Ephraim, it’s still purely local in effect and wouldn’t be damaging to the Secretary of State, I would suppose.”

“That depends,” replied the Under Secretary, looking down and making a minute and entirely unnecessary adjustment of the Remembrance Day poppy in his button-hole. “You see, the Secretary of State’s rather sensitive at the moment, on account of attacks in the House about finance.”

“But how could this tie up with that?”

“I’m not saying it does, but it might.” The Under Secretary suavely showed his teeth like an elderly sheep. “You’ll recall that a few years back we—or our predecessors—advised the Secretary of State to accept the principal recommendations of the Sablon Committee and that that meant, inter alia, approval of the Lawson Park project; and a good deal of money for it in the annual estimates ever since. Lawson Park’s always had its enemies, as you know, and someone may well try to argue that these wasters of public money have been negligent in letting the dogs escape. That could be embarrassing. It’s bad enough the station having been sited in a national park in the first place—”

“Can’t see that. It doesn’t cause pollution or increase the flow of traffic–”

“I know, I know, Michael,” said the Under Secretary in a characteristically testy tone, “but it’s a nonconforming user in a national park and as Crown’ development it attracted a deemed planning permission. That’s quite enough for the Opposition if the place gets itself into hot water. But look, I fear we shall have to call a halt now to these most interesting deliberations. I have things to attend to and so, I’m sure, have you.” (Good Lord! thought the Assistant Secretary, I can’t believe it!) “I’m seeing the Parly. Sec. tomorrow evening about one or two other things and while I’m about it I’d like to set his mind at rest on this, if we can. Have you got a reliable contact up there?”

“Yes, more or less. Chap called Boycott I generally talk to.”

“Well, could you please find out what their thinking is on this, and in particular whether they’ve had a dog escape and if so what they’ve done about it? We want to be able to say, publicly if necessary, that this Hound of the Baskervilles, if it exists, didn’t emerge from Lawson Park.”

“Right, Maurice, I’ll see to that.” (Bloody old woman! What other Under Secretary would make a meal of a thing like this?)

“You understand, I hope I’m going to be proved to be fussing unnecessarily, Michael. It’s just that I’ve got such an incurably suspicious mind, you know.”

In the corridor, the Assistant Secretary paused to look out over St. James’s Park in the failing light. From high up in a great, bark-peeling plane tree a thrush was singing, and in the distance he could discern the pelicans on the lake, swimming one behind the other and all thrusting their heads below water at the same, identical instant. As often in moments of difficulty or depression, he began to repeat “Lycidas” silently to himself.

The mist was like an elastic, damp cloth over the muzzle, yet worse, being insubstantial and impossible to claw aside. For the twentieth time Rowf rubbed a paw across his face to wipe away a clot of the wet gossamer filling the grass for mile after mile. The muffled pouring of the becks sounded from both before and behind. There were no stars. There was no breeze and no movement of smells. There were only those scents that hung stilly in the mist itself and formed part of it—sheep and sheep’s droppings, heather and the lichen and fungus covering the stone walls. There was not a sound to be heard of any living creature, man, bird or beast. He and the tod were moving beneath a ceiling of mist, along passages walled with mist, shouldering their way through thickets of mist. Yet the mist, unlike honest trees, bushes and walls, placed no bounds upon uncertainty and error. Along a walled path you can go only one way or the other—right or wrong. But it is a strange path where even with a thought the rack dislimns and the walls are at once on all sides and nowhere at all, cut away before and closing from behind, apparently extending in one direction but in fact open in all.

Rowf, with the tod at his side, plodded on through the wide vacuity. He was tired out, but less with exertion than with the strain of ignorance, doubt and uncertainty. Some three hours earlier, as soon as darkness had fallen, he and the tod had descended into Lickledale, leaving Snitter, who was once more rambling and evidently confused as to where he was, alone in the shelter of the shaft. Rowf, still weary after his long search on Harter Fell and the rescue from the shed, had felt unequal to hunting sheep with no more help than the tod could give him, and they had decided to go for poultry at best, with dustbins as a last resort. Upon the outskirts of Broughton Mills and the threshold of what seemed likely to prove a hopeless business among too many houses, cars, men and dogs, the wet fog had crept down from the tops like an accomplice and they had smashed (or rather, Rowf had smashed) a length of slack wire netting, snatched two hens and disappeared into the grey density amid a clamour of guinea-fowl and the shouted curses of an invisible man not twenty yards away, whose torch showed him nothing but a motionless, all-enveloping curtain of fog.

The tod put down its hen and sat breathing smokily into the surrounding cold. “Ye canna beat a bit mist, if yer liftin’ hens or ducks. We’d have been oot half th’ neet forbye, an’ mebbies got wor hint-ends full o’ lead atop o’ thet.”

The wire had re-opened Rowf’s wounded nose and it was beginning to sting abominably.

“Whit are ye rakin’ aboot efter noo?” asked the tod irritably.

“A puddle,” answered Rowf, vanishing into the fog. “A good, cold one, too.” There was a muffled sound of lapping and he reappeared. “That’s better.”

“By, ye’re reet mucky.”

“Tod, how do you find the way? I’ve no idea where we are.”

“Groond,” answered the tod. “It gans up an’ gans doon. Ye divven’t need mair. We’re goin’ up noo.”

“Are we near home? Oh, damn these cobwebs!”

“Pluff ‘em off, hinny. Ay, we’re nigh noo. Ye can tell fro’ the groond. Up ahight th’earth’s lighter. Mind, yon snout o’ yours luks weel brayed aboot. Ye’ve torn it bad.”

“It’ll be all right. Tod, what about Snitter? How does he seem to you?”

“He’s weel away wi’d, yon. He wez on agen this mornin’ aboot not bein’ left inside his aan heed. Daft as a brush.”

“Yes, he’s bad right enough—worse than I’ve ever seen him. These turns of his pass off, though—or they always have. It’s a nuisance, but he’ll have to stay where he is for the time being. We’ll have to hunt without him.”

“He canna bide there, hinny. None of us can. If yon mist howlds doon, we’ll hev to be off b’ th’ morn.”

“Again, tod? He’ll never do it. D’you want to go far?”

“This tale o’ his aboot killin’ yon chep wiv a gun—d’ye think thet’s reet, or is it just his daft crack?”

“It’s true. As far as I can make out the man had caught him on his way back alone from that last sheep we killed on Hard Knott, and either Snitter startled him, so that he let the gun off himself, or else Snitter got his paw caught in it. Either way the man’s dead.”

“An’ foond?”

“He’s found all right.” Rowf told the tod of the shot that had missed him at Cockley Beck. The tod listened silently, and before replying set off once more up the hillside.

“By, he’s th’ dabbest hand ye iver saw, yon wee fella. Shoot a man? Whey, ye wadden’t credit it. Mind, it’s bad, yon, bad. The’ll be huntin’ noo till they find th’ pair o’ yez, ne doot aboot that. If Ah had th’ sense Ah wes born wi’, Ah’d be off an away mesel’ an’ leave ye t’id.”

“That’d be the end of us, tod. Without you we’d have been finished a long while back.”

“Ay, ne doot aboot thet neether. Whey …” (the tod paused), “Whey, Ah’ll not be tekkin mesel’ off yit. But mind—Ah’m tellin’ ye—gan where Ah tell ye te, an’ ne muckin’ aboot, or Ah’m away like a shot an’ ye can fend fer yersels.”

“How far, tod?”

“A lang way—it’ll be two neets gettin’, Ah warr’nd. We’ll lie up o’ Bull Crag till th’ morrer morn, if th’ wee fella can get that far.

Then through b’ Wyth Born an’ Dunmail Raise. Best te cross th’ Raise be neet—ay, an’ duck across sharp when there’s ne bit cars or lights shinin’ o’ th’ road.”

“But where are we going? Have you ever been there before?”

“Helvellyn range. Nowt but th’ once. Mind, it’s high groond—wild and blowed lonely forbye. ‘Sennuf to blaw yer lugs off there, noo an’ agen. But there’s ne other chance for ye, with aall them booggers oot huntin’.”

“If you think we’re as badly off as that, why are you staying on with us?”

“Mebbies Ah’m sorry for thon wee fella.” The tod paused. “Mebbies.”

“I don’t believe that, you smelly—” Rowf broke off, choking and coughing, and again clawed at his muzzle. Up here, on the higher ground, the mist was so thick that they could scarcely see one another.

“Ah warr’nd ye divven’t, ne kiddin’.”

“Why don’t you talk straight for once?” Rowf, infuriated by his enforced dependence on the tod to guide him through the mist, growled dangerously, and at once the tod became obsequious.

“Give ower, hinny. Divven’t gan on se. Taalk strite? Aall reet, thin. Ye’ll nivver leave yer marrer, noo will ye? An’ ye’re th’ one that fells th’ yows, reet? Noo, there’s wor place yonder, an’ th’ wee fella’s got th’ wind o’ ye—d’ye not hear him yappin’ inbye? Howway doon an’ give ‘m thon chicken.”

“‘Pasteurella pestis,’” said Digby Driver happily. “Ah ha-ha-ha-ha HA! A flea! Ha, ha, ha HAH! A flea! Well, well! Who’d a thought it? Now read on! This disease is primarily one of rats and other rodents, but wherever rats live in close proximity to man there is the chance of an outbreak through rodent fleas which transfer their attention to man,’ Splendid! And so? Don’t miss next week’s smashing instalment! Transmission may be mechanical, involving simply the contamination of the mouth-parts of the insects, or it may involve regurgitation of infected blood into the puncture. Most infected fleas develop blockages in their digestive tracts as a result of the multiplication of bacteria, so that, when they try to feed, the blood simply flows back into the host, taking with it some of the germs from the gut. Because no food can get past their blockage, the fleas become “hungry” and try to feed more frequently than they otherwise would. The result is that the disease spreads more rapidly.’ Excellent! Then there’s—er—let’s see—murine typhus, ‘a less severe form of ordinary typhus fever, carried by rodent fleas—’ well, never mind that, we can do better. Find out where the worthy doctor resides, and off we go. A wolf am I, a wolf on mischief bent.”

Friday the 12th November

The Under Secretary stared owlishly across his desk, contriving to suggest that not the least unfortunate aspect of the matter was that he himself had had to initiate inquiries which otherwise would not have been pursued at all.

“And what did your Master Boycott say?” he asked.

“Well,” replied the Assistant Secretary, “not more than he could help. I began by asking him whether they’d lost any dogs and he said why did we want to know.”

“‘I will also ask you one thing, and answer me.’ Well?”

“Well, I could have had a shot at the baptism of John,” said the Assistant Secretary, who liked to show that he could at least nail the Under Secretary’s quotations, “but I hesitated a moment on that. I saw no reason specifically to drag the Parly. Sec. into it, so I simply said that we’d seen this press item and what could they tell us about the dogs. Then Boycott said that it hadn’t been proved that the dogs were theirs—”

The Under Secretary clicked his tongue and frowned peevishly.

“—so I said, well, at that rate why had Powell gone chasing over to Dunnerdale with the police; and Boycott said that Powell had taken it entirely on himself to do that—no one else had been in the place when the police called. And then he said—off his own bat, this was—that in any case there was nothing to prove that the dogs seen at the Dunnerdale shop premises were the ones who’d been killing sheep. He got rather aggressive, as a matter of fact.”

The Under Secretary, now that he had learned that the conversation had taken this unproductive turn, allowed his manner to suggest contempt, dislike and patience sorely tried.

“But did he say, Michael” (with the air of bringing an undisciplined mind back to the only question that mattered), “did he say whether or not they’d lost any dogs?”

“He didn’t, and I couldn’t get him to.”

(A frown, implying, “You must have mishandled him—upset him.”) “You didn’t mention the Parliamentary Secretary’s probable interest?”

“No.” (My line didn’t work, so it ipso facto becomes wrong.) “Maurice, why should one fortify a request for information by mentioning any particular member of the Department, Minister or officer? If the Department want to know, then the Secretary of State wants to know, or so I was always taught.”

“Well, it doesn’t seem to have worked very well on this occasion, does it?”

At this moment the telephone rang and the Under Secretary picked it up.

“Yes, Jean, put him through. Good morning, Edward. No, not yet. Have you? Did Lock say that? Did he? All right, I’ll come over and join the party. A bientôt.” He put the telephone down.

“Well, Michael, more heavy affairs supervene. But we shall have, I think, to press this matter a little further.” (That means I must. How?) “Someone up there must be found who will say a resounding Yea or Nay about these predatory hounds. Can you please try again, and let me have half a sheet of paper to put to the Parliamentary Secretary this evening?”

He left the room without waiting for an answer.

“Oh Rowf—Rowf, wait a minute—I know where we are—we’ve been here before. That first night—the very first night after we escaped. It was misty, like this, only it was almost dark—after we’d left those sheep-dogs who got so angry with us, d’you remember?—and then we changed—changed into wild animals. It was here.”

“D’you think we’re wild animals, tod?” Rowf sat on the lonely waste of Levers Hause and listened to the invisible streams below. A crow rarked somewhere in the mirk above. It was cold and raw, with cat-ice on the puddles among the rocks. Both dogs’ coats were sodden and the tod’s brush dragged dark and heavy.

“Wild animals? Whey, mair like two aald cluckers runnin’ loose i’ th’ paddock! Cum away noo sharp! We’ve a lang lowp yet te Bull Crag.” The tod looked impatiently at Rowf, its breath steaming round its head in the still air.

“Plenty of time, surely?” said Rowf. “Let him rest a bit.”

“Nar, nar. Yon mist’ll be lifted afore mid-day an’ some clever boogger on th’ fell’ll spot us. Th’ whole idea o’ goin’ t’Helvellyn is that nebody sees us goin’ an’ nebody knaws we’ve come.”

Rowf stood bristling over the tod, which cowered down but made no move to run.

“You’re so damned clever, aren’t you, you little sneaker? As long as I do all the hard work and get hurt killing your meals—”

“Howway, steady, noo, steady, bonny lad! Ne need te gan on so. Give ower! Listen, d’ye knaw why, though there’s nowt but th’ three of us, w’ still alive, wi’ hundreds—mebbies thousands—o’ men that’d be glad te kill us?”

“I know.” Snitter lifted his leg against a rock and sat down again with the flap of one ear falling rakishly into the cleft in his head. “I’ve just realized why. They wouldn’t dare. I’ve only to go and drown, or jump under a lorry, and the sky will fall down and all the men will die. Have you ever thought of that, Rowf? That puts us one ahead of them all right.”

Rowf made no answer.

“The mouse went down a gully in the floor,” went on Snitter. “That’s why he’s alive. D’you know where that gully is? I do. Sometimes, if I shut my eyes quickly, I can actually catch a sight of his tail. He’s made of newspaper, you know—a boy puts him through the hole in the door—I mean the floor—every morning. The whitecoats made the hole—a long, narrow one—with their knives. Right? Well, now then—”

“Aa’ll tell th’ pair on yez why.” The tod’s harsh whisper silenced Snitter. “Them menfolk—the’ aall mistrust an’ cheat each other-aye shovin’ an’ fightin’. Us tods knaw that. Divven’t ye turn thet way, an’ mebbies we’ll fettle th’ booggers yet. Yor ne wild animals—if ye wor, ye’d knaw th’ same as Aa knaw, wivoot th’ need te be telt. Ah’m not lettin’ ye bide here fer a start—yon mist’s ganna lift, an’ b’ then we’ve te be up on th’ Crinkles, up ahight there, where none’ll spy ye oot—neether ye nor him, wiv ‘is bonny magpie jacket. Noo, ne messin’, let’s away!”

They set off once more along the Hause. Snitter brought up the rear, singing to himself in a quiet whine.

“Will you shut up about drowning?” said Rowf. “Singing nonsense—”

“It passes the time.” Snitter was apologetic.

“There are other ways to pass the time.”

“And to pass these rocks too. But not before I’ve passed this turd.”

Snitter crouched trembling in the cold, and then hurried after the two trotting shapes already disappearing into the mist over Great How Crags.

“But how on earth could they have found that out so quickly?” asked Mr. Powell, handing back the press cutting from the Orator which Dr. Boycott had laid on his desk without a word.

“There’s very little there, actually, when you come to boil it down,” answered Dr. Boycott. “Nothing they couldn’t have got from the police at Coniston. In fact, that’s almost certainly where they did get it from.”

“But I never even told the policeman my name—”

“He may know it anyway—it’s a very small point, however they got it. The real awkwardness is that you ever went over to Seathwaite at all.”

“How could I avoid it? The policeman said he’d come on purpose—”

“And you instantly dropped what you were doing and went off with him almost as though we’d been expecting him to come. It’s a great pity you were in the place so early.”

“But damn it, what else could I do? The policeman said the dog had a green collar—”

“You should have said that the station saw no reason to send someone rushing off to Dunnerdale and that you’d report the matter to the Director as soon as he came in.”

“I did say that—the last bit, anyway—and the policeman wouldn’t have it.”

“He couldn’t have compelled you to go with him, Stephen. Now it looks as though we acknowledged our connection with the matter instantly—which is exactly what you did do, in effect.”

“Surely it’d have looked a lot worse, chief, if the police had gone there alone and then brought the dog back here themselves?”

“Not at all. Indeed, one might well say, ‘If only they had!’ In that case, we could simply have said thank you very much, taken the dog in, destroyed it and burnt the body. It’s not an offence to possess a dog that raids a dustbin, and in the absence of any proof that it had been killing sheep, that would have been the end of the whole business and we’d have been home and dry, without even a body that anyone could identify.”

“Well, I’m sure I meant to act in the best interests of the station—”

“No doubt. Well, it can’t be helped now, Stephen. What I wanted to say was this. In the light of these recent developments—the Ministry were on the telephone yesterday evening, you know—”

“Oh, were they?”

“They were indeed. I fended them off fairly briskly as far as yesterday goes—but I’ll come back to that in a minute. What I want to say is that the Director has now decided that in all the circumstances our best course will be to take the bull by the horns and make a short announcement, simply to the effect that two dogs escaped, and the date when they did so. We can’t go on saying we won’t say a word-not if Whitehall are determined to poke their noses in and make a fuss. For the life of me I can’t see why they should be, though. We’re situated in the locality—obviously we didn’t want locals knowing dogs escaped if we could help it. But a few sheep—and even that poor fellow’s death, though they never succeeded in pinning it on the dogs—why ever should Whitehall bother? Those things are surely very local, even if they are unfortunate.”

“P’raps some old worry-guts up there’s afraid of a local M.P. digging up the Sablon Committee’s recommendations and the planning permission and all that.”

“What rubbish! Well, now, come and help me with the press statement—I want to make sure I get the details right—and then we really must get on with those monkeys. What’s the present position on them?”

“Well, the entire group’s been paralysed by lumbar injections of pure OX-Dapro, as you instructed.”

“Excellent. Any results yet?”

“Well, the four with flaccid areflexic paraplegia show no response at all, either to stamping on their tails or to pins applied to the lower limbs.”

“All right, but be careful how you intensify tests like that. They mustn’t die. Monkeys are getting increasingly hard to obtain, you know—apparently there’s a world shortage. I wonder why? Anyway, we shall be needing to use these again for something else. What’s the score now on the monkey in the cylinder, by the way?”

“Twenty-seven days plus,” answered Mr. Powell. “It seems almost comatose. To tell you the truth, I shan’t be sorry when it’s time to take it out.”

Digby Driver trod out his cigarette on the step, pressed the bell firmly and turned his back on the door while he waited. Certainly the door was mean enough to make the distant, moonlit view of Coniston Water appear a great deal more attractive, even to him. Just as he was about to ring again, the hall beyond the undulant glass panels became lit, the door was partially opened and he found himself looking into the shadow-obscured face of an elderly, grey-haired man standing defensively behind it.

“Dr. Goodner?”

“I am, yes.” Both the voice and the look were hesitant, nervous. Digby Driver put one foot on the door-sill and noticed the other noticing him do so.

“I’m a pressman. May I talk to you for a minute, please?”

“We don’t—we don’t talk vith the press unless it is happening vith an official appointment at the station.”

“Dr. Goodner, believe me, I’ve only got your best interests at heart, and I won’t take up ten minutes of your time—not five. You’d do much better to see me now, privately and entirely off the record. You would, I assure you. Want me to tell you why?”

Dr. Goodner hesitated a moment longer, looking down at the door-mat. Then he shrugged his shoulders, let go of the door, turned his back, led the way into a small, unheated drawing-room, which was obviously not the room he had been sitting in, closed its door behind Digby Driver as he entered, and stood looking at him without a word.

Driver, standing by the sofa, opened the folder he was carrying, took out a typed sheet of paper and began looking at it intently.

“What is it you want?”

Driver looked up. “I want the answer to just one question, Dr. Goodner, and I give you my word that I shan’t say where that answer came from. What is the special work you are doing in your locked laboratory at Lawson Park?”

Dr. Goodner deliberately opened the drawing-room door and was half-way across the narrow hall before Driver could speak again, this time in sharper tones, which the authorities of his former university would have recognized at once.

“You’d better look at this sheet of paper, Dr. Goodner—Dr. Geutner, I should say, Flat 4, Tillierstrasse 9043. Come on, you have a good look at it before you go rushing off to call the bouncer.”

Dr. Goodner returned and took in one hand the paper which Driver handed to him. As Driver let go of it, the upper end began to tremble. Dr. Goodner put on his spectacles and held it horizontally beneath the ill-shaded central bulb.

“What is this that you show me?”

Driver paused a moment. Then he said quietly, “You can see what it is. It’s a biographical sketch—or the notes for one. My newspaper’s planning a series, to be published shortly, on naturalized ex-enemy scientists and doctors working in this country. An article based on those particular notes is due to appear in two weeks’ time.”

Dr. Goodner shrugged.

“These things that have happened are all finished very long time ago. I am not a war criminal.”

“You won’t be far short of one in the public mind, Dr. Geutner of München, when this gets published. We’re in touch with a man who remembers your visit to Buchenwald early in 1945—’”

“I haff done nothing there. I go in, I go avay again—”

“Very likely, but you went. And the work for the Wehrmacht on disease warfare potential? Oh, and Trudi—I forgot her. Come on, Dr. Geutner. Have a good think about it.”

Dr. Goodner clenched one hand by his side, but said nothing.

“Now listen, that article won’t be published, now or at any future time, I promise you—certainly not by my paper, and not by any other British paper that I know of—provided you simply answer yes or no truthfully to one question and then forget that you ever did. After that, I’m gone for good and I’ve never been here. Easy, isn’t it? Now, here’s the question. From last month up to the present, has the work you’ve been doing in your locked laboratory been research into bubonic plague?”

After a short pause, Dr. Goodner shrugged his shoulders and replied, “Yes.”

“Thank you. I know I said one question, but there’s just one more related one, I’m afraid, and then I’m gone. Were there, last month, infected fleas in that laboratory capable of transmitting plague?”

This time there was a longer pause. Dr. Goodner was looking down at the empty fireplace with one open hand laid flat on top of the glazed, putty-coloured bricks of the cheap mantelpiece. When at length he looked up, his spectacles flashed in the cold light. But Digby Driver was before him.

“Don’t bother to speak. If the answer’s yes just nod.” By this time he had reached the door and turned, Dr. Goodner was once more looking at the fireplace. He nodded almost imperceptibly and Digby Driver let himself out into the peaceful night.

Saturday the 13th November

“It’s a bad world for animals,” said Rowf grimly.

“Does that include the caterpillars you ate?”

“It includes you.”

“I’m the brainy zany with the drainy crany. It smells like that, anyway.”

“Let me lick the mud out. Keep still.”

“Ow—look out! I say, what would you call this—brain-washing?”

“All right, I’ve finished. It’s clean enough now.”

“Fine—I feel much cleverer, too. You could say you’ve cleared my mind. I’ll walk on my hind legs if you like. It used to make Annie Mossity as cross as two sticks, only she never dared to say so. One day I pretended to slip and clawed at her stockings. Ho ho!”

“Didn’t do you any good, did it? Anyway, why are you so cheerful? You’ve got no reason that I can see.”

“It’s the mouse, actually. When the moon shines like this, he sings songs inside my head; like Kiff, you know. Kiff’s all right. He’s up on that cloud of his.”

“Maybe; but I can’t hear your mouse.”

“That’s only because you’re hungry. Didn’t you know hunger mays yeff?” “What?”

Snitter made no reply.

“What did you say?”

Snitter jumped up and barked in his ear. “I said, didn’t you know hunger makes you DEAF?”

Rowf snapped at him and he ran, yelping.

“Haald yer whisht!” The tod, padding ahead up the steeply falling beck, looked round angrily.

The truth was that Rowf, like everyone with an accomplishment admired or relied upon by those about him, was wondering how long he would be able to keep it up and afraid that he might already be finished. For the past thirty hours they had had a hard time. On the previous day, urged on relentlessly by the tod, who seemed tireless compared even with the hulking Rowf, they had travelled the length of the Crinkle Crags along their eastern side, skirted Bow Fell, sneaking through the top of Rossett Gill in thinner but still persistent mist (within earshot of a burly young man whose girl was begging him to turn back), passed below Angle Tarn, trotted down the upper part of Langstrath Beck and by evening had reached the tod’s promised refuge among the rocks of Bull Crag. Though not a true earth, it was spacious enough and, with no more than a light east wind blowing, reasonably warm with three bodies crowded into it. But this, as it turned out, was cold comfort. Rowf, already tired, and still plagued by the pad which he had cut on Harter Fell, failed again and again to pull down the marked-out sheep until at last, flinging himself exhausted and cursing on the ground in the moonlit solitude, he allowed Snitter to persuade him to give up for the night. His temper was nothing improved by the marked manner in which the tod refrained from comment and began hunting among the heather for beetles and anything else that might be edible. Both dogs, swallowing their pride, copied him and Rowf, when he nosed out two hairy, chestnut-striped, three-inch caterpillars of the fox moth, snapped them up without hesitation.

Next morning Snitter woke to find Rowf already vanished into the wet, still mist. As he and the tod were about to set out on the scent—plain enough on the damp ground—they met him returning, bloody-mouthed, swollen with his kill but lamer than ever. Nearly an hour before, in the dark before dawn, he had pulled down his quarry alone, lying in ambush under a crag and leaping straight at a yow’s throat as she wandered too close. The battering he had suffered from her, fresh and unfatigued by the usual pursuit, had winded and hurt him until only his rage at the previous night’s failure had given him the determination to hold on. After the kill he had ripped off and gorged the flesh of an entire flank, lain for a time belching and licking his paws; and so come back to his friends. The mercurial Snitter danced and gambolled about him as they all three returned to the body. The tod, however, said nothing beyond a surly, “Yer not se femmer t’day, then?”

“Tod,” said Snitter sharply, “that remark’s in very poor smell. You mean he was no good yesterday, and you’ve no business to say it. I’ll set the flies on you, I will—huge ones—men riding on them—oh, whatever am I talking about?—”

“Nivver said nowt aboot yisterday. Said he were none se femmer t’day.”

Nevertheless, the tod returned to gnawing its bloody share without further speech. A rebuke from Snitter was so unusual that perhaps even its ladrone, hit-and-run mind felt something akin to abashment.

Later in the day Snitter, unaided, succeeded in catching a lean, wandering rat and ate it alone, without telling. The feat raised his spirits as June the mayfly and when they came to set out in the dusk he was in tearing form. Throughout the four miles over Greenup and down to Dunmail Raise he was irrepressible, coming and going like a scent on the breeze and glittering like shards of broken looking-glass.

The sound of car engines and the sight of headlights, moving on the broad road south of Thirlmere excited him with memories.

“I remember those lights at night, Rowf! And the cars growl, you can hear them—that’s why young dogs often rush out and try to chase them. Waste of time; they never take any notice. The lights are pieces of old moons, you know.”

“What d’you mean?” asked Rowf, interested in spite of himself to watch the long beams approaching, dazzling into the eyes for a second and humming away again into the moonlit dimness.

“Well, once the moon gets to be full somebody—some man or other—goes up every day and slices bits off one side—you’ve noticed?—until there isn’t any more, and then after a bit a new one grows. Men do that with all sorts of things, actually—rose-bushes, for instance; my master used to cut them almost down to the ground in winter, and then they grew again. Come to that, I dare say it was something of the kind the whitecoats were up to with me. Perhaps I’ll grow a new Snitter one day, you never know. Anyway, by the time it gets to be full the moon’s all pitted and rifted with cracks and holes—to make it easier to break bits off, obviously. Well, my dam told me that moons are actually huge—enormous—only they don’t look it because they’re so high in the sky. The man who slices the bits off brings them down here, and then they’re used for making those lights on the cars. Clever, isn’t it?”

“Do they last long—when they’re lights, I mean?”

“Not very long—only about a night, I should think, because you hardly ever see them shining by day. They must keep changing them. You can tell they’re quite different from the still sort of lights men make indoors by lifting up their hands. Sn’ff! Sn’ff! How that car smell takes me back, too! It’s a cheerful, natural sort of smell, isn’t it?—-not like these foul rocks. Let’s stay here and rest a bit, tod.”

“Nay, git ower, ye gowk. Bide aboot o’ th’ road an’ ye’ll be gud an’ deed.”

Snitter scuttled across in an interval of darkness, joined the tod in the bed of Birkside Gill and looked up at the long Helvellyn ridge fading into distance and moonlight above them.

“O for the wings of a sheep!” sighed Snitter, as they began once more to follow the inexorable tod up the gill’s pools and cascades towards Willie Wife Moor.

“Wings of a sheep, Snitter?”

“Yes—they had them once, you know. What happened was that one flew up into the sky, so naturally they all followed. Then they took off their wings and began feeding and as the sun moved on across the sky they went with it, to keep warm. Well, towards evening a wind got up and blew all their wings away from the place where they’d left them. They never got them back—you can see them all up there, blowing along in the blue to this day.”

“But how did the sheep get back to the ground?”

“Why, a long way off the sky curves down and touches the land—you can see it does. They had to walk round the long way—took them ages.”

“Well, I never knew that. You are a clever little chap, Snitter. He’s clever, isn’t he, tod?”

“Ay, clever as th’ north end of a sooth-boond jackass.” The tod lay down. “Ye kin bide a while noo, lad. It’s a canny bit run yit an’ Aa haven’t the list t’ do it.”

When at length they had passed Nethermost Pike, reached the western end of Striding Edge and were looking down the almost sheer six hundred feet to Red Tarn shining smooth in the moonlight, Rowf curled his lip and swore.

“My teeth in your neck, tod, you never told me we’d be living on the edge of one of these blasted drowning-tanks! And no men, you said—why, the whole place smells of men like a rubbish-tip—tobacco, old bread—what are those other smells, Snitter—”

“Oo—potato crisps, women, chocolate, ice-cream squishy squish. That was another of Kiff’s songs. ‘O mutton-bones, chicken and cheese, they’re things that are certain to please, but what I like the most is a jolly lamp-post—’”

“Shut up! Tod, scores of men must come here—”

“Why ay, but not in winter an’ not where vor gannin’.”

“I’m not going down to that tank,” said Rowf.

“Nay, divven’t fash yersel’, hinny.” The tod seemed almost conciliatory.

Snitter, sitting back on the stones, raised his muzzle to the cloudy, sailing moon. With as little reason and almost as much delight as the migrant blackcap in May, which sings on the outskirts of an English copse, heedless that in six months’ time some hirsute swine in Italy or Cyprus, with call-pipe and quicklime, will murder it for some other swine in Paris to eat in aspic, Snitter gave tongue in the moonlight.

“Oh, come on, Snitter!” said Rowf. “What’s the use of sitting there, singing rubbish?”

“A lot,” answered Snitter. “When I sing, people in the sky throw bits down to me. Or Kiff does, or someone. You don’t believe me, do you? Look!”

He pattered away a few yards among the rocks and a moment later they could hear and smell him routing out and munching the damp remains of an abandoned packet of crisps. He ran back to them with the plastic bag stuck over his muzzle.

“Woff floffle floof.” He snudged it off with one front paw. “Would you like it, tod? I’m afraid it’s not really what it was just now.”

Without a word the tod set off northward along the summit, towards Low Man.

Half an hour later they had descended a thousand feet and come to the ruined flue below the eastern slopes of Raise—an ugly, enseared landscape, riven with the scars of old industry—and here, in a kind of little cave formed by part of the ruin, they went to ground and dozed restlessly for two or three hungry hours. At moonset the tod roused them and led them a mile down the beck to the hamlet of Glenridding where, under its shrewd guidance, they foraged among the dustbins for what little they could get.

“Dustbins is as dangerous as owt else—thet’s why ye were nigh booggered i’ Doonerd’l: ye took ne heed. Ye’ve to push th’ lid off, grab whit ye can an’ away while they’re still thinkin’ what wez yon. Nivver hang aboot.”

They returned to their lair in the darkness before dawn, half-filled and half-poisoned, Rowf stopping repeatedly to excrete a foul fluid over the stones along the beck. Snitter’s high spirits had evaporated and he felt tired out. Once in the chilly hole, he curled up beside the tod and fell asleep at once.

Digby Driver, having made a telephone call to Mr. Simpson in London and dictated his second article to the Orator, returned into Dunnerdale. He certainly did not intend to be in or near Coniston when the article appeared. Having reconnoitred from the bar of the Traveller’s Rest to the bar of the Newfield, he proceeded to follow the kindly advice of Jack Longmire (landlord of the latter) to the effect that Mr. Bob Taylor knew a great deal about the whole valley, being up and down Duddon at nearly all times of year, fishing. He was lucky enough to find Bob in, tying trout flies at a table by the fire.

“Ye-es, I’m fairly sure now that I must have seen one of those dogs crossing the Duddon on the very morning it escaped from Miss Dawson’s,” said Bob, pouring sherry for Digby Driver and himself. “At least, if it wasn’t, I’m sure I don’t know what a strange fox terrier was doing swimming the Duddon on its own in quite a lonely spot. Wasn’t it a black-and-white fox terrier that Miss Dawson caught in her yard?”

“So I believe,” said Driver. “So if you’re right, that’s the dog that’s been killing sheep in the hills east of the Duddon, and it returned there as soon as it escaped. But why hasn’t anyone seen it up there? Where’s it hiding, d’you think?”

“Hard to say, really,” replied Bob reflectively.

“Are there any lonely barns or sheds up that way?”

“None at all,” said Bob, deftly concluding the manufacture of a black gnat with two fragments of a starling’s feather. “All the same, it would be very unlikely to be living in the open, I’d think, for two reasons. One’s simply the time of year and the weather; and the other is that if it were, someone—Dennis Williamson or somebody—would have seen it up there by now.”

“So?”

“So it must have found some sort of underground refuge.”

“Like?”

“We-ell, let’s think; perhaps an old shaft or slate working of some kind; or the old coppermines—somewhere like that.”

“What are the actual likeliest places, d’you know?”

“I think it’s hardly possible to be comprehensive about that,” replied Bob, who in his time had been first a schoolmaster and then a town planner in Whitehall, and was accustomed to answer questions with precision. “But if it were anything to do with me, which thank goodness it isn’t, I’d be inclined to have a look at the old Seathwaite coppermine shaft, up beyond Seathwaite Tarn, and then, perhaps, over the top, at the area of the quarries south of the summit of Coniston Old Man; yes, and the Paddy End mining area too.”

“Where are they, exactly?”

Digby Driver spread out his map and Bob showed him. Not long afterwards, Driver refused Mrs. Taylor’s hospitable offer of luncheon and took his leave.

He returned up the Duddon valley, left his car in the lane near Long House, took a torch with him and set out for Seathwaite Tarn. Having rounded the tarn along the north shore, he reached and entered the coppermine shaft; and here he smoked a cigarette, throwing down the empty packet as deftly as any Islington yob at the Angel. Like Dennis before him, he drew blank, but did not fail, nevertheless, to observe the gnawed bones, excreta and other evidence of relatively recent canine occupation. He was too ignorant to be able to tell whether the occupants had left some time ago or whether they had merely gone out and might be returning.

“H’m,” mused Digby Driver thoughtfully. “What’s to be done now, I wonder? This mustn’t leak out. No, no. It would never do, would it, if that dog—if those dogs—were to be caught too soon? Never, never. They’re lucky to have me, they are indeed.”

Monday the 15th November

“Good God!” said Dr. Boycott, aghast.

He sat staring at the front page of the Orator with a kind of stupefaction. Mr. Powell, behind his shoulder, also stared, lips compressed and eyes moving from side to side as he read.

“Coo-er!” said Mr. Powell. “And what exactly does Α do now, I wonder?”

“I don’t know what the Director will do,” replied Dr. Boycott, “but I know what I’d do in his place. I’d get Whitehall to issue a categorical statement immediately that the dogs couldn’t possibly have had any contact.”

“And what about the dogs? Do we have to go out and try to catch them now?”

“If it was me, I’d take instructions from Whitehall on that. This is one situation where Whitehall might be some help to us. The dogs’ll have to be shot now, obviously—not just caught, but shot dead, and the quicker the better. What I want to know is, how did the Orator man get hold of all this?”

“Goodner, d’you suppose?” asked Mr. Powell.

“Goodner’s always been as canny as they come. A man of his age and experience—if he was prone to indiscretion he’d have fallen down a long time before now. I dare say discretion was one of the assets he’d already shown he possessed before he got the job. Not just anybody gets put on germ warfare, you know. There’s too much at stake.”

Mr. Powell picked up the Orator and re-read it with a demure travel of regard, frowning the while. He was at a cold scent, but it was certainly rank; and sure enough, after another half-minute, Dr. Boycott cried upon it.

“Have you said anything to anyone?” asked Dr. Boycott suddenly and sharply.

Mr. Powell started. “Me? No, not a thing, chief, straight up.”

“You’re absolutely certain? Not to anyone? How about that fellow you said gave you a lift back from Dunnerdale?”

“I can’t remember what we talked about. Nothing that’s security, that’s for sure.”

“But he couldn’t help knowing you were from here and that you’d gone over to Dunnerdale after the dogs. Did he ask you any questions?”

“I said something about the dogs, I believe—nothing much—but certainly nothing about Goodner’s work or bubonic plague. Well, I couldn’t, could I? I don’t know anything. I didn’t even know he was doing plague, come to that.”

“Well, all right. It’s a matter for the Director now. Save it for the judge, as the Americans say. It’s possible that nothing more will come of it. Dogs can’t contract bubonic plague, you know. If they could, and those dogs had had any contact, they’d be dead by now. Presumably we’ve only got to say so and the whole thing’ll die down. But all the same, the quicker they’re shot the better.”

“You know, chief,” said Mr. Powell, “something tells me that that press release of ours may not have been terribly fortunately timed.”

Tuesday the 16th November

“A major disaster,” said the Under Secretary, “I would imagine, though it’s early to tell as yet. It could hardly have come at a worse time, with criticism running so high over public expenditure to implement the Sablon Committee recommendations.”

The Assistant Secretary stood gazing out of the window. It was T. S. Eliot’s violet hour, when the eyes turn upward from the desk, and the street below was full of clerks, typists and executive officers hurrying to St. James’s Park underground and the buses of Victoria Street. The starlings had already come in and, after their usual cackling and squabbling, more or less settled down along the cornices. There had been a kestrel over the park that afternoon. Did the kestrels ever take starlings, he wondered. Hardly; but they probably took sparrows. It was to be hoped so, for there was something disappointing and undignified about the idea of their coming into London merely to pick up rubbish. Sate itself in a celestial bed and prey on garbage. Come to think of it, Shakespeare must have seen them taking garbage. Then that line might be a kind of unconscious extension of the iterative image of hawking in Hamlet. “When the wind is southerly—”

“If you’ve had time to reflect, could I have the benefit of your views, Michael?”

(Could you?)

“Well, I think it might be extremely awkward all round, Maurice, if the papers are intent on making a meal of this plague business.”

“Let us see whether our respective minds are in accord. Why do you?”

“Well, we can’t deny that the dogs escaped and that initially the station kept quiet about them. We can’t deny that the station have got a bloke on germ warfare and that inter alia he’s working on bubonic plague. And apparently we can’t deny that the dogs, while escaping, may have gone somewhere near where that work’s being done.”

“I agree. But now, tell me two things. Could the dogs in fact have had any contact?”

“Well, almost certainly not. Boycott says it’s out of the question.”

“And is it?”

“I honestly can’t tell, Maurice, unless I were to go up there myself and have a look round. But apparently the plague lab’s kept locked and it can be proved that it was locked that night.”

“But fleas—cracks—doors—”

“Precisely. Of course the fleas weren’t loose, but how can anyone swear for certain—how can the Secretary of State stand up in the House and say that one might not have been?”

“And secondly, can dogs in fact carry bubonic plague?”

“Well, I’m advised not. But it’s like all this advice you get from technical officers, you know. When you get right down to it and lean on them, they begin qualifying. ‘Well, they conceivably could, but it’s very unlikely.’ ‘We can’t positively say it could never happen in any circumstances,’ and so on.”

“So for all practical purposes there’s nothing to worry about, but nevertheless it’s gone sour on us to the extent of providing nuisance value to a hostile and malicious press?”

“That’s the way I see it.”

“Oh, dear.” The Under Secretary drew meditatively on his blotting-pad. “Gone to the demnition bow-wows.”

“I don’t think even Mr. Mantolini could give us much help in this case.”

“Well, you may perhaps have to go up there, depending on how things develop.”

(At twelve hours’ notice, I bet, in the event.)

“I’ll be seeing the Parliamentary Secretary about it, though I’m not sure when—probably Friday. Perhaps you’d better come along too, Michael. I’m afraid it may be going to be difficult to convince him that all this couldn’t have been avoided. How close is our liaison with Lawson Park? Shouldn’t we have been told at once about these dogs having escaped?”

“Hardly. They have a great many projects and experiments up there and the dogs weren’t particularly important until this press attack started.”

“Yes, I know, I know, Michael” (O God, here we go again!), “but you must try to see things from a Minister’s point of view. I can’t help feeling that very often you seem unable to appreciate—oh well, never mind.” (I do mind, damn you, and why don’t you either say something I can answer or else keep quiet?) “You see, what’s really so very unfortunate is this press release that the station appear to have put out unilaterally, without reference to us. They issue a statement admitting that two dogs escaped, as though there were now nothing more to be said, and in the event this virtually coincides with a piece in the Orator accusing them of trying to keep quiet about the plague work. It looks bad.”

“I know. It’s a pity they did that.”

“But should they have, Michael? Shouldn’t there have been an agreed drill under which they referred their proposed statement to you before releasing it?”

“I’ve repeatedly tried to arrange one, but as you know, these chaps always put up a great deal of resistance to anything that suggests to them that they’re being controlled and restricted by Whitehall.”

“H’m. No doubt they do.” (And you’re thinking that I ought to have been able to push them off it if I had any ability.) “Well, let us trust that the hope is not drunk wherein we dress ourselves—”

“Well, I dare do all that may become a man.” The Assistant Secretary’s goat was not altogether ungot.

“I’m sure you do, Michael. And now, good night. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind asking James to look in for a moment, would you?”

(What’s your P.A. for, you sod?)

Wednesday the 17th November

Rowf, raising his muzzle cautiously above the bracken, had time to glimpse nothing more than the distant bar of moonlight twinkling and gleaming across Ullswater before ducking quickly down again at the sound of men’s voices a good deal closer than he cared for. He glanced at the tod, crouched small, tense and watchful among the fronds, and at Snitter gnawing on a stick to contain his hunger and wagging his head like some crazy, ill-made scarecrow in a high wind.

It was now the fourth night since they had come to the Helvellyn range. They had killed two sheep, but with greater difficulty than before, and tonight Rowf had refused to attempt another, insisting instead on a farmyard raid. The tod had demurred, pointing out that the weather was too fine, still and clear for hunting round human dwellings, but in the face of Rowf’s angry impatience had finally given in. To Snitter it was plain that the tod was unable to make head or tail of Rowf’s total lack of its own natural bent for coldly weighing one consideration against another and then acting to the best advantage. At the time when it had first joined them, it had never known a creature like Rowf and accordingly had not reckoned with his ways, but now it had come to distrust and fear his impulsive nature and above all his impetuous anger, which it could not understand. Snitter hoped that it was not beginning to regret the bargain it had struck with them. He would have liked to ask it, and to try to smooth things over, but discussion was not the tod’s strong point.

The wind was carrying plainly the smell of poultry from the henhouse in the farmyard. Rowf lifted his off-side front paw and tried his weight on it. It was as tender as ever and, cursing, he lay down again. His hunger moved sluggishly in his belly, dulling his spirit as drifting clouds obscure the sun.

His companions in desperation, he thought: the one, whose very talk he could barely understand, more crafty and self-interested than any cat, whom he now knew he hated for its sly, calculating cunning; who would desert them both without the least compunction whenever it might decide that it would suit it to do so; the other his friend, the only creature in the world who cared a fly for him, but who seemed to grow more addle-pated and more of a liability with every precarious day they survived. It was for these that he had to go on, night after night, mustering his diminishing strength for yet another plunging, battering encounter, using up what little was left of his courage and endurance, until the time when there would be none left—whereupon the tod would depart and Snitter and himself would either starve or be cornered and killed. No, he thought, the tod had been right enough; he was no wild animal, nor, after all, had it proved possible for him to become one. Though he might never have had a master, yet by his nature he needed the friendship of other creatures as the tod did not.

The reek of the tod excited him, in his hunger, to a slavering rage. Why couldn’t I have died in the tank? thought Rowf. That was what my pack leaders wanted: at least, I suppose they did; and I let them down. Now I’m neither a decent dog nor a thorough-going thief like the tod. Oh, blast this leg! If it goes on hurting like this I shan’t even be up to breaking into a hen-roost. The two of us could try to eat this damned tod, I suppose, come to that. Then there’s cats. Cats run loose in farmyards. You could eat a cat at a pinch. I wonder whether I could kill one and get it out before the place came round our ears?

He turned again to Snitter. “Are you ready, Snitter?”

“Oh, yes,” answered Snitter, with a grisly pretence of jaunty carelessness, “but why not wait a bit? There’s a flood of sleep coming to cover the houses, you know. Blue and deep—a deep sleep. I’m calling it, actually. You see—” He stopped.

“What do you mean? You mean you can—”

“Call it? Yes, I call it the sea. The tod told me. A deep-blue sleep.”

Rowf, a trifle light-headed in his emptiness, remembered the man whom Snitter had killed and the strange power which, according to his account, had seemed to come pouring from his head.

“I say, Snitter?”

“Yes?”

“Can you really make things happen—you said you could—you know, alter things and turn them all upside-down? You can’t really, can you? That man just died, didn’t he? It was only one of your queer turns that made you think you killed him?”

“I don’t know, Rowf. Sometimes I feel sure that that’s really what I did without meaning to, and then the feeling disappears, so that I—well, I can’t even remember what it felt like to feel like that. It’s muddling.”

The wretched dog seemed upset. Rowf gave him a playful nip.

“Come on now, Snitter, I didn’t mean it seriously—it was only a joke. But if you really can do these things, why don’t you—well, why don’t you make all the men afraid of us, for instance? Ho, yes, that’s the idea!” Rowf paused to relish it, then began to elaborate. “Make them all run away—make them call their dogs off, open their gates and—and send us home carrying a nice, warm chicken? Now that really would be something! Couldn’t you do that for us, Snitter, hey?”

Snitter raised his split head and licked his friend’s nose. “I‘ll try, Rowf; but I don’t really know whether I could manage all that.”

“Neither do I, old chap. I only wish you could.”

“You mustn’t think I—oh, Rowf, you were only making fun of me!”

“No, no, of course I wasn’t! I know you could do all that quite easily if you wanted to—it’s just that tonight’s not convenient—that’s it, isn’t it?”

“Bidin’ there yammerin’ aboot nowt—”

“Oh, shut up, tod! Let us alone!”

“Ay, Ah will thet. Ah’s off t’see if w’ can bash our way into th’ henhoose. Nay, marrer, let me do’t mesel’. Ye‘ll ownly clitter an’ clatter till th’ farmer comes, an’ that‘ll mean another neet wi’ ne meat, an’ mebbies worse.”

Before Rowf could reply the tod had melted away with its usual silence. A few moments later they caught sight for an instant of its slim, dark shape slinking across a patch of moonlight where the lonnin led into the farmyard.

“Hush, Snitter,” said Rowf quickly, “lie down again!” For behind the thin shelter of the bracken patch Snitter had stood up and was capering slowly from paw to paw, giving low whines and wagging his stumpy tail.

“Well, Rowf, I was only doing my best to—you know, you said to make the men give us—this is what they call a tincantation—but I don’t really know quite how to go about it—”

“It was a joke, Snitter, for goodness’ sake! Now pull yourself together—we’re going to risk our lives in a minute, and that’s real—it’s not a game. Even you can tell the difference if you try. You’re hungry—that’s real. And in there are hens, and they’re real, and a man, possibly with a gun, and he’s real. Got it?”

“Yes, Rowf.”

“Well, don’t forget it.”

There was a rustle in the fern and the tod reappeared. Its jaws were faintly glistening, yellow and viscous, and there was a smooth smell, at once creamy and lightly savoury, that made both ravenous dogs slobber. Rowf licked at its mask.

“What’s that you smell of?”

“Chucky-eggs, hinny. Th’ wez a layaway nest i’ th’ nettles roond th’ back. Th’ aald clucker wez away an’ aall. Aa’s taken th’ lot an’ nipped ootbye sharp as a flash. Ye canna gan in there t’neet—it’d be nowt but th’ Dark fer th’ bowth o’ yuz. There’s two chaps bletherin’ away i’ th’ hemmel an’ a woman forbye. If th’ hens or th’ dergs wez te kick up a row they’d be strite doon on ye, and if ye wor in th’ henhoose they’d hev ye afore ye could torn roond. Mebbies they’d have a gun an’ that’d be yer lot. Howway on oot of it noo! We’ll try elsewhere.”

The tod’s air of artful self-possession, its smell, the smell of the eggs, his own fume of hunger—Rowf felt his teeth on edge to burst his dripping mouth.

“You crawling, sneaking little rat! You go in there and eat your head off and then you come back and tell us we’re not to! You stinking, underground—”

He leapt for the sharp-nosed, grinning mask, but in the instant that his weight fell on the patch of long grass from which it had been protruding, it was no longer there. Heedless now of how much noise he made, he thrust here and there through the undergrowth, drew blank and came pushing his way back to Snitter, who had not moved.

“Goes in there, stuffs itself full of eggs and then, oh yes! it’s ready to go home, the dirty little—”

“He didn’t say that, Rowf. You’re even more light-headed than I am. All he said—”

“I tell you, I’m finished with it—and for good this time. It’s just a filthy scrounger. We don’t need it to help us to stay alive—we never did. It just hangs about and eats what we kill—”

“That’s not true, Rowf. He’s done as much for himself as us all along—both with sheep and hen-roosts. He can’t help what he is. It’s not his fault that only one of the three of us has the weight to pull down a yow. I admire him—I like him—”

“And I don’t! The mere smell of it drives me as mad as you! If ever it shows up again I’ll chew it to bits—”

“It’s only your hunger—”

“Yes, and now I’m going to do something about that, too. Come on!”

“But Rowf, the tod warned us—”

“I don’t care what the damned tod said. We’re going to eat.”

Rowf led the way down the bank into the lonnin and squeezed under the farmyard gate. Snitter followed. The cowshed, at right angles to the farmhouse, flanked one side of the yard, and through its open door came electric light and the sounds of human voices, clinking cans and the soft thudding and stamping of cattle in their stalls. Evidently milking was getting finished late.

“They’re terribly near, Rowf—”

“They’re busy—they won’t hear us—”

“There’s sure to be a dog—”

“And I’m a dog, too—”

From the further end of the farmyard they could hear a faint pecking and rustling, followed by the quiet, slow clucking (“rer-er’ck, t’ck t’ck”) of a drowsy hen awake among her roosting sisters. The sound drew Rowf entranced. With claws clicking on the tarred surface, he trotted briskly through the cowpats, down the length of the yard and so up to the hens’ wire enclosure. Here he stopped, sniffing the dark air and listening to the noises from inside the henhouse, which rode, laden, above his rapacity like Noah’s ark above the gulping flood.

Snitter ran up behind him, whispering urgently.

“We can’t do it, Rowf! You can’t smash your way into that! The tod might have crept in through a crack, thrown a couple of hens down and we could have grabbed them and run; but that’s all finished now. This farmyard’s a fearful dead-end, too; an absolute trap. For goodness’ sake let’s get out quick and try somewhere else!”

“No fear! There’s a started board there—see it? I’ll shove it inwards and you can squeeze through and do the job better than ever that damned tod could. Only be quick! Ready? Right!”

Rowf plunged up the wooden steps and hurled his weight against the sprung board beside the trap-door. It levered stiffly inwards and at once Snitter, as he had been told, pushed his way inside. Instantly a fearful racket broke out around him—clucking, squawking, clattering, flapping here and there and the resonant clanging of wiry perches in close, odorous darkness. He plunged forward at random, came upon a hen and bit it through the neck, pushed it out of the gap and heard it thump, jerking and twitching, on the ground.

“I can’t—can’t hold the board open any longer,” gasped Rowf in the dark. “Come on out quick or you’ll be stuck inside.”

Snitter pushed his head and shoulders under the splintered end of the board. It dug into his back, knifing downwards painfully. He pushed harder. The board gave and he stumbled forward between Rowf’s front paws, knocked him off balance and fell with him to the ground beside the hot, pulsating body of the hen. Picking himself up, he grabbed the body by the neck as the tod had taught him and began to run with it. At that moment the farmyard was suddenly flooded with light. He dropped the hen and pulled up, terrified and confused.

He looked about him. Along the side of the farmyard opposite to the cowshed, a high stone wall extended down to the gate, without even a tree-trunk to break its line and never so much as a rubbish-bin or old crate left against it. The farmhouse windows were shut; so was the door. They were in an enclosed, walled space, lit by electric bulbs, from which the only ways out were through the farmhouse, the cowshed and the gate leading into the lonnin. As he realized this, two men, followed by a dog, came striding into the light from the shadow outside the cowshed door. One was carrying a heavy stick and the other a shot-gun.

A cat went racing across the yard and was gone like a flash under the gate into the dark. Then Rowf was beside him, gripping a bone in his teeth—presumably one left lying about by the very dog which was now glaring at them between the men’s legs.

At least it may not hurt, thought Snitter. With any luck it may be over in a moment.

“I’m sorry, Snitter,” mumbled Rowf through the bone. “It was all my fault.”

“It’s all right, old Rowf,” answered Snitter. “The hen didn’t complain, after all.” His confusion was gone. He was astonished to find himself so calm.

Suddenly a woman, screaming at the top of her voice, ran forward from the cowshed door, seized the already-levelled barrel of the gun and pushed it upward. As the man shouted and turned upon her angrily, she flung out a pointing arm towards the dogs, babbling a torrent of words which guttered down into whimpering and frightened tears. The second man uttered a low, corroborative word and at once all three began to back away, staring at Snitter and Rowf in wide-eyed horror. The dog, who had been moving towards them, bristling, was checked by a quick, “‘Ere Jed, ’ere Jed,” and, sensing his master’s fear, turned and slunk back across the yard.

Dazed, Rowf looked about him. For a moment he wondered whether perhaps Snitter and he might already be dead. Perhaps this was what happened—some kind of trance? He took a few hesitant steps forward and at once the three humans, with quick, jerky scratchings of boots on the stones, sidled still further away. Then one of the men, at a run, stumbled across the yard, tugged open the gate, propped it wide and hurried back to his companions. At the same moment the woman, who had edged along the wall to the farmhouse door, fumbled an instant with the latch and disappeared inside.

Snitter and Rowf, as stupefied as though they had been struck suddenly deaf or found all odour destroyed throughout the world, made their way across the yard and out through the open gate. They had gone no more than a few yards down the lonnin when there sounded behind them a thudding of boots. Rowf, looking quickly round, saw one of the men carrying the hen’s body on a garden fork. He tossed it, and it fell with a thump between the two of them, smelling of succulent flesh and warm blood. Hardly knowing what he did, Snitter snatched it up in his mouth and ran into the darkness with Rowf at his side.

Looking back from among the bracken, they could see the farmyard lights still burning, the two men standing together, apparently deep in talk, and the dog sitting beside them with an air of amazement as deep as their own.

“Snitter! What—what on earth did you—how—how did you do it? I don’t understand—”

“I don’t know, Rowf! I’m as bewildered as you are! I must have done it, I suppose—at least—but I’ve no idea how.”

“It’s—it’s terrifying! You might have killed them—set the farm on fire—you’re not safe! I never supposed you could really—”

“The hen, Rowf; your bone! We’ve got food! Let’s forget the rest—it’s too—too frightening! I’ll never know what I did! Can you find the way back without the tod?”

“Yes—yes, I think so. If the place is still there. If we’re still here. I—I don’t know what to—I can’t make head or tail of it. Snitter, you must be—”

“Let it alone, Rowf! Drop it! Come on back!”

They ate their kill at the top of the wood, strewing guts and feathers all abroad without a thought and then, their hunger satisfied, made their way back to Stang End without another word between them.

Thursday the 18th November

“I see,” said Digby Driver, “and the Research Station wouldn’t tell you anything?”

“Nay, not a thing,” replied Dennis Williamson. “‘Noothing to say.’ I assked the boogger why he’d roong, like, if he’d noothing to say.”

“What did he reply to that?”

“Said he were returning my call as matter of courtesy. Ah said Ah’d return him dog through his bluidy window-pane if Ah got channce.”

“Well, let’s hope we do get just that, Mr. Williamson. If I’m not mistaken, you’ve been all over your land pretty thoroughly, haven’t you, to try and find these dogs?”

“Ay, Ah have thet.”

“And you had a look into the old coppermine shaft above the tarn?”

“Ay, well, there’d been soomthing in theer, but it were hard to tell whether it were dog or fox or owt. There were boanes an’ that layin’ around and there were smell of fox reet enoof. But fox could have browt boanes in on it oan, like. It could have been nowt but fox, or it could have been dog. But if it were dog, it’s not been back theer, that’s for sure.”

“Well, if they’re still up there I mean to find them. You know the land. D’you think we could—”

Gwen Williamson came out of the door of Tongue ‘Us into the yard.

“Mr. Driver? It’s telephone—for you.”

“For me?”

“Ay—Mary Longmire from t’Newfield. I think she’s got a message. Happen soombody wants you.”

Digby Driver went indoors, picked up the receiver and spoke.

“Mr. Driver?” said Mary Longmire’s voice. “I thought you might be up with Dennis, so I just gave him a ring. Sorry to bother you. There’s been someone on the telephone enquiring for you. He wouldn’t leave his name, but he was speaking from Glenridding, over by Ullswater. Apparently your dogs were seen there lasst night.”

“My dogs? Are you—was he—sure?”

“No doubt about it, he said. They had green collars, and one had a terrible split all along it head. He wanted to know what he ought to do. Said he’d informed Medical Officer of Health, but his wife was still terrified on account of the plague.”

“Did he leave a number? Any address?”

“Nay, he did not.”

“All right, Mrs. Longmire, many thanks. I’ll get over there right away.”

Digby Driver put down the receiver and smote his forehead with his open palm.

“My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”

Digby Driver quite often said things like this. He could not have identified the context and would not have been particularly bothered if anyone had told him what it was.