The Plague Dogs

Now leave we to speak of Digby Driver and turn we unto Snitter and Rowf, that all this while had been awaiting darkness in their refuge upon Stang End. The rain, drifting across the bare, waste solitude, made, even to a dog’s ear, only the slightest sound in trickling between the stones. Snitter, watching his breath condense on the wall of the ruined flue, wondered whether Rowf were really as hungry as he smelt or whether the smell got its intensity from his own starved belly. He raised his paw from the chicken bone which it had been holding down and as he did so Rowf rolled over and gripped the bone between his teeth.

“Oh—you’re going to gnaw that, Rowf, are you?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Did I enjoy it?”

“What?”

“It’s the one you pushed across to me just now.”

“Oh. Sorry, There’s been nothing left on any of them for hours, anyway.”

“I know.”

“I hate this place.”

“We’ve got so many friends to help us choose a better one, too. The whitecoats, the farmers—”

“I wish we’d never come here. That damned tod!”

“I’m sure he was only doing what he’d have done by himself and for himself. I wish you hadn’t driven him away, Rowf. You terrified him—he won’t come back now.”

“Good. Just the smell of him—”

“But Rowf, we can’t kill sheep without him—not safely—or go on taking ducks and hens. I’m afraid we may not even be able to keep hidden. He knew such a lot that we didn’t.”

“We killed sheep before we met him.”

“One sheep. Without him we’d never have lasted this long. We’d have been caught long ago.”

“I killed one above Bull Crag that morning.”

“Rowf, it’s twice as hard without the tod, you know it is. We shan’t manage a kill tonight. We shall make a mess of it and have to give up again, that’s the plain truth.”

“My paw’s painful. I can’t run on it properly. But even apart from that, it seems to get harder and harder. Like—like—”

“Like what, Rowf?” Snitter changed his cramped position on the stones.

“I was going to say, like the whitecoats’ tank. I feel just as though I were sinking, sometimes. And there’s no avoiding it, either. We’ve got to eat. But I’m afraid the time’s coming when I’m not going to be able to kill.”

Snitter made no reply and they lay unspeaking for some time, while the rain billowed on across the fell.

“Last night, Rowf—I still don’t understand. What happened? Those men were frightened—badly frightened. Did you smell them?”

“Yes, I did. But Snitter, I’ve been thinking—if you can do all that to humans and other dogs, why do we need to hunt sheep at all? Why don’t we just go down there—”

“I tell you, I don’t know how I did it. But there was something wrong, Rowf, wasn’t there—something frightening about it? I don’t know what I did, but I know one thing—they hated us. They wanted to kill us, only they were afraid; and that’s what I can’t understand. I wouldn’t dare go back. They might not be afraid next time. Besides—oh, Rowf, you can’t imagine what it’s like to see a man fall dead and know that it’s you who killed him.” Snitter paused a moment. “If I hadn’t killed my master, we’d both be sitting at home now, by the fire; instead of—oh dear, oh dear! Sometimes I wish I could do it to myself. It’s that Annie Mossity. I’m sure she put it on me, somehow or other. She always hated me.”

“As far as I can see,” said Rowf, “it’s better never to have had a master. I wish that Annie was here—I’d chew her up for you. I hate all humans: I hate them!”

“Perhaps they don’t really know any more than we do. Perhaps even humans have their troubles.”

“Don’t be so damn silly.”

“I am silly. But they never look happy, do they—not like—well, not like a chaffinch or a puppy. Perhaps they don’t know what they’re doing any more than we do. Perhaps they do bad things to each other, not just to us—”

“What I’m saying is that they run the world for themselves. They don’t care what they do to us; they just make use of us for their own convenience. It’s a bad—”

“I wish you’d stop saying that. Anyone’d think you’d got another one somewhere.”

“The men could alter this one if they wanted to. Anyway, our chances are thin enough, yours and mine. What’s the use of talking? Let’s go out again and try our luck. We’ve got to find something we can eat—”

“Firelight—newspapers crackling—my master used to put slices of bread on a sort of stick and brown them in front of the fire—it smelt nice—sometimes he used to give me a bit—oh look, look, there are the rhododendrons, Rowf! Look, just outside! Come on!” Snitter ran out into the rainy darkness and lay down. “Now and then that mouse has good ideas, you know. He’s very small, but of course he’s been ill—”

He laid his muzzle on his paws and closed his eyes contentedly, while the rain ran in streams over his back.

“Oh, the bees, Rowf—the sun’s so warm—”

“Snitter, come back inside, come on! You’d better stay in here tonight. You’re not fit to go out hunting. Go to sleep; and don’t go lying out in that rain, d’you see? I’ll go down and find—well, I’ll have a go at the dustbins. I’ll bring you something back. If I don’t come back by tomorrow you’d better—you’d better—well, anyway, don’t get wandering off, d’you understand?”

There was no reply. After pausing a few moments in the damp, chilly den, Rowf pushed his nose against his friend’s belly. Snitter was fast asleep.

Inhabitants of the tiny, quaint lakeside village of Glenridding, Westmorland, on the shores of majestic Ullswater, tapped Digby Driver on his typewriter. He paused, seeking a striking and really original turn of phrase:—here in the heart of poet Wordsworth’s watery homeland—; still it eluded him:—here in the heart of novelist Hugh Walpole’s picturesque country—-; ah, here it came: got a shock yesterday. The reason? They found themselves next in line for a visit from the dreaded Plague Dogs, who are spreading a reign of terror across this quiet rural area, where hitherto the most dreaded creature forcenturies has been the wolf, the last one of which was killed in 1534, the same year in which Anne Boleyn lost her head on Tower Hill while husband Henry was hunting in Richmond Park. (If that’s wrong who the hell cares?) While a few are still disposed to make light of this threatening menace, many more already know with creeping dread that it is a matter not to be regarded with such detachment. Those who think of plague in the same breath as bosomy orange-girl Nell Gwynne and bewigged diarist Samuel Pepys may soon find themselves mistaken, as the Orator’s quest conclusively shows. Many readers will ask, when was the last outbreak of plague in England? The answer? 1910 to 1918 in Suffolk. Yes, it’s true! Between these dates there were no less than 23 identified cases in that old-world county, 18 of whom died. (Clever of old Simpson to dig that one up.)

Already, those on the spot are anxiously asking their local government officers (at least, they bloody soon will be when I’ve finished with them) whether any undisputed cases have yet been confirmed and what safety precautions should be taken. Can the unthinkable repeat itself? (Wonder what they’ll do when this really takes hold? Fill the rag up with good stuff like this—push ‘em in and let ‘em swim—interesting experiment in sociological group reaction, really.) Might the mysterious dogs be about to turn our secret weapons against ourselves? Does a canine Nemesis hang over Lakeland? Farmers at Glenridding have told me personally that they were so terrified by the mere sight of the maddened, snarling brutes who invaded their hen-roosts last night that they actually threw them fowls and flung open their gates to speed their departure, not daring to shoot for fear the infected bodies might spread the ghastly pestilence in the vicinity of their own homes.

Meanwhile, Animal Research at Lawson Park preserves its bureaucratic silence. Yes, they deign to tell us, the dogs escaped. No, replies the Orator, the people of Britain are not satisfied. Today, in YOUR interest, the Orator asks these questions. WHO let the dogs escape? HOW close did they come to the fleas of Death? WHY were those fleas allowed to roam at large and uncontrolled? WHEN will the public be told the TRUTH? Let us see whether the Men of Science, who are continually telling us they know all the answers, can tell us these. If they cannot, and that right soon, then the Orator says,“Write to your M.P.!” (For an artist’s impression of the Plague Dogs, turn to page …)

“Yeah, well, Bob Grisly’ll do that in half an hour if old Simpson fancies the idea. Pity we haven’t got a photograph. We need a visual image, if we’re going to get not just the adults but the kids steamed up about this. Kid-involvement—that’s what’s needed to get it really on the move. Now,” said Digby Driver, looking out of the window at the soft rain drifting across Ullswater in the last light, “the immediate requirements are a telephone and two or three dry Martinis. A large steak’d come in handy, too—or some eggs and bacon, anyway. What I need in this hole just now is some joy dee veever.”

Snitter woke hungry. The rain had cleared and beyond Ullswater the moon had risen. The waters on this starry night were as beautiful and fair as poet Wordsworth (or even novelist Hugh Walpole, come to that) could have wished. Yet it was not these which caused Snitter to feel a vague, alert uneasiness. He got up, put his head out of the shelter and listened. Something had awakened him—something which was not the all-too-familiar return of the humming in his head. He listened, but could hear nothing except the coming and going of the light wind as it patted gently against the stones of the ruined flue. Cautiously he went outside and stood looking about the empty, moonlit waste. There was still nothing to be heard but the wind and the distant stream. More than a mile to the southwest rose the enormous, symmetrical pyramid of Catstycam, its slopes falling away on all sides from the pointed summit. Remote and calm it looked, soaring, in the moonlight, far above the solitude of masterless, starving dogs.

I wonder what it’s like up there? thought Snitter. Perhaps it was from there that those sheep flew up into the sky. Kiff might be up there. He always used to say he’d be on a cloud

Suddenly he tensed, listening more intently. This time there could be no mistaking it. Far off it was, and faint, coming and going on the wind like the noise of the beck; a barking sound, a cry as of a dog or fox.

“It’s the tod!” cried Snitter. “The tod! He’s looking for us!” He leapt up and began running across the long, downward slope towards Glenridding Beck, yapping, “Tod! Tod!”

There was no reply, but still he ran on. After about a quarter of a mile he stopped and, since the wind was from the north and of no use to him, searched with his eyes among the scattered rocks. He was near the beck now and could see below him, plainly enough, a stone sheep-fold in the angle where a second beck came in from the opposite side. And now, at this close range, he suddenly perceived a stirring in a brake of fern. He barked again and in the same moment saw, quite clearly, a terrier bitch glancing through the covert—a bitch whose appearance recalled others from the days of his old life with his master. Certainly she did not look like a sheep-dog—at all events, not like the unfriendly dogs which he and Rowf had met above Levers Water during the first afternoon of their escape.

“Who are you?” barked Snitter.

The bitch made no reply, but ran a little way towards him. There was something wild and shy in her motion which was puzzling.

What’s the matter with her? wondered Snitter. He barked again, “You needn’t be afraid of me! I’m alone!” Then he thought, But is she? and looked round at the hollows and heights about them. There was no human in sight. What could she be doing here? Surely there can’t be a shepherd with her at this time of night? As he waited for her to come nearer he listened uneasily, but heard neither shout nor whistle.

Whatever is she up to, all by herself? I can’t seem to see her properly, either. How strange—but then I never can see anything straight when these humming fits come on. I wish I didn’t feel so giddy and queer.

Suddenly the thought came to him: She’s no sheep-dog—that’s plain. I wonder, can she possibly be like us—another escaper? We’d have a pack again—how splendid! What a lark for Rowf when he gets back! “Hullo, Snitter, are you all right?” “Oh, yes, only there’s two of me now! I split my head in two and made another dog! Here she is! Wuff wuff! Ho ho!” Snitter rolled on the stones and waved his legs in the air.

At this moment the other stopped in the act of climbing the nearer slope from the beck, stood gazing at him for a few moments and then began to go back by the way she had come.

“Oh, rip it and tear it!” said Snitter. “Now I’ve put the wind up her by acting so crazily. Wait!” he barked. “Stop! Stop! I won’t do you any harm!”

The bitch—plainly a town-dweller, both from her motion and her general air of being in a strange place—turned and once more stared at him, but then ran on, re-crossed the beck and went a short distance up the course of the tributary.

Well, she is nervous—she’s worse than I am, thought Snitter. Unless I can get her to stop I suppose I’ll just have to try to overtake her. I believe she has escaped from the whitecoats and they’ve frightened her half silly. I hope she doesn’t turn out to be useless—just another mouth to feed. Still, at least I don’t have to be afraid of her. It’s lucky Rowf isn’t here—he’d scare her all to bits.

He splashed over Glenridding Beck and pushed on up Red Tarn Beck behind his elusive quarry. From time to time he caught glimpses of her dodging in and out of the bracken, yet whenever he laid his nose to the rain-soaked ground he could not pick up the least scent.

“Funny!” said Snitter. “That’s not natural. She’s no distance ahead—not as far as my master used to throw my ball. Sn’ff, sn’ff! How odd!”

At this moment he came round a boulder and at once saw the bitch not twenty lengths ahead of him. She was, if anything, rather bigger than himself, with a rough, brown coat that brushed the wet fern as she ran clumsily on.

“This is very strange!” said Snitter. “She’s not trying to get away from me, that’s plain. She’s going quite slowly; but I can’t seem to catch her. And her smell, wherever is it? Oh my dam, I believe I know—how shameful! The whitecoats must have done something to her, as they did to me, and it’s destroyed her smell! Poor creature-whatever will she do? Can’t tell anyone where she’s been, can’t excite a dog, can’t leave traces—or if she can it’s no good to her, if she doesn’t smell. They are cruel swine—the very worst! Jimjam was right. Whatever happens to me, I’m glad I got out of there. I only wish I could see straight—it’s that mouse again. Get your tail out of my eye! Oh, there she goes now!”

He crossed the line of the disused water-cut and held on up the beck. From time to time he barked, but still there was no reply.

I hope Rowf’s not back yet, thought Snitter. If he is, he’ll be worried to find me gone. Still, he’ll be able to follow my scent, that’s something. It must be as plain as the paraffin man’s used to be at home. Oh, I know where she’s going now. We’re quite near the big tank that Rowf didn’t like—the one we could see down below when I was singing to the moon that night and found the potato crisp bag. My goodness, it’s a long way up here! And that’s snow, that white patch in the gully over there. Oh, fanackers, this is too much of a good thing altogether! She’s off her head for sure, to lead me all this way and never answer a word.

As he came out on the dreary marsh below the outfall of the Red Tarn, he looked about him at the enormous, cliff-surrounded hollow. He was in a cove, a huge recess, marked here and there by old, snowy streaks among the almost-sheer gullies. In front was the lofty precipice of Helvellyn’s eastern face, running round by the south to the gnarled line of Striding Edge black against the moon. At its foot lay the silent tarn, still and grey as a tombstone in a churchyard. When a fish splashed, a hundred yards out, Snitter jumped, nervous as a cat; and not altogether from surprise that a fish should leap at night, though he tried to tell himself that that was the reason.

Not free from boding thoughts, he remained for a while on the shore of the tarn, wondering whether he would do better, after all, to go back. He was uneasy in this high, desolate place and was becoming less and less keen on the stranger. If she were an honest dog, why did she not behave like one? Also, he himself was beginning to feel as glass-legged as he had on Hard Knott. And if I’m to be taken badly like that again, he thought, I’ll try to make sure Rowf’s there this time. No more dark strangers with guns for me. Poor man! I didn’t want to kill him! No, and I don’t want to bring any misfortune on her, either. I’m going back now.

He barked, “You’re only making a fool of me!” and set off down the beck by the way he had ascended. Yet still he could not help feeling a certain curiosity about his mysterious fern-skulker. He stopped under a low, lichen-covered crag, lapped a long drink and then barked once more, “I’m going back! Can you hear me?”

“I can hear you.” The answer, instant as an echo, came from immediately behind him.

Snitter leapt in the air and faced about. The stranger was standing under the crag not three lengths away. Raising a hind leg, she scratched herself a moment and then, being the bigger dog, came forward and sniffed Snitter over, Snitter standing still while she did so. Her nose felt icy cold and oddly dry.

I was right, thought Snitter. They have taken away her smell. What a shame! There’s nothing they won’t do, those whitecoats.

As the bitch sat back from him he asked, “What are you doing here?”

“Watching.”

What? thought Snitter. The answer had reached him as a kind of audible mist drifting into his head. I must pull myself together: she’ll think I’m even crazier than I am.

“What?” he asked. “What did you say?”

“Watching.”

“Watching what?”

The other said no more.

“I’m sorry,” said Snitter. “Don’t mind me. I believe we’re both in the same sort of fix. I got out of that whitecoat place too, but they cut my head open, as you’ll have noticed, and I can’t always hear properly—or see straight either, come to that. I’m very sorry they’ve taken your—” He stopped, for it suddenly occurred to him that most likely his fellow-victim would not want to be reminded that she had been deprived of the power to communicate fear, aggression, heat and, indeed, almost everything worthwhile.

It’s like blinding her, thought Snitter angrily. The dirty brutes! He went on quickly, “It’s just that I’ve never met a bitch quite like you before. Let me have a sn—I mean, let me have a look. Why, my goodness, they’ve starved you as well, haven’t they? Or is it with living out here? Haven’t you been able to find any food?”

Still the bitch made no reply. She was, indeed, dreadfully thin. Each staring rib showed along her sides, and her eyes were sunk so deep in her head that they seemed almost to be looking out of a skull.

“Come on, my dear,” said Snitter, “what’s up? I dare say you’re thinking I can’t help you or be any good to you, but it’s no use just saying nothing, now you’ve led me all the way up here. What’s the trouble—apart from everything, I mean?” Suddenly faint, he lurched where he stood, and lay down on the moss. When the humming in his head had cleared he heard the other saying,”—my master, so I stayed.”

“Oh, you had a master?” answered Snitter. “So did I, once, but Rowf—that’s my friend—he never had one, you know. I’m not sure he’s not better off in the long run.”

Stiffly, as though with difficulty, the bitch began to walk away. “So will you come? Perhaps—”

Quite apart from her fearful thinness, there was something so eerie about her whole manner and appearance that Snitter was once more seized with misgiving.

“Come-where?”

“My master, I said—my master! Weren’t you listening?”

“Your master? Why, where is he? Not here, surely?”

“I told you!” The stranger sounded less angry than desperate.

“I’m very sorry,” answered Snitter humbly. “I’m not altogether right in the head, you know, and I’ve got one of my dizzy spells coming on. They maimed me almost as badly as you, I’m afraid. Tell me again and I’ll get hold of it this time.”

“My master’s hurt.”

“And he’s out here?”

“Over on the other side of the water. We were walking along the top when he slipped and fell. I went down after him, but he was hurt. He can’t move.”

“Oh, my life,” said Snitter, “that’s bad! But couldn’t he shout or wave or something? Men quite often walk along the top—the tod said so. Besides, I’ve been up there myself and it’s littered with bags and packets. There must be people who’d come down and help—”

Without answering, the bitch jumped awkwardly across the beck in the yellowing moonlight.

She’s not very polite, thought Snitter. Still, I can’t honestly say that this is much of a place for manners, or that I’m a very deserving case either, come to that. She told me about her master and evidently I didn’t hear most of it. If only my head weren’t as full of holes as a tomtit’s nutbag! How on earth can I help her? Then the idea occurred to him: I could take a message. I suppose she’s too stupid to do that herself. At least, she may not be stupid but she seems very much confused and—well, sort of dazed. But if I go, the men down in the valley will—oh dear, oh dear! Well, I’d better go and see this master of hers first, anyway.

He overtook the bitch and they ran on together, across the bog and round the lower, eastern end of the tarn. Once round, she left the shore and, going faster now, covered the short distance to the boulders and stones about the foot of Striding Edge. Here they came into deep shadow—almost darkness—and Snitter stopped to accustom his eyes.

He peered up at the abrupt and perilous rocks above. My dam! he said to himself. Did her master fall from there? He must be badly hurt! And this poor fool’s been hanging round when he must have wanted her to do anything but that. But why couldn’t he shout? I suppose it only happened this afternoon, and there’s been no one along the top. He must be starved with the cold. Oh—I never thought! If I can help him, perhaps he might take me—me and Rowf—take us back to his home when he’s better!

“I say! D’you think your master—”

He stopped. In the near-darkness, the bitch was gazing at him with so sombre, so wan and foreboding a look that instinctively he shrank away from her. There was not a sound all around them. At last he said timidly, “I’m sorry. I only meant—I—where is your poor master?”

She led the way round a crag standing a few yards out from the foot of a great, over-hanging face. Snitter followed her, his pads rattling lightly over the loose stones, and at once saw the dark shape of a man lying face down beside a patch of bog myrtle. He went up to it and pressed his muzzle against the shoulder.

The clothes were sodden, cold as the stones, rotten through and through. But more dreadful still, they were void, without firm content and yielding as an old, empty sack. Despite the horror that gripped him, Snitter pushed harder, desperate to give the lie to his fear, to prove himself wrong by encountering the resistance of the flesh-and-blood shoulder beneath the coat. The cloth, breaking open in a long rent, revealed the sharp, grey edge of a protruding bone. At the same moment the hat, jammed awry along the side of the head, fell off to disclose the dome of a skull, streaked with wisps of hair still adhering to the yellow skin of the scalp. One black eye socket stared up at Snitter and clenched teeth grinned in a stilled grimace. There was not the least smell of carrion. He saw, at a little distance, the scattered bones of one hand lying separately—no doubt where they had been dragged and dropped by the ripping, tussling buzzards.

Shaking, salivating, urinating with shock and fear, Snitter ran out from among the rocks.

“She’s more mad than I am—she doesn’t know! She’s gone crazy and she doesn’t know! Oh, how dreadful—I shall have to tell her! What will she do? How can she not know? That man must have been dead three months.”

He limped tremblingly back to the terrier, who had not moved and did not look up from the body as he approached.

“Your master—your master’s dead! He’s dead!”

The brown terrier, where it sat on the stones, raised its head. And now, as Snitter realized with a terrible certainty, there was no question either of his own madness or of his own eyesight. He was seeing what was there to be seen. The bitch, open-jawed, emaciated, glimmered faintly in the dark, turning upon him blank eyes that contained no speculation, that neither blinked nor followed his movement as he cowered away from her. The tongue was black and dried, the teeth decayed almost to the gums. It answered not a word. It could not, since, as now he perceived, it possessed no life, no substance but that which might be attributed to it by some unsuspecting creature who had not yet seen it for what it was; a phantom, a nothing, a dried, empty husk of old grief suffered long ago.

Snitter turned to fly; and in so doing saw, plain in the moonlight beyond the shadow of the precipice, the figure of a man, hunched in an old overcoat and carrying a stick, striding away towards the tarn. He raced after it but then, terrified that the horror behind might be following, looked back. Both dog and body had disappeared. So, when he turned again towards the tarn, had the figure in the moonlight. He was alone.

Ten minutes later Rowf, who had made his way by scent up the beck, carrying an entire leg of lamb with a fair amount of lean and gristle left on it, found Snitter wandering on the shore, crying like a dog at the mercy of devils. Twice during their return he seemed to lose his wits altogether, plunging in frenzy into the stream, first in terror of a blundering sheep and then of the glitter of a streak of limestone quartz in the moon. But when at last, back in the shelter of the ruined flue, he had pushed, like a puppy, deep under Rowf’s side, he returned almost at once into a sleep even deeper than that in which his friend had left him upon setting out at nightfall.

Friday the 19th November

Mr. Basil Forbes, M.P., the Parliamentary Secretary, was a pleasant enough young man and, even if regarded with a degree of amusement by the higher civil servants on account of being something of an intellectual lightweight, was, on the whole, reasonably well liked in the Department. He had the advantage of a prepossessing appearance and, despite the reputation for imprudence which had earned him his nickname of Errol the Peril, was nevertheless free from the higher lunacies (such as a conviction that he was a godsent political genius, or a tendency to resent the activities of other Departments and instruct his civil servants to have rows with them) and above all, was well-mannered and open to persuasion. In a word, there were plenty of worse people that a civil servant might have to civilly serve.

On a chilly morning of London sootshine and grimegleam, sunsift, cloudstrain and lightrack, he greeted affably the Under Secretary and the Assistant Secretary as they were shown in by his personal assistant. He switched on the lights in the tropical fishtank, ordered lukewarm coffee all round and graciously treated them to fully five minutes’ small talk. At length the Under Secretary, glancing surreptitiously at his watch, contrived to mention the Lake District.

“Ah, yes,” said Mr. Forbes, as though tearing himself with reluctance from the pleasures of civilized conversation, “the Lake District; and these frightful-frightful dogs. What d’you think we’re going to have to do about these dogs, Maurice?”

“Well, Parliamentary Secretary, I think by all sensible standards it’s really a non-problem——”

“But none the less a shade awkward, eh?”

“None the less awkward indeed—politically speaking. Still, at least there’s no actual health risk to the public—”

“That’s certain, is it?”

“Absolutely, Parliamentary Secretary,” said the Assistant Secretary, opening fire from the left flank. “The dogs were never in contact with the bubonic plague laboratory at all.”

“Then why can’t we say so?”

“We think you can and should,” said the Under Secretary, “but we’d like to confirm that a little later, when Michael here’s been and had a look at the place. The newspapers can get it all wrong, of course. No one’s going to mind that in the least; but we mustn’t get anything wrong—even if no one notices.”

“All right,” said Mr. Forbes. “So there’s no public health risk and we can say so and the papers’ll have to go away and invent something else. But now, what about the by-products—secondary nuisance value and all that? You know next Thursday’s a Supply Day and the Opposition have chosen to debate expenditure on Research Establishments.”

“Yes, we shall be briefing you, Parliamentary Secretary. Bugwash will probably start by resurrecting the matter of the planning permission for Lawson Park, then allege extravagance in the Government’s implementation of the recommendations of the Sablon Committee, and proceed thence to allegations of mismanagement on the grounds that the dogs were allowed to escape, and that once they had escaped nothing was done.”

“That’ll be about the size of it, I expect, and normally it wouldn’t be hard to answer. But I must confess, Maurice, that there’s one aspect of it I don’t terribly like, and I hope you’re going to be able to tell me the answer. At the moment it can be made to look as though we thought we had something to hide—in fact, as though we’d been trying to hide everything we could, and very unsuccessfully at that.”

“I know,” replied the Under Secretary, nodding sagely to indicate that he, no less than the Parliamentary Secretary, had realized, as soon as the case got up to his level, the deplorable lack of perspicacity shown by their underlings.

“I mean,” went on Mr. Forbes, smiling matily up from the papers on the table, “first these dogs get out, you know. All right, so that could happen to anyone. But then, when they find the dogs are gone, the boffins decide to say nothing to anyone; and they go on saying nothing to anyone even when they know the dogs are killing sheep and prowling about in a national park like a couple of jackals. Surely that was damn silly, Michael, wasn’t it?”

“It certainly looks that way now, Parliamentary Secretary, but it’s only fair to these chaps to point out that at the time there was a certain amount to be said in favour of silence. It was a hundred to one chance against all this trouble brewing up. It was much more likely that the dogs would get themselves shot or that the whole thing would evaporate in some way or other.”

“Well, maybe,” said the Parliamentary Secretary, glancing momentarily across at the tropical fish. “But what about the next piece of misjudgement? The station finally put out a statement to the effect that two dogs escaped; and this coincides spot-on with the Orator’s published allegation that those dogs had been in contact with bubonic plague. Thereupon the station go silent again and don’t deny it, so that it looks as though they deliberately omitted it from their original statement. What’s the answer?”

“That the allegation’s too ludicrous to merit either mention or denial.”

“H’m. All gone off at half-cock, rather, hasn’t it?” mused the Parliamentary Secretary. “What’s worrying me is why we ourselves—the Department—didn’t weigh in earlier. Why didn’t the station tell us at once what had happened? Why did they go and put out a statement of their own before giving us any chance to see it? And why didn’t we stamp on this plague nonsense earlier, and talk to Min. of Ag. about placating the local farmers? Those are the sort of things the Secretary of State’s going to want to know.”

Looking up, the Assistant Secretary again met the intent gaze of the Under Secretary. He waited for him to speak—it being now, of course, the moment for the captain of the team to weigh in on behalf of his subordinate. The Under Secretary, with an air of joining Mr. Forbes in waiting for a reply, continued to gaze and say nothing. A silence fell. Stupefied, incredulous, the Assistant Secretary groped for words. Floundering as though in deep water, he felt fixed upon him the eyes of one who might, if he chose, pull him out. Mr. Forbes waited courteously. The Assistant Secretary saw the Under Secretary look down at the table, draw lines and squares on a pad of paper and then once more raise his eyes attentively.

“Is there an agreed liaison drill?” asked Mr. Forbes, by way of kindly stimulus.

“We’re—er—in the process of setting one up, sir.”

“Well—well—it all seems just a little bit unfortunate, Michael,” said Mr. Forbes pleasantly. “P’raps you could let me see the agreed drill as soon as possible, could you, even if it is rather shutting the door after the horse has bolted?”

“Michael’s going up there this afternoon, Parliamentary Secretary,” said the Under Secretary, at last breaking his silence. (“First I knew of it. It was going to be Monday.”) “No doubt that’ll be one of the things you’ll sort out as a matter of urgency, Michael, won’t it?”

“Splendid!” said the Parliamentary Secretary in a tone of warm congratulation, as though all were now merry as lambkins on the lea. “Well, perhaps we’ve just got time to glance at this very convincing draft answer you’ve given me for the P.Q. that Bugwash has put down—’To ask the Secretary of State, etc., in what circumstances two infected dogs were permitted to escape from the Animal Research Station at Lawson Park, and if he will make a statement.’ Now, I expect I’m being very silly, but it did seem to me that this third draft supplementary—”

Ten minutes later, in the corridor, the Under Secretary said, “Well, Michael, you’ll want to be catching a train as soon as possible. You won’t forget, will you, that there are two things—first to see whether we can safely advise Ministers that the dogs couldn’t have been in contact with any plague-infected material; and then the—er—somewhat belated matter of an agreed consultation drill.”

At the lift-doors the Assistant Secretary found his tongue.

“I’ve got to go and see one of the lawyers, Maurice, now, about an appeal case, so I’ll leave you here, and look in for a final word before I set out.”

Once in the lavatory on the next floor, he was overcome by a blinding rage so violent that for a few moments his sight actually clouded over.

“He sat there and said nothing to the Parliamentary Secretary—not a bloody word! He sat there and let the Parliamentary Secretary take it out on me for something he knew damned well was no more my fault than a cold in the head! Eton and Balliol, and he let Forbes, a basically reasonable bloke, whom we all like, think that I’m to blame. The bastard, the dirty, rotten bastard!”

He beat the flat of one hand against the tiled wall.

“Excuse me, are ye feelin’ all roight, sorr?”

The Assistant Secretary, looking round vaguely, recognized a messenger named O’Connell, a decent Irishman who had once served him during bygone days as a Principal.

“Oh, hullo, O’Connell. Nice to see you again. Yes, I’m all right, thanks. Just letting off a bit of steam, you know.”

“I thought perhaps ye might have come over queer, sorr—been taken baad, ye know.”

“It’s good of you to bother. Still, old soldiers don’t get taken bad, do they?”

This was a joke. Both the Assistant Secretary and O’Connell had at different times been in the army and had once or twice exchanged military reminiscences.

“Well, they can do, sorr. I didn’t like to see ye put under the weather, ye know.”

“Thanks. You know, O’Connell, it’s extremely annoying to suffer injustice and be unable to do anything about it.”

“Man, baste and bird, ‘tis the fate of every wan in the world, sorr, all but a varry few. There was some fella—Oi read ut in the paper-that said, ‘The dispensin’ of injustice is always in the roight hands.’ Oi’d say that was very thrue indade, wouldn’t you?”

Digby Driver had succeeded in tracking down Annie Mossity.

It had not really been very difficult. He had simply followed up what Mr, Powell had told him during the run back to Coniston from Broughton, by enquiring of the Barrow-in-Furness ambulance service and police about any road accident known to them during recent weeks involving a man and a lorry and brought about by a dog. Within a few hours this had resulted in his being put in touch with a lady in Dalton named Mrs. Ann Moss, the sister and next-of-kin of the dog’s master, a local solicitor named Mr. Alan Wood.

Mr. Driver was now sitting in a small, chilly drawing-room, in front of an inadequate electric fire masked by a façade of plastic coal and below a singularly nasty coloured print of two little Italian-looking children with fixed and implausible tears on their cheeks, balancing on his knee, in its saucer, a full tea-cup coloured pale buff and having the form of a truncated and inverted cone. Annie Mossity, a hefty, plain, untidy woman with large limbs and a general air of thinly veiled aggression, was sitting opposite. Digby Driver, who could seldom be accused of dragging his feet in getting around to the personal circumstances of anyone whom he interviewed—particularly any that might pertain to anxiety, fear, misfortune, sexual irregularity or conjugal disharmony—had already gathered, first, that she had no children and secondly that Mr. Moss, though presumed to be alive, was no longer in the field. He was not unduly surprised. The goldfish, he thought, looked frustrated and the budgerigar distinctly put upon. Neither, however, was in the fortunate position of being able to follow Mr. Moss over the hill.

“Was it a shock,” asked Digby Driver (who had prudently left his notebook, as possibly having a somewhat inhibiting effect, in his overcoat pocket), “when you realized that this dog which had broken out of the Lawson Park Research Station was the very one that you’d sold them?”

“Well,” replied Mrs. Moss, with an apparent spontaneity that somehow contrived despite itself to seem disingenuous and cunning, “we can’t be sure of that, actually, can we? I don’t believe it is the same dog, and to be perfectly frank, Mr. Driver, I think you’re wasting your time here. If my brother were to get any idea—”

“There’s virtually no doubt about it, Mrs. Moss, believe me. You see—

“Why don’t you ask the Research Station?” interjected Mrs. Moss somewhat sharply. “They’d be able to tell you for certain, surely? I don’t want to be drawn in—”

“I have,” replied Digby Driver untruthfully. “But you’ll know-that is, you’ll know if you read the Orator—that the station aren’t saying any more than they can possibly help. They’re not acting in the public interest by persisting in this uncooperative silence, but nevertheless that seems to be—”

“I don’t wish to discuss it either,” rejoined Annie Mossity. “I hope you’ll soon come to feel sure, as I do, that it’s nothing to do with me and that it’s not my brother’s dog.”

“Well,” said Digby Driver, smiling pleasantly, “well, all right, Mrs. Moss, let’s not trouble our minds about that aspect of the matter at all. I’m not asking you to say yea or nay to that. Let’s agree that we don’t know for certain whether or not the dog you sold to Lawson Park has become one of the Plague Dogs—”

“However many are there, for heaven’s sake?” asked the lady.

“Only two, but that’s definitely two too many, you know. But as I say, let’s leave all that on one side. We’ll agree that it’s not your job or mine to know that, although you can be sure that it’ll be established one way or the other quite soon. Can you help me by telling me something about your poor brother and his dog? His death must have been a terrible shock and grief to you, wasn’t it?”

As he uttered these last words there passed across Annie Mossity’s face a sudden, swiftly suppressed look of incredulity, followed immediately by one of relief. She hesitated before replying and appeared to be pondering. Then, with an air of decision, she said, “It was a dreadful blow; and a dreadful loss. Oh, Mr. Driver, if you don’t mind, I can’t bear to speak of it—”

“No, no, of course not. Forgive me,” said Driver hastily. In the normal way he rather welcomed the tears of the bereaved, since they usually led to freer and more indiscreet speech, and often reduced the interviewee to a defenceless and malleable state. However, this was not what he was after just now. What he wanted was specific information.

“Just tell me a little more about the dog,” he said. “Have you a photograph of it, by any chance?”

“No, I certainly haven’t,” replied Mrs. Moss. “To be perfectly honest, I was only too glad to get rid of it.”

“Ah, that’s interesting,” said Driver. “Why was that? Was it simply because it had been the cause of the fatal accident to your brother, or was there something else?”

“Well-er—”

Annie Mossity cannot be said to have been unconscious, in the psychological sense—though they were certainly not present to her mind at this moment—of the fur-lined boots and gloves which she had bought with the money that Animal Research had paid her for Snitter. Thanks, however, to inveterate vanity and to a long-established capacity for self-deception, she was almost completely unconscious of her own jealousy of her brother’s affection for the dog, and totally unconscious of her resentment of all that it represented-her brother’s happy, untidy bachelor life and domestic contentment, his not always very well-concealed contempt for her empty-minded, genteel ways and lack of any real desire or need either for her interference in his home or for her nagging insistence that he ought to get married. Snitter, like Alan himself, had tolerated her, teased her and conceivably even committed, insofar as a dog can, the unforgivable sin of pitying her. But since neither dog nor master were present, all this could be unthinkingly transmuted in her mind.

“Well—er—you see, the dog—it was, well, it was—”

“What was its name?” interrupted Digby Driver.

“My brother used to call it ‘Snitter.’ As I was saying, it was undisciplined and aggressive. It was its undisciplined ways that brought about the accident to my poor brother, you know—”

“It was habitually aggressive, was it? Were you afraid of it? Did it ever attack you?”

“Well—er—no, not to say attack, really, no. But it had a very nasty nature, really, Mr. Driver, if you know what I mean. It was—well, untidy, really, and destructive in its ways. After the accident there was no one to take it. I couldn’t take it, not here; and you see, with my poor brother gone—”

“Did it ever attack other animals?”

“Oh, yes, with cats it was very bad. Very bad indeed. It used to bark at them and chase them.”

“So when it made its recent day boo as a sheep-killer, it didn’t come as a surprise to you?”

“Well, I suppose it didn’t, really, no, not really, when you come to think about it, no.” She considered for a moment and then said, “Not really.”

“So you think that perhaps after all it may be one of the sheep-killing dogs?”

“Well—er—” Annie Mossity perceived that Mr. Driver had led her where she had not intended to go. “Well, I’m only saying it might be.”

“Quite so. But it wasn’t a particularly large dog, was it? Do you think it would really be able to kill a sheep?”

“Well, I mean, it was a fox terrier, it could kill a fox, couldn’t it, and sheep, I mean, they’re timid creatures, aren’t they, really, and if it was that hungry—oh, it didn’t care what it did, Mr. Driver! I saw it one day in the rhododendrons round at my brother’s, and it had got hold of some horrible—well, I wouldn’t like to say, but full of—full of, ugh, you know—”

(As long as she hated the dog and isn’t going to deny anything we want to say about its evil and aggressive nature, thought Driver, that’s all I need. There’s one thing, though, that might be raised by some third party if they were so minded. I’d better make sure that that’s out of the way and then I can get the hell out of here and send some local chap round to get a picture this evening.)

“—and dragging that nasty, smelly blanket out of its basket, Mr. Driver, all round the floor-well, really—I was glad to see it thrown away—”

“Mrs. Moss, I’m just wondering—I’m sure you can tell me—what gave you the idea of selling the dog to the Research Station? After your poor brother’s death, you had a great deal to do, I’m sure. Why go to that extra trouble? I mean, why not just have the dog put down?”

“Mr. Driver,” said Annie Mossity, with the swift flux of defensive aggression that had caused her employer to learn better than to try to criticize her, however gently, for anything at all—it was easier to bear her incompetence in silence—”I hope you’re not implying that I would want to cause the dog to suffer in any way. If so, I’m bound to tell you—”

“Certainly not,” replied Digby Driver smoothly, “far from it. On the contrary, Mrs. Moss, I was wondering where you got hold of such a sensible, useful idea.”

“Why, it was my brother-in-law—my sister’s husband,” replied Annie Mossity, warming under the facile flattery. “He’s a vet up Newcastle way, you know. I’d mentioned to him that I couldn’t do with the dog at all and meant to have it put down, and a day or two later he told me that the gentlemen at Lawson Park had circulated a request to several vets in his neighbourhood that they wanted to obtain a full-grown, domesticated dog for a particular experiment. It had to be an adult, domesticated dog, he said. He assured me that it wouldn’t suffer and explained how important it was in the public interest that these scientific needs should be met—”

(So you sold your dead brother’s dog to the experimenters, did you, you mean, avaricious cow, for what you could get? I wonder if you stopped to think whether that was likely to be in accordance with his wishes?)

“So it was a case of yielding to pressure, really, wasn’t it, Mrs. Moss? In effect, they asked you on bended knee and you obliged them?” (And I’ll bet you beat ‘em up to more than they were offering in the first place.) “We all have to consider the public interest, and it was really kinder than having the dog put down, wasn’t it? I mean, you saved its life, really.” (If she’ll swallow that she’ll swallow anything.)

“Oh, yes, I suppose I did, really, because you see, well, I mean, I couldn’t really do with a dog with that aggressive nature, you see, but it was kinder really than having it put down, I mean—”

“Yes, of course. Precisely. Well, now, I’d like to do an article on you and the dog, if you don’t mind” (or if you do mind, you blue-haired faggot) “and perhaps if I could send a colleague round for a picture this evening—you know, you in your charming home—”

It was deadly cold out of doors and the light fading. Mr. Powell, who had a sore throat and also, he suspected, a temperature, stood shivering in the draught and wondered yet again why Dr. Boycott did not shut the window. In point of fact Dr. Boycott—who, whenever he had to take one of his subordinates to task, always felt a little more tense and averse than he would have cared for them to know—was not conscious either of the draught or of Mr. Powell’s discomfort. He had already decided that in the light of what he had to say it would not be appropriate to ask Mr. Powell to sit down; but on the other hand he did not feel up to remaining seated himself while requiring Mr. Powell to stand. In view of their normal working relationship, that would be overdoing things and what he had to say would only misfire, leaving upon Mr. Powell the dominant impression that his boss had tried to come it too heavy: and on that account Mr. Powell would not feel small. Detachment would be a more effective ploy.

Accordingly, having sent for Mr. Powell, he had allowed him, upon entering, to find his superior standing beside the wallboard opposite his desk and apparently examining the progress graphs and other information pinned thereon. He continued in this occupation while talking to Mr. Powell, who stood uneasily nearby, unsure (as intended) whether he was expected to show an interest in the graphs, from which Dr. Boycott did not, to begin with, deflect his eyes. In the pauses of their conversation, the east wind could be heard moaning round the corners of the buildings, and outside, something tapped and tapped constantly against a drainpipe, with a flat resonance like that of a cracked bell.

“The Director’s seen Goodner,” said Dr. Boycott absently, running his finger down some figures relating to Ministry of Defence research establishments’ experiments on living animals. “I wasn’t there myself, of course.”

“Doe, of course dot,” replied Mr. Powell, snuffling and blowing his nose into his last dry handkerchief.

“131,994 experiments last year,” muttered Dr. Boycott parenthetically. “Call it 132,000. But Goodner was positive that he’d said nothing to anyone.”

“Oh.”

“That represents—er—let’s see—thirteen per cent of the total number of experiments performed by or on behalf of Government departments and related bodies,” went on Dr. Boycott, in a fast, preoccupied mutter. Then, raising the volume a shade, “I had a word with Tyson myself and he was equally positive.”

(Tyson had, in fact, been provoked by Dr. Boycott’s questions into his broadest Lancashire, accounting for himself with a flow of vowels and consonants as obscure in vocabulary but plain in meaning as the barking of a dog.)

“Well, doe wud’s had eddythig out of be, chief, I assure you,” said Mr. Powell, clutching his sopping handkerchief and weighing the respective merits of sniffing without it or attempting another blow.

“The Illinois experiments—I know I had the file somewhere, only yesterday,” said Dr. Boycott. “Never mind—d’you recall the figures off-hand—just roughly, of course?”

“I doe the reference,” said Mr. Powell. “Radiation Research, 1968. Sixty-wud beagles were radiated with Cobalt 60 gamma and half of them died within three weeks. Dasty symptoms they had. Their stomachs—”

“Oh, well, Susan’ll dig it out for me. Except for that chap who gave you a lift back from Ulpha that morning?”

“Yes, I told you about that, you’ll recall.”

“Would you know him if you saw him again?” asked Dr. Boycott.

“Yeah, I reckon I would. Why?”

“Is that him?” Dr. Boycott jerked his head towards a small newspaper photograph, shorn of explanatory print, which was lying exposed on his desk. Mr. Powell went across and looked at it.

“Why, yes, that is the chap,” he answered immediately. “Where did that come from, thed?”

“It came from yesterday’s London Orator” said Dr. Boycott expressionlessly. “That’s their reporter Driver, who’s covering this business of the dogs. He wrote the bubonic plague article, you know.”

Mr. Powell ran this through his aching head while the mucus finally blocked both nostrils entirely.

“If there’s eddy suggestiod—” he began. He stopped. “I think—could I see the Director myself?”

“You could,” replied Dr. Boycott, “but I think you’d be ill advised—I mean, to go in there and make something out of it before he’s decided whether to take it any further himself. Qui s’excuse s’accuse, you know.”

Mr. Powell didn’t know.

“Besides, you’re not established yet, are you?” said Dr. Boycott. “I think, in view of that, you’d do better to sit tight and see whether it blows over, even now.”

“Well, it all depeds what he thinks, doesn’t it? If he thinks that I’ve—God dabbit, I hardly dew Goodner was doig plague at all, so how could I—”

“Well, I know what he’ll think if you go in to see him with that cold on you,” said Dr. Boycott. “One hundred and twenty-nine sheep last year—tests on wounds caused by—er—high-velocity bullets. The Director’s got an absolute obsession about cold and infection. Anyway, he can’t see you now. He can’t see anyone. He’s drafting a personal letter to the Secretary of State. But you’re obviously not well. You ought to be at home. Yes, go home, Stephen—go home and drink hot whisky in bed. Ring up on Monday morning if you’re not feeling better. Er—one hundred and thirty-five goats, let me see-jagged shrapnel—”

“Thanks. But where are we at with this lot dow thed, chief?”

“Hard to say, really,” replied Dr. Boycott. “Ministers are bothering themselves, apparently. Someone’s here now from the Department, come to see the Director and have a look round. Damned snoopers—I should have thought a written report from us would have been enough for any reasonable person. It’s all rubbish, anyway. I’ll give you a five-pound note for every case of plague confirmed from Land’s End to John O’Groats. And that includes Bedfordshire. Go there, Stephen, now. Hot whisky.”

As Mr. Powell reached the door he added, “Before you go, make sure someone else takes over that monkey in the cylinder. The Director attaches importance to that experiment. We mustn’t have anything go wrong with it after all this time. How long has it done now?”

“Thirty-five days,” answered Mr. Powell. “Five weeks. I wonder whether it feels worse than I do?”

“My feet are colder than the whitecoats’ glass table,” said Snitter. “I wish I had my dear old blanket here. Wonder what happened to it? It used to smell so nice. I bet Annie threw it away.”

Rowf, half-asleep, rolled over on the stones, drew in a long, snuffling breath and released it in a steamy cloud.

“Rowf, you did promise we wouldn’t stay here another night, didn’t you? I couldn’t face—you know—even wondering whether—whether it might come back. If I only heard it out there, I believe I’d—”

“We’ll get out before dark, don’t worry. Where to, though?”

“I don’t mind where. Just not here.” Snitter sat up and looked out into the bitter, louring afternoon. “Funny—I was going to say I believed I’d go mad. But of course, I forgot, I am mad, so—”

“That’s why you saw it. It was one of your bad turns. If I’d been there you wouldn’t have seen anything at all.”

“I dare say not, but it was there, all the same. I didn’t imagine it. Oh, let’s not talk about it any more, Rowf. My feet feel like stones in the water. It’s turned much colder. Does it seem to you as though we were under some sort of surface—you know, down in some deep place, like a lake?”

“No, it certainly doesn’t. And let me tell you, I’ve been down at the bottom of—”

“I didn’t mean that. Don’t get angry, Rowf. But why is the sky so heavy and sort of pressing down? And there’s a funny smell, too—a kind of clean, light smell. Or is it something I’m imagining again?”

Rowf sat up suddenly, sniffed the air, ran a few yards outside and then tensed, nose turned to the slight but rising wind.

“Snitter, come out here, quick! What on earth is it?”

Snitter, following him into the open, raised his muzzle also towards the low, thick clouds. Both dogs stood silent, gazing westwards at the flat summit of Raise outlined against the bleak winter light. As far as eye could see, a vast flurry filled the horizon; a silent, regular commotion that flickered, darkly speckled, through the space between earth and clouds. As it came moving onward towards the place where they were standing, Snitter began to whine and almost turned tail. But in the same moment it was down upon them, swift as swallows on an evening lake, feathers and ice-pins, pricking and tingling minutely in eyes, ears and open skull, innumerable, momentary sharpnesses of cold on lips and moist noses, all the fell from sky to sky blotted out under a steady, whirling drift of melting particles, smaller than leaves, larger than dust or sand.

“They’re flies, Rowf! They must be—white flies! But no sound, no smell, like the—the ghost dog! Oh Rowf, don’t let them get me! Don’t let them—”

“Come on, Snitter, come back inside! Be sensible! Whatever they are, they’re not flies. Look at the ground—they disappear the moment they touch it.”

“No, they don’t—they turn into water. Look at your nose—no, well, look at mine, then.”

They watched as the crevices between the stones began slowly to fill with frail, dully glinting, crystalline fragments that crumbled, renewed themselves, crumbled again and grew, clinging together and gradually forming piles light as cat’s fur caught on garden bushes. At last Snitter said, “Why d’you suppose they’ve done it?”

“To try and kill us, I suppose. We know now that for some reason or other they’re afraid to come near us, don’t we? So they must mean to make it too cold for us to stay alive.”

“But it’s not as cold as that. At least, it wouldn’t be if only we had food. Anyway, Rowf, it’ll be dark soon. Let’s go away now—anywhere—please. I can’t help being dreadfully afraid. You would be too, if you’d—if you’d seen—there’s a garden in my ear, you know,” said Snitter, once more going outside. “Some of this stuff’s falling on it. All the bushes are white.”

Twenty minutes later, plodding in the direction of the pallid sunset still faintly visible through the drift, they crossed the north shoulder of Raise above Sticks Pass and looked down at the innumerable, scudding flakes disappearing as they fell upon the dark sheet of Thirlmere.

“Where are we, Rowf?”

“I don’t know about you, but I’m a good throat’s length away from my stomach.”

“I wish the tod were here. He’d know what to do.”

“The tod—it’s all my fault. I’m sorry, Snitter.”

“Never mind, old Rowf. It can’t be helped now. Oh, Rowf! Oh, my dam! Look—look! That’s why they’ve done it! Oh, they’re clever, aren’t they? If they’re so clever, why can’t they just come and kill us and be done with it?”

Behind them, up the slope of the shoulder they had climbed, their tracks showed clearly, black paw-marks impressed on the lightly covered, white ground; two lines stretching back and down until they were lost in the blotted-out waste of Stang.

“Everywhere we go!” breathed Snitter. “They can see where we’ve been and everywhere we go!”

“No, they can’t,” said Rowf after a few moments’ thought. “They’ve been too clever this time. Don’t you see, as long as this stuff goes on falling, it blots out the marks we make in it?”

“But when it’s finished falling? They’re just not ready for us yet, that’s all.”

“I know a trick worth two of that. The tod’s got nothing on me. We’re not beat yet, Snitter. It doesn’t lie in the becks—look. The water melts it. So down that beck we go, come on. There you are—not a print to be seen. Are you all right?”

“My feet are cold,” gasped Snitter, splashing and shivering.

“Oh, bother!” said the Under Secretary, wrinkling his nose and staring at the red slip stapled across the green folder. “I suppose Michael has departed for Lawson Park, has he?”

“Oh, yes, he’s been gone some time. I phoned to make sure,” answered his personal assistant, raising one hand to pat her hair as she cleared the OUT tray with the other.

“Well, I suppose we’ll just have to do it ourselves,” said the Under Secretary. “No time like the present. Could you take dictation, please, Jean—one plus—er—two, draft, double-space? Er—h’m—yes—’I am replying at once to your letter of 18th November, in which you speak of local anxiety caused by the recent escape of two dogs from the Animal Research Station at Lawson Park.

“‘While I fully understand and sympathize with your very natural feelings in this matter, I should, I think, make it clear that the Secretary of State is strongly of the view that this, which is essentially a local problem, should remain one for tackling, at all events in the first place, by the local authorities concerned. The Medical Officers of Health in the area (whose Association are in full agreement with my Chief Medical Officer as to the extreme unlikelihood of these dogs being able to carry bubonic plague) will no doubt wish to take immediate steps to allay local anxiety—’”

Two starlings alighted outside, strutted, tussled and let their liquid sittings fall to stain the Under Secretary’s stiff, dishonoured window-sill.

Saturday the 20th November

“Oh, hell!” said Digby Driver, putting out his cigarette with a hiss in the slopped saucer of his teacup. “All this is beginning to smell of day jar voo. What we need now is something new—pep the whole thing up to a higher level. A photograph of the dogs in action—some indiscretion by the people at Lawson Park—an official statement by a Minister; not that I could cover that from here—but some bloody thing or other we need, to get a fresh driving force behind the story. Undiagnosed illness somewhere round about? No, that’s no good-only fall flat when it’s proved not to be plague—as of course it would be. Hell’s bells, let me think, let me think—”

“I can’t tell, Rowf. It’s puzzling, and I’m afraid I’m not making much sense after wandering about all night in this cold. But perhaps the people in the cars aren’t looking for us after all. They all go by at such a rate. If they were after us they wouldn’t have far to look, would they?”

“Damn them, they all look as fat as castrated Labradors. Why can’t one of them stop and give us some food?”

“I’m starving, Rowf. I’m perished with this cold. It’s a long time since sunrise now, but it doesn’t seem to get any warmer. Can you feel your paws?”

“Don’t be silly. They must have dropped off hours ago.”

“Rowf, let’s find a house, or a farm or something and give ourselves up. Licking men’s hands would be better than licking this cold stuff off our paws. They might feed us before they took us back to the whitecoats, you never know. Otherwise we’ll die out here for sure.”

Rowf threw back his head and barked at the close, muffling sky. The snow, which had ceased during the night, had been falling steadily again for the past hour, and in the swirling confusion neither dog could make out either the hills whence they had come or what lay beyond the main road, where the cars and lorries went whang-whanging past behind the dismal sheen of their lights in the gloom.

“Rowf-rowf! Rowf-rowf! Go on, pour down the lot and bury us underneath it, blast you! I don’t care! You’re not as cruel or contemptible as the whitecoats who used to put me in the tank! They were supposed to be masters—you’re not! I’m just a dog, starving to death, but I’m still better than you, whatever you are! You’re licking the whitecoats’ hands. Aren’t you ashamed? Miles of bitter sky and freezing cold powder against a couple of starving dogs! Rowf-rowf! Rowf-rowf!”

“Rowf, even a whitecoat indoors would be better than this cold stuff out of doors. If only I had my head in a decent kennel, it’d be a lot less mad than it is now.”

“I shan’t say any more. I never barked when they drowned me: I knew my duty all right. I can die out here as well as ever I did in there.”

“I say, Rowf, there’s a car stopping! Look, it’s pulled in to the side, just up there. Can you see?”

“Don’t care. Let it.”

“D’you think they’re looking for us?”

“If they’re looking for me they’ll find a lot of teeth.”

“There’s a woman getting out. She looks a bit like Annie Mossity, in that fur coat. It isn’t Annie, though. Oh, look, Rowf, she’s gone up behind that rock to pee! I always wondered how they did it. Look at the steam! It seems rather a funny bit of ground to want to lay claim to—still, I suppose she knows what she wants. What’s the man doing? He’s got out, too. He’s looking at the lights or something on the car. Oh, Rowf, can you smell the meat? Meat, Rowf, meat! There’s meat in that car!”

“Snitter, come back!”

“I’ll be shot if I come back! Look, you can see into the back of the car! That’s a shopping basket. My master used to have one. It’s full of things to eat—they always wrap them up in paper like that. Wherever there’s men there’s paper- and food!”

Rowf caught up with him. “Snitter, stop! They’ll only hurt you or shut you up again, like they did in that shed.”

“They won’t! I’m desperate, I’m mad, I’m dangerous—remember me? They throw chickens after me to get rid of me faster! I’m bold untold in the great white cold, I’m the dread with the head, the nit with the split! Here I go, who dares say no!”

Capering, ears erect, staring white-eyed, rolling head over heels, wagging a frothing muzzle, curling his upper lip until the black gums showed above his teeth, Snitter, out of the thickened gloom, came mopping and mowing down upon the car. In the sight of the driver (a young man named Geoffrey Westcott), starting in surprise and peering quickly round with vision half-dazzled from his examination of the alignment of the headlight beams, his eyes were two full moons, he had a thousand noses, horns whelked and waved like the enridged sea. Thou hast seen a farmer’s dog bark at a beggar, and the creature run from the cur? There thou mightst behold the great image of Snitter. So did Mr. Westcott. With a spasm of horror he recognized the features of which he had read in the paper—the green plastic collar, the split head, the air of gaunt, crazy savagery. Even as he cried out and ran, Snitter leapt into the car, jumped over the back of the driving seat and, slavering, began to drag the soft, squashy, meat-reeking parcels out of the wicker basket on the back seat. Rowf, up beside him in a moment, gripped a joint of mutton in his jaws and sprang with it out of the car door. As they gulped and chewed, the snow grew dappled red with blood, brown with fragments of sausage, chocolate and kidney, yellow with butter and biscuit-crumbs. Plastic wrappers and shreds of paper blew away on the wind.

“Look out, Snitter, the man’s coming back!”

“I don’t care. Tell him I want a blanket as well! A cloud would do—ashes, hay, newspapers tell him—”

“Snitter, he’s got a gun! That’s a gun!”

Snitter looked up quickly. “No, it isn’t. I’ve seen those flat, black boxes before. Lots of men have them. My master had one. They just make little snicking noises, that’s all.”

“But he’s pointing it at us!”

“I know. I tell you, they do that. You needn’t worry: it’s not a gun. There—did you hear that little click? That’s all they do. Anyway, that’s the lot now, except for what’s left of this great lump of meat here. You licked up the eggs off the back seat, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did. What d’you take me for? Better than the tod’s eggs, those were. You grab that soft stuff and I’ll carry this great bone here. Come on!”

They vanished into the whirling desolation as Mr. Westcott supported his sobbing, trembling lady passenger back towards the road. It had indeed been a terrible experience, and Mrs. Green might very well have wet her knickers if she had had anything left to wet them with. The driving door was swinging ajar and the back seat looked like a field of war and if it was not Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer, that redoubtable pair would certainly not have been ashamed of the job. Shocked and dazed, but nevertheless deeply thankful at least to have escaped contact and infection, the two of them left the deadly, contaminated vehicle where it stood and set out to walk the four miles to Keswick through the snow.

Five minutes later Snitter reappeared, followed by the reluctant Rowf, and set to work to finish off the scraps.

“I’m not leaving anything, I tell you!”

“It’s not safe, Snitter! They’ll come back, or another car will stop.”

“I don’t care! I shall have eaten the lot, and nothing can alter that.”

“Come on! Don’t overdo it! There’s a man coming!”

“I’ll sing him a song!

Nevertheless when, a minute later, the police Jaguar drew up to see why an empty car, with headlights on and driving door wide open, was parked on the hard shoulder, the only canine traces were two lines of paw-marks disappearing into the mirk.

The telephone rang. Digby Driver picked it up.

“Driver Orator.”

“Is that Mr. Digby Driver himself speaking?”

“It is indeed. Who might I—”

“Mr. Driver, you don’t know me, but my name’s Westcott, Geoffrey Westcott, and I believe I’ve got something of considerable interest both to tell and to show you. My landlady and I were attacked and robbed this morning by your Plague Dogs. They drove us off and then ransacked my car.”

“Christ Almighty! Where?”

“It was during a snowstorm, near Smaithwaite Bridge, a little north of Thirlmere. We’d stopped the car and got out for a minute, when the dogs just appeared and fell on it.”

“But you say ransacked and robbed? What of, for God’s sake?”

“All my landlady’s shopping, out of the back of the car. Everything that was edible, that is. They ate the lot.”

“You’re sure it was the Plague Dogs?”

“I’m as good as certain, Mr. Driver. But more than that, I’ve got several photographs of them, taken from about twenty-five to thirty yards’ distance. Would you be interested in acquiring those for your paper?”

“I’d like to meet you right away. Where are you?”

Mr. Westcott gave an address in Windermere.

“I’m on my way,” said Digby Driver, and slammed down the receiver.

Vaguely aware of the two glimmering squares of the casements opposite and of the wash-basin between and below them—its waste-pipe an elephant’s grey trunk curving downward into the floor—Mr. Powell staggered on through the snow, shivering with fever and tormented with a sick headache that never left him. Sometimes he clutched a drift of cotton snow about him for warmth. Anon, he flung it aside as he clambered, sweating with the effort, out of the piled heap of snow into which he had fallen and become engulfed to the neck.

He was at Stalingrad, lost, out of touch with his unit and as a last hope making his way back to 6th Army headquarters. The enemy were shaggy, black dogs, armed with casks of hot whisky slung round their necks, the terrible effect of which was to intensify headache and induce nausea and vomiting. They could be seen everywhere—dark shapes scudding down from the bitter hills to cut communications on the roads, or skulking in the balance-cupboards behind isolated cylinders, to ambush any fugitive who might try to seek shelter. All organized resistance had broken down and the stragglers were wandering to the rear in desperate search of relief. But there was no relief for Mr. Powell.

“The tanks!” muttered Mr. Powell, tossing from side to side. “Too many tanks—too many dogs in tanks!”

As he spoke he came in sight at last of headquarters, a huge, grey ruin standing alone in an expanse of white snow. He floundered towards it, scratching, through his sweat-sodden pyjamas, at his unwashed, itching body, and as he came closer saw that it was, or had once been, a cathedral. Struggling, he turned the heavy, iron ring of the door and stumbled inside.

At first he could perceive nothing, but then, raising his eyes to the source of the dim light, he saw, with a sense of recognition and relief, the rabbits—row upon row of them—gazing gravely down from the hammer beams and the lamp-lit reredos. Even here it was very cold and throughout the building there was not a sound save that of his own coughing, which echoed in the nave.

“Help me!” cried Mr. Powell to the ranks of silent heads.

They gave no sign of having heard him and he fell on his knees.

“Help me! I’m ill! Can’t you see me?”

“We can’t see you,” said a rabbit. “We can’t see anyone. We’re drafting a personal letter to the Secretary of State.”

“I’ve brought you some tea,” said a dog with a slung tommy gun, entering the nave from behind him. “How are you feeling?”

Mr. Powell sat up, coughed, spat yellow into his handkerchief and looked confusedly round the cold, darkening room.

“Oh, fine. I’ll be all right a bit later, love,” he replied. “Sorry-I had a lousy dream—not too good at all. Must be time to draw the curtains, isn’t it? Tell Stephanie she’s a sweetie, won’t you, and I’ll try to be fit enough to read her some more about Dr. Dolittle tomorrow? I must aim to get back to work by Tuesday, I really must.”