The Plague Dogs (30 page)

"Oh, I don't doubt for a moment that they had green collars," answered Mr. Powell rather hurriedly. "What we don't know, though, is whether these particular dogs are the ones that have been killing the sheep or whether either of them had anything to do with the fatal accident. Probably those are things we never shall know."

There was a rather awkward pause. Everyone seemed to be expecting him to say something more. "We need to get hold of the dogs first, that's what I mean," he added. "Then we may learn whose they are, mayn't we, and where they come from?"

"Oh—I thought perhaps the research station would know whether they had any dogs missing,"

said Vera, putting the obvious question in the politest possible way, "and what they looked like. The other dog now—the one you didn't see—that was altogether different to look at. It was a big, kind of a rough—" To the sharp eye and experienced journalistic sense of Digby Driver, it was plain that Mr.

Powell, young, honest, ingenuous and a trifle callow, was about to find himself in deep water—if indeed he were not already there. Obviously, the thing to do was to come to his aid: there would be nothing like so much to be gained by pressing awkward questions on him or adding to his confusion.

"Oh, that reminds me," he said, smiling at Vera. "Sorry—not changing the subject or anything, but it was what you were saying about the one we didn't see. There's been a most peculiar noise coming from the engine of my car, but I can't actually see anything at all. I'm usually rather good at seeing noises, too, and hearing smells and all that. I wonder—" he turned to Mr. Powell. "Would you be good enough, seeing you're here, to put an ear under the bonnet and tell me what you think? I'm sure you know a lot more about these things than I do."

As he had expected, Mr. Powell was not backward in seizing the floating spar. "Yeah—well, sure, if I can," he said. "I can't claim to be an internal combustion expert, but—"

"I bet you're more of an expert than I am," replied Mr. Driver cordially, as he led the way across to the Triumph Toledo standing by the pumps. He propped open the bonnet and started the engine.

"Damn nuisance for you, all these people asking questions," he went on, revving the engine with one hand to make the interior a still more fine and private place. They both leaned inward, heads close together. "I suppose you want to say as little as you can, don't you; and hope the bloody dogs'll go up in smoke one dark night? That's what I'd want, I know that."

"Well, you've about said it," answered Mr. Powell, his spirits already rising in response to the stranger's quick understanding and ready sympathy. "I mean, you know, if one's got to spend half a day going out in a police car about three times a week, every time someone gets a sight of a stray dog anywhere in the Lake District—"

"These provincial police are so damned unimaginative," said Digby Driver. "Anyway, why should you have to Stand in a white sheet even before anybody's proved that. this dog—or these dogs, if there are two of the buggers—i didn't know there were—come from your place? I mean, it’s like asking a bloke whether or not he's screwed Mary Irown because she's looking for someone to pin an affiliation order on to—why the hell should anyone expect him answer up and put himself in the dock?"

Mr. Powell laughed; and gave every evidence of appreciating this witty, young-man-of-the-world approach.

'Well, whatever it may have been, the bloody thing seems to have stopped doing it now," said Mr. Driver, jerking his thumb at the engine. "It would, of course, when the expert comes along. Look, I say, are you going back to Coniston now? Only I'm going that way, and unless you particularly want to go back with your policeman chum, you'd be doing me a good turn if you'd let me give you a lift. Then you could hear the noise if it develops again."

"But are you sure I'd not be taking you out of your way?" asked Mr. Powell. Ten minutes later, munching Phyllis's Kendal Mint Cake (as eaten by Biliary and Tensing on the summit of Everest), Mr.

Driver and his passenger passed within a few yards of the vigilant tod crouched among the hazels and continued on their way towards Ulpha and Broughton.

"I don't know why the hell they can't say straight out whether they've lost any dogs or not," said Gerald Gray, landlord of the Manor at Broughton-in-Furness, as he drew a pint for Mr. Hutchinson the butcher (known locally as Mistroochinson) and a half for himself. "What gets me down is all this damned ca' canny stuff. Everyone knows there's a dog up at Seathwaite killing sheep and everyone's virtually certain it's escaped from Lawson Park; but the station themselves won't even say yea or nay.

Well, why the hell won't they?"

"Ay, well, ye've about said it theer, Gerry," replied Mistroochinson. At this relatively early hour there was no one else in that finest of all pubs, the Manor Hotel at Broughton. The banded slate floor lay cool, dark and smooth as a woodland pool in autumn. The newly lit fire was burning up in the beautiful, eighteenth-century fireplace and Strafford, Gerald's black tom-cat, sat purring on the rag rug, as well he might.

"They're bein' what ye might call circumspect," added Mistroochinson sagaciously. "Not sayin'

nowt until they've got to, like."

"Well, they'll damned well have to soon, I should think," answered Gerald. "Another sheep or two and the local peasantry'll be storming the gates of the station with fefire and sword. Heads will roll and bells will toll. Balls fall," he added, after a moment. "Ay, well, but everyone's worried about joost his oan sheep, Gerry, tha knaws, and noan s' mooch about any-woon else's," said Mistroochinson.

"They say—"

"Well, talk of the devil," interrupted Gerald, looking out of the window into the pretty, quiet little square that forms I the centre of Broughton. "Here's one of those very re-f search buggers coming in now, unless I'm much mistaken. That's young Stephen Powell, who works up at Lawson. Wonder what he's doing here so early in the morning?" It had not been particularly hard for Digby Driver to,-.

persuade Mr. Powell to stop off for a quick one in Brough-gton before returning to duty. A moment later he entered -_ the bar with his companion, wished Gerald good morning and ordered two pints of bitter.

"Pints at this time of day?" demurred Mr. Powell, albeit a trifle half-heartedly.

"Oh, sorry," replied Mr. Driver civilly. "Never mind, they're here now and they won't do us any harm, I'm sure. "

"O.K., but then I really must hurry back to those blinking rabbits," said Mr. Powell. "Well, here's mud in your. eye!"

"Cheers!" responded Mr. Driver. I "Morning, Gerald," said Mr. Powell, perhaps a shade. more tardily than courtesy to a landlord requires, as he paused for breath between his first and second pull. "How's the world treating you?"

"Oh, mustn't grumble," answered Gerald. "And yourself?"

"Fine, thanks."

"And how's Stephanie?" asked Gerald, this time with more than a touch of genuine solicitude in his voice.

"She's—well, she's about the same, you know," replied Powell.

His noticeable, if controlled, clouding of ler did not escape Digby Driver. A sick child? he wondered. An invalid sister-in-law? An expert in observation and exploiting personal grief and suffering, he stored little incident away for future use. ''You were just telling me that the dogs went from room to room through the animal block, but nobody knows how they finally succeeded in escaping?" he asked.

"Well, I'm blest if I know how they did," answered Mr. Powell, "unless they dissolved themselves in smoke and blew away up the chimney. But to tell you the truth, I don't really want to spend any more of this pleasant morning talking about the sods. They've made enough trouble for me already."

"What a damn shame!" said Digby Driver. "Why the hell should you be blamed? It's like the old lady a»d the parrot in the public lavatory—d'you know that one?"

Nobody knew it, and Mr. Driver obligingly related it to an appreciative audience. It reminded Gerald of one about two miners and a cow, which assisted Mr. Powell to the conclusion that, since nobody at Lawson Park could possibly tell how long he might need to investigate the Dunnerdale dogs and return, it would be a pity to hurry away. He set up three more pints, including one for Mistroochinson; and then insisted on buying a fourth, for Gerald. Nobody ever wants to leave the bar of the Manor.

The sense of loss and desolation lay over Snitter's awareness like hill-mist.

Rising, here and there, out of this separating mirk, he could discern three or four peaks of certain knowledge, as that his master was dead, that he himself was mad, that men had destroyed the natural world and substituted a wilderness and that although he had now lost again the head which he had briefly found, he still carried in himself the involuntary power to deal death. But from what viewpoint he was regarding these; what the mist-covered land connecting them looked like; their relationship to each other beneath the miasma of confusion and ignorance from which they protruded—

in short, where he was—these things remained dark to him. He lay still among the bare hazel branches and leafless elder, but from time to time raised his head to the sky with a howl, cut short as often as Rowf turned upon him, cursing.

"You can't expect any sense," said Snitter petulantly, "from a dog that's just been dragged outside his own head. If only you'd left me where I was!"

"Ye'd nivver be here noo, ye'd be in th' Dark, hinny, ne bother. Them cheps wudda gi'n ye ne chance at aall. Noo bide easy, an' sort yerseF oot." The tod turned to Rowf. "We got te get th' wee fella back hyem afore neet. He's bad i' th' heed aall reet, ne doot."

"But we'll be seen for sure at this time of day. Isn't that what you've been teaching me all this time? We'll have to wait till dark."

"An' hoo ye gan te keep his gob shut, marrer?" enquired the tod sardonically. "He'll be yammerin' his heed off, an' fetchin' aall th' farmers fer five miles roond. It's howway wi' us te Broon Haw, an' sharp as w' can shift an' aall."

"In broad daylight?" asked Rowf again.: "Ah shud say so—unless yer gan te leave him here. We got to get him undergroond an' well in-bye an' aall, where nebody'll hear him. Howway noo! He'll manage sure eneuf."

"But the river?"

"Nowt else for't but swimmin'. There's ne bridge atween Ulpha an' yon noose we wor at."

They swam the Duddon under High Kiln Bank, Rowf setting his teeth to the horrible business and sweeping down twenty yards with the swift, bitter current before his paws gripped stones and pulled him out on the further side. They thought themselves unseen, but they were mistaken. Bob Taylor, the most skilful fisherman in the valley, working his way with a wet fly up the reach between Ulpha Church and Hall Dunnerdale Bridge after the running sea trout, caught sight, a hundred and fifty yards upstream, of Snitter's black-and-white back as he plunged across behind the tod. A minute afterwards, Bob hooked a three-quarter pounder and thought no more about what he had seen; but it was to recur to him later.

“But, Stephen, old boy, surely the dogs weren't in any "

"physical condition to kill sheep and give rise to all this ler?" asked Digby Driver, gripping the handrail and king back at Mr. Powell over his shoulder as they pussyfooted their way down the breakneck flight of steps at leads into the yard behind the Manor, on their way the netry, Gents or loo.

Ulpha Church

"Well, I don't know so much about that," replied Mr. Powell. "One of them was an absolute bastard of a dog—mind you, it'd had enough to make it, poor sod—but there was nobody cared to touch it, not even old Tyson—"

"Tyson? He's the man about the place?"

"Yeah—feeds them, cleans them out an' all that. I always say he knows more about the work at Lawson Park than anyone else. He deals with all the animals, you see, and it's his business to know what each one's being used for and by whom. The rest of us, except for the Director, only knows about the projects we're doing ourselves. No, but that seven-three-two, it really was a dangerous animal —it was always muzzled before it was brought out for tests—"

"What were the tests?" asked Driver. "Well, they were something like the tests carried out by Curt Richter at the Johns Hopkins medical school in America—what's his thing called?—The Phenomenon of Sudden Death in Animals and Man.' D'you know that?" Like a good many young people immersed in specialised work, Mr. Powell tended to forget that others were likely to be unfamiliar with his background material. " Traid I don't—not up my street really." They came back into the yard and Mr. Powell, hands in pockets, stopped and leaned against the netty wall. "Well, Richter put wild rats and domesticated rats into tanks of water to swim until they drowned; and he found that some of them died very rapidly for no apparent reason. A bloke called Cannon had already suggested that it might be psychogenic—you know, fear, with consequent over-stimulation of the sympathicoadrenal system; accelerated heartbeat, contraction in systole—all that jazz. What Richter established was that it wasn't fear but hopelessness—overstimulation of the parasympathetic system, the sympathicoadrenal. This seven-three-two dog of lours at Lawson Park had been given all sorts of drugs—you know, atropine and the colingerics, and adrenalectomy and thyroidectomy—you name it.

But the real thing was that it had been continually immersed, drowned and Revived, so that it had built up a terrific resistance, based on the conditioned expectation that it was going to be removed again. It didn't succumb to the usual psychogenic factors; on the contrary, it was doing fantastic endurance times, very very interesting. They're funny things, you know, hope and confidence," said Mr. Powell rather conscientiously. "For instance, they're present a good deal less [gly] in dogs that haven't been domesticated. Wild lals, and therefore by inference primitive men—[creatures] living in precarious situations—are more susceptible fear and strain than domesticated animals. Strange, isn't it?"

"What about the other dog that escaped?" asked Digby "Well, that wasn't mine—not involved in any of my programmes: I don't touch surgery—probably shan't until I'm established—but if we hadn't had evidence to the contrary this morning I'd have thought that that dog was unlikely to be alive, let alone to be killing sheep. -It had what you might call a pretty drastic brain operation, to say the least."