The Plague Dogs (34 page)

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 {lord to obtain, you know—apparently there's a world shortage. I wonder why?

Anyway, we shall be needing to these again for something else. What's the score now; pn 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 recognised 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 I 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 naturalised 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 I long time ago. I am not a war criminal."

"You won't be far short of one in the public mind, Dr. Geutner of Munchen, when this gets published. We're gin touch with a man who remembers your visit to Buchen-Itwald 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 Stehrmacht on disease warfare potential? Oh, and Trudi H—-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 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. Goober 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 inarked-out sheep until at last, flinging himself exhausted and cursing on the ground in the moonlit solitude, he

«llowed Snitter to persuade him to give up for the night. is 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 hoar 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