British Murder Mysteries: J. S. Fletcher Edition (40+ Titles in One Volume). J. S. Fletcher

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СКАЧАТЬ which lay at the side of the farmstead. And, as the foreman had remarked in the hollow, there were in that stackyard five-and-forty stacks of wheat and barley and oats, the yield of the recent harvest. Taffendale, a wealthy man, had no need to thrash his corn, as most farmers did—almost as soon as it was got from the land. He could afford to keep it, and keep it for months he always did. No thrashing machine had entered his yard that autumn, nor would enter; there stood the forty-five stacks, stoutly thatched and neatly trimmed, not to be touched before the end of the next spring. And now the sparks were flying that way; as Taffendale and the foreman gazed anxiously into the blackness above them, they saw a scurrying lump of red fall on the roof of the pigeon-cote and continue to glow fiercely and to shoot out tiny sparks of flame over the surrounding tiles.

      Taffendale snapped out one fierce exclamation and leaped from the horseblock. He snatched a stick from one of his own farm lads, and waved his arm to his men.

      "Out with that fire!" he shouted, above the roar of the flames and the strident voice of the nominy caller. "Quick, men! Out with it! Lay on!"

      The lime-burners leaped on the crowd with a fury that sent its members flying as sparrows fly before the sudden onset of a hawk. Up rose the cudgels and down they fell, on heads, arms, shoulders, and on the burning figures and the red mass of straw and wood beneath. But the beating in of the fire only sent a fresh shower of sparks whirling and eddying into the sky, to be seized and carried onward by the wind, and suddenly, high above the yells and oaths of the men and the screeching of the women, they heard the voice of Tibby Graddige screaming from an upper window of the house.

      "The stackgarth's on fire! The stackgarth's on fire!"

      Taffendale slashed the leader of the mob heavily across the face with his cudgel, saw him sink down into the bonfire like a dead man, and calling on the lime-burners and his farm hands, ran like one demented round the garden and the outbuildings to the stack-yard. And as he turned the last corner he groaned and sobbed from very despair and helplessness because of the sight that met him. Three of the closely ranged stacks were well alight, and blazing furiously, and the wind was carrying the fire amongst the others in wide, curling sheets of flame.

      For a moment Taffendale halted, staring at the fierce, never-ceasing onslaught of the terrible force which was tearing its way through his safely-garnered produce. Already the flame was licking a hundred new paths from stack to stack; as the men hastened up, it hastened before them; as they beat it out in one place it burst out anew in another. Before his very eyes the side of a great wheatstack caught and harboured a spark, was transformed into a sheet of glowing red, and sent up a circling pillar of smoke, through which the fire flashed like a live thing. He stood dazed, trembling, utterly bewildered. He saw one of his lads dash out of the stable-yard on his own horse, and go careering madly over the meadows, leaping hedge and ditch as they came, and he knew that he was riding to call the firemen from the market-town, five long miles off. He saw the lime-burners and the farm hands tear down branches of trees wherewith to beat out the spreading flames; he saw the flames set fire to the branches and go on eating their way to the hearts of the stacks. He saw the foreman and others dragging tarpaulins over the sides of the stacks which the fire had not yet reached; the fire swept on and set the tarpaulins alight, and more volumes of black and oily smoke rolled away to mingle with the flames. He saw the men driven back, driven away, until at last, smoke-grimed and singed and sullen they stood gathered about him, silently watching the great glowing mass of straw and grain, worth many a thousand pounds, mould itself into a mighty furnace, the glow of which was spread widely over the sky and was seen for miles upon miles by many a wondering town and village.

      "That's done for!" said Taffendale at last. "There's naught can save it. Every stack 'll go. No use any fire brigade coming—they can do naught. But there's one good job—the wind's blowing it away from the buildings and the stables. Some of you go and quiet those horses. Let them out into the garth—they're worse than the women!"

      The horses were screaming in the stables, and when the lads released them they rushed out into the homegarth and galloped wildly away across country, to round up at last in a shaking, quivering mass and, closely huddled together, to stare back in wide-eyed affright at the horror which had driven them close to madness. And Taffendale stared, and the men gathered about him stared, and the women, clustering in the farmhouse windows, stared, until in the grey morning the great fire burnt itself out, and where the stacks had stood in their prim neatness and ordered lines, thatched and trimmed and shaven, there was nothing but shapeless heaps of blackened refuse, through which evil tongues of feeble flame darted at every puff of wind.

      And in that grey light Taffendale went back to the road outside the farmstead and looked at the place whereat the evil had originated. There were patches of blood on the yellow of the roadway, showing where the lime-burners' sticks had cracked the villagers' crowns. And across the ruins of the bonfire, still tied together and only partially consumed, lay the straw-stuffed effigies which had represented Rhoda and himself.

Chapter XVIII

       Table of Contents

      Taffendale went back to the house, stripped off his smoke-blackened clothes, and plunged into a cold bath. An hour later, the sun being then well risen above the woods, he walked into the kitchen, spick-and-span, from his well-groomed head to his polished boots, to find the lime-burners and the farm hands busied over the breakfast which he had told his housekeeper to prepare for them. The occasion might have been one of rejoicing rather than of sorrow, for Taffendale had been prodigal in his orders, and the men were feasting royally. They stared open-mouthed at him as he strode up to the top of the long table at which they sat.

      "Now, my lads," he said, "its no use crying over spilt milk. What's done is done, and it can't be helped now. What's more important is what is to be done. I want every sign and vestige of that fire cleared out of my stackyard to-day. Set to work on it as soon as you've had your breakfasts, and go at it with a heart and a half! There'll be drinkings for you morning and afternoon, and there'll be your dinner at one o'clock and your supper at six. Go at it, all of you—lime-burners and all. And when it's done there'll be a sovereign apiece for every man and lad. What I want," he paused as a murmur of gratification rolled round the the table—"what I want is to see my premises cleared of every trace of what happened last night. As for those that caused it to happen—leave them to me."

      Then he strode out of the kitchen followed by voluble promises, and went to the parlour, where Rhoda, cowed and terrified by the events of the night, sat awaiting him. Before she could speak he laid his hand firmly on her shoulder.

      "Now, my girl," he said, with a note of purpose and sternness in his voice which she had never noticed before, "I want you to listen to me. Maybe this has all come about because—well, because we didn't think, because we let our feelings get too much for us. But I'm not the man to be beaten down by what they call public opinion. When I decide to go on with a thing I go on with it against the likes or dislikes of anybody. And—you'll stay in this house."

      Rhoda stared at him with amazed eyes.

      "After—last night?" she faltered.

      "Because of last night," said Taffendale. "Because of last night. I'll let whoever's interested see that I care naught for what anybody says. You're burned out of house and home, and here you'll stay. My housekeeper's also my cousin, and she'll play propriety and act chaperone and all the rest of the damned nonsense. And if anybody says a word, then they'll have to settle with me. Now I'm going to begin my reckoning with those devils in Martinsthorpe, and before I've done with them they shall wish that they'd died before ever their mothers bore them!"

      Without more words Taffendale went away, saddled his horse with his own hands, and set out for the market-town and his solicitor. And so that he might fill his mind full СКАЧАТЬ