









                        Chapter XXIV

                       Belling the Cat


When they had finished reading, Hazel burst into hysterical
sobs, crying alternately, "Poor grandfather!" and "Will they
hang her for it?"  Master Nathaniel soothed her as best he
could, and, when she had dried her eyes, she said, "Poor
Marjory Beach!  She must have that ham and that buck
rabbit."
   "She's still alive, then?" asked Master Nathaniel
eagerly.  Hazel nodded: "She is poor, and still a maid, and
lives in Swan."
   "And what about Peter Pease, the tinker's smart little
lad?  Is there nothing for *him*, Miss Hazel?" cried the
blacksmith with a twinkle.
   Hazels stared at him in bewilderment, and Master
Nathaniel cried gleefully, "Why, it's the same name, by the
Harvest of Souls!  Were you, then, the little chap who saw
Pugwalker picking the berries?"
   And Hazel said in slow amazement, "*You* were the little
boy who spoke to my grandfather... *that night*?  I never
thought..."
   "That I'd begun so humbly, eh?  Yes, I was the son of a
tinker, or, as they liked to be called, of a whitesmith. 
And now I'm a blacksmith, and as white is better than black
I suppose I've come down in the world."  And he winked
merrily.
   "And you remember the circumstances alluded to by the
late farmer?" asked Master Nathaniel eagerly.
   "That I do, my lord Seneschal.  As well if they had
happened yesterday.  I won't easily forget the farmer's face
that night when I offered him my basketful -- but though the
death-berries are rare enough I found them in those days
commoner to pick up than ha'pence.  And I won't easily
forget Master Pugwalker's face, either, while he was
plucking them.  And little did he know there was a squirrel
watching him with a good Dorimare tongue in his head!"
   "Have you ever seen him since?"
   The blacksmith winked.
   "Come, come!" cried Master Nathaniel impatiently.  "Have
you seen him since?  This is no time for beating about the
bush."
   "Well, perhaps I have," said the blacksmith slowly,
"trotting about Swan, as brisk and as pleased with himself
as a fox with a goose in his mouth.  And I've often wondered
whether it wasn't my duty as law-man to speak out... but, 
after all, it was very long ago, and his life seemed to be
of better value than his death, for he was a wonderfully
clever doctor and did a powerful lot of good."
   "It -- it was Dr. Leer, then?" asked Hazel in a low
voice; and the blacksmith winked.
   "Well, I think we should be getting back to the house,"
said Master Nathaniel, "there's still some business before
us."  And, lowering his voice, he added, "Not very pleasant
business, I fear."
   "I suppose your Honour means belling the cat?" said the
blacksmith, adding with a rueful laugh, "I can't imagine a
nastier job.  She's a cat with claws."
   As the walked up to the house, the labourer whispered to
Hazel, "Please, missy, does it mean that the mistress killed
her husband?  They always say so in the village, but..."
   "Don't, Ben; don't!  I can't bear talking about it,"
cried Hazel with a shudder.  And when they reached the
house, she ran up to her own bedroom and locked herself in.
   Ben was despatched to get a stout coil of rope, and
Master Nathaniel and the blacksmith, whom the recent
excitement had made hungry, began to forage around for
something to eat.
   Suddenly a voice at the door said, "And what, may I ask,
are you looking for in my larder, gentlemen?"
   It was the widow.  First she scrutinized Master Nathaniel
-- a little pale and hollow-eyed, perhaps, but alive and
kicking, for all that.  Then her eyes travelled to Peter
Pease.  At that moment, Ben entered with the rope, and
Master Nathaniel nudged the law-man, who, clearing his
throat, cried in the expressionless falsetto of the Law,
"Clementina Gibberty!  In the name of the country of
Dorimare, and to the end that the dead, the living, and
those not yet born, may rest quietly in their graves, their
bed, and the womb, I arrest you for the murder of your late
husband, Jeremiah Gibberty."
   She turned deadly pale, and, for a few seconds, stood
glaring at him in deadly silence.  Then she gave a scornful
laugh.  "What new joke of yours is this, Peter Pease?  I was
accused of this before, as you know well, and acquitted with
the judge's compliments, and as good as an apology.  Law
business must be very slack in Swan that you've nothing
better to do than to come and frighten a poor woman in her
own house with old spiteful tales that were silenced once
and for all nearly forty years ago.  My late husband died
quietly in his bed, and I only hope you may have as peaceful
an end.  And you must know very little of the law, Peter
Pease, if you don't know that a person can't be tried twice
for the same crime."
   Then Master Nathaniel stepped forward.  "You were tried
before," he said quietly, "for poisoning your husband with
the sap of osiers.  This time it will be for poisoning him
with the berries of merciful death.  To-night the dead have
found their tongues."
   She gave a wild shriek, which reached upstairs to Hazel's
room and caused her to spring into bed and pull the blankets
over her ears, as if it had been a thunderstorm. 
   Master Nathaniel signed to Ben, who, grinning from ear to
ear, as is the way of rustics when witnessing a painful and
embarrassing scene, came up to his mistress with the coil of
rope.  But to bind her, he needed the aid of both the
blacksmith and Master Nathaniel, for, like a veritable wild
cat, she struggled and scratched and bit.
   When her arms were tightly bound, Master Nathaniel said,
"And now I will read you the words of the dead."
   She was, for the time, worn out by her struggles, and her
only answer was an insolent stare, and he produced the
farmer's document and read it through to her.
   "And now," he said, eyeing her curiously, "shall I tell
you who gave me the clue without which I should never have
found that letter?  It was a certain old man, whom I think
you know, by name Portunus."
   Her face turned as pale as death, and in a low voice of
horror she cried, "Long ago I guessed who he was, and feared
that he might prove my undoing."  Then her voice grew shrill
with terror and her eyes became fixed, as if seeing some
hideous vision, "The Silent People!" she screamed.  "The
dumb who speak!  The bound who strike!  I cherished and fed
old Portunus like a tame bird.  But what do the dead know of
kindness?"
   "If old Portunus is he whom you take him to be, I fail to
see that he has much cause for gratitude," said Master
Nathaniel drily.  "Well, he has taken his revenge, on you --
and your accomplice."
   "My accomplice?"
   "Aye, on Endymion Leer."
   "Oh, Leer!"  And she laughed scornfully.  "It was a
greater than Endymion Leer who ordered the death of farmer
Gibberty."
   "Indeed?"
   "Yes.  One who cares not for good and evil, and sows his
commands like grain."
   "Whom do you mean?"
   Again she laughed scornfully.  "Not one whom I would name
to *you*.  But set your mind at rest, he cannot be summoned
in a court of law."
   She gave him a searching look, and said abruptly, "Who
are you?"
   "My name is Nathaniel Chanticleer."
   "I thought as much!" she cried triumphantly.  "I wasn't
sure, but I thought I'd take no risks.  However, you seem to
bear a charmed life."
   "I suppose you are alluding to your kind thought for my
comfort -- putting that nice little death-box in my room to
keep me warm, eh?"
   "Yes, that's it," she answered brazenly.
   Then a look of indescribable malice came into her face,
and, with an evil smile, she said, "You see, you gave
yourself away -- without knowing it -- at dinner."
   "Indeed?  And how, may I ask?"
   At first she did not answer, but eyed him gloatingly as a
cat might eye a mouse.  And then she said slowly, "It was
that pack of lies you told me about the doings of the lads
at Moongrass.  Your son isn't at Moongrass -- nor ever has
been, nor ever will be." 
   "What do you mean?" he cried hoarsely.
   "Mean?" she said with a shrill, triumphant laugh.  "I
mean this -- on the night of the thirty-first of October,
when the Silent People are abroad, he heard Duke Aubrey's
summons, and followed it across the hills."
   "Woman... what...  what... speak... or..." and the veins
in Master Nathaniel's temples were swelling, and a fire
seemed to have been lighted in his brain.
   Her laughter redoubled.  "You'll never see your son
again!" she jeered.  "Young Ranulph Chanticleer has gone to
the land whence none returns."
   Not for a moment did he doubt the truth of her words. 
Before his inward eye there flashed the picture he had seen
in the pattern on the ceiling, just before losing
consciousness -- Ranulph weeping among the fields of
gillyflowers.
   A horror of impotent tenderness swept over him.  While,
with the surface of his mind, he supposed that this was IT
springing out at him at last.  And parallel with the agony,
and in no way mitigating it, was a sense of relief -- the
relaxing of tension, when one can say, "Well, it has come at
last."
   He turned a dull eye on the widow, and said, a little
thickly, "The land from which no one returns... but I can go
there, too."
   "Follow him across the hills?" she cried scornfully. 
"No; you are not made of *that* sort of stuff."
   He beckoned to Peter Pease, and they went out together to
the front of the house.  The cocks were crowing, and there
was a feeling of dawn in the air.
   "I want my horse," he said dully.  "And can you find Miss
Hazel for me?"
   But as he spoke she joined them -- pale and wild-eyed.
   "From my room I heard you coming out," she said.  "Is it
-- is it over?"
   Master Nathaniel nodded.  And then, in a quiet voice
emptied of all emotion, he told her what he had just learned
from the widow.  She went still paler than before, and her
eyes filled with tears.
   Then, turning to Peter Pease, he said, "You will
immediately get out a warrant for the apprehension of
Endymion Leer and sent it into Lud to the new Mayor, Master
Polydore Vigil.  And you, Miss Hazel, you'd better leave
this place at once -- you will have to be plaintiff in the
trial.  Go to your aunt, Mistress Ivy Peppercorn, who keeps
the village shop at Mothgreen.  And remember, you must say
nothing whatever about the part I've played in this business
-- that is essential.  I am not popular at present in Lud. 
And, now, would you kindly order my horse saddled and
brought round."
   There was something so colourless, so dead, in his voice,
that both Hazel and the smith stood, for a few seconds, in
awed and sympathetic silence, and then Hazel went off slowly
to order his horse.
   "You... you didn't mean what you said to the widow, sir,
about... about going... *yonder*?" asked Peter Pease in an
awed voice. 
   Suddenly the fire was rekindled in Master Nathaniel's
eyes, and he cried fiercely, "Aye, yonder, and beyond
yonder, if need be... till I find my son."
   It did not take long for his horse to be saddled and led
to the door.
   "Good-bye, my child," he said to Hazel, taking her hand,
and then he added, with a smile, "You dragged me back last
night from the Milky Way... and now I am going by the
earthly one."
   She and Peter stood watching him, riding along the valley
towards the Debatable Hills, till he and his horse were just
a speck in the distance.
   "Well, well," said Peter Pease, "I warrant it'll be the
first time in the history of Dorimare that a man has loved
his son well enough to follow him *yonder*."
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