Another Small Kingdom by James Green Read Free Book Online Page A

that idle old French cook and even if she wasn’t deaf he was sure she would be loyal. Darcy may have been a fool to think he could outmanoeuvre me, thought Bentley, but I must be a bigger fool to put myself so easily at the wrong end of Macleod’s pistol. Macleod was pointing the pistol and waiting. On the other hand, thought Bentley, if Macleod was going to kill me I would be dead already. He was sure Macleod wouldn’t have had any scruple about shooting him in the back. He called out.
    â€˜What now?’
    â€˜Put the box somewhere, on your shoulder or on your head.’ Macleod smiled. Bentley thought it a nasty smile. ‘Why not hold it between your legs, just under your crotch?’ The smile widened to a grin, ‘Anywhere you feel comfortable.’
    This is a damn fine time to find out that the bastard has a sense of humour, thought Bentley, and placed the box carefully on his left shoulder leaning slightly over to his right so that it balanced. It wasn’t an easy thing to do under the circumstances. And if Macleod isn’t still the shot he was in the army it wasn’t supposed to be me who would suffer any consequences.
    Bentley looked back down the gallery and called out. ‘I hope you haven’t lost …’
    But the sound of the pistol firing exploded through the cellar and pounded into Bentley’s ears. The box was gone and he could see Macleod’s mouth moving but, whatever he was saying, Bentley could only hear a loud ringing inside his head. He saw the lawyer removing two small pieces of wadding from his ears. Then Macleod pointed with the pistol at something behind Bentley on the floor. Bentley turned and looked down. On the floor behind him at the bottom of the cellar wall was the box. There was a neat hole in it, almost in the middle. He couldn’t hear himself as he said, ‘Damn and blast the Scottish bastard, that surely was some shot.’ As he walked back down the gallery the ringing began to subside and by the time he was at the table where the lawyer was cleaning his pistol his hearing had almost returned to normal.
    â€˜I guess you could call it a hobby. I pistol shoot targets down here.’ Macleod looked around the cellar. ‘Sometimes I buy a caged bird and let it out to see if I can hit it on the wing. It’s something to pass the time.’ Macleod took his dressing gown off its hook and put it on. ‘Now, shall we go back to the library and you can tell me what all this is about?’
    Bentley nodded and waited while Macleod snuffed out the lights, picked up his lamp and left the shooting gallery.
    Bentley followed well pleased with the evening. Yes, he would tell Macleod. He would tell him just enough to get the job done, but he certainly wouldn’t tell him what this was all about.

Chapter Seven
    M acleod once more sat alone in the library with the blanket back round his legs but the night-cap ignored on the floor and the footstool still where he had kicked it. He was looking blindly into the empty fireplace thinking of what Bentley had told him, trying to make some sense of it. Amélie came in, went to the table and picked up the empty decanter. She turned to leave. Macleod stopped her.
    â€˜No more tonight.’ He wanted another decanter very much, but he also wanted a head clear enough to think about what Bentley had told him. Unfortunately he knew he couldn’t have both. Amélie shrugged. She was well used to his late-night drinking. Lawyer Macleod hadn’t gone to bed stone cold sober above a dozen times since his return to Boston at the end of the war. ‘Did you hear me and M’sieur Bentley shooting in the gallery, Amélie?’
    â€˜I never hear anything. Perhaps I am deaf.’
    Macleod smiled as Amélie left, then drank the whisky that was still in the glass.
    To the world at large Lawyer Macleod must have seemed the embodiment of temperance. He had never been known to