Sweet Danger by Margery Allingham Read Free Book Online Page B

no,’ said Mr Bull. ‘No, there’s very little corn. I don’t suppose Miss Amanda mills twenty sacks in a year. She runs a dynamo. Charges up wireless batteries. She told me she could put me up a light outside the house here. Said she’dwrite my name in lights if I liked. Seems funny, and that’s a fact. So it is now.’
    His opponent refrained from pointing out that as apparently the entire population of Pontisbright gathered at the ‘Gauntlett’ already, not much purpose would be served by any such ambitious scheme, but his interest in Miss Amanda Fitton increased.
    â€˜She’s clever for her age,’ was Mr Bull’s next remark, ‘and I’m not trying to deceive you. Even if there was any reason for it I wouldn’t do that. But I reckon she must bring in quite thirty pounds a year, and her only seventeen. Of course they work hard for it, her and Scatty, but they get it.’
    â€˜Seventeen?’ said Mr Campion, who was getting a remarkable mental picture of the two millers of Pontisbright. ‘Does this astonishing young woman live alone at the mill?’
    â€˜No, no. There’s three on ’em. Three Fittons. There’s Miss Mary, the eldest; she’s twenty-three. Then comes Miss Amanda. Then there’s young Mr Hal. He’s only sixteen. He’d be a lord of the land if the law was what it ought to be. He’s a Pontisbright all right. You wait till you see him. Looks like the burning bush coming along; yes, yes, so he does now.’
    Mr Campion had not time to enquire into this startling simile, for the landlord was still talking.
    â€˜They’ve got a foreigner staying with them, a fine upstanding old lady. Miss Huntingforest, her name is. Got knocked down by a burglar yesterday.’ He became thoughtful for a moment and then turned to Campion with the expression of one who has had a vision. ‘Now I
hev
thought of something,’ he said. ‘If you gentlemen want to stay here you’d better get took on at the mill as paying guests. I reckon they’d be glad to have you. Scatty was talking to me about borrowing the paper to see if there was anybody advertising for a place.’
    â€˜That wouldn’t be a bad idea at all,’ said Mr Campion.‘In fact, that’d be a very good idea. But I thought we’d fixed up here?’
    â€˜That’ll be all right,’ said Mr Bull vehemently. ‘Don’t you worry about that. Some people’d complain and make a fuss about being put out, but I wouldn’t. I ain’t and I shan’t. I don’t feel it and I shan’t say it. I’m honest, though I do say it myself.’
    â€˜Quite,’ said Mr Campion foolishly. ‘Quite. You’re not very keen on visitors here at all, are you? I thought it was rather strange when we came in.’
    â€˜Ah,’ said Mr Bull, ‘strange it is, and I shouldn’t be an honest man if I didn’t admit that.’
    They went on playing until long after closing time, legal and actual. Eager-Wright and Guffy retired, and Campion remained with the landlord alone in the big empty taproom. An oil lamp had been lighted, and the uncertain shadows it cast over the table gave the landlord such an advantage over his opponent that it evidently seemed to him a waste of good money to suggest finishing the play.
    Mr Campion remained vague and foolish-looking, but the scared expression which had lingered in his host’s eyes earlier in the evening returned as the shadows deepened, and towards eleven o’clock, while they were still playing, Mrs Bull appeared in the doorway, a coat thrown over her nightgown. Her face was very pale, and when her husband stepped over to speak to her the indolent figure by the table caught a stifled sentence. The words were ordinary, but there was a thrill in the whisper in which they were uttered.
    â€˜It’s out there again!’
    Campion stepped over to the