The Crime and the Criminal Part 34

"There's been a slight frost, sir, but I think it's going to be a clear day."

From where I lay in bed the sky looked cloudless.

"It seems just the morning for a shoot."

"I think it is a shooting day, sir--there's no wind, and a good light."

As Burton said, it was a shooting day. When I had dressed I went straight down on to the terrace. There was a slight nip in the air, and the faintest whisper of a breeze. It was the sort of day which makes one feel that it is good to be alive. I seemed to be the first one down. I never felt more fit. I stood there drinking in great draughts of the clear, cool air, with greater relish than I ever drank champagne. If one always lived in such an atmosphere, with plenty of money in one's pockets, one could afford to be a model of all the virtues.

Some one spoke to me from behind. It was Dora.

"You are the first on the scene."

I turned. She was standing at the open window of the morning-room.

"Am I the first to whom you have wished good morning?"

"The very first. Good morning, Mr. Townsend."

She held out to me her hand. I retained it in mine. A wild impulse seized me to kiss her on the lips. It was all I could do to hold my own against it. Her eyes were so provoking, her mouth so tempting. She allowed me to keep her hand in mine, though she might surely have seen my desire showing through my face. And I have no doubt she did, for she smiled at me.

"Well--good luck."

"I will keep my promise."

I released her hand. A gleam of colour was glowing on her cheeks. I doubted if she was not making fun of me.

"After all, papa cannot come. He wishes you to shoot without him. He says that he will certainly be down tonight."

We shot without him. I do not think that he was missed. I had never seen Sir Haselton Jardine handling a gun, but I should not fancy that he was much of a performer. He did not strike one as being built that way.

I spoke to Innes as we were strolling to cover.

"Innes, I'm feeling in first-rate shooting trim to-day. I don't pretend, for a moment, to compare my shooting to yours, but would you like to have a sporting wager?"

"How?"

One peculiarity of Innes's is that he never uses two syllables where one will do.

"Bet you a pony that I kill more birds than you."

"Birds? or all in?"

"All in if you like."

"Done."

That decided it. I had not expected that he would bet. I had a sort of suspicion that he rather avoided making bets with me, but now that he had bet, if I did not win his pony and keep my promise, luck would have to be against me with a vengeance.

There were seven guns--the house lot, and a local. Innes, Archie, I, and the local had the best places. The local was a man named Purrier.

He seemed to be something in the gentleman farmer sort of line. He could shoot, though he was a pot hunter if ever there was one. Sport did not seem so much to his taste as killing. He potted ever so many of his birds before they had a chance of getting up. Archie shot wildly.

He evidently had not taken my advice and gone to bed when I did. When he is in form his gun can be relied upon. At his performances on that occasion, I saw Vicary, the head-keeper, more than once pulling a face.

Innes, as usual, performed like a book. And his luck was better than mine. The birds would rise his side. I never missed a chance. Yet, by lunch-time, he was nineteen pheasants, two rabbits, and a hare to the good--twenty-one in all.

I was a bit surprised to find that luncheon was done in swagger fas.h.i.+on. It was the first time I had shot at Jardine's. I had not been aware that they did things in quite such style. There was a portable kitchen, and a tent, and a regular table, and a lot of servants, and there were the ladies there. One doesn't care, if one is at all keen, for lunch being made a feature, when one is shooting. But I did not object so much just then. Dora's face was welcome, though I had such a pitiful tale to tell. We sat down anyhow. I planted myself beside her.

"I haven't kept my promise."

"Pray, how is that?"

"The stars in their courses have fought against me. The enemy is twenty-one ahead."

"That is nothing. You will keep your promise before you have finished.

I know you will."

How she knew is more than I can say. She knew better than I did. And she knew quite right. I kept my promise. After lunch, I made up for all my ill-luck of the morning. Her words may have had something to do with it--and the tone in which the words were uttered. I believe they had.

Anyhow, I wound up by beating my friend, the enemy, with more than two score birds in hand.

The local made all the running at the start. He shot like a keeper, for the larder, or like a dealer, for the shop, gra.s.sing bird after bird before it had a fair chance to stretch its wings. Some of the birds seemed a trifle tame; they were either weak on the wing or else they had been overfed. They would not rise until they were compelled. Some of them had to be driven right on to our guns before they would get up.

This was nuts for the local. When he had a chance to stop them they never got up at all.

I began catching Innes all along. But it was in the last cover the trick was done. The bag for the day was close upon two thousand. Of these over seven hundred were winged in that last cover. Vicary had kept his _bonne bouche_ for the finish.

When we reached it Innes and I were about equal. When the slaughter began he did all he knew. But I did better. I brought them down as fast as I could get the guns; and I fancy that my guns were loaded quicker than his. While it lasted it was as hot a bit as one could wish.

When it was over Innes came to me.

"You win."

"I think I do. What do you make your total?"

He told me. I told him that I made mine forty-seven more.

"I did not know that you were quite so many as that. But I knew that you were in front. The birds have broken on your gun in a crowd."

I owned that was so.

"I know that the luck has been mine. Of course, as a shot I am not to be compared to you. It was like my cheek to back myself. But, somehow, I seemed to know, in advance, that I should have the luck."

"It has not, by any means, been all luck. You're a good shot, Mr.

Townsend."

Archie came slouching up. He had lost his temper--as he was wont to do when he had been making an a.s.s of himself.

"Did you ever see anything like my shooting? I can't hit a haystack."

He was looking at Vicary, but whether he was speaking to him is more than I can say. Vicary chose to think that he was. Evidently Jardine's head man knew his business--he had given us a first-rate day. But he was one of those keepers who like to see their birds shot. When they were missed, and the princ.i.p.al offender gave him such a chance as that, he was not likely to let it pa.s.s him.