And Berry Came Too Read Free Page A

my dressing-case.”
    Looking ready to burst—
    “Splendid,” said Berry, shakily. With starting eyes he regarded the dial of his watch. “And now I think I’ll retire. I’m not tired really – I’ve only been on the job for nineteen hours. But as I’ve paid for the room – Oh, and who’s going to ring up Falcon?”
    “What for?” said Jill.
    “What for?” snarled Berry. “Why, to know if the Knave’s come back. I’m not going to get up at five and stagger about half-conscious, looking for a dog that’s sprawling about in his basket, sleeping it off.”
    “I wish I could believe it,” wailed Daphne. “I’d cheerfully get up at four, if—”
    “All right. You do it,” said Berry. “Ring up Falcon at four. If he says—”
    “You can’t do that,” said his wife. “They’ll all be asleep.”
    With an unearthly laugh, Berry lay back in his chair and drummed with his heels upon the floor. Then he leapt to his feet and looked round.
    “Understand this,” he said. “You can all please yourselves, but before I look for a needle in a bottle of hay I’ve got to be credibly informed that the needle is there. And that’s my last word. If anyone rouses me and, having roused me, is unable to assure me that the Knave was not at White Ladies ten minutes ago, I’ll commit an aggravated assault upon his person. I may do it any way. But without that information whoever does it is doomed.”
    With that, he stalked out of the hall just as Jonah came in.
    After a hasty discussion, it was arranged that I should ring up Falcon at half past six and that, failing the news we hoped for, I should arouse the others without delay. Then, without more ado, we went heavily to bed.
    For anxiety we had just cause. At large in the countryside, a stranger in a strange land, a swift Alsatian was in truth a needle in a bottle of hay. Between our home and Cock Feathers lay a very network of roads. And the Knave was unacquainted with traffic. And the roads on a handsome Sunday were sure to be crammed.

    It was eight o’clock of that lovely mid-summer morning before we were on the road.
    The order of our going was dreadful. I had not spoken with Falcon: more dead than alive, I had swayed for ten minutes by the switchboard, listening to the night porter wrangling with the unseen, only to learn that the telephone line to White Ladies was ‘out of order.’ For all we knew, therefore, the Knave had reappeared and was now asleep in his bed. This conception was distracting enough, but Berry’s insistence upon it can be better imagined than described… Between us we had but one map, and our efforts to learn its lessons and then to agree and remember our several casts not only proved explosive but wasted valuable time. Finally it was determined that Jonah and Jill should drive direct to White Ladies by the way by which we had come, whilst Berry and I scoured the district, which, had he set out across country, the Knave might fairly have reached. As for communication, Jonah was to ring up the Granbys at twelve o’clock. The Granbys lived at Dewdrop, perhaps forty miles from Cock Feathers: we knew them well. Over all, the hopelessness of the venture hung like a thundercloud. For all that, there was only one Knave. If action was futile, inaction was not to be borne. The reflection that, if he were doomed, we should, at least, have made what efforts we could, spurred even Berry up to the starting gate.
    It was shortly before ten o’clock that the incident occurred.
    Some thirty-five miles from Cock Feathers, Berry and I were moving in country we did not know, and proving a web of by-roads that sprawled between two highways. I was driving and watching the road itself, while Berry was up on his feet, looking over the quickset hedges and scanning the woods and meadows on either side.
    For the hundredth time—
    “The point is this,” said my brother-in-law. “If I knew that the Knave was in trouble and somebody told me where, I’d run