Cargo of Eagles

Cargo of Eagles Read Free

Book: Cargo of Eagles Read Free
Author: Margery Allingham
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habit, because of its memories and strode on, his heavy chin thrust out, his shoulders sagging and his eyes down. There was defeat written all over him. As he turned and his face was hidden, Mr Campion raised the glass to the new skyscraper beside the old hotel. Of the nest of windows on the ninth and tenth floors, two had curtains looped back by cautious hands. They dropped into place as the solitary figure advanced.
    Old ladies with silver knives? More accurately dry grey serpents with shiny duct-fed teeth. The thin man shivered and returned the little telescope to its locker.
    â€˜How soon can you get back to Saltey?’ he enquired.
    â€˜You’ve made up your mind already? Wonderful. I thought you’d have to have a conference or something. I can go down there today, as a matter of fact. Am I still to be investigating the great Saltey Demon? I’m afraid that’s going to turn out to be a dead loss, by the way.’
    â€˜I thought it might. What is it? A rustic joke?’
    â€˜Sort of. The lady at the pub has been casting round for something to attract visitors ever since she took over the place. She had a yen for one of those God-awful wishing-wells you find all over the West Country. You know the sort of thing. Fling your dime into the water and the local pixies will reward you with a lucky pebble and a picture postcard of the waterfront. She kept worrying to know if Saltey had such a sprite and eventually someone—her husband perhaps, for he’s a local—came forward with this unlikely devil. They tell the tale on Friday nights in walnut time when the moon is full. Or something like that.’
    Mr Campion laughed.
    â€˜She must have sold the idea to the local papers because the nationals picked it up a year or two back. I read it somewhere. A coloured Sunday, I think.’
    â€˜You told me. Anyway, the legend provides me with a fairly reasonable excuse for hanging round. At the moment I’m the poor young Yankee professor, good for a free pint and folksy tale any day.’
    â€˜And no one new has arrived in the village in the past year or so?’
    â€˜Only the pub people, or rather the woman. A couple called Wishart. Her name is Dixie and she’s not exactly an intellectual but she means well and she’s a worker. Her husband is not. He’s a man of culture in his odd way—quite a different background, anyhow, I’d say. I think he lived around thoseparts as a boy. He writes poetry and gets it published or used to.’
    â€˜Not H. O. Wishart?’
    â€˜That’s the man. He’s about sixty-five now and not the best of value, but he’s in the anthologies. She keeps a Georgian Poetry under the bar counter and trots it out on the least provocation.’
    â€˜
Beware of me: I cast no shadow when I pass
,’ quoted Mr Campion. ‘That’s the chap, isn’t it? A genuine minor poet and a white hope at one time. I didn’t know he was at the inn. Did you say it was called “The Demon”?’
    â€˜That’s very recent. Dixie got the brewers to change it. Partly because the other pub is called The Angel, and partly on account of the old joke about the Demon. It used to be called “The Foliage”, which she was mistaken enough to think dull.’
    Morty met the other man’s raised eyebrows and laughed. ‘I know. It can only be a contraction of “The Foliate Man”, can’t it? I tell you the place is full of good things. Add that to the Fertility Venus and one or two other items and the shenanigans the wilder teenage gangs get up to along the sea wall don’t seem half as modern as they might.’
    â€˜Tearaways? You get them down there?’ The thin man looked interested but Morty shrugged.
    â€˜They’re everywhere. They don’t stay. They just swoop down on motor bikes—ton-up types. They tear off their space-man rig-outs and jump in the sea. Then they eat the shop

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