“I went to Watters,” he continued, speaking very carefully, “to see about this hotpot supper. I went to tell Mr. Shaw I reckoned he’d better put it off.”
“Put it off?” Lanty’s eyebrows went up again. “What on earth for? Measles or something broken out at the ‘Duke’? He must have thought you had a pretty fair cheek! What did he say?”
“Say?” Brack raised himself in the car, shaking suddenly with distorting rage. “He heard me right out without bucking in once—all I’ve told you from the start, and a bit more—and then he said what the whole durned crowd of them say, every bright boy among ’em, but what I reckon they’ll soon be shutting their mouths on for ever and ever, Amen—he said, ‘I’ll ask Mr. Lancaster!’ That’s the ticket—always has been. ‘I’ll ask Mr. Lancaster. What a Lancaster says, goes!’”
His hand fell accidentally on the Prayer-book, and he quietened. The bell had ceased ringing up on the hill. Lanty regarded him gravely.
“I know what you believe, Brack—it didn’t take long to guess who sent that chapter out of the Bible—but you can hardly expect us to believe it, too, just on your word. You’ll admit it’s a queer story. And what’s it got to do with the hotpot?”
Brack fiddled with the wheel, suddenly embarrassed and distressed, his personal animosity fading before the pressure of his inexplicable fear. His tale had run fluently enough to Hamer, a listener from without. Before the agent’s steady contempt it fell to pieces.
“Dead woolly things!” he muttered, incoherent and unintelligible; and other words completely lost. And then again: “Wet little woolly things! Dead!”
Lanty might be forgiven for thinking that his sudden religious mania had been backed by the “Duke’s” ale. He touched up his horse, but Brack put out a hand.
“I’ve just been slinging a word over the wire!” he said queerly.
“Really?” Lancaster was wearying to get away. “To the Clerk of the Weather, I presume?”