But independent as she was, she rarely interfered with the talk of Halsey and his male friends. And on this occasion when the three men—Halsey, Peter Betts, and young Dempsey—had gathered smoking round the fire, she settled herself with her knitting by the table and the lamp, throwing in every now and then a muttered and generally sarcastic comment, of which her husband took no notice—especially as he knew very well that the sarcasms were never aimed at him, and that she was as proud of him as she was generally contemptuous of the rest of the world.
Halsey had just finished a rather grudging description of his experiences two days before for John Dempsey's benefit. He was conscious that each time he repeated them, they sounded more incredible. He didn't want to repeat them; he didn't mean to repeat them; after this, nobody should get any more out of him at all.
Young Dempsey's attitude was certainly not encouraging. Attentive at first, he allowed himself, as Halsey's talk developed, a mild, progressive grin, which spread gradually over his ugly but honest face, and remained there. In face of it, Halsey's speech became more and more laconic, till at last he shut his mouth with a snap, and drawing himself up in his chair, re-lit his pipe with the expression that meant, "All right—I've done—you may take it or leave it."
"Well, I don't see that what you saw, Mr. Halsey, was so very uncommon!"
Dempsey began, still smiling, in spite of a warning look from Betts.
"You saw a man come down that road? Well, in the first place, why
shouldn't a man come down that road—it's a reg'lar right of way—"
"It's the way, mind ye, as the ghost of old Watson has allus come!" put in Peter Betts, chivalrously anxious to support his friend Halsey, as far as he could, against a sceptical stranger. "An' it's been seen twice on that road already, as I can remember: once when I was a little boy, by old Dan Holt, the postmaster, and once about ten years ago."
Dempsey looked at the speaker indulgently. To his sharpened transatlantic sense, these old men, in this funny old village, seemed to him a curiously dim and feeble folk. He could hardly prevent himself from talking to them as though they were children. He supposed his grandfather would have been like that if he'd stayed on at Ipscombe. He thanked the stars he hadn't!
But since he had been summoned to consult, as a person who had a vested interest, of a rather blood-curdling sort, in the Great End ghost, he had to give his opinion; and he gave it, while Halsey listened and smoked in a rather sulky silence. For it was soon evident that the murderer's grandson had no use at all for the supposed ghost-story. He tore it ruthlessly to pieces. In the first place, Halsey described the man seen on the grass-road as tall and lanky. But according to his grandfather's account, the murdered gamekeeper, on the contrary, was a broadly-built, stumpy man. In the next place—the coughing and the bleeding!—he laughed so long and loudly at these points in the story that Halsey's still black bushy eyebrows met frowningly over a pair of angry eyes, and Betts tried hurriedly to tame the young man's mirth.
"Well, if yer don't think that man as Halsey saw was the ghost, what do you s'pose 'ee was doin' there?" asked Betts, "and where did he go? Halsey went right round the farm. The hill just there is as bare as my hand. He must ha' seen the man—if it wor a man—an' he saw nothin'. There isn't a tree or a bush where that man could ha' hid hisself—if he wor a man."
Dempsey declared he should have to go and examine the ground himself before he could answer the question. But of course there was an answer to it—there must be. As to the man—why Millsborough, and Ipscombe too, had been full of outlandish East Enders, flying from the raids, Poles and Russians, and such like—thievin' fellows by all accounts. Why couldn't it be one of them—prowling round the farm for anything he could pick up—and frightened off, when he saw Halsey?
Betts, smoking with prodigious energy, inquired what he made of the blood. Didn't he know the old story of how Watson was tracked down to the cart-shed? Dempsey laughed again.