XI
Those three months passed all too quickly; months of sunshine and
warmth, of varied novel exertion in the open air, of congenial
experiences, of interest and wholesome food and successful digestion,
months that browned Mr. Polly and hardened him and saw the beginnings
of his beard, months marred only by one anxiety, an anxiety Mr. Polly
did his utmost to suppress. The day of reckoning was never mentioned,
it is true, by either the plump woman or himself, but the name of
Uncle Jim was written in letters of glaring silence across their
intercourse. As the term of that respite drew to an end his anxiety
increased, until at last it even trenched upon his well-earned sleep.
He had some idea of buying a revolver. At last he compromised upon a
small and very foul and dirty rook rifle which he purchased in Lammam
under a pretext of bird scaring, and loaded carefully and concealed
under his bed from the plump woman's eye.
September passed away, October came.
And at last came that night in October whose happenings it is so
difficult for a sympathetic historian to drag out of their proper
nocturnal indistinctness into the clear, hard light of positive
statement. A novelist should present characters, not vivisect them
publicly....
The best, the kindliest, if not the justest course is surely to leave
untold such things as Mr. Polly would manifestly have preferred
untold.
Mr. Polly had declared that when the cyclist discovered him he was
seeking a weapon that should make a conclusive end to Uncle Jim. That
declaration is placed before the reader without comment.
The gun was certainly in possession of Uncle Jim at that time and no
human being but Mr. Polly knows how he got hold of it.
The cyclist was a literary man named Warspite, who suffered from
insomnia; he had risen and come out of his house near Lammam just
before the dawn, and he discovered Mr. Polly partially concealed in
the ditch by the Potwell churchyard wall. It is an ordinary dry ditch,
full of nettles and overgrown with elder and dogrose, and in no way
suggestive of an arsenal. It is the last place in which you would look
for a gun. And he says that when he dismounted to see why Mr. Polly
was allowing only the latter part of his person to show (and that it
would seem by inadvertency), Mr. Polly merely raised his head and
advised him to "Look out!" and added: "He's let fly at me twice
already." He came out under persuasion and with gestures of extreme
caution. He was wearing a white cotton nightgown of the type that has
now been so extensively superseded by pyjama sleeping suits, and his
legs and feet were bare and much scratched and torn and very muddy.
Mr. Warspite takes that exceptionally lively interest in his
fellow-creatures which constitutes so much of the distinctive and
complex charm of your novelist all the world over, and he at once
involved himself generously in the case. The two men returned at Mr.
Polly's initiative across the churchyard to the Potwell Inn, and came
upon the burst and damaged rook rifle near the new monument to Sir
Samuel _Harpon_ at the corner by the yew.
"That must have been his third go," said Mr. Polly. "It sounded a bit
funny."
The sight inspirited him greatly, and he explained further that he had
fled to the churchyard on account of the cover afforded by tombstones
from the flight of small shot. He expressed anxiety for the fate of
the landlady of the Potwell Inn and her grandchild, and led the way
with enhanced alacrity along the lane to that establishment.
They found the doors of the house standing open, the bar in some
disorder--several bottles of whisky were afterwards found to be
missing--and Blake, the village policeman, rapping patiently at the
open door. He entered with them. The glass in the bar had suffered
severely, and one of the mirrors was starred from a blow from a pewter
pot. The till had been forced and ransacked, and so had the bureau in
the minute room behind the bar. An upper window was opened and the
voice of the landlady became audible making enquiries. They went out
and parleyed with her. She had locked herself upstairs with the little
girl, she said, and refused to descend until she was assured that
neither Uncle Jim nor Mr. Polly's gun were anywhere on the premises.
Mr. Blake and Mr. Warspite proceeded to satisfy themselves with regard
to the former condition, and Mr. Polly went to his room in search of
garments more suited to the brightening dawn. He returned immediately
with a request that Mr. Blake and Mr. Warspite would "just come and
look." They found the apartment in a state of extraordinary confusion,
the bedclothes in a ball in the corner, the drawers all open and
ransacked, the chair broken, the lock of the door forced and broken,
one door panel slightly scorched and perforated by shot, and the
window wide open. None of Mr. Polly's clothes were to be seen, but
some garments which had apparently once formed part of a stoker's
workaday outfit, two brownish yellow halves of a shirt, and an unsound
pair of boots were scattered on the floor. A faint smell of gunpowder
still hung in the air, and two or three books Mr. Polly had recently
acquired had been shied with some violence under the bed. Mr. Warspite
looked at Mr. Blake, and then both men looked at Mr. Polly. "That's
_his_ boots," said Mr. Polly.
Blake turned his eye to the window. "Some of these tiles '_ave_ just
got broken," he observed.
"I got out of the window and slid down the scullery tiles," Mr. Polly
answered, omitting much, they both felt, from his explanation....
"Well, we better find 'im and '_ave_ a word with 'im," said Blake.
"That's about my business now."
