with Giles at her side and Marlowe and Mr Campion leaning over the settee behind her, it seemed ridiculous to be afraid.
The stranger took her hand in his own, and when he turned his palm uppermost they saw with a little surprise that the natural fold of his hand made no permanent crease. The skin was smooth and unlined.
‘I was right,’ he said, holding the girl’s small hand out for inspection. ‘You have had troubles; they will end, though not perhaps as you expect. You will love, you will be loved. I see you in strange company at least twice in your life. The thing you remember most clearly,’ he went on with sudden intensity, ‘is lying on a bed of thick fur with the head of an animal looking down at you. Isn’t that so?’
Judge Lobbett and his daughter exchanged astonished glances, and a smothered exclamation escaped Marlowe. Giles and Biddy glanced at their visitor inquiringly, and after some hesitation Isopel explained. ‘When I was a child,’ she said, ‘we were on holiday in the Rockies. I got lost. A trapper found me and I stayed in his cabin for a few hours until father found me. The trapper told me to lie down, and I rested on a heap of skins by the fire. There was a bear skin on the wall with a roughly stuffed head. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It was terrible, grotesque, and out of shape. It’s one of my most usual nightmares. I don’t know how you knew,’ she finished, staring at the fortune teller, her dark eyes widening as she realized the wonder.
The stranger smiled and went on. His voice revealed a soothing quality.
‘You will have your dark hour,’ he said, ‘but it will pass. There is serenity for you. Beware of strangers, although you will not marry one of your own people. Your domains will be wide, and you will know the peace which is the lowing of kine over small meadows. That is your fortune. It is a pity that I cannot promise as much to you all.’
He spoke the last words softly, and although his tone was unchanged, the soothing effect of Isopel’s reading was completely spoiled, and an unpleasant flavour remained.
He made his adieux immediately afterwards, and Giles and Marlowe settled with him, paying the trifling sum he demanded with some surprise.
The car disappeared down the narrow road. As it passed, the whistle that had heralded its approach sounded once more from the garden. The seven cries were repeated one after the other, each fainter and farther off than the one before. Mr Campion and Giles were standing with Marlowe.
‘Seven,’ said Giles. ‘The Seven Whistlers. That means the end of the world, so they say.’
‘That means he’s gone,’ said Mr Campion with relief. ‘My respected friends George and ’Anry, with their five sons, have performed their spot of policing with great success. No one comes over the Stroud at night in future without our knowing on the moment. These blessed lads are posted every five hundred yards along the road. The moment a stranger passes any one of them—well, it’s Owl Friday. Trespassers will be persecuted, you see.’
They went back towards the door laughing. Biddy met them on the threshold. Judge Lobbett and his daughter were behind her, and a stout perplexed old woman who had evidently entered by the back way hovered at her side.
Biddy was pale and her brown eyes spoke unnamed terrors. There was something in her hand which she held out to her brother.
‘Giles,’ she said, ‘look at this. Alice has just brought it over.’
The boy took the crumpled piece of paper and the big old-fashioned ring she gave him. It lay gleaming in his hand.
‘ “Giles and Albert come over alone,” ’ he read slowly.
A look of horror suddenly dawned in his face.
‘St Swithin!’ he said breathlessly. ‘His ring! He would never part with that unless—’
The words were silenced by a sound which reached them clearly through the open window, sharp and unmistakable. A gunshot on the night air.
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