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Page 5
Coates, whose unruffled calm at all times provided an excellent
sedative, replied:
"Not since a little before midnight, sir."
"Ah!" said I, "and have you been in the garden this morning, Coates?"
"Yes, sir," he replied, "for raspberries for breakfast, sir."
"But not on this side of the cottage?"
"Not on this side."
"Then will you step out, Coates, keeping carefully to the paths, and
proceed as far as the tool-shed? Particularly note if the beds have
been disturbed between the hedge and the path, but don't make any
marks yourself. You are looking for _spoor_, you understand?"
"Spoor? Very good, sir. Of big game?"
"Of big game, yes, Coates."
Unmoved by the strangeness of his instructions, Coates, an
object-lesson for those who decry the excellence of British Army
disciplinary methods, departed.
It was with not a little curiosity and interest that I awaited his
report. As I sat sipping my tea I could hear his regular tread as he
passed along the garden path outside the window. Then it ceased and
was followed by a vague muttering. He had found something. All traces
of the storm had disappeared and there was every indication of a
renewal of the heat-wave; but I knew that the wet soil would have
preserved a perfect impression of any imprint made upon it on the
previous night. Nevertheless, with the early morning sun streaming
into my window out of a sky as near to turquoise as I had ever seen it
in England, I found it impossible to recapture that uncanny thrill
which had come to me in the dark hours when out of the shadows under
the hedge the great cat's eyes had looked up at me.
And now, becoming more fully awake, I remembered something else which
hitherto I had not associated with the latter phenomenon. I remembered
that lithe and evasive pursuing shape which I had detected behind me
on the road. Even now, however, it was difficult to associate one with
the other; for whereas the dimly-seen figure had resembled that of a
man (or, more closely, that of a woman) the eyes had looked out upon
me from a point low down near the ground, like those of some crouching
feline.
Coates' footsteps sounded again upon the path and I heard him walking
round the cottage and through the kitchen. Finally he re�ntered the
bedroom and stood just within the doorway in that attitude of
attention which was part and parcel of the man. His appearance would
doubtless have violated the proprieties of the Albany, for in my rural
retreat he was called upon to perform other and more important
services than those of a valet. His neatly shaved chin, stolid red
countenance and perfectly brushed hair were unexceptionable of course,
but because his duties would presently take him into the garden he
wore, not the regulation black, but an ancient shooting-jacket, khaki
breeches and brown gaiters, looking every inch of him the old soldier
that he was.
"Well, Coates?" said I.
He cleared his throat.
"There are footprints in the radish-beds, sir," he reported.
"Footprints?"
"Yes, sir. Very deep. As though some one had jumped over the hedge and
landed there."
"Jumped over the hedge!" I exclaimed. "That would be a considerable
jump, Coates, from the road."
"It would, sir. Maybe she scrambled up."
"She?"
Coates cleared his throat again.
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