We started for Evesham under a sharp shower, the Squire driving Bob and
Blister in the large phaeton. Tod sat with him, I and the groom behind.
Not a shadow of doubt lay on any one of us that we should bring back
Don in triumph--leaving Dick Standish to be dealt with according to his
merits. But, as the Squire remarked later, we were not a match for Dick
in cunning.
"Keep your eyes open, lads," the Squire said to us as we approached the
town. "And if you see Dick Standish, with or without the dog, jump out
and pounce upon him. You hear, Giles?"
"No need to tell me to do it, sir," answered Giles humbly, clenching his
fists; he had been eating humble pie ever since Tuesday night. "I am
ready."
But Dick Standish was not seen. Leaving the carriage and Giles at the
inn, we made our way to the police station. An officer named Brett
attended to us. It was curious enough, but the first person we saw
inside the station was Tobias Jellico, who had called in on some matter
of business that concerned his shop.
"We had your message yesterday, sir," said Brett to the Squire, "and we
lost no time in seeing after Standish. But it is not your dog that he
has with him."
"Not my dog!" repeated the Squire, up in arms at once. "Don't tell me
that, Brett. Whose dog should it be but mine? Come!"
"Well, sir, I never saw your dog; but Tomkins, one of our men, who has
often been on duty at Church Dykely, knows it well," rejoined Brett. "We
had Standish and the dog up here, and Tomkins at once said it was not
your dog at all, so we let the man go. Mr. Jellico also says it is not
yours; I was talking to him about it now."
"What I said was this," put in Jellico, stepping forward, and speaking
with meek deprecation. "If Squire Todhetley's dog has been described to
me correctly, the dog I saw with Standish yesterday can't be the same.
It is a great big ugly dog, with tan marks about his white coat----"
"Ugly!" retorted the Squire, resenting the aspersion, for he fully
believed it to be Don.
"It is not at all an ugly dog, it's a handsome dog," spoke up Brett.
"Perhaps Mr. Jellico does not like dogs."
"Not much," confessed Jellico.
"How came you to say yesterday at Church Dykely that it was the same
dog?" Tod asked the man.
"If you please, sir, I didn't exactly say it was; I said I made no doubt
of it," returned Jellico, mild as new milk. "It was in this way: Perkins
the butcher was standing at his shop door as I passed down the street.
We began talking, and he told me about the poachers having been out
on the Tuesday night, and that Squire Todhetley had lost his fine
Newfoundland dog; he said it was thought the Standishes were in both
games. So then I said I had met Dick Standish with just such a dog that
morning as I was a-coming out of Evesham. I had never seen the Squire's
dog, you perceive, gentlemen; but neither Mr. Perkins nor me had any
doubt it was his."
"And it must be mine," returned the Squire, hotly. "Send for the dog,
Brett; I will see it. Send for Standish also."
"I'll send, sir," replied Brett, rather dubiously, "and get the man here
if he is to be had. The chances are that with all this bother Standish
has left the town and taken the dog with him."
Brett was a talkative man, with a mottled face and sandy hair. He
despatched a messenger to see after Standish. Jellico went out at the
same time, telling Brett that his business could wait till another day.
"I know it is my dog," affirmed the Squire to Brett while he waited.
Nothing on earth, except actual sight, would have convinced him that it
was not his. "Those loose men play all sorts of cunning tricks. Dick
Standish is full of them. I shouldn't wonder but he has _painted_ the
dog; done his black marks over with brown paint--or _green_."
"We've a dyer in this town, Squire," related Brett; "he owns a little
white curly dog, and he dyes him as an advertisement for his colours,
and lets him run about on the pavement before the shop door. To-day the
dog will be a delicate sky-blue, to-morrow a flaming scarlet; the next
day he'll be a beautiful orange, with a green tail. The neighbours'
dogs collect round and stand looking at him from a respectful distance,
uncertain, I suppose, whether he is of the dog species, or not."