The Square Peg or The Gun Fella полностью

“I’m quite all right,” he said, “but, Bill, I want a spot of brandy, just to settle me before I go on to Sarah. And I want you to look at the car. Ignition’s gone.”

Mrs. Method-Methodde appeared at the door, and called:

“Is that Ted? Where have you been, Ted? You’re ever so late.”

Frampton drove off. They could deal with their darling in their own way, he thought; he himself had had enough of him. He hurried home, and at once telephoned to the police, that a big car was wrecked at the bend, and needed red lights upon it.

Not long after this, he received, by the post, a printed paper giving particulars of the sale of Stubbington Great Wood and the desirable residence of Tittups House.

There were photographs of Tittups House, and descriptions of its tennis-courts, gardens (kitchen, fruit and flower), and of the three hundred and fifty acres of magnificent timber, known as the Stubbington Great Wood. Frampton had been to Tittups, to return the Colonel’s call, and knew it as a big, derelict, hideous, dilapidated Georgian mansion, with no bathroom for anybody, and hateful little attics for the servants. The Wood he knew to be one of the outlying spurs of the Waste; it was all on mean, sick soil, and bore scrub and brush, and many small, stunted oaks, which never looked well. A forester with a large fortune to spend might have made something of it, but Purple Tittup had never spent any money on it, having none to spend. He had lived on at the house, and had shot the Wood thrice in each season. Twice a year, the hounds had met at Tittups, and had then drawn the Wood. Now it was all to be sold.

“It’s a rotten investment,” Frampton thought. “No one can use a house like that. No one will take it; no one will bid for it. Still,” he thought, “it will be going dirt cheap, with all the Wood. I’m not sure, that I won’t put in for it, to settle the Hunt from hunting on this side of the valley for good and all. Why hadn’t that Annual-Tilter swine the grace to apologise in Court, instead of talking his tommy-rot about everyone being free to follow foxes anywhere? Vermin, quotha; chaps like that are vermin, in this land.”

It chanced that that day Frampton had planned to drive to Sulhampton, to see the glass in the Abbey windows. It was a drive of some thirty-five miles from Mullples.

On leaving the Abbey, he turned towards the famous old Royalist tavern, King Charles’s Crown, for lunch. He had been there before, more than once. While he was lunching, he suddenly stiffened at the sound of a familiar, cracked voice, saying:

“They give a feller a very sound pie here.”

It was the Annual-Tilter in person, accompanied by his wife and another man, a rather big chap, with pop eyes and a heavy jowl. They took a table at some distance from him, near a window which looked on the street. They had not noticed him. They talked about what they were going to have for lunch, and how Millie had looked. The waitress took their orders, put one or two items on their table and then withdrew. Mrs. Annual-Tilter looked round, saw Frampton, looked hard, to make sure, and then with her hand made her husband look; all three looked. Frampton was aware of their stares; he stared back, and then, thinking that the chance was too good to miss, rose from his place, came over to their table, and said:

“You are Annual-Tilter, acting master of the Tunster. You were in charge, when your filthy dogs went through my bird sanctuary. Since you haven’t had the grace to apologise, let me tell you that I’ll stop your hunting in that part of Tatshire, if it costs me the last penny I’ve got. That’s all I’ve got to say to you at present.”

He turned his back upon them and walked back to his place. Sitting down, he stared, stare for stare, with his enemy, in whom he saw desire for battle checked by the knowledge that a scene would never do. He ate his cheese slowly, still staring at them. Mrs. Annual-Tilter said: “Outrageous.” The pop-eyed man meditated war, but did not wage it. Frampton drank his coffee slowly, still staring. He had made them squirm a little, he thought. He had made them Frampton-Mansell-conscious; they would remember the gun-fella in their prayers that night. When he had finished his lunch, and paid his bill, he stood up, nodded to them and strolled out.

“Now I see what to do,” he said to himself. “This has been just like an answer to prayer. Now I’ll make an offer for the Tittup ruin and all that filthy wood and put the Hunt out of all our side of Tatshire.”