[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
on me in the fog, the idea that Dartmoor was alive. Are you going to allow me
to pass? I asked it, only half mocking. Will you keep from throwing your rain
and wind at me, pulling your mists up over my head, setting your haunts to
plague me and your pixies to lead me astray? I don t much like you, I told the
land before me, but I mean you no harm. There was no answer, other than the
sound of Red cropping at the brief grass with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.
After a bit, I got to my feet. Friend or foe, I had no choice but to enter.
The road stretched out across the flat, rock-studded ground, the same terrain
I had seen north of here, interrupted only by a quarry gouged into a dip and
curve of the road and by the prison, riding a rise some distance from the road
Page 62
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
near Princetown. A grim place like all its kind, it seemed to declare that
there would be no coddling of felons here, that punishment, discomfort, and
boredom were to be their lot. The motto over the gate, I had heard, read
parcere subjectis, or To spare the Vanquished, and with Virgil I had to
agree that it was marginally more humane to incarcerate one s enemy than it
was to slaughter him. Built originally as a camp for prisoners in the
Napoleonic War, Princetown Prison had seen the Black Hole and the cat-o -nine
tails, starvation diet and hard labour, and if recent years had seen a more
enlightened régime, the image of life within those grey, circular walls
remained one of brutality and deprivation, what Holmes had referred to as a
place designed for the breaking of men s spirits. I suddenly realised that I
had been sitting and looking at the prison for too long, and that I did not
wish to have a guard sent down to ask my business. I put my heels to Red s
side; for once he obliged.
He did not throw me again until we were nearly in Postbridge, when I was
leaning inattentively in the saddle to look over a wall and found the wall
coming rapidly up to meet me. Long years of martial training gave my body an
automatic response to a fall, but hitting a padded gymnastic mat and flying
into a pile of stones were different matters entirely.
I climbed back over the wall and grabbed the reins with more force than was
either necessary or sensible. Damn you! I shouted at him. A few bruises are
one thing, but if you break my spectacles, how do you expect us to get home
again? I stormed around to mount, and had my left foot in the stirrup when a
voice came from somewhere behind me.
Does him usually hanswer you?
I turned with my foot still in the irons, and nearly fell again. There was a
face looking at me over the wall on the opposite side on the road, a person so
wrapped up in scarfs and hats as to make any sexual identification difficult,
but I thought it a young woman rather than an unlined, beardless youth. I
laughed, embarrassed more at my loss of temper than at having been caught
talking to the animal.
He hasn t answered me yet, but we only met a short time ago. It wouldn t
surprise me too much if he did.
Him s Mr Arundell s oss, bainty?
Yes, I said, surprised. Lew House was a fair distance from here.
Thought so. They boft n cheap cause e kept dumping the lady who had n
avore. Don t do it to menvolk, cooriusly enuv.
A misogynist gelding. Dear God, what on earth was I doing here? You know Mr
Arundell?
He rides down here sometimes when th hunt s on, though he do like ter follow
th hounds on foot.
Having met Red, I couldn t blame him.
I knaw who ye be, she said conversationally.
Do you?
You re with Znoop Zherlock, baint you? I heerd tell you re is wife?
I supposed the question on the end of her last statement was understandable,
even without the oddity of our ages, as I was wearing the same sort of raiment
as she was.
That I am.
And you re here for the Squire, Mr Baring-Gould.
Here now, I protested. What makes you think that?
Oh, me mum s cousin s close friends with the zister of Miz Endacott, who
cleans for Miz Elliott three days a week.
What do they think I m doing for Mr Baring-Gould? I demanded, and walked
across to look over the wall at this all-knowing gossip.
Ye be axin questions about old Josiah Gorton and the ghostly carridge.
Well, I ll be I stopped, stoppered my rising irritation, and asked more
calmly, So, do you know anything about either?
I doan, she admitted. But Eliz beth Chase, along by Wheal Betsy, she be
waitin to see y.
Page 63
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Wheal Betsy being& ?
Up from Mary Tavy.
Which was nearly back to Lew Trenchard from here.
What does she want to see me about?
An edge og.
I opened my mouth to continue this line of questioning, and then closed it,
turned my back, and led the horse away. I would not be driven insane by the
peculiarities gathered around me. I would not.
The rationale behind my expedition was fairly simple and really quite
sensible, in its own way: The great inner sweep of the moor, in several remote
spots of which a rather substantial ghostly carriage had been seen, was not,
as Holmes had pointed out, a place overly endowed with facilities in which to
store a coach and stable its horses. Granted, the moor was well populated with
horses, but animals big enough and well enough trained to pull a carriage over
rough ground by moonlight were hardly likely to blend in with the compact,
wild inhabitants of the moor.
Around the edges of the moor, however, lived people, and people (as I had just
demonstrated) noticed things and talked about them. The sound of harnessed
horses at night, strange hoofprints in a lane, dogs barking at the moon, all
would have attracted attention if they had come in from outside, passing
through the circle of farms and villages. Therefore, a careful circuit of the
moor s outer band of civilisation ought to tell us whether or not the carriage
had passed through it.
On one level, the disproportionate use of our time hunting for something that
might not exist was more than a touch ridiculous what the detectives at
Scotland Yard might have to say about our carriage hunt did not bear thinking.
On the other hand, the search was typical of Holmes approach to an
investigation: One looked for an oddity, some little thing that stood out, and
traced it to its source (praying that it was not a mere coincidence, a thing
that was, unfortunately, far from unknown). This appearance of a mythic coach
just at the time a moor man was killed was too much of a coincidence to be
believed. Hence the hunt or rather, our two hunts, one on each segment of the
circumference. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl rafalstec.xlx.pl
on me in the fog, the idea that Dartmoor was alive. Are you going to allow me
to pass? I asked it, only half mocking. Will you keep from throwing your rain
and wind at me, pulling your mists up over my head, setting your haunts to
plague me and your pixies to lead me astray? I don t much like you, I told the
land before me, but I mean you no harm. There was no answer, other than the
sound of Red cropping at the brief grass with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.
After a bit, I got to my feet. Friend or foe, I had no choice but to enter.
The road stretched out across the flat, rock-studded ground, the same terrain
I had seen north of here, interrupted only by a quarry gouged into a dip and
curve of the road and by the prison, riding a rise some distance from the road
Page 62
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
near Princetown. A grim place like all its kind, it seemed to declare that
there would be no coddling of felons here, that punishment, discomfort, and
boredom were to be their lot. The motto over the gate, I had heard, read
parcere subjectis, or To spare the Vanquished, and with Virgil I had to
agree that it was marginally more humane to incarcerate one s enemy than it
was to slaughter him. Built originally as a camp for prisoners in the
Napoleonic War, Princetown Prison had seen the Black Hole and the cat-o -nine
tails, starvation diet and hard labour, and if recent years had seen a more
enlightened régime, the image of life within those grey, circular walls
remained one of brutality and deprivation, what Holmes had referred to as a
place designed for the breaking of men s spirits. I suddenly realised that I
had been sitting and looking at the prison for too long, and that I did not
wish to have a guard sent down to ask my business. I put my heels to Red s
side; for once he obliged.
He did not throw me again until we were nearly in Postbridge, when I was
leaning inattentively in the saddle to look over a wall and found the wall
coming rapidly up to meet me. Long years of martial training gave my body an
automatic response to a fall, but hitting a padded gymnastic mat and flying
into a pile of stones were different matters entirely.
I climbed back over the wall and grabbed the reins with more force than was
either necessary or sensible. Damn you! I shouted at him. A few bruises are
one thing, but if you break my spectacles, how do you expect us to get home
again? I stormed around to mount, and had my left foot in the stirrup when a
voice came from somewhere behind me.
Does him usually hanswer you?
I turned with my foot still in the irons, and nearly fell again. There was a
face looking at me over the wall on the opposite side on the road, a person so
wrapped up in scarfs and hats as to make any sexual identification difficult,
but I thought it a young woman rather than an unlined, beardless youth. I
laughed, embarrassed more at my loss of temper than at having been caught
talking to the animal.
He hasn t answered me yet, but we only met a short time ago. It wouldn t
surprise me too much if he did.
Him s Mr Arundell s oss, bainty?
Yes, I said, surprised. Lew House was a fair distance from here.
Thought so. They boft n cheap cause e kept dumping the lady who had n
avore. Don t do it to menvolk, cooriusly enuv.
A misogynist gelding. Dear God, what on earth was I doing here? You know Mr
Arundell?
He rides down here sometimes when th hunt s on, though he do like ter follow
th hounds on foot.
Having met Red, I couldn t blame him.
I knaw who ye be, she said conversationally.
Do you?
You re with Znoop Zherlock, baint you? I heerd tell you re is wife?
I supposed the question on the end of her last statement was understandable,
even without the oddity of our ages, as I was wearing the same sort of raiment
as she was.
That I am.
And you re here for the Squire, Mr Baring-Gould.
Here now, I protested. What makes you think that?
Oh, me mum s cousin s close friends with the zister of Miz Endacott, who
cleans for Miz Elliott three days a week.
What do they think I m doing for Mr Baring-Gould? I demanded, and walked
across to look over the wall at this all-knowing gossip.
Ye be axin questions about old Josiah Gorton and the ghostly carridge.
Well, I ll be I stopped, stoppered my rising irritation, and asked more
calmly, So, do you know anything about either?
I doan, she admitted. But Eliz beth Chase, along by Wheal Betsy, she be
waitin to see y.
Page 63
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Wheal Betsy being& ?
Up from Mary Tavy.
Which was nearly back to Lew Trenchard from here.
What does she want to see me about?
An edge og.
I opened my mouth to continue this line of questioning, and then closed it,
turned my back, and led the horse away. I would not be driven insane by the
peculiarities gathered around me. I would not.
The rationale behind my expedition was fairly simple and really quite
sensible, in its own way: The great inner sweep of the moor, in several remote
spots of which a rather substantial ghostly carriage had been seen, was not,
as Holmes had pointed out, a place overly endowed with facilities in which to
store a coach and stable its horses. Granted, the moor was well populated with
horses, but animals big enough and well enough trained to pull a carriage over
rough ground by moonlight were hardly likely to blend in with the compact,
wild inhabitants of the moor.
Around the edges of the moor, however, lived people, and people (as I had just
demonstrated) noticed things and talked about them. The sound of harnessed
horses at night, strange hoofprints in a lane, dogs barking at the moon, all
would have attracted attention if they had come in from outside, passing
through the circle of farms and villages. Therefore, a careful circuit of the
moor s outer band of civilisation ought to tell us whether or not the carriage
had passed through it.
On one level, the disproportionate use of our time hunting for something that
might not exist was more than a touch ridiculous what the detectives at
Scotland Yard might have to say about our carriage hunt did not bear thinking.
On the other hand, the search was typical of Holmes approach to an
investigation: One looked for an oddity, some little thing that stood out, and
traced it to its source (praying that it was not a mere coincidence, a thing
that was, unfortunately, far from unknown). This appearance of a mythic coach
just at the time a moor man was killed was too much of a coincidence to be
believed. Hence the hunt or rather, our two hunts, one on each segment of the
circumference. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]