The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime - Michael Sims [90]
I wriggled quietly with pleasure, as I saw it all. And then, the Official Appraiser’s brief explanation to the Chief; and the salty flavour of the Chief’s explanation to Number 17, that there was no law against a sea Captain feeding his pet hens with bits of glass, cut or otherwise, for the improvement, or otherwise, of their digestions.
Then there would be the replacing of my five dozen ring-necks, or their equivalent in good honest dollars, treasury dollars, I presume. I calculated rapidly that even as the prestige of Number 17 must come down, so the price of my hens should as infallibly go up.
I snicked the lesser door of the upper coop shut, and watched my four hens and Mr. Brown’s pigeons. The hens clucked, and walked odd paces in the dignified and uncertain fashion affected by all hens of a laying age. The pigeons fluttered a bit, and then resumed their wonted cooing; and after that, all was comfortable in that ark; for the hens discovered pigeon-food to be very good hen-food also, and set to work earnestly to fill the unfillable.
The searchers came aboard with the Pilot, and after the usual preliminaries, my presence was requested at the opening of the hen-coop. I noticed that Mr. Aglae was still in the upper smoke-room, as I passed, and there he appeared intent to stay. I admired his judgment.
The officials gathered on the well-deck, and the Chief explained that they had received certain information which they were acting upon; and asked me formally whether I had any diamonds to declare.
“I’m sorry to say that I’ve left my diamond investments at home this trip, Mister,” I said. “I’ve nothing I’m setting out to declare, except you’ve been put on to some mare’s nest!”
“We happen to think otherwise, Cap’n,” he said. “I’ve given you your chance, and you’ve chucked it. Now you’ve got to take what’s coming to you!”
He turned to one of his men.
“Open the lower coop, Ellis,” he told him. “Rake out those chickens. Hand ’em over to the poulterer.”
As each chicken was taken out, it was handed to the poulterer, and the man killed it then and there. My little plan was making things unfortunate, of course, for my brother’s ring-necks; but, after all, they were fulfilling their name, and I felt that, eventually, I should have nothing personally to grumble about.
But, in spite of this pleasant inward feeling, I protested formally and vigorously against the whole business, and pointed out that someone would have to pay, and keep on paying for an “outrage” (as I called it) of this kind.
The Chief merely shrugged his shoulders, and told the men to rake out the four hens from the upper coop. The man reached in his hand through the trap; but, of course, the hens side-stepped him in a dignified fashion. Then the man grew a little wrathy, and whipped down the whole front of the coop, and plunged in, head and shoulders, to get them.
Instantly, what I had planned, happened. There was a multitudinous, harsh, dry whisper of a hundred pairs of wings; and then, hey! the air was white with pigeons. The man backed out of the coop, with a couple of my ring-neck hens in each hairy fist; and met the blast of his superior’s wrath—
“You clumsy goat!” snarled the Chief—“What——” And then the second thing that I had foreseen, occurred.
“Confound you, Sir!” yelled Mr. Brown, dashing in among us, breathless. “Confound you! Confound you! You’ve loosed all my pigeons! What the blazes does this mean! What the blazes. . . .”
“You may well ask, Sir, what it means,” I answered. “I think these officials have gone mad!”
But Mr. Brown was already, to all appearances, quite oblivious of anyone or anything, except his beloved pigeons.
He had lugged out a big gold watch and a notebook and was making frantic efforts to achieve a lightning-like series of time-notes, staring up with a crick in his neck, trying crazily to identify the directions taken by various of his more particular birds.
He had, of course, to give it up almost at once; for already the bulk of the birds had made their preliminary circles, and were now shooting away for