TIGER-HAIR

ZITA walked back in the direction of Prickwillow with a weight on her heart and her mind ill at ease. Incidents half observed rose in her memory and demanded consideration—as in a pool sunken leaves will rise after a lapse of time and float on the surface. Facts that had been indistinctly seen and scarce regarded, now assumed shape and significance.

She recalled the incidents of the night of her father's death, and marshalled them in order with that nicety and precision that marked her arrangement of the goods in the van. She remembered how that she had seen two men ride along the bank, one after another, with an interval of some minutes intervening between them, as they passed above where she had been with the van and her father. The first rider had been furnished with two lanterns to his feet. She had let him pass without attempting to arrest him. That man she now knew was Hezekiah Drownlands. Then, after a lapse of some minutes, a second rider had passed, going in the same direction. He had carried a single lantern attached to his left stirrup. To him she had run, him she had brought to a standstill, and she had asked and been refused his assistance. That man was Jeremiah Runham.

Zita next recalled every particular of her run along the bank after the second rider. She now distinctly remembered having seen a glitter of several lights before her, a cluster of lights leaping and falling, flashing and disappearing. How many these had been she could not recall. They had changed position, they were not all visible at once. At the time, in her distress of mind, she had not counted them. But she was now convinced that the lights which she had seen, and seen in one constellation, had been more than two. A single star would have represented Runham. Two stars would have indicated Drownlands. More than two—that showed that the men had been together. Further, she had heard shouts and cries. At the time, as she ran, she had supposed that these were in response to her appeals for assistance; but when she had reached Drownlands, the only man on the bank she did come upon, then, as she now recalled, he was startled at her appearance, as if it were wholly unexpected. He could not, therefore, have called in answer to her cries. But where was the third light? What had become of Runham?

When she had reached Drownlands no third light was visible, whereas a minute previously there had certainly been more than two before her. What had become of the second rider?

It was, of course, conceivable at the time that the third light had been extinguished, and the second rider was in full career along the bank in the direction he desired to go. But such an explanation was no longer admissible when it was known that this rider was dead, and had been drowned in the river. When Zita considered that this rider, Runham, had been found in the water, with the light of life as well as that of his lantern extinguished, and when she remembered that she had picked up the flail he had been carrying at the spot where she came up with Drownlands, it appeared certain to her that Drownlands must have witnessed, if he did not cause, the death of Runham. It was possible that Runham, returning tipsy from market, may have urged his horse on one side, so as to pass the man before him, and so have plunged into the river; and it was possible enough that Drownlands had chosen to maintain silence on the matter, lest any admissions on his part might have been construed into an accusation of having caused the death of his adversary.

Zita was turning these thoughts over in her mind when she reached the embankment. She started to walk along it. She was confident that she could fix the spot where she had slipped into the water, and that was but about a hundred paces from where she had come up with Drownlands. She remembered to have observed there a post in the water that had in it a mortice-hole, like an eye, and that the head was so indented and rugged as at one moment to make her suppose it was a human face.

As has already been stated, there had been sufficient frost to harden mud into rock. Traces of a scuffle—if a scuffle had taken place—would be recognisable still to an eye that knew precisely where to look for them.

Zita went with nimble feet, a busy brain, and fluttering heart towards the point where the van had been arrested in the mud, and she resolved thence to follow the course she had taken on that eventful night along the bank. On this occasion she walked deliberately where she had previously run, and came after a while to the spot where, according to her calculation, she had slipped into the canal. There she found the post standing up out of the water to which she had clung, close to the bank, with the mortice-hole in it that had looked so like a human eye. This was the only post of the kind she had come across, and this was not more than a hundred yards from the spot where she had grasped Drownlands' foot, had held him, and had heard him scream at her touch.

At this point, some hundred yards beyond the post with the hole in it, she carefully explored the soil. The top of the embankment was indented with hoof-marks, but these might have been made by the gangers' horses, which were constantly driven up and down the embankment. But there was something that satisfied the girl that at this spot a struggle had taken place, for on the land side of the embankment tufts of grass and clods of clay had been torn out and thrown into the drove, and on the water side hoof-marks and a slide in the greasy marl were sealed up by the frost as evidences of a horse having there gone down into the water. These had not been observed by any one else, as no one save Zita had known the exact place where to look for them, and though distinguishable enough when searched for, they were not obtrusively manifest.

Zita had not merely a well-arranged mind, but she was able to prize whatever facts came before her at their true value.

Now, as she walked away from the river towards Prickwillow, she realised that there was strong presumptive evidence that Drownlands had been engaged in a tussle with his enemy, and that he knew how it was that Runham had met his death, even if he were not absolutely his murderer.

As Zita entered the house, she heard the master's voice raised in tones of anger. He was addressing Mrs. Tunkiss, the housekeeper.

'It's all idle excuse—you don't want the trouble of it. I know your ways.'

'I haven't a needle will go through it,' answered Leehanna.

Then Drownlands came out of the kitchen. He was swinging in his hand the tiger-skin that usually in cold or wet weather was slung over his shoulders. His eye lighted on Zita, and his face brightened at once.

'Look here, you Cheap Jack girl,' said he. 'The servants are idle curs, both of them. I want Leehanna Tunkiss to mend my skin. I have torn it. A few threads will suffice, and she declares she has no needle that will go through the leather. It's all idleness and excuse.'

'I will do it,' said Zita. 'We have all sizes and sorts of needles in stock—for cobblers, tailors, and all.'

She took the tiger-hide out of his hand.

'That's my great-coat—my mantle by day and my rug and coverlet by night,' said Drownlands. 'I wear no other. We, who have been born and bred in the Fens, folk are pleased to call fen-tigers. That is why I got this skin. Ten, fifteen years ago it was for sale in Ely, and I bought it as a fancy, and have come to think I can't do without it. Folks have got to know me now by it, and call me the Fen-tiger King. Can you mend it?'

Turning the skin about, Zita said, 'It has been given a wrench—tremenjous.'

'Well, so it has, and there is a rip as well. If it is not drawn together now, it will go worse. I don't want to wear rags, and I won't, that's more—though Leehanna would have me, to save trouble. It is easier to find an excuse than to run threads with a needle.'

'I will do it,' said Zita. 'But you must suffer me to take it to my room, that I may find a suitable needle and stout thread.'

'Yes, take it,' said Drownlands, with his beetling brows drawn together and his eyes fixed on her from below them. 'Yes, Chestnut-hair! you can do everything. In your store you keep everything but excuses.'

'We could not sell them,' said Zita.

'And it is with excuses Leehanna serves me,' he replied, and looked sideways angrily at his housekeeper, who retreated muttering into the kitchen.

Then Drownlands went out, and Zita retired to her room to accomplish the task she had undertaken. As she turned the hide about, she was struck with the evidence it gave of having been wrenched and twisted with great strain of violence. The wrench was no ordinary one, produced by the catching of the skin in a nail or door. The hide was in one place stretched out of shape by the force exerted on it; not only so, but it had been contorted. Again, on closer investigation, it appeared that some of the hair had been ripped out by the roots, by this means exposing the bare hide.

As Zita worked at the repair, her busy brain occupied itself with the causes of this strain and rent: how they could have been produced, why the tension had been so excessive.

That Drownlands had not ridden to Ely on the fair-day with his skin torn she was convinced by his asking to have it mended now; whereas, had it been in this condition before fair-day, he would have required it to be repaired before riding into Ely. Drownlands was eccentric in his dress, but he was also punctilious about its neatness. The injury done to the tiger-skin must have been done since Tawdry fair-day. All at once Zita dropped needle and twine, started up, left her room, and went to that which Drownlands used as his office, the apartment into which he had conducted her when he showed her his money.

Into the corner of this room he had flung the flail that he had taken from her when she was about to leave his farm and to return it to Mark Runham; the flail she had picked up on the bank was that Runham the elder had bought from her for a guinea.

Zita knew that Drownlands was out, she had seen him go to the stables across the yard. He had not returned. She had not heard his voice or step in the house since. Into the office she was justified in penetrating, for the master had asked her to keep it in order for him. Leehanna Tunkiss neglected it, on the excuse that she was afraid of disarranging his papers and books. Zita knew that both flails were in this room; that which Drownlands had bought was suspended to a nail, the other was in the corner where he had cast it.

Zita took both flails and examined them. She saw that they had been subjected to rough usage. The wood was bruised in both. It had not been so when they left her hands in the afternoon of Tawdry Fair. The flappers were dinted, and there was a deep bruise in the 'handfast' of one. Both had been employed to strike, and both had clashed against each other.

Zita replaced Drownlands' flail on the nail whence she had unhitched it, and took a further look at that which had belonged to Runham.

She now observed that the leather thongs that attached the flapper to the handfast were twisted, stretched, and strained, and that in the twist was a tuft of hair precisely similar to that of the tiger-skin.

She detached some of this hair, took it to her room, and compared it with that still in place on the hide. There could no longer be any question but that a struggle had taken place between the two men, that they had fought with the flails, that in course of the contest the flail of Runham had become entangled in the hide worn by Drownlands, and that the flail had been twisted, and so had strained and torn the skin.

In this case Drownlands most certainly knew of the death of his adversary, and had had some hand in it.

Zita knew enough, and she shuddered at the thought that she was enjoying the hospitality of a murderer.