The house was an old one. It stood back from the road, screened from the observations of the curious and the profane by a high untidy hedge that overtopped a wooden paling, a little the worse for wear. The house had been built for comfort rather than beauty, and had reached a stage in its existence when it possessed neither attributes. It had the appearance of being empty, so Dr Ernest Crane and Brian thought, as they pushed open the gate with some labour and negotiated the weed-grown paths; the upper windows stared blankly, innocent of curtain; the windows of the ‘best’ floor were shuttered, as also were the lower windows.
Brian picked a way to the front door—there had been a shower of rain, and the water lay in puddles. He was mounting the steps when he checked himself.
“Somebody has been here who smokes Turkish cigarettes,” he said, pointing with his stick to the rain-trodden remnant of such a one.
“True, O Sherlock,” said the doctor flippantly, “but apparently all sorts of medical birds come here for the by-products of Nature.”
Brian knocked at the door, a smart rat-tat, and the hollow echo of it rang through the house. They waited for some little time, then Brian knocked again.
“I’m afraid there’s nobody in,” he said. He had hardly spoken before there came a shuffling of feet in the uncarpeted hall, and with a great rattling of chains and shooting of bolts the door was opened cautiously by a very dirty-looking old man. He held a milk-jug in his hand and seemed disappointed to discover who his visitors were.
“Thought you wor the milkman,” he said, with a burr which Brian failed to locate. “Coom in, lad, doan’t stand theer.”
He closed the door behind them, putting the milk-jug on the ground as he adjusted the chains—there were two—and pushed home the bolts.
“Who might thee be wanting to see, sitha?” he asked querulously.
“We wish to see the doctor,” said Brian, wondering what sort of man the doctor could be to employ such a scarecrow. For the man was disreputable. From his tousled grey head to his soiled slippers he was a model of slovenliness. An old plaid scarf was tied under his chin, he wore a big drooping knitted waistcoat, though the day was warm, and his trousers and coat had been intended for wearers of more ample size.
“Coom in,” he snorted.
He opened the door of a room and ushered them in. The furniture was dingy, the wall-papers were peeling off in various odd corners. In the centre of the room was a big table piled up with an indescribable mass of papers, books, balls of string, odd sheets of manuscript, and dirty test-tubes. One corner of the desk had been cleared to allow of the use of a microscope. This alone seemed adequately protected from dust, for a glass cup cover was over it.
“Sit you down,” commanded the old man. “Ah’m doctor.” He seated himself opposite the centre of the table on a swing chair and grinned at their discomfiture. “Ay,” he went on. “Ah’m doctor all reet, sitha, though nowt like doctor thee expected to see—ah? Get on, lad; just tell me what tickles tha.”
There was a good-humoured glint in his deepset eyes, and for all Brian’s aversion to his uncleanly host, he felt the man was straight.
“I’ve come to see you about a peculiar business,” he said. “My name is Pallard, and I own race-horses.”
“Ah!” said the old man with another grin. “Ah know tha! Gotten a horse called Grey Timothy, hasn’t tha? Ah backed him oop an’ down, in an’ out wi’ the horse that won Goodwood Coop. Ah took tens, an’ eats, an’ sixes, an’ fower, your horse, lad, an’ he got hoom a short head.”
It was Brian’s turn to smile.
“I’m glad you’re a sportsman, doctor,” he said, “because it makes what I’ve got to say much easier. You will have read in the papers that Greenpol, another horse of mine, dropped dead on the course.”
The doctor nodded.
“Well,” Brian went on, “my horse died because he had been bitten by tsetse flies.”
The old man’s eyes suddenly lighted.
“Tsetse?” he repeated, “art sure?”
“My friend here, Dr Ernest Crane”—the old man favoured the other with a courtly nod—“has the beasts with him.”
Ernest produced his box and handed it over to the old man, who opened it. He poked the contents with a knitting needle which lay amongst the miscellaneous rubbish on the table.
“No doot,” he said, “yons glossina morsitans,” he turned the fly over again. “Wheer did ye get him?”
“I found him in my stable, after the horse had died mysteriously.”