The Plague Dogs

*But, Stephen, old boy, surely the dogs weren't in any "*• "sical condition to kill sheep and give rise to all this ler?" asked Digby Driver, gripping the handrail and >king back at Mr. Powell over his shoulder as they ssyfooted their way down the breakneck flight of steps at leads into the yard behind the Manor, on their way the netry, Gents or loo.

Utpha Church

"Well, I don't know so much about that," replied Mr. Powell. "One of them was an absolute bastard of a dog--mind you, it'd had enough to make it, poor sod--but there was nobody cared to touch it, not even old Tyson--"

"Tyson? He's the man about the place?"

"Yeah--feeds them, cleans them out an' all that. I always say he knows more about the work at Lawson Park than anyone else. He deals with all the animals, you see, and it's his business to know what each one's being used for and by whom. The rest of us, except for the Director, only knows about the projects we're doing ourselves. No, but that seven-three-two, it really was a dangerous animal --it was always muzzled before it was brought out for tests--"

"What were the tests?" asked Driver. "Well, they were something like the tests carried out by Curt Richter at the Johns Hopkins medical school in America--what's his thing called?--The Phenomenon of Sudden Death in Animals and Man.' D'you know that?" Like a good many young people immersed in specialised work, Mr. Powell tended to forget that others were likely to be unfamiliar with his background material. " Traid I don't--not up my street really." They came back into the yard and Mr. Powell, hands in pockets, stopped and leaned against the netty wall. | "Well, Richter put wild rats and domesticated rats into tanks of water to swim until they drowned; and he found that some of them died very rapidly for no apparent reason. A bloke called Cannon had already suggested that it might be psychogenic--you know, fear, with consequent * over-stimulation of the sympathicoadrenal system; accelerated heartbeat, contraction in systole--all that jazz. What Richter established was that it wasn't fear but hopelessness--overstimulation of the parasympathetic system, jiot the sympathicoadrenal. This seven-three-two dog of lours at Lawson Park had been given all sorts of drugs--fyou know, atropine and the colingerics, and adrenalec-tomy and thyroidectomy--you name it. But the real thing was that it had been continually immersed, drowned and Revived, so that it had built up a terrific resistance, based fbn the conditioned expectation that it was going to be removed again. It didn't succumb to the usual psychogenic factors; on the contrary, it was doing fantastic endurance times, very very interesting. They're funny things, you know, hope and confidence," said Mr. Powell rather sen-Jtcntiously. "For instance, they're present a good deal less "gly in dogs that haven't been domesticated. Wild lals, and therefore by inference primitive men--crea-BS living in precarious situations--are more susceptible fear and strain than domesticated animals. Strange, tt't it?"

"What about the other dog that escaped?" asked Digby "Well, that wasn't mine--not involved in any of my programmes: I don't touch surgery--probably shan't until I'm established--but if we hadn't had evidence to the contrary this morning I'd have thought that that dog was unlikely to be alive, let alone to be killing sheep. -It had what you might call a pretty drastic brain operation, to say the least."

"What was the object all sublime?" asked Driver, as they made their way through the Manor into the square and got back into his car. • "Well, that was a sort of psychological thing, too, as I understand it," replied Mr. Powell. "That was why they needed an adult, thoroughly domesticated dog--they paid quite a bit for it, I believe, to some woman in Dalton."

"Why did she part with it, d'you know?"

"Well, it wasn't originally hers. Apparently it had belonged to her brother in Barrow, but it had somehow or other brought about his--I'm not sure, but his death, I believe I heard--in an accident with a lorry, so naturally she wasn't keen on keeping it. That's an exceptional situation, of course. In the normal way domesticated animals--people's pets--aren't easy to come by for this work, as you can well believe. The operation was something quite new--a bit like a leucotomy, but that's misleading, really. To be perfectly frank, there were innovatory complications that put it a long way beyond me. But the general purpose--and no one'll be able to say, now, how far it was successful; not in this particular case, anyway--was to bring about a confusion of the subjective and objective in the animal's mind."

"How would that work in practice, then?" asked Digby Driver, accelerating out of the square and up the hill towards the Coniston road.

"Well, as I understand it--whoops!" Mr. Powell belched beerily, leaned forward and frowned, seeking an illustrative example. "Er--well, did you ever read a book called Pincher Martin, by a man named Golding? You know, the Lord of the Flies bloke?"

"I've read Lord of the Flies, but I don't think I know this other book."

"Well, the chap in it's supposed to be dead--drowned at sea; and in the next world, which is a sort of hellish limbo, one of the things he does is to confuse subjective and objective. He thinks he's still alive and that he's been washed up on a rock in the Atlantic, but actually it's an illusion and the rock is only a mental projection--it's the shape of a back tooth in his own head. The dog that had this operation might have illusions something like that. Suppose it had come to associate--well, let's say cats with eau de cologne, for instance--then it might be observed to treat some inanimate object--a cardboard box, say--as a cat when it was subjected to the smell of eau de cologne: or conversely, it might see something objective and act as though it was nothing but the equivalent of some thought in its mind--I can't think what, but you get the general idea."

"It must be a fascinating job, yours," said Driver. "Straight on, do we go here? All the way?"

"All the way to Coniston. It's really very good of you."

"No, not at all--I've got to go there myself, as I said. No, I mean, a fascinating job you have with all these experimental discoveries."

"A lot of it's routine, actually--you know, Fifty L. D. and all that."

"Fifty L. D.?"

"Fifty lethal dose. Say you--or anyone--wants to market a new lipstick or a food additive or something, then we have to forcibly feed quantities of it to a group of animals until we've ascertained at what dosage level half of them die within fourteen days."

"Whatever for? I mean, suppose the stuff's not toxic anyway?"

"Doesn't matter. You still have to continue forcible feeding until you've ascertained Fifty L. D. They may die of internal rupture--osmotic or pH effects-- anything. It's a bore, actually, but that's partly what we're there for. All in a good cause, you know. Cosmetics have to be safe, or no one'd buy 'em."

"I suppose there are compensations--not for them but for you, I mean--defence projects and secret stuff--breaking new ground. No, O. K," added Digby Driver, smiling broadly. "Don't answer that, as the judges say. I don't want you to give me anything to pass on to two square-jawed blokes in raincoats on Hampstead Heath."

"Oh, Goodner's the chap for that. I wouldn't be in the least surprised to learn that he'd been one of those very blokes in his time. He's German by birth. He was working in Germany at the end of the war--for the Germans, I mean. He's on secret work of some kind right now, that I do know. Something to do with lethal disease, for the Ministry of Defence. They practically lock him up at night--they lock up all his stuff, anyway. And there's no talking shop to him. I bet he gets paid three times what I do," added Mr. Powell, hi a candid non sequitur.

"And what sort of leave do they give you?" enquired Digby Driver, who knew exactly how far to go and when to stop. "Where's this? Oh, Torver, is it? Does it get a bit lonelier before Coniston? Good--I could do with another piss, couldn't you?"

" 'Accidental death,'" said Robert Lindsay. "Ay, well, that's all he could have found--couldn't have found owt else, Dennis, could he?"

"Could have found suicide if he'd had a mind," said Dennis. "Never on the evidence. There were nothing to suggest it. If yon Ephraim chap's alone and he dies wi' shot-gun when he's standing beside his car, he's entitled to benefit of all the doubt there may be; and there were no evidence at all that he were of suicidal disposition. Nay, Coroner were reel enoof--on available evidence that were accident, Dennis, plain as day."

"He never said nowt about dog, though, did he?" said Dennis. "But it were yon bluidy dog browt it about, for all that. It were dog as shot him, tha knaws."

"Y* reckon dog set off gun an* killed him?"

"Ay, I do that. It were seen booggerin' off oop fell like th' clappers, tha knaws, Bob."

"Coroner couldn't bring that in on evidence either. An' if he had, it would still be accidental death, wouldn't it? Dog's an accident as mooch as light trigger or owt else."

"Ay, happen it would, Bob, but if he'd pinned blame fair an' square on dog, like, then happen police or soom- one'd be instroocted to find it at once and shoot it. Way it's been left now, you an' me's no better off than we were at start. You could lose a coople more sheep tonight an' Ah could lose three next week, and no boogger but us give a damn. Research Station weren't at inquest--no bluidy fear. Nowt to do wi' them--and they'll do nowt, an' all, without they're made to, Bob, tha knaws." There was a pause while Robert sucked the top of his stick and considered his next words. Dennis lit a cigarette and pitched the spent match over his dog's head into the long grass below the wall.

"Theer's joost woon lot o' chaps as could make them stand an' annser, Dennis," said Robert at length. "Compel them to answer, like."

"Member of Parliament?" asked Dennis. "He'll do nowt--"

"Nay, not him. Woon lot o' chaps; an' that's press chaps. Did y'see Loondon Orator yesterday?"

"Nay, Ah niver did. Ah were back late from Preston--"

"Well, they're sending reporter chap oop from Loondon--special reporter, they said, to coover t' whole story, like, an' get to t'bottom of it. It were Ephraim's death started them off. Chap called Driver--ay. Real smart chap, be all accounts--real 'andy fella."

"Ay, but wheer's he at? No good to us without he's here, is he?"

"Coniston police were over to Dawson girls this morning, tha knaws," said Robert. "Git awaay?"

"Ay, they were that--an' fella from Research Station were wi' them. Two dogs with green collars were into Dawson girls' doostbins int' early morning. Phyllis got one on 'em shut int' shed an' she phoned police, but dog were awaay owt of back-eend draain before this yoong research fella could grab it.

Ay, weel, if police are that mooch interested, Dennis, tha knaws, and tha tells 'em tha's got soomthing tha wants t' say to yon Driver chap, they'll tdl thee wheer he's at,"

"Ah've got a whole bluidy lot Ah'm gann't to say to him," said Dennis. (24,9)

The morning turned still and fine, with high-sailing, diaphanous clouds barely masking the sun's warmth in their swift passage across its face. The heather was snug as a dog-blanket. Rowf lay basking on the summit of Caw, warming his shaggy coat until the last moisture of Duddon had dried out of it. A few yards below, among a tumble of rocks, Snitter and the tod were playing and tussling like puppies over a bone long picked clean, the tod pausing every now and then to scent the wind and look eqst and west down the empty slopes below. "What's up wi' ye noo, marrer?" it remarked, as Snitter suddenly dropped the bone and remained gazing westward with cocked ears and head lifted to the wind. "Ye're not hevvin' one o' yer bad torns agen? Aall that aboot 'inside yer head*--where else wad ye be, ye fond wee fyeul?"

"No, I'm all right, tod. Rowf! I say, Rowf!"

"Aargh! He'll take ne notice, he's still dryin' hissel' oot. What's gan on, then? Can you see owt doon belaa?"

"Far off, tod. Look--the dark blue. It's not the sky. It's like a great gash between the sky and the land. They've cut the top of the hills open, I suppose, but why does the blood spill out blue?"

"Mebbies yer still a bit aglee wi' yon shed carry-on. Which way ye lukkin'?"

"Out there, between the hills."

Ten miles away, through the clear, sunny air, between and beyond the distant tops of Hesk Fell and Whitfell to the west, a still, indigo line lay all along the horizon.

"Yon? Yon's th* sea. Did ye not knaa?" As Snitter stared, the tod added, "Well, it's ne pig's arse, fer a start."

"No, I suppose not. What is the sea? Is it a place? Is that what we can smell licking the wind like a wet tongue?"

"Ay--th' salt an' th' weeds. It's aall waiter there--waiter, an' forbye a sea-mist noo an' agen."

"Then we couldn't live there? It looks--it looks--I don'l know--peaceful. Could we go and live Ihere?"

"Wad ye seek feathers on a goat?" replied the tod shortly, and forthwilh crept up through the rocks to where Rowf had woken and begun snapping at flies in the sun.

Snitter remained staring at the patch of far-off blue.

Water--could it really be water, that tranquil stain along the foot of the sky? Firm it seemed, smooth and unmoving between the crests of the hills on either side; but further off than they, deeper, deep within the cleft, a long way beyond and within.

It could be put back, I suppose, thought Snitter, musingly. It shouldn't have been cut open like that, but it's all still there--funny, I thought it wasn't. It could be closed up again and then I'd be all right, I suppose. Only it's such an awfully long way off. If only I could have stayed inside my head this morning, I might have been able to decide how to get there--how to reach it. But whoever would have thought it was all still there?

He closed his eyes and the salty wind, fitful and mischievous, tugged at the grass and whispered in a half-heard song, while faint scents, breaking like waves, came - and went between his nostrils and ears. "We are the brains the whitecoats stole, And you the victim of the theft. Yet here the wound might be made whole, The sense restored and healed the cleft. And since, of sanity bereft, You can devise no better plan, To us, the only place that's left. Come, lost dog; seek your vanished man."

"If I could just get all these thoughts up together," murmured Snitter. "But I'm sleepy now. It's been a long day--long night--something or other, anyway. How smoothly that grass moves against the sky--like mouse-tails." Soothed and finally oblivious, Snitter fell asleep in the November sunshine. Lakeland shopkeeper Phyllis Dawson got a shock yesterday, tapped Digby Driver on his typewriter. (Except when signing his name, Digby Driver had seldom had a pen in his hand for several years past.) The reason? She found her dustbins the target of a new-style commando raid by the two mysterious dogs which have recently been playing (251) a game of hide-and-seek for real with farmers up and down the traditional old-world valley of Dunnerdale, Lancashire, in the heart of poet Wordsworth's Lakeland. The mystery death of tailoring manager David Ephraim, found shot beside his car at lonely Cockley Beck, near the head of the valley, took place while farmers were combing the fells nearby for the four-footed smash-and-grab intruders, and is believed to form another link in the chain lying behind efforts to pinpoint the cause of the enigma. Where have the unknown dogs come from and where are they hiding? Shopkeeper Phyllis's contribution was doomed to disappointment yesterday when scientist Stephen Pow-ell, hastening eighteen miles to the scene of the crime from Lawson Park Animal Research Station, arrived too late to forestall the dogs' escape from the shed where they had been immured pending identification and removal. Are these canine Robin Hoods indeed a public danger, as local farmers hotly maintain, or are they wrongly accused of undeserved guilt? They may have an alibi, but if so the term is more than usually apt, for where indeed are they? This is the question Lakeland is asking itself as I pursue enquiries in the little grey town of Coniston, one-time home of famous Victorian John Ruskin.

Well, thought Digby Driver, that'll do for the guts of the first article. If they want it longer they can pep it up on the editorial desk. Better to keep the actual connection of the dogs with Lawson Park to blow tomorrow. Yeah, great--that can burst upon an astonished world as an accusation. "Why have the public not been told?" and all that. The thing is, what come-back have the station got? We know two dogs escaped from Lawson Park; and thanks to dear old Master Stephen, bless him, we know what they were being used for and what they looked like. And we can be certain--or as good as--that they were the same dogs as those that were raiding Miss Dawson's dustbins. But that's no good to the news-reading public. The thing is, have they been killing sheep and, above all, did they cause the death of Ephraim? What we want is evidence of gross negligence by public servants. "Gross negligence, gross negligence, let nothing you dismay," sang Mr. Driver happily. "Remember good Sir Ivor Stone's the bloke who doth you pay, To make the public, buy the rag and read it every day, O-oh tidings of co-omfort and joy-He broke off, glancing at his watch. "Ten minutes to opening time. Well, mustn't grumble. I confess I never expected to fall on my feet right from the start like this. Drive down Dunnerdale and walk straight into the dogs and then into Master Powell looking for them. All the same, it still doesn't grab the reader by the throat and rivet the front page--and that's what it's got to do, boy, somehow or other. Tyson--and Goodner--ho, hum! Wonder who that there Goodner used to be--might ask Simp-son to look into that."

He strolled down the road in the direction of The Crown. The mild winter dusk had fallen with a very light rain and smell of autumn woods drifting from the hills above. The far-off lake, visible at street-corners and between the houses as a faintly shining, grey expanse, lay smooth yet lithe as eel-skin, and somehow suggestive of multiplicity, as though composed of the innumerable, uneventful lives spent near its shores--long-ago lives now fallen, like autumn berries and leaves, into the peaceful oblivion of time past, there to exert their fecund, silent influence upon the heedless living. There were bronze chrysanthemums in gardens, lights behind red-curtained windows and drifts of wood-smoke blowing from cowled chimneys. A van passed, changing gear on the slope, and as its engine receded the unceasing, gentle sound of babbling water resumed its place in the silence, uprising like heather when horse-hooves have gone by. A clock struck six, a dog barked, the breeze tussled a paper bag along the gravel and a blackbird, tuck-tucking away to roost, flew ten yards from one stone wall to another.

This is a right dump, thought Digby Driver as he crossed the bridge over Church Beck. I wonder how many Orator readers there are here? Well, there'll be some more soon, if I've got anything to do with it.

He entered the saloon bar of The Crown, ordered a pint and fell into conversation with the barman.

"I suppose you're not sorry to have a bit less to do during winter months?" he asked. "There must be a lot of work at a place like this during the holiday season?"

"Oh, ay," returned the barman. "It's downright murder at times. July and August we get fair rooshed off our feet.

Still, it's good business as long as y* can stand oop to it."

"I suppose in winter it becomes mainly a matter of looking after the regulars?" pursued Driver. "D'you deescalate your involvement with catering for visitors at this time of year?"

"Well, there's always a few cooms by," replied th» barman. "We keep on a bit of hot food at mid-day, but not sooch a wide raange, like. There's no Americans in winter, for woon thing, y' see."

"No, that's true," said Driver. "How about the people up at Lawson Park? They bring you a bit of trade, I suppose?"

"Not really so as ye'd noatice," replied the barman. "Theer's soom o' them looks in for a drink now and then, but they're not what ye'd call a source o' regular coostom, aren't those scientific gentlemen. Ah reckon theer's a few o' them thinks alcohol's what's used for preserving specimens," he added humorously.

"Ha ha, that's a good one--I dare say they do," said Digby Driver. "1 suppose they get up to all sorts of new research projects up there. D'you think there's much in the way of secret weapons they go in for--germ warfare and all that sort of thing? Makes you feel nervous, doesn't it? You know, if anything were to get out and come down here--hell's bells, eh?"

"Ay, well, that were woon thing as coom oop at pooblic enquiry before they built t'plaace," answered the barman. "Them as objected said there'd be element o' daanger from infection an' sooch like. Not that anything in that way's ever happened so far. But Ah've heerd as theer's parts of t'plaace kept secret, like, an' no one to go in but those that have to do wi' it."

"That reminds me," said Driver, "d'you know a chap called Tyson?"

" 'Bout forty," answered the barman with a chuckle. "Two thirds of t'folk int'

Laakes is called Tyson, an' hafe the rest's called Birkett."

"Well, I meant a particular chap who works up at Law-son Park."

"Oh, old 'Arry? Ay, Ah knows him reel enoof. He cleans out animals oop there-- feeds 'em an' that. He'll likely be in a bit later--cooms in for 'is pint most evenings. Did you want to speak to him?"

"Well, I'm a newspaper man, you see, and I'm doing an article on English research stations from the point of view of ordinary people like you and me.

So a real, live chap like Tyson'd be more use than those scientists--they'd be too technical for the newspaper-reading public anyway."

"Oh, ay," said the barman, unconsciously flattered as Driver had intended. "Well, if ye'ere going to be here for a while I'll tell you if he cooms in, like. He'll be through int' pooblic yonder, but I'll let y' know."

"Thanks," said Driver. "He certainly won't be a loser by it."

"Mr. Tyson, I'm a man of business like yourself. I believe in being perfectly straight and plain. I want information for my paper about this business of the dogs escaping and I'm ready to pay for it. It's not a question of bargaining--there's the money. Count it. I shan't say you told me anything--I shan't even mention your name. Tell me everything you know about the dogs and that money goes into your pocket and I've forgotten I ever had it."

The two had left The Crown for Tyson's cottage, where they were sitting before the fire in the living room. Mrs. Tyson was busy in the kitchen and the door between was shut.

Digby Driver listened closely to Tyson's account of the escape of seven-three-two and eight-one-five, which corroborated and in certain particulars added to what he had already heard from Mr. Powell that morning.

"You're sure they went right through the entire animal block from end to end?" he asked.

"Good as sure," answered Tyson. "How?"

"Weel, they'd knocked ower caage o' mice int' pregnancy unit and one moosta cut it paw on't glass. Theer were spots o' blood reet through to t'guinea-pig plaace at t'oother end. Ah cleaned 'em oop."

"But you still don't know how they got out of the block?"

"Nay."

Digby Driver chewed his pencil. This was maddening. The vital piece of information, if it existed and whatever it might be, was still eluding him. "How much d'you know about the work of Dr. Good-ner?" he asked suddenly.