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A Shadow Before
by
“Shure it’s the Dunsloe horse fair, your honour–the greatest horse-fair in all Oireland. It lasts for a wake, and the folk come from far an’ near–from England an’ Scotland an’ iverywhere. If you look out of the winder, your honour, you’ll see the horses, and it’s asy your honour’s conscience must be, or you wouldn’t slape so sound that the creatures didn’t rouse you with their clatter.”
Dodds had a recollection that he had heard a confused murmur, which had interwoven itself with his dreams–a sort of steady rhythmic beating and clanking–and now, when he looked through the window, he saw the cause of it. The square was packed with horses from end to end–greys, bays, browns, blacks, chestnuts–young ones and old, fine ones and coarse, horses of every conceivable sort and size. It seemed a huge function for so small a town, and he remarked as much to the waiter.
“Well, you see, your honour, the horses don’t live in the town, an’ they don’t vex their heads how small it is. But it’s in the very centre of the horse-bradin’ districts of Oireland, so where should they come to be sould if it wasn’t to Dunsloe?” The waiter had a telegram in his hand, and he turned the address to Worlington Dodds. “Shure I niver heard such a name, sorr. Maybe you could tell me who owns it?”
Dodds looked at the envelope. Strellenhaus was the name. “No, I don’t know,” said he. “I never heard it before. It’s a foreign name. Perhaps if you were–“
But at that moment a little round-faced, ruddy-cheeked gentleman, who was breakfasting at the next table, leaned forward and interrupted him.
“Did you say a foreign name, sir?” said he.
“Strellenhaus is the name.”
“I am Mr. Strellenhaus–Mr. Julius Strellenhaus, of Liverpool. I was expecting a telegram. Thank you very much.”
He sat so near that Dodds, without any wish to play the spy, could not help to some extent overlooking him as he opened the envelope. The message was a very long one. Quite a wad of melon-tinted paper came out from the tawny envelope. Mr. Strellenhaus arranged the sheets methodically upon the table-cloth in front of him, so that no eye but his own could see them. Then he took out a note-book, and, with an anxious face, he began to make entries in it, glancing first at the telegram and then at the book, and writing apparently one letter or figure at a time. Dodds was interested, for he knew exactly what the man was doing. He was working out a cipher. Dodds had often done it himself. And then suddenly the little man turned very pale, as if the full purport of the message had been a shock to him. Dodds had done that also, and his sympathies were all with his neighbours. Then the stranger rose, and, leaving his breakfast untasted, he walked out of the room.
“I’m thinkin’ that the gintleman has had bad news, sorr,” said the confidential waiter.
“Looks like it,” Dodds answered; and at that moment his thoughts were suddenly drawn off into another direction.
The boots had entered the room with a telegram in his hand. “Where’s Mr. Mancune?” said he to the waiter.
“Well, there are some quare names about. What was it you said?”
“Mr. Mancune,” said the boots, glancing round him. “Ah, there he is!” and he handed the telegram to a gentleman who was sitting reading the paper in a corner.
Dodds’s eyes had already fallen upon this man, and he had wondered vaguely what he was doing in such company. He was a tall, white-haired, eagle-nosed gentleman, with a waxed moustache and a carefully pointed beard–an aristocratic type which seemed out of its element among the rough, hearty, noisy dealers who surrounded him. This, then, was Mr. Mancune, for whom the second telegram was intended.