"Blasted impertinence!" exploded the stranger. "Let me past!"
"I do apologise!" said Old Carter the Lamp-lighter, standing aside. "Incidentally, the fishing's not good in that direction. No water, you see."
"The fishing? What in blue blazes are you on about now?"
"There's a length of netting hanging out of your rucksack."
The stranger strode away, swinging his cane, his countenance flushed with anger.
"Have a splendid day!" called Old Carter the Lamp-lighter after him.
"Goat-fiddler!" called the bag.
Sneaking along from the untended land to the north, a poacher approached the field opposite the Alsop cottage and quietly slipped into the thick border of trees that surrounded it. It was a good field for rabbits but there'd been police outside the cottage these past few days and he'd been too nervous to check his traps. Were the coppers still there? He was going to have a look.
Treading softly, as was his habit, he moved furtively from bole to bole.
Suddenly, a feeling of unease gripped him.
He froze.
He was not alone.
He could sense a presence.
Moistening his lips with his tongue, he crouched, held his breath, and listened.
All he could hear was birdsong.
A lot of it.
Too much!
An absolute cacophony!
"Maggotous duffers! Cross-eyed poseurs! Scrubbers! Bounders! Dirty baggage! Dolts! Filthy blackguards! Decomposing scumbags! Poodlerubbers! Piss-heads!"
The poacher looked around him in bewilderment. What the hell? The trees seemed to have more birds in them than he'd ever known-and they were screaming insults!
"Bastards! Stink-brains! Stupid fungus-lickers! Lobotomised chumps! Tangle-tongued inbreds! Curs! Fish-faced idiots! Balloon-heads! Little shits! Witless pigstickers! Crap masters! Buffoons!"
His unease turned to superstitious dread.
The poacher was just about to turn and take to his heels when an uncomfortable feeling in his neck stopped him. He looked down and his stubbled chin bumped into a wet red blade that projected from his throat. He coughed blood onto it and watched as it slid back into his neck and out of sight.
"My apologies," said a soft voice from behind.
The poacher died and slid to the loamy earth.
The man who'd killed him sheathed his swordstick. Like all his fellow Rakes, he was well dressed, carried a bagged birdcage in one hand, and had a rucksack on his back.
Little by little, the Rakes had occupied the shadows under the trees around the field and now there were hundreds of them.
By the time twilight was descending over the village, there were no more smart, bag-carrying, cane-brandishing strangers for Old Carter the Lamplighter to accost.
He'd swept the street until it was practically shining. Now he was settling into his armchair to enjoy a cup of tea and a hot buttered crumpet.
He placed the teacup on the arm of his chair, raised the crumpet to his open mouth, and stopped.
The cup was rattling in its saucer.
"What in the name of all that's holy is happening now?" he muttered, lowering the crumpet and standing up. He crossed to the window and looked out. There was nothing to see, but he could hear an odd thrumming.
Moving to the front door, he opened it just in time to see a plush leather armchair descend from the sky.
It landed across the street from his cottage, the spinning wings above it slowing down, the paradiddle of its motor becoming lazier, steam rolling away.
The noise stopped. The wings became still. The man in the seat pushed his goggles up onto his forehead, lit a pipe, and began to smoke.
Old Carter the Lamp-lighter sighed and stepped out of his house. He closed the front door, walked down the path, opened the gate, crossed the spotlessly clean street, stood next to the chair, and said, "Sangappa."
The man looked up, and with his pipe stem clenched between his teeth mumbled, "Beg pardon?"
"Sangappa," repeated Old Carter the Lamp-lighter. "It's the best leather softener money can buy. They send it over from India. Hard to find and a mite expensive but worth every penny. There's nothing to top it. Sangappa. It'd do that chair of yours a world of good, take my word for it."
"I do," said the man, raising a pair of binoculars to his eyes and directing them down the street.
Old Carter the Lamp-lighter ate his crumpet and chewed thoughtfully while he looked to where the lenses were pointing: at the high street's junction with Bearbinder Lane, the lower end of the village, beyond which fields and woods sloped up to the next hill.
"Bird-watching?" he asked, after a pause.
"Sort of."
"Parakeets?"
The man lowered his glasses and looked at the villager. "Funny you should say that."
"It's been a funny sort of day. Police, are you?"
"What makes you think so?"
"Your boots."
"Ah. Oh dear."
"Good for boots, too, that Sangappa is. They're in the woods."
"The parakeets, you mean?"
"Yes. In cages, in bags, in the hands of men, in the woods."
"How many? Men, that is."
"An infestation, I should say. Is that one of 'em new clockwork lamps?"
He pointed to a cylindrical object resting in a coil of rope between the constable's police-issue boots.
"Yes, it is."
"Do me out of job, that would, if it weren't for the fact that I'm twice retired."
"Twice?"
"Yes. Good, is it? Bright?"
"Very bright indeed, Mr.-?"
"They call me Old Carter the Lamp-lighter, sir, on account of the fact that I used to be a lamp-lighter before I retired."
"I thought that might be their reason."
"Detective, are you?"
"No. Constable. What else are you retired from?"
"Soldiering. King's Royal Rifle Corps. They have nets too."
"As well as rifles?"
"I mean the men in the woods, sir. Nets and parakeets."
"I see. Well, thank you, Mr. Old Carter the Lamp-lighter. I'm Constable Krishnamurthy. Your information is most useful. Would you accept a little advice?"
"Only fair, sir. I advised you about Sangappa, after all."
"You did. In return, my advice is this: stay indoors this evening!"
The policemen and Letty Green villagers left Pipers End as the sun was setting. They moved in a wide, silent arc toward Old Ford and the southern, western, and northern borders of the Alsop field.
Detective Inspector Thomas Honesty led the men to the south.
Detective Inspector William Trounce led the men to the west.
Sir Richard Francis Burton led the men to the north.
Meanwhile, opposite the lower eastern end of the field, in the isolated cottage, the Alsop family hunched around a table in the candlelit cellar and played games of whist, while above them, on a chair in the hallway, Sister Raghavendra sat facing the front door. She held a revolver in her lap and kept her finger on the trigger.
Farther to the east, beyond the village, near a derelict farmhouse, six rotorchairs landed. Their drivers sat and watched Old Ford. If they saw Constable Krishnamurthy's chair rise from it, they would fire up their engines and follow him.
The forces marshalled by Sir Richard Francis Burton were ready to pounce.
However, so were the forces gathered by the opposition.
Beneath the trees surrounding the Alsop field, the Rakes slouched insouciantly and endured the insults hurled at them by the caged birds.