The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams

Author:Richard Adams
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Speculative Fiction Suspense, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9780345494023
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 1977-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Thursday the llth November

“—And then there’s this,” said the Under Secretary, picking up a press cutting, “which you may already have seen. It may prove entirely negligible, but I don’t much like the look of it. A little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand.”

(258)

“I’ll advise the Parliamentary Secretary to prepare his chariot.”

The Assistant Secretary sighed inwardly and tried to assume an eager and cooperative air. The two of them had already spent an hour in discussing three matters on which the necessary action could have been decided in as many minutes. If ever there was a case of Parkinson’s Law, thought the Assistant Secretary morosely—only there ought to be a corollary in this case. “Work expands in direct proportion to the loquacity of the senior officer responsible for it.”

Outside, in Whitehall, evening was falling and over Horse Guards Parade the sunlit air was flecked and alive with starlings’ wings. By the thousand they flew in, whistling, strutting, chuckling to one another on the jutty friezes of the Government offices, their pendent beds and pro-creant cradles. The light reflected, from their glossy plumage, swift, glancing greens, blues and mauves. O happy living things! No tongue their beauty might declare. “I wish my kind saint would take pity on me,” thought the Assistant Secretary, taking the press cutting which the Under Secretary was holding out to him. Whatever it might be, he ought already to have seen it himself, of course—it was he who ought to have drawn it to the Under Secretary’s attention, not the other way around. The Under Secretary was making this point by the act of refraining from making it.

Mystery Dog Raiders at Large in Lakeland, he read. A report from the Orator’s Man-on-the-Spot—Digby Driver. He skimmed quickly down the item. With any luck, and if he could absorb the gist of it quickly enough, he could say that he had already seen it, but hadn’t thought it worth mentioning to his busy Under Secretary.

“Yes, I did see this, Maurice, actually, but it didn’t seem to amount to a great deal. I mean, even if Animal Research were to admit that they’d let a dog or dogs escape, and even if one of those dogs had caused the death of this poor chap Ephraim, it’s still purely local in effect and wouldn’t be damaging to the Secretary of State, I would suppose.”

“That depends,” replied the Under Secretary, looking (259)

down and making a minute and entirely unnecessary adjustment of the Remembrance Day poppy in his buttonhole. “You see, the Secretary of State’s rather sensitive at the moment, on account of attacks in the House about finance.”

“But how could this tie up with that?”

“I’m not saying it does, but it might.” The Under Secretary suavely showed his teeth like an elderly sheep. “You’ll recall that a few years back we—or our predecessors—advised the Secretary of State to accept the principal recommendations of the Sablon Committee and that that meant, inter alia, approval of the Lawson Park project; and a good deal of money for it in the annual estimates ever since.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.