'Drag it,' Claud said. 'Just pull it behind you.'
We started off through the pitch-black woods, pulling the pheasants behind us. 'We'll never make it all the way back to the village like this,' I said.
'Charlie's never let me down yet,' Claud said.
We came to the margin of the wood and peered through the hedge into the lane. Claud said, 'Charlie boy' very softly and the old man behind the wheel of the taxi not five yards away poked his head out into the moonlight and gave us a sly toothless grin. We slid through the hedge, dragging the sacks after us along the ground.
'Hullo!' Charlie said. 'What's this?'
'It's cabbages,' Claud told him. 'Open the door.'
Two minutes later we were safely inside the taxi, cruising slowly down the hill towards the village.
It was all over now bar the shouting. Claud was triumphant, bursting with pride and excitement, and he kept leaning forward and tapping Charlie Kinch on the shoulder and saying, 'How about it, Charlie? How about this for a haul?' and Charlie kept glancing back popeyed at the huge bulging sacks lying on the floor between us and saying, 'Jesus Christ, man, how did you do it?'
'There's six brace of them for you, Charlie,' Claud said. And Charlie said, 'I reckon pheasants is going to be a bit scarce up at Mr Victor Hazel's opening-day shoot this year,' and Claud said, 'I imagine they are, Charlie, I imagine they are.'
'What in God's name are you going to do with a hundred and twenty pheasants?' I asked.
'Put them in cold storage for the winter,' Claud said. 'Put them in with the dogmeat in the deep-freeze at the filling-station.'
'Not tonight, I trust?'
'No, Gordon, not tonight. We leave them at Bessie's house tonight.'
'Bessie who?'
'Bessie Organ.'
'Bessie Organ!'
'Bessie always delivers my game, didn't you know that?'
'I don't know anything,' I said. I was completely stunned. Mrs Organ was the wife of the Reverend Jack Organ, the local vicar.
'Always choose a respectable woman to deliver your game,' Claud announced. 'That's correct, Charlie, isn't it?'
'Bessie's a right smart girl,' Charlie said.
We were driving through the village now and the street-lamps were still on and the men were wandering home from the pubs. I saw Will Prattley letting himself in quietly by the side-door of his fishmonger's shop and Mrs Prattley's head was sticking out of the window just above him, but he didn't know it.
'The vicar is very partial to roasted pheasant,' Claud said.
'He hangs it eighteen days,' Charlie said, 'then he gives it a couple of good shakes and all the feathers drop off.'
The taxi turned left and swung in through the gates of the vicarage. There were no lights on in the house and nobody met us. Claud and I dumped the pheasants in the coal shed at the rear, and then we said good-bye to Charlie Kinch and walked back in the moonlight to the filling-station, empty-handed. Whether or not Mr Rabbetts was watching us as we went in, I do not know. We saw no sign of him.
'Here she comes,' Claud said to me the next morning.
'Who?'
'Bessie - Bessie Organ.' He spoke the name proudly and with a slight proprietary air, as though he were a general referring to his bravest officer.
I followed him outside.
'Down there,' he said, pointing.
Far away down the road I could see a small female figure advancing towards us.