The Trouble With Harry Read Online Free PDF

the other half with a painting of a glossy-haired young man advertising cigarettes.
    The history of the Wiggs’ was the history of success. The old cottage had stood there long before the bungalows were dreamt of; long before the ancestors of Mark Douglas had begun to disclaim him as a descendant. The cottage had been a game-warden’s cottage and Henry Wiggs had been a game-warden. It follows that Milly Wiggs had been a game-warden’s wife.
    When the landed gentry to whom the shooting estate belonged became buried gentry, it was found necessary to sell the estate to meet the legacy of debts. It was then that Mark Douglas, would-be landlordand lover of blondes, conceived his plan.
    He had bought all the land except the piece on which the cottage stood. This had been left, freehold, to the Wiggs’ in appreciation of the game they had preserved for killing. Henry Wiggs, a shrewd man who could see one hundred and fifty paces on a dark night, had immediately gone into business. By the time the estate was built – a six-week miracle – he had stocked in his front room all that human beings living in a wood might need. In the years that followed a brisk trade was carried on in the little cottage, for the nearest shopping centre was three miles away – a garden city which sprawled across a neighbouring hill like the dirty red wounds of a gravel workings.
    Sixpences passed across the counter by the thousand. Sixpences and shillings and, after the drapery had started, odd sums ending in three-farthings . Confidences, too, were exchanged across this counter and gossip was rampant. The little store became to Sparrowswick Estate what the centre of any busy metropolis is to any busy metropolis. The Wiggs came to know the new woodland denizens as well as they had done the old quadrupeds, andto like and dislike and recognise the foxes and the rabbits and the snakes amongst them. The people with no money began to run up their little bills and pay them, while the people with plenty of money began to run up big bills and leave them unpaid, and gradually a state of urban normality came to the heath.
    The death of Henry Wiggs could be directly attributed to the unpleasant Mr Douglas. One autumn evening, on his way to collect some rent from one of his blonde tenants, he had called in on Henry Wiggs and asked that ex-gamekeeper if he stocked a certain commodity. Mr Wiggs had been sharpening the bacon slicer at the time and he had almost cut off the top of his finger. He made a noise similar to a hog in distress, which Mr Mark Douglas had interpreted as ‘No’. Thereupon Mr Douglas had suggested, well-meaningly, that Mr Wiggs would do well to keep a little supply in some discreet corner of the shop. Moreover, Mr Douglas had personally guaranteed a steady sale of this commodity. It was at this stage that Mr Henry Wiggs had dashed into his back parlourand appeared a moment later grasping the double-barrelled shotgun.
    There had then occurred a chase the like of which had never been seen before on that heath or any other. Mark Douglas had gone running wildly away up through the woods on to the heath with Henry Wiggs in hot pursuit. And after Henry there came Mrs Wiggs, and after Mrs Wiggs the blonde with whom Mr Douglas had an appointment, and after her most of the residents of the estate, for it was a time of day when a little diversion is welcome. All over the heath they had travelled at a smart pace, and four times the barrels of the shotgun were discharged without effect. Nobody knew the exact reason for the pursuit of their landlord by their provisioned but it was naturally assumed that Mr Wiggs had found Mr Douglas in a compromising situation with Mrs Wiggs, for although Mrs Wiggs was plain and elderly she did wear a skirt and she did not play bagpipes.
    Eventually, by hiding all night in the bracken, Mark Douglas had escaped the wrath of Mr Wiggs. But Henry never fully recovered from that chase.He was no young