Even Captain Alec was not superior to the foibles which beset humanity. If it had been his conception of duty which impelled him to take a high line with Beaumaroy, there was now in his feelings, although he did not realize the fact, an alloy of less precious metal. He had demanded an ordeal, a test—that he should see Mr. Saffron and judge for himself. The test had been accepted; he had been worsted in it. His suspicions were not laid to rest—far from it; but they were left unjustified and unconfirmed. He had nothing to go upon, nothing to show. He had been baffled, and, moreover, bantered and almost openly ridiculed. Beaumaroy had been too many for him, in fact, the subtle rogue!
This conception of the case coloured his looks and pointed his words when Tower Cottage and its occupants were referred to, and most markedly when he spoke of them to Cynthia Walford; for in talking to her he naturally allowed himself greater freedom than he did with others; talking to her had become like talking to himself, so completely did she give him back what he bestowed on her, and re-echo to his mind its own voice. Such perfect sympathy induces a free outpouring of inner thoughts, and reinforces the opinions of which it so unreservedly approves.
Cynthia did more than elicit and reinforce Captain Alec's opinion; she also disseminated it—at Old Place, at the Irechesters', at Doctor Mary's; through all the little circle in which she was now a constant and a favourite figure. In the light of her experience of men, so limited and so sharply contrasted, she made a simple classification of them; they were Cransters or Alecs; and each class acted after its kind. Plainly Beaumaroy was not an Alec; therefore he was a Cranster; and Cranster-like actions were to be expected from him, of such special description as his circumstances and temptations might dictate.
She poured this simple philosophy into Doctor Mary's ears, vouching Alec's authority for its application to Beaumaroy. The theory was too simple for Mary, whose profession had shown her at all events something of the complexity of human nature; and she was no infallibilist; she would bow unquestioningly to no man's authority, not even to Alec's, much as she liked and admired him. There was even a streak of contrariness in her; what she might have said to herself she was prone to criticize or contradict, if it were too confidently or urgently pressed on her by another; perhaps, too, Cynthia's claim to be the Captain's mouthpiece stirred up in her a latent resentment; it was not to be called a jealousy, it was rather an amused irritation at both the divinity and his worshipper. His worshippers can sometimes make a divinity look foolish.
Her own interview with Beaumaroy at the Cottage had left her puzzled, distrustful—and attracted. She suspected him vaguely of wanting to use her for some purpose of his own; in spite of the swift plausibility of his explanation, she was nearly certain that he had lied to her about the combination knife-and-fork. Yet his account of his own position in regard to Mr. Saffron had sounded remarkably candid, and the more so because he made no pretensions to an exalted attitude. It had been left to her to define the standard of sensitive honour; his had been rather that of safety—or, at the best, that of what the world would think, or even of what the hated cousins might attempt to prove. But there again she was distrustful, both of him and of her own judgment. He might be—it seemed likely—one of those men who conceal the good as well as the bad in themselves, one of the morally shy men. Or again, perhaps, one of the morally diffident, who shrink from arrogating to themselves high standards because they fear for their own virtue if it be put to the test, and cling to the power of saying, later on, "Well, I told you not to expect too much from me!" Such various types of men exist, and they do not fall readily into either of Cynthia's two classes; they are neither Cransters nor Alecs; certainly not in thought, probably not in conduct. He had said at Old Place, the first time that she met him, that the war had destroyed all his scruples. That might be true; but it was hardly the remark of a man naturally unscrupulous.
She met him one day at Old Place about a week after Christmas. The Captain was not there; he was at her own house, with Cynthia. With the rest of the family Beaumaroy was at his best; gaily respectful to Mrs. Naylor, merry with Gertie, exchanging cut and thrust with old Mr. Naylor, easy and cordial towards herself. Certainly an attractive human being and a charming companion, pre-eminently natural. "One talks of taking people as one finds them," old Naylor said to her, when they found themselves alone for a few minutes together by the fire, while the others chatted by the window. "That fellow takes himself as he finds himself! Not as a pattern, a failure, or a problem, but just as a fact—a psychological fact."
"That rather shuts out effort, doesn't it? Well, I mean——"
"Strivings?" Mr. Naylor smiled. "Yes, it does. On the other hand, it gives such free play. That's what makes him interesting, makes you think about him." He laughed. "Oh, I daresay the surroundings help too—we're all rather children!—old Saffron, and the Devil, and Captain Duggle, and the rest of it! The brain isn't over-worked down here; we like to find an outlet."
"That means you think there's nothing in it really?"
"In what?" retorted old Naylor briskly.
But Mary was equal to him. "My lips are sealed professionally," she smiled. "But hasn't your son said anything?"
"Admirable woman! Yes, Alec has said a few things; and the young lady gives it us too. For my part, I think Beaumaroy's just drifting. He'll take the gifts of fortune if they come, but I don't think there's much deliberate design about it. Ah, now you're smiling in a superior way, Doctor Mary! I charge you with secret knowledge. Or are you puffed up by having superseded Irechester?"
"I was never so distressed and—well, embarrassed—at anything in my life."
"Well, that, if you ask me, does look a bit queer. Sort of fits in with Alec's theory."
Mary's discretion gave way a little. "Or with Mr. Beaumaroy's? Which is that I'm a fool, I think."
"And that Irechester isn't?" His eyes twinkled in good-humoured malice. "Talking of what this and that person thinks—of himself and of others—Irechester thinks himself something of an alienist."
Her eyes grew suddenly alert. "He's never talked to me on that subject."
"Perhaps he doesn't think it's one of yours. Perhaps your studies haven't lain that way? After all, no medical man can study everything!"
"Don't be naughty, Mr. Naylor!" said Doctor Mary.
"He tells me that, in cases where the condition—the condition I think he called it—is in doubt, he fixes his attention on the eyes and the voice. He couldn't give me any very clear description of what he found in the eyes. I couldn't quite make out, anyhow, what he meant, unless it was a sort of meaninglessness—a want of what you might call intellectual focus. Do you follow me?"
"Yes, I think I know what you mean."
"But with regard to the voice, I distinctly remember that he used the word 'metallic.'"
"Why, that's the word Cynthia used——!"
"I daresay it is. It's the word Alec used in describing the voice in which old Mr. Saffron recited his poem—or whatever it was—in bed."
"But I've talked to Mr. Saffron; his voice isn't like that; it's a little high, but full and rather melodious."
"Oh, well then——!" He spread out his hands, as though acknowledging a check. "Still, the voice described as metallic seems to have been Mr. Saffron's—at a certain moment at least. As a merely medical question of some interest, I wonder if such a symptom or sign of—er—irritability could be intermittent, coming and going with the—er—fits! Irechester didn't say anything on that point. Have you any opinion?"
"None. I don't know. I should like to ask Dr. Irechester." Then, with a sudden smile, she amended, "No, I shouldn't!"
"And why not, pray? Professional etiquette?"
"No—pride. Dr. Irechester laughed at me. I think I see why now; and perhaps why Mr. Beaumaroy——" She broke off abruptly, the slightest gesture of her hand warning Naylor also to be silent.
Having said good-bye to his friends by the window, Beaumaroy was sauntering across the room to pay the like courtesy to herself and Naylor. Mary rose to her feet; there was an air of decision about her, and she addressed Beaumaroy almost before he was within speaking distance as it is generally reckoned in society.
"If you're going home, Mr. Beaumaroy, shall we walk together? It's time I was off too."
Beaumaroy looked a little surprised, but undoubtedly pleased. "Well, now, what a delightful way of prolonging a delightful visit! I'm truly grateful, Dr. Arkroyd."
"Oh, you needn't be!" said Mary, with a little toss of her head.
Naylor watched them with amusement. "He'll catch it on that walk!" he was thinking. "She's going to let him have it! I wish I could be there to hear." He spoke to them openly: "I'm sorry you must both go; but, since you must, go together. Your walk will be much pleasanter."
Mary understood him well enough, and gave him a flash from her eyes. But Beaumaroy's face betrayed nothing, as he murmured politely: "To me, at all events, Mr. Naylor."
Naylor was not wrong as to Mary's mood and purpose. But she did not find it easy to begin. Pretty quick at a retort herself, she could often foresee the retorts open to her interlocutor. Beaumaroy had provided himself with plenty: the old man's whim; the access to the old man so willingly allowed, not only to her but to Captain Alec; his own candour carried to the verge of self-betrayal. Oh, he would be full of retorts, supple and dexterous ones! As this hostile accusation passed through her mind, she awoke to the fact that she was, at the same moment, regarding his profile (he too was silent, no doubt lying in wait to trip up her opening!) with interest, even with some approval. He seemed to feel her glance, for he turned towards her quickly—so quickly that she had no time to turn her eyes away.
"Doctor Mary"—the familiar mode of address habitually used at the house which they had just left seemed to slip out without his consciousness of it—"you've got something against me; I know you have! I'm sensitive that way, though not, perhaps, in another. Now, out with it!"
"You'd silence me with a clever answer. I think that you sometimes make the mistake of supposing that to be silenced is the same thing as being convinced. You silenced Captain Naylor—Oh, I don't mean you've prevented him from talking!—I mean you confuted him, you put him in the wrong; but you certainly didn't convince him."
"Of what?" he asked in a tone of surprise.
"You know that. Let us suppose his idea was all nonsense; yet your immediate object was to put it out of his head." She suddenly added, "I think your last question was a diplomatic blunder, Mr. Beaumaroy. You must have known what I meant. What was the good of pretending not to?"
Beaumaroy stopped still in the road for a moment, looking at her with a rueful amusement. "You're not so easily silenced, after all!" he said, starting to walk on again.
"You encourage me." To tell the truth, Mary was not only encouraged, she was pleased by the hit she had scored, and flattered by his acknowledgment of it. "Well, then, I'll put another point. You needn't answer if you don't like."
"I shall answer if I can, depend on it!" He laughed, and Mary, for a brief instant, joined in his laugh. His sudden lapses into candour seemed somehow to put the serious hostile questioner ridiculously in the wrong. Could a man like that really have anything to conceal?
But she held to her purpose. "You're a friendly sort of man, you offer and accept attentions and kindnesses, you're not stand-offish, or haughty, or sulky; you make friends easily, especially perhaps with women; they like you, and like to be pleasant and kind to you. There are men—patients, I mean—very hard to deal with—men who resent being ill, resent having to have things done to them and for them, who especially resent the services of women, even of nurses—I mean in quite indifferent things, not merely in things where a man may naturally shrink from their help. Well, you don't seem that sort of man in the least." She looked at him, as she ended this appreciation of him, as though she expected an answer or a comment. Beaumaroy made neither; he walked on, not even looking at her.
"And you can't have been troubled long with that wound. It evidently healed up quickly and sweetly."
Beaumaroy looked for an instant at his maimed hand with a critical air; but he was still silent.
"So that I wonder you didn't do as most patients do—let the nurse, or, if you were still disabled after you came out, a friend or somebody, cut up your food for you without providing yourself with that implement." He turned his head quickly towards her. "And if you ask me what implement I mean, I shall answer—the one you tried to snatch from the sideboard at Tower Cottage before I could see it."
It was a direct challenge; she charged him with a lie. Beaumaroy's face assumed a really troubled expression, a thing rare for it to do. Yet it was not an ashamed or abashed expression; it just seemed to recognize that a troublesome difficulty had arisen. He set a slower pace and prodded the road with his stick. Mary pushed her advantage. "Your—your improvisation didn't satisfy me at the time, and the more I've thought over it, the less have I found it convincing."
He stopped again, turning round to her. He slapped his left hand against the side of his leg. "Well, there it is, Doctor Mary! You must make what you can of it."
It was complete surrender as to the combination knife-and-fork. He was beaten—on that point at least—and owned it. His lie was found out. "It's dashed difficult always to remember that you're a doctor," he broke out the next minute.
Mary could not help laughing; but her eyes were still keen and challenging as she said, "Perhaps you'd better change your doctor again, Mr. Beaumaroy. You haven't found one stupid enough!"
Again Beaumaroy had no defence; his nonplussed air confessed that manoeuvre too. Mary dropped her rallying tone and went on gravely, "Unless I'm treated with confidence and sincerity, I can't continue to attend Mr. Saffron."
"That's your ultimatum, is it, Doctor Mary?"
She nodded sharply and decisively. Beaumaroy meditated for a few seconds. Then he shook his head regretfully. "It's no use. I daren't trust you," he said.
Mary laughed again—this time in amazed resentment of his impudence. "You can't trust me! I think it's the other way round. It seems to me that the boot's on the other leg."
"Not as I see it." Then he smiled slowly, as it were tentatively. "Or would you—I wonder if you could—possibly—well, stand in with me?"
"Are you offering me a—a partnership?" she asked indignantly.
He raised his hand in a seeming protest, and spoke now hastily and in some confusion. "Not as you understand it. I mean—as you probably understand it—from what I said to you that night at the Cottage. There are features in the—well, there are things that I admit have—have passed through my mind, without being what you'd call settled. Oh, yes, without being in the least settled. Well, for the sake of your help and—er—co-operation, those—those features could be dropped. And then perhaps—if only your—your rules and etiquette——"
Mary scornfully cut short his embarrassed pleadings. "There's a good deal more than rules and etiquette involved. It seems to me that it's a matter of common honesty rather than of rules and etiquette——"
"Yes, but you don't understand——"
She cut him short again. "Mr. Beaumaroy, after this—after your suggestion and all the rest of it—there must be an end of all relations between us—professionally and, so far as possible, socially too, please. I don't want to be self-righteous, but I feel bound to say that you have misunderstood my character."
Her voice quivered at the end, and almost broke. She was full of a grieved indignation.
They had come opposite the cottage now. Beaumaroy stopped, and stood facing her. Though dusk had fallen, it was a clear evening; she could see his face plainly; obviously he was in deep distress. "I wouldn't have offended you for the world. I—I like you far too much, Doctor Mary."
"You imputed your own standards to me. That's all there is about it, I suppose," she said in a scornful sadness. He looked very miserable. Compassion, and the old odd attraction which he had for her, stirred in her mind. Her voice grew soft, and she held out her hand. "I'm sorry too, very sorry, that it should have to be good-bye between us."
Beaumaroy did not take her proffered hand, or even seem to notice it. He stood quite still.
"I'm damned if I know what I'm to do now!"
Close on the heels of his despairing confession of helplessness—for such it undoubtedly seemed to be—came the noise of an opening door, a light from the inside of the cottage, a patter of quick-moving feet on the flagged path that led to the garden gate. The next moment Mary saw the figure of Mr. Saffron, in his old grey shawl, standing at the gate. He was waving his right arm in an excited way, and his hand held a large sheet of paper.
"Hector! Hector, my dear, dear boy! The news has come at last! You can be off to-morrow!"
Beaumaroy started violently, glanced at his old friend's strange figure, glanced once too at Mary; the expression of utter despair which his face had worn seemed modified into one of humorous bewilderment.
"Yes, yes, you can start to-morrow for Morocco, my dear boy!" cried old Mr. Saffron.
Beaumaroy lifted his hat to her, cried, "I'm coming, sir," turned on his heel, and strode quickly up to Mr. Saffron. She watched him open the gate and take the old gentleman by the arm; she heard the murmur of his voice, speaking in soft accents as the pair walked up the path together. They passed into the house, and the door was shut.
Mary stood where she was for a moment, then moved slowly, hesitatingly, yet as though under a lure which she could not resist. Just outside the gate lay something that gleamed white through the darkness. It was the sheet of paper. Mr. Saffron had dropped it in his excitement, and Beaumaroy had not noticed.
Mary stole forward and picked it up stealthily; she was incapable of resisting her curiosity or even of stopping to think about her action. She held it up to what light there was, and strained her eyes to examine it. So far as she could see, it was covered with dots, dashes, lines, queerly drawn geometrical figures—a mass of meaningless hieroglyphics. She dropped it again where she had found it, and made off home with guilty swiftness.
Yes, there had been, this time, a distinctly metallic ring in old Mr. Saffron's voice.
When Mary arrived home, she found Cynthia and Captain Alec still in possession of the drawing-room; their manner accused her legitimate entry into the room of being an outrageous intrusion. She took no heed of that, and indeed little heed of them. To tell the truth—she was ashamed to confess, but it was the truth—she felt rather tired of them that evening. Their affair deserved every laudatory epithet—except that of interesting; so she declared peevishly within herself, as she tried to join in conversation with them. It was no use. They talked on, and in justice to them it may be urged that they were fully as bored with Mary just then as she was with them; so naturally their talents did not shine their brightest. But they had plenty to say to one another, and dutifully threw in a question or a reference to Mary every now and then. Sitting apart at the other end of the long low room—it ran through the whole depth of her old-fashioned dwelling—she barely heeded and barely answered. They smiled at one another and were glad.
She was very tired; her feelings were wounded, her nerves on edge; she could not even attempt any cool train of reasoning. The outcome of her talk with Beaumaroy filled her mind, rather than the matter of it; and, more even than that, the figure of the man seemed to be with her, almost to stand before her, with his queer alternations of despair and mirth, of defiance and pleading, of derision and alarm. One moment she was intensely irritated with him, in the next she half forgave the plaintive image which the fancy of her mind conjured up before her eyes.
Her eyes closed—she was so very tired, the fight had taken it out of her! To have to do things like that was an odious necessity, which had never befallen her before. That man had done—well, Captain Alec was quite right about him. Yet still the shadowy image, though thus reproached, did not depart; it was smiling at her now with its old mockery—the kindly mockery which his face wore before they quarrelled, and before its light was quenched in that forlorn bewilderment. And it seemed as though the image began to say some words to her, disconnected words, not making a sentence, but yet having for the image a pregnant meaning, and seeming to her—though vaguely and very dimly—to be the key to what she had to understand. She was stupid not to understand words so full of meaning—just as stupid as Beaumaroy had thought.
Then Doctor Mary fell asleep, sound asleep; she had been very near it for the last ten minutes.
Captain Alec and Cynthia were in two chairs, close side by side, in front of the fire. Once Cynthia glanced over her shoulder; the Captain had glanced over his in the same direction already. One of his hands held one of Cynthia's. It was well to be sure that Mary was asleep, really asleep.
She had gone to sleep on the name of Beaumaroy; on it she awoke. It came from Captain Alec's lips. He was standing on the hearthrug with his arm round Cynthia's waist, and his other hand raising one of hers to his lips. He looked admirably handsome—strong, protecting, devoted. And Cynthia, in her fragile appealing prettiness, was a delicious foil, a perfect complement to the picture. But now, under stress of emotion—small blame to a man who was making a vow of eternal fidelity!—under stress of emotion, as, on a previous occasion, under that of indignation, the Captain had raised his voice!
"Yes, against all the scoundrels in the world, whether they're called Cranster or Beaumaroy!" he said.
Mary's eyes opened. She sat up. "Cranster and Beaumaroy?" They were the words which her ears had caught. "What in the world has Mr. Beaumaroy to do with——?" But she broke off, as she saw the couple by the fire. "But what are you two doing?"
Cynthia broke away from her lover, and ran to her friend with joyous avowals.
"I must have been sound asleep," cried Mary, kissing her. Alec had followed across the room and now stood close by her. She looked up at him. "Oh, I see! She's to be safe now from such people?" On this particular occasion Mary's look at the Captain was not admiring; it was a little scornful.
"That's the idea," agreed the happy Alec. "Another idea is that I trot you both over in the car to Old Place—to break the news and have dinner."
"Splendid!" cried Cynthia. "Do come, Mary!"
Mary shook her head. "No; you go—you two," she said. "I'm tired—and I want to think." She passed her hand across her eyes. She seemed to wipe away the mists of sleep. Her face suddenly grew animated and exultant. "No, I don't want to think! I know!" she exclaimed emphatically.
"Mary dear, are you still asleep? Are you talking in your sleep?"
"The keyword! It came to me, somehow, in my sleep. The keyword—Morocco!"
"What the deuce has Morocco——?" Captain Alec began, with justifiable impatience.
"Ah, you never heard that, and, dear Captain Alec, you wouldn't have understood it if you had. You thought he was reciting poems. What he was really doing——"
"Look here, Doctor Mary, I've just been accepted by Cynthia, and I'm going to take her to my mother and father. Can you get your mind on to that?" He looked at her curiously, not at all understanding her excitement, perhaps resenting the obvious fact that his Cynthia's happiness was not foremost in her friend's mind.
With a great effort Mary brought herself down to the earth—to the earth of romantic love from the heaven of professional triumph. True, the latter was hers, the former somebody else's. "I do beg your pardon, I do indeed. And do let me kiss you again, Cynthia darling—and you, dear Captain Alec, just once! And then you shall go off to dinner." She laughed excitedly. "Yes, I'm going to push you out."
"Let's go, Alec," said Cynthia, not unkindly, yet just a little pettishly. The great moment of her life—surely as great a moment as there had ever been in anybody's life?—had hardly earned adequate recognition from Mary. As usual, her feelings and Alec's were as one. Before they passed to other and more important matters, when they drove off in the car, she said to Alec, "It seems to me that Mary's strangely interested in that Mr. Beaumaroy. Had she been dreaming of him, Alec?"
"Looks like it! And why the devil Morocco?" His intellect baffled, Captain Alec took refuge in his affections.
Left alone—and so thankful for it!—Doctor Mary did not attempt to sit still. She walked up and down, she roved here and there, smoking any quantity of cigarettes; she would certainly have forbidden such excess to a patient. The keyword—its significance had seemed to come to her in her sleep. Something in that subconsciousness theory? The word explained, linked up, gave significance—that magical word Morocco!
Yes, they fell into place now, the things that had been so puzzling, and that looked now so obviously suggestive. Even one thing which she had thought nothing about, which had not struck her as having any significance, now took on its meaning—the grey shawl which the old gentleman so constantly wore swathed round his body, enveloping the whole of it except his right arm. Did he wear the shawl while he took his meals? Doctor Mary could not tell as to that. Perhaps he did not; at his meals only Beaumaroy, and perhaps their servant, would be present. But he seemed to wear it whenever he went abroad, whenever he was exposed to the scrutiny of strangers. That indicated secretiveness—perhaps fear—the apprehension of something. The caution bred by that might give way under the influence of great cerebral excitement. Unquestionably Mr. Saffron had been very excited when he waved the sheet of hieroglyphics and shouted to Beaumaroy about Morocco. But whether he wore the shawl or not in the safe privacy of Tower Cottage, whatever might be the truth about that—perhaps he varied his practice according to his condition—on one thing Doctor Mary would stake her life—he used the combination knife-and-fork!
For it was over that implement that Beaumaroy had tripped up. It ought to have been hidden before she was admitted to the cottage. Somebody had been careless, somebody had blundered—whether Beaumaroy himself or his servant was immaterial. Beaumaroy had lied, readily and ingeniously, but not quite readily enough. The dart of his hand had betrayed him; that, and a look in his eyes, a tell-tale mirth which had seemed to mock both her and himself, and had made his ingenious lie even at the moment unconvincing. Yes, whether Mr. Saffron wore the shawl or not, he certainly used the combination table implement!
And the "poems"? The poems which Mr. Saffron recited to himself in bed, and which he had said, in Captain Alec's hearing, were good and "went well." It was Beaumaroy, of course, who had called them poems; the Captain had merely repeated the description. But with her newly found insight Doctor Mary knew better. What Mr. Saffron declaimed, in that vibrating metallic voice, were not poems, but—speeches!
And "Morocco" itself! To anybody who remembered history for a few years back, even with the general memory of the man in the street, to anybody who had read the controversies about the war, Morocco brought not puzzle, but enlightenment. For had not Morocco been really the starting-point of the years of crisis—those years intermittent in excitement but constant in anxiety? Beaumaroy was to start to-morrow for Morocco—on the strength of the hieroglyphics! Perhaps he was to go on from Morocco to Libya; perhaps he was to raise the Senussi (Mary had followed the history of the war), to make his appearance at Cairo, Jerusalem, Baghdad! He was to be a forerunner, was Mr. Beaumaroy. Mr. Saffron, his august master, would follow in due course! With a sardonic smile she wondered how the ingenious man would get out of starting for Morocco; perhaps he would not succeed in obtaining a passport, or, that excuse failing, in eluding the vigilance of the British authorities. Or some more hieroglyphics might come, carrying another message, postponing his start, saying that the propitious moment had not yet arrived after all. There were several devices open to ingenuity; many ways in which Beaumaroy might protract a situation not so bad for him even as it stood, and quite rich in possibilities. Her acid smile was turned against herself when she remembered that she had been fool enough to talk to Beaumaroy about sensitive honour!
Well, never mind Mr. Beaumaroy! The case as to Mr. Saffron stood pretty plain. It was queer and pitiful, but by no means unprecedented. She might be not much of an alienist, as Dr. Irechester had been kind enough to suggest to Mr. Naylor, but she had seen such cases herself—even stranger ones, where even higher Powers suffered impersonation, with effects still more tragically absurd to onlookers. And she remembered reading somewhere—was it in Maudslay?—that in the days of Napoleon, when princes and kings were as ninepins to be set up and knocked down at the tyrant's pleasure, the asylums of France were full of such great folk. Potentates there galore! If she had Mr. Saffron's "record" before her, she would expect to read of a vain ostentatious man, ambitious in his own small way; the little plant of these qualities would, given a morbid physical condition, develop into the fantastic growth of delusion which she had now diagnosed in the case of Mr. Saffron—diagnosed with the assistance of some lucky accidents!
But what was her duty now—the duty of Dr. Mary Arkroyd, a duly qualified, accredited, responsible medical practitioner? With a slight shock to her self-esteem she was obliged to confess that she had only the haziest idea. Had not people who kept a lunatic to be licensed or something? Or did that apply only to lunatics in the plural? And did Beaumaroy keep Mr. Saffron within the meaning of whatever the law might be? But at any rate she must do something; the state of things at Tower Cottage could not go on as it was. The law of the land—whatever it was—must be observed, Beaumaroy must be foiled, and poor old Mr. Saffron taken proper care of. The course of her meditations was hardly interrupted by the episode of her light evening meal; she was back in her drawing-room by half-past eight, her mind engrossed with the matter still.
It was a little after nine when there was a ring at the hall door. Not the lovers back so early? She heard a man's voice in the hall. The next moment Beaumaroy was shown in, and the door shut behind him. He stood still by it, making no motion to advance towards her. He was breathing quickly, and she noticed beads of perspiration on his forehead. She had sprung to her feet at the sight of him, and faced him with indignation.
"You have no right to come here, Mr. Beaumaroy, after what passed between us this afternoon."
"Besides being, as you saw yourself, very excited, my poor old friend isn't at all well to-night."
"I'm very sorry; but I'm no longer Mr. Saffron's medical attendant. If I declined to be this afternoon, I decline ten times more to-night."
"For all I know, he's very ill indeed, Dr. Arkroyd." Beaumaroy's manner was very quiet, restrained, and formal.
"I have come to a clear conclusion about Mr. Saffron's case since I left you."
"I thought you might. I suppose 'Morocco' put you on the scent? And I suppose, too, that you looked at that wretched bit of paper?"
"I—I thought it——" Here Mary was slightly embarrassed.
"You'd have been more than human if you hadn't. I was out again after it in five minutes—as soon as I missed it; you'd gone, but I concluded you'd seen it. He scribbles dozens like that."
"You seem to admit my conclusion about his mental condition," she observed stiffly.
"I always admit when I cease to be able to deny. But don't let's stand here talking. Really, for all I know, he may be dying. His heart seems to me very bad."
"Go and ask Dr. Irechester."
"He dreads Irechester. I believe the sight of Irechester might finish him. You must come."
"I can't—for the reasons I've told you."
"Why? My misdeeds? Or your rules and regulations? My God, how I hate rules and regulations! Which of them is it that is perhaps to cost the old man his life?"
Mary could not resist the appeal; that could hardly be her duty, and certainly was not her inclination. Her grievance was not against poor old Mr. Saffron, with his pitiful delusion of greatness, of a greatness too which now had suffered an eclipse almost as tragical as that which had befallen his own reason. What an irony in his mad aping of it now!
"I will come, Mr. Beaumaroy, on condition that you give me candidly and truthfully all the information which, as Mr. Saffron's medical attendant, I am entitled to ask."
"I'll tell you all I know about him—and about myself too."
"Your affairs and—er—position matter to me only so far as they bear on Mr. Saffron."
"So be it. Only come quickly; and bring some of your things that may help a man with a bad heart."
Mary left him, went to her surgery, and was quickly back with her bag. "I'll get out the car."
"It'll take a little longer, I know, but do you mind if we walk? Cars always alarm him. He thinks that they come to take him away. Every car that passes vexes him; he looks to see if it will stop. And when yours does——" He ended with a shrug.
For the first time Mary's feelings took on a keen edge of pity. Poor old gentleman! Fancy his living like that! And cars—military cars too—had been so common on the road across the heath.
"I understand. Let us go at once. You walked yourself, I suppose?"
"Ran," said Beaumaroy, and, with the first sign of a smile, wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.
"I'm ready, Mr. Beaumaroy," said Doctor Mary.
They walked along together in silence for full half the way. Then Beaumaroy spoke. "He was extremely excited—at his worst—when he and I went into the cottage. I had to humour him in every way; it was the only thing to do. That was followed by great fatigue—a sort of collapse. I persuaded him to go to bed. I hope we shall find him there, but I don't know. He would let me go only on condition that I left the door of the Tower unlocked, so that he could go in there if he wanted to. If he has, I'm afraid that you may see something—well, something rather bizarre, Dr. Arkroyd."
"That's all in the course of my profession."
Silence fell on them again, till the outline of cottage and tower came into view through the darkness. Beaumaroy spoke only once again before they reached the garden gate.
"If he should happen to be calmer now, I hope you will not consider it necessary to tell him that you suspect anything unusual."
"He is secretive?"
"He lives in terror."
"Of what?"
"Of being shut up. May I lead the way in, Dr. Arkroyd?"
They entered the cottage, and Beaumaroy shut the door. A lamp was burning dimly in the passage. He turned it up. "Would you kindly wait here one minute?" Receiving her nod of acquiescence, he stepped softly up the stairs, and she heard him open a door above; she knew it was that of Mr. Saffron's bedroom, where she had visited the old man. She waited—now with a sudden sense of suspense. It was very quiet in the cottage.
Beaumaroy was down again in a minute.
"It is as I feared," he said quietly. "He has got up again, and gone into the Tower. Shall I try and get him out, or will you——?"
"I will go in with you, of course, Mr. Beaumaroy."
His old mirthful, yet rueful, smile came on his lips—just for a moment. Then he was grave and formal again. "This way, then, if you please, Dr. Arkroyd," he said deferentially.
Mr. Percy Bennett, that gentlemanly stranger, was an enemy to delay; both constitutionally and owing to experience, averse from dallying with fortune; to him a bird in his hand was worth a whole aviary on his neighbour's unrifled premises. He thought that Beaumaroy might levant with the treasure; at any moment that unwelcome, though not unfamiliar, tap on the shoulder, with the words (gratifying under quite other circumstances and from quite different lips) "I want you," might incapacitate him from prosecuting his enterprise (he expressed this idea in more homely idiom—less Latinized was his language, metaphorical indeed, yet terse); finally he had that healthy distrust of his accomplices which is essential to success in a career of crime; he thought that Sergeant Hooper might not deliver the goods!
Sergeant Hooper demurred; he deprecated inconsiderate haste; let the opportunity be chosen. He had served under Mr. Beaumaroy in France, and (whatever faults Major-General Punnit might find with that officer) preferred that he should be off the premises at the moment when Mr. Bennett and he himself made unauthorized entry thereon. "He's a hot 'un in a scrap," said the Sergeant, sitting in a public-house at Sprotsfield on Boxing Day evening, Mr. Bennett and sundry other excursionists from London being present.
"My chauffeur will settle him," said Mr. Bennett. It may seem odd that Mr. Bennett should have a chauffeur; but he had—or proposed to have—pro hac vice—orad hoc; for this particular job in fact. Without a car that stuff at Tower Cottage—somewhere at Tower Cottage—would be difficult to shift.
The Sergeant demurred still, by no means for the sake of saving Beaumaroy's skin, but still purely for the reason already given; yet he admitted that he could not name any date on which he could guarantee Beaumaroy's absence from Tower Cottage. "He never leaves the old blighter alone later than eleven o'clock or so, and rarely as late as that."
"Then any night's about the same," said gentleman Bennett; "and now for the scheme dear N.C.O.!"
Sergeant Hooper despaired of the doors. The house-door might possibly be negotiated, though at the probable cost of arousing the notice of Beaumaroy—and the old blighter himself. But the door from the parlour into the Tower offered insuperable difficulties. It was always locked; the lock was intricate; he had never so much as seen the key at close quarters and, even had opportunity offered, was quite unpractised in the art of taking impressions of locks—a thing not done with accuracy quite so easily as seems sometimes to be assumed.
"For my own part," said Mr. Bennett with a nod, "I've always inclined to the window. We can negotiate that without any noise to speak of, and it oughtn't to take us more than a few minutes. Just deal boards, I expect! Perhaps the old gentleman and your pal Beaumaroy" (the Sergeant spat) "will sleep right through it!"
"If they ain't in the Tower itself," suggested the Sergeant gloomily.
"Wherever they may be," said gentleman Bennett, with a touch of irritability—he was himself a sanguine man and disliked a mind fertile in objections—"I suppose the stuff's in the Tower, isn't it?"
"It goes in there, and I've never seen it come out, Mr. Bennett." Here at least a tone of confidence rang in the Sergeant's voice.
"But where in the Tower, Sergeant?"
"'Ow should I know? I've never been in the blooming place."
"It's really rather a queer business," observed Mr. Bennett, allowing himself, for a moment, an outside and critical consideration of the matter.
"Damned," said the Sergeant briefly.
"But, once inside, we're bound to find it! Then—with the car—it's in London in forty minutes, and in ten more it's—where it's going to be; where that is needn't worry you, my dear Sergeant."
"What if we're seen from the road?" urged the pessimistic Sergeant.
"There's never a job about which you can't put those questions. What if Ludendorff had known just what Foch was going to do, Sergeant? At any rate anybody who sees us is two miles either way from a police station—and may be a lot farther if he tries to interfere with us! It's a hundred to one against anybody being on the road at that time of night; we'll pray for a dark night and dirty weather—which, so far as I've observed, you generally get in this beastly neighbourhood." He leant forward and tapped the Sergeant on the shoulder. "Barring accidents, let's say this day week; meanwhile, Neddy"—he smiled as he interjected "Neddy is our chauffeur"—"Neddy and I will make our little plan of attack."
"Don't be too generous! Don't leave all the V.C. chances to me," the Sergeant implored.
"Neddy's a fair glutton for 'em! Difficulty is to keep him from murder! And he stands six foot four and weighs seventeen stone."
"I'll back him up—from be'ind—company in support," grinned the Sergeant, considerably comforted by this description of his coadjutor.
"You'll occupy the station assigned to you, my man," said Mr. Bennett, with an admirable burlesque of the military manner. "The front is wherever a soldier is ordered to be—a fine saying of Lord Kitchener's! Remember it, Sergeant!"
"Yes, sir," said the Sergeant, grinning still.
He found Mr. Bennett on the whole amusing company, though occasionally rather alarming; for instance, there seemed to him to be no particular reason for dragging in Neddy's predilection for murder; though, of course, a man of his inches and weight might commit murder through some trifling and pardonable miscalculation of force. "Same as if that Captain Naylor hit you!" the Sergeant reflected, as he finished the ample portion of rum with which the conversation had been lightened. He felt pleasantly muzzy, and saw Mr. Bennett's clean-cut features rather blurred in outline. However the sandy wig and red moustache which that gentleman wore—in his character as a Boxing Day excursionist—were still salient features even to his eyes. Anybody in the room would have been able to swear to them.
Thus the date of the attack was settled and, if only it had been adhered to, things might have fallen out differently between Doctor Mary and Mr. Beaumaroy. Events would probably have relieved Mary from the necessity of presenting her ultimatum, and she might never have heard that illuminating word "Morocco." But big Neddy the Shover—as his intimate friends were wont to call him—was a man of pleasure as well as of business; he was not a bloke in an office; he liked an ample Christmas vacation and was now taking one with a party of friends at Brighton—all tip-toppers, who did the thing in style and spent their money (which was not their money) lavishly. From the attractions of this company—not composed of gentlemen only—Neddy refused to be separated. Mr. Bennett, who was on thorns at the delay, could take it or leave it at that; in any case the job was, in Neddy's opinion (which he expressed with that massive but good-humoured scorn which is an appanage of very large men), a leap in the dark, a pig in a poke, blind hookey; for who really knew how much of the stuff the old blighter and his pal had contrived to shift down to the cottage in the old brown bag? Sometimes it looked light, sometimes it looked heavy; sometimes perhaps it was full of bricks!
In this mood Neddy had to be humoured, even though gentlemanly Mr. Bennett sat on thorns. The Sergeant repined less at the delay; he liked the pickings which the job brought him much better than the job itself, standing in wholesome dread of Beaumaroy. It was rather with resignation than with joy that he received from Mr. Bennett the news that Neddy had at last named the day that would suit his High Mightiness—Tuesday the 7th of January it was, and, as it chanced, the very day before Beaumaroy was to start for Morocco! More accurately, the attack would be delivered on the actual day of his departure—if he went. For it was timed for one o'clock in the morning, an hour at which the road across the heath might reasonably be expected to be clear of traffic. This was an especially important point, in view of the fact that the window of the Tower faced towards the road and was but four or five yards distant from it.
After a jovial dinner—rather too jovial in Mr. Bennett's opinion, but that was Neddy's only fault, he would mix pleasure with business—the two set out in an Overland car. Mr. Bennett—whom, by the way, his big friend Neddy called "Mike," and not "Percy," as might have been expected—assumed his sandy wig and red moustache as soon as they were well started; Neddy scorned disguise for the moment, but he had a mask in his pocket. He also had a very nasty little club in the same pocket, whereas Mr. Bennett carried no weapon of offence—merely the tools of his trade, at which he was singularly expert. The friends had worked together before; though Neddy reviled Mike for a coward, and Mike averred, with curses, that Neddy would bring them both to the gallows some day, yet they worked well together and had a respect for one another, each allowing for the other's idiosyncrasies. The true spirit of partnership! On it alone can lasting and honourable success be built.
"Just match-boarding, the Sergeant says it is, does he?" asked Neddy, breaking a long silence, which indeed had lasted until they were across Putney Bridge and climbing the hill.
"Yes, and rotten at that. It oughtn't to take two minutes; then there'll be only the window. Of course we must have a look round first. Then, if the coast's clear, I'll nip in and shove something up against the door of the place while you're following. The Sergeant's to stay on guard at the door of the house, so that we can't be taken in the rear. See?"
"Righto!"
"Then—well, we've got to find the stuff, and when we've found it, you've got to carry it, Neddy. Don't mind if it's a bit heavy, do you?"
"I don't want to overstrain myself," said Neddy jocularly, "but I'll do my best with it—only hope it's there!"
"It must be there. Hasn't got wings, has it? At any rate, not till you put it in your pocket, and go out for an evening with the ladies!"
Neddy paid this pleasantry the tribute of a laugh, but he had one more business question to ask:
"Where are we to stow the car? How far off?"
"The Sergeant has picked out a big clump of trees, a hundred yards from the cottage on the Sprotsfield side, and about thirty yards from the road. Pretty clear going to it, bar the bracken—she'll do it easily. There she'll lie, snug as you like. As we go by Sprotsfield, the car won't have to pass the cottage at all—that's an advantage—and yet it's not over far to carry the stuff."
"Sounds all right," said Neddy placidly, and with a yawn. "Have a drop?"
"No, I won't—and I wish you wouldn't, Neddy. It makes you bad-tempered, and a man doesn't want to be bad-tempered on these jobs."
"Take the wheel a second while I have a drop," said Neddy, just for all the world as if his friend had not spoken. He unscrewed the top of a large flask and took a very considerable "drop." It was only after he had done this with great deliberation that he observed good-naturedly, "And you go to hell, Mike! It's dark, ain't it? That's a bit of all right."
He did not speak again till they were near Sprotsfield. "This Beaumaroy—queer name, ain't it?—he's a big chap, ain't he, Mike?"
"Pretty fair; but, Lord love you, a baby beside yourself."
"Well, now, you told me something the Sergeant said about a man as was" (Neddy, unlike his friend, occasionally tripped in his English) "really big."
"Oh, that's Naylor—Captain Naylor. But he's not at the cottage; we're not likely to meet him, praise be!"
"Rather wish we were! I want a little bit of exercise," said Neddy.
"Well, I don't know but what Beaumaroy might give you that. The Sergeant's got tales about him at the war."
"Oh, blast these soldiers—they ain't no good." In what he himself regarded as his spare hours, that is to say, the daytime hours wherein the ordinary man labours, Neddy was a highly skilled craftsman, whose only failing was a tendency to be late in the morning and to fall ill about the festive seasons of the year. He made lenses, and, in spite of the failing, his work had been deemed to be of National Importance, as indeed it was. But that did not excuse his prejudice against soldiers.
They passed through the outskirts of Sprotsfield; Mike—to use his more familiar name—had made a thorough exploration of the place, and his directions enabled his chauffeur to avoid the central and populous parts of the town. Then they came out on to the open heath, passed Old Place, and presently—about half a mile from Tower Cottage—found Sergeant Hooper waiting for them by the roadside. It was then hard on midnight—a dark cloudy night, very apt for their purpose. With a nod, but without a word, the Sergeant got into the car, and in cautious whispers directed its course to the shelter of the clump of trees; they reached it after a few hundred yards of smooth road and some thirty of bumping over the heath. It afforded a perfect screen from the road, and on the other side there was only untrodden heath, no path or track being visible near it.
Neddy got out of the car, but he did not forget his faithful flask. He offered it to the Sergeant in token of approval. "Good place, Sergeant," he said; "does credit to you, as a beginner. Here, mate, hold on, though. It's evident you ain't accustomed to liqueur glasses!"
"When I sits up so late, I gets a kind of a sinking," the Sergeant explained apologetically.
Mike flashed a torch on him for a minute; there was a very uncomfortable look in his little squinty eyes. "Sergeant," he said suavely but gravely, "my friend here relies on you. He's not a safe man to disappoint." He shifted the light suddenly on to Neddy, whose proportions seemed to loom out prodigious from the surrounding darkness. "Are you, Neddy?"
"No, I'm a sensitive chap, I am," said Neddy, smiling. "Don't you go and hurt my pride in you by any sign of weakness, Sergeant."
The Sergeant shivered a little. "I'm game—I'll stick it," he protested valorously.
"You'd better!" Neddy advised.
"All quiet at the cottage as you came by?" asked Mike.
"Quiet as the grave, for what I see," the Sergeant answered.
"All right. Mike, where are them sandwiches? I feel like a bite. One for the Sergeant too! But no more flask—no, you don't, Sergeant! When'll we start, Mike?"
"In about half an hour."
"Just nice time for a snack—oysters and stout for you, my darling?" said jovial Neddy. Then—with a change of voice—"Just as well that didn't pass us!"
For the sound of a car came from the road they had just left. It was going in the direction of the cottage and of Inkston. Captain Alec was taking his betrothed home after a joyful evening of congratulation and welcome.
The scene presented by the interior of the Tower, when Beaumaroy softly opened the door and signed to Doctor Mary to step forward and look, was indeed a strange one, a ridiculous yet pathetic mockery of grandeur.
The building was a circular one, rising to a height of some thirty-five feet and having a diameter of about ten. Up to about twelve feet from the floor its walls were draped with red and purple stuffs of coarse material; above them the bare bricks and the rafters of the roof showed naked. In the middle of the floor—with their backs to the door at which Mary and her companion stood—were set two small arm-chairs of plain and cheap make. Facing them, on a rough dais about three feet high and with two steps leading up to it, stood a large and deep carved oaken arm-chair. It too was upholstered in purple, and above and around it were a canopy and curtains of the same colour. This strange erection was set with its back to the one window—that which Mr. Saffron had caused to be boarded up, soon after he entered into occupation. The place was lighted by candles—two tall standards of an ecclesiastical pattern, one on either side of the great chair or throne, and each holding six large candles, all of which were now alight and about half consumed. On the throne, his spare wasted figure set far back in the recesses of its deep cushioned seat and his feet resting on a high hassock, sat old Mr. Saffron; in his right hand he grasped a sceptre, obviously a theatrical "property," but a handsome one, of black wood with gilt ornamentation; his left arm he held close against his side. His eyes were turned up towards the roof; his lips were moving as though he were talking, but no sound came.
Such was Doctor Mary's first impression of the scene; but the next moment she took in another feature of it, not less remarkable. To the left of the throne, to her right as she stood in the doorway facing it, there was a fireplace; an empty grate, though the night was cold. Immediately in front of it was—unmistakably—the excavation in the floor which Mr. Penrose had described at the Christmas dinner-party at Old Place—six feet in length by three in breadth, and about four feet deep. Against the wall, close by, stood a sheet of cast iron, which evidently served to cover and conceal the aperture; by it was thrown down, in careless disorder, a strip of the same dull red baize as covered the rest of the floor of the Tower. By the side of the sheet and the piece of carpet there was an old brown leather bag.
Tradition—and Mr. Penrose—had told the truth. Here without doubt was Captain Duggle's grave, the grave he had caused to be dug for himself, but which—be the reason what it might—his body had never occupied. Yet the tomb was not entirely empty. The floor of it was strewn with gold—to what depth Mary could not tell, but it was covered with golden sovereigns; there must be thousands of them. They gleamed under the light of the candles.
Mary turned startled, inquiring, apprehensive eyes on Beaumaroy. He pressed her arm gently, and whispered:
"I'll tell you presently. Come in. He'll notice us, I expect, in a minute. Mind you curtsey when he sees you!" He led her in, pulling the door to after him, and placed her and himself in front of the two small arm-chairs opposite Mr. Saffron's throne.
Beaumaroy removed his hand from her arm but she caught his wrist in one of hers and stood there, holding on to him, breathing quickly, her eyes now set on the figure on the throne.
The old man's lips had ceased to move; his eyes had closed; he lay back in the deep seat, inert, looking half dead, very pale and waxen in the face. For what seemed a long time he sat thus, motionless and almost without signs of life, while the two stood side by side before him. Mary glanced once at Beaumaroy; his lips were apart in that half-humorous, half-compassionate smile; there was no hint of impatience in his bearing.
At last Mr. Saffron opened his eyes and saw them; there was intelligence in his look, though his body did not move. Mary was conscious of a low bow from Beaumaroy; she remembered the caution he had given her, and herself made a deep curtsey; the old man made a slight inclination of his handsome white head. Then, after another long pause, a movement passed over his body—excepting his left arm. She saw that he was trying to rise from his seat, but that he had barely the strength to achieve his purpose. But he persisted in his effort, and in the end rose slowly and tremulously to his feet.
Then, utterly without warning, in a sudden and shocking burst of that high, voluble, metallic speech which Captain Alec had heard through the ceiling of the parlour, he began to address them—if indeed it were they whom he addressed, and not some phantom audience of princes, marshal's admirals, or trembling sheep-like recruits. It was difficult to hear the words, hopeless to make out the sense. It was a farrago of nonsense, part of his own inventing, part (as it seemed) wild and confused reminiscences of the published speeches of the man he aped, all strung together on some invisible thread of insane reasoning, delivered with a mad vehemence and intensity that shook and seemed to rend his feeble frame.
"We must stop him, we must stop him," Mary suddenly whispered. "He'll kill himself if he goes on like this!"
"I've never been able to stop him," Beaumaroy whispered back. "Hush! If he hears us speaking, he'll be furious and carry on worse."
The old man's blue eyes fixed themselves on Beaumaroy—of Mary he took no heed. He pointed at Beaumaroy with his sceptre, and from him to the gleaming gold in Captain Duggle's grave. A streak of coherency, a strand of mad logic, now ran through his hurtling words; the money was there, Beaumaroy was to take it—to-day, to-day!—to take it to Morocco, to raise the tribes, to set Africa aflame. He was to scatter it—broadcast, broadcast! There was no end to it—don't spare it! "There's millions, millions of it!" he shouted, and achieved a weird wild majesty in a final cry, "God with us!"
Then he fell—tumbled back in utter collapse into the recesses of the great chair. His sceptre fell from his nerveless hand and rolled down the steps of the dais; the impetus it gathered carried it, rolling still, across the floor to the edge of the open pit; for an instant it lay poised on the edge, and then fell with a jangle of sound on the carpet of golden coins that lined Captain Duggle's grave.
"Quick! Get my bag—I left it in the passage," whispered Mary, as she started forward, up the dais, to the old man's side. "And brandy, if you've got it," she called after Beaumaroy, as he turned to the door to do her bidding.
Beaumaroy was gone no more than a minute. When he came back, with the bag hitched under his arm, a decanter of brandy in one hand and a glass in the other, Mary was leaning over the throne, with her arm round the old man. His eyes were open, but he was inert and motionless. Beaumaroy poured out some brandy, and gave it into Mary's free hand. But when Mr. Saffron saw Beaumaroy by his side, he gave a sudden twist of his body, wrenched himself away from Mary's arm, and flung himself on his trusted friend. "Hector, I'm in danger! They're after me! They'll shut me up!"
Beaumaroy put his strong arms about the frail old body. "Oh no, sir, oh no!" he said in low, comforting, half-bantering tones. "That's the old foolishness, sir, if I may say so. You're perfectly safe with me. You ought to trust me by now, sir, really you ought."
"You'll swear—you'll swear it's all right, Hector?"
"Right as rain, sir," Beaumaroy assured him cheerfully.
Very feebly the old man moved his right hand towards the open grave. "Plenty—plenty! All yours, Hector! For—for the Cause—God's with us!" His head fell forward on Beaumaroy's breast; for an instant again he raised it, and looked in the face of his friend. A smile came on his lips. "I know I can trust you. I'm safe with you, Hector." His head fell forward again; his whole body was relaxed; he gave a sigh of peace. Beaumaroy lifted him in his arms and very gently set him back in his great chair, placing his feet again on the high footstool.
"I think it's all over," he said, and Mary saw tears in his eyes.
Then Mary herself collapsed; she sank down on the dais and broke into weeping. It had all been so pitiful—and somehow so terrible. Her quick tumultuous sobbing sounded through the place which the vibrations of the old man's voice had lately filled.
She felt Beaumaroy's hand on her shoulder. "You must make sure," he said, in a low voice. "You must make your examination."
With trembling hands she did it—she forced herself to it, Beaumaroy aiding her. There was no doubt. Life had left the body which reason had left long before. His weakened heart had not endured the last strain of mad excitement. The old man was dead.
Her face showed Beaumaroy the result of her examination, if he had ever doubted of it. She looked at him, then made a motion of her hand towards the body. "We must—we must——" she stammered, the tears still rolling down her cheeks.
"Presently," he said. "There's plenty of time. You're not fit to do that now—and no more am I, to tell the truth. We'll rest for half an hour, and then get him upstairs, and—and do the rest. Come with me!" He put his hand lightly within her arm. "He will rest quietly on his throne for a little while. He's not afraid any more. He's at rest."
Still with his arm in Mary's, he bent forward and kissed the old man on the forehead. "I shall miss you, old friend," he said. Then, with gentle insistence, he led Mary away. They left the old man, propped up by the high stool on which his feet rested, seated far back in the great chair, hard by Captain Duggle's grave, where the sceptre lay on a carpet of gold. The tall candles burnt on either side of his throne, imparting a far-off semblance of ceremonial state.
Thus died, unmarried, in the seventy-first year of his age, Aloysius William Saffron, formerly of Exeter, Surveyor and Auctioneer. He had run, on the whole, a creditable course; starting from small beginnings, and belonging to a family more remarkable for eccentricity than for any solid merit, he had built up a good practice; he had made money and put it by; he enjoyed a good name for financial probity. But he was held to be a vain, fussy, self-important, peacocky fellow; very self-centred also and (as Beaumaroy had indicated) impatient of the family and social obligations which most men recognize, even though often unwillingly. As the years gathered upon his head, these characteristics were intensified. On the occasion of some trifling set-back in business—a rival cut him out in a certain negotiation—he threw up everything and disappeared from his native town. Thenceforward nothing was heard of him there, save that he wrote occasionally to his cousin, Sophia Radbolt, and her husband, both of whom he most cordially hated, whose claims to his notice, regard, or assistance he had, of late years at least, hotly resented. Yet he wrote to them—wrote them vaunting and magniloquent letters, hinting darkly of great doings and great riches. In spite of their opinion of him, the Radbolts came to believe perhaps half of what he said; he was old and without other ties; their thirst for his money was greedy. Undoubtedly the Radbolts would dearly have loved to get hold of him and—somehow—hold him fast.
When he came to Tower Cottage—it was in the first year of the war—he was precariously sane; it was only gradually that his fundamental and constitutional vices and foibles turned to a morbid growth. First came intensified hatred and suspicion of the Radbolts—they were after him and his money! Then, through hidden processes of mental distortion, there grew the conviction that he was of high importance, a great man, the object of great conspiracies, in which the odious Radbolts were but instruments. It was, no doubt, the course of public events, culminating in the Great War, which gave to his mania its special turn, to his delusion its monstrous (but, as Doctor Mary was aware, by no means unprecedented) character. By the time of his meeting with Beaumaroy the delusion was complete; through all the second half of 1918 he followed—so far as his mind could now follow anything rationally—in his own person and fortunes the fate of the man whom he believed himself to be, appropriating the hopes, the fears, the imagined ambitions, the physical infirmity, of that self-created other self.
But he wrapped it all in deep secrecy, for, as the conviction of his true identity grew complete, his fears were multiplied. Radbolts indeed! The whole of Christendom—Principalities and Powers—were on his track. They would shut him up—kill him perhaps! Cunningly he hid his secret—save what could not be entirely hidden, the physical deformity. But he hid it with his shawl; he never ate out of his own house; the combination knife-and-fork was kept sedulously hidden. Only to Beaumaroy did he reveal the hidden thing; and later, on Beaumaroy's persuasion, he let into the portentous secret one faithful servant—Beaumaroy's unsavoury retainer, Sergeant Hooper.
He never accepted Hooper as more than a distasteful necessity—somebody must wait on him and do him menial service—not feared indeed, for surely such a dog would not dare to be false, but cordially disliked. Beaumaroy won him from the beginning. Whom he conceived him to be Beaumaroy himself never knew, but he opened his heart to him unreservedly. Of him he had no suspicion; to him he looked for safety and for the realization of his cherished dreams. Beaumaroy soothed his terrors and humoured him in all things—what was the good of doing anything else? asked Beaumaroy's philosophy. He loved Beaumaroy far more than he had loved anybody except himself in all his life. At the end, through the wild tangle of mad imaginings, there ran this golden thread of human affection; it gave the old man hours of peace, sometimes almost of sanity.
So he came to his death, directly indeed of a long-standing organic disease, yet veritably self-destroyed. And so he sat now dead, amidst his shabby parody of splendour. He had done with thrones; he had even done with Tower Cottage—unless indeed his pale shade were to hold nocturnal converse with the robust and flamboyant ghost of Captain Duggle; the one vaunting his unreal vanished greatness, mouthing orations and mimicking pomp; the other telling, in language garnished with strange and horrible oaths, of those dark and lurid terrors which once had driven him from this very place, leaving it ablaze behind. A strange couple they would make, and strange would be their conversation!
Yet the tenement which had housed the old man's deranged spirit, empty as now it was—aye, emptier than Duggle's tomb—was still to be witness of one more earthly scene and unwittingly bear part in it.