As Mary brought her car to a stand at the gate of the little front garden of Tower Cottage, she saw, through the mist, Beaumaroy's corrugated face; he was standing in the doorway, and the light in the passage revealed it. It seemed to her to wear a triumphant impish look, but this vanished as he advanced to meet her, relieved her of the neat black handbag which she always carried with her on her visits, and suggested gravely that she should at once go upstairs and see her patient.
"He's quieter now," he said. "The mere news that you were coming had a soothing effect. Let me show you the way." He led her upstairs and into a small room on the first floor, nakedly furnished with necessities, but with a cheery fire blazing in the grate.
Old Mr. Saffron lay in bed, propped up by pillows. His silver hair strayed from under a nightcap; he wore a light blue bedroom jacket; its colour matched that of his restless eyes; his arms were under the clothes from the elbows down. He was rather flushed, but did not look seriously ill, and greeted Doctor Mary with dignified composure.
"I'll see Dr. Arkroyd alone, Hector." Beaumaroy gave the slightest little jerk of his head, and the old man added quickly, "I am sure of myself, quite sure."
The phrase sounded rather an odd one to Mary, but Beaumaroy accepted the assurance with a nod. "All right, I'll wait downstairs, sir. I hope you'll bring me a good account of him, Doctor." So he left Mary to make her examination; going downstairs, he shook his head once, pursed up his lips, and then smiled doubtfully, as a man may do when he has made up his mind to take a chance.
When Mary rejoined him, she asked for pen and paper, wrote a prescription, and requested that Beaumaroy's man should take it to the chemist's. He went out to give it to the Sergeant, and, when he came back, found her seated in the big chair by the fire.
"The present little attack is nothing, Mr. Beaumaroy," she said. "Stomachic—with a little fever; if he takes what I've prescribed, he ought to be all right in the morning. But I suppose you know that there is valvular disease—quite definite? Didn't Dr. Irechester tell you?"
"Yes; but he said there was no particular—no immediate danger."
"If he's kept quiet and free from worry. Didn't he advise that?"
"Yes," Beaumaroy admitted, "he did. That's the only thing you find wrong with him, Doctor?"
Beaumaroy was standing on the far side of the table, his finger-tips resting lightly on it. He looked across at Mary with eyes candidly inquiring.
"I've found nothing else so far. I suppose he's got nothing to worry him?"
"Not really, I think. He fusses a bit about his affairs." He smiled. "We go to London every week to fuss about his affairs; he's always changing his investments, taking his money out of one thing and putting it in another, you know. Old people get like that sometimes, don't they? I'm a novice at that kind of thing, never having had any money to play with; but I'm bound to say that he seems to know very well what he's about."
"Do you know anything of his history or his people? Has he any relations?"
"I know very little. I don't think he has any—any real relations, so to speak. There are, I believe, some cousins, distant cousins, whom he hates. In fact, a lonely old bachelor, Dr. Arkroyd."
Mary gave a little laugh and became less professional. "He's rather an old dear! He uses funny stately phrases. He said I might speak quite openly to you, as you were closely attached to his person!"
"Sounds rather like a newspaper, doesn't it? He does talk like that sometimes." Beaumaroy moved round the table, came close to the fire, and stood there, smiling down at Mary.
"He's very fond of you, I think," she went on.
"He reposes entire confidence in me," said Beaumaroy, with a touch of assumed pompousness.
"Those were his very words!" cried Mary, laughing again. "And he said it just in that way! How clever of you to guess!"
"Not so very. He says it to me six times a week."
Mary had risen, about to take her leave, but to her surprise Beaumaroy went on quickly, with one of his confidential smiles, "And now I'm going to show you that I have the utmost confidence in you. Please sit down again, Dr. Arkroyd. The matter concerns your patient just as much as myself, or I wouldn't trouble you with it—at any rate, I shouldn't venture to, so early in our acquaintance. I want you to consider yourself as Mr. Saffron's medical adviser, and—also—to try to imagine yourself my friend."
"I've every inclination to be your friend, but I hardly know you, Mr. Beaumaroy."
"And feel a few doubts about me? From what you've heard from myself—and perhaps from others?"
The wind swished outside; save for that, the little room seemed very still. The professional character of the interview did not save it, for Mary Arkroyd, from a sudden and rather unwelcome sense of intimacy—of an intimacy thrust upon her, though not so much by her companion as by circumstances. She answered rather stiffly, "Perhaps I have some doubts."
"You detect—very acutely—that I have a great influence over Mr. Saffron. You ask—very properly—whether he has relations. I think you threw out a feeler about his money affairs—whether he had anything to worry about was your phrase, wasn't it? Am I misinterpreting what was in your mind?"
As he spoke, he offered her a cigarette from a box on the mantelpiece. She took one and lit it at the top of the lamp-chimney; then she sat down again in the big chair; she had not accepted his earlier invitation to resume her seat.
"It was proper for me to put those questions, Mr. Beaumaroy. Mr. Saffron is not a sound man, and he's old. In normal conditions his relations should at least be warned of the position."
"Exactly," Beaumaroy assented, with an appearance of eagerness. "But he hates them. Any suggestion that they have any sort of claim on him raises strong resentment in him. I've known old men—old monied men—like that before, and no doubt you have. Well now, you'll begin to see the difficulty of my position. I'll put the case to you quite bluntly. Suppose Mr. Saffron, having this liking for me, this confidence in me, living here with me alone—except for servants; being, as one might say, exposed to my influence; suppose he took it into his head to make a will in my favour, to leave me all his money. It's quite a considerable sum, so far as our Wednesday doings enable me to judge. Suppose that happened, how should I stand in your opinion, Dr. Arkroyd? But wait a moment still. Suppose that my career has not been very—well, resplendent; that my army record is only so-so; that I've devoted myself to him with remarkable assiduity, as in fact I have; that I might be called, quite plausibly, an adventurer. Well, propounding that will, how should I stand before the world and, if necessary" (he shrugged his shoulders), "the Court?"
Mary sat silent for a moment or two. Beaumaroy knelt down by the fire, rearranged the logs of wood which were smouldering there, and put on a couple more. From that position, looking into the grate, he added, "And the change of doctors? It was he, of course, who insisted on it, but I can see a clever lawyer using that against me too. Can't you, Dr. Arkroyd?"
"I'm sure I wish you hadn't had to make the change!" exclaimed Mary.
"So do I; though, mind you, I'm not pretending that Irechester is a favourite of mine, any more than he is of my old friend's. Still—there it is. I've no right, perhaps, to press my question, but your opinion would be of real value to me."
"I see no reason to think that he's not quite competent to make a will," said Doctor Mary. "And no real reason why he shouldn't prefer you to distant relations whom he dislikes."
"Ah, no real reason; that's what you say! You mean that people would impute——?"
Mary Arkroyd had her limitations—of experience, of knowledge, of intuition. But she did not lack courage.
"I have given you my professional opinion. It is that, so far as I see, Mr. Saffron is of perfectly sound understanding, and capable of making a valid will. You did me the honour——"
"No, no!" he interrupted in a low but rather strangely vehement protest. "I begged the favour——"
"As you like! The favour, then, of my opinion as your friend, as well as my view as Mr. Saffron's doctor."
Beaumaroy did not rise from his knees, but turned his face towards her; the logs had blazed up, and his eyes looked curiously bright in the glare—themselves, as it were, afire.
"In my opinion a man of sensitive honour would prefer that that will should not be made, Mr. Beaumaroy," said Mary steadily.
Beaumaroy appeared to consider. "I'm a bit posed by that point of view, Dr. Arkroyd," he said at last. "Either the old man's sane—compos mentis, don't you call it?—or he isn't. If he is——"
"I know. But I feel that way about it."
"You'd have to give evidence for me!" He raised his brows and smiled at her.
"There can be undue influence without actual want of mental competence, I think."
"I don't know whether my influence is undue. I believe I'm the only creature alive who cares twopence for the poor old gentleman."
"I know! I know! Mr. Beaumaroy, your position is very difficult. I see that. It really is. But—would you take the money for yourself? Aren't you—well, rather in the position of a trustee?"
"Who for? The hated cousins? What's the reason in that?"
"They may be very good people really. Old men take fancies, as you said yourself. And they may have built on——"
"Stepping into a dead man's shoes? I dare say. Why mayn't I build on it too? Why not my hand against the other fellow's?"
"That's what you learnt from the war! You said so—at Old Place. Captain Naylor said something different."
"Suppose Alec Naylor and I—a hero and a damaged article——" he smiled at Mary, and she smiled back with a sudden enjoyment of the humorous yet bitter tang in his voice—"loved the same woman—and I had a chance of her. Am I to give it up?"
"Really we're getting a long way from medicine, Mr. Beaumaroy!"
"Oh, you're a general practitioner! Wise on all subjects under heaven! Conceive yourself hesitating between him and me——"
Mary laughed frankly. "How absurd you are! If you must go on talking, talk seriously."
"But why am I absurd?"
"Because, if I were a marrying woman—which I'm not—I shouldn't hesitate between you and Captain Naylor, not for a minute."
"You'd jump at me?"
Laughing again—his eyes had now a schoolboy merriment in them—Mary rose from the big chair. "At him, if I'm not being impolite, Mr. Beaumaroy."
They stood face to face. For the first time for several years—Mary's girlhood had not been altogether empty of sentimental episodes—she blushed under a man's glance—because it was a man's. At this event, of which she was acutely conscious and at which she was intensely irritated, she drew herself up, with an attempt to return to her strictly professional manner.
"I don't find you the least impolite, Dr. Arkroyd," said Beaumaroy.
It was impudent, yet gay, dexterous, and elusive enough to avoid reproof. With no more than a little shake of her head and a light, yet embarrassed laugh, Mary moved towards the door, her way lying between the table and an old oak sideboard, which stood against the wall. Some plates, knives, and other articles of the table lay strewn, none too tidily, about it. Beaumaroy followed her, smiling complacently, his hands in his pockets.
Suddenly Mary came to a stop and pointed with her finger at the sideboard, turning her face towards her companion. At the same instant Beaumaroy's right hand shot out from his pocket towards the sideboard, as though to snatch up something from it. Then he drew the hand as swiftly back again; but his eyes watched Mary's with an alert and suspicious gaze. That was for a second only; then his face resumed its amused and nonchalant expression. But the movement of the hand and the look of the eyes had not escaped Mary's attention; her voice betrayed some surprise as she said:
"It's only that I just happened to notice that combination knife-and-fork lying there, and I wondered who——"
The article in question lay among some half-dozen ordinary knives and forks. It was of a kind quite familiar to Doctor Mary from her hospital experience—a fork on one side, a knife-blade on the other—an implement made for people who could command the use of only one hand.
"Surely you've noticed my hand?" He drew his right hand again from the pocket to which he had so quickly returned it. "I used to use that in hospital, when I was bandaged up. But that's a long while ago now, and I can't think why Hooper's left it lying there."
The account was plausible, and entirely the same might now be said of his face and manner. But Mary had seen the dart of his hand and the sudden alertness in his eyes. Her own rested on him for a moment with inquiry—for the first time with a hint of distrust. "I see!" she murmured vaguely, and, turning away from him, pursued her way to the door. Beaumaroy followed her with a queer smile on his lips; he shrugged his shoulders once, very slightly.
A constraint had fallen on Mary. She allowed herself to be escorted to the car and helped into it in silence. Beaumaroy made no effort to force the talk, possibly by reason of the presence of Sergeant Hooper, who had arrived back from the chemist's with the medicine for Mr. Saffron just as Mary and Beaumaroy came out of the hall door. He stood by his bicycle, drawing just a little aside to let them pass, but not far enough to prevent the light from the passage showing up his ill-favoured countenance.
"Well, good-bye, Dr. Arkroyd. I'll see how he is to-morrow, and ask you to be kind enough to call again, if it seems advisable. And a thousand thanks."
"Good night, Mr. Beaumaroy."
She started the car. Beaumaroy walked back to the hall door. Mary glanced behind her once, and saw him standing by it, again framed by the light behind him, as she had seen him on her arrival. But, this time, within the four corners of the same frame was included the forbidding visage of Sergeant Hooper.
Beaumaroy returned to the fire in the parlour; Hooper, leaving his bicycle in the passage, followed him into the room and put the medicine bottle on the table. Smiling at him, Beaumaroy pointed at the combination knife-and-fork.
"Is it your fault or mine that that damned thing's lying there?" he asked.
"Yours," answered the Sergeant, without hesitation and with his habitual surliness. "I cleaned it and put it out for you to lock away, as usual. Suppose you went and forgot it, sir!"
Beaumaroy shook his head in self-condemnation and a humorous dismay. "That's it! I went and forgot it, Sergeant. And I think—I rather think—that Doctor Mary smells a rat—though she is, at present, far from guessing the colour of the animal!"
The words sounded scornful; they were spoken for the Sergeant as well as for himself. He was looking amused and kindly, even rather tenderly amused; as though liking and pity were the emotions which most actively survived his first private conversation with Doctor Mary—in spite of that mishap of the combination knife-and-fork.
Christmas Day, 1918, was a merry feast, and nowhere merrier than at Old Place. There was a house-party and, for dinner on the day itself, a local contingent as well: Miss Wall, the Irechesters, Mr. Penrose, and Doctor Mary. Mr. Beaumaroy also had been invited by Mrs. Naylor; she considered him an interesting man and felt pity for the obvious tedium of his situation; but he had not felt able to leave his old friend. Doctor Mary's Paying Guest was of the house-party, not merely a dinner guest. She was asked over to spend three days and went, accompanied by Jeanne, who by this time was crying much less; crying was no longer the cue; her mistress, and not merely stern Doctor Mary, had plainly shown her that. Gertie Naylor had invited Cynthia to help her in entertaining the subalterns, though Gertie was really quite equal to that task herself; there were only three of them, and if a pretty girl is not equal to three subalterns—well, what are we coming to in England? And, as it turned out, Miss Gertie had to deal with them all—sometimes collectively, sometimes one by one—practically unassisted. Cynthia was otherwise engaged. Gertie complained neither of the cause nor of its consequence.
The drink—or drugs—hypothesis was exploded, and Miss Wall's speculations set at rest, with a quite comforting solatium of romantic and unhappy interest—"a nice titbit for the old cat," as Mr. Naylor unkindly put it. Cynthia had told her story; she wanted a richer sympathy than Doctor Mary's common sense afforded; out of this need the revelation came to Gertie in innocent confidence, and, with the narrator's tacit approval, ran through the family and its intimate friends. If Cynthia had been as calculating as she was guileless, she could not have done better for herself. Mrs. Naylor's motherliness, old Naylor's courtliness, Gertie's breathless concern and avid appetite for the fullest detail, everybody's desire to console and cheer—all these were at her service, all enlisted in the effort to make her forget, and live and laugh again. Her heart responded; she found herself becoming happy at a rate which made her positively ashamed. No wonder tactful Jeanne discovered that the cue was changed!
Fastidious old Naylor regarded his wife with the affection of habit and with a little disdain for the ordinariness of her virtues—not to say of the mind which they adorned. His daughter was to him a precious toy, on which he tried jokes, played tricks, and lavished gifts, for the joy of seeing the prettiness of her reactions to his treatment. It never occurred to him to think that his toy might be broken; fond as he was, his feeling for her lacked the apprehensiveness of the deepest love. But he idolized his son, and in this case neither without fear nor without understanding. For four years now he had feared for him bitterly: for his body, for his life. At every waking hour his inner cry had been even as David's, "Would God I had died for thee, my son, my son!" For at every moment of those four years it might be that his son was even then dead. That terror, endured under a cool and almost off-hand demeanour, was past; but he feared for his son still. Of all who went to the war as Crusaders, none had the temperament more ardently than Alec. As he went, so—obviously—he had come back, not disillusioned, nay, with all his illusions, or delusions, about this wicked world and its possibilities, about the people who dwell in it and their lamentable limitations, stronger in his mind than ever. How could he get through life without being too sore hurt and wounded, without being cut to the very quick by his inevitable discoveries? Old Naylor did not see how it was to be done, or even hoped for; but the right kind of wife was unquestionably the best chance.
He had cast a speculative eye on Cynthia Walford—Irechester had caught him at it—but, as he observed her more, she did not altogether satisfy him. Alec needed someone more stable, stronger, someone in a sense protective; somebody more like Mary Arkroyd; that idea passed through his thoughts; if only Mary would take the trouble to dress herself, remember that she was—or might be made—an attractive young woman; and—yes, throw her mortar and pestle out of the window—without, however, discarding with them the sturdy, sane, balanced qualities of mind which enabled her to handle them with such admirable competence. But he soon had to put this idea from him. His son's own impulse was to give, not to seek, protection and support.
Of Cynthia's woeful experience Alec had spoken to his father once only. "It makes me mad to think the fellow who did that wore a British uniform!"
How unreasonable! Since by all the laws of average, when millions of men are wearing a uniform, there must be some rogues in it. But it was Alec's way to hold himself responsible for the whole of His Majesty's Forces. Their honour was his; for their misdeeds he must in his own person make reparation. "That fellow Beaumaroy may have lost his conscience, but my boy seems to have acquired five million," the old man grumbled to himself—a grumble full of pride.
The father might analyse; with Alec it was all impulse—the impulse to soothe, to obliterate, to atone. The girl had been sore hurt; with the acuteness of sympathy he divined that she felt herself in a way soiled and stained by contact with unworthiness and by a too easy acceptance of it. All that must be swept out of her heart, out of her very memory, if it could be.
Doctor Mary saw what was happening, and with a little pang to which she would not have liked to own. She had set love affairs, and all the notions connected therewith, behind her; but she had idealized Alec Naylor a little; and she thought Cynthia, in homely phrase, "hardly good enough." Was it not rather perverse that the very fact of having been a little goose should help her to win so rare a swan?
"You're taking my patient out of my hands, Captain Alec!" she said to him jokingly. "And you're devoting great attention to the case."
He flushed. "She seems to like to talk to me," he answered simply. "She seems to me to have rather a remarkable mind, Doctor Mary." (She was "Doctor Mary" to all the Old Place party now—in affection, with a touch of chaff.)
O sancta simplicitas!Mary longed to say that Cynthia was a very ordinary child. Like to talk to him, indeed! Of course she did; and to use her girl's weapons on him; and to wonder, in an almost awestruck delight, at their effect on this dazzling hero. Well, the guilelessness of heroes!
So mused Mary, on the unprofessional side of her mind, as she watched, that Christmas-tide, Captain Alec's delicate, sensitively indirect and delayed approach towards the ripe fruit that hung so ready to his hand. "Part of his chivalry to assume she can't think of him yet!" Mary was half impatient, half reluctantly admiring; not an uncommon mixture of feeling for the extreme forms of virtue to produce. In the net result, however, her mental image of Alec lost something of its heroic proportions.
But professionally (the distinction must not be pushed too far, she was not built in water-tight compartments) Tower Cottage remained obstinately in the centre of her thoughts; and, connected with it, there arose a puzzle over Dr. Irechester's demeanour. She had taken advantage of Beaumaroy's permission—though rather doubtful whether she was doing right, for she was still inexperienced in niceties of etiquette—and sent on the letter, with a frank note explaining her own feelings and the reason which had caused her to pay her visit to Mr. Saffron. But though Irechester was quite friendly when they met at Old Place before dinner, and talked freely to her during a rather prolonged period of waiting (Captain Alec and Cynthia, Gertie and two subalterns were very late, having apparently forgotten dinner in more refined delights), he made no reference to the letters, nor to Tower Cottage or its inmates. Mary herself was too shy to break the ice, but wondered at his silence, and the more because the matter evidently had not gone out of his mind. For, after dinner, when the port had gone round once and the proper healths been honoured, he said across the table to Mr. Penrose:
"We were talking the other day of the Tower—on the heath, you know, by old Saffron's cottage—and none of us knew its history. You know all about Inkston from time out o' mind. Have you got any story about it?"
Mr. Penrose practised as a solicitor in London, but lived in a little old house near the Irechesters' in the village street, and devoted his leisure to the antiquities and topography of the neighbourhood; his lore was plentiful and curious, if not important. He was a small, neat old fellow, with white whiskers of the antique cut, a thin voice, and a dry cackling laugh.
"There was a story about it, and one quite fit for Christmas evening, if you're in the mood to hear it."
The thin voice was penetrating. At the promise of a story silence fell on the company, and Mr. Penrose told his tale, vouching as his authority an erstwhile "oldest inhabitant," now gathered to his fathers; for the tale dated back some eighty years, to the date of the ancient's early manhood.
A seafaring man had suddenly appeared, out of space, as it were, at Inkston, and taken the cottage. He carried with him a strong smell of rum and tobacco, and gave it to be understood that his name was Captain Duggle. He was no beauty, and his behaviour was worse than his looks. To that quiet village, in those quiet strait-laced times, he was a horror and a portent. He not only drank prodigiously—that, being in character and also a source of local profit, might have passed with mild censure—but he swore and blasphemed horribly, spurning the parson, mocking at Revelation, even at the Deity Himself. The Devil was his friend, he said. A most terrible fellow, this Captain Duggle. Inkston's hair stood on end, and no wonder!
"No doubt they shivered with delight over it all," commented Mr. Naylor.
Captain Duggle lived all by himself—well, what God-fearing Christian, male or female, would be found to live with him?—came and went mysteriously and capriciously, always full of money, and at least equally full of drink. What he did with himself nobody knew, but evil legends gathered about him. Terrified wayfarers, passing the cottage by night, took oath that they had heard more than one voice!
"This is proper Christmas!" a subaltern interjected into Gertie's ear.
Mr. Penrose, with an air of gratification, continued his narrative.
"The story goes on to tell," he said, "of a final interview with the village clergyman, in which that reverend man, as in duty bound, solemnly told Captain Duggle that, however much he might curse, and blaspheme, and drink, and—er—do all the other things that the Captain did" (Obviously here Mr. Penrose felt hampered by the presence of ladies), "yet Death, Judgment, and Churchyard waited for him at last. Whereupon the Captain, emitting an inconceivably terrific imprecation, which no one ever dared to repeat and which consequently is lost to tradition, declared that the first he'd never feared, the second was parson's gabble, and as to the third, never should his dead toes be nearer any church than for the last forty years his living feet had been! If so be as he wasn't drowned at sea, he'd make a grave for himself!"
Mr. Penrose paused, sipped port wine, and resumed.
"And so, no doubt, he did, building the Tower for that purpose. By bribes and threats he got two men to work for him. One was the uncle of my informant. But though he built that Tower, and inside it dug his grave, he never lay there, being, as things turned out, carried off by the Devil. Oh, yes, there was no doubt! He went home one night—a Saturday—very drunk, as usual. On the Sunday night a belated wayfarer—possibly also drunk—heard wild shrieks and saw a strange red glow through the window of the Tower—now, by the way, boarded up. And no doubt he'd have smelt brimstone if the wind hadn't set the wrong way! Anyhow Captain Duggle was never seen again by mortal eyes—at Inkston, at all events. After a time the landlord of the cottage screwed up his courage to resume possession—the Captain had only a lease of it, though he built the Tower at his own charges, and, I believe, without any permission, the landlord being much too frightened to interfere with him. He found everything in a sad mess there, while in the Tower itself every blessed stick had been burnt up. So the story looks pretty plausible."
"And the grave?" This question came eagerly from at least three of the company.
"In front of the fireplace there was a big oblong hole—six feet by three feet by four—planks at the bottom, the sides roughly lined with brick. Captain Duggle's grave; but he wasn't in it!"
"But what really became of him, Mr. Penrose?" cried Cynthia.
"The Rising Generation is very sceptical," said old Naylor. "You, of course, Penrose, believe the story?"
"I do," said Mr. Penrose composedly. "I believe that a devil carried him off—and that its name wasdelirium tremens. We can guess—can't we, Irechester?—why he smashed or burnt everything, and fled in mad terror into the darkness. Where to? Was he drowned at sea, or did he take his life, or did he rot to death in some filthy hole? Nobody knows. But the grave he dug is there in the Tower—unless it's been filled up since old Saffron has lived there."
"Why in the world wasn't it filled up before?" asked Alec Naylor, with a laugh. "People lived in the cottage, didn't they?"
"I've visited the cottage often," Irechester interposed, "when various people had it, but I never saw any signs of the Tower being used."
"It never was, I'm sure; and as for the grave—well, Alec, in country parts, to this day, you'd be thought a bold man if you filled up a grave that your neighbour had dug for himself—and such a neighbour as Captain Duggle! He might take it into his head some night to visit it, and if he found it filled up there'd be trouble—nasty trouble!" His laugh cackled out rather uncomfortably. Gertie shivered, and one of the subalterns gulped down his port.
"Old Saffron's a man of education, I believe. No doubt he pays no heed to such nonsense, and has had the thing covered up," said Naylor.
"As to that I don't know. Perhaps you do, Irechester? He's your patient, isn't he?"
Dr. Irechester sat four places from Mary. Before he replied to the question he cast a glance at her, smiling rather mockingly. "I've attended him on one or two occasions, but I've never seen the inside of the Tower. So I don't know either."
"Oh, but I'm curious! I shall ask Mr. Beaumaroy," cried Cynthia.
The ironical character of Irechester's smile grew more pronounced, and his voice was at its driest: "Certainly you can ask Beaumaroy, Miss Walford. As far as asking goes, there's no difficulty."
A pause followed this pointed remark, on which nobody seemed disposed to comment. Mrs. Naylor ended the session by rising from her chair.
But Mary Arkroyd was disquieted, worried as to how she stood with Irechester, vaguely but insistently worried over the whole Tower Cottage business. Well, the first point she could soon settle—or try to settle, anyhow.
With the directness which marked her action when once her mind was made up, she waylaid Irechester as he came into the drawing-room; her resolute approach sufficed to detach Naylor from him; he found himself isolated for the moment from everybody except Mary.
"You got my letter, Dr. Irechester? I—I rather expected an answer."
"Your conduct was so obviously and punctiliously correct," he replied suavely, "that I thought my answer could wait till I met you here to-day, as I knew that I was to have the pleasure of doing." He looked her full in the eyes. "You were placed—placed, my dear colleague—in a position in which you had no alternative."
"I thought so, Dr. Irechester, but——"
"Oh yes, clearly! I'm far from making any complaint." He gave her a courteous little bow, but it was one which plainly closed the subject. Indeed he passed by her and joined a group that had gathered on the hearthrug, leaving her alone.
So she stood for a moment, oppressed by a growing uneasiness. Irechester said nothing, but surely meant something of import? He mocked her, but not idly or out of wantonness. He seemed almost to warn her. What could there be to warn her about? He had laid an odd emphasis on the word "placed"; he had repeated it. Who had "placed" her there? Mr. Saffron? Or Mr.——?
Alec Naylor broke in on her uneasy meditation. "It's a clinking night, Doctor Mary," he observed. "Do you mind if I walk Miss Walford home—instead of her going with you in your car, you know? It's only a couple of miles and——"
"Do you think your leg can stand it?"
He laughed. "I'll cut the thing off, if it dares to make any objection!"
On this same Christmas Day Sergeant Hooper was feeling morose and discontented; not because he was alone in the world (a situation comprising many advantages); nor on the score of his wages, which were extremely liberal; nor on account of the "old blighter's"—that is, Mr. Saffron's—occasional outbursts of temper, these being in the nature of the case and within the terms of the contract; nor, finally, by reason of Beaumaroy's airy insolence, since from his youth up the Sergeant was hardened to unfavourable comments on his personal appearance, trifling vulgarities which a man of sense could afford to ignore.
No; the winter of his discontent—a bitter winter—was due to the conviction, which had been growing in his mind for some time, that he was only in half the secret, and that not the more profitable half. He knew that the old blighter had to be humoured in certain small ways—as, for example, in regard to the combination knife-and-fork—and the reason for it. But, first, he did not know what happened inside the Tower; he had never seen the inside of it; the door was always locked; he was never invited to accompany his masters when they repaired thither by day, and he was not on the premises by night. And, secondly, he did not understand the Wednesday journeys to London, and he had never seen the inside of Beaumaroy's brown bag—that, like the Tower door, was always locked. He had handled it once, just before the pair set out for London one Wednesday. Beaumaroy, a careless man sometimes, in spite of the cunning which Dr. Irechester attributed to him, had left it on the parlour table while he helped Mr. Saffron on with his coat in the passage, and the Sergeant had swiftly and surreptitiously lifted it up. It was very light—obviously empty, or, at all events, holding only feather-weight contents. He had never got near it when it came back from town; then it always went straight into the Tower and had the key turned on it forthwith.
But the Sergeant, although slow-witted as well as ugly, had had his experiences; he had carried weights both in the army and in other institutions which are officially described as His Majesty's, and had seen other men carry them too. From the set of Beaumaroy's figure as he arrived home on at least two occasions with the brown bag, and from the way in which he handled it, the Sergeant confidently drew the conclusion that it was of a considerable, almost a grievous, weight. What was the heavy thing in it? What became of that thing after it was taken into the Tower? To whose use or profit did it, or was it to, ensure? Because it was plain, even to the meanest capacity, that the contents of the bag had a value in the eyes of the two men who went to London for them, and who shepherded them from London to the custody of the Tower.
These thoughts filled and racked his brain as he sat drinking rum and water in the bar of the Green Man on Christmas evening; a solitary man, mixing little with the people of the village, he sat apart at a small table in the corner, musing within himself, yet idly watching the company—villagers, a few friends from London and elsewhere, some soldiers and their ladies. Besides these, a tall slim man stood leaning against the bar, at the far end of it, talking to Bill Smithers, the landlord, and sipping a whisky-and-soda between pulls at his cigar. He wore a neat dark overcoat, brown shoes, and a bowler hat rather on one side; his appearance was, in fact, genteel, though his air was a trifle raffish. In age he seemed about forty. The Sergeant had never seen him before, and therefore favoured him with a glance of special attention.
Oddly enough, the gentlemanly stranger seemed to reciprocate the Sergeant's interest; he gave him quite a long glance. Then he finished his whisky-and-soda, spoke a word to Bill Smithers, and lounged across the room to where the Sergeant sat.
"It's poor work drinking alone on Christmas night," he observed. "May I join you? I've ordered a little something; and—well, we needn't bother about offering a gentleman a glass to-night."
The Sergeant eyed him with apparent disfavour—as, indeed, he did everybody who approached him—but a nod of his head accorded the desired permission. Smithers came across with a bottle of brandy and glasses. "Good stuff!" said the stranger, as he sat down, filled the glasses, and drank his off. "The best thing to top up with, believe me!"
The Sergeant, in turn, drained his glass, maintaining, however, his aloofness of demeanour. "What's up?" he growled.
"What's in the brown bag?" asked the stranger lightly and urbanely.
The Sergeant did not start; he was too old a hand for that; but his small gimlet eyes searched his new acquaintance's face very keenly. "You know a lot!"
"More than you do in some directions, less in others perhaps. Shall I begin? Because we've got to confide in one another, Sergeant. A little story of what two gentlemen do in London on Wednesdays, and of what they carry home in a brown leather bag? Would that interest you? Oh, that stuff in the brown leather bag! Hard to come by now, isn't it? But they know where there's still some—and so do I, to remark it incidentally. There were actually some people, Sergeant Hooper, who distrusted the righteousness of the British Cause—which is to say" (the stranger smiled cynically) "the certainty of our licking the Germans—and they hoarded it, the villains!"
Sergeant Hooper stretched out his hand towards the bottle. "Allow me!" said the stranger politely. "I observe that your hand trembles a little."
It did. The Sergeant was excited. The stranger seemed to be touching on a subject which always excited the Sergeant—to the point of hands trembling, twitching, and itching.
"Have to pay for it too! Thirty bob in curl-twisters for every ruddy disc; that's the figure now, or thereabouts. What do they want to do it for? What's your governors' game? Who, in short, is going to get off with it?"
"What is it they does—the old blighter and Boomery" (Thus he pronounced the name Beaumaroy)—"in London?"
"First to the stockbroker's—then to a bank or two—I've known it three even; then a taxi down East, and a call at certain addresses. The bag's with 'em, Sergeant, and at each call it gets heavier. I've seen it swell, so to speak."
"Who in hell are you?" the Sergeant grunted huskily.
"Names later—after the usual guarantees of good faith."
The whole conversation, carried on in low tones, had passed under cover of noisy mirth, snatches of song, banter, and giggling; nobody paid heed to the two men talking in a corner. Yet the stranger lowered his voice to a whisper, as he added:
"From me to you fifty quid on account; from you to me just a sight of the place where they put it."
Sergeant Hooper drank, smoked, and pondered. The stranger showed the edge of a roll of notes, protruding it from his breast-pocket. The Sergeant nodded—he understood that part. But there was much that he did not understand. "It fair beats me what the blazes they're doing itfor," he broke out.
"Whose money would it be?"
"The old blighter's, o' course. Boomery's stony, except for his screw." He looked hard at the gentlemanly stranger, and a slow smile came on his lips. "That's your idea, is it, mister?"
"Gentleman's old—looks frail—might go off suddenly. What then? Friends turn up—always do when you're dead, you know. Well, what of it? Less money in the funds than was reckoned; dear old gentleman doesn't cut up as well as they hoped! And meanwhile our friend B——! Does it dawn on you at all—from our friend B——'s point of view, Sergeant? I may be wrong, but that's my provisional conjecture. The question remains how he's got the old gent into the game, doesn't it?"
Precisely the point to which the Sergeant's mind also had turned! The knowledge which he possessed—that half of the secret—and which his companion did not, might be very material to a solution of the problem; the Sergeant did not mean to share it prematurely, or without necessity, or for nothing. But surely it had a bearing on the case? Dull-witted as he was, the Sergeant seemed to catch a glimmer of light, and mentally groped towards it.
"Well, we can't sit here all night," said the stranger in good-humoured impatience. "I've a train to catch."
"There's no train up from here to-night."
"There is from Sprotsfield. I shall walk over."
The Sergeant smiled. "Oh, if you're walking to Sprotsfield, I'll put you on your way. If anybody was to see us—Boomery, for instance—he couldn't complain of my seeing an old pal on his way on Christmas night. No 'arm in that; no look of prowling, or spying, or such-like! And you are an old pal, ain't you?"
"Certainly; your old pal—let me see—your old pal Percy Bennett."
"As it might be, or as it might not. What about the——?" He pointed to Percy Bennett's breast-pocket.
"I'll give it you outside. You don't want me to be seen handing it over in here, do you?"
The Sergeant had one more question to ask. "About 'ow much d'ye reckon there might be by now?"
"How often have they been to London? Because they don't come to see my friends every time, I fancy."
"Must 'ave been six or seven times by now. The game began soon after Boomery and I came 'ere."
"Then, quite roughly—quite a shot—from what I know of the deals we—my friends, I mean—did with them, and reasoning from that, there might be a matter of seven or eight thousand pounds."
The Sergeant whistled softly, rose, and led the way to the door. The gentlemanly stranger paused at the bar to pay for the brandy, and after bidding the landlord a civil good evening, with the compliments of the season, followed the Sergeant into the village street.
Fifteen minutes' brisk walk brought them to Hinton Avenue. At the end of it they passed Doctor Mary's house; the drawing-room curtains were not drawn; on the blind they saw reflected the shadows of a man and a girl, standing side by side. "Mistletoe, eh?" remarked the stranger. The Sergeant spat on the road; they resumed their way, pursuing the road across the heath.
It was fine, but overclouded and decidedly dark. Every now and then Bennett—to call the stranger by what was almost confessedly anom de guerre—flashed a powerful electric torch on the roadway. "Don't want to walk into a gorse bush," he explained with a laugh.
"Put it away, you darned fool! We're nearly there."
The stranger obeyed. In another seven or eight minutes there loomed up, on the left hand, the dim outline of Mr. Saffron's abode—the square cottage with the odd round tower annexed.
"There you are!" The Sergeant's voice instinctively kept to a whisper. "That's what you want to see."
"But I can't see it—not so as to get any clear idea."
No lights showed from the cottage, nor, of course, from the Tower; its only window had been, as Mr. Penrose said, boarded up. The wind—there was generally a wind on the heath—stirred the fir trees and the bushes into a soft movement and a faint murmur of sound. A very acute and alert ear might perhaps have caught another sound—footfalls on the road, a good long way behind them. The two spies, or scouts, did not hear them; their attention was elsewhere.
"Probably they're both in bed; it's quite safe to make our examination," said the stranger.
"Yes, I s'pose it is. But look to be ready to douse your glim. Boomery's a nailer at turning up unexpected." The Sergeant seemed rather nervous.
Mr. Bennett was not. He took out his torch, and guided by its light (which, however, he took care not to throw towards the cottage windows) he advanced to the garden gate, the Sergeant following, and took a survey of the premises. It was remarkable that, as the light of the torch beamed out, the faint sound of footfalls on the road behind died away.
"Keep an eye on the windows, and touch my elbow if any light shows. Don't speak." The stranger was at business—his business—now, and his voice became correspondingly business-like. "We won't risk going inside the gate. I can see from here." Indeed he very well could; Tower Cottage stood back no more than twelve or fifteen feet from the road, and the torch was powerful.
For four or five minutes the stranger made his examination. Then he turned off his torch. "Looks easy," he remarked, "but of course there's the garrison." Once more he turned on his light, to look at his watch. "Can't stop now, or I shall miss the train, and I don't want to have to get a bed at Sprotsfield. A strayed reveller on Christmas night might be too well remembered. Got an address?"
"Care of Mrs. Willnough, Laundress, Inkston."
"Right. Good night." With a quick turn he was off along the road to Sprotsfield. The Sergeant saw the gleam of his torch once or twice, receding at quite a surprising pace into the distance. Feeling the wad of notes in his pocket—perhaps to make sure that the whole episode had not been a dream—the Sergeant turned back towards Inkston.
After a couple of minutes, a tall figure emerged from the shelter of a high and thick gorse bush just opposite Tower Cottage, on the other side of the road. Captain Alec Naylor had seen the light of the stranger's torch, and, after four years in France, he was well skilled in the art of noiseless approach. But he felt that, for the moment at least, his brain was less agile than his feet. He had been suddenly wrenched out of one set of thoughts into another profoundly different. It was his shadow, together with Cynthia Walford's, that the Sergeant and the stranger had seen on Doctor Mary's blind. After "walking her home," he had—well, just not proposed to Cynthia, restrained more by those scruples of his than by any ungraciousness on the part of the lady. Even his modesty could not blind him to this fact. He was full of pity, of love, of a man's joyous sense of triumph, half wishing that he had made his proposal, half glad that he had not, just because it, and its radiant promise, could still be dangled in the bright vision of the future. He was in the seventh heaven of romance, and his heaven was higher than that which most men reach; it was built on loftier foundations.
Then came the flash of the torch; the high spirits born of one experience sought an outlet in another. "By Jove, I'll track 'em—like old times!" he murmured, with a low light laugh. And, just for fun, he did it, taking to the heath beside the road, twisting his long body in and out amongst gorse, heather, and bracken, very noiselessly, with wonderful dexterity. The light of the lamp was continuous now; the stranger was making his examination. By it Captain Alec guided his steps; and he arrived behind the tall gorse bush opposite Tower Cottage just in time to hear the Sergeant say, "Mrs. Willnough, Laundress, Inkston," and to witness the parting of the two companions.
There was very little to go upon there. Why should not one friend give another an address? But the examination? Beaumaroy should surely know of that? It might be nothing; but, on the other hand, it might have a meaning. But the men had gone, had obviously parted for the night. Beaumaroy could be told to-morrow; now he himself could go back to his visions—and so homeward, in happiness, to his bed.
Having reached this sensible conclusion, he was about to turn away from the garden gate which he now stood facing, when he heard the house door softly open and as softly shut. The practice of his profession had given him keen eyes in the dark; he discovered Beaumaroy's tall figure stealing very cautiously down the narrow, flagged path. The next instant the light of another torch flashed out, and this time not in the distance, but full in his own face.
"By God, you, Naylor!" Beaumaroy exclaimed in a voice which was low but full of surprise. "I—I—well, it's rather late——"
Alec Naylor was suddenly struck with the element of humour in the situation. He had been playing detective; apparently he was now the suspected!
"Give me time and I'll explain all," he said, smiling under the dazzling rays of the torch.
Beaumaroy glanced round at the house for a second, pursed up his lips into one of the odd little contortions which he sometimes allowed himself, and said, "Well, then, old chap, come in and have a drink, and do it. For I'm hanged if I see why you should stand staring into this garden in the middle of the night! With your opportunities I should be better employed on Christmas evening."
"You really want me to come in?" It was now Captain Alec's voice which expressed surprise.
"Why the devil not?" asked Beaumaroy in a tone of frank but friendly impatience.
He turned and led the way into Tower Cottage. Somehow this invitation to enter was the last thing that Captain Alec had expected.
Beaumaroy led the way into the parlour, Captain Alec following. "Well, I thought your old friend didn't care to see strangers," he said, continuing the conversation.
"He was tired and fretful to-night, so I got him to bed, and gave him a soothing draught—one that our friend Dr. Arkroyd sent him. He went off like a lamb, poor old boy. If we don't talk too loud we shan't disturb him."
"I can tell you what I have to tell in a few minutes."
"Don't hurry." Beaumaroy was bringing the refreshment he had offered from the sideboard. "I'm feeling lonely to-night, so I"—he smiled—"yielded to the impulse to ask you to come in, Naylor. However, let's have the story by all means."
The surprise—it might almost have been taken for alarm—which he had shown at the first sight of Alec, seemed to have given place to a gentle and amiable weariness, which persisted through the recital of the Captain's experiences—how his errand of courtesy, or gallantry, had led to his being on the road across the heath so late at night, and of what he had seen there.
"You copped them properly!" Beaumaroy remarked at the end, with a lazy smile. "One does learn a trick or two in France. You couldn't see their faces, I suppose?"
"No; too dark. I didn't dare show a light, though I had one. Besides, their backs were towards me. One looked tall and thin, the other short and stumpy. But I should never be able to swear to either."
"And they went off in different directions, you say?"
"Yes, the tall one towards Sprotsfield, the short one back towards Inkston."
"Oh, the short stumpy one it was who turned back to Inkston?" Beaumaroy had seated himself on a low three-legged stool, opposite to the big chair where Alec sat, and was smoking his pipe, his hands clasped round his knees. "It doesn't seem to me to come to much, though I'm much obliged to you all the same. The short one's probably a local, the other a stranger, and the local was probably seeing his friend part of the way home, and incidentally showing him one of the sights of the neighbourhood. There are stories about this old den, you know—ancient traditions. It's said to be haunted, and what not."
"Funnily enough, we had the story to-night at dinner, at our house."
"Had you now?" Beaumaroy looked up quickly. "What, all about——?"
"Captain Duggle, and the Devil, and the grave, and all that."
"Who told you the story?"
"Old Mr. Penrose. Do you know him? Lives in High Street, near the Irechesters."
"I think I know him by sight. So he entertained you with that old yarn, did he? And that same old yarn probably accounts for the nocturnal examination which you saw going on. It was a little excitement for you, to reward you for your politeness to Miss Walford!"
Alec flushed, but answered frankly: "I needed no reward for that." His feelings got the better of him; he was very full of feelings that night, and wanted to be sympathized with. "Beaumaroy, do you know that girl's story?" Beaumaroy shook his head—and listened to it. Captain Alec ended on his old note: "To think of the scoundrel using the King's uniform like that!"
"Rotten! But—er—don't raise your voice." He pointed to the ceiling, smiling, and went on—without further comment on Cynthia's ill-usage—"I suppose you intend to stick to the army, Naylor?"
"Yes, certainly I do."
"I'm discharged. After I came out of hospital they gave me sick leave—and constantly renewed it; and when the armistice came they gave me my discharge. They put it down to my wound, of course, but—well, I gathered the impression that I was considered no great loss." He had finished his pipe, and was now smiling reflectively.
Captain Alec did not smile. Indeed he looked rather pained; he was remembering General Punnit's story: military inefficiency—even military imperfection—was for him no smiling matter. Beaumaroy did not appear to notice his disapproving gravity.
"So I was at a loose end. I had sold up my business in Spain—I was there six or seven years, just as Captain—Captain——? Oh, Cranster, yes!—was in Bogota—when I joined up, and had no particular reason for going back there—and, incidentally, no money to go back with. So I took on this job, which came to me quite accidentally. I went into a Piccadilly bar one evening, and found my old man there, rather excited and declaiming a good deal of rot; seemed to have the war a bit on his brain. They started in to guy him, and I think one or two meant to hustle him, and perhaps take his money off him. I took his part, and there was a bit of a shindy. In the end I saw him home to his lodgings—he had a room in London for the night—and—to cut a long story short—we palled up, and he asked me to come and live with him. So here I am, and with me my Sancho Panza, the worthy ex-Sergeant Hooper. Perhaps I may be forgiven for impliedly comparing myself to Don Quixote, since that gentleman, besides his other characteristics, is generally agreed to have been mad."
"Your Sancho Panza's no beauty," remarked the Captain drily.
"And no saint either. Kicked out of the Service, and done time. That between ourselves."
"Then why the devil do you have the fellow about?"
"Beggars mustn't be choosers. Besides, I've apenchantfor failures."
That was what General Punnit had said! Alec Naylor grew impatient. "That's the very spirit we have to fight against!" he exclaimed, rather hotly.
"Forgive me, but—please—don't raise your voice."
Alec lowered his voice—for a moment anyhow—but the central article of his creed was assailed, and he grew vehement. "It's fatal; it's at the root of all our troubles. Allow for failures in individuals, and you produce failure all round. It's tenderness to defaulters that wrecks discipline. I would have strict justice, but no mercy—not a shadow of it!"
"But you said that day, at your place, that the war had made you tender-hearted."
"Yes, I did—and it's true. Is it hard-hearted to refuse to let a slacker cost good men their lives? Much better take his, if it's got to be one or the other."
"A cogent argument. But, my dear Naylor, I wish you wouldn't raise your voice."
"Damn my voice!" said Alec, most vexatiously interrupted just as he had got into his stride. "You say things that I can't and won't let pass, and——"
"I really wouldn't have asked you in, if I'd thought you'd raise your voice."
Alec recollected himself. "My dear fellow, a thousand pardons! I forgot! The old gentleman——?"
"Exactly. But I'm afraid the mischief's done. Listen!" Again he pointed to the ceiling, but his eyes set on Captain Alec with a queer, rueful, humorous expression. "I was an ass to ask you in. But I'm no good at it—that's the fact. I'm always giving the show away!" he grumbled, half to himself, but not inaudibly.
Alec stared at him for a moment in puzzle, but the next instant his attention was diverted. Another voice besides his was raised; the sound of it came through the ceiling from the room above; the words were not audible; the volubility of the utterance in itself went far to prevent them from being distinguishable; but the high, vibrant, metallic tones rang through the house. It was a rush of noise—sharp grating noise—without a meaning. The effect was weird, very uncomfortable. Alec Naylor knit his brows, and once gave a little shiver, as he listened. Beaumaroy sat quite still, the expression in his eyes unaltered—or, if it altered at all, it grew softer, as though with pity or affection.
"Good God, Beaumaroy, are you keeping a lunatic in this house?" He might raise his voice as loud as he pleased now, it was drowned by that other.
"I'm not keeping him, he's keeping me. And, anyhow, his medical adviser tells me there is no reason to suppose that my old friend is notcompos mentis."
"Irechester says that?"
"Mr. Saffron's medical attendant is Dr. Arkroyd."
As he spoke, the noise from above suddenly ceased. Since neither of the men in the parlour spoke, there ensued a minute of what seemed intense silence; it was such a change.
Then came a still small sound—a creaking of wood—from overhead.
"I think you'd better go, Naylor, if you don't mind. After a—a performance of that kind he generally comes and tells me about it. And he may be—I don't know at all for certain—annoyed to find you here."
Alec Naylor got up from the big chair, but it was not to take his departure.
"I want to see him, Beaumaroy," he said brusquely and rather authoritatively.
Beaumaroy raised his brows. "I won't take you to his room, or let you go there, if I can help it. But if he comes down—well, you can stay and see him. It may get me into a scrape, but that doesn't matter much."
"My point of view is——"
"My dear fellow, I know your point of view perfectly. It is that you are personally responsible for the universe—apparently just because you wear a uniform."
No other sound had come from above or from the stairs, but the door now opened suddenly, and Mr. Saffron stood on the threshold. He wore slippers, a pair of checked trousers, and his bedroom jacket of pale blue; in addition, the grey shawl, which he wore on his walks, was again swathed closely round him. Only his right arm was free from it; in his hand was a silver bedroom candlestick. From his pale face and under his snowy hair his blue eyes gleamed brightly. As Alec first caught sight of him, he was smiling happily, and he called out triumphantly: "That was a good one! That went well, Hector!"
Then he saw Alec's tall figure by the fire. He grew grave, closed the door carefully, and advanced to the table, on which he set down the candlestick. After a momentary look at Alec, he turned his gaze inquiringly towards Beaumaroy.
"I'm afraid we're keeping it up rather late, sir," said the latter in a tone of respectful yet easy apology, "but I took an airing on the road after you went to bed, and there I found my friend here on his way home; and since it was Christmas——"
Mr. Saffron bowed his head in acquiescence; he showed no sign of anger. "Present your friend to me, Hector," he requested—or ordered—gravely.
"Captain Naylor, sir. Distinguished Service Order; Duffshire Fusiliers."
The Captain was in uniform and, during his talk with Beaumaroy, had not thought of taking off his cap. Thus he came to the salute instinctively. The old man bowed with reserved dignity; in spite of his queer get-up he bore himself well; the tall handsome Captain did not seem to efface or outclass him.
"Captain Naylor has distinguished himself highly in the war, sir," Beaumaroy continued.
"I am very glad to make the acquaintance of any officer who has distinguished himself in the service of his country." Then his tone became easier and more familiar. "Don't let me disturb you, gentlemen. My business with you, Hector, will wait. I have finished my work, and can rest with a clear conscience."
"Couldn't we persuade you to stay a few minutes with us, and join us in a whisky-and-soda?"
"Yes, by all means, Hector. But no whisky. Give me a glass of my own wine; I see a bottle on the sideboard."
He came round the table and sat down in the big chair. "Pray seat yourself, Captain," he said, waving his hand towards the stool which Beaumaroy had lately occupied.
The Captain obeyed the gesture, but his huge frame looked awkward on the low seat; he felt aware of it, then aware of the cap on his head; he snatched it off hastily and twiddled it between his fingers. Mr. Saffron, high up in the great chair, sitting erect, seemed now actually to dominate the scene—Beaumaroy standing by, with an arm on the back of the chair, holding a tall glass, full of the golden wine, ready to Mr. Saffron's command; the old man reached up his thin right hand, took it, and sipped with evident pleasure.
Alec Naylor was embarrassed; he sat in silence. But Beaumaroy seemed quite at his ease. He began with a statement which was, in its literal form, no falsehood; but that was about all that could be said for it on the score of veracity. "Before you came in, sir, we were just speaking of uniforms. Do you remember seeing our blue Air Force uniform when we were in town last week? I remember that you expressed approval of it."
In any case the topic was very successful. Mr. Saffron embraced it with eagerness; with much animation he discussed the merits, whether practical or decorative, of various uniforms—field-grey, khaki, horizon-blue, Air Force blue, and a dozen others worn by various armies, corps, and services. Alec was something of an enthusiast in this line too; he soon forgot his embarrassment, and joined in the conversation freely, though with a due respect to the obvious thoroughness of Mr. Saffron's information. Watching the pair with an amused smile, Beaumaroy contented himself with putting in, here and there, what may be called a conjunctive observation—just enough to give the topic a new start.
After a quarter of an hour of this pleasant conversation, for such all three seemed to find it, Mr. Saffron finished his wine, handed the glass to Beaumaroy, and took a cordial leave of Alec Naylor. "It's time for me to be in bed, but don't hurry away, Captain. You won't disturb me, I'm a good sleeper. Good-bye. I shan't want you any more to-night, Hector."
Beaumaroy handed him his candle again, and held the door open for him as he went out.
Alec Naylor clapped his cap back on his head. "I'm off too," he said abruptly.
"Well, you insisted on seeing him, and you've seen him. What about it now?" asked Beaumaroy.
Alec eyed him with a puzzled, baffled suspicion. "You switched him on to that subject on purpose, and by means of something uncommon like a lie."
"A little artifice! I knew it would interest you, and it's quite one of his hobbies. I don't know much about his past life, but I think he must have had something to do with military tailoring. A designer at the War Office, perhaps." Beaumaroy gave a low laugh, rather mocking and malicious. "Still, that doesn't prove a man mad, does it? Perhaps it ought to, but in general opinion it doesn't, any more than reciting poems in bed does."
"Do you mean to tell me that he was reciting poetry when——?"
"Well, it couldn't have sounded worse if he had been, could it?"
Now he was openly laughing at the Captain's angry bewilderment. He knew that Alec Naylor did not believe a word of what he was saying, or suggesting; but yet Alec could not pass his guard, nor wing a shaft between the joints of his harness. If he got into difficulties through heedlessness, at least he made a good shot at getting out of them again by his dexterity. Only, of course, suspicion remains suspicion, even though it be, for the moment, baffled. And it could not be denied that suspicions were piling up—Captain Alec; Irechester; even, on one little point, Doctor Mary! And possibly those two fellows outside—one of them short and stumpy—had their suspicions too, though these might be directed to another point. He gave one of his little shrugs as he followed the silent Captain to the garden gate.
"Good night. Thanks again. And I hope we shall meet soon," he said cheerily.
Alec gave him a brief "Good night" and a particularly formal military salute.