VI.StrainOctober 3. 9.15 P.M.I awoke, late in the morning, of course, very much refreshed. For a moment or two I was puzzled by my situation; then the tenseness and terror of the preceding night stung me. I knew that brooding over those wild events would lead to no good—of this and other matters I had already made up my mind. I kicked off the bedclothes and ventured out of my door. It was a minute or two past ten, and on my secret march in last night’s borrowed dressing-robe down to Pendleton’s room for a bath, I found no sign of any other guest.Half an hour later, in the dinner-room across the corridor from the Hall of the Moth, I sought breakfast. On the threshold, his back toward me, I found Ludlow vehement, making warlike gestures at someone inside.He looked unnaturally thin and bent, Ludlow, attired in a suit of cottage tweed, a smoky grey, a thing surely inherited from some plethoric uncle, for it hung on his Lordship like a bag and at the same time was too short in particulars. His trousers were certainly not intended to show all that length of woollen sock, and his wrists shot out from his sleeves like a conjurer’s whenever, as now, he straightened his arms. His Oxford collar, cut off too soon, exposed a lean craning neck.Belvoir was seated at the table. He was on the point of remarking in his blandest voice:“And you know, my dear Ludlow, the notion of obscenity is certainly modern.”“No such thing,” sputtered Lord Ludlow. “Your opinions are atrocious, sir, and your books are vile. You should be boiled in oil for your opinions, sir—and for your books you should, er, er—be parboiled!”“And you, my good sir, should be embalmed,” rejoined Belvoir with equanimity. “Youareembalmed, by Jove! A good job, too. That will explain everything.”“Thank you, sir!”“Not at all. My good sir, have you ever descended to fundamentals from that altitude of sublime cerebration that you seem to be soaring in whenever I expound my lowly beliefs?”“Fundamentals? What do you mean by fundamentals?”“I mean facts.”“You mean a perversion of the facts, sir!”Belvoir had caught sight of my grinning face over Ludlow’s shoulder, and for my benefit, I believe, he carried on a spirited rejoinder. “My books, upon which you have delivered so restrained a stricture, are little more than depositories of facts, my good sir. When I assert that modesty is a purely conventional matter, I am not spinning a yarn from an arm-chair. When I remark that modern marriage—all marriage—is the outcome of hardened tribal customs, I am not foining in intellectual darkness. When I comment on the different conceptions of chastity, instancing the preparation for marriage of Babylonian girls in the temples of the priests—”Ludlow had been standing still as death during these words, but I could see that his cleaver-like brownish cheek had been taking on a very amiable purple hue. The mention of Babylon fired him.“Babylon! Filth! Pah!”“Quite so, if you are viciously entangled in the nets of your own particular hidebound, Tory—”“You’re a fool, sir, and the sooner you—”“But how beautiful to the Babylonian woman—”“Rubbish! In the first place, you haven’t any—”“Even you, Ludlow, if you had happened to be a priest in Baby—”“Outrageous, sir! What right—”“Why will a Brahmin wash—”“I am not a Brahmin either, or a—”“Or take the case of murder. With us it is a crime, but in—”“Poppycock! Would you do a murder, sir, to show your immunity to so-called custom?”“I’m too kind-hearted,” murmured Belvoir.“And yet you recommend us to throw overboard everything we have saved from the past—to cast convention to the winds—to wallow in a sty of the senses—to debauch—”After a few purple seconds, like a puny Jeremiah, lifting spindle arms out of his sleeves while he raised his fists, he turned and stalked forth in a billow of smoke-grey tweed, kicking a porridge-bowl along the floor. Beholding me, he snapped “Good morning” while he went past.“Lord Ludlow doesn’t stomach new ideas very readily. His digestion was formed during the supremacy of the late lamented V.R.”Belvoir spoke from the floor, wherefrom he smilingly recovered the porridge-bowl. I then saw that other dishes, and silver, lay scattered.The “stick of dynamite” explained, “The good Ludlowwilljump incontinent to his feet when he wants to bully someone, regardless of whether his tray’s on his lap or not. Hewilleat his breakfast off a tray.”“Good lord!”“Oh, small harm. I did not press my argument until he had emptied every dish. As you see, neither ham nor egg hath left a stain.”I helped him recover thedisiecta membra. While we collected the crockery from the carpet, Belvoir murmured, “Poor Ludlow! Too many spinning-mills—I’m afraid some of them are going on in his brain.”“Spinning-mills!”“Yes, didn’t you know? Our noble friend is chairman of a good few businesses in cloth—from Ulster to the Outer Hebrides.”“But really, Mr. Belvoir, I’m surprised to find you carrying on any academic controversy this morning.”“Eh?” His features held a vague look of trouble.I had set about loading a goodly plate at the sideboard. “Well, it strikes me that you were having a row about the wrong thing.”“The wrong thing?”“Gad, man, hasn’t anything happened here to set tongues wagging, that you must bicker with the noble Lord about folkways and the comparative conceptions of chastity?”“Why, you don’t mean—”“Great Scott, is everyone in the House as indifferent as you two? Am I the only one who remembers there was a massacre last night?”“Well,” hesitated he, “I suppose that those signs and evidences—at night—”“You mean, now it’s good broad morning sunlight, everyone has calmed?”“Considerably, Mr. Bannerlee. Even Miss Mertoun, who saw that horror, wanted to go out of doors this morning, but Miss Lebetwood forbade it.”“Miss Mertoun!” I looked up astonished from sausage and bacon and steaming coffee.“Last night, you know, we supposed that she would have to remain in bed half a week. But a blue morning sky re-creates the world, and people. Besides, a couple of the most painful enigmas are considerably lightened. What do you lack? Milk?”“Yes.”“You won’t find any, I’m afraid. The milkman’s man—we’ve had it over the ’phone—is in the throes of a nervous breakdown.”“Doesn’t Crofts keep a cow of his own?”“He does, but the beast has failed ignobly. Well, as I was saying, last evening’s troubles are mostly dissipated.”“Which?”“Sir Brooke, for one. Pendleton has had a note from him in the morning post.”“He’s not coming?”“Well, what should you say? The note consisted of three words: ‘Wait for me.’ What should you say?”“What does Pendleton say?”Belvoir laughed. “Poor chap, he’s almost off his chump still, as you may guess. Governing a household threatened with theft and no one knows what else is out of his line. He’s in high dudgeon over it—wants to know how long he’s supposed to wait, why he should be expected to wait at all, and so forth.He, if you like, hasn’t forgotten last night.”“What I can’t see is, why this gentleman’s absence should paralyze the proceedings.”Belvoir winked. “We can’t have the Feast proper unless the bride’s health is drunk, and Sir Brooke is assigned to proposing the toast.”A few seconds went by while I absorbed this statement. “No one else could propose it, of course?”Belvoir grinned. “Well, opinions differ. Crofts says anybody can, but Cosgrove solemnly insists that no one elseshall!”“What difference—?”“You’ll have to ask Cosgrove; but he won’t tell you the answer, the real answer, that is. He’s put his foot down, though. No, Sir Brooke means no Bidding Feast; that’s flat.”“How long do you suppose the festivities can be postponed?”“A day, says Pendleton. Then if he had his way, the marriage would take place, Brooke or no.”“The marriage! With all that ugliness and horror unexplained?”Belvoir shrugged. “What would you have? The fact is that the blood is not so significant as we thought. Pendleton would have sent for the police to-day, I dare say, in spite of his stand last night, but the source of the blood has been found, or rather missed.”“The source?”“A possible or probable source. A sucking-pig with all necessary qualifications is gone from the sties. Pendleton seems to believe that a poacher may have slaughtered it, or that someone has indulged in a ritualistic blood orgy, or that—but we can’t make out what he thinks, if he knows himself. Come outside, Mr. Bannerlee, and see for yourself how the exhibits have lost their grisliness in daylight.”We met Pendleton at the foot of the stairs. His greeting to me was effusive yet a trifle strained. He had been going up to call me; hadn’t expected that after my long—here he looked at Belvoir, bethought himself, and stammered—well, he hadn’t expected me to be up so soon. The boy Toby, he said, had at nine o’clock been sent on his bicycle through New Aidenn to the ineffable village, to fetch my bag from the inn, and incidentally to re-inquire about the reported appearance of Sir Brooke at New Aidenn station. Most of the guests, however, believed the identification had been mistaken. As a fact, Sir Brooke was quite irresponsible enough to stay overnight and not ’phone. But since the message— Were we going out? He’d come, too.On the lawn beyond the mighty gate-house—and herefrom in the daytime we could see the narrow glitter of Aidenn Water beyond the tennis-court some distance up the bank—on the lawn the blood-pool, now a dry clot, and the hatchet with helve and blade both stained, were fenced off with guards of chicken-wire.“And don’t you think these are serious testimony?”“To what? to what?” Pendleton inquired. “What can we make of Parson—”“You have swallowed this Parson Lolly, hook, line, and sinker. Now I—”“You and Oxford weren’t so chirpy last evening,” observed our host.I was indignant. “Well! Did I seem to be in the same condition of nerves—”“You saw the same thing.”“But, Crofts, man, it surely can be explained somehow without—”He was impatient. “Yes, of course, everything can be explained. Things have been happening, oh, quite explainable things, all of them—only not one of themhasbeen explained. But what I object to is giving them an explanation that’s pure conjecture. You evidently think there’s been murder here. You seem to believe that’s human blood. How do you know it isn’t pig’s blood?”“Why not try to get someone here who can tell?”“Someoneiscoming,” snapped Pendleton.“Oh, you have sent—”“No; more guests arriving, that’s all. Late comers.”“Like Sir Brooke?”“No, not like Sir Brooke. Sir Brooke promised to come yesterday; these weren’t expected until to-day.”“And one of them will be able to tell—”“Doctor Aire should be able to tell,” said Pendleton wearily. “Come on over to the court, and let’s forget this.”I acceded gladly enough. Belvoir begged off on the score of writing letters, and Cosgrove, that moment hailing us from the library window, came through the armoury door in baggy knickers and an Irish edition of a sportsman’s coat (black and astonishingly high in the collar).While Cosgrove, Pendleton, and I moved along northward and surveyed the meagre walls of the glazed conservatory, we could tell from the mere vestiges that that large room and the storey of three bed-chambers ranged above it were later engraftings to the house. The tinting of the stones was bolder, undarkened, and brick had been used to some extent north of the tower that marked the limit of the original wall.An odd thing, that conservatory window fractured by the Parson in his latest escapade. Brilliant purple clematis framed the lower expanses of conservatory glass. Beneath a small birch-tree opposite the great burst-in window we paused for a moment in order that I might see the damaged section. Again the blooms within sent out a heady breath. The gap in the glass was extremely irregular in shape, a good five feet in its tallest dimension, half that in its widest. To-day, said Pendleton, the glazier from New Aidenn, already come for a preliminary examination, would bring his paraphernalia and close up the place.“That’s quite an opening unprotected.”“Oh, no fear,” said Crofts, “the door from the conservatory into the corridor had been double-locked and bolted from the corridor side. Always is, anyhow, unless someone wants to go in to make music.”“Make music?”“Yes, the piano’s there, you know.”“And how do you account for the shape of the smash? It looks as if someone walking on air had stepped through the glass.”“Someone flying?” muttered Cosgrove, running his finger along the edge of the broken pane.Pendleton made a movement of annoyance. “Oh, I don’t try to explain it. I leave that to you, sleuth-hound. That description of yours sounds very probable to me.”“Our poor, dear host,” I murmured pityingly. “Forgive me for harping on the ungrateful chord of mystery.”From beyond the thick-clumped shrubs to the north and toward Aidenn Water came a staccato of handclapping and a few bright tones of voices in the fresh, vibrant sunlight. The sounds reminded Pendleton of our objective.“Come along to the tennis. That must be Paula playing.”“Isn’t it a bit late in the year for tennis?”“I suppose so, but Paula would play it in Iceland.”“She is good then, I take it?”“Very good. She’d give you a run, Bannerlee.”“Oh, Lord, I’m no use any more. What sort of court have you, Crofts?”“Hard. Too much rain here for anything else.”While we went our way, I was all alert for signs of the billowing and swelling marauder of last night, and I thought ruefully how a fictional detective finds clues even in bent grass-blades. I kept my eyes wide. We crossed the lawn and passed near the cypress trees where the black-robed creature had disappeared. Surreptitiously I looked for footprints; nothing was distinguishable.Before reaching the track leading to the pretentious bridge over the tributary stream, we swung left through the bushes and soon came to a knoll full of scaly-red, twisted strawberry trees.“These are aliens in England,” explained Cosgrove to me, while we wound our way upward through the plantation. “But in my country they are natives. I like nothing better than to loiter among them; they almost make me think I am in old Muckross again. There is one reason why I like your Highglen estate, friend Crofts.”We found a pleasant clearing there, where we could lie, having a view both of the lawns and of the tennis. The strawberry trees extend thickly beyond the knoll and around the court, which is only a few yards away from Aidenn Water where it comes straight down the middle of the Vale before making quite a detour toward the western escarpment. A doubles match was in progress, and the knot of spectators was too intent on the exchanges to notice us.“There’s Paula,” indicated Crofts. “Look at that shot! She’s master of us all with the racquet.”A white-skirted player had given a leap, awhangwas to be heard even from our vantage-point, and another patter of applause. I thought the Irishman looked satisfied.“I approve of the excellence of women in games,” he said.We reclined at our ease and had a good view of Miss Lebetwood and her partner grinding down their opponents. Cosgrove, it developed, had never played tennis, nor did he any other game—now. In his “youth,” he told us, he had been a good Rugger player, I think he called himself a “dangerous partisan”; “murderous” I thought might be the fitter word while I gazed at his countenance full of heavy seriousness and wondered when this young man considered his “youth” to have ended.He swept his arm toward the enclosure where the players darted and skipped. “As for this juvenile pastime, my part in it has been confined to holding the fish-net.”I gave an astonished “Fish-net!”“Yes, on the stream bank.”Crofts Pendleton rolled over so that he might address me. “We lose a good few balls here.”“Well, these tangled strawberry trees might swallow any number.”“There’s more in it than that. It seems almost uncanny sometimes how many are never recovered.”Cosgrove said, “The number of missing balls is extraordinary.”“Yes, and wild shots often go into Aidenn Water. We usually have someone on the bank with the net to recapture them floating down!”“That must be a grateful task.”“It is like all other labours of love,” rejoined Crofts, “a joy to the doer, a wonder to the Philistine.”I looked sharply at my friend; little nippy speeches like that were not like him.Our talk drifted away from the games. I mentioned that ruin farther up the Vale, which I was eager to see by daylight. Cosgrove had some wild tale about it which he told with sonorous impressiveness—only, while I watched the lithe leaps of Paula Lebetwood and witnessed the accuracy of her shots, the gist of the history escaped me. At this moment all I can recall of it is that the word “treachery” kept coming in. Even if I was distracted from appreciation, Cosgrove seemed to derive a pure pleasure from hearing himself pour forth. But Crofts Pendleton did not dote on the tale; instead this account, doubtless half fact, half legend, seemed to remind him of present broils.During an exchange of courts, I let my gaze alight on Mynydd Tarw, that northern hill above the ruin, whereon Aidenn Water begins at Shepherd’s Well. My glance roved down the western line of hills, Black Mixen, Great Rhos, Esgair Nantau, and Vron Hill, the last directly opposite us across the Water.“Do you see it?” Crofts said suddenly.“What?” I asked, rolling over with a start.“The tumulus on Vron Hill. Some old josser lying up there with a ton of stones on his chest.”“No, I don’t see it.”“Neither do I. Funny thing about it, it lies just over the shoulder of the Hill from where we are. At sunset, though, it looks quite grand up there, if you can see it.”“Somehow I’ve noticed that,” I remarked gravely.“What do you mean?”“Things look better if you can see them.”Crofts brushed aside my feeble attempt at leg-pulling. “Seriously, though, Bannerlee, you should have a try at it this evening—from your window, or from outside on the balcony. I’m no good at old stones and that kind of thing, but I do get a thrill when I think of that codger up there sleeping it off. He chose a breezy place to wait for Judgment.”“I will have a look,” I promised. “I can’t see, though, why this antique gentleman selected that Hill in preference to any one of several others hereabout.” I indicated with my arm. “Why, that one, for instance, or that one, must be a couple of hundred feet higher. Don’t you think so?” I put it to Cosgrove, but he hesitated to commit himself, and Crofts said that I had better ask Miss Lebetwood, if I were too lazy to consult an ordnance map.“She’s hot stuff at all that, really—very useful.”I saw Cosgrove give his head a doleful wag.“Her brother—American army officer—killed,” explained our host. “Before he sailed for France she made him teach her all he knew, apparently. She and he would pore over the maps and plans together, I understand.”“Yes,” came in Cosgrove with his voice like the great slow tramp of oxen, “she has too many of these unwomanly things in her head, I misdoubt. Photography—”“Topography, you mean,” contradicted Crofts, surprised out of his jaded condition into smothered laughter by the Irishman’s blunder. “Topography, not photography.”“I said photography, and I’ll stick to it,” replied Cosgrove with never a smile. “And topography as well. Do you call them fit studies for a woman?”“They, and others like them, are the very things that make you ache for her,” said Pendleton with what I considered remarkable penetration. “They form part of the wonder of her, the quality that makes it hard for you to realize just what a prize you’ve captured. Come man, frankly, what would you give to have her for your wife two days from now if she didn’t have intellect as well as a treasury of golden hair and emotions which permit a strange susceptibility to such as you?”I looked curiously at Cosgrove, to see how he would take the challenge. He took it stolidly, with never a sign on his rufous countenance; only after a while his eyebrows lifted sharply, as if he considered the possibility of truth in his friend’s words.For my part, I soon was too absorbed in the dart and dip of the tennis ball to notice much more of the talk. Pendleton kept trying to tell me more about Miss Lebetwood, how she loved climbing, how on earlier visits she had taken the unpromising lad Toby in hand and uncovered surprising intelligence in him. It all had something to do with photography—or was it topography?—no matter. She had even brought down some apparatus—or was it maps?—and given it to him. Cosgrove kept still now, while our host rambled on, evidently glad of any topic he could talk of without unpleasant associations.Suddenly the game was over, and everyone concerned trooped toward the House. Pendleton was hailed by somebody and had to join the returning party, though I think he would have been glad to remain out of sight of his country home just then. I was well content to stay with Cosgrove, for the man rather fascinated me; his mind seemed to be full of admirable inconsistencies.We strolled southward where Aidenn Water makes that monstrous sweep to the west beyond the towered gate, and further where the stream swings sharply eastward again under the very toes of the bounding hills. There stood the bridge, a crossing of one arch: ill-hewn, moss-grown moor stone with a two-foot parapet, quite immeasurably old and quite quaint, with an immemorial ash-tree overlooking it from this side. The water stole peacefully underneath. I expressed surprise that it would bear any considerable weight, and Cosgrove with an air of commenting on the irrelevant remarked that he did not suppose it was ever expected to bear any greater weight than Pendleton’s motor or a tradesman’s team and wagon.“Look at it, I say, look at it. They build no bridges like that to-day.”We remained several minutes there beside the water-crossing, which was indeed picturesque, then turned toward the half-hidden House in some haste, for the sky had gradually been overcast and now there was a premonition of showers in the nip of the wind.We hastened through the main portal of the House, beneath the stone head of the cat, just in time to escape a flicker and dash of rain.There at the foot of the stair-well was Pendleton again, with a long, sour face.I suppressed a desire to laugh.“Well?”“That damned, diseased pest!”“What! Not the Parson once more!”Cosgrove cannoned an incredulous “No!”With the suddenness of a conjurer our host thrust before our noses a second cardboard placard scrawled across with uncouth printing mingled of capitals and small letters, now composing a message of more sinister purport:LooK ouT FOR PARSON LOLLY He MEAns BUSINeSS“Ah, yes,” I murmured with perhaps a little too much surface effort at nonchalance. “Parson Lolly means business now. He was only trifling last night.”“He was interrupted last night—be sure of that,” intoned Cosgrove.“Damned lucky for us, then.”Pendleton was unsteady with righteous embarrassment and rage when Cosgrove interrogated him. “Where was this thing found?—who found it?—when—”“Harmony—one of the housemaids—the vixen,” snapped Pendleton, and seemed unable to make headway.“Why is the good Harmony held in such opprobrium?” I inquired.“I swear she’s lying—the minx—or she put it there herself.”“Where?”“In your room, Sean, lying in the middle of the floor.”Perhaps Pendleton had been saving that item for rather a stiff jolt at the last. I happened to be looking at Cosgrove and saw his eyebrows jerk upward prodigiously, as if they were going to fly off his forehead, and the eyes beneath them bulged and stared like glass.“In my room? When was this?”“She just came down from doing the beds—says she found it there not five minutes ago.”“Hem,” said Cosgrove, his features settling into a study.“Come, come,” urged Pendleton, making a nervous movement of impatience. “Tell us—when were you in your room last?”“A little after nine, I think,” answered Cosgrove, solemnly scratching his black-thatched head behind the left ear, his look scowling and intent upon the floor, his brow cleft by one heavy wrinkle. “I saw the boy riding the bicycle out of the barn; that would be nine, you said. I heard Lord Ludlow quarrelling with the man Soames for bringing him the wrong color of towel, a quarter of an hour later—fully. And I came out in the corridor in time to see Soames disappear down the stair.”“After a quarter past nine,” said Pendleton. “That leaves over two hours—unless Harmony—”“It couldn’t have been there and you not see it?” I asked.“In the centre of the floor? Mr. Bannerlee!”“Are you implying that it was left there last night?”“I withdraw the suggestion, Crofts,” I said, “although—”“There are enough ‘if’s’ and ‘although’s’ in this to—to stock a political editor,” grumbled our host.“Has the placard any mark, any peculiarity—”“For identification, you mean?” Pendleton turned the cardboard over between his fingers, dubiously. “It’s like last night’s—cut round the edges with scissors or a knife—might have been part of the bottom of a box of sweets.” His voice was despairing. “I suppose enough board for twenty foul things like this comes into this house every week. And in all Wales—”“Our search—supposing we go about a search—will hardly be as broad as that,” said Cosgrove, and I was struck, as many times before, by the lack of lightness in his voice. He meant just that: that if the placard were investigated, the whole country need not be drawn into the matter.Our host turned to the Irishman: “Search won’t do any good; that’s certain sure. But I’ll have the servants up this afternoon. (Bannerlee, you be with me while I question ’em and tell me what you think of their candour—you’ve no prejudices, you know.) Sean, what do you think of it? Are you alarmed?”Cosgrove laughed contemptuously.“But it’s directed to you this time.”“It’s casual, casual. What could anyone—what could this meddler have against me?”“It was left in your room.”“By chance,” insisted Cosgrove. “There could have been no malice toward me in it.”“But, by gad, what shall I tell the people here?”“Nothing—and swear the woman Harmony to whisper never a word.”“Yes, of course, I’ve sworn her on the Bible until she was blue-scared, the jade. But this thing?”Cosgrove reached out and took the placard. He tore it across, placed the pieces together and tore it again, and repeatedly, and handed the bits back to Crofts.“Make a small fire in the Hall.”It impressed me as a really brave thing, and I believe that Crofts felt the same admiration for him who dismissed such a message, apparently out of the air, from man or superman or sub-man.“Here goes, then.”“Has the boy come back with my bag?”“Not for at least another hour, I’m afraid. He has a long hilly road to ride—down through New Aidenn and all the way around by the south skirts of Aidenn Forest.”“Sir Brooke?”“Not a nail of him. But the others have come.”I echoed, “Others? Guests?”“Doctor Aire and the two young, very young Americans.”“And what says the Doctor to the blood on the lawn?” asked Cosgrove.“He took some of it up for microscopy. He can tell if it’s probably human or not. He’s more than a little interested.”We had entered the Hall of the Moth from the portrait corridor, and through the plenteous windows saw a swift rain pouring down.“The evidence is getting wet.”“Canvas spread over,” Crofts assured us. “Andthisevidence now gets carbonized.”We watched the fragments of cardboard smoulder, flare, and become consumed in the fireplace where raindrops spattered down the chimney, until only ashes were left, and a tiny spire of smoke. Cosgrove disintegrated the ash with the poker.“That’sa blessing,” said Crofts, taking out his watch. “Luncheon-bell in ten minutes. Between now and then I shall smoke not less than three cigarettes.”
October 3. 9.15 P.M.
I awoke, late in the morning, of course, very much refreshed. For a moment or two I was puzzled by my situation; then the tenseness and terror of the preceding night stung me. I knew that brooding over those wild events would lead to no good—of this and other matters I had already made up my mind. I kicked off the bedclothes and ventured out of my door. It was a minute or two past ten, and on my secret march in last night’s borrowed dressing-robe down to Pendleton’s room for a bath, I found no sign of any other guest.
Half an hour later, in the dinner-room across the corridor from the Hall of the Moth, I sought breakfast. On the threshold, his back toward me, I found Ludlow vehement, making warlike gestures at someone inside.
He looked unnaturally thin and bent, Ludlow, attired in a suit of cottage tweed, a smoky grey, a thing surely inherited from some plethoric uncle, for it hung on his Lordship like a bag and at the same time was too short in particulars. His trousers were certainly not intended to show all that length of woollen sock, and his wrists shot out from his sleeves like a conjurer’s whenever, as now, he straightened his arms. His Oxford collar, cut off too soon, exposed a lean craning neck.
Belvoir was seated at the table. He was on the point of remarking in his blandest voice:
“And you know, my dear Ludlow, the notion of obscenity is certainly modern.”
“No such thing,” sputtered Lord Ludlow. “Your opinions are atrocious, sir, and your books are vile. You should be boiled in oil for your opinions, sir—and for your books you should, er, er—be parboiled!”
“And you, my good sir, should be embalmed,” rejoined Belvoir with equanimity. “Youareembalmed, by Jove! A good job, too. That will explain everything.”
“Thank you, sir!”
“Not at all. My good sir, have you ever descended to fundamentals from that altitude of sublime cerebration that you seem to be soaring in whenever I expound my lowly beliefs?”
“Fundamentals? What do you mean by fundamentals?”
“I mean facts.”
“You mean a perversion of the facts, sir!”
Belvoir had caught sight of my grinning face over Ludlow’s shoulder, and for my benefit, I believe, he carried on a spirited rejoinder. “My books, upon which you have delivered so restrained a stricture, are little more than depositories of facts, my good sir. When I assert that modesty is a purely conventional matter, I am not spinning a yarn from an arm-chair. When I remark that modern marriage—all marriage—is the outcome of hardened tribal customs, I am not foining in intellectual darkness. When I comment on the different conceptions of chastity, instancing the preparation for marriage of Babylonian girls in the temples of the priests—”
Ludlow had been standing still as death during these words, but I could see that his cleaver-like brownish cheek had been taking on a very amiable purple hue. The mention of Babylon fired him.
“Babylon! Filth! Pah!”
“Quite so, if you are viciously entangled in the nets of your own particular hidebound, Tory—”
“You’re a fool, sir, and the sooner you—”
“But how beautiful to the Babylonian woman—”
“Rubbish! In the first place, you haven’t any—”
“Even you, Ludlow, if you had happened to be a priest in Baby—”
“Outrageous, sir! What right—”
“Why will a Brahmin wash—”
“I am not a Brahmin either, or a—”
“Or take the case of murder. With us it is a crime, but in—”
“Poppycock! Would you do a murder, sir, to show your immunity to so-called custom?”
“I’m too kind-hearted,” murmured Belvoir.
“And yet you recommend us to throw overboard everything we have saved from the past—to cast convention to the winds—to wallow in a sty of the senses—to debauch—”
After a few purple seconds, like a puny Jeremiah, lifting spindle arms out of his sleeves while he raised his fists, he turned and stalked forth in a billow of smoke-grey tweed, kicking a porridge-bowl along the floor. Beholding me, he snapped “Good morning” while he went past.
“Lord Ludlow doesn’t stomach new ideas very readily. His digestion was formed during the supremacy of the late lamented V.R.”
Belvoir spoke from the floor, wherefrom he smilingly recovered the porridge-bowl. I then saw that other dishes, and silver, lay scattered.
The “stick of dynamite” explained, “The good Ludlowwilljump incontinent to his feet when he wants to bully someone, regardless of whether his tray’s on his lap or not. Hewilleat his breakfast off a tray.”
“Good lord!”
“Oh, small harm. I did not press my argument until he had emptied every dish. As you see, neither ham nor egg hath left a stain.”
I helped him recover thedisiecta membra. While we collected the crockery from the carpet, Belvoir murmured, “Poor Ludlow! Too many spinning-mills—I’m afraid some of them are going on in his brain.”
“Spinning-mills!”
“Yes, didn’t you know? Our noble friend is chairman of a good few businesses in cloth—from Ulster to the Outer Hebrides.”
“But really, Mr. Belvoir, I’m surprised to find you carrying on any academic controversy this morning.”
“Eh?” His features held a vague look of trouble.
I had set about loading a goodly plate at the sideboard. “Well, it strikes me that you were having a row about the wrong thing.”
“The wrong thing?”
“Gad, man, hasn’t anything happened here to set tongues wagging, that you must bicker with the noble Lord about folkways and the comparative conceptions of chastity?”
“Why, you don’t mean—”
“Great Scott, is everyone in the House as indifferent as you two? Am I the only one who remembers there was a massacre last night?”
“Well,” hesitated he, “I suppose that those signs and evidences—at night—”
“You mean, now it’s good broad morning sunlight, everyone has calmed?”
“Considerably, Mr. Bannerlee. Even Miss Mertoun, who saw that horror, wanted to go out of doors this morning, but Miss Lebetwood forbade it.”
“Miss Mertoun!” I looked up astonished from sausage and bacon and steaming coffee.
“Last night, you know, we supposed that she would have to remain in bed half a week. But a blue morning sky re-creates the world, and people. Besides, a couple of the most painful enigmas are considerably lightened. What do you lack? Milk?”
“Yes.”
“You won’t find any, I’m afraid. The milkman’s man—we’ve had it over the ’phone—is in the throes of a nervous breakdown.”
“Doesn’t Crofts keep a cow of his own?”
“He does, but the beast has failed ignobly. Well, as I was saying, last evening’s troubles are mostly dissipated.”
“Which?”
“Sir Brooke, for one. Pendleton has had a note from him in the morning post.”
“He’s not coming?”
“Well, what should you say? The note consisted of three words: ‘Wait for me.’ What should you say?”
“What does Pendleton say?”
Belvoir laughed. “Poor chap, he’s almost off his chump still, as you may guess. Governing a household threatened with theft and no one knows what else is out of his line. He’s in high dudgeon over it—wants to know how long he’s supposed to wait, why he should be expected to wait at all, and so forth.He, if you like, hasn’t forgotten last night.”
“What I can’t see is, why this gentleman’s absence should paralyze the proceedings.”
Belvoir winked. “We can’t have the Feast proper unless the bride’s health is drunk, and Sir Brooke is assigned to proposing the toast.”
A few seconds went by while I absorbed this statement. “No one else could propose it, of course?”
Belvoir grinned. “Well, opinions differ. Crofts says anybody can, but Cosgrove solemnly insists that no one elseshall!”
“What difference—?”
“You’ll have to ask Cosgrove; but he won’t tell you the answer, the real answer, that is. He’s put his foot down, though. No, Sir Brooke means no Bidding Feast; that’s flat.”
“How long do you suppose the festivities can be postponed?”
“A day, says Pendleton. Then if he had his way, the marriage would take place, Brooke or no.”
“The marriage! With all that ugliness and horror unexplained?”
Belvoir shrugged. “What would you have? The fact is that the blood is not so significant as we thought. Pendleton would have sent for the police to-day, I dare say, in spite of his stand last night, but the source of the blood has been found, or rather missed.”
“The source?”
“A possible or probable source. A sucking-pig with all necessary qualifications is gone from the sties. Pendleton seems to believe that a poacher may have slaughtered it, or that someone has indulged in a ritualistic blood orgy, or that—but we can’t make out what he thinks, if he knows himself. Come outside, Mr. Bannerlee, and see for yourself how the exhibits have lost their grisliness in daylight.”
We met Pendleton at the foot of the stairs. His greeting to me was effusive yet a trifle strained. He had been going up to call me; hadn’t expected that after my long—here he looked at Belvoir, bethought himself, and stammered—well, he hadn’t expected me to be up so soon. The boy Toby, he said, had at nine o’clock been sent on his bicycle through New Aidenn to the ineffable village, to fetch my bag from the inn, and incidentally to re-inquire about the reported appearance of Sir Brooke at New Aidenn station. Most of the guests, however, believed the identification had been mistaken. As a fact, Sir Brooke was quite irresponsible enough to stay overnight and not ’phone. But since the message— Were we going out? He’d come, too.
On the lawn beyond the mighty gate-house—and herefrom in the daytime we could see the narrow glitter of Aidenn Water beyond the tennis-court some distance up the bank—on the lawn the blood-pool, now a dry clot, and the hatchet with helve and blade both stained, were fenced off with guards of chicken-wire.
“And don’t you think these are serious testimony?”
“To what? to what?” Pendleton inquired. “What can we make of Parson—”
“You have swallowed this Parson Lolly, hook, line, and sinker. Now I—”
“You and Oxford weren’t so chirpy last evening,” observed our host.
I was indignant. “Well! Did I seem to be in the same condition of nerves—”
“You saw the same thing.”
“But, Crofts, man, it surely can be explained somehow without—”
He was impatient. “Yes, of course, everything can be explained. Things have been happening, oh, quite explainable things, all of them—only not one of themhasbeen explained. But what I object to is giving them an explanation that’s pure conjecture. You evidently think there’s been murder here. You seem to believe that’s human blood. How do you know it isn’t pig’s blood?”
“Why not try to get someone here who can tell?”
“Someoneiscoming,” snapped Pendleton.
“Oh, you have sent—”
“No; more guests arriving, that’s all. Late comers.”
“Like Sir Brooke?”
“No, not like Sir Brooke. Sir Brooke promised to come yesterday; these weren’t expected until to-day.”
“And one of them will be able to tell—”
“Doctor Aire should be able to tell,” said Pendleton wearily. “Come on over to the court, and let’s forget this.”
I acceded gladly enough. Belvoir begged off on the score of writing letters, and Cosgrove, that moment hailing us from the library window, came through the armoury door in baggy knickers and an Irish edition of a sportsman’s coat (black and astonishingly high in the collar).
While Cosgrove, Pendleton, and I moved along northward and surveyed the meagre walls of the glazed conservatory, we could tell from the mere vestiges that that large room and the storey of three bed-chambers ranged above it were later engraftings to the house. The tinting of the stones was bolder, undarkened, and brick had been used to some extent north of the tower that marked the limit of the original wall.
An odd thing, that conservatory window fractured by the Parson in his latest escapade. Brilliant purple clematis framed the lower expanses of conservatory glass. Beneath a small birch-tree opposite the great burst-in window we paused for a moment in order that I might see the damaged section. Again the blooms within sent out a heady breath. The gap in the glass was extremely irregular in shape, a good five feet in its tallest dimension, half that in its widest. To-day, said Pendleton, the glazier from New Aidenn, already come for a preliminary examination, would bring his paraphernalia and close up the place.
“That’s quite an opening unprotected.”
“Oh, no fear,” said Crofts, “the door from the conservatory into the corridor had been double-locked and bolted from the corridor side. Always is, anyhow, unless someone wants to go in to make music.”
“Make music?”
“Yes, the piano’s there, you know.”
“And how do you account for the shape of the smash? It looks as if someone walking on air had stepped through the glass.”
“Someone flying?” muttered Cosgrove, running his finger along the edge of the broken pane.
Pendleton made a movement of annoyance. “Oh, I don’t try to explain it. I leave that to you, sleuth-hound. That description of yours sounds very probable to me.”
“Our poor, dear host,” I murmured pityingly. “Forgive me for harping on the ungrateful chord of mystery.”
From beyond the thick-clumped shrubs to the north and toward Aidenn Water came a staccato of handclapping and a few bright tones of voices in the fresh, vibrant sunlight. The sounds reminded Pendleton of our objective.
“Come along to the tennis. That must be Paula playing.”
“Isn’t it a bit late in the year for tennis?”
“I suppose so, but Paula would play it in Iceland.”
“She is good then, I take it?”
“Very good. She’d give you a run, Bannerlee.”
“Oh, Lord, I’m no use any more. What sort of court have you, Crofts?”
“Hard. Too much rain here for anything else.”
While we went our way, I was all alert for signs of the billowing and swelling marauder of last night, and I thought ruefully how a fictional detective finds clues even in bent grass-blades. I kept my eyes wide. We crossed the lawn and passed near the cypress trees where the black-robed creature had disappeared. Surreptitiously I looked for footprints; nothing was distinguishable.
Before reaching the track leading to the pretentious bridge over the tributary stream, we swung left through the bushes and soon came to a knoll full of scaly-red, twisted strawberry trees.
“These are aliens in England,” explained Cosgrove to me, while we wound our way upward through the plantation. “But in my country they are natives. I like nothing better than to loiter among them; they almost make me think I am in old Muckross again. There is one reason why I like your Highglen estate, friend Crofts.”
We found a pleasant clearing there, where we could lie, having a view both of the lawns and of the tennis. The strawberry trees extend thickly beyond the knoll and around the court, which is only a few yards away from Aidenn Water where it comes straight down the middle of the Vale before making quite a detour toward the western escarpment. A doubles match was in progress, and the knot of spectators was too intent on the exchanges to notice us.
“There’s Paula,” indicated Crofts. “Look at that shot! She’s master of us all with the racquet.”
A white-skirted player had given a leap, awhangwas to be heard even from our vantage-point, and another patter of applause. I thought the Irishman looked satisfied.
“I approve of the excellence of women in games,” he said.
We reclined at our ease and had a good view of Miss Lebetwood and her partner grinding down their opponents. Cosgrove, it developed, had never played tennis, nor did he any other game—now. In his “youth,” he told us, he had been a good Rugger player, I think he called himself a “dangerous partisan”; “murderous” I thought might be the fitter word while I gazed at his countenance full of heavy seriousness and wondered when this young man considered his “youth” to have ended.
He swept his arm toward the enclosure where the players darted and skipped. “As for this juvenile pastime, my part in it has been confined to holding the fish-net.”
I gave an astonished “Fish-net!”
“Yes, on the stream bank.”
Crofts Pendleton rolled over so that he might address me. “We lose a good few balls here.”
“Well, these tangled strawberry trees might swallow any number.”
“There’s more in it than that. It seems almost uncanny sometimes how many are never recovered.”
Cosgrove said, “The number of missing balls is extraordinary.”
“Yes, and wild shots often go into Aidenn Water. We usually have someone on the bank with the net to recapture them floating down!”
“That must be a grateful task.”
“It is like all other labours of love,” rejoined Crofts, “a joy to the doer, a wonder to the Philistine.”
I looked sharply at my friend; little nippy speeches like that were not like him.
Our talk drifted away from the games. I mentioned that ruin farther up the Vale, which I was eager to see by daylight. Cosgrove had some wild tale about it which he told with sonorous impressiveness—only, while I watched the lithe leaps of Paula Lebetwood and witnessed the accuracy of her shots, the gist of the history escaped me. At this moment all I can recall of it is that the word “treachery” kept coming in. Even if I was distracted from appreciation, Cosgrove seemed to derive a pure pleasure from hearing himself pour forth. But Crofts Pendleton did not dote on the tale; instead this account, doubtless half fact, half legend, seemed to remind him of present broils.
During an exchange of courts, I let my gaze alight on Mynydd Tarw, that northern hill above the ruin, whereon Aidenn Water begins at Shepherd’s Well. My glance roved down the western line of hills, Black Mixen, Great Rhos, Esgair Nantau, and Vron Hill, the last directly opposite us across the Water.
“Do you see it?” Crofts said suddenly.
“What?” I asked, rolling over with a start.
“The tumulus on Vron Hill. Some old josser lying up there with a ton of stones on his chest.”
“No, I don’t see it.”
“Neither do I. Funny thing about it, it lies just over the shoulder of the Hill from where we are. At sunset, though, it looks quite grand up there, if you can see it.”
“Somehow I’ve noticed that,” I remarked gravely.
“What do you mean?”
“Things look better if you can see them.”
Crofts brushed aside my feeble attempt at leg-pulling. “Seriously, though, Bannerlee, you should have a try at it this evening—from your window, or from outside on the balcony. I’m no good at old stones and that kind of thing, but I do get a thrill when I think of that codger up there sleeping it off. He chose a breezy place to wait for Judgment.”
“I will have a look,” I promised. “I can’t see, though, why this antique gentleman selected that Hill in preference to any one of several others hereabout.” I indicated with my arm. “Why, that one, for instance, or that one, must be a couple of hundred feet higher. Don’t you think so?” I put it to Cosgrove, but he hesitated to commit himself, and Crofts said that I had better ask Miss Lebetwood, if I were too lazy to consult an ordnance map.
“She’s hot stuff at all that, really—very useful.”
I saw Cosgrove give his head a doleful wag.
“Her brother—American army officer—killed,” explained our host. “Before he sailed for France she made him teach her all he knew, apparently. She and he would pore over the maps and plans together, I understand.”
“Yes,” came in Cosgrove with his voice like the great slow tramp of oxen, “she has too many of these unwomanly things in her head, I misdoubt. Photography—”
“Topography, you mean,” contradicted Crofts, surprised out of his jaded condition into smothered laughter by the Irishman’s blunder. “Topography, not photography.”
“I said photography, and I’ll stick to it,” replied Cosgrove with never a smile. “And topography as well. Do you call them fit studies for a woman?”
“They, and others like them, are the very things that make you ache for her,” said Pendleton with what I considered remarkable penetration. “They form part of the wonder of her, the quality that makes it hard for you to realize just what a prize you’ve captured. Come man, frankly, what would you give to have her for your wife two days from now if she didn’t have intellect as well as a treasury of golden hair and emotions which permit a strange susceptibility to such as you?”
I looked curiously at Cosgrove, to see how he would take the challenge. He took it stolidly, with never a sign on his rufous countenance; only after a while his eyebrows lifted sharply, as if he considered the possibility of truth in his friend’s words.
For my part, I soon was too absorbed in the dart and dip of the tennis ball to notice much more of the talk. Pendleton kept trying to tell me more about Miss Lebetwood, how she loved climbing, how on earlier visits she had taken the unpromising lad Toby in hand and uncovered surprising intelligence in him. It all had something to do with photography—or was it topography?—no matter. She had even brought down some apparatus—or was it maps?—and given it to him. Cosgrove kept still now, while our host rambled on, evidently glad of any topic he could talk of without unpleasant associations.
Suddenly the game was over, and everyone concerned trooped toward the House. Pendleton was hailed by somebody and had to join the returning party, though I think he would have been glad to remain out of sight of his country home just then. I was well content to stay with Cosgrove, for the man rather fascinated me; his mind seemed to be full of admirable inconsistencies.
We strolled southward where Aidenn Water makes that monstrous sweep to the west beyond the towered gate, and further where the stream swings sharply eastward again under the very toes of the bounding hills. There stood the bridge, a crossing of one arch: ill-hewn, moss-grown moor stone with a two-foot parapet, quite immeasurably old and quite quaint, with an immemorial ash-tree overlooking it from this side. The water stole peacefully underneath. I expressed surprise that it would bear any considerable weight, and Cosgrove with an air of commenting on the irrelevant remarked that he did not suppose it was ever expected to bear any greater weight than Pendleton’s motor or a tradesman’s team and wagon.
“Look at it, I say, look at it. They build no bridges like that to-day.”
We remained several minutes there beside the water-crossing, which was indeed picturesque, then turned toward the half-hidden House in some haste, for the sky had gradually been overcast and now there was a premonition of showers in the nip of the wind.
We hastened through the main portal of the House, beneath the stone head of the cat, just in time to escape a flicker and dash of rain.
There at the foot of the stair-well was Pendleton again, with a long, sour face.
I suppressed a desire to laugh.
“Well?”
“That damned, diseased pest!”
“What! Not the Parson once more!”
Cosgrove cannoned an incredulous “No!”
With the suddenness of a conjurer our host thrust before our noses a second cardboard placard scrawled across with uncouth printing mingled of capitals and small letters, now composing a message of more sinister purport:
LooK ouT FOR PARSON LOLLY He MEAns BUSINeSS
LooK ouT FOR PARSON LOLLY He MEAns BUSINeSS
“Ah, yes,” I murmured with perhaps a little too much surface effort at nonchalance. “Parson Lolly means business now. He was only trifling last night.”
“He was interrupted last night—be sure of that,” intoned Cosgrove.
“Damned lucky for us, then.”
Pendleton was unsteady with righteous embarrassment and rage when Cosgrove interrogated him. “Where was this thing found?—who found it?—when—”
“Harmony—one of the housemaids—the vixen,” snapped Pendleton, and seemed unable to make headway.
“Why is the good Harmony held in such opprobrium?” I inquired.
“I swear she’s lying—the minx—or she put it there herself.”
“Where?”
“In your room, Sean, lying in the middle of the floor.”
Perhaps Pendleton had been saving that item for rather a stiff jolt at the last. I happened to be looking at Cosgrove and saw his eyebrows jerk upward prodigiously, as if they were going to fly off his forehead, and the eyes beneath them bulged and stared like glass.
“In my room? When was this?”
“She just came down from doing the beds—says she found it there not five minutes ago.”
“Hem,” said Cosgrove, his features settling into a study.
“Come, come,” urged Pendleton, making a nervous movement of impatience. “Tell us—when were you in your room last?”
“A little after nine, I think,” answered Cosgrove, solemnly scratching his black-thatched head behind the left ear, his look scowling and intent upon the floor, his brow cleft by one heavy wrinkle. “I saw the boy riding the bicycle out of the barn; that would be nine, you said. I heard Lord Ludlow quarrelling with the man Soames for bringing him the wrong color of towel, a quarter of an hour later—fully. And I came out in the corridor in time to see Soames disappear down the stair.”
“After a quarter past nine,” said Pendleton. “That leaves over two hours—unless Harmony—”
“It couldn’t have been there and you not see it?” I asked.
“In the centre of the floor? Mr. Bannerlee!”
“Are you implying that it was left there last night?”
“I withdraw the suggestion, Crofts,” I said, “although—”
“There are enough ‘if’s’ and ‘although’s’ in this to—to stock a political editor,” grumbled our host.
“Has the placard any mark, any peculiarity—”
“For identification, you mean?” Pendleton turned the cardboard over between his fingers, dubiously. “It’s like last night’s—cut round the edges with scissors or a knife—might have been part of the bottom of a box of sweets.” His voice was despairing. “I suppose enough board for twenty foul things like this comes into this house every week. And in all Wales—”
“Our search—supposing we go about a search—will hardly be as broad as that,” said Cosgrove, and I was struck, as many times before, by the lack of lightness in his voice. He meant just that: that if the placard were investigated, the whole country need not be drawn into the matter.
Our host turned to the Irishman: “Search won’t do any good; that’s certain sure. But I’ll have the servants up this afternoon. (Bannerlee, you be with me while I question ’em and tell me what you think of their candour—you’ve no prejudices, you know.) Sean, what do you think of it? Are you alarmed?”
Cosgrove laughed contemptuously.
“But it’s directed to you this time.”
“It’s casual, casual. What could anyone—what could this meddler have against me?”
“It was left in your room.”
“By chance,” insisted Cosgrove. “There could have been no malice toward me in it.”
“But, by gad, what shall I tell the people here?”
“Nothing—and swear the woman Harmony to whisper never a word.”
“Yes, of course, I’ve sworn her on the Bible until she was blue-scared, the jade. But this thing?”
Cosgrove reached out and took the placard. He tore it across, placed the pieces together and tore it again, and repeatedly, and handed the bits back to Crofts.
“Make a small fire in the Hall.”
It impressed me as a really brave thing, and I believe that Crofts felt the same admiration for him who dismissed such a message, apparently out of the air, from man or superman or sub-man.
“Here goes, then.”
“Has the boy come back with my bag?”
“Not for at least another hour, I’m afraid. He has a long hilly road to ride—down through New Aidenn and all the way around by the south skirts of Aidenn Forest.”
“Sir Brooke?”
“Not a nail of him. But the others have come.”
I echoed, “Others? Guests?”
“Doctor Aire and the two young, very young Americans.”
“And what says the Doctor to the blood on the lawn?” asked Cosgrove.
“He took some of it up for microscopy. He can tell if it’s probably human or not. He’s more than a little interested.”
We had entered the Hall of the Moth from the portrait corridor, and through the plenteous windows saw a swift rain pouring down.
“The evidence is getting wet.”
“Canvas spread over,” Crofts assured us. “Andthisevidence now gets carbonized.”
We watched the fragments of cardboard smoulder, flare, and become consumed in the fireplace where raindrops spattered down the chimney, until only ashes were left, and a tiny spire of smoke. Cosgrove disintegrated the ash with the poker.
“That’sa blessing,” said Crofts, taking out his watch. “Luncheon-bell in ten minutes. Between now and then I shall smoke not less than three cigarettes.”