XXII.The Beginning of the End: ParabolaSame day. 3P.M.In spite of early bed last night, no one was downstairs early this bright morning, Sunday. I myself wanted breakfast at nine, but then I am the one person in the House who has anything concrete to do (to wit, this writing)—hence I require the less repose.I visited the library before I went for food. To my grim pleasure, the Book of Sylvan Armitage was back on its shelf. I am always grimly pleased nowadays when anything baffling turns up. Crofts, by the way, has proved blatantly sceptical about my experience last night; he said that if I must go crawling about the House when decent folk are abed, I mustn’t hold him responsible for what I think I see.The telephone jangled in the corridor while I was at the table. I heard Soames answer and take some message. Presently the servant came to me.“Superintendent Salt is holding on, sir, if you please.”“Me, he wants?”“He asked for any of the gentlemen, sir. Would you mind speaking to him?”“Not at all.” A few moments later I was saying, “Hello, Superintendent; this is Bannerlee. Anything I can do for you?”“Thanks very much, Mr. Bannerlee. Would you mind givin’ a message to the doctor—Doctor Aire, I mean?”“Delighted.”“I’ve been lookin’ uphiswhereabouts the two days before he came down to Radnorshire.”“His!”“Yes. Nothing like thoroughness, is there? He might like to know he’s not the Parson. Tell him he’s absolved, clean character, goes scot-free.”“He’ll be grateful, I’m sure.”“Certain to be. Another thing, too, sir. I took the liberty—unpardonable—of checkin’youalso.”“Me!”The sound must have deafened Salt, for it was a little while before he resumed, with smothered amusement. “Couldn’t help it, sir. All in the way of routine. You’re acquitted, too, and can go your ways.”“Thanks awfully.”“Don’t mention it. By the way, I just told that man to inform Mr. Pendleton that I’m comin’ up there this afternoon early, around dinner-time. I’m bringin’ someone with me.”“Oh? Any harm in asking who it is?”“None at all,” chuckled Salt. “Good-bye.”It was about one o’clock when I came downstairs again, after setting down the record of last night’s expedition. I think everyone was in the Hall, surrounding Salt and a young fellow in a neat grey suit, who was lank and had freckles and brown hair. His appearance and manner—he was smiling most of the time—were engaging. Salt also wore a respectful grin; in fact, everyone looked brighter for this chap’s presence, especially Crofts.“Come on, Bannerlee,” he said; “let me introduce the beginning of the end. You can guess who this is.”I had a flash of genius. “Yes, I can, by George. It’s Harry—Mr. Heatheringham.”“Right!” declared the young man. “But after all, Mr. Bannerlee, you’ve an unfair advantage in this guessing business.”“You mean—?”He winked, took my torch out of his pocket, and handed it to me with a low bow, such as I had seen somewhere not long before. “Many thanks for this. I had to borrow it when my own failed last night.”“Gods! was it you I hit? I’m most awfully sorry.”“It didn’t hurt, really, but for a little while I didn’t know where I stood—er, that is, I wasn’t standing at all.” He felt a place on the back of his head. “It’s hardly the size of a teacup—I mean the bump. And I wasn’t dazed for long either.”“I’m glad to hear it,” I avowed. “You certainly lost no time waking and legging it.”“Oh, I was awake, wide enough, when you were fastening me up—and a neat job, that.”“You don’t mean to say—”“Yes, but I thought it was better to let you do your worst and untie myself afterward. I wasn’t sure that the time for explanations had come, and I wasn’t sure—then—just what you yourself were up to.”“But if I’d been someone else, you might have been killed.”His eyes were merry. “I knew it wasn’t somebody else. Suppose we call it a draw.”“We’re dying to hear how you escaped,” said Lib. “Why do you keep it bottled up?”“It’s my living, you see,” returned Heatheringham apologetically, but with his customary smile. “I have to be up to a few of the little secrets of my trade, or I don’t get any bread and butter. Some do it on the stage for money, but in my business it comes in valuable in good earnest to carry a few skeleton keys and know how to twist a hand out of a knotted handkerchief.”Gradually, while talk went on, we disposed ourselves in chairs, making a group about this young man who showed from the first minute of acquaintance such a winning, and even naïve, nature. He sat in the midst of us now, busy parrying all sorts of questions, and I noticed that while he spoke lightly, he glanced from person to person, making brief, sharp studies of us. Particularly he kept stealing looks at Miss Lebetwood and the two younger Americans.I had returned the study intensively, striving to capture some elusive recollection. “Pardon me, Mr. Heatheringham, but really I believe I’ve met you somewhere—another time, I mean. Am I right?”“Yes, indeed, we have met. We’ve been having lovers’ meetings all over the place. You recollect the umbrella?”The menagerie-keeper! I uttered a great gasp. “That was never you in the crooked black beard!”“Wasn’t it, though?” he retorted brightly. “I can see your eyes popping now, Mr. Bannerlee, when I said, ‘I won’t need finger-nails.’ ”“Incredible! That man was bulbous.” I pointed to the detective’s hands, which were brown and lean. “Don’t tell me you owned the great red wrists and fingers that fellow had.”“Try a tightly-bound cuff or any other constriction around the wrist and keep your arms down—see what happens. Your hands will look like hams. The rest was just a matter of accessories, an inflated chest-protector, some dowdy clothes, some black hair. A bad disguise, on the whole.”“On the contrary, your twin brother wouldn’t have recognized you.”“No, but he would have had me arrested. Disguise should be unobtrusive, but that one shouted all over the place. To tell the truth, I used it more to give my friend Crofts Pendleton something to worry about than for any other reason.”“Oh, you did, did you?” said Crofts.“Yes, old man. I didn’t realize the situation here might actually be serious. I merely supposed some sneak-thief was snooping in the neighbourhood. But it did seem a good chance to have a little sport with you. You will let yourself in for it,” he accused our muttering host. “I thought I’d make myself up into a figure of fun and have a reconnaissance of the scene a couple of nights, just to assure myself there was no cause for alarm. Then I’d be seen on purpose by some good honest yokels and perhaps a village idiot or so, and pop in in a day or two to see what the effect had been in the Vale. But matters turned out differently from what I had expected, and by the time I met with you, Mr. Bannerlee, the last thing on earth I wanted was to have it known I was in the neighbourhood. So I improvised some unnatural eccentricities and made up a line of desperate talk that I knew would spoil the last chance of Crofts’ guessing it was me, in case you told him of your experience, as I felt certain you would.”“But I didn’t.”“No, you didn’t. And it made no difference, for what I said about the bothersome watch-dogs wouldn’t have made much impression, would it, unless our friend knew where it came from? All those men you sent out,” he told Crofts, “kept treading on my toes. I had to leg it twice to slip away from them. And that was after I had made some very material discoveries and would have given a year of my life not to be seen.”“How was I to know that?” said Crofts. “What discoveries do you mean?”“I ran into a chap who must have been Sir Brooke Mortimer from what I know now. He seemed to have lost his way, quite a distance up the Vale. I set the gentleman going in the right direction and watched him start back downstream. A bit unsteady, I thought he was—oh, nothing wrong with him that way, but I could see his eyes weren’t too good. He didn’t seem able to pick his footing, and he might have stepped into a hole as big as a house without knowing what had happened to him.”“And do you mean to say that he followed your directions unhesitatingly when according to yourself you looked like something out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales?” asked Lord Ludlow, who had been playing finger-exercises on his knees.“I don’t believe he quite took me in, my Lord. I’m telling you his eyesight couldn’t have been good. He might have thought I was a gentleman-farmer, for all I know—and he seemed like an unsuspicious, trusting little chap.”I saw that the subject was a painful one to be discussed in full session this way, and I wanted to divert the course of conversation. I nodded to Salt.“The discovery of Mr. Heatheringham knocks one off the list of your favourite suspects, eh, Superintendent?”“Can’t say it does,” he rejoined, with that slow smoulder of humour underneath the surface. “I’ve known about Mr. Heatheringham since he arrived in our little community over a week ago.”He had! More surprises were let loose. As a measure of sensible precaution the detective had reported his presence to Salt as soon as he arrived in New Aidenn. In the early dawn after meeting me, having learned that there was something worth attention in the way of mystery in the Vale, the young man discarded the crooked black beard of the menagerie-keeper and glorified his chin with a rich red one, finely adapted to his complexion. This emblem he had attached properly, using separate hairs at the edges and trimming the whole to a nicety. He commenced a campaign of deceit.First Foggins’ driver was tempted from the path of duty with a five-pound note, and reported sick. While Foggins the milkman was tearing his hair, in walked the unblushing detective, and Foggins fell victim to his wiles. That very noon the newly-employed had driven the milk cart up the Vale. He had explained at the kitchen door, with a certain amount of wit, though with his ready tongue all the time in his cheek, why the service was so much delayed and how he had fallen heir to the position. The listener to this merry tale was Rosa Clay. It gained the young man a means of contact with affairs inside the House which might have been extremely valuable had the storm not cut off the Vale from Foggins’ circuit.During the week Heatheringham formed with the Post Office attendant a mushroom friendship that passeth all legality. So it came about that Crofts’ impassioned letters were handed to their recipient direct, without going to Worcester and back. It was, moreover, the detective himself who had been on the Post Office end of the ’phone when Crofts dictated his telegram Thursday afternoon with many maledictions on the stumbling clerk who took the message.The dinner-bell had rung and we were on our feet. Salt announced he mustn’t stay, but would leave the field clear for the younger man. “Do what he tells you,” he said. “He has an idea from time to time.”Heatheringham drew me apart, until the rest were gone, even waving Crofts ahead.“You can do me a favour, Mr. Bannerlee, if you will,” he said with a laugh in his voice, as if he might have something in the way of a surprise to try on me.“I suppose I owe you a month’s hard labour for battering you last night—but, of course, I want to help you if I can. What shall it be?”“You’re keeping a written record of events, aren’t you?”“Crofts told you!” I exclaimed reproachfully—reproachfully in reference to Crofts, that is.“Not a bit of it—just my prowling. I’ve noticed your candles burning until all hours, and last night I brought a small telescope with me and had a squint at you from a tree way out by the Water. I could hardly think that you wrote letters all night, could I?”“Well, your guess is right, as it happens, but my penmanship is rather free and easy, and I don’t think you’ll find much value—” I was speaking slowly but thinking fast. Had I put down anything positively libellous, anything I’d hesitate to sign my name to?“Let me try, all the same. You and I are both detached onlookers in this thing, Mr. Bannerlee, and I shouldn’t be surprised if we supplement each other pretty fully. I’m quite frankly selfish, you see,” he admitted easily. “I want to know all you know without telling you what I know.”“Oh, I’ll trust you to repay me, not later than noon to-morrow,” I said. “Come along upstairs with me while I get the sheets for you—unless you’ll wait until after dinner.”“There’s no after dinner for me; I’m not taking dinner,” he answered, and we went up the stairs together. “I had a snack in New Aidenn with something like this in prospect. Time’s what counts. It will be dark too soon to suit me.”Same day. 7P.M.Please God, the experiment is over. It was not long.About five this afternoon Heatheringham came into the library where I was writing about the events of the day. He had wrestled with my script since I had left him to go down to dinner, and he seemed even better-humoured than before.“I want some tea,” he said. “I want some tea, and yet, while there’s light, I want a little assistance from the people here.”“Are you commandeering the servants, too?”“No, I can do without the servants, except that one who brought the hot water.”“Soames?”“Right.”“Well, you’ll find the rest of us in the conservatory, waiting for both tea and you. Since the tragedy outside the Hall, the venue of tea has been shifted.”“I suppose they could wait fifteen minutes for their feeding, if I suffered with them?”“We have been in training for martyrdom all week. But what on earth is this rigmarole you’re going to put us through?”“I want you to rehearse a little drama you have already performed without rehearsal.”It was just that.“I’m sorry if this is painful to some of you,” he said later in the conservatory. “But it’s vital. I need to check some observations, and there’s no way else. I’m awfully sorry to trouble you; really I am, but it’s my living, you know.” He gave a sly smile. “It’s my living, and it will help you to escape from here to-morrow. Is it a bargain?”From the time Cosgrove left the Hall until Miss Lebetwood found him dying outside may have been an hour. We were asked to re-enact as precisely as possible our movements during the last quarter of this period.“You would be asleep, sir, over by the gate-house, if I’m not mistaken,” said Heatheringham to Oxford. “I’ll let you off the sleeping. Just be on hand, if you don’t mind. You,” addressing Belvoir, “would be coming toward the towers and meeting Miss Mertoun and Lord Herbert. Presently you’d commence monkeying with the winch.” He spoke to me. “You were returning from the Delambre cottage, weren’t you? Doctor Aire and Mr. Maryvale must see you from the summer-house. I think you’ll all work into it.”“But how silly!” said Miss Lebetwood. “All I can do is to wander about the strawberry trees looking for tennis balls I know won’t be there.”“It’s all make-believe, you know,” answered Heatheringham. “And I can’t change the parts around, can I?”“I don’t see how my doing that can help.”“Still,” insisted the detective deferentially, “it will assist me a lot if you’ll just go through the motions. Now, is everybody clear about what he’s to do?”“Shall I fetch hot water for Mr. Bannerlee, sir?” asked Soames, who had been admitted to our company.“That’s hardly essential. But you might carry an empty pannikin to give mental support. Now, shall we commence? Some of the ladies may need coats. It’s beginning to blow a bit.”“Not fair unless you tell us what you’re going to do yourself,” protested Lib.“I’m going to be here, there, and everywhere,” said Heatheringham. “You may even hear me giving a few stage directions. Come on, people, I want my tea. One, two, three, go.”Little gusts of wind were stirring. Evening frost had caused a marvellous change in the foliage, and the air was chromatic with flying leaves. They blew in my face while I breasted my way to the north end of the sycamore park, where I turned to retrace my steps. Through the dim light of the wood, I saw the black forms of Maryvale and Doctor Aire together on the porch of the abandoned summer-house. They nodded when I came nearest them. I reached the bridge, the cypresses, the lawn, the mansion itself. I saw people beyond the gate-house.Suddenly I remembered that to keep in character I must peer into the Hall, and my flesh began to crawl at the thought of seeing the grim, phantasmal bone. I would not see it, of course, but if I did—Then I caught a glimpse of Heatheringham over a hundred yards south of the House. He seemed to be waving me on, and I assumed that I must be a little behind my schedule. Without a glance into any of the windows I obediently rounded the library tower, entered the half-opened door, not omitting to ring, since I had done so on the previous occasion. The footman answered the bell with what would have been appalling suddenness had I not known he had been waiting for me. He received my instructions for hot water with the same obeisance and the same perfunctory words in the identical tone as before. I climbed the empty House to my room.I was in a quandary, for it would do no manner of good to take off my coat and repeat the little battle with myself whose result had been a wounded finger. I certainly wouldn’t subject my digit to the safety-razor’s mercies a second time. But for the sake of keeping in the rhythm of the other day I might perform some of the milder motions. First I must go out to the balcony, where I had picked up the odd little scrap of rope.I pressed through the window and, standing on the roof outside, saw the forms of people anticking about the tower and heard the rasp of the winch. Someone was on the lawn a little distance beyond the walk that skirts the House—Heatheringham himself.“Hello!” I called aloud in the high wind. “Everything working smoothly?”He must have seen me before, for he answered quickly, cupping his hands. “Yes, I think they’re all in their places. You did come out there the other day, didn’t you?”“I did, and should go in again now if I keep in step.”“Did you order that hot water?”“Yes, indeed.”“How did the servant behave?”“Admirably; he didn’t turn a hair.”“No, I should think not. Well, carry on. I’m bound this way.” He shouted the last words in a bristling wind, and set off walking toward the north.“Good hunting,” I called after him.I had now been on the roof for nearly five minutes and had equalled the span of time I spent there before. I returned to my chamber.I laid my watch on the table and timed my own part of the programme, to make as near the properrapprochementwith Soames as I could. I allowed half a minute for divesting myself of coat and shirt, and as long again for my struggle with the oak chest and my mishap with the stool. (The handle of the chest was gone now; no use repeating that fracas.) Thirty seconds more of searching for a place to attach my strop, perhaps the remainder of the minute spent in that unhappy stropping (for luck and devilment I gave the curlicued bracket a jerk and a smash), fifteen seconds to stare like a fool at the place where I had formerly cut my finger, a few moments for crossing to the door and listening for Soames—My heart missed a beat or two. Someonewasclimbing the stairs!It was silly of me, of course, to be taken aback by the very thing I was waiting for, I had heard no one but Soames himself ascending at his proper time.But the slam of the door down below and the deep brawling laughter which followed— Dear God! they, too, reverberated, and the sound of that inhuman mirth now held a ghastly message which it had not on the first occasion.And early above the sound of the laughter had I heard a single sharp explosion, like the report of a firearm?I leaped across to the window. This time there was no fan of light spreading from the Hall, but I saw indecipherable forms criss-crossing on the lawn, and the sound of conflicting cries floated up in the lapse of the wind.To leave the chamber, to reach the stair-head, took but a second or two. Again I saw Soames green as an old statue, a grotesque caricature of Aquarius, stony-lipped with mortal fear, the little empty water-can dangling from his hand.I ignored him, but heard his feet pound down the stairs behind me. Down at the front entrance, just outside the door, I caught sight of Lib, still as wax. We looked at each other, mirroring the dread we saw.“Did you hear it?” I said at last.Her voice was weak. “The shot, you mean?”“Was there a shot?”“There was if my ears are working.”“Where?”She shook her head miserably. “I—I don’t know. I think it was out on the lawn.”“Then why were you coming in?”She clenched both little fists and shook them tremblingly. “I was only doing what the detective told me to do. Besides, he—he came in first.”“He came in!”“He went in this door while I was quite a way from the House.”“Then what’s become of him? He couldn’t have fired that shot outside!”“Don’t ask me. Don’t ask me. I don’t know anything about it. I got to the door in time to hear the tail-end of that laugh—that was enough for me. I don’t want to lead the searching-party. This is the last time I officiate for any detective.”“Come along with me, then. He must be here somewhere.”“I think they’re trying to find him outside, sir,” said Soames, who had stepped warily to the corner of the House.“That’s because they don’t know he went in here. Come along, both of you.”We passed into the portrait-corridor, and I shouted Heatheringham’s name a couple of times, without effect.Several of the servants had emerged from their quarters and were clustered about me while I stood at the door beneath the musicians’ gallery, scrutinizing the vast gloom of the Hall. Somehow, I was loath to enter or to switch on the light ready to my hand.“Nobody here,” said Lib beside me, in a tone of relief.I still moved my glance through the spaces of the room. Feet were pouring through the front door. I heard Crofts’ voice raised:“Heatheringham’s missing. What in thunder are you up to?”Then I saw something limned against the dark expanse of the central window of the Hall: the shape of a man who leaned heavily against the window-frame, looking out to the lawn. The moment my eyes had distinguished him, I knew it was Heatheringham. But he was awfully still! Why hadn’t he heard my shout?“Heatheringham!” I called, and was shocked how strained the syllables crept from my lips. “Heather—”“Where is he? Do you see him?” demanded Crofts, pressing to the door. “Why didn’t you light up—good God!”He had switched on the electricity. From outside, beyond the window, came cry upon excited cry when the form of the detective was revealed by the blazing chandelier. But we who were behind Harry Heatheringham could see why he did not answer us, why he did not move. There was a gaping wound at the base of his brain, and the whole back of his trim grey coat was black with blood.“Lawks!” cried Soames, and seemed about to faint.Persons were rushing in from outside now, through the french windows. Doctor Aire took one look at the wound, and his face was filled with the most complete astonishment. His little dark eyes came out of their hiding-places, and even his tobacco-leaf complexion went several shades wan.“Keep the women away,” he snapped at Soames, “and don’t let Maryvale come in here.”“This is horrible, horrible,” Crofts kept saying.“Is—is he dead?” asked Bob Cullen timidly, but no one smiled.“He is,” answered the Doctor. “Men with holes in their heads like this are dead as Pharaoh.”I ventured to touch the left hand that hung with such dreadful listlessness. “Why, he’s stiff!” I blurted, and a great shudder shook me. “He’s stiff! He must have been dead a long time. But, Doctor, I was talking to him less than five minutes ago!”“You were!” exclaimed Crofts in an incredulous bull-voice.“Quite so,” said Aire. “I noticed it the moment I saw the poor fellow.” He, too, touched the left hand. “Stiff, yes, but not cold yet.”“What’s it all mean?” asked Belvoir.“He could never be leaning there in that semi-lifelike manner if it weren’t the case,” said Aire. “I observed it, as I said, when I had the first glimpse of him. I have heard of it, but I’ve never seen a case before.”“A case of what?”“Instantrigor mortis. It occurs sometimes, under certain conditions, in sudden death.”Ludlow, who stood near the body on the other side, was regarding it with awe, but his sharp face quickened with discovery. “Have you looked at his other hand? There’s a revolver in it.”“Then he did fire the shot,” I cried.“I’ll stake my life the shot was from somewhere outside,” avouched Crofts.“I’m sure it was,” said Belvoir quietly.“The point I wish to make,” said Ludlow, “is that the revolver is outside. He’s put his hand right through.”It was so. Concealed by the fact that the body pressed close to the window, the right arm half-way to the elbow had been thrust through the glass and the wrist was supported by one of the cross-bars between the small panes. The weapon was tightly clutched in the hand, and its nose pointed upward!“What in the name of reason could he have fired at up there?”It was when we laid the dead detective, stiff in the original posture, revolver clamped in hand, on the carpet spread over theBrocade de Lyonscreation that we looked beyond that article of elegance and saw what had been concealed behind it.Splashes of blood from Heatheringham’s wound were on the floor at our feet, between the body and the couch. Now we beheld more blood, a trail of it across the floor in drops that led in a long, irregular, parabolic curve from the couch to the open door by the clock-corner, and so out into the corridor. There the track ceased abruptly.“Hm,” said Aire, standing at the spot. “Here’s where the assailant tucked his bludgeon away.” He looked up and down the gallery. “Friend Crofts, why not have another search and see if one of these priceless paintings doesn’t conceal a door?”“There has never been, and is not any secret passage in the House,” said Crofts decisively. “You can say amen to that.”Aire shrugged his shoulders. Lord Ludlow shook his head several times, though what at no one could tell. Belvoir stared at the last drop of blood where it stained the blue-carpeted floor as if he were fascinated by it. Bob Cullen pursed his lips and whistled a ditty of no tone. Crofts kept putting his hands in his pockets and taking them out again.Insensibly, instinctively, we drew the tiniest bit closer to one another. Spiritually, we huddled. We were all little men, badly frightened, in the great House where murder stalked invisible.If this is “the beginning of the end,” what will the end itself be like?
Same day. 3P.M.
In spite of early bed last night, no one was downstairs early this bright morning, Sunday. I myself wanted breakfast at nine, but then I am the one person in the House who has anything concrete to do (to wit, this writing)—hence I require the less repose.
I visited the library before I went for food. To my grim pleasure, the Book of Sylvan Armitage was back on its shelf. I am always grimly pleased nowadays when anything baffling turns up. Crofts, by the way, has proved blatantly sceptical about my experience last night; he said that if I must go crawling about the House when decent folk are abed, I mustn’t hold him responsible for what I think I see.
The telephone jangled in the corridor while I was at the table. I heard Soames answer and take some message. Presently the servant came to me.
“Superintendent Salt is holding on, sir, if you please.”
“Me, he wants?”
“He asked for any of the gentlemen, sir. Would you mind speaking to him?”
“Not at all.” A few moments later I was saying, “Hello, Superintendent; this is Bannerlee. Anything I can do for you?”
“Thanks very much, Mr. Bannerlee. Would you mind givin’ a message to the doctor—Doctor Aire, I mean?”
“Delighted.”
“I’ve been lookin’ uphiswhereabouts the two days before he came down to Radnorshire.”
“His!”
“Yes. Nothing like thoroughness, is there? He might like to know he’s not the Parson. Tell him he’s absolved, clean character, goes scot-free.”
“He’ll be grateful, I’m sure.”
“Certain to be. Another thing, too, sir. I took the liberty—unpardonable—of checkin’youalso.”
“Me!”
The sound must have deafened Salt, for it was a little while before he resumed, with smothered amusement. “Couldn’t help it, sir. All in the way of routine. You’re acquitted, too, and can go your ways.”
“Thanks awfully.”
“Don’t mention it. By the way, I just told that man to inform Mr. Pendleton that I’m comin’ up there this afternoon early, around dinner-time. I’m bringin’ someone with me.”
“Oh? Any harm in asking who it is?”
“None at all,” chuckled Salt. “Good-bye.”
It was about one o’clock when I came downstairs again, after setting down the record of last night’s expedition. I think everyone was in the Hall, surrounding Salt and a young fellow in a neat grey suit, who was lank and had freckles and brown hair. His appearance and manner—he was smiling most of the time—were engaging. Salt also wore a respectful grin; in fact, everyone looked brighter for this chap’s presence, especially Crofts.
“Come on, Bannerlee,” he said; “let me introduce the beginning of the end. You can guess who this is.”
I had a flash of genius. “Yes, I can, by George. It’s Harry—Mr. Heatheringham.”
“Right!” declared the young man. “But after all, Mr. Bannerlee, you’ve an unfair advantage in this guessing business.”
“You mean—?”
He winked, took my torch out of his pocket, and handed it to me with a low bow, such as I had seen somewhere not long before. “Many thanks for this. I had to borrow it when my own failed last night.”
“Gods! was it you I hit? I’m most awfully sorry.”
“It didn’t hurt, really, but for a little while I didn’t know where I stood—er, that is, I wasn’t standing at all.” He felt a place on the back of his head. “It’s hardly the size of a teacup—I mean the bump. And I wasn’t dazed for long either.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” I avowed. “You certainly lost no time waking and legging it.”
“Oh, I was awake, wide enough, when you were fastening me up—and a neat job, that.”
“You don’t mean to say—”
“Yes, but I thought it was better to let you do your worst and untie myself afterward. I wasn’t sure that the time for explanations had come, and I wasn’t sure—then—just what you yourself were up to.”
“But if I’d been someone else, you might have been killed.”
His eyes were merry. “I knew it wasn’t somebody else. Suppose we call it a draw.”
“We’re dying to hear how you escaped,” said Lib. “Why do you keep it bottled up?”
“It’s my living, you see,” returned Heatheringham apologetically, but with his customary smile. “I have to be up to a few of the little secrets of my trade, or I don’t get any bread and butter. Some do it on the stage for money, but in my business it comes in valuable in good earnest to carry a few skeleton keys and know how to twist a hand out of a knotted handkerchief.”
Gradually, while talk went on, we disposed ourselves in chairs, making a group about this young man who showed from the first minute of acquaintance such a winning, and even naïve, nature. He sat in the midst of us now, busy parrying all sorts of questions, and I noticed that while he spoke lightly, he glanced from person to person, making brief, sharp studies of us. Particularly he kept stealing looks at Miss Lebetwood and the two younger Americans.
I had returned the study intensively, striving to capture some elusive recollection. “Pardon me, Mr. Heatheringham, but really I believe I’ve met you somewhere—another time, I mean. Am I right?”
“Yes, indeed, we have met. We’ve been having lovers’ meetings all over the place. You recollect the umbrella?”
The menagerie-keeper! I uttered a great gasp. “That was never you in the crooked black beard!”
“Wasn’t it, though?” he retorted brightly. “I can see your eyes popping now, Mr. Bannerlee, when I said, ‘I won’t need finger-nails.’ ”
“Incredible! That man was bulbous.” I pointed to the detective’s hands, which were brown and lean. “Don’t tell me you owned the great red wrists and fingers that fellow had.”
“Try a tightly-bound cuff or any other constriction around the wrist and keep your arms down—see what happens. Your hands will look like hams. The rest was just a matter of accessories, an inflated chest-protector, some dowdy clothes, some black hair. A bad disguise, on the whole.”
“On the contrary, your twin brother wouldn’t have recognized you.”
“No, but he would have had me arrested. Disguise should be unobtrusive, but that one shouted all over the place. To tell the truth, I used it more to give my friend Crofts Pendleton something to worry about than for any other reason.”
“Oh, you did, did you?” said Crofts.
“Yes, old man. I didn’t realize the situation here might actually be serious. I merely supposed some sneak-thief was snooping in the neighbourhood. But it did seem a good chance to have a little sport with you. You will let yourself in for it,” he accused our muttering host. “I thought I’d make myself up into a figure of fun and have a reconnaissance of the scene a couple of nights, just to assure myself there was no cause for alarm. Then I’d be seen on purpose by some good honest yokels and perhaps a village idiot or so, and pop in in a day or two to see what the effect had been in the Vale. But matters turned out differently from what I had expected, and by the time I met with you, Mr. Bannerlee, the last thing on earth I wanted was to have it known I was in the neighbourhood. So I improvised some unnatural eccentricities and made up a line of desperate talk that I knew would spoil the last chance of Crofts’ guessing it was me, in case you told him of your experience, as I felt certain you would.”
“But I didn’t.”
“No, you didn’t. And it made no difference, for what I said about the bothersome watch-dogs wouldn’t have made much impression, would it, unless our friend knew where it came from? All those men you sent out,” he told Crofts, “kept treading on my toes. I had to leg it twice to slip away from them. And that was after I had made some very material discoveries and would have given a year of my life not to be seen.”
“How was I to know that?” said Crofts. “What discoveries do you mean?”
“I ran into a chap who must have been Sir Brooke Mortimer from what I know now. He seemed to have lost his way, quite a distance up the Vale. I set the gentleman going in the right direction and watched him start back downstream. A bit unsteady, I thought he was—oh, nothing wrong with him that way, but I could see his eyes weren’t too good. He didn’t seem able to pick his footing, and he might have stepped into a hole as big as a house without knowing what had happened to him.”
“And do you mean to say that he followed your directions unhesitatingly when according to yourself you looked like something out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales?” asked Lord Ludlow, who had been playing finger-exercises on his knees.
“I don’t believe he quite took me in, my Lord. I’m telling you his eyesight couldn’t have been good. He might have thought I was a gentleman-farmer, for all I know—and he seemed like an unsuspicious, trusting little chap.”
I saw that the subject was a painful one to be discussed in full session this way, and I wanted to divert the course of conversation. I nodded to Salt.
“The discovery of Mr. Heatheringham knocks one off the list of your favourite suspects, eh, Superintendent?”
“Can’t say it does,” he rejoined, with that slow smoulder of humour underneath the surface. “I’ve known about Mr. Heatheringham since he arrived in our little community over a week ago.”
He had! More surprises were let loose. As a measure of sensible precaution the detective had reported his presence to Salt as soon as he arrived in New Aidenn. In the early dawn after meeting me, having learned that there was something worth attention in the way of mystery in the Vale, the young man discarded the crooked black beard of the menagerie-keeper and glorified his chin with a rich red one, finely adapted to his complexion. This emblem he had attached properly, using separate hairs at the edges and trimming the whole to a nicety. He commenced a campaign of deceit.
First Foggins’ driver was tempted from the path of duty with a five-pound note, and reported sick. While Foggins the milkman was tearing his hair, in walked the unblushing detective, and Foggins fell victim to his wiles. That very noon the newly-employed had driven the milk cart up the Vale. He had explained at the kitchen door, with a certain amount of wit, though with his ready tongue all the time in his cheek, why the service was so much delayed and how he had fallen heir to the position. The listener to this merry tale was Rosa Clay. It gained the young man a means of contact with affairs inside the House which might have been extremely valuable had the storm not cut off the Vale from Foggins’ circuit.
During the week Heatheringham formed with the Post Office attendant a mushroom friendship that passeth all legality. So it came about that Crofts’ impassioned letters were handed to their recipient direct, without going to Worcester and back. It was, moreover, the detective himself who had been on the Post Office end of the ’phone when Crofts dictated his telegram Thursday afternoon with many maledictions on the stumbling clerk who took the message.
The dinner-bell had rung and we were on our feet. Salt announced he mustn’t stay, but would leave the field clear for the younger man. “Do what he tells you,” he said. “He has an idea from time to time.”
Heatheringham drew me apart, until the rest were gone, even waving Crofts ahead.
“You can do me a favour, Mr. Bannerlee, if you will,” he said with a laugh in his voice, as if he might have something in the way of a surprise to try on me.
“I suppose I owe you a month’s hard labour for battering you last night—but, of course, I want to help you if I can. What shall it be?”
“You’re keeping a written record of events, aren’t you?”
“Crofts told you!” I exclaimed reproachfully—reproachfully in reference to Crofts, that is.
“Not a bit of it—just my prowling. I’ve noticed your candles burning until all hours, and last night I brought a small telescope with me and had a squint at you from a tree way out by the Water. I could hardly think that you wrote letters all night, could I?”
“Well, your guess is right, as it happens, but my penmanship is rather free and easy, and I don’t think you’ll find much value—” I was speaking slowly but thinking fast. Had I put down anything positively libellous, anything I’d hesitate to sign my name to?
“Let me try, all the same. You and I are both detached onlookers in this thing, Mr. Bannerlee, and I shouldn’t be surprised if we supplement each other pretty fully. I’m quite frankly selfish, you see,” he admitted easily. “I want to know all you know without telling you what I know.”
“Oh, I’ll trust you to repay me, not later than noon to-morrow,” I said. “Come along upstairs with me while I get the sheets for you—unless you’ll wait until after dinner.”
“There’s no after dinner for me; I’m not taking dinner,” he answered, and we went up the stairs together. “I had a snack in New Aidenn with something like this in prospect. Time’s what counts. It will be dark too soon to suit me.”
Same day. 7P.M.
Please God, the experiment is over. It was not long.
About five this afternoon Heatheringham came into the library where I was writing about the events of the day. He had wrestled with my script since I had left him to go down to dinner, and he seemed even better-humoured than before.
“I want some tea,” he said. “I want some tea, and yet, while there’s light, I want a little assistance from the people here.”
“Are you commandeering the servants, too?”
“No, I can do without the servants, except that one who brought the hot water.”
“Soames?”
“Right.”
“Well, you’ll find the rest of us in the conservatory, waiting for both tea and you. Since the tragedy outside the Hall, the venue of tea has been shifted.”
“I suppose they could wait fifteen minutes for their feeding, if I suffered with them?”
“We have been in training for martyrdom all week. But what on earth is this rigmarole you’re going to put us through?”
“I want you to rehearse a little drama you have already performed without rehearsal.”
It was just that.
“I’m sorry if this is painful to some of you,” he said later in the conservatory. “But it’s vital. I need to check some observations, and there’s no way else. I’m awfully sorry to trouble you; really I am, but it’s my living, you know.” He gave a sly smile. “It’s my living, and it will help you to escape from here to-morrow. Is it a bargain?”
From the time Cosgrove left the Hall until Miss Lebetwood found him dying outside may have been an hour. We were asked to re-enact as precisely as possible our movements during the last quarter of this period.
“You would be asleep, sir, over by the gate-house, if I’m not mistaken,” said Heatheringham to Oxford. “I’ll let you off the sleeping. Just be on hand, if you don’t mind. You,” addressing Belvoir, “would be coming toward the towers and meeting Miss Mertoun and Lord Herbert. Presently you’d commence monkeying with the winch.” He spoke to me. “You were returning from the Delambre cottage, weren’t you? Doctor Aire and Mr. Maryvale must see you from the summer-house. I think you’ll all work into it.”
“But how silly!” said Miss Lebetwood. “All I can do is to wander about the strawberry trees looking for tennis balls I know won’t be there.”
“It’s all make-believe, you know,” answered Heatheringham. “And I can’t change the parts around, can I?”
“I don’t see how my doing that can help.”
“Still,” insisted the detective deferentially, “it will assist me a lot if you’ll just go through the motions. Now, is everybody clear about what he’s to do?”
“Shall I fetch hot water for Mr. Bannerlee, sir?” asked Soames, who had been admitted to our company.
“That’s hardly essential. But you might carry an empty pannikin to give mental support. Now, shall we commence? Some of the ladies may need coats. It’s beginning to blow a bit.”
“Not fair unless you tell us what you’re going to do yourself,” protested Lib.
“I’m going to be here, there, and everywhere,” said Heatheringham. “You may even hear me giving a few stage directions. Come on, people, I want my tea. One, two, three, go.”
Little gusts of wind were stirring. Evening frost had caused a marvellous change in the foliage, and the air was chromatic with flying leaves. They blew in my face while I breasted my way to the north end of the sycamore park, where I turned to retrace my steps. Through the dim light of the wood, I saw the black forms of Maryvale and Doctor Aire together on the porch of the abandoned summer-house. They nodded when I came nearest them. I reached the bridge, the cypresses, the lawn, the mansion itself. I saw people beyond the gate-house.
Suddenly I remembered that to keep in character I must peer into the Hall, and my flesh began to crawl at the thought of seeing the grim, phantasmal bone. I would not see it, of course, but if I did—
Then I caught a glimpse of Heatheringham over a hundred yards south of the House. He seemed to be waving me on, and I assumed that I must be a little behind my schedule. Without a glance into any of the windows I obediently rounded the library tower, entered the half-opened door, not omitting to ring, since I had done so on the previous occasion. The footman answered the bell with what would have been appalling suddenness had I not known he had been waiting for me. He received my instructions for hot water with the same obeisance and the same perfunctory words in the identical tone as before. I climbed the empty House to my room.
I was in a quandary, for it would do no manner of good to take off my coat and repeat the little battle with myself whose result had been a wounded finger. I certainly wouldn’t subject my digit to the safety-razor’s mercies a second time. But for the sake of keeping in the rhythm of the other day I might perform some of the milder motions. First I must go out to the balcony, where I had picked up the odd little scrap of rope.
I pressed through the window and, standing on the roof outside, saw the forms of people anticking about the tower and heard the rasp of the winch. Someone was on the lawn a little distance beyond the walk that skirts the House—Heatheringham himself.
“Hello!” I called aloud in the high wind. “Everything working smoothly?”
He must have seen me before, for he answered quickly, cupping his hands. “Yes, I think they’re all in their places. You did come out there the other day, didn’t you?”
“I did, and should go in again now if I keep in step.”
“Did you order that hot water?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“How did the servant behave?”
“Admirably; he didn’t turn a hair.”
“No, I should think not. Well, carry on. I’m bound this way.” He shouted the last words in a bristling wind, and set off walking toward the north.
“Good hunting,” I called after him.
I had now been on the roof for nearly five minutes and had equalled the span of time I spent there before. I returned to my chamber.
I laid my watch on the table and timed my own part of the programme, to make as near the properrapprochementwith Soames as I could. I allowed half a minute for divesting myself of coat and shirt, and as long again for my struggle with the oak chest and my mishap with the stool. (The handle of the chest was gone now; no use repeating that fracas.) Thirty seconds more of searching for a place to attach my strop, perhaps the remainder of the minute spent in that unhappy stropping (for luck and devilment I gave the curlicued bracket a jerk and a smash), fifteen seconds to stare like a fool at the place where I had formerly cut my finger, a few moments for crossing to the door and listening for Soames—
My heart missed a beat or two. Someonewasclimbing the stairs!
It was silly of me, of course, to be taken aback by the very thing I was waiting for, I had heard no one but Soames himself ascending at his proper time.
But the slam of the door down below and the deep brawling laughter which followed— Dear God! they, too, reverberated, and the sound of that inhuman mirth now held a ghastly message which it had not on the first occasion.
And early above the sound of the laughter had I heard a single sharp explosion, like the report of a firearm?
I leaped across to the window. This time there was no fan of light spreading from the Hall, but I saw indecipherable forms criss-crossing on the lawn, and the sound of conflicting cries floated up in the lapse of the wind.
To leave the chamber, to reach the stair-head, took but a second or two. Again I saw Soames green as an old statue, a grotesque caricature of Aquarius, stony-lipped with mortal fear, the little empty water-can dangling from his hand.
I ignored him, but heard his feet pound down the stairs behind me. Down at the front entrance, just outside the door, I caught sight of Lib, still as wax. We looked at each other, mirroring the dread we saw.
“Did you hear it?” I said at last.
Her voice was weak. “The shot, you mean?”
“Was there a shot?”
“There was if my ears are working.”
“Where?”
She shook her head miserably. “I—I don’t know. I think it was out on the lawn.”
“Then why were you coming in?”
She clenched both little fists and shook them tremblingly. “I was only doing what the detective told me to do. Besides, he—he came in first.”
“He came in!”
“He went in this door while I was quite a way from the House.”
“Then what’s become of him? He couldn’t have fired that shot outside!”
“Don’t ask me. Don’t ask me. I don’t know anything about it. I got to the door in time to hear the tail-end of that laugh—that was enough for me. I don’t want to lead the searching-party. This is the last time I officiate for any detective.”
“Come along with me, then. He must be here somewhere.”
“I think they’re trying to find him outside, sir,” said Soames, who had stepped warily to the corner of the House.
“That’s because they don’t know he went in here. Come along, both of you.”
We passed into the portrait-corridor, and I shouted Heatheringham’s name a couple of times, without effect.
Several of the servants had emerged from their quarters and were clustered about me while I stood at the door beneath the musicians’ gallery, scrutinizing the vast gloom of the Hall. Somehow, I was loath to enter or to switch on the light ready to my hand.
“Nobody here,” said Lib beside me, in a tone of relief.
I still moved my glance through the spaces of the room. Feet were pouring through the front door. I heard Crofts’ voice raised:
“Heatheringham’s missing. What in thunder are you up to?”
Then I saw something limned against the dark expanse of the central window of the Hall: the shape of a man who leaned heavily against the window-frame, looking out to the lawn. The moment my eyes had distinguished him, I knew it was Heatheringham. But he was awfully still! Why hadn’t he heard my shout?
“Heatheringham!” I called, and was shocked how strained the syllables crept from my lips. “Heather—”
“Where is he? Do you see him?” demanded Crofts, pressing to the door. “Why didn’t you light up—good God!”
He had switched on the electricity. From outside, beyond the window, came cry upon excited cry when the form of the detective was revealed by the blazing chandelier. But we who were behind Harry Heatheringham could see why he did not answer us, why he did not move. There was a gaping wound at the base of his brain, and the whole back of his trim grey coat was black with blood.
“Lawks!” cried Soames, and seemed about to faint.
Persons were rushing in from outside now, through the french windows. Doctor Aire took one look at the wound, and his face was filled with the most complete astonishment. His little dark eyes came out of their hiding-places, and even his tobacco-leaf complexion went several shades wan.
“Keep the women away,” he snapped at Soames, “and don’t let Maryvale come in here.”
“This is horrible, horrible,” Crofts kept saying.
“Is—is he dead?” asked Bob Cullen timidly, but no one smiled.
“He is,” answered the Doctor. “Men with holes in their heads like this are dead as Pharaoh.”
I ventured to touch the left hand that hung with such dreadful listlessness. “Why, he’s stiff!” I blurted, and a great shudder shook me. “He’s stiff! He must have been dead a long time. But, Doctor, I was talking to him less than five minutes ago!”
“You were!” exclaimed Crofts in an incredulous bull-voice.
“Quite so,” said Aire. “I noticed it the moment I saw the poor fellow.” He, too, touched the left hand. “Stiff, yes, but not cold yet.”
“What’s it all mean?” asked Belvoir.
“He could never be leaning there in that semi-lifelike manner if it weren’t the case,” said Aire. “I observed it, as I said, when I had the first glimpse of him. I have heard of it, but I’ve never seen a case before.”
“A case of what?”
“Instantrigor mortis. It occurs sometimes, under certain conditions, in sudden death.”
Ludlow, who stood near the body on the other side, was regarding it with awe, but his sharp face quickened with discovery. “Have you looked at his other hand? There’s a revolver in it.”
“Then he did fire the shot,” I cried.
“I’ll stake my life the shot was from somewhere outside,” avouched Crofts.
“I’m sure it was,” said Belvoir quietly.
“The point I wish to make,” said Ludlow, “is that the revolver is outside. He’s put his hand right through.”
It was so. Concealed by the fact that the body pressed close to the window, the right arm half-way to the elbow had been thrust through the glass and the wrist was supported by one of the cross-bars between the small panes. The weapon was tightly clutched in the hand, and its nose pointed upward!
“What in the name of reason could he have fired at up there?”
It was when we laid the dead detective, stiff in the original posture, revolver clamped in hand, on the carpet spread over theBrocade de Lyonscreation that we looked beyond that article of elegance and saw what had been concealed behind it.
Splashes of blood from Heatheringham’s wound were on the floor at our feet, between the body and the couch. Now we beheld more blood, a trail of it across the floor in drops that led in a long, irregular, parabolic curve from the couch to the open door by the clock-corner, and so out into the corridor. There the track ceased abruptly.
“Hm,” said Aire, standing at the spot. “Here’s where the assailant tucked his bludgeon away.” He looked up and down the gallery. “Friend Crofts, why not have another search and see if one of these priceless paintings doesn’t conceal a door?”
“There has never been, and is not any secret passage in the House,” said Crofts decisively. “You can say amen to that.”
Aire shrugged his shoulders. Lord Ludlow shook his head several times, though what at no one could tell. Belvoir stared at the last drop of blood where it stained the blue-carpeted floor as if he were fascinated by it. Bob Cullen pursed his lips and whistled a ditty of no tone. Crofts kept putting his hands in his pockets and taking them out again.
Insensibly, instinctively, we drew the tiniest bit closer to one another. Spiritually, we huddled. We were all little men, badly frightened, in the great House where murder stalked invisible.
If this is “the beginning of the end,” what will the end itself be like?