The luncheon with Teresa was a pronounced social success. French rather than Irish in character, it was eaten under a plum-tree in the orchard. Micky waited at table with his hat on, and then disappeared for awhile. At two o’clock he rose again above the horizon, and said that the electric car was at the door. Richard and Teresa set off to meet the two-thirty train at Leighton Buzzard. By this time they had certainly become rather intimate, according to the way of young persons thrown together—by no matter what chance—in the month of June—or any other month. It was not, perhaps, unnatural that Raphael Craig, when he emerged from the railway-station and found the two laughing and chatting side by side in the motor-car, should have cast at them a sidelong glance, in which were mingled amusement, alarm, and warning.
Mr. Raphael carried the large brown portmanteau, which was now—as Richard discovered by handling it—quite empty. On the journey home Teresa drove the car, and her father sat by her side. Richard occupied the rear of the car, giving a hint occasionally as to the management of the machine.
‘I think I have nothing further to do here,’ he said when the party had arrived safely at Queen’s Farm. ‘Both the other cars are in order. I will therefore bid you good-day. Should anything go wrong with this car, you will doubtless let us know.’
He spoke in his most commercial manner, though his feelings were far from commercial.
Raphael Craig bent those dark, deep eyes of his upon the youth.
‘I have been telephoning to your firm this morning,’ said Craig, ‘and have arranged with them that you shall take the Panhard back to town. They are going to take it off my hands—at a price.’
‘With pleasure,’ said Richard.
‘But,’ Mr. Craig continued, ‘I wish to use the Panhard this week-end. Therefore you cannot remove it till Monday.’
‘Very good,’ said Richard, ‘I will present myself on Monday morning.’
‘And in the meantime?’
‘In the meantime I have other business for my firm in the neighbourhood.’
Teresa’s glance intercepted her father’s, and these two exchanged a look. The old man frowned at his daughter.
‘Good-day,’ said Richard.
Raphael and Teresa shook hands with him. Was he a conceited ass, or did Teresa really seem grieved?
‘Till Monday,’ said Teresa.
Richard walked down to the village, engaged Miss Puddephatt’s room, and dined at the White Horse Hotel. He had not yet definitely decided what course of conduct to follow. He was inclined to do nothing further in the affair, and to tell Simon Lock on Monday that, so far as he could discover, Simon Lock’s suspicions about Raphael Craig were groundless. He had taken no money from Simon Lock, and he would take none. Yet why should he pause now? Why should he not, for his own private satisfaction, probe the mystery to the bottom? Afterwards—when the strange secret stood revealed to him—there would be plenty of time then to decide whether or not to deliver up Raphael Craig into the hands of Simon Lock. Yes, on consideration he would, for his own pleasure, find out whatever was to be found out.
That evening, an hour after sunset, he lay hidden behind a hedge on the west side of Watling Street, exactly opposite the boreen leading to the Queen’s Farm.
Richard slept. He was decidedly short of sleep, and sleep overtook him unawares. Suddenly from the end of the boreen came the faint spit, spit of a motor-car, growing louder as it approached the main road. Would it awake Richard? No, he slept stolidly on. The motor-car, bearing an old man and a young girl, slid down into the valley towards Dunstable, and so out of hearing. An hour passed. The church clock at Houghton Regis, two miles off to the east, struck midnight. Then the car might have been heard returning, it laboured heavily up the hill, and grunted as though complaining of its burden as it curved round into the boreen towards Queen’s Farm.
Richard awoke. In a fraction of a second he was wide awake, alert, eager, excited. He saw the car vanishing towards the outbuildings of Queen’s Farm. Springing out of the hedge, he clambered over the opposite hedge into Craig’s orchard, crossed it, passed the house by its north side, and so came to the quadrangle of outbuildings. By keeping on the exterior of this quadrangle he arrived at last, skirting the walls, at the blind end of the boreen. He peeped cautiously round the angle of the wall, scarcely allowing even the tip of his nose to protrude, and discerned the empty motor-car. He ventured forward into the boreen. It was at this corner of the quadrangle that the locked shed was situated. Rather high up in the wall a light disclosed the presence of a small window. The faintness of the light proved that the window must be extremely dirty. But even if it had been clean he could not have utilized it, for it was seven feet from the earth. He put his hand on the wall and touched a spout. The spout felt rickety, but he climbed up it, and, clinging partly to the spout and partly to the frame of the window, he looked into the locked shed. It had once, he perceived, been used as a stable, but it was being put to other purposes now. The manger was heaped up with bright silver coins. In the middle of the floor stood a large iron receptacle of peculiar shape. He guessed that it had been constructed to fit into the well of the Panhard motor-car. By means of two small buckets Teresa and her father were transferring the contents of this receptacle, which was still half full of silver, into the manger.
The shed was ‘lighted by a single candle stuck insecurely on what had once been a partition between two stalls. The candle flickered and cast strange shadows. The upper part of the chamber was in darkness. Looking straight across it, Richard saw another little window exactly opposite his own; and through this window he discerned another watching face.
‘Micky!’ he exclaimed softly to himself.
Raphael and Teresa were, then, doubly spied upon. But who was Micky?
Richard’s attention was diverted from this interesting inquiry by the gradual growth of a light near the door, of which, being parallel with his window, he had no view. Then a long, licking flame appeared. He could see it creeping across the floor, nearer and nearer to the unconscious heavers of silver. Raphael had turned on the waste tap of the exhaust petrol under the motor-car. The highly combustible quid had run beneath the door of the shed it had there come in contact with the ax match used by Raphael to light the candle and then thrown down. Richard saw next that the door of the shed was on fire; at the same moment, unable any longer to keep his grip on the spout and the window-frame, he fell unexpectedly to the ground.
The blazing door was locked. Richard called, shouted shouted again. There was no answer, but in the extraordinary outer silence he could still hear the industrious shovelling of silver.
‘Well,’ he said to himself, ‘they’re bound to find out pretty soon that the show’s on fire.’
He threw himself against the door angrily, and, to his surprise, it yielded, and he fell over the river of flame into the interior of the shed. The noise at last startled Raphael and Teresa out of the preoccupation of their task.
‘Haven’t you perceived that the place is being burned down?’ he exclaimed drily.
At the same instant he sprang towards Teresa. The stream of burning petrol had found its way into the central runnel of the stone floor, and so had suddenly reached the hem of Teresa’s dress, which already showed a small blaze. Fortunately, it was a serge travelling frock; had it been of light summer material, Teresa would probably have been burnt to death. Richard dragged her fiercely from the region of the runnel, and extinguished the smouldering serge between his hands, which showed the scars of that timely action for a fortnight afterwards. He glanced round quickly, saw a pile of empty sacks in a corner—had they been used as money-bags? he wondered—and, seizing several of them, laid them fiat on the burning petrol and against the door. His unhesitating celerity no doubt prevented a magnificent conflagration. The petrol, it is true, had nearly burnt itself out, but the woodwork of the door was, in fireman’s phrase, ‘well alight,’ and, being aged and rotten, it formed a quick fuel.
When the flames had been conquered, the three occupants of the shed looked at each other without a word. Strange to say, under the steady gaze of Raphael Craig, Richard’s eyes blinked, and he glanced in another direction—up at the little window in the opposite wall where he had seen the face of Micky, but where the face of Micky was no longer on view. Then he looked again at Raphael Craig, whose dark orbs seemed to ask accusingly: ‘What are you doing here?’ And, despite the fact that he had in all probability been the means of saving Teresa’s life, he could not avoid the absurd sensation of having been caught in a misdeed. He felt as if he must explain his presence to Raphael Craig. At that juncture, we are obliged to confess, his imperturbability deserted him for a space.
‘I—I happened to be passing the end of the road,’ he said lamely, ‘and I saw what I took to be a flame, so I ran along—and found—this, I’m glad it’s no worse.’
‘So am I,’ said Raphael Craig, with cold gravity.
Teresa was silent.
‘I’m glad I was in time,’ said Richard, as awkwardly as a boy.
‘I’m glad you were,’ Mr. Craig agreed.
‘It is possible that my daughter owes her life to you. I cannot imagine how I could have been so careless with that petrol. It was inexcusable. We thank you, Mr. Redgrave, for your services so admirably rendered.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ said Richard; ‘that’s nothing at all.’
The whole interview was becoming too utterly ridiculous. But what could be said or done? It was the heaps of silver coins lying about that rendered the situation so extremely difficult. Useless for Raphael Craig to pretend that he and Teresa had been engaged in some perfectly usual and common-place task. Useless for Richard, notwithstanding his lame explanation, to pretend that he had not been spying. The heaps of silver made all parties excessively self-conscious, and when you are self-conscious you can never say the right thing in the right manner.
It was Raphael Craig who first, so to speak, came to himself.
‘As you are here, Mr. Redgrave,’ he said, ‘as you have already laid us under one obligation, perhaps you will consent to lay us under another. Perhaps you will help us to finish off these few coins. Afterwards I will beg the honour of a few words with you in private.’
It was magnificent, thought Richard, this audacious manouvre of the old man’s. It took the bull by the horns in a very determined fashion. It disarmed Richard instantly. What course, save that of complying with so calm and courteous a request, could he pursue? He divined that Raphael Craig was not a man moulded to the ordinary pattern of bank managers, ‘With pleasure,’ he replied, and thereupon the heaps of silver seemed less bizarre, less confusing, less productive of a general awkwardness. By a fiction unanimously agreed to, all three began to behave as if shovelling thousands of new silver coins at dead of night in a disused stable was a daily affair with them.
Still without uttering a word, Teresa handed her galvanized iron bucket to Richard. He noticed a little uncertainty in the motion of her hand as she did so. The next moment there was a thud on the floor of the stable. Teresa had fainted. She lay extended on the stone floor. Richard ran to pick up that fair frame. He had lifted the girl’s head when the old man interposed.
‘Never raise the head of a person who has lost consciousness,’ he said coldly; ‘it is dangerous. Teresa will recover in a few minutes. This swoon is due only to the shock and strain of the last few minutes. In the meantime, will you open the door?’
Richard, having complied, stood inactive, anxious to do something, yet finding nothing to do.
‘Shall I fetch some water from the house?’ he asked. ‘Swoons are sometimes very serious if they last too long.’
‘Are they, my friend?’ said Raphael, with the trace of a smile. ‘This one is already over—see?’
Teresa opened her eyes.
‘What are you two staring at?’ she inquired curiously, and then sighed as one fatigued.
Her father raised her head in his arm and held it so for a few moments.
‘Now, my chuck,’ he said, ‘try if you can stand. Mr. Redgrave, will you assist me?’
Mr. Redgrave assisted with joy. The girl at length stood up, supported on one side by Raphael Craig and on the other by the emissary of Simon Lock. With a glance at Richard, she said she could walk. Outside stood the motor-car.
‘Shall we take her round to the front-door on this?’ Richard suggested.
‘Are you mad?’ exclaimed Raphael Craig, with sudden disapproval. ‘Teresa will walk.’
He locked the charred door of the stable with a padlock which he took from his pocket, and they proceeded to the house.
Bridget stood at the front-door, seeming to expect them.
‘You’re not well, mavourneen,’ she said, glancing at Teresa’s face, and led the girl away.
During the whole of the time spent by him at Queen’s Farm nothing impressed Richard more than the impassive yet affectionate demeanour of Mrs. Bridget, that mysterious old servant, on this occasion.
The two men were left together in the hall. Mrs. Bridget and Teresa had gone upstairs.
‘Mike!’ Raphael Craig called.
‘Yes, sorr,’ answered Mike, appearing from a small butler’s pantry under the staircase.
‘Bring whisky into the drawing-room.’
‘That I will, sorr.’
Richard admired Micky’s sangfroid, which was certainly tremendous, and he determined to have an interview with the man before many hours were past, in order to see whether he could not break that sangfroid down.
‘Come into the drawing-room, will you?’, said Raphael Craig.
‘Thanks,’ said Richard.
The drawing-room proved to be the room into which Mr. Craig had vanished on thepreviousnight. It presented, to his surprise, no unusual feature whatever. It had the customary quantities of chairs, occasional tables, photographs, knicknacks, and cosy corners. It was lighted by a single lamp suspended from the middle of the ceiling. The only article of furniture that by any stretch of fancy could be termed extraordinary in a drawing-room was a rather slim grandfather’s clock in an inlaid case of the Sheraton period. This clock struck one as they went into the room.
Micky arrived with the whisky.
‘You will join me?’ asked Raphael, lifting the decanter.
‘Thanks,’ said Richard.
‘That will do, Mike.’
Mike departed. The two men ignited cigars and drank. Each was seated in a large easy-chair.
‘Now for it,’ said Richard to himself.
Mr. Raphael Craig coughed.
‘I dare say, Mr. Redgrave,’ the bank manager began, ‘that certain things which you have seen this evening will have struck you as being somewhat strange.’
‘I am happy to have been of any help,’ said Richard.
Raphael bowed.
‘I will not disguise from you,’ he continued, that when you arrived here in such a peculiar manner last night I had my suspicious of your good faith. I even thought for a moment—it was very foolish of me—that you were from Scotland Yard. I don’t know why I should have thought that, but I did think it.’
‘Really,’ said Richard, ‘I have not the least connection with Scotland Yard. I told you my business.’
‘I believe you,’ said Raphael. ‘I merely mention the course of my thoughts concerning you. I am fully convinced now that, despite certain unusual items connected with your visit, you are exactly what you said you were, and for my doubts I now offer apology. To tell you the truth, I inquired from the Williamson Company this morning as to you, and was quite reassured by what they said. But,’ Mr. Craig went on, with a very pronounced ‘but,’ interrupting Richard, who had embarked on some protest—‘but I have at the same time been forced to the conclusion, Mr. Redgrave, that my household, such as it is, and my ways, such as they are, have roused in you a curiosity which is scarcely worthy of yourself. I am a fairly good judge of character, and I know by infallible signs that you have a nature far above idle curiosity.’
‘Thanks for your good opinion,’ said Richard; ‘but, to deal with your suspicions in their order, may I ask why you thought at first that I was an agent of Scotland Yard? Were you expecting Scotland Yard at Queen’s Farm?’
He could not avoid a faint ironic smile.
Mr. Craig threw his cigar into the fireplace.
‘I was,’ said Raphael briefly, ‘and I will tell you why. Some time ago an uncle of mine died, at a great age, and left me a huge fortune. My uncle, Mr. Redgrave, was mad. For fifty years he had put all his savings into silver coins. He had once been in a Mexican silver-mine, and the experience in some mysterious way had affected his brain. Perhaps his brain was already affected. He lived for silver, and in half a century he collected more than half a million separate silver coins—all English, all current, all unused. This fortune he bequeathed to me. I was, in fact, his sole relative.’
‘A strange old fellow he must have been,’ Richard remarked.
‘Yes,’ said Raphael. ‘But I am equally strange. I have said that my uncle had a mania. I, too, have that mania, for I tell you, Mr. Redgrave, that I cannot bring myself to part with those coins. I have the same madness for silver that my uncle had. Away from the silver, I can see myself steadily, can admit frankly to myself that on that one point my brain is, if you like the term, “touched.” In the presence of the silver I exist solely for it, and can think of nothing else.’
‘Nevertheless,’ said Richard dispassionately, ‘I was told in the village to-day that you paid for everything in silver. If you are so attached to silver, how can you bring yourself to part with it? Why not pay in gold?’
‘Because,’ Raphael replied, ‘I never handle gold save in my professional capacity as bank manager. I take my salary in silver. I cannot help it. The weight frequently proves a difficulty, but I cannot help it. Silver I must have. It is in my blood, the desire for silver. True, I pay away silver—simply because I have no other coins available.’
‘I see,’ said Richard.
He scarcely knew what to think of his strange companion. The man seemed absolutely sane, absolutely in possession of every sense and faculty, yet, behold him accusing himself of madness!
‘Let me finish,’ said Raphael Craig. ‘When I came into my uncle’s fortune I was at a loss what to do with it. The small house which I then had over at Sewell, near Chalk Hill, had no accommodation for such a valuable and ponderous collection. I made a confidante of my daughter. She sympathized with me, and suggested that, at any rate for a time, I should conceal the hoard in a disused chalk-pit which lay a few hundred yards from our house. The idea, at first sight rather wild, grew upon me. I adopted it. Then I took this house, and gradually I have removed my silver from the chalk-pit to Queen’s Farm. It is hidden in various quarters of the place. We brought the last load to-night.’
‘This is very interesting,’ said Richard, who had nothing else to say.
‘I have told you this,’ the old man concluded, ‘in order to account to you for what you saw to-night in that stable. It is but just that you should know. I thank you again for your prompt services in the matter of the fire, and I ask you, Mr. Redgrave, to pity the infirmity—the harmless infirmity—of an old man.’
Raphael Craig stood up and gazed at Richard with his deep-set melancholy eyes.
‘It is an infirmity which draws suspicion upon this house as a magnet draws iron. Once already I have had the local police up here making stupid inquiries. I put them off as well as I could. Daily I am expecting that the directors of the bank will call me up to explain my conduct. Yet I cannot do otherwise.’
‘Why,’ said Richard, ‘if you are rich, do you still care to serve the bank? Pardon my impertinence, but, surely, if you left the bank one source of your apprehensions would be stopped?’
‘I cannot leave the bank,’ said Raphael Craig, with solemn pathos; ‘it would break my heart.’
With these words he sank back into a chair, and appeared to be lost in thought So the two sat for some time. Then Richard rose and went quietly towards the door.
‘You are the only person, save Teresa, who knows my secret. Remember that, Mr. Redgrave.’
The manager’s voice sounded weak and distant. Richard bowed and stole from the room. He sucked at his cigar, but it had gone out.
Very quietly he sauntered to the front-door, which was ajar, and into the portico. He stood there meditating. In front he could vaguely discern the forms of the trees in the orchard, but beyond these nothing. The night was as dark as a wolfs mouth. Then the sound of a horse’s rapid hoof caught his ear. The wind had fallen, and everything was still. Looking down the hill, he could see the light of a vehicle ascending the slope of Watling Street. The sound of the horse’s trot came nearer and nearer, passed the end of the boreen, and so continued up the hill, getting fainter now, till it died entirely away as the vehicle dipped down the gradient into Hockliffe. The vehicle was one of her late Majesty’s mails, which took that route at that hour on Saturday nights only. It constituted a perfectly simple weekly phenomenon, yet somehow the birth, growth, fading, and death of the sound of the horse’s trot on the great road affected Richard’s imagination to a singular degree.
‘What is my position up here now?’ he asked himself. ‘Am I to depart an unconfessed spy, without another word to Raphael Craig or Teresa, or—what?’
The old man’s recital had touched him, and Teresa’s swoon had decidedly touched him more.
He strolled very leisurely down the drive, staring about him. Then, with senses suddenly alert, he whispered:
‘Come out, there. I see you quite well.’ Micky was hiding in the bushes under the drawing-room window. The little man obeyed complacently enough.
‘Come out into the road with me, Mike; I want to have a chat with you.’
Richard had sufficient tact not to put any sign of reproof or anger into his tone. He accepted Micky’s spying as a thing of course. They walked along the boreen together and up the high-road towards Hockliffe.
‘Now,’ said Richard, ‘we can talk at our ease here; we shan’t be overheard.’
‘What does your honour want to talk about?’ asked Micky, with a great air of innocence.
‘You can drop the “your honour,” and all that rigmarole, my friend, and tell me who you really are. To prevent any unnecessary untruths, I may as well tell you at the start that I found Goron’s Memoirs in the pocket of your coat in the harness-room yesterday morning. From that moment I knew you were playing a part here.’
‘Like you,’ said Micky quickly.
‘Yes—if it pleases you—like me. What I want to know is, are you a detective?’
‘And what I want to know is,’ said Micky, who had abandoned most of his Irish accent, ‘what are you?’
‘Let us not beat about the bush,’ said Richard impatiently. ‘You’re a decent chap, so am I. I will begin by confessing that I am a private inquiry agent employed by the British and Scottish Bank.’
‘Oh,’ said Micky, ‘I knew it was something of that sort Have you ever heard of a detective named Nolan?’
‘What!theNolan?’ asked Richard.
‘The same,’ said Micky.
‘You are Nolan?’
‘I have the honour—or the dishonour.’
‘I am glad to meet you,’ said Richard. ‘Of course, I know you well by reputation. How thoroughly you go into an affair! Fancy you acting as odd man here for weeks! I tell you you have completely imposed on them.’
‘Have I?’ exclaimed Micky—or Nolan, as he must now be called. ‘I should be glad to be assured of that. Twice to-day I have feared that Raphael Craig had his doubts of me.’
‘I don’t think so for a moment,’ said Richard positively. ‘But what is your object—what is Scotland Yard after? Personally, I came here without any theories, on the chance of something turning up.’
‘Scotland Yard is merely curious about the suicide—if it was a suicide—of a man named Featherstone, and about the plague of silver which has visited this district during the last year or two.’
‘You say “if it was a suicide.” Do you suspect that Featherstone’s death was due to anything else?’
‘I never suspect until I know, Mr. Redgrave. I am here with an open mind.’
‘And what have you discovered so far?’ asked Richard.
‘My very dear sir,’ Nolan expostulated, ‘what do you take me for? I am sure that you are a man of unimpeachable honour—all private agents are—but, nevertheless, I cannot proclaim my discoveries to a stranger. It would be a breach of etiquette to do so, even if such a course were not indiscreet.’
‘I give you my word, Mr. Nolan, that my activity in this case is now entirely at an end. I have found out this evening all that I wished to know, and perhaps more than I wished to know. I shall return to town on Monday morning, and Bedfordshire will know me no more.’ He paused, and added: ‘At least, it will know me no more as a private inquiry agent.’
‘Or motor-car expert,’ said Nolan.
Richard laughed.
‘I was merely asking you,’ Richard resumed, ‘how far you had got, in the hope that possibly I might be able to simplify matters for you.’
‘You are very good,’ said Nolan, with an indescribable accent of irony—a bantering tone which, however, was so good-humoured that Richard could not take exception to it—‘you are very good.’
‘You have found out, I presume, something concerning the chalk-pit?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Nolan, ‘I have found out something concerning the chalk-pit.’
‘And you know what the crash Was early this morning?’
‘I have a notion,’ said Nolan.
‘And, since I saw your inquisitive face at the window of that stable to-night, you know what that stable contains?’
‘Not quite to half-a-crown,’ said Nolan, but approximately.’
‘By the way,’ Richard asked, ‘why on earth didn’t you come and assist in putting out the fire?’
‘What! And give myself away?’
‘It might have been a matter of life and death.’
‘Yes, it might have been. Had it got so far, I dare say I should have sacrificed my standing here, my reputation with these people as a simple Irishman, in order to save them. But I knew that you were there, and that you would do all that was necessary.’
‘I only just got into the place in time,’ said Richard sharply.
‘Yes. It is a pity that you burnt your hands.’
‘How do you know that I burnt my hands?’ Richard asked.
‘I can tell by the way you hold them,’ said Nolan.
‘It was worth it,’ said Richard.
‘Was it?’ observed Nolan quietly. ‘I am glad. Of course, now that you have found out everything——’
He drew up standing in the road. His voice showed that Richard had made some little impression on that great man from Scotland Yard.
‘Admit first,’ said Richard, his eyes twinkling through the gold-rimmed spectacles, ‘that you were guilty of the grossest indiscretion—not to say stupidity—in leaving Goron’s Memoirs, a yellow-covered French book, lying about the harness-room—you, an Irish labourer.’
‘I admit that in that matter I was an inconceivable ass,’ said Nolan cheerfully.
‘Good!’ said Richard; ‘you shall have your reward.’
Then Richard told him all that he had learnt from the lips of Raphael Craig. There was a silence when he had finished.
‘Yes,’ said Nolan, ‘it’s rather an impressive story; it impresses even me. But do you believe it?’
‘I believe what Craig told me. If he lied, he is the finest actor I ever saw.’
‘Listen,’ said Nolan. ‘Does this tale of Craig’s explain his daughter’s visit to Bosco’s circus and her chat with Juana, and her unblushing fibs to you afterwards?’
‘How did you hear about that?’ questioned Richard savagely.
He scarcely liked Nolan’s curt language in regard to Teresa.
‘I did hear about it,’ said Nolan; ‘let that suffice. And listen further. I will make you a present of a fact—an absolutely indisputable fact—which I have discovered: Raphael Craig never had an uncle. His father was an only son. Moreover, no person has died within the last few years who could by any means be related to Craig. The records at Somerset House have been thoroughly searched.’
‘No uncle!’ was all Richard, the nonplussed, could murmur.
‘And,’ Nolan continued, ‘while I am about it, I will make you a present of another little fact. You say that Craig told you that he had brought all his silver here, the last load having arrived to-night. On the contrary, he has gradually been taking silver away from here, I admit that he has brought some, but he has carted far more away. For what else should he need all this generous supply of motorcars?’
Richard began to suspect that he had mistaken his vocation.
On the Monday morning Richard presented himself at Queen’s Farm. The day was jocund, the landscape smiled; in the forty-acre field below the house a steam-plough, actuated by two enormous engines and a steel hawser, was working at the bidding of a farmer who farmed on principles of his own, and liked to do his ploughing at midsummer. The steam-plough rattled and jarred and jolted like a humorous and high-spirited leviathan; the birds sang merrily above it; the Chiltem Hills stretched away in the far distance, bathed in limitless glad sunshine; and Watling Street ran white, dazzling, and serene, down the near slope and up the hill towards Dunstable, curtained in the dust of rural traffic.
In the midst of all these things joyous and content, behold Richard, melancholy and full of discontent, ringing at the front-door bell of Queen’s Farm. He rang and rang again, but there was no answer. It was after eight o’clock, yet not a blind had been drawn up; and the people of the house had told him that they took breakfast at seven o’clock! Richard had passed a wretched week-end in the village of Hockliffe, his one solace having been another chat with Mr. Puddephatt, wine-merchant and horse-dealer to the nobility and gentry of the neighbourhood. He was at a loss what to do. What, indeed, could he do? The last words of Nolan, the detective, had given him pause, hinting, as they did, at strange mysteries still unsolved. Supposing that he, Richard, continued his investigations and discovered some sinister secret—some crime? The point was that Teresa was almost certainly involved in her father’s schemes. Here was the difficulty which troubled him. His fancy pictured a court of justice, and Raphael Craig and Teresa in the dock, and Richard Redgrave giving evidence against them, explaining how he had spied upon them, dogged their footsteps, and ultimately arrived at the heart of the mystery. Could he do that? Could he look Teresa in the face? And yet, what, after all, was Teresa to him—Teresa, whom he had known only three days?
That was the question—what was Teresa to him?
He rang again, and the jangle of the bell reverberated as though through a deserted dwelling. Then he walked round the house by the garden, in the hope of encountering Micky, otherwise Mr. Nolan of Scotland Yard. But not a sign of Mr. Nolan could he see anywhere. The stable-door was unlocked; the mares were contentedly at work on a morning repast of crushed oats, followed by clover-hay, but there was no Micky. He began to think that perhaps Nolan knew a great deal more than he had chosen to tell during that night walk along Watling Street. Perhaps Nolan had returned to Scotland Yard armed with all the evidence necessary to conduct a magnificentcause célèbreto a successful conclusion. He could see the posters of the evening papers: ‘Extraordinary Affair in Bedfordshire: A Bank Manager and his Daughter charged with——’
Charged with what?
Pooh! When he recalled the dignified and absolutely sincere air of Raphael Craig at their interview in the drawing-room in the early hours of Sunday morning, when he recalled the words of the white-haired man, uttered with an appealing glance from under those massive brows: ‘I ask you, Mr. Redgrave, to pity the infirmity, the harmless infirmity, of an old man’—when he recalled these words, and the manner of the speaker, he could not but think that Nolan must be on an absolutely false scent; he could not but believe that the Craigs were honest and innocent.
He at last got round to the kitchen-door of the house and knocked. The door was immediately opened—or, rather, half opened—by Mrs. Bridget, who put her head in the small aperture thus made after the manner of certain women. She merely looked at him severely, without uttering a word.
‘I wish to see Mr. Craig,’ he said calmly.
‘I was to tell ye the motor-car is in the shed, and ye are kindly to deliver it at Williamson’s.’
This was her reply.
‘Mr. Craig is not up, then? Miss Craig——’
‘I was to tell ye the motor-car is in the shed, and ye are kindly to deliver it at Williamson’s.’
‘Thank you. I perfectly understand,’ said Richard. ‘Miss Craig, I hope, is fully recovered?’
‘I was to tell ye the motor-car——’
Thinking that this extraordinary Irishwoman was scarcely in full possession of her wits that morning, Richard turned away, and proceeded to the shed where the motor-cars were kept. The Panhard, he found, was ready for action, its petrol-tank duly filled, its bearings oiled, its brasswork polished. He sprang aboard and set off down the boreen. As he passed the house, gazing at it, one of the drawn blinds on the first-floor seemed to twitch aside and then fall straight again. Or was it his imagination?
He turned into Watling Street, and then, on the slope, set the car to its best pace. He reached the valley in a whirl of dust at a speed of forty miles an hour. The great road stretched invitingly ahead. His spirits rose. He seemed to recover somewhat from the influence of the mysteries of Queen’s Farm.
‘I’ll chuck it,’ he shouted to himself above the noise of the flying car—‘that’s what I’ll do. I’ll go and tell Lord Dolmer this very morning that I can’t do anything, and prefer to waste no more time on the affair.’
After that he laughed, also to himself, and swerved the car neatly to avoid half a brick which lay in the middle of the road. It was at that moment that he perceived, some distance in front, his friend Mr. Puddephatt. Mr. Puddephatt was apparently walking to Dunstable. Richard overtook him and drew up.
‘Let me give you a lift,’ said Richard.
0126
Mr. Puddephatt surveyed the Panhard askance.
‘Let you give me a lift?’ Mr. Puddephatt repeated. It was his habit to repeat the exact words of an interlocutor before giving a reply. ‘No, thanks,’ said he. ‘I’m walking to Dunstable Station for exercise.’
‘What are you going to Dunstable Station for?’ asked Richard.
‘I’m for Lunnon—horse sale at the Elephant and Castle. Perhaps you know the Elephant and Castle, sir?’
‘I’ll give you a lift to London, if you like,’ said Richard, seizing the chance of companionship, of which he was badly in need. ‘We shall get there quite as soon as your train.’
Mr. Puddephatt eyed the car suspiciously. He had no sympathy with motor-cars.
‘Are you afraid?’ asked Richard.
‘Am I afraid?’ he repeated. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I ain’t afraid. But I’d sooner be behind a three-year-old than behind one of them things. But I’ll try it and see how I like it. And thank ye, sir.’
So Mr. Puddephatt journeyed with Richard to London.
Perhaps it was fate that induced Mr. Puddephatt, when they had discussed the weather, horses, motor-cars, steam-ploughs, wine, parish councils, London, and daily papers, to turn the conversation on to the subject of the Craigs. Mr. Puddephatt had had many and various dealings with the Craigs, and he recounted to Richard the whole of them, one after another, in detail. It seemed, from his narrative, that he had again and again, from sheer good-nature, saved the Craigs from the rapacity and unscrupulousness of the village community.
‘Nice young lady, that Miss Teresa,’ observed Mr. Puddephatt.
‘Yes,’ said Richard.
By this time they had passed through St. Albans and were well on the way to Edgware.
‘They do say,’ said Mr. Puddephatt, leaning back luxuriously against the cushions—‘they do say as she isn’t his daughter—not rightly.’
‘They say what?’ asked Richard quietly, all alert, but not choosing to seem so.
Mr. Puddephatt reaffirmed his statement.
‘Who says that?’ asked Richard.
‘Oh!’ said Mr. Puddephatt, ‘I dare say it isn’t true. But it’s gotten about the village. Ye never know how them tales begin. I dare say it isn’t true. Bless ye, there’s lots o’ tales.’
‘Oh, indeed!’ Richard remarked sagaciously.
‘Ay!’ said Mr. Puddephatt, filling his pipe, ‘lots o’ tales. That night as she ran away from the farm, and Mrs. Bridget had to fetch her back from the White Horse—— Everybody said as how the old man ill-treated her, daughter or no daughter.’
‘When was that?
‘A few weeks back,’ said Mr. Puddephatt laconically.
This was all he would say.
‘It’s a queer world, Mr. Puddephatt,’ said Richard aloud. To himself he said: ‘Then perhaps she isn’t involved with her father—if he is her father.’
At length they reached the suburbs of London and had to moderate their speed. As they wound in and out through the traffic of Kilburn, Richard’s eye chanced to catch the sign of the British and Scottish Bank. He drew up opposite the mahogany doors of the bank and, leaving Mr. Puddephatt in charge of the car, entered. It was turned ten o’clock. He felt fairly certain that Raphael Craig had not left Queen’s Farm, but he wanted to convince himself that the bank manager was not always so impeccably prompt at business as some people said.
‘I wish to see Mr. Craig,’ he said, just as he had said two hours before to Mrs. Bridget.
‘Mr. Craig,’ said the clerk, ‘is at present taking his annual holiday. He will return to business in a fortnight’s time.’
Richard returned to the car curiously annoyed, with a sense of being baffled. His thoughts ran back to Teresa. Thirty miles of Watling Street now separated them, yet her image was more strenuously before him than it had been at any time since she fainted in the silver-heaped stable on Saturday night.
‘Yes,’ he said to himself positively, ‘I’ll call on Lord Dolmer at once, and tell him I won’t have anything further to do with the affair.’
He dropped Mr. Puddephatt, whose society, he felt, was perhaps growing rather tedious to him, at Oxford Circus, and directed him to an omnibus for the Elephant and Castle.
‘My address is 4, Adelphi Terrace, in case you need a friend in London at any time,’ said Richard.
‘Good-day to ye, sir,’ said Mr. Puddephatt, ‘and thank ye kindly. Shall we be seeing you again at Hockliffe soon?’
‘No,’ said Richard shortly. ‘I am not likely ever to come to Hockliffe. My business there is absolutely concluded.’
They shook hands, full of goodwill. As Mr. Puddephatt’s burly and rustic form faded away into the crowd Richard watched it, and thought how strange, and, indeed, pathetic, it was that two human beings should casually meet, become in a measure intimate, and then part for evermore, lost to each other in the mazy wilderness of an immense civilization.
He drove the car to Holborn Viaduct, deposited it on the Williamson Company’s premises, and then took a bus for Piccadilly. As he did so it began to rain, at first gently, then with a more determined steadiness: a spell of fine weather which had lasted for several weeks was at last broken.
In less than half an hour he was at Lord Dolmer’s door in Half-Moon Street.
This nobleman, as has been stated, was comparatively a poor man. Emphasis must now be laid on that word ‘comparatively.’ The baron had a thousand a year of his own in stocks, and a small property in Yorkshire which brought in a trifle less than nothing a year, after all the outgoings were paid. His appointments in the City yielded him fifteen hundred a year. So that his net income was a trifle less than two thousand five hundred pounds per annum. He was thus removed from the fear of absolute starvation. The peerage was not an ancient one—Lord Dolmer was only the second baron—but the blood was aristocratic; it had run in the veins of generations of men who knew how to live and how to enjoy themselves. Lord Dolmer had discreetly remained a bachelor, and, in the common phrase, ‘he did himself uncommonly well.’ He had a suite of finely-furnished rooms in Half-Moon Street, and his domestic staff there consisted of a valet, who was also butler and confidential factotum; a boy, who fulfilled the functions of a ‘tiger,’ and employed his leisure hours in not cleaning knives and boots; a housekeeper, who wore black silk and guarded the secret of her age; and two women servants. It was the valet who answered to Richard’s masterful ring; the valet’s name was Simpkin.
‘Lord Dolmer at home?’ asked Richard.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Simpkin amicably; ‘his lord-ship is at breakfast.’
It was just upon eleven o’clock.
‘I’ll tell him you’re here, sir,’ said Simpkin.
In another moment Richard was greeting the second Baron Dolmer in the dining-room, a stylish little apartment trimmed with oak. Lord Dolmer breakfasted in the Continental fashion, taking coffee at eight, and déjeuner about eleven. He had the habit of smoking during a meal, and the border of his plate, which held the remains of a kidney, showed a couple of cigarette-ends. He gave Richard a cigarette from his gold case, and Simpkin supplemented this hospitality with a glass of adorable and unique sherry.
‘We will deprive ourselves of your presence, Simpkin,’ said Lord Dolmer, who, a very simple and good-natured man at heart, had nevertheless these little affectations.
‘Certainly, sir,’ said the privileged Simpkin, who liked to hear his master use these extraordinary phrases.
‘And now, Redgrave, what is it? You pride yourself, I know, on your inscrutable features, but I perceive that there is something up.’
‘Well,’ said Richard, ‘it’s about that Craig affair. I thought I’d just call and tell you privately that I can’t do anything. I should like, if you and Mr. Lock don’t object, to retire from it.’
‘Singular!’ exclaimed Lord Dolmer mildly—, ‘highly singular! Tell me the details, my friend.’
Richard, rather to his own surprise, began to tell the story, omitting, however, all reference to Micky, the detective.
‘And do you believe Mr. Raphael Craig’s tale?’ asked Lord Dolmer. ‘It seems to me scarcely to fit in with some of the facts which you have related.’
Richard took breath.
‘No, I don’t,’ he said plumply.
‘And yet you prefer to go no further?’
‘And yet I prefer to go no further.’
‘And this Teresa, who frequents circuses and chalk-pits, and faints at midnight—what sort of a girl is she?’
‘Miss Craig is a very beautiful woman,’ said Richard stiffly.
He tried hard to speak in a natural tone of voice, but failed.
‘She has bewitched you, Redgrave,’ said Lord Dolmer. ‘It is a clear case. She has bewitched you. This won’t do at all—my unimpressionable Redgrave knocked over by a country girl of nineteen or so!’
He rubbed his hands together, and then lighted another cigarette.
Richard pulled himself together, and replied, smiling:
‘Not at all.... But really, Lord Dolmer, I want to throw the thing up. So far from Miss Craig having bewitched me, I shall, in all probability, never see her again.’
‘I see—a heroic sacrifice! Well, I will tell Mr. Simon Lock... what shall I tell him?’
‘Tell him I have discovered nothing definite, and own myself beaten as regards finding out the true origin of Raphael Craig’s eccentricities. But tell him, also, that I am convinced that Raphael Craig is nothing worse than eccentric.’ Richard paused, and repeated: ‘Yes, nothing worse than eccentric.’
‘No, Redgrave, I won’t tell him that you are convinced of that.’
‘And why not?’
‘Because, forgive me, I am convinced that you are not convinced of it.’
There was an interval of silence, during which two spirals of smoke ascended gracefully to the panelled ceiling of Lord Dolmer’s diningroom.
‘Perhaps I am not,’ Richard answered calmly. ‘Tell Simon Lock what you like, then, only make it plain that I retire. I ask no fee, since I have earned none. I wash my hands of the whole business. I am within my rights in so doing.’
‘Certainly you are within your rights,’ said Lord Dolmer. ‘And d’you know, Redgrave, I am rather glad that you are retiring from the case.’
‘Why?’
‘If I tell you my reason you will regard it as strictly confidential?’
Richard assented.
‘It is this: Mr. Simon Lock has a mysterious animus against Raphael Craig; what the cause of that animus is neither I nor any of the other directors can guess, but it exists. (Remember, all this is between friends.) It is Mr. Lock who has forced on this secret inquiry. The other directors were against a proceeding which is rather underhand and contrary to the best traditions of the bank. But Mr. Simon Lock had his way.’ Here Lord Dolmer lighted another cigarette and resumed. ‘I ask you, Why should the bank interfere? A bank manager has a perfect right to live where he likes, and, outside office hours, to do what he likes, so long as he obeys the laws of the country and the laws of respectability. Mr. Lock laid stress on the fact that Raphael Craig had been fined for furious motor-car driving. But what of that? It is a misfortune which may overtake the wisest of us. You, my dear Redgrave, well know that even I have several times only narrowly escaped the same ignominious fate. The fact is—and I tell you this candidly—there is something between Mr. Simon Lock and Raphael Craig. When Mr. Lock joined the Board one of his first actions was to suggest that Craig should be asked to resign—why, no one knows. Craig is one of the most able bank managers in London. He would long since have been promoted to a superior post but for Mr. Simon Lock’s consistent opposition. For these reasons, as I say, I am glad that you have retired from the case. For anything I know Raphael Craig may be one of the biggest scoundrels at large. I don’t care. The point is that he has not been fairly treated by us—that is to say, by Simon Lock. I have the honour to be an Englishman, and fair play is my creed.’ His lordship was silent for a space, and then he said, by way of finale, ‘Of course, I rely absolutely upon your discretion, Redgrave.’
Richard nodded.
‘What you say is very interesting,’ he remarked. ‘It is conceivable, then, that Mr. Lock, not to be daunted by my defection, may insist on employing another private detective?’
‘Quite conceivable,’ Lord Dolmer admitted.
‘In that case,’ Richard began, and then stopped.
‘What?’ asked Lord Dolmer.
‘Oh, nothing!’ said Richard.
Lord Dolmer smiled, and, still smiling, said:
‘One word of advice, my friend: forget her.’
‘Why?’ Richard questioned absently, and bit his lip.
‘Forget her,’ repeated the Baron.