CHAPTER IIPERKINS
MISS DERRICK left the room, and Perkins stood motionless as though she welcomed its silence. Her eyes took on a strange expression as she scanned this apartment, with every least detail of which she was utterly familiar. The paneling ran nearly to the ceiling, and was topped by a narrow shelf. The west wall was dominated by the fireplace, and in the corner, placed at a slight angle from the wall itself, was the big desk. Sitting there, one looked not out through the French window, but almost directly at the door from the main hall. The desk was already littered with Derrick’s manuscript, and toward it Perkins moved as in a dream.
She put one thin hand on the smooth leather surface, then bent over the massive frame, searching, it seemed, in the manner of one who hopes she may not find. Her attitude suggested that she had done this many times before, and always with the same result; but it did not affect the swift and silent touch with which she fingered the heavy mahogany corners and deep, carved molding of its intricate design. Presently she shook her head with a sort of patient resolution and turned on the portrait a look of extraordinary inquiry, as though Millicent’s eyes, peering from the pigment, could have directed her—if they only would. The picture might have been alive, so keen was her regard, so expectant of an answer.
Evening had drawn on, and the study became peopled with soft mysterious shadows in which she stood like a priestess before some half-veiled shrine. She made no movement toward the lamp but in the gloom progressed without a sound from point to point, with here and there a lingering touch to furniture and woodwork. These intimate caresses blended her the more completely with all that surrounded her till she was merged and absorbed into the bodily human presentment of wood and stone. Finally she came directly under the portrait, bent her head in an attitude of profound thought, and remained quite motionless. She was standing thus when the front hall door opened and Derrick’s whistle sounded cheerily outside.
At that the maid smiled to herself with sudden pleasure, crossed the room swiftly, and became occupied with the tea-tray. Derrick entered. He did not see her at first and started at a slight rattle of china.
“Jove, Perkins, you made me jump! I thought you were part of the room.”
She did not answer. He sent her a quick searching glance, stood by the mantel, and, taking out his pipe, watched her silently. How amazingly she fitted into everything! No, he could not imagine Beech Lodge without this woman.
“You will want to work now, sir?”
He nodded. “Yes, I think I will”; then, suddenly, “I say, how did you know I wanted to work?”
She gave a queer, twisted smile, the first he had seen on that ageless face—a strange and almost grotesquely communicable look, with which she stepped at once from the rôle of servant and became a sort of administrator of something yet to be explained. But there was no lack of respect in her manner.
“I thought perhaps you might, sir.”
She took out the tray and, returning in a moment, adjusted the heavy curtains over the French window. He watched her light the desk-lamp and turn it low, feeling rested and soothed by every deft and noiseless movement. His senses were comforted by the indescribable certainty of her touch, which gave him an extraordinary feeling of confidence—in something. And Perkins must know what this was. Presently he went to the desk and fingered his manuscript. It struck him that what he had already written was a little unreal and undirected. It didn’t go deep enough.
“Shall I make up the fire, sir?”
“No, thank you. It’s not worth while till after dinner. But I’d like the lamp higher.”
She came slowly toward him. “Have you really seen this room by firelight, sir?”
He looked at her curiously and instantly pictured this ancient chamber with warm shadows flickering over its mellow casements. Depth and warmth; that’s what it would be, had always been. He knew this much.
“Perhaps you might make up the fire after all. Good suggestion!”
She obeyed, and he watched the effect—more fascinating than he had imagined. The study took on a new and ghostly beauty. Its dancing shadows were populous with fantasy that died and was born while he stared. There were tenants of the past here that no change of ownership could ever displace; reminders of spoken things that had drifted from vanished lips; echoes of songs whose lilt had never become silent. It had ceased to be a room. It was a palace of dream and vision. And in the background stood Perkins.
“By George!” he said under his breath.
“I thought you’d like it, sir.”
She was half invisible, and he started violently. “It’s wonderful, but I expected that.”
“Yes, it’s strange how one can tell.”
He glanced at her, as though he had known her all his life. “There is something about this room, and I felt it the first time I came in. How old is it?”
“It has no age, sir.”
Derrick did not seem surprised. “I thought you’d say that.” He paused; then as though resuming some previous talk, “Who else has felt it?”
“Only Mr. Millicent since I came here, and his daughter. It was different with Mrs. Millicent, and she was frightened.”
“I think I understand that, too. Was this his favorite room?”
“Yes, that is his desk. I think that at the end he was frightened as well.”
“And you found him. How was that?”
She made an indefinite gesture. “They sent for me.”
Again he felt nothing of surprise. “Yes, because they had seen and knew. But why did you stay here after it happened?”
Perkins took one long, uncertain breath. “I did go away for a week, but I couldn’t stay. It was all silent in London where I went. Then I knew that it—that they would not let me remain away, so I had to come back.” She gazed round this well-remembered room and seemed to signal that she acknowledged its potency.
Derrick looked at the littered desk and into the mask-like face. Her eyes were alight now, and not those of a lonely woman. She was, as it were, surrounded by friends. He wondered if they would ever be his friends.
“Do you mind talking like this? I think I understand, but most people wouldn’t.”
“It makes me happier. For two years there have been no living words about it. I could never find any one who understood at all since it happened, and Miss Millicent would not speak.” She hesitated, and sent him the faintest smile. “For the last two days the house has been amused.”
“How?” he demanded. Beech Lodge seemed to be stirring about him, and with slow palpitations of a monstrous life, throbbing in one vast pulse on which Perkins kept a cool, knowledgeable finger. It moved and breathed.
“It was at the men who came to take the inventory. They were such children; though one of them, and he was quite old, guessed at something in a general way. The other could never hear or see anything.”
He nodded and, turning, caught a yellow flicker that touched the portrait into a strange similitude of life. Millicent’s eyes were speaking now, strange things to which he had no key. But only for a little while. The key was not far away. There came over Derrick the profound conviction that this was all arranged. It belonged to the cycle of appointed things. The stage was all set. If he could but keep his ears tuned to the elusive vibrations that permeated this solitary dwelling, he might decipher its mystery. And Perkins was part of it.
“Is that like Mr. Millicent?”
She nodded, with no surprise that he should know whose portrait it was. “Yes, and there was something about him very like you, sir. Not in appearance, but the other thing. He once told me that he began to hear and understand a little while he was a child. They commenced to talk before he left his first school. I’m glad, sir, that Miss Derrick does not understand.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because she told me not to be lonely, as if one could. She thinks I’m a little mad, and that’s why I’m willing to stay here and not ask high wages.”
He did not answer, beginning now to perceive why he had been led to this isolated spot. Millicent stared down at him, and he was persuaded that from the picture proceeded a thin appeal for help—or was it for revenge?—Millicent whose life had been so suddenly snuffed out—Millicent who had been afraid before he died. Afraid of what?
“You’re not afraid too, sir, are you? It’s no use if you are.”
He shook his head, scanning thoughtfully the books, the prints, the dull paneling, and heavy oaken floor.
“You believe,” he said slowly, “that all this has sucked in year after year something from mortality, something that is never quite lost, till, in time, wood and stone and paper become something much more than this, and radiate back to us, if we can only catch it, the wisdom and courage and love and evil they have so long absorbed. You believe all this, Perkins?”
Her eyes opened wide, filling with a strange light. She was no longer an impassive, middle-aged woman, the servant of the house, but a creature vibrant with feeling, as one who has unleashed her soul. Her lips moved inaudibly, as at some mystic shrine.
“Wisdom and courage and love and evil,” she repeated in an awed whisper. “Yes, yes, that’s it, all of it. Last time it was evil in Beech Lodge. The evil had been here for months and years, growing stronger and stronger. It began when Mr. Millicent got back from the East, and it never stopped. I tried to silence it but failed, and then it silenced him. The evil was too strong.”
“But it’s over now,” said Derrick steadily.
“No, it’s here yet, in this room,” she pointed to the portrait. “He knows. He’s been trying to tell me but cannot.”
“From whom does it come?”
“Wait, sir; you’re not ready yet. Nothing is quite ready, but it will be soon. That’s why you came. The others will come, too.”
He experienced a remarkable sensation of having lost all physical weight, and seemed to catch a low singing note as of a myriad of tiny voices, the far murmur of those who approached from the unknown. He could see Perkins, still motionless, and feel his own body, but this had no significance. As the wireless operator tunes his set till it abstracts from the invisible only that which is carried by its own individual wave-length and remains unaffected by all others, so Derrick began to pick up a series of vibrations that in a queer and remote fashion he recognized, but could not as yet interpret. Then he caught his own tones.
“So this air is full of that which can never die or disappear, and may save or destroy as it is written. It destroyed Millicent and may be the undoing of others unless it is brought to naught.”
“How else could it be?” Perkins covered her pale face, bent her head, and disappeared.
Derrick stared at the portrait, his features transfigured with something that was not altogether wonder. It was all unreal yet enormously real. What surprised him most was that he should be admitted so readily to this “no man’s land” where mystery, like a cloaked figure, moved among the shadows of tragedy. How much was here? How much of it was his own fancy? Who was the real Millicent, the man within the man who had been afraid before he died? How and why did Millicent die? Did evil take on an embodiment and, emerging like an apparition from the unknown, butcher him where he sat? Derrick pictured him, shrinking back into his chair with starting eyes while something moved closer, closer. And then—
A knock sounded at the door.
“If you please, sir, the inventory men would like to come in for a moment.” The impassive mask had fallen over her face again.
“Eh! I thought they had finished.” He spoke jerkily, aware that the study had suddenly become void and silent. “All right, they may come.”
A shuffle of footsteps in the hall, and Mr. Jarrad entered deferentially, hat in hand. He was followed by Dawkins. The younger man looked amused, and a trifle superior.
“I beg pardon for disturbing you like this, sir, but on looking over our notes I find that my colleague has omitted to make an entry concerning this desk.”
“Anything the matter with the desk?” asked Derrick curiously.
“No, sir, it’s merely the point of its physical condition, which would naturally affect any possible question of dilapidations. When I examined it I noticed a large stain on the leather, quite faint and dull. It’s the sort of thing one generally finds on desks of this character, especially when there happen to be young people in the family. I did not detect it till for some reason I made a second inspection. Now it seems that either I did not mention this for record or, if I did, my colleague failed to make the entry. So with your permission I’ll show it to him.”
Derrick felt no surprise. “Certainly,” he said mechanically. “Do you need more light?”
Mr. Jarrad shook his head, advanced to the desk, reverentially moved a sheaf of manuscript, put on his glasses, and bent low over the glossy surface. Dawkins stood at his elbow looking openly incredulous.
“I can’t see anything, just the same,” said the latter, “and a stain is a stain.”
Mr. Jarrad shifted the lamp and peered hard. “Curious,” he murmured to himself. “How very curious! I could have sworn that—ah—there, my friend,” he nodded with satisfaction, “you can see it now. It seems a little more difficult to place than the last time, but there it is, and quite large.” He ran a thin finger over an irregular outline. “In a certain light it might be almost invisible. Very faint, I admit, but surely your young eyes are as sharp as my glasses?”
Dawkins scrutinized, nodded, mumbled an apology, and made an entry in the large book. Mr. Jarrad turned to Derrick.
“That’s what I referred to, sir, and it’s not my habit to overlook small things. The foundation of a sound inventory business is system plus what might be called perception.”
“Perception?”
“Yes, sir. It involves a certain amount of sensitiveness, strange as that may sound, and the ability to perceive and record what is usually, in fact one might almost say always, missed by the casual observer. It’s not altogether a matter of training, either, but of instinct. Possibly there’s not one man in a hundred who would have spotted that; and if I were fanciful, sir, I would hazard the opinion that the desk was trying to hide it, which is of course absurd. In fact, though I see that you yourself have been sitting here, I am sure you did not observe it. Thank you, sir, and good night! We’ll be of no further trouble now.”
This oration being delivered in his very best manner, and the dignity of his profession thus established, Mr. Jarrad retired. When the steps died out, Derrick looked for himself. Close under the lamp he discerned a shadowy blotch of irregular shape, a rough pool with a tone a shade darker than the leather. It had apparently been subjected to hard rubbing. It was a discoloration of no particular hue, but as he gazed he knew without doubt that it had been made two years previously by the life-blood of Henry Millicent.
CHAPTER IIITHE MAN FROM THE EAST
AWEEK passed at Beech Lodge, while Derrick endeavored to get down to work; but in spite of every effort, progress seemed impossible. Ideas, when they came, were illusory; his characters imbued themselves with strange aspirations and qualities, and plot after plot was displaced by the secret but constantly strengthening conviction that this novel was not, for the present at any rate, the most important thing in life. More than ever he was fascinated by Millicent’s study and the nameless advances seemingly made by the portrait of its late owner, and sat at the big desk for hours, fingering his pen, grasping at thoughts that continually eluded him. By the end of the second week he was assured there was something the dead man wanted him to do.
Of all this he said nothing to Edith, and it was a relief to know that she was of too practical a nature to harbor imaginings similar to his own. Her days were spent in settling down, and he agreed thankfully with all she proposed, stipulating only that the study itself should remain absolutely undisturbed. That room, he announced with an air of great contentment, had been designed and equipped to suit his particular fancy. When he said this it seemed that the portrait of Millicent signaled its silent approval.
It was one evening when he was at the desk, trying as usual to classify his own thoughts, that Edith looked up from the book in her lap.
“Jack,” she said suddenly.
He put down his pen with relief. There were whispering shadows in the corner, and one could not work to-night.
“Yes, what is it?”
“Will you tell me something, quite honestly?”
He smiled and nodded. “It’s no particular effort to be honest with you. What am I suspected of now?”
She glanced into the leaping fire, and turned with a quick, familiar motion. “How’s the book going? I do so want to know.”
“It isn’t making what one would call absolutely triumphant progress. It’s generally that way at first. Then later on you realize that you’ve done far more than you thought, and the happy issue is in sight.”
“Do you know yet whether Beech Lodge is as good a place to work in as you expected?”
“I think it is, quite,” he said slowly. “It’s a new atmosphere, and one doesn’t get it at once, but whatever I write here will be different and”—he hesitated an instant—“I think stronger than anything I’ve done yet. I can see that already.”
“I’m glad you haven’t any second thoughts about the place.”
“But I have, quite a lot. They’re not sorted out yet. What about you? Too busy to think at all?”
She glanced at him oddly. “I’ve been trying to be too busy but haven’t quite succeeded.” She said this with a touch of reluctance, as though confessing to some feminine weakness.
“I hope they’re pleasant thoughts.”
“Not altogether, Jack. Sometimes they’re queer and sometimes a bit disconcerting. Foolish for a woman like me to talk like this, isn’t it?”
He laughed easily. “I know no person less foolish.”
She did not answer but continued to gaze into the fire, her eyes a little disturbed. Her brother wanted time to think, being convinced that it was most important that for the present at any rate Edith should remain unaware of certain things. Perkins, for instance. However competent Perkins might be, she could not in any sense be called a normal woman. Perhaps he was not at this time normal himself. Something assured him that no revelation would be made from the unknown to his sister. Her wireless set might be affected, but it was not tuned to the right wave-length. After all, there was no reason why matters should not proceed smoothly enough.
“Why are your reflections disconcerting?” he hazarded.
“I don’t know. It’s stupid of me, and I call myself an idiot for being affected at all. The funny thing, Jack, is that I’m gradually beginning to consider myself absolutely superficial to something or other—I don’t know what. The house is running well, and Perkins is a treasure; a little chilling at times, but the best servant I’ve ever had. Things seem to do themselves at her desire. Why should I feel superficial?”
He shook his head. “You’re anything but that. What else is the matter?”
“Nothing whatever, and yet—” She got up restlessly and balanced herself on the corner of the desk close to the dull stain. But it had no message for her. “If you say definitely that we made no mistake in taking Beech Lodge, I’ll feel a lot better. Isn’t it silly of me? There’s everything here one wants, and all a housekeeper could desire, but—”
He felt a touch of apprehension and laughed it off. “You’re only a bit lonely, and probably I’ve been selfish in planting you in such a lonely spot for the sake of that confounded novel. I admit to being a bit spoiled. But we have neighbors. What about the Millicents?”
“They’re about three miles from here in a cottage. Perkins tells me the daughter is twenty-two and very pretty but has never got over her father’s death. They were devoted to each other.”
“You’ll see them soon,” he said involuntarily.
“I hardly think so. They would not call under all the circumstances; at least it would be strange if they did.”
“Perhaps not, but—” He broke off. “Tell me more of what’s in your mind. You know what you are to me, and I can’t help feeling rather responsible.”
“It’s hard to tell you without seeming an utter fool. It vexes and amuses me all at once,” she said simply. “It’s things I’ve never been conscious of before. I’m not actually conscious of them now, but it’s as if something had suggested their existence. At the same time I know I’ll never quite understand. I’m not built that way. Perhaps I get something through what I feel for you because you feel it, even though it’s past me. Does this all sound like gibberish? Then again it is as though both of us were being threatened. I wonder if you understand that all this is so different from anything I’ve felt before that I don’t quite know what to do.”
Derrick listened seriously. His first impulse was to laugh her mood away, but instantly there came to him from the surrounding shadows a warning that on no account must he be false to that which he himself believed. Pondering this, he knew that he could not deny these mysterious powers that now proclaimed themselves. He might desert their kingdom, but to disown it was impossible.
“If the place does not agree with you, we’ll chuck it,” he said slowly.
She sent him a whimsical smile. “You know that’s out of the question, dear old boy. We simply can’t; we’re in too deep for the next year. And forgive me if I talk to you as though you were my sister, for that’s one of my selfish habits, and it’s really your own fault for standing it. Here we stick till that novel is finished and sold. I’m sorry it doesn’t go as fast as you would like.”
“It will when I get shaken down,” he answered doggedly. “Trouble is that one is apt to think of too many things at once. Then follows the discarding and selecting process, and I suppose I’m going through that now. The point is to be sure of retaining what is really worth while; and, when I begin to feel that, it means confidence and progress. In that last novel I didn’t quite know what to discard, and it jumps at me from every page. But now,” he concluded with a little lift in his voice, “I’ve an idea that I’m just on the edge of something big.”
“While your sister,” she murmured absently, “has a perfectly ridiculous sensation that she’s just on the edge of something deep, and hasn’t the slightest intention of falling over.”
She sent him a companionable smile and was soon lost in her book. Derrick struggled on with his opening chapters, thankful that she had made no searching inquiry into his own inward sensations. There was no sound save the methodical turning of a page and the scratch of a pen. The fire puttered its ruddy comfort, and Beech Lodge was dipped in an abyss of silence.
Presently the inner edge of one of the heavy curtains that hung over the French window stirred ever so slightly and at one point drew very slowly aside, leaving a narrow oval gap on the border of which a man’s fingers, short, broad, and strong, were visible. This gap widened inch by inch, till, framed in the dull fabric, there appeared a face. A mass of tumbled hair surmounted a low forehead, beneath which moved eyes that were dark, shining, and restless. The man might have been forty, with tanned skin, large and rather uncouth features, a broad mouth, heavy lips—blue-black and unshaven—and a strange, furtive expression. No part of his body was visible below the chin, and the face hung as though suspended like a threatening mask in mid-air. The roving eyes searched the room, darting from place to place with extraordinary quickness, and reflecting little pin-points of light from the leaping flames. Finally they rested on Derrick and his sister with a look in which surprise mingled with a certain unconquerable composure. There was no fear in the look but rather the suggestion that this formidable stranger from the dark had been here before and was now making up his mind on some vital matter. Then the lips widened into a grin rendered repulsive by discolored teeth; the gap narrowed as silently as a leaf falls; face and fingers diminished and disappeared; the curtain trembled and hung straight; and there drifted into the room the faintest possible sound from without. It was over, like a baleful dream.
Derrick looked up sharply. “Who was that?”
Edith, perceiving nothing, stared at him. His face was tense, his eyes very wide open. She struggled against a foolish sense of alarm.
“Where, Jack?”
“In this room. Did any one come in just now?” He peered about, searching the dancing shadows, keyed suddenly to a strange pitch.
“No one,” she said. “Who could there be? I heard nothing.”
“That’s odd,” he murmured.
She got up, stood beside him, and put a hand on his arm. “What’s odd, Jack? I wish you wouldn’t go on like this—and don’t be so mysterious, unless you want it to get on my nerves.”
“I had an extraordinary feeling that for a moment we were not alone.” He laughed, but it sounded a shade forced. “Dreaming as usual, I suppose. Sorry, Edith; I won’t do it again.”
But Miss Derrick, in spite of herself, had turned a little pale. For the past hour she had been trying to put out of her head a succession of strange thoughts about strange things, and she had nearly succeeded. Now she felt dizzy. Perhaps they had not been alone. But who could it have been? Mystery, breathless, confusing, and baffling, stole in on her like a secret assailant, attacking all senses save that of fear. Her pulse slowed—and beat tumultuously. She stepped to the bell and rang hard. Derrick looked at her with wonder.
“What’s the matter? There’s nothing to be frightened about!”
“How do you know?” she stammered. “I feel queer because I don’t know. I want to see some one who isn’t just ourselves,” she went on chaotically, “and I’m the more vexed because it has to—to be Perkins.” She covered her eyes unconsciously, like a child. “Jack, Jack, what is the matter with me? I’m acting like a fool.”
He put his arm round her. “I’m awfully sorry, dear, but, really, it’s nothing. I hardly knew I spoke. Of course it is nothing. I’ll search the house if you like.”
“But would you find it?” she whispered. “Would you find it?”
Came a tap at the door, and Perkins entered, her face as blank as ever. Edith controlled herself with an effort and looked straight into the basilisk eyes.
“Perkins, has any one come to the house just now?”
The maid glanced at her, impassive and inscrutable. “No, madam. Was any one expected?”
Edith could but answer with another question. “You—you have heard nothing within the last few minutes?”
“Nothing whatever, madam.” The voice carried no suggestion of surprise, but Perkins’s eyes met those of Derrick for a passing instant.
“Thank you. Please go to my room, and—and bring me a handkerchief. Are all the windows and doors fastened?”
“Yes, madam, except this one. Mr. Derrick told me to leave that to him.”
She disappeared. Derrick laughed and lit his pipe.
“You’re answered now, Edith! The house closed tight as a drum, and the only access from outside through this room.”
“Perhaps you’re right! Yes, of course you are; but, when she comes back, say something that will keep her for a minute; say anything at all. Please do that. I can’t explain, but I must hear some other voice, even Perkins’s comfortless accents. Jack, I am a fool.”
“You’re not very complimentary to my powers of entertainment,” he chuckled. “I won’t write any more to-night. We’ll get out the cards if you like.”
She shook her head and sent him a strange glance, as though wondering if he would understand. “It isn’t entertainment I want to-night.”
“Then what? I’m not in a position to offer much more.”
“I don’t know. It’s something like protection, but not quite that, either. I know it sounds absurd, but it’s the kind of thing that could only come from one who does not believe what you do about all this.” She made a gesture at the surrounding room. “I suppose it’s a sort of companion in my incredulity. You’re beginning to make things rather too much alive for my comfort, though I don’t believe in them at all.”
“There’s nothing here,” he protested quickly, “nothing but ourselves. Forget what I said. I was only dreaming aloud. It’s what the Scotch call havering.”
Even as he spoke there came to him the refutation of his own words. Millicent signaled his disapproval from the canvas overhead, and stinging whispers from the silence around proclaimed him false to his real belief. The protest died on his lips, and Edith looked at him keenly.
“I don’t want you to say what you don’t believe in the hope of stiffening me, but I’d be glad if you’d help to prevent my believing it, too. I don’t want to, and I don’t intend to. I’m tremendously in earnest about all this. The reason is that I know I haven’t got the right kind of mental machinery. It would break me all up, while on the contrary it is perfectly natural for you. All I want to do is to carry on here in the ordinary way and make it as easy as possible for you to work. That’s a woman’s job, Jack, and I’m satisfied with it and don’t want to go beyond it. If there’s anything that you’re forced to tell me, well, tell me, but don’t do any more. All this may sound rather hysterical, but it isn’t; and it’s because I know myself better than I begin to think I know you, even after all these years. So don’t try me more than you can avoid.”
While she was speaking, Perkins entered as silently as before. Edith steadied herself, wondering how much the woman had heard. She took the handkerchief and made an indefinite gesture to her brother.
“I say, Perkins,” he put in, “this garden is running wild, and I’ve got to get some one at once or there’ll be nothing worth while in the summer. Do you know of any good man in the neighborhood?”
“I’m sorry; I don’t, sir.”
“What about the village? Any chance there?”
“I can’t say, sir. I haven’t been to the village for more than a year.”
“Mr. Thursby’s man seems to have been very capable. Think you could find him?”
“I don’t know where he is, sir. He came once a week for the past year, but left the village about a month ago. There’s been no one since.”
“Did Mr. Thursby take over Mr. Millicent’s man?”
“No, sir.” Perkins’s expression changed ever so slightly. “He could not.”
“Why was that?”
“Because Martin, Mr. Millicent’s man, had already left.”
“When?” said Derrick curiously.
“Three days after Mr. Millicent died.”
Edith gave an involuntary shiver. “Why should he do that so soon?”
Perkins glanced at the portrait with a kind of mute unconsciousness. “I cannot say, madam. Martin did not tell me.”
“It’s more or less understandable,” hazarded Derrick; “probably Mrs. Millicent let him go. She wasn’t keeping on the place anyway. Do you happen to know where he went, Perkins?”
Edith looked up. “Does that matter, Jack?”
“Yes, I think so. The man’s reputation for roses spread all over the county, and I’d like to get him back if we could afford it. And it’s better to have some one who knows the ground, if possible. What about him, Perkins?”
“No one has heard of him from that day, as yet, sir.”
Edith got up with unmistakable decision. She was evidently feeling herself again.
“Good night, Jack. Perkins, please bring my hot water now.”
Derrick followed her with his eyes but said nothing. When he was alone, he seated himself again at his desk and looked musingly at his manuscript. How thin and unprofitable was all he had written, these doings of characters so obviously fictitious, so utterly divorced from the stinging realities of life. They saw little and felt less, being framed in paper and not flesh and blood. His long hand stole to the edge of the desk, avoiding that discolored patch, and clasped the solid frame as though to draw from it something like real inspiration. He now touched the shadow of Millicent’s life-blood. His glance traveled then automatically to the portrait. Blood and paint! Between them they held the key of mystery. He scanned the composed features, feeling that the essence of what had once been Millicent was close by. Then it came to him that this essence of the murdered man had its own part to play and was no doubt playing it at this very moment, moving in mysterious channels and in league with mysterious powers. Recurrent and voiceless questions crowded upon him. What could Millicent mean to Perkins, that lank woman with the forbidding eyes? It seemed after a few moments that the painted lips quivered and tried to speak, and the quiet gaze took on something more than the mere flicker of firelight. What was it that Millicent was trying to convey?
“What have you absorbed?” murmured Derrick, half aloud. “What is it you would tell me? You suffered here death and the fear that was perhaps worse than death, but why did you pay the price?” He began to write unconsciously, capturing the words as they came; strange words, unlinked with anything that had gone before, but pregnant with clouded suggestion. “You believed as I do that we are not the masters of things, but that each of us builds up around him invisible towers of influence, by which in time we are dominated. We store the air with records that the air cannot discard or obliterate, eloquent—yet having no voice; strong—yet casting no shadow. And behind it all are Things. We cry for them as children, and when the end comes it is hard to let them go.”
He was staring, puzzled, at what he had written, when Perkins came in, her face grave.
“If you please, sir, the gardener is here.” Her voice was a little breathless.
“What gardener? I thought you told me just a moment ago that you knew of no one.”
“It’s Mr. Millicent’s gardener,” she replied steadily.
“The man who has not been heard of for two years?”
“Yes, sir. He has just returned.”
Derrick took a long breath. “What brings him back now?”
He regretted the question as soon as it was asked, for Perkins was regarding him as though wondering why he should be surprised. It was all part of something else, something bigger. Surely he must realize that.
“I do not know, sir. He only reached the village this evening and came straight here.”
“Does he expect me to engage him?”
“He would like to come back to his old place, sir.”
“How extraordinary!”
Again Derrick spoke too hastily, and again he regretted it. Perkins did not answer. She stood passively, an austere expression on her sallow features; and, scrutinize as he might, there was no penetrating the veil that enshrouded her. She was an embodiment of something that defied his keenest analysis.
“Where has this man been for the past two years?”
“He did not say, sir.”
“You can tell me whether he was satisfactory in every way to Mr. Millicent?”
She nodded. “Mr. Millicent used to say that he was the best gardener in the county.”
Derrick paused. “Perkins, I’m going to ask you another question, but you need not answer unless you like to.”
“I will tell you anything I know, sir.” She spoke steadily and without a trace of surprise.
“Then from all you know, and I refer to more than his ability as a gardener, do you think it would be a good thing to take him on?”
“Why do you put it that way, sir?”
“I leave that to you. The matter may be more important than one can realize—as yet.” He lingered a little over the last words.
“Then, yes, sir, if you want a garden like Mr. Millicent’s.”
The shrewdness of the answer took him aback. “Send him in,” he said shortly.
The man entered, the man whose dark features had peered through the parted curtains a short hour before. He was powerfully built, very broad, and dressed in loose and much worn tweeds of a foreign cut. He came forward with the lurching walk of a seafaring trade, a colored handkerchief twisted round the column of his brown neck. His swinging hands were wide and knotted, and every motion spoke of great physical strength. No mere Sussex gardener this, who had spent his placid years among his roses and dahlias, but one who carried with him nameless suggestions of the jungle and the faint pounding of distant surf. Dangling his cap, he gave a sort of salute, making at the same time a swift survey of the room. From this furtive and searching glance it seemed to Derrick that the man missed something he knew of old in Millicent’s time, but no flicker of change of expression could be discerned on the weather-beaten face. The face itself was neither cruel nor merciless but conveyed a grim, implacable resolution. Here, reflected Derrick, was the man who disappeared three days after Millicent’s death. What brought him back now?
“What is your name?”
“Martin, sir, John Martin.” The voice was deep and husky.
“Perkins tells me you were in Mr. Millicent’s service.”
“Yes, sir, for some years after his last trip to the East.”
“Did you come from the East with him?”
“No, sir, I—I was engaged here at Beech Lodge.”
“Several years service, yet you left three days after your employer died?”
Martin jerked up his head. “Yes, sir; that’s it.”
“How did you happen to go so quickly? Were you discharged by Mrs. Millicent?”
A dull flush rose in the tanned face. “You might as well ask how my master happened to die three days before I left, sir. Mrs. Millicent was giving up Beech Lodge and didn’t want a gardener. There was no other job in sight about here, and I couldn’t afford to hang on in the village.”
Derrick nodded with seeming carelessness. “Perhaps that’s fair enough, and as it happens I do want a gardener, but you’ll have to satisfy me completely on all points before I consider you. The circumstances are a bit out of the ordinary.”
“I’m ready to tell you anything I can, sir.”
“Then where do you come from now?”
“Upper Burma, by way of Canada. I have a sister in Alberta.” He fumbled in his pocket. “Would you be wanting to see my passport?”
“Not now, at any rate. I don’t understand why you should clear out of Sussex for Burma just because there was no job close at hand.”
“Well, sir, to tell the truth, I was that upset I wanted to get away as far as possible. I couldn’t put the master out of my head. He’d always been good to me from the first day I came, and we liked the same things, sir.”
“What was that?”
“Roses.”
He shot this out with rumbling assurance, and, strange as it sounded, Derrick believed him. It was difficult to picture this great hulk among the roses, these thick fingers training the delicate buds, but Martin’s reputation had already been established far beyond Beech Lodge. There had been, too, an assuring little break in the voice, suggesting a depth of feeling in strange contrast to this forbidding exterior. If this was acting, it was good acting. He scanned the man’s face, but as for promising any future revelations it was no more expressive than that of Perkins herself. Anything might lie hidden here. There were hints of passion in the eyes, but over him rested the touch of a complete control. If one could only get underneath that! It was obvious to Derrick that he must act deliberately—and delicately. It would be a matter of weeks, or perhaps months. The strangeness of the situation came over him with redoubled force. It was all part of a plan. Whose plan?
“How is it, Martin, if you can tell me, that after two years on the other side of the world you turn up here within a week or so of my coming? There has been no job going for all that time, but you arrive as soon as the job, your old one, is open.”
Martin scratched his head and seemed genuinely puzzled.
“Dunno, sir. It’s queer to me, too, but here I am. I didn’t know there was a job open till a few minutes ago.”
“I take it, then, you had no particular reason for getting back here to-day?”
The man glanced at him with a sort of awkward interest. He hesitated a little, as though about to put forward something hardly credible even to himself, and finally jerked out an answer.
“I can’t say much more than that things kind of hinted at it, sir, and kept on hinting till they made me uncomfortable. There wasn’t any special reason I know of. I was doing well enough, trading up the Irawadi, when something began to get at me to come back, and it kept on till I started for Rangoon. It stayed with me, hustling me along, and I felt I didn’t even want to go and look up my sister; but I did, and the same feeling lifted me out of their farm in Alberta. Up till about two months ago I believed I wasn’t wanted here; then I knew I was wanted for something.” He frowned to himself at this, as though he hardly expected to be either understood or taken seriously. “Maybe I was a fool to come,” he added, “but in a way it wasn’t left to me to decide. It’s the first time I ever struck anything like that. It was like jungle-fever without the fever.”
“You simply had to come,” said Derrick quickly.
“I’m not given to such feelings, but, since you say it, yes, I reckon I had to come.”
Derrick had a faint thrill of triumph. Here again the mysterious factor was at work, the thing to which he himself was yielding so completely. It had spread its potent and invisible filaments half round the world, penetrated the Burmese jungle, and haled this shifty-eyed man back to the tiny Sussex village from which he had fled under the shadow of a great crime as yet undetected. How could these filaments have been set in motion if not at the demand of the dead Millicent whose quiet features now surveyed this recaptured wanderer? What would the thing that had been Millicent arrange next? At the thought of this Derrick’s pulse gave a throb of excitement. Then he looked Martin full in the face.
“Who found your master?”
The man dropped his cap, and all the blood in his body seemed to climb to his temples.
“Miss Perkins found him,” he said jerkily.
“Where did she find him?” If Martin had lied the fact would come out now.
Martin pointed to the desk. “Where you are sitting, Mr. Derrick. He was leaning forward, his head on one side.”
“Dead?”
“Yes, sir, but not long.”
“What had happened?”
“Stabbed in the neck.”
“By what?”
“I do not know, sir.”
“And no trace of what killed him has ever been found?”
“Nothing that I ever heard of.” Martin moved a little impatiently, but Derrick’s voice was very even.
“Of course you were at the inquest? These are some of the things you need not answer, unless you’re determined to get that job.”
“Yes, I was there”—this with a defiant glance—“and they examined me, and when it was over not a man had a word to say against me.”
Derrick sharpened his tone. “Your master is just behind you.”
The man started violently and made a harsh noise in his throat. He turned slowly and unwillingly, forcing himself inch by inch, till, following Derrick’s gaze he saw the portrait. At that his color changed, his face becoming overcast with anger.
“By God, but you frightened me,” he said thickly. “I didn’t know what you meant—thought it was a ghost.”
“Is that a good likeness?”
Martin breathed deeply and pulled himself together stretching his fingers with a slow gesture of relief.
“Yes, that’s him all right, but he looked older, a good deal older toward the end. Something like you, sir, isn’t he?”
“Where were you at the time it happened? Can you tell me exactly, and what you were doing?”
The dark face grew threatening. “Is this another inquest, Mr. Derrick? I came here to try and get my old job.”
“You can drop it if you like, Martin, or else answer my questions.”
“Well,” said the man truculently, “I was smoking in that little garden beside the cottage—I lived there then—when I heard Perkins. She was running like a deer down from the house and calling at the top of her voice. She was only half dressed, and I thought she was mad, screaming about the master being killed. I ran back with her, and found him as I told you—where you’re sitting now. Then I ran to the village for the doctor. When we got him here he said that Mr. Millicent must have been dead for over an hour. He had been struck with great force in the neck with a dagger of some kind. And that’s all I know.”
Derrick nodded, apparently satisfied. “It’s practically what I’ve heard elsewhere.” He sat for a moment, plunged in thought. “Wait where you are for a moment, Martin. I want to have a word with Miss Derrick before deciding.”
He went out. Martin balanced himself on the edge of his chair, listened keenly to the retreating footsteps, heard a creak on the stair, and glanced cautiously about. Then he got up, stole on tiptoe to the door, and put his ear to the keyhole. Satisfied that he was secure, he crept noiselessly across the floor, darting a look at the portrait as he went, and halted stiffly beside the big desk. Here his hands became intensely busy, his thick fingers passing swiftly over the carved frame, like those of a blind man. One particular spot he explored with strained attention, turning his massive head every few seconds toward the door, his whole body keyed to the utmost nervous pitch. He had his back to the French window, and the lamp cast his gigantic shadow on the ceiling, where its distorted shadow quivered like that of a brooding giant.
But from the window another pair of eyes surveyed this silent drama. Once again the curtains had parted slightly some five feet above the floor, and, from the gap so lately tenanted by Martin’s threatening mask, Derrick now watched every move. This was what he sought, this opportunity, but what had guided him to his vantage-point he could not tell. He had remembered that the window was unfastened. He believed that the curtain would keep him safe from discovery, because he was assured that his strange visitor had come to stay and not to steal. To observe Martin when Martin thought himself unobserved, in that direction might lie knowledge. But what was it Martin sought now?
The scrutiny lasted but a few seconds. The gardener was back in his seat when Derrick entered unconcernedly, resumed his seat at the desk, and lit his pipe with extreme deliberation. Martin’s face was utterly blank, and he got up automatically when the new master of Beech Lodge came in.
“If you want that job, I’m inclined to give it to you.”
The big chest expanded slowly, and the broad figure lost something of its rigidity.
“Thank you, sir, and I’ll do my very best,” said Martin eagerly. “I know the place like a book, and I know roses, and you won’t have reason to regret it.”
Derrick smiled. “We haven’t discussed the matter of wages yet.” He was wondering whether the rate of pay meant as little to this man as it had to Perkins. “What I’m going to offer won’t seem much to one who has knocked about the world as much as yourself. It’s not a case of American wages.”
“I’m not worrying about wages, sir. It doesn’t take much to keep me going, and I’ve never had a drink in my life. It’s the old job I’m after.”
“Then what do you say to thirty shillings a week and the cottage.”
“That’s fair enough,” said Martin eagerly.
“By the way, I take it you’re not married?”
“I haven’t any wife now,” he stammered after a poignant pause.
“Sorry, Martin, I didn’t mean to hurt you. Any children?”
“No, sir.” The tanned face was calm again.
“Then I suppose you can begin to-morrow?”
“I’m ready for that.” Martin fingered his cap. “Might I sleep in the cottage to-night, sir? I’ve got my bundle outside.”
He said this without any seeming thought of the inference Derrick must draw, an inference that the latter jumped at. Why bring a bundle before one was sure of a job? But perhaps, and here a message drifted in from the paneled walls, perhaps it was already arranged that Martin should get the job, and the man in some queer way was aware of that. And, after all, why should he part from his bundle? He would have slept with it under a hedge.
Derrick felt in his pocket. “Perhaps you’d better stop in the village to-night, and clean up the cottage to-morrow. It must be cold and damp. Got enough money?”
Martin gave a twisted smile. “Yes, sir, I have money, but if you don’t mind I’ll risk the damp. It’s nothing to me.”
“No, let it stand till to-morrow; then you can move in. I’ll see you about ten o’clock.”
He rang the bell, Martin standing motionless, a baffling expression on his face. He had secured what he came for but still seemed ill at ease and uncontent. Then Perkins entered like a sallow ghost, and Derrick, regarding these two, experienced a novel sensation at seeing them stand side by side, the staff of Beech Lodge, the depositories of the secret of the house. Between them lay the thing he pursued, or that pursued him. They did not look at each other, but waited, silent, impassive, and remote. He wondered what it would be that first broke through the surface of this extraordinary calm, so profound as to be already ominous. But that would come in its appointed cycle.
“Perkins, I have engaged Martin as gardener. He will commence work in the morning, occupy the cottage, and do for himself entirely. Did you do anything in the house before, Martin?”
“Boots and coals, sir.”
“I don’t need any help now, sir,” put in Perkins swiftly.
Martin’s lids flickered, but he did not stir.
“Then for the meantime, Martin, stick to outside work. All right, you may go now.”
The man mumbled good night, made his former awkward salute, and marched into the hall. He did not glance at the woman, nor she at him. Derrick’s eyes narrowed a little.
“Please come here, Perkins, when you’ve locked up.”
The door closed, and he looked instinctively at the portrait as though to ask whether in all this he had done the right thing. But Millicent was uncommunicative to-night. Quite deliberately Derrick was rebuilding the personnel of Beech Lodge as it existed two years before, peopling it with the same faces, making it echo with the same voices. Its one-time master was no doubt still here, and now there remained only the other Millicents. If the circle could but be closed, and old contacts reëstablished, then perhaps the way would become clear. He was deliberating this when Perkins’s return ended the reverie.
“I’d like, if possible, to feel sure, Perkins, that from all you know of Martin I’ve done the right thing in engaging him. This unexpected return is bound to affect you in some way under the circumstances, and—”
He stopped abruptly. She was staring at him with so searching an expression that he knew that to-night he had drawn nearer the essential mystery of Beech Lodge. Yet it was not his action but his words that produced this remarkable effect. He was aware that it was not in the garden, where Millicent had lovingly tended his roses, or anywhere but in this room that the spirit of the murdered man seemed to cry aloud for vengeance—and for peace.
“It was meant that Martin should come back and you should engage him,” said Perkins dully. “I do not know more than that. You could not help it. You were called, and Martin, too.”
He perceived that there was nothing absurd in this. She spoke simply, as though reciting facts established beyond all question. Her look told him that at this moment she could go no further. Suddenly something reached him out of space. The room was alive again.
“How long had Mr. Millicent been dead when you found him?”
“I told you that they sent for me,” she answered gravely, “but I do not know how soon they sent. When the doctor came he thought that it had happened more than an hour before.”
“And you found him at this desk?”
“Did Martin say that?” she asked breathlessly.
“Does it matter who said it?”
Her thin hands clasped over her breast. There was a look in her face he had never seen there before.
“But it matters a great deal if it was Martin. Were you and he long in this room together?”
“No,” she said tremulously, “only a moment, but he stayed there after the doctor came.”
Derrick’s voice, which in spite of himself had risen a little, now dropped to a more level pitch.
“And in spite of all this nothing of any importance seems to have disappeared. Even his papers were undisturbed, so it was not burglary. He had no enemies?”
“He was not that kind. All liked him who knew him.”
“And you have nothing to say or suggest as to any possible motive.”
She did not answer but seemed to withdraw lest he unearth more than she was prepared to reveal. This suggested that it was now for him to follow the trail alone—if he could.
“Was it hard to get that stain reduced?” He flung the question at her like a missile.
Perkins winced visibly, glancing first at him, then at the desk as though its massive surface had found accusing speech. Her breath came faster, and Derrick knew that he had moved a step nearer the truth.
“Are there no secrets from you?” she whispered.
“Perhaps it was not always there,” he continued meaningly, “but returned after I came here. My fingers found it first, and it spoke. Soon after that I began to understand. The inventory man saw it before I did but got nothing from it. Perhaps Martin found it, too, when I was out of the room. I hoped he would.”
She nodded uncertainly, as one blinded by a sudden vision, then moved unsteadily to the desk and stood looking down at the faint, irregular patch. She put out a hand, lean and claw-like, forcing herself to touch the discolored leather. Leaning over it, her eyes dark with unfathomable things, she relived something in that moment; but it was hidden too deep for discovery. Finally she spoke, as though to some one far distant.
“Is it always this way? Is the whole world full of stains like this, stains that go deeper and deeper, however we try to rub them out, till by and by we cannot reach them?”
“Some stains are never effaced,” said Derrick grimly. “We only rub them deeper in.”
“And Martin is here to-night!” The words came from her very soul.
“Martin is probably in the cottage at this moment.”
“But he said he was going to the village.”
Derrick reached for his pipe. “Yes, that’s what I told him, but now I think he’s in the cottage. He does not want to go further from the house than that. I don’t know why, but I know.”
She sent him a look like that of an animal in a trap and left the room. Derrick sucked at his pipe, pitching his mind back over the last half-hour, piecing together fragment after fragment of evidence, but groping in vain for some underlying fact. Incident and strange coincident, shuffle them as he might, they made no decipherable pattern. Then, as happened so often, his eyes wandered to the portrait of Millicent.
“Is it all right,” he said, half aloud, “you whom I have never seen? You know why I am trying, but I do not. It’s all clear on your side, but misty on mine. Is it only for a little longer, till you find rest and sleep—for till then will there be no peace for me?”
“Jack,” sounded a voice at the door, “who on earth are you talking to?”
He started and laughed awkwardly. “Come in, Edith; I thought you were asleep long ago.”
“I couldn’t get to sleep, so thought I would come and see you. Why this oration to an empty room?”
He hooked his arm into hers, led her across, and halted under the portrait.
“I want you to help me do something for that chap.”
She looked at him regretfully. “There’s no reason in you at all, and just when I had persuaded myself that everything was all right.”
“I admit it sounds ridiculous, but really it’s not. I was never more serious in my life.”
“But how can you do anything for a dead man you never knew?” She glanced keenly about the room. “Do you remember our last talk, the one we had just after we got here?”
“Yes, every word of it. And I’m not going to try you now.”
She put a hand on his arm. “It isn’t myself, Jack; it’s you. I’m all right, except that I blame myself for having been rather silly. But I know perfectly well that nothing has been natural since we came here, especially yourself. Things seem to be settled in the ordinary way; then you make me feel they’re not settled, and you, my dear brother, are drifting about as you never have before. What is it? If I knew, perhaps I might help. Really I don’t understand, and in a queer way we don’t seem to be living for ourselves any longer.”
“Well,” he countered, “I’m not altogether unpractical. For instance, I think I’ve got hold of a first-rate gardener.”
“To-night?”
“Yes, he has just gone. I took him on, and he starts to-morrow.”
She brightened at that and went off after begging him not to sit up too late. Derrick went back to his desk, feeling suddenly a little weary. The singing silence reasserted itself, and the fire was low. He endeavored to work.
Presently he looked up sharply and caught his breath. There was a distinct tapping at the French window. He had a novel sensation of fear. The sound continued with a sort of regular and tiny beat. He got up slowly, and drew aside the curtain. The window was not locked. Through the glass he saw the peaked cap, red face, and brass buttons of a gigantic policeman. The man made a reassuring salute, and Derrick opened the window.
“Come in,” he said.
“Beg pardon, sir, for not going to the front door, but I saw you were alone and didn’t want to wake the whole house. There’s no other light anywhere.”
“All right, officer, but you gave me a bit of a start. What is it?”
“I’m on patrol, sir, passing here twice every night. I usually take a stroll round the house and cottage to see that all is as it should be, and just now, when I was at the back of the cottage, I noticed a light inside. That surprised me, as I knew it had not been occupied since Mr. Thursby left.”
“That’s quite right.”
“Well, sir, there’s a man there now. Is that with your permission?”
Derrick’s pulse beat a little faster. “What sort of a man?”
“Middle-aged, sir, queer face, queer clothes, sitting on a chair and staring.”
“At what?”
“At nothing, sir, so far as I could make out. A thick-set party, his skin burned and brown as though he’d come off the sea. Black hair, he has, and big hands and odd eyes that never stirred. It was the eyes that took me. He’s an ugly-looking customer all round, sir, but I thought I’d better see you before I pulled him in, just in case. What puzzled me was the lamp being lit and the blind up, if he’d no right to be there. There, was a bundle on the floor beside him.”
“I’m glad you came in first. How long have you been on duty in the village?”
“Matter of a year and a half now, sir. I was transferred here just about the time Mr. Thursby left Beech Lodge.”
“Well, I’ve been here a little more than a week. You knew, of course, that this was Mr. Millicent’s house?”
“Yes, sir, we all know that. There wasn’t much chance of forgetting it.”
“But I don’t suppose you personally know anything about his death—or murder, if you like?”
The constable shook his head. “I know what the rest of the force knows, and I’ve read the evidence at the inquest. But there wasn’t anything dug up then that was of any real use.”
Derrick nodded. “I had heard nothing of it up to a week ago, not even a whisper when I leased this house last month. Now I’m beginning to feel as though I’d known it all my life. What does the sergeant think about it?”
“I’m not supposed to say anything about what’s not my duty, sir,” replied the man a trifle stiffly.
“You’re probably right there; is this the first time you’ve been in this room?”
The constable looked ponderously about, his eyes glinting at sight of the desk. He knew what had happened there. Then at the portrait, with a hard stare.
“Yes, sir, first time.”
“Ever been in the house at all?”
“No, sir, never crossed the door-step.”
“I suppose you know that Mr. Millicent was found dead at this desk with a stab in his neck? That’s him above the mantel. They say it’s very like him and, oddly, something like me.”