On this same Christmas Day Sergeant Hooper was feeling morose and discontented; not because he was alone in the world (a situation comprising many advantages), nor on the score of his wages, which were extremely liberal; nor on account of the “old blighter’s”—that is, Mr. Saffron’s—occasional outbursts of temper, these being in the nature of the case and within the terms of the contract; nor, finally, by reason of Beaumaroy’s airy insolence, since from his youth up the Sergeant was hardened to unfavorable comments on his personal appearance, trifling vulgarities which a man of sense could afford to ignore.
No; the winter of his discontent—a bitter winter—was due to the conviction, which had been growing in his mind for some time, that he was only in half the secret, and that not the more profitable half. He knew that the old blighter had to be humored in certain small ways, as, for example, in regard to the combination knife-and-fork—and the reason for it. But, first, he did not know what happened inside the Tower; he had never seen the inside of it; the door was always locked; he was never invited to accompany his masters when they repaired thither by day, and he was not on the premises by night. And, secondly, he did not understand the Wednesday journeys to London, and he had never seen the inside of Beaumaroy’s brown bag—that, like the Tower door, was always locked. He had handled it once, just before the pair set out for London one Wednesday. Beaumaroy, a careless man sometimes, in spite of the cunning which Dr. Irechester attributed to him, had left it on the parlor table while he helped Mr. Saffron on with his coat in the passage, and the Sergeant had swiftly and surreptitiously lifted it up. It was very light, obviously empty, or, at all events, holding only featherweight contents. He had never got near it when it came back from town; then it always went straight into the Tower and had the key turned on it forthwith.
But the Sergeant, although slow-witted as well as ugly, had had his experiences; he had carried weights both in the army and in other institutions which are officially described as His Majesty’s, and had seen other men carry them too. From the set of Beaumaroy’s figure as he arrived home on at least two occasions with the brown bag, and from the way in which he handled it, the Sergeant confidently drew the conclusion that it was of a considerable, almost a grievous, weight. What was the heavy thing in it? What became of that thing after it was taken into the Tower? To whose use or profit did it, or was it, to inure? Certainly it was plain, even to the meanest capacity, that the contents of the bag had a value in the eyes of the two men who went to London for them and who shepherded them from London to the custody of the Tower.
These thoughts filled and racked his brain as he sat drinking rum and water in the bar of theGreen Manon Christmas evening; a solitary man, mixing little with the people of the village, he sat apart at a small table in the corner, musing within himself, yet idly watching the company—villagers, a few friends from London and elsewhere, some soldiers and their ladies. Besides these, a tall slim man stood leaning against the bar, at the far end of it, talking to Bill Smithers, the landlord, and sipping whisky-and-soda between pulls at his cigar. He wore a neat dark overcoat, brown shoes, and a bowler hat rather on one side; his appearance was, in fact, genteel, though his air was a trifle raffish. In age he seemed about forty. The Sergeant had never seen him before, and therefore favored him with a glance of special attention.
Oddly enough, the gentlemanly stranger seemed to reciprocate the Sergeant’s interest; he gave him quite a long glance. Then he finished his whisky-and-soda, spoke a word to Bill Smithers, and lounged across the room to where the Sergeant sat.
“It’s poor work drinking alone on Christmas night,” he observed. “May I join you? I’ve ordered a little something, and, well, we needn’t bother about offering a gentleman a glass tonight.”
The Sergeant eyed him with apparent disfavor—as, indeed, he did everybody who approached him—but a nod of his head accorded the desired permission. Smithers came across with a bottle of brandy and glasses. “Good stuff!” said the stranger, as he sat down, filled the glasses, and drank his off. “The best thing to top up with, believe me!”
The Sergeant, in turn, drained his glass, maintaining, however, his aloofness of demeanor. “What’s up?” he growled.
“What’s in the brown bag?” asked the stranger lightly and urbanely.
The Sergeant did not start; he was too old a hand for that; but his small gimlet eyes searched his new acquaintance’s face very keenly. “You know a lot!”
“More than you do in some directions, less in others, perhaps. Shall I begin? Because we’ve got to confide in one another, Sergeant. A little story of what two gentlemen do in London on Wednesdays, and of what they carry home in a brown leather bag? Would that interest you? Oh, that stuff in the brown leather bag! Hard to come by now, isn’t it? But they know where there’s still some, and so do I, to remark it incidentally. There were actually some people, Sergeant Hooper, who distrusted the righteousness of the British Cause, which is to say (the stranger smiled cynically) the certainty of our licking the Germans, and they hoarded it, the villains!”
Sergeant Hooper stretched out his hand towards the bottle. “Allow me!” said the stranger politely. “I observe that your hand trembles a little.”
It did. The Sergeant was excited. The stranger seemed to be touching on a subject which always excited the Sergeant—to the point of hands trembling, twitching, and itching.
“Have to pay for it, too! Thirty bob in curl-twisters for every ruddy disc; that’s the figure now, or thereabouts. What do they want to do it for? What’s your governor’s game? Who, in short, is going to get off with it?”
“What is it they does, the old blighter and Boomery (thus he pronounced the name Beaumaroy), in London?”
“First to the stockbroker’s, then to a bank or two, I’ve known it three even; then a taxi down East, and a call at certain addresses. The bag’s with ‘em, Sergeant, and at each call it gets heavier. I’ve seen it swell, so to speak.”
“Who in hell are you?” the Sergeant grunted huskily.
“Names later—after the usual guarantees of good faith.”
The whole conversation, carried on in low tones, had passed under cover of noisy mirth, snatches of song, banter, and gigglings; nobody paid heed to the two men talking in a corner. Yet the stranger lowered his voice to a whisper, as he added:
“From me to you fifty quid on account; from you to me just a sight of the place where they put it.”
Sergeant Hooper drank, smoked, and pondered. The stranger showed the edge of a roll of notes, protruding it from his breast-pocket. The Sergeant nodded, he understood that part. But there was much that he did not understand. “It fair beats me what the blazes they’re doing itfor,” he broke out.
“Whose money would it be?”
“The old blighter’s, o’ course. Boomery’s stony, except for his screw.” He looked hard at the gentlemanly stranger, and a slow smile came on his lips, “That’s your idea, is it, mister?”
“Gentleman’s old, looks frail, might go off suddenly. What then? Friends turn up, always do when you’re dead, you know. Well, what of it? Less money in the funds than was reckoned; dear old gentleman doesn’t cut up as well as they hoped! And meanwhile our friend B——! Does it dawn on you at all, from our friend B——‘s point of view, Sergeant? I may be wrong, but that’s my provisional conjecture. The question remains how he’s got the old gent into the game, doesn’t it?”
Precisely the point to which the Sergeant’s mind also had turned! The knowledge which he possessed—that half of the secret—and which his companion did not, might be very material to a solution of the problem; the Sergeant did not mean to share it prematurely, without necessity, or for nothing. But surely it had a bearing on the case? Dull-witted as he was, the Sergeant seemed to catch a glimmer of light, and mentally groped towards it.
“Well, we can’t sit here all night,” said the stranger in good-humored impatience. “I’ve a train to catch.”
“There’s no train up from here to-night.”
“There is from Sprotsfield. I shall walk over.”
The Sergeant smiled. “Oh, if you’re walking to Sprotsfield, I’ll put you on your way. If anybody was to see us, Boomery, for instance, he couldn’t complain of my seeing an old pal on his way on Christmas night. No ‘arm in that; no look of prowling, or spying, or such like! And you are an old pal, ain’t you?”
“Certainly; your old pal—let me see—your old pal Percy Bennett.”
“As it might he, or as it might not. What about the—” He pointed to Percy Bennett’s breast-pocket.
“I’ll give it you outside. You don’t want me to be seen handing it over in here, do you?”
The Sergeant had one more question to ask. “About ‘ow much d’ye reckon there might be by now?”
“How often have they been to London? Because they don’t come to see my friends every time, I fancy.”
“Must ‘ave been six or seven times by now. The game began soon after Boomery and I came ‘ere.”
“Then, quite roughly, quite a shot, from what I know of the deals we—my friends, I mean—did with them, and reasoning from that, there might be a matter of seven or eight thousand pounds.”
The Sergeant whistled softly, rose, and led the way to the door. The gentlemanly stranger paused at the bar to pay for the brandy, and after bidding the landlord a civil good-evening, with the compliments of the season, followed the Sergeant into the village street.
Fifteen minutes’ brisk walk brought them to Hinton Avenue. At the end of it they passed Doctor Mary’s house; the drawing-room curtains were not drawn; on the blind they saw reflected the shadows of a man and a girl, standing side by side. “Mistletoe, eh?” remarked the stranger. The Sergeant spat on the road; they resumed their way, pursuing the road across the heath.
It was fine, but overclouded and decidedly dark. Every now and then Bennett, to call the stranger by what was almost confessedly anom-de-guerre,flashed a powerful electric torch on the roadway. “Don’t want to walk into a gorse-bush,” he explained with a laugh.
“Put it away, you darned fool! We’re nearly there.”
The stranger obeyed. In another seven or eight minutes there loomed up, on the left hand, the dim outline of Mr. Saffron’s abode—the square cottage with the odd round tower annexed.
“There you are!” The Sergeant’s voice instinctively kept to a whisper. “That’s what you want to see.”
“But I can’t see it—not so as to get any clear idea.”
No lights showed from the cottage, nor, of course, from the Tower; its only window had been, as Mr. Penrose said, boarded up. The wind—there was generally a wind on the heath—stirred the fir-trees and the bushes into a soft movement and a faint murmur of sound. A very acute and alert ear might perhaps have caught another sound—footfalls on the road, a good long way behind them. The two spies, or scouts, did not hear them; their attention was elsewhere.
“Probably they’re both in bed; it’s quite safe to make our examination,” said the stranger.
“Yes, I s’pose it is. But look to be ready to douse your glim. Boomery’s a nailer at turning up unexpected.” The Sergeant seemed rather nervous.
Mr. Bennett was not. He took out his torch, and guided by its light (which, however, he took care not to throw towards the cottage windows) he advanced to the garden gate, the Sergeant following, and took a survey of the premises. It was remarkable that, as the light of the torch beamed out, the faint sound of footfalls on the road behind died away.
“Keep an eye on the windows, and touch my elbow if any light shows. Don’t speak.” The stranger was at business—his business—now, and his voice became correspondingly businesslike. “We won’t risk going inside the gate. I can see from here.” Indeed he very well could; Tower Cottage stood back no more than twelve or fifteen feet from the road, and the torch was powerful.
For four or five minutes the stranger made his examination. Then he turned off his torch. “Looks easy,” he remarked, “but of course there’s the garrison.” Once more he turned on his light, to look at his watch. “Can’t stop now, or I shall miss the train, and I don’t want to have to get a bed at Sprotsfield. A strayed reveler on Christmas night might be too well remembered. Got an address?”
“Care of Mrs. Willnough, Laundress, Inkston.”
“Right. Good-night.” With a quick turn he was off along the road to Sprotsfield. The Sergeant saw the gleam of his torch once or twice, receding at quite a surprising pace into the distance. Feeling the wad of notes in his pocket—perhaps to make sure that the whole episode had not been a dream—the Sergeant turned back towards Inkston.
After a couple of minutes, a tall figure emerged from the shelter of a high and thick gorse bush just opposite Tower Cottage, on the other side of the road. Captain Alec Naylor had seen the light of the stranger’s torch, and, after four years in France, he was well skilled in the art of noiseless approach. But he felt that, for the moment at least, his brain was less agile than his feet. He had been suddenly wrenched out of one set of thoughts into another profoundly different. It was his shadow, together with Cynthia Walford’s, that the Sergeant and the stranger had seen on Doctor Mary’s blind. After “walking her home,” he had—well, just not proposed to Cynthia, restrained more by those scruples of his than by any ungraciousness on the part of the lady. Even his modesty could not blind him to this fact. He was full of pity, of love, of a man’s joyous sense of triumph, half wishing that he had made his proposal, half glad that he had not, just because it, and its radiant promise, could still be dangled in the bright vision of the future. He was in the seventh heaven of romance, and his heaven was higher than that which most men reach; it was built on loftier foundations.
Then came the flash of the torch; the high spirits born of one experience sought an outlet in another. “By Jove, I’ll track ‘em—like old times!” he murmured, with a low light laugh. And, just for fun, he did it, taking to the heath beside the road, twisting his long body in and out amongst gorse, heather, and bracken, very noiselessly, with wonderful dexterity. The light of the lamp was continuous now; the stranger was making his examination. By it Captain Alec guided his steps; and he arrived behind the tall gorse bush opposite Tower Cottage just in time to hear the Sergeant say “Mrs. Willnough, Laundress, Inkston,” and to witness the parting of the two companions.
There was very little to go upon there. Why should not one friend give another an address? But the examination? Beaumaroy should surely know of that? It might be nothing, but, on the other hand, it might have a meaning. But the men had gone, had obviously parted for the night. Beaumaroy could be told to-morrow; now he himself could go back to his visions—and so homeward, in happiness, to his bed.
Having reached this sensible conclusion, he was about to turn away from the garden gate which he now stood facing, when he heard the house door softly open and as softly shut. The practice of his profession had given him keen eyes in the dark; he discovered Beaumaroy’s tall figure stealing very cautiously down the narrow, flagged path. The next instant the light of another torch flashed out, and this time not in the distance, but full in his own face.
“By God, you, Naylor!” Beaumaroy exclaimed in a voice which was low but full of surprise. “I—I—well, it’s rather late—”
Alec Naylor was suddenly struck with the element of humor in the situation. He had been playing detective; apparently he was now the suspected!
“Give me time and I’ll explain all,” he said, smiling under the dazzling rays of the torch.
Beaumaroy glanced round at the house for a second, pursed up his lips into one of the odd little contortions which he sometimes allowed himself, and said: “Well, then, old chap, come in and have a drink, and do it. For I’m hanged if I see why you should stand staring into this garden in the middle of the night! With your opportunities I should be better employed on Christmas evening.”
“You really want me to come in?” It was now Captain Alec’s voice which expressed surprise.
“Why the devil not?” asked Beaumaroy in a tone of frank but friendly impatience.
He turned and led the way into Tower Cottage. Somehow this invitation to enter was the last thing that Captain Alec had expected.
Beaumaroy led the way into the parlor, Captain Alec following. “Well, I thought your old friend didn’t care to see strangers,” he said, continuing the conversation.
“He was tired and fretful to-night, so I got him to bed, and gave him a soothing draught—one that our friend Dr. Arkroyd sent him. He went off like a lamb, poor old boy. If we don’t talk too loud we sha’n’t disturb him.”
“I can tell you what I have to tell in a few minutes.”
“Don’t hurry.” Beaumaroy was bringing the refreshment he had offered from the sideboard. “I’m feeling lonely to-night, so I—” he smiled—“yielded to the impulse to ask you to come in, Naylor. However, let’s have the story by all means.”
The surprise—it might almost have been taken for alarm—which he had shown at the first sight of Alec seemed to have given place to a gentle and amiable weariness, which persisted through the recital of the Captain’s experiences—how his errand of courtesy, or gallantry, had led to his being on the road across the heath so late at night, and of what he had seen there.
“You copped them properly!” Beaumaroy remarked at the end, with a lazy smile. “One does learn a trick or two in France. You couldn’t see their faces, I suppose?”
“No; too dark. I didn’t dare show a light, though I had one. Besides, their backs were towards me. One looked tall and thin, the other short and stumpy. But I should never be able to swear to either.”
“And they went off in different directions, you say?”
“Yes, the tall one towards Sprotsfield, the short one back towards Inkston.”
“Oh, the short stumpy one it was who turned back to Inkston?” Beaumaroy had seated himself on a low three-legged stool, opposite to the big chair where Alec sat, and was smoking his pipe, his hands clasped round his knees. “It doesn’t seem to me to come to much, though I’m much obliged to you all the same. The short one’s probably a local, the other a stranger, and the local was probably seeing his friend part of the way home, and incidentally showing him one of the sights of the neighborhood. There are stories about this old den, you know—ancient traditions. It’s said to be haunted, and what not.”
“Funnily enough, we had the story to-night at dinner, at our house.”
“Had you now?” Beaumaroy looked up quickly. “What, all about—”
“Captain Duggle, and the Devil, and the grave, and all that.”
“Who told you the story?”
“Old Mr. Penrose. Do you know him? Lives in High Street, near the Irechesters.”
“I think I know him by sight. So he entertained you with that old yarn, did he? And that same old yarn probably accounts for the nocturnal examination which you saw going on. It was a little excitement for you, to reward you for your politeness to Miss Walford!”
Alec flushed, but answered frankly: “I needed no reward for that.” His feelings got the better of him; he was very full of feelings that night, and wanted to be sympathized with. “Beaumaroy, do you know that girl’s story?” Beaumaroy shook his head, and listened to it. Captain Alec ended on his old note: “To think of the scoundrel using the King’s uniform like that!”
“Rotten! But, er, don’t raise your voice.” He pointed to the ceiling, smiling, and went on without further comment on Cynthia’s ill-usage. “I suppose you intend to stick to the army, Naylor?”
“Yes, certainly I do.”
“I’m discharged. After I came out of hospital they gave me sick leave, and constantly renewed it; and when the armistice came they gave me my discharge. They put it down to my wound, of course, but—well, I gathered the impression that I was considered no great loss.” He had finished his pipe, and was now smiling reflectively.
Captain Alec did not smile. Indeed he looked rather pained; he was remembering General Punnit’s story: military inefficiency, even military imperfection, was for him no smiling matter. Beaumaroy did not appear to notice his disapproving gravity.
“So I was at a loose end. I had sold up my business in Spain; I was there six or seven years, just as Captain—Captain—? Oh, Cranster, yes!—was in Bogota—when I joined up, and had no particular reason for going back there—and, incidentally, no money to go back with. So I took on this job, which came to me quite accidentally. I went into a Piccadilly bar one evening, and found my old man there, rather excited and declaiming a good deal of rot; seemed to have the war a bit on his brain. They started in to guy him, and I think one or two meant to hustle him, and perhaps take his money off him. I took his part, and there was a bit of a shindy. In the end I saw him home to his lodgings—he had a room in London for the night—and, to cut a long story short, we palled up, and he asked me to come and live with him. So here I am, and with me my Sancho Panza, the worthy ex-Sergeant Hooper. Perhaps I may be forgiven for impliedly comparing myself to Don Quixote, since that gentleman, besides his other characteristics, is generally agreed to have been mad.”
“Your Sancho Panza’s no beauty,” remarked the Captain drily.
“And no saint either. Kicked out of the Service, and done time. That between ourselves.”
“Then why the devil do you have the fellow about?”
“Beggars mustn’t be choosers. Besides, I’ve apenchantfor failures.”
That was what General Punnit had said! Alec Naylor grew impatient. “That’s the very spirit we have to fight against!” he exclaimed, rather hotly.
“Forgive me, but, please, don’t raise your voice.”
Alec lowered his voice, for a moment anyhow, but the central article of his creed was assailed, and he grew vehement. “It’s fatal; it’s at the root of all our troubles. Allow for failures in individuals, and you produce failure all round. It’s tenderness to defaulters that wrecks discipline. I would have strict justice, but no mercy, not a shadow of it!”
“But you said that day at your place that the war had made you tender-hearted.”
“Yes, I did, and it’s true. Is it hard-hearted to refuse to let a slacker cost good men their lives? Much better take his, if it’s got to be one or the other.”
“A cogent argument. But, my dear Naylor, I wish you wouldn’t raise your voice.”
“Damn my voice!” said Alec, most vexatiously interrupted just as he had got into his stride. “You say things that I can’t and won’t let pass, and—”
“I really wouldn’t have asked you in, if I’d thought you’d raise your voice.”
Alec recollected himself. “My dear fellow, a thousand pardons! I forgot! The old gentleman!”
“Exactly. But I’m afraid the mischief’s done. Listen!” Again he pointed to the ceiling, but his eyes set on Captain Alec with a queer, rueful, humorous expression. “I was an ass to ask you in. But I’m no good at it, that’s the fact. I’m always giving the show away!” he grumbled, half to himself, but not inaudibly.
Alec stared at him for a moment in puzzle, but the next instant his attention was diverted. Another voice besides his was raised; the sound of it came through the ceiling from the room above; the words were not audible; the volubility of the utterance in itself went far to prevent them from being distinguishable; but the high, vibrant, metallic tones rang through the house. It was a rush of noise, sharp grating noise, without a meaning. The effect was weird, very uncomfortable. Alec Naylor knit his brows, and once gave a little shiver, as he listened. Beaumaroy sat quite still, the expression in his eyes unaltered, or, if altered at all, it grew softer, as though with pity or affection.
“Good God, Beaumaroy, are you keeping a lunatic in this house?” He might raise his voice as loud as he pleased now, it was drowned by that other.
“I’m not keeping him, he’s keeping me. And, anyhow, his medical adviser tells me there is no reason to suppose that my old friend is notcompos mentis.”
“Irechester says that?”
“Mr. Saffron’s medical attendant is Dr. Arkroyd.”
As he spoke the noise from above suddenly ceased. Since neither of the men in the parlor spoke, there ensued a minute of what seemed intense silence; it was such a change.
Then came a still small sound, a creaking of wood from overhead.
“I think you’d better go, Naylor, if you don’t mind. After a performance of that kind he generally comes and tells me about it. And he may be, I don’t know at all for certain, annoyed to find you here.”
Alec Naylor got up from the big chair, but it was not to take his departure.
“I want to see him, Beaumaroy,” he said brusquely and rather authoritatively.
Beaumaroy raised his brows. “I won’t take you to his room, or let you go there if I can help it. But if he comes down, well, you can stay and see him. It may get me into a scrape, but that doesn’t matter much.”
“My point of view is—”
“My dear fellow, I know your point of view perfectly. It is that you are personally responsible for the universe, apparently just because you wear a uniform.”
No other sound had come from above or from the stairs, but the door now opened suddenly, and Mr. Saffron stood on the threshold. He wore slippers, a pair of checked trousers, and his bedroom jacket of pale blue; in addition, the gray shawl, which he wore on his walks, was again swathed closely round him. Only his right arm was free from it; in his hand was a silver bedroom candlestick. From his pale face and under his snowy hair his blue eyes gleamed brightly. As Alec first caught sight of him, he was smiling happily, and he called out triumphantly: “That was a good one! That went well, Hector!”
Then he saw Alec’s tall figure by the fire. He grew grave, closed the door carefully, and advanced to the table, on which he set down the candlestick. After a momentary look at Alec, he turned his gaze inquiringly towards Beaumaroy.
“I’m afraid we’re keeping it up rather late, sir,” said the latter in a tone of respectful yet easy apology, “but I took an airing in the road after you went to bed, and there I found my friend here on his way home; and since it was Christmas—”
Mr. Saffron bowed his head in acquiescence; he showed no sign of anger. “Present your friend to me, Hector,” he requested, or ordered, gravely.
“Captain Naylor, sir, Distinguished Service Order; Duffshire Fusiliers.”
The Captain was in uniform and, during his talk with Beaumaroy, had not thought of taking off his cap. Thus he came to the salute instinctively. The old man bowed with reserved dignity; in spite of his queer get-up he bore himself well; the tall handsome Captain did not seem to efface or outclass him.
“Captain Naylor has distinguished himself highly in the war, sir,” Beaumaroy continued.
“I am very glad to make the acquaintance of any officer who has distinguished himself in the service of his country.” Then his tone became easier and more familiar. “Don’t let me disturb you, gentlemen. My business with you, Hector, will wait. I have finished my work, and can rest with a clear conscience.”
“Couldn’t we persuade you to stay a few minutes with us, and join us in a whisky-and-soda?”
“Yes, by all means, Hector. But no whisky. Give me a glass of my own wine; I see a bottle on the sideboard.”
He came round the table and sat down in the big chair. “Pray seat yourself, Captain,” he said, waving his hand towards the stool which Beaumaroy had lately occupied.
The Captain obeyed the gesture, but his huge frame looked awkward on the low seat; he felt aware of it, then aware of the cap on his head; he snatched it off hastily, and twiddled it between his fingers. Mr. Saffron, high up in the great chair, sitting erect, seemed now actually to dominate the scene—Beaumaroy standing by, with an arm on the back of the chair, holding a tall glass full of the golden wine ready to Mr. Saffron’s command; the old man reached up his thin right hand, took it, and sipped with evident pleasure.
Alec Naylor was embarrassed; he sat in silence. But Beaumaroy seemed quite at his ease. He began with a statement which was, in its literal form, no falsehood; but that was about all that could be said for it on the score of veracity. “Before you came in, sir, we were just speaking of uniforms. Do you remember seeing our blue Air Force uniform when we were in town last week? I remember that you expressed approval of it.”
In any case the topic was very successful. Mr. Saffron embraced it with eagerness; with much animation he discussed the merits, whether practical or decorative, of various uniforms—field-gray, khaki, horizon blue, Air Force blue, and a dozen others worn by various armies, corps, and services. Alec was something of an enthusiast in this line too; he soon forgot his embarrassment, and joined in the conversation freely, though with a due respect to the obvious thoroughness of Mr. Saffron’s information. Watching the pair with an amused smile, Beaumaroy contented himself with putting in, here and there, what may be called a conjunctive observation—just enough to give the topic a new start.
After a quarter of an hour of this pleasant conversation, for such all three seemed to find it, Mr. Saffron finished his wine, handed the glass to Beaumaroy, and took a cordial leave of Alec Naylor. “It’s time for me to be in bed, but don’t hurry away, Captain. You won’t disturb me, I’m a good sleeper. Good-bye. I sha’n’t want you any more to-night, Hector.”
Beaumaroy handed him his candle again, and held the door open for him as he went out.
Alec Naylor clapped his cap back on his head. “I’m off too,” he said abruptly.
“Well, you insisted on seeing him, and you’ve seen him. What about it now?” asked Beaumaroy.
Alec eyed him with a puzzled baffled suspicion. “You switched him on to that subject on purpose, and by means of something uncommon like a lie.”
“A little artifice! I knew it would interest you, and it’s quite one of his hobbies. I don’t know much about his past life, but I think he must have had something to do with military tailoring. A designer at the War Office, perhaps.” Beaumaroy gave a low laugh, rather mocking and malicious. “Still, that doesn’t prove a man mad, does it? Perhaps it ought to, but in general opinion it doesn’t, any more than reciting poetry in bed does.”
“Do you mean to tell me that he was reciting poetry when—”
“Well, it couldn’t have sounded worse if he had been, could it?”
Now he was openly laughing at the Captain’s angry bewilderment. He knew that Alec Naylor did not believe a word of what he was saying or suggesting; but yet Alec could not pass his guard, nor wing a shaft between the joints of his harness. If he got into difficulties through heedlessness, at least he made a good shot at getting out of them again by his dexterity. Only, of course, suspicion remains suspicion, even though it be, for the moment, baffled. And it could not be denied that suspicions were piling up—Captain Alec, Irechester, even, on one little point, Doctor Mary! And possibly those two fellows outside—one of them short and stumpy—had their suspicions too, though these might be directed to another point. He gave one of his little shrugs as he followed the silent Captain to the garden gate.
“Good-night. Thanks again. And I hope we shall meet soon,” he said cheerily.
Alec gave him a brief “Good-night” and a particularly formal military salute.
Even Captain Alec was not superior to the foibles which beset humanity. If it had been his conception of duty which impelled him to take a high line with Beaumaroy, there was now in his feelings, although he did not realize the fact, an alloy of less precious metal. He had demanded an ordeal, a test—that he should see Mr. Saffron and judge for himself. The test had been accepted; he had been worsted in it. His suspicions were not laid to rest—far from it; but they were left unjustified and unconfirmed. He had nothing to go upon, nothing to show. He had been baffled, and, moreover, bantered and almost openly ridiculed. In fact, Beaumaroy had been too many for him, the subtle rogue!
This conception of the case colored his looks and pointed his words when Tower Cottage and its occupants were referred to, and most markedly when he spoke of them to Cynthia Walford; for in talking to her he naturally allowed himself greater freedom than he did with others; talking to her had become like talking to himself, so completely did she give him back what he bestowed on her, and re-echo to his mind its own voice. Such perfect sympathy induces a free outpouring of inner thoughts, and reinforces the opinions of which it so unreservedly approves.
Cynthia did more than elicit and reinforce Captain Alec’s opinion; she also disseminated it—at Old Place, at the Irechesters’, at Doctor Mary’s, through all the little circle in which she was now a constant and a favorite figure. In the light of her experience of men, so limited and so sharply contrasted, she made a simple classification of them; they were Cransters or Alecs; and each class acted after its kind. Plainly Beaumaroy was not an Alec; therefore he was Cranster, and Cranster-like actions were to be expected from him, of such special description as his circumstances and temptations might dictate.
She poured this simple philosophy into Doctor Mary’s ears, vouching Alec’s authority for its application to Beaumaroy. The theory was too simple for Mary, whose profession had shown her at all events something of the complexity of human nature; and she was no infallibilist; she would bow unquestioningly to no man’s authority, not even to Alec’s, much as she liked and admired him. There was even a streak of contrariness in her; what she might have said to herself she was prone to criticize or contradict, if it were too confidently or urgently pressed on her by another; perhaps, too, Cynthia’s claim to be the Captain’s mouthpiece stirred up in her a latent resentment; it was not to be called a jealousy; it was rather an amused irritation at both the divinity and his worshiper. His worshipers can sometimes make a divinity look foolish.
Her own interview with Beaumaroy at the Cottage had left her puzzled, distrustful—and attracted. She suspected him vaguely of wanting to use her for some purpose of his own; in spite of the swift plausibility of his explanation, she was nearly certain that he had lied to her about the combination knife-and-fork. Yet his account of his own position in regard to Mr. Saffron had sounded remarkably candid, and the more so because he made no pretensions to an exalted attitude. It had been left to her to define the standard of sensitive honor; his had been rather that of safety or, at the best, that of what the world would think, or even of what the hated cousins might attempt to prove. But there again she was distrustful, both of him and of her own judgment. He might be—it seemed likely—one of those men who conceal the good as well as the bad in themselves, one of the morally shy men. Or again, perhaps, one of the morally diffident, who shrink from arrogating to themselves high standards because they fear for their own virtue if it be put to the test, and cling to the power of saying, later on, “Well, I told you not to expect too much from me!” Such various types of men exist, and they do not fall readily into either of Cynthia’s two classes; they are neither Cransters nor Alecs; certainly not in thought, probably not in conduct. He had said at Old Place, the first time that she met him, that the war had destroyed all his scruples. That might be true; but it was hardly the remark of a man naturally unscrupulous.
She met him one day at Old Place about a week after Christmas. The Captain was not there; he was at her own house, with Cynthia. With the rest of the family Beaumaroy was at his best; gaily respectful to Mrs. Naylor, merry with Gertie, exchanging cut and thrust with old Mr. Naylor, easy and cordial towards herself. Certainly an attractive human being and a charming companion, pre-eminently natural. “One talks of taking people as one finds them,” old Naylor said to her when they were left alone together for a few minutes by the fire, while the others chatted by the window. “That fellow takes himself as he finds himself! Not as a pattern, a failure, or a problem, but just as a fact—a psychological fact.”
“That rather shuts out effort, doesn’t it? Well, I mean—”
“Strivings?” Mr. Naylor smiled. “Yes, it does. On the other hand, it gives such free play. That’s what makes him interesting, makes you think about him.” He laughed. “Oh, I dare say the surroundings help too—we’re all rather children—old Saffron, and the Devil, and Captain Duggle, and the rest of it! The brain isn’t overworked down here; we like to find an outlet.”
“That means you think there’s nothing in it really?”
“In what?” retorted old Naylor briskly.
But Mary was equal to him. “My lips are sealed professionally,” she smiled. “But hasn’t your son said anything?”
“Admirable woman! Yes, Alec has said a few things; and the young lady gives it us, too. For my part, I think Beaumaroy’s just drifting. He’ll take the gifts of fortune if they come, but I don’t think there’s much deliberate design about it. Ah, now you’re smiling in a superior way, Doctor Mary! I charge you with secret knowledge. Or are you puffed up by having superseded Irechester?”
“I was never so distressed and—well, embarrassed at anything in my life.”
“Well, that, if you ask me, does look a bit queer. Sort of fits in with Alec’s theory.”
Mary’s discretion gave way a little. “Or with Mr. Beaumaroy’s? Which is that I’m a fool, I think.”
“And that Irechester isn’t?” His eyes twinkled in good-humored malice. “Talking of what this and that person thinks of himself and of others, Irechester thinks himself something of an alienist.”
Her eyes grew suddenly alert. “He’s never talked to me on that subject.”
“Perhaps he doesn’t think it’s one of yours. Perhaps your studies haven’t lain that way? After all, no medical man can study everything!”
“Don’t be naughty, Mr. Naylor” said Doctor Mary.
“He tells me that, in cases where the condition—the condition I think he called it—is in doubt, he fixes his attention on the eyes and the voice. He couldn’t give me any very clear description of what he found in the eyes. I couldn’t quite make out, anyhow, what he meant, unless it was a sort of meaninglessness, a want of what you might call intellectual focus. Do you follow me?”
“Yes, I think I know what you mean.”
“But with regard to the voice I distinctly remember that he used the word âmetallic.’”
“Why, that’s the word Cynthia used—”
“I dare say it is. It’s the word Alec used in describing the voice in which old Mr. Saffron recited his poem, or whatever it was, in bed.”
“But I’ve talked to Mr. Saffron; his voice isn’t like that; it’s a little high, but full and rather melodious.”
“Oh, well then—” He spread out his hands, as though acknowledging a check. “Still, the voice described as metallic seems to have been Mr. Saffron’s; at a certain moment at least. As a merely medical question of some interest, I wonder if such a symptom or sign of—er—irritability could be intermittent, coming and going with the—er—fits! Irechester didn’t say anything on that point. Have you any opinion?”
“None. I don’t know. I should like to ask Dr. Irechester.” Then, with a sudden smile, she amended, “No, I shouldn’t!”
“And why not, pray? Professional etiquette?”
“No, pride. Dr. Irechester laughed at me. I think I see why now; and perhaps why Mr. Beaumaroy—” She broke off abruptly, the slightest gesture of her hand warning Naylor also to be silent.
Having said good-bye to his friends by the window, Beaumaroy was sauntering across the room to pay the like courtesy to herself and Naylor. Mary rose to her feet; there was an air of decision about her, and she addressed Beaumaroy almost before he was within speaking distance as it is generally reckoned in society.
“If you’re going home, Mr. Beaumaroy, shall we walk together? It’s time I was off, too.”
Beaumaroy looked a little surprised, but undoubtedly pleased. “Well, now, what a delightful way of prolonging a delightful visit. I’m truly grateful, Dr. Arkroyd.”
“Oh, you needn’t be!” said Mary with a little toss of her head.
Naylor watched them with amusement. “He’ll catch it on that walk!” he was thinking. “She’s going to let him have it! I wish I could be there to hear.” He spoke to them openly: “I’m sorry you must both go, but, since you must, go together. Your walk will be much pleasanter.”
Mary understood him well enough, and gave him a flash from her eyes. But Beaumaroy’s face betrayed nothing, as he murmured politely: “To me, at all events, Mr. Naylor.”
Naylor was not wrong as to Mary’s mood and purpose. But she did not find it easy to begin. Pretty quick at a retort herself, she could often foresee the retorts open to her interlocutor. Beaumaroy had provided himself with plenty: the old man’s whim; the access to the old man so willingly allowed, not only to her but to Captain Alec; his own candor carried to the verge of self-betrayal. Oh, he would be full of retorts, supple and dexterous ones! As this hostile accusation passed through her mind, she awoke to the fact that she was, at the same moment, regarding his profile (he, too, was silent, no doubt lying in wait to trip up her opening!) with interest, even with some approval. He seemed to feel her glance, for he turned towards her quickly—so quickly that she had no time to turn her eyes away.
“Doctor Mary”—the familiar mode of address habitually used at the house which they had just left seemed to slip out without his consciousness of it—“You’ve got something against me; I know you have! I’m sensitive that way, though not, perhaps, in another. Now, out with it!”
“You’d silence me with a clever answer. I think that you sometimes make the mistake of supposing that to be silenced is the same thing as being convinced. You silenced Captain Naylor—oh, I don’t mean you’ve prevented him from talking!—I mean you confuted him, you put him in the wrong, but you certainly didn’t convince him.”
“Of what?” he asked in a tone of surprise.
“You know that. Let us suppose his idea was all nonsense; yet your immediate object was to put it out of his head.” She suddenly added, “I think your last question was a diplomatic blunder, Mr. Beaumaroy. You must have known what I meant. What was the good of pretending not to?”
Beaumaroy stopped still in the road for a moment, looking at her with a rueful amusement. “You’re not so easily silenced, after all!” he said, starting to walk on again.
“You encourage me.” To tell the truth, Mary was not only encouraged, she was pleased by the hit she had scored, and flattered by his acknowledgment of it. “Well, then, I’ll put another point. You needn’t answer if you don’t like.”
“I shall answer if I can, depend on it!” He laughed, and Mary, for a brief instant, joined in his laugh. His sudden lapses into candor seemed somehow to put the serious hostile questioner ridiculously in the wrong. Could a man like that really have anything to conceal?
But she held to her purpose. “You’re a friendly sort of man, you offer and accept attentions and kindnesses, you’re not stand-offish, or haughty, or sulky; you make friends easily, especially, perhaps, with women; they like you, and like to be pleasant and kind to you. There are men—patients, I mean—very hard to deal with; men who resent being ill, resent having to have things done to them and for them, who especially resent the services of women, even of nurses—I mean in quite indifferent things, not merely in things where a man may naturally shrink from their help. Well, you don’t seem that sort of man in the least.” She looked at him, as she ended this appreciation of him, as though she expected an answer or a comment. Beaumaroy made neither; he walked on, not even looking at her.
“And you can’t have been troubled long with that wound. It evidently healed up quickly and sweetly.”
Beaumaroy looked for an instant at his maimed hand with a critical air; but he was still silent.
“So that I wonder you didn’t do as most patients do—let the nurse, or, if you were still disabled after you came out, a friend or somebody, cut up your food for you without providing yourself with that implement.” He turned his head quickly towards her. “And if you ask me what implement I mean, I shall answer—the one you tried to snatch from the sideboard at Tower Cottage before I could see it.”
It was a direct challenge; she charged him with a lie. Beaumaroy’s face assumed a really troubled expression, a thing rare for it to do. Yet it was not an ashamed or abashed expression; it just seemed to recognize that a troublesome difficulty had arisen. He set a slower pace and prodded the road with his stick. Mary pushed her advantage. “Your—your improvization didn’t satisfy me at the time, and the more I’ve thought over it, the less have I found it convincing.”
He stopped again, turning round to her. He slapped his left hand against the side of his leg. “Well, there it is, Doctor Mary! You must make what you can of it.”
It was complete surrender as to the combination knife-and-fork. He was beaten, on that point at least, and owned it. His lie was found out. “It’s dashed difficult always to remember that you’re a doctor,” he broke out the next minute.
Mary could not help laughing; but her eyes were still keen and challenging as she said, “Perhaps you’d better change your doctor again, Mr. Beaumaroy. You haven’t found one stupid enough!”
Again Beaumaroy had no defense; his nonplussed air confessed that maneuver, too. Mary dropped her rallying tone and went on gravely: “Unless I’m treated with confidence and sincerity, I can’t continue to attend Mr. Saffron.”
“That’s your ultimatum, is it, Doctor Mary?”
She nodded sharply and decisively. Beaumaroy meditated for a few seconds. Then he shook his head regretfully. “It’s no use. I daren’t trust you,” he said.
Mary laughed again, this time in amazed resentment of his impudence. “You can’t trust me! I think it’s the other way round. It seems to me that the boot’s on the other leg.”
“Not as I see it.” Then he smiled slowly, as it were tentatively. “Or would you—I wonder if you could—possibly—well, stand in with me?”
“Are you offering me a—a partnership?” she asked indignantly.
He raised his hand in a seeming protest, and spoke now hastily and in some confusion. “Not as you understand it. I mean, as you probably understand it, from what I said to you that night at the Cottage. There are features in the—well, there are things that I admit have—have passed through my mind, without being what you’d call settled. Oh, yes, without being in the least settled. Well, for the sake of your help and—er—co-operation, those—those features could be dropped. And then perhaps—if only your—your rules and etiquette—”
Mary scornfully cut short his embarrassed pleadings. “There’s a good deal more than rules and etiquette involved. It seems to me that it’s a matter of common honesty rather than of rules and etiquette—”
“Yes, but you don’t understand—”
She cut him short again. “Mr. Beaumaroy, after this, after your suggestion and all the rest of it, there must be an end of all relations between us—professionally and, so far as possible, socially too, please. I don’t want to be self-righteous, but I feel bound to say that you have misunderstood my character.”
Her voice quivered at the end, and almost broke. She was full of a grieved indignation.
They had come opposite the cottage now. Beaumaroy stopped, and stood facing her. Though dusk had fallen, it was a clear evening; she could see his face plainly; obviously he was in deep distress. “I wouldn’t have offended you for the world. I—I like you far too much, Doctor Mary.”
“You imputed your own standards to me. That’s all there is about it, I suppose,” she said in a scornful sadness. He looked very miserable. Compassion, and the old odd attraction which he had for her, stirred in her mind. Her voice grew soft, and she held out her hand. “I’m sorry too, very sorry, that it should have to be good-bye between us.”
Beaumaroy did not take her proffered hand, or even seem to notice it. He stood quite still.
“I’m damned if I know what I’m to do now!”
Close on the heels of his despairing confession of helplessness—for such it undoubtedly seemed to me—came the noise of an opening door, a light from the inside of the Cottage, a patter of quick-moving feet on the flagged path that led to the garden gate. The next moment Mary saw the figure of Mr. Saffron, in his old gray shawl, standing at the gate. He was waving his right arm in an excited way, and his hand held a large sheet of paper.
“Hector! Hector, my dear, dear boy! The news has come at last. You can be off tomorrow!”
Beaumaroy started violently, glanced at his old friend’s strange figure, glanced once, too, at Mary; the expression of utter despair which his face had worn seemed modified into one of humorous bewilderment.
“Yes, yes, you can start tomorrow for Morocco, my dear boy!” cried old Mr. Saffron.
Beaumaroy lifted his hat to her, cried, “I’m coming, sir!” turned on his heel, and strode quickly up to Mr. Saffron. She watched him open the gate and take the old gentleman by the arm; she heard the murmur of his voice speaking soft accents as the pair walked up the path together. They passed into the house, and the door was shut.
Mary stood where she was for a moment, then moved slowly, hesitatingly, yet as though under a lure which she could not resist. Just outside the gate lay something that gleamed white through the darkness. It was the sheet of paper. Mr. Saffron had dropped it in his excitement, and Beaumaroy had not noticed.
Mary stole forward and picked it up stealthily; she was incapable of resisting her curiosity or even of stopping to think about her action. She held it up to what light there was, and strained her eyes to examine it. So far as she could see, it was covered with dots, dashes, lines, queerly drawn geometrical figures—a mass of meaningless hieroglyphics. She dropped it again where she had found it, and made off home with guilty swiftness.
Yes, there had been, this time, a distinctly metallic ring in old Mr. Saffron’s voice.