Mary did not appear to answer Beaumaroy’s glance; she continued to look at, and to address herself to, Captain Alec. “I am tired, and I should love a ride home. But I’ve still a little to do, and—I know it’s awfully late, but would you mind waiting just a little while? I’m afraid I might be as much as half-an-hour.”
“Right you are, Doctor Mary—as long as you like. I’ll walk up and down, and smoke a cigar; I want one badly.” Mary made an extremely faint motion of her hand towards the house. “Oh, thanks, but really I—well, I shall feel more comfortable here, I think.”
Mary smiled; it was always safe to rely on Captain Alec’s fine feelings; under the circumstances he would—she had felt pretty sure—prefer to smoke his cigar outside the house. “I’ll be as quick as I can. Come, Mr. Beaumaroy!”
Beaumaroy followed her up the path and into the house. The Sergeant was still on the floor of the passage; he rolled apprehensive resentful eyes at them; Mary took no heed of him, but preceded Beaumaroy into the parlor and shut the door.
“I don’t know what your game is,” remarked Beaumaroy in a low voice, “but you couldn’t have played mine better. I don’t want him inside the house; but I’m mighty glad to have him extremely visible outside it.”
“It was very quiet inside there”—she pointed to the door of the Tower—“just before I came out. Before that, I’d heard odd sounds. Was there somebody there—and the Sergeant in league with him?”
“Exactly,” smiled Beaumaroy. “It is all quiet. I think I’ll have a look.”
The candle on the table had burnt out. He took another from the sideboard and lit it from the one which Mary still held.
“Like the poker?” she asked, with a flicker of a smile on her face.
“No you come and help, if I cry out!” He could not repress a chuckle; Doctor Mary was interesting him extremely.
Lighted by his candle, he went into the Tower. She heard him moving about there, as she stood thoughtfully by the extinct fire, still with her candle in her hand.
Beaumaroy returned. “He’s gone—or they’ve gone.” He exhibited to her gaze two objects—a checked pocket-handkerchief and a tobacco pouch. “Number one found on the edge of the grave—Number two on the floor of the dais, just behind the canopy. If the same man had drawn them both out of the same pocket at the same time—wanting to blow the same nose, Doctor Mary—they’d have fallen at the same place, wouldn’t they?”
“Wonderful, Holmes!” said Mary. “And now, shall we attend to Mr. Saffron?”
They carried out that office, the course of which they had originally prepared. Beaumaroy passed with his burden hard by the Sergeant, and Mary followed. In a quarter of an hour they came downstairs again, and Mary again led the way into the parlor. She went to the window, and drew the curtains aside a little way. The lights of the car were burning; the Captain’s tall figure fell within their rays and was plainly visible, strolling up and down; the ambit of the rays did not, however, embrace the Tower window. The Captain paced and smoked, patient, content, gone back to his own happy memories and anticipations. Mary returned to the table and set her candle down on it.
“All right. I think we can keep him a little longer.”
“I vote we do,” said Beaumaroy. “I reckon he’s scared the fellows away, and they won’t come back so long as they see his lights.”
Rash at conclusions sometimes—as has been seen—Beaumaroy was right in his opinion of the Captain’s value as a sentry, or a scarecrow to keep away hungry birds. The confederates had stolen back to their base of operations—to where their car lay behind the trees. There, too, no Sergeant and no sack! Neddy reached for his roomy flask, drank of it, and with hoarse curses consigned the entire course of events, his accomplices, even himself, to nethermost perdition. “That place ain’t—natural!” he ended in a gloomy conviction. “‘Oo pinched that sack? The Sergeant? Well—maybe it was, and maybe it wasn’t.” He finished the flask to cure a recurrence of the shudders.
Mike prevailed with him so far that he consented—reluctantly—to be left alone on the blasted heath, while his friend went back to reconnoiter. Mike went, and presently returned; the car was still there, the tall figure was still pacing up and down.
“And perhaps the other one’s gone for the police!” Mike suggested uneasily. “Guess we’ve lost the hand, Neddy! Best be moving, eh? It’s no go for to-night.”
“Catch me trying the bloomin’ place any other night!” grumbled Neddy. “It’s given me the ‘orrors, and no mistake.”
Mike—Mr. Percy Bennett, that erstwhile gentlemanly stranger—recognized one of his failures. Such things are incidental to all professions. “Our best game is to go back; if the Sergeant’s on the square, we’ll hear from him.” But he spoke without much hope; rationalist as he professed himself, still he was affected by the atmosphere of the Tower. With what difficulty do we entirely throw off atavistic notions! They both of them had, at the bottom of their minds, the idea that the dead man on the high seat had defeated them, and that no luck lay in meddling with his treasure.
“I ‘ave my doubts whether that ugly Sergeant’s ‘uman himself,” growled Neddy, as he hoisted his bulk into the car.
So they went back to whence they came; and the impression that the night’s adventure left upon them was heightened as the days went by. For, strange to say, though they watched all the usual channels of information, as Ministers say; in Parliament, and also tried to open up some unusual ones, they never heard anything again of the Sergeant, of the sack of gold, of the yawning tomb with its golden lining, of its silent waxen-faced enthroned guardian who had defeated them. It all—the whole bizarre scene—vanished from their ken, as though it had been one of those alluring, thwarting dreams which afflict men in sleep. It was an experience to which they were shy of alluding among their confidential friends, even of talking about between themselves. In a word—uncomfortable!
Meanwhile the Sergeant’s association with Tower Cottage had also drawn to its close. After his search and his discovery in the Tower, Beaumaroy came out into the passage where the prisoner lay, and proceeded to unfasten his bonds.
“Stand up and listen to me, Sergeant,” he said. “Your pals have run away; they can’t help you, and they wouldn’t if they could, because, owing to you, they haven’t got away with any plunder, and so they’ll be in a very bad temper with you. In the road, in front of the house, is Captain Naylor—you know that officer and his dimensions? He’s in a very temper with you too. (Here Beaumaroy was embroidering the situation; the Sergeant was not really in Captain Alec’s thoughts.) Finally, I’m in a very bad temper with you myself. If I see your ugly phiz much longer, I may break out. Don’t you think you’d better depart—by the back door—and go home? And if you’re not out of Inkston for good and all by ten o’clock in the morning, and if you ever show yourself there again, look out for squalls. What you’ve got out of this business I don’t know. You can keep it—and I’ll give you a parting present myself as well.”
“I knows a thing or two—” the Sergeant began, but he saw a look that he had seen only once or twice before on Beaumaroy’s face; on each occasion it had been followed by the death of the enemy whose act had elicited it.
“Oh, try that game, just try it!” Beaumaroy muttered. “Just give me that excuse!” He advanced to the Sergeant, who fell suddenly on his knees. “Don’t make a noise, you hound, or I’ll silence you for good and all—I’d do it for twopence!” He took hold of the Sergeant’s coat-collar, jerked him on to his legs, and propelled him to the kitchen and through it to the back door. Opening it, he dispatched the Sergeant through the doorway with an accurate and vigorous kick. He fell, and lay sprawling on the ground for a second, then gathered himself up and ran hastily over the heath, soon disappearing in the darkness. The memory of Beaumaroy’s look was even keener than the sensation caused by Beaumaroy’s boot. It sent him in flight back to Inkston, thence to London, thence into the unknown, to some spot chosen for its remoteness from Beaumaroy, from Captain Naylor, from Mike and from Neddy. He recognized his unpopularity, thereby achieving a triumph in a difficult little branch of wisdom.
Beaumaroy returned to the parlor hastily; not so much to avoid keeping Captain Alec waiting—it was quite a useful precaution to have that sentry on duty a little longer—as because his curiosity and interest had been excited by the description which Doctor Mary had given of Mr. Saffron’s death. It was true, probably the precise truth, but it seemed to have been volunteered in a rather remarkable way and worded with careful purpose. Also it was the bare truth, the truth denuded of all its attendant circumstances—which had not been normal.
When he rejoined her, Mary was sitting in the armchair by the fire; she heard his account of the state of affairs up-to-date with a thoughtful smile, smoking a cigarette; her smile broadened over the tale of the water-butt. She had put on the fur cloak in which she had walked to the cottage—the fire was out and the room cold; framed in the furs, the outline of her face looked softer.
“So we stand more or less as we did before the burglars appeared on the scene,” she commented.
“Except that our personal exertions have saved that money.”
“I suppose you would prefer that all the circumstances shouldn’t come out? There have been irregularities.”
“I should prefer that, not so much on my own account—I don’t know and don’t care what they could do to me—as for the old man’s sake.”
“If I know you, I think you would rather enjoy being able to keep your secret. You like having the laugh of people. I know that myself, Mr. Beaumaroy.” She exchanged a smile with him. “You want a death certificate from me,” she added.
“I suppose I do,” Beaumaroy agreed.
“In the sort of terms in which I described Mr. Saffron’s death to Captain Alec? If I gave such a certificate, there would remain nothing—well, nothing peculiar—except the—the appearance of things in the Tower.”
Her eyes were now fixed on his face; he nodded his head with a smile of understanding. There was something new in the tone of Doctor Mary’s voice; not only friendliness, though that was there, but a note of excitement, of enjoyment, as though she also were not superior to the pleasure of having the laugh of people. “But it’s rather straining a point to say that—and nothing more. I could do it only if you made me feel that I could trust you absolutely.”
Beaumaroy made a little grimace, and waited for her to develop her subject.
“Your morality is different from most people’s, and from mine. Mine is conventional.”
“Conventual!” Beaumaroy murmured.
“Yours isn’t. It’s all personal with you. You recognize no rights in people whom you don’t like, or who you think aren’t deserving, or haven’t earned rights. And you don’t judge your own rights by what the law gives you, either. The right of conquest you called it; you hold yourself free to exercise that against everybody, except your friends, and against everybody in the interest of your friends—like poor Mr. Saffron. I believe you’d do the same for me if I asked you to.”
“I’m glad you believe that, Doctor Mary.”
“But I can’t deal with you on that basis. It’s even difficult to be friends on that basis—and certainly impossible to be partners.”
“I never suggested that we should be partners over the money,” Beaumaroy put in quickly.
“No. But I’m suggesting now—as you did before—that we should be partners—in a secret, in Mr. Saffron’s secret.” She smiled again as she added, “You can manage it all, I know, if you like. I’ve unlimited confidence in your ingenuity—quite unlimited.”
“But none at all in my honesty?”
“You’ve got an honesty; but I don’t call it a really honest honesty.”
“All this leads up to—the Radbolts!” declared Beaumaroy with & gesture of disgust.
“It does. I want your word of honor—given to a friend—that all that money—all of it—goes to the Radbolts, if it legally belongs to them. I want that in exchange for the certificate.”
“A hard bargain! It isn’t so much that I want the money—though I must remark that in my judgment I have a strong claim to it; I would say a moral claim but for my deference to your views, Doctor Mary. But it isn’t mainly that. I hate the Radbolts getting it, just as much as the old man would have hated it.”
“I have given you my—my terms,” said Mary.
Beaumaroy stood looking down at her, his hands in his pockets. His face was twisted in a humorous disgust. Mary laughed gently. “It is possible to—to keep the rules without being a prig, you know, though I believe you think it isn’t.”
“Including the sack in the water-butt? My sack, the sack I rescued?”
“Including the sack in the water-butt. Yes, every single sovereign!” Though Mary was pursuing the high moral line, there was now more mischief than gravity in her demeanor.
“Well, I’ll do it!” He evidently spoke with a great effort. “I’ll do it! But, look here, Doctor Mary, you’ll live to be sorry you made me do it. Oh, I don’t mean that that conscience of yours will be sorry. That’ll approve, no doubt, being the extremely conventionalized thing it is. But you yourself, you’ll be sorry, or I’m much mistaken in the Radbolts.”
“It isn’t a question of the Radbolts,” she insisted, laughing.
“Oh yes, it is, and you’ll come to feel it so.” Beaumaroy was equally obstinate.
Mary rose. “Then that’s settled, and we needn’t keep Captain Alec waiting any longer.”
“How do you know that I sha’n’t cheat you?” he asked.
“I don’t know how I know that,” Mary admitted. “But I do know it. And I want to tell you—”
She suddenly felt embarrassed under his gaze; her cheeks flushed, but she went on resolutely:
“To tell you how glad, how happy, I am that it all ends like this; that the poor old man is free of his fancies and his fears, beyond both our pity and our laughter.”
“Aye, he’s earned rest, if there is to be rest for any of us!”
“And you can rest, too. And you can laugh with us, and not at us. Isn’t that, after all, a more human sort of laughter?”
She was smiling still as she gave him her hand, but he saw that tears stood in her eyes. The next instant she gave a little sob.
“Doctor Mary!” he exclaimed in rueful expostulation.
“No, no, how stupid you are!” She laughed through her sob. “It’s not unhappiness!” She pressed his hand tightly for an instant and then walked quickly out of the house, calling back to him, “Don’t come, please don’t come. I’d rather go to Captain Alec by myself.”
Left alone in the cottage, now so quiet and so peaceful, Beaumaroy mused a while as he smoked his pipe. Then he turned to his labors—his final night of work in the Tower. There was much to do, very much to do; he achieved his task towards morning. When day dawned, there was nothing but water in the water-butt, and in the Tower no furnishings were visible save three chairs—a high carved one by the fireplace, and two much smaller on the little platform under the window. The faded old red carpet on the floor was the only attempt at decoration. And in still one thing more the Tower was different from what it had been, Beaumaroy contented himself with pasting brown paper over the pane on which Mike had operated. He did not replace the matchboarding over the window, but stowed it away in the coal-shed. The place was horribly in need of sunshine and fresh air—and the old gentleman was no longer alive to fear the draught!
When the undertaker came up to the cottage that afternoon, he glanced from the parlor, through the open door, into the Tower.
“Driving past on business, sir,” he remarked to Beaumaroy, “I’ve often wondered what the old gentleman did with that there Tower. But it looks as if he didn’t make no use of it.”
“We sometimes stored things in it,” said Beaumaroy. “But, as you see, there’s nothing much there now.”
But then the undertaker, worthy man, could not see through the carpet, or through the lid of Captain Duggle’s grave. That was full—fuller than it had been at any period of its history. In it lay the wealth, the scepter, and the trappings of dead Majesty. For wherein did Mr. Saffron’s dead Majesty differ from the dead Majesty of other Kings?
The attendance was small at Mr. Saffron’s funeral. Besides meek and depressed Mrs. Wiles, and Beaumaroy himself, Doctor Mary found herself, rather to her surprise, in company with old Mr. Naylor. On comparing notes she discovered that, like herself, he had come on Beaumaroy’s urgent invitation and, moreover, that he was engaged also to come on afterwards to Tower Cottage, where Beaumaroy was to entertain the chief mourners at a mid-day repast. “Glad enough to show my respect to a neighbor,” said old Naylor. “And I always liked the old man’s looks. But really I don’t see why I should go to lunch. However, Beaumaroy—”
Mary did not see why he should go to lunch—nor, for that matter, why she should either, but curiosity about the chief mourners made her glad that she was going. The chief mourners did not look, at first sight, attractive. Mr. Radbolt was a short plump man, with a weaselly face and cunning eyes; his wife’s eyes, of a greeny color, stared stolidly out from her broad red face; she was taller than her mate, and her figure contrived to be at once stout and angular. All through the service, Beaumaroy’s gaze was set on the pair as they sat or stood in front of him, wandering from the one to the other in an apparently fascinated study.
At the Cottage he entertained his party in the parlor with a generous hospitality, and treated the Radbolts with most courteous deference. The man responded with the best manners that he had—who can do more? The woman was much less cordial; she was curt, and treated Beaumaroy rather as the servant than the friend of her dead cousin; there was a clear suggestion of suspicion in her bearing towards him. After a broad stare of astonishment on her introduction to “Dr. Arkroyd,” she took very little notice of Mary; only to Mr. Naylor was she clumsily civil and even rather cringing; it was clear that in him she acknowledged the gentleman. He sat by her, and she tried to insinuate herself into a private conversation with him, apart from the others, probing him as to his knowledge of the dead man and his mode of living. Her questions hovered persistently round the point of Mr. Saffron’s expenditure.
“Mr. Saffron was not a friend of mine,” Naylor found it necessary to explain. “I had few opportunities of observing his way of life, even if I had felt any wish to do so.”
“I suppose Beaumaroy knew all about his affairs,” she suggested.
“As to that, I think you must ask Mr. Beaumaroy himself.”
“From what the lawyers say, the old man seems to have been getting rid of his money, somehow or to somebody,” she grumbled, in a positive whisper.
To Mr. Naylor’s intense relief, Beaumaroy interrupted this conversation. “Well, how do you like this little place, Mrs. Radbolt?” he asked cheerfully. “Not a bad little crib, is it? Don’t you think so too, Dr. Arkroyd?” Throughout this gathering Beaumaroy was very punctilious with his “Dr. Arkroyd.” One would have thought that Mary and he were almost strangers.
“Yes, I like it,” said Mary. “The Tower makes it rather unusual and picturesque.” This was not really her sincere opinion; she was playing up to Beaumaroy, convinced that he had opened some conversational maneuver.
“Don’t like it at all,” answered Mrs. Radbolt. “We’ll get rid of it as soon as we can, won’t we, Radbolt?” She always addressed her husband as “Radbolt.”
“Don’t be in a hurry, don’t throw it away,” Beaumaroy advised. “It’s not everybody’s choice, of course, but there are quarters—yes, more than one quarter—in which you might get a very good offer for this place.” His eye caught Mary’s for a moment. “Indeed I wish I was in a position to make you one myself. I should like to take it as it stands—lock, stock and barrel. But I’ve sunk all I had in another venture—hope it turns out a satisfactory one! So I’m not in a position to do it. If Mrs. Radbolt wants to sell, what would you think of it, Dr. Arkroyd, as a speculation?”
Mary shook her head, smiling, glad to be able to smile with plausible reason. “I’m not as fond of rash speculations as you are, Mr. Beaumaroy.”
“It may be worth more than it looks,” he pursued. “Good neighborhood, healthy air, fruitful soil, very rich soil hereabouts.”
“My dear Beaumaroy, the land about here is abominable,” Naylor expostulated.
“Perhaps generally, but some rich pockets—one may call pockets,” corrected Beaumaroy.
“I’m not an agriculturist,” remarked weaselly Mr. Radbolt, in his oily tones.
“And then there’s a picturesque old yarn told about it—oh, whether it’s true or not, of course I don’t know. It’s about a certain Captain Duggle—not the Army—the Mercantile Marine, Mrs. Radbolt. You know the story Dr. Arkroyd? And you too, Mr. Naylor? You’re the oldest inhabitant of Inkston present, sir. Suppose you tell it to Mr. and Mrs. Radbolt? I’m sure it will make them attach a new value to this really very attractive cottage—with, as Dr. Arkroyd says, the additional feature of the Tower.”
“I know the story only as a friend of mine—Mr. Penrose—who takes great interest in local records and traditions, told it to me. If our host desires, I shall be happy to tell it to Mrs. Radbolt.” Mr. Naylor accompanied his words with a courtly little bow to that lady, and launched upon the legend of Captain Duggle.
Mr. Radbolt was a religious man. At the end of the story he observed gravely, “The belief in diabolical personalities is not to be lightly dismissed, Mr. Beaumaroy.”
“I’m entirely of your opinion, Mr. Radbolt.” This time Mary felt that her smile was not so plausible.
“There seems to have been nothing in the grave,” mused Mrs. Radbolt.
“Apparently not when Captain Duggle left it—if he was ever in it—at all events not when he left the house, in whatever way and by whatever agency.”
“As to the latter point, I myself incline to Penrose’s theory,” said Mr. Naylor. “Delirium tremens, you know!”
Beaumaroy puffed at his cigar. “Still, I’ve often thought that, though it was empty then, it would have made—supposing it really exists—an excellent hiding-place for anybody who wanted such a thing. Say, for a miser, or a man who had his reasons for concealing what he was worth! I once suggested the idea to Mr. Saffron, and he was a good deal amused. He patted me on the shoulder and laughed heartily. He wasn’t often so much amused as that.”
A new look came into Mrs. Radbolt’s green eyes. Up to now, distrust of Beaumaroy had predominated. His frank bearing, his obvious candor and simplicity, had weakened her suspicions. But his words suggested something else; he might be a fool, not a knave; Mr. Saffron had been amused, had laughed beyond his wont. That might have seemed the best way of putting Beaumaroy off the scent. The green eyes were now alert, eager, immensely acquisitive.
“The grave’s in the Tower, if it’s anywhere. Would you like to see the Tower, Mrs. Radbolt?”
“Yes, I should,” she answered tartly. “Being part of our property as it is.”
Mary exchanged a glance with Mr. Naylor, as they followed the others into the Tower. “What an abominable woman!” her glance said. Naylor smiled a despairing acquiescence.
The strangers—chief mourners, heirs-at-law, owners now of the place wherein they stood—looked round the bare brick walls of the little rotunda. Naylor examined it with interest too—the old story was a quaint one. Mary stood at the back of the group, smiling triumphantly. How had he disposed of—everything? She had not been wrong in her unlimited confidence in his ingenuity. She did not falter in her faith in his word pledged to her.
“Safe from burglars, that grave of the Captain’s, if you kept it properly concealed!” Beaumaroy pursued in a sort of humorous meditation. “And in these days some people like to have their money in their own hands. Confiscatory legislation possible, isn’t it, Mr. Naylor? You know about those things better than I do. And then the taxes—shocking, Mr. Radbolt! By Jove, I knew a chap the other day who came in for what sounded like a pretty little inheritance. But by the time he’d paid all the duties and so on, most of the gilt was off the gingerbread! It’s there—in front of the hearth—that the story says the grave is. Doesn’t it, Mr. Naylor?” A sudden thought seemed to strike him, “I say, Mrs. Radbolt, would you like us to have a look whether we can find any indications of it?” His eyes traveled beyond the lady whom he addressed. They met Mary’s. She knew their message; he was taking her into his confidence about his experiment with the chief mourners.
The stout angular woman had leapt to her conclusion. Much less money than had been expected—no signs of money having been spent and here, not the cunning knave whom she had expected, but a garrulous open fool, giving away what was perhaps a golden secret! Mammon, the greed of acquisitiveness, the voracious appetite for getting more, gleamed in her green eyes.
“There? Do you say it’s—it’s supposed to be there?” she asked eagerly, with a shake in her voice.
Her husband interposed in a suave and sanctimonious voice: “My dear, if Mr. Beaumaroy and the other gentleman won’t mind my saying so, I’ve been feeling that these are rather light and frivolous topics for the day, and the occasion which brings us here. The whole thing is probably an unfounded story, although there is a sound moral to it. Later on, just as a matter of curiosity, if you like, my dear. But to-day, Cousin Aloysius’s day of burial, is it quite seemly?”
The big woman looked at her smaller mate for just a moment, a scrutinizing look. Then she said with most unexpected meekness, “I was wrong. You always have the proper feelings, Radbolt.”
“The fault was mine, entirely mine,” Beaumaroy hastily interposed. “I dragged in the old yarn, I led Mr. Naylor into telling it, I told you about what I said to Mr. Saffron and how he took it. All my fault! I acknowledge the justice of your rebuke. I apologize, Mr. Radbolt! And I think that we’ve exhausted the interest of the Tower.” He looked at his watch. “Er, how do you stand for time? Shall Mrs. Wiles make us a cup of tea, or have you a train to catch?”
“That’s the woman in charge of the house, isn’t it?” asked Mrs. Radbolt.
“Comes in for the day. She doesn’t sleep here.” He smiled pleasantly on Mrs. Radbolt. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think that she would consent to sleep here by herself. Silly! But—the old story, you know!”
“Don’t you sleep here?” the woman persisted, though her husband was looking at her rather uneasily.
“Up to now I have,” said Beaumaroy. “But there’s nothing to keep me here now, and Mr. Naylor has kindly offered to put me up as long as I stay at Inkston.”
“Going to leave the place with nobody in it?”
Beaumaroy’s manner indicated surprise. “Oh, yes! There’s nothing to tempt thieves, is there? Just lock the door and put the key in my pocket!”
The woman looked very surly, but flummoxed. Her husband, with his suave oiliness, came to her rescue. “My wife is always nervous, perhaps foolishly nervous, about fire, Mr. Beaumaroy. Well, with an old house like this, there is always the risk.”
“Upon my soul, I hadn’t thought of it! And I’ve packed up all my things, and your car’s come and fetched them, Mr. Naylor. Still, of course I could—”
“Oh, we’ve no right, no claim, to trouble you, Mr. Beaumaroy. Only my wife is—”
“Fire’s an obsession with me, I’m afraid,” said the stout woman, with a rumbling giggle. The sound of her mirth was intolerably disagreeable to Mary.
“I really think, my dear, that you’ll feel easier if I stay myself, won’t you? You can send me what I want to-morrow, and rejoin me when we arrange—because we shall have to settle what’s to be done with the place.”
“As you please, Mr. Radbolt.” Beaumaroy’s tone was, for the first time, a little curt. It hinted some slight offense—as though he felt himself charged with carelessness, and considered Mrs. Radbolt’s obsession mere fussiness. “No doubt, if you stay, Mrs. Wiles will agree to stay too, and do her best to make you comfortable.”
“I shall feel easier that way, Radbolt,” Mrs. Radbolt admitted, with another rumble of apologetic mirth.
Beaumaroy motioned his guests back to the parlor. His manner retained its shade of distance and offense. “Then it really only remains for me to wish you good-bye—and all happiness in your new property. Any information in my possession as to Mr. Saffron’s affairs I shall, of course, be happy to give you. Is the car coming for you, Mr. Naylor?”
“I thought it would be pleasant to walk back; and I hope Doctor Mary will come with us and have some tea. I’ll send you home afterwards, Doctor Mary.”
Farewells were exchanged, but now without even a show of cordiality. Naylor and Doctor Mary felt too much distaste for the chief mourners to attain more than a cold civility. Beaumaroy did not relax into his earlier friendliness. His apparent dislike to her husband’s plan of staying at the Cottage roused Mrs. Radbolt’s suspicions again; was he a rogue after all, but a very plausible, a very deep one? Only Mr. Radbolt’s unctuousness—surely it would have smoothed the stormiest waves—saved the social situation.
“Intelligent people, I thought,” Beaumaroy observed, as the three friends pursued their way across the heath towards Old Place. “Didn’t you, Mr. Naylor?”
Old Naylor grunted. With a twinkle in his eyes, Beaumaroy tried Doctor Mary. “What was your impression of them?”
“Oh!” moaned Mary, with a deep and expressive note. “But how did you know they’d be like that?”
“Letters, and the old man’s description, he had a considerable command of language, and very violent likes and dislikes. I made a picture of them—and it’s turned out pretty accurate.”
“And those were the nearest kith and kin your poor old man had?” Naylor shook his head sadly. “The woman obviously cared not a straw about anything but handling his money—and couldn’t even hide it! A gross and horrible female, Beaumaroy!”
“Were you really hurt about their insisting on staying?” asked Mary.
“Oh, come, you’re sharper than that, Doctor Mary! Still, I think I did it pretty well. I set the old girl thinking again, didn’t I?” He broke into laughter, and Mary joined in heartily. Old Naylor glanced from one to the other with an air of curiosity.
“You two people look to me—somehow—as if you’d got a secret between you.”
“Perhaps we have! Mr. Naylor’s a man of honor, Doctor Mary; a man who appreciates a situation, a man you can trust.” Beaumaroy seemed very gay and happy now, disembarrassed of a load, and buoyant alike in walk and in spirit. “What do you say to letting Mr. Naylor—just him—nobody else—into our secret?”
Mary put her arms through old Mr. Naylor’s. “I don’t mind, if you don’t. But nobody else!”
“Then you shall tell him—the entire story—at your leisure. Meanwhile I’ll begin at the wrong end. I told you I’d made a picture of the hated cousins, of the heirs-at-law, those sorrowing chief mourners. Well, having made a picture of them that’s proved true, I’ll make a prophecy about them, and I’ll bet you it proves just as true.”
“Go on,” said Mary. “Listen, Mr. Naylor,” she added with a squeeze of the old man’s arm.
“You’re like a couple of naughty children!” he said, with an affectionate look and laugh.
“Well, my prophecy is that they’ll swear the poor dear old man’s estate at under five thousand.”
“Well, why shouldn’t—” old Naylor began; but he stopped as he saw Mary’s eyes meet Beaumaroy’s in a rapture of quick and delighted understanding.
“And then perhaps you’ll own to being sorry, Doctor Mary!”
“So that’s what you were up to, was it?” said Mary.
Old Mr. Naylor called on Mary two or three days later—at an hour when, as he well knew, Cynthia was at his own house—in order to hear the story. There were parts of it which she could not describe fully for lack of knowledge—the enterprise of Mike and Big Neddy, for example; but all that she knew she told frankly, and did not scruple to invoke her imagination to paint Beaumaroy’s position, with its difficulties, demands, obligations—and temptations. He heard her with close attention, evidently amused, and watching her animated face with a keen and watchful pleasure.
“Surprising!” he said at the end, rubbing his hands together. “That’s to say, not in itself particularly surprising. Just a queer little happening; one would think nothing of it if one read it in the newspaper! Things are always so much more surprising when they happen down one’s own street, or within a few minutes’ walk of one’s garden wall—and when one actually knows the people involved in them. Still I was always inclined to agree with Dr. Irechester that there was something out of the common about old Saffron and our friend Beaumaroy.”
“Dr. Irechester never found out what it was, though!” exclaimed Mary triumphantly.
“No, he didn’t; for reasons pretty clearly indicated in your narrative.” He sat back in his chair, his elbows on the arms and his hands clasped before him. “If I may say so, the really curious thing is to find you in the thick of it, Doctor Mary.”
“That wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t refuse to attend Mr. Saffron. Dr. Irechester himself said so.”
He paid no heed to her protest. “In the thick of it—and enjoying it so tremendously!”
Mary looked thoughtful. “I didn’t at first. I was angry, indignant, suspicious. I thought I was being made a fool of.”
“So you were—a fool and a tool, my dear!”
“But that night—because it all really happened in just one night—the chief mourners, as Mr. Beaumaroy always calls them, were more than—”
“Just a rather amusing epilogue—yes, that’s all.”
“That night, it did get hold of me.” She laughed a little nervously, a little uneasily.
“And now you tell it to me—I must say that your telling made it twice the story that it really is—now you tell it as if it were the greatest thing that ever happened to you!”
For a moment Mary fenced. “Well, nothing interesting ever has happened in my humdrum life before.” But old Naylor pursed up his lips in contempt of her fencing. “It did seem to me a great—a great experience. Not the burglars and all that—though some of the things, like the water-butt, did amuse me very much—but our being apart from all the world, there by ourselves, against the whole world in a way, Mr. Naylor.”
“The law on one side, the robbers on the other, and you two alone together!”
“Yes, you understand. That was the way I felt it. But we weren’t together, not in every way. I mean, we were fighting between ourselves too, right up to the very end.” She gave another low laugh. “I suppose we’re fighting still; he means to face me with some Radbolt villainy, and make me sorry for what he calls my legalism—with an epithet!”
“That’s his idea, and my own too, I confess. Those chief mourners will find the money—and some other things that’ll make ‘em stare. But they’ll lie low; they’ll sit on the cash till the time comes when it’s safe to dispose of it; and they’ll bilk the Inland Revenue out of the duties. The remarkable thing is that Beaumaroy seems to want them to do it.”
“That’s to make me sorry; that’s to prove me wrong, Mr. Naylor.”
“It may make you sorry, it makes me sorry, for that matter; but it doesn’t prove you wrong. You were right. My boy Alec would have taken the same line as you did. Now you needn’t laugh at me, Mary. I own up at once; that’s my highest praise.”
“I know it is; and it implies a contrast?”
Old Naylor unclasped his hands and spread them in a deprecatory gesture. “It must do that,” he acknowledged.
Mary gave a rebellious little toss of her head. “I don’t care if it does, Mr. Naylor! Mr. Beaumaroy is my friend now.”
“And mine. Moreover I have such confidence in his honor and fidelity that I have offered him a rather important and confidential position in my business—to represent us at one of the foreign ports where we have considerable interests.” He smiled. “It’s the sort of place where he will perhaps find himself less trammelled by—er—legalism, and with more opportunities for his undoubted gift of initiative.”
“Will he accept your offer? Will he go?” she asked rather excitedly.
“Without doubt, I think. It’s really quite a good offer. And what prospects has he now, or here?”
Mary stretched her hands towards the fire and gazed into it in silence.
“I think you’ll have an offer soon too, and a good one, Doctor Mary. Irechester was over at our place yesterday. He’s still of opinion that there was something queer at Tower Cottage. Indeed he thinks that Mr. Saffron was queer himself, in his head, and that a clever doctor would have found it out.”
“That he himself would, if he’d gone on attending—”
“Precisely. But he’s not surprised that you didn’t; you lacked the experience. Still he thinks none the worse of you for that, and he told me that he has made up his mind to offer you partnership. Irechester’s a bit stiff, but a very straight fellow. You could rely on being fairly treated, and it’s a good practice. Besides he’s well off, and quite likely to retire as soon as he sees you fairly in the saddle.”
“It’s a great compliment.” Here Mary’s voice sounded quite straightforward and sincere. An odd little note of contempt crept into it as she added, “And it sounds—ideal!”
“Yes, it does,” old Naylor agreed, with a private smile all to himself, whilst Mary still gazed into the fire. “Quite ideal. You’re a lucky young woman, Mary.” He rose to take his leave. “So, with our young folk happily married, and you installed, and friend Beaumaroy suited to his liking—why, upon my word, we may ring the curtain down on a happy ending—of Act I, at all events!”
She seemed to pay no heed to his words. He stood for a moment, admiring her; not as a beauty, but a healthy comely young woman, stout-hearted, and with humanity and a sense of fun in her. And, as he looked, his true feeling about the situation suddenly burst through all restraint and leapt from his lips. “Though, for my part, under the circumstances, if I were you, I’d see old Irechester damned before I accepted the partnership!”
She turned to him—startled, yet suddenly smiling. He took her hand and raised it to his lips.
“Hush! Not another word! Good-bye, my dear Mary!”
The next day, as Mary, her morning round finished, sat at lunch with Cynthia, listening, or not listening, to her friend’s excusably, eager chatter about her approaching wedding, a note was delivered into her hands:
The C.M.‘s are in a hurry! She’s back! The window is boarded up again! Come and see! About 4 o’clock this afternoon. B.
Mary kept the appointment. She found Beaumaroy strolling up and down on the road in front of the cottage. The Tower window was boarded up again, but with new strong planks, in a much more solid and workmanlike fashion. If he were to try again, Mike would not find it so easy to negotiate, without making a dangerous noise over the job.
“Such impatience—such undisguised rapacity—is indecent and revolting,” Beaumaroy remarked. He seemed to be in the highest spirits. “I wonder if they’ve opened it yet!”
“They’ll see you prowling about outside, won’t they?”
“I hope so. Indeed I’ve no doubt of it. Mrs. Greeneyes is probably peering through the parlor window at this minute, and cursing me. I like it! To those people I represent law and order. If they can rise to the conception of such a thing at all, I probably embody conscience. When you come to think of it, it’s a pleasant turn of events that I should come to represent law and order and conscience to anybody, even to the Radbolts.”
“It is rather a change,” she agreed. “But let’s walk on. I don’t really much want to think of them.”
“That’s because you feel that you’re losing the bet. I can’t stop them getting the money in the end, that’s your doing! I can’t stop them cheating the Revenue, which is what they certainly mean to do, without exposing myself to more inconvenience than I am disposed to undergo in the cause of the Revenue. Whereas if I had left the bag in the water-butt—all your doing! Aren’t you a little sorry?”
“Of course there is an aspect of the case—” she admitted smiling.
“That’s enough for me! You’ve lost the bet. Let’s see—what were the stakes, Mary?”
“Come, let’s walk on.” She put her arm through his. “What about this berth that Mr. Naylor’s offering you? At Bogota, isn’t it?”
He looked puzzled for a moment; then his mind worked quickly back to Cynthia’s almost forgotten tragedy. He laughed in enjoyment of her thrust. “My place isn’t Bogota—though I fancy that it’s rather in the same moral latitude. You’re confusing me with Captain Cranster!”
“So I was—for a moment,” said Doctor Mary demurely. “But what about the appointment, anyhow?”
“What about your partnership with Dr. Irechester, if you come to that?”
Mary pressed his arm gently, and they walked on in silence for a little while. They were clear of the neighborhood of Tower Cottage now, but still a considerable distance from Old Place; very much alone together on the heath, as they had seemed to be that night—that night of nights—at the cottage.
“I haven’t so much as received the offer yet; only Mr. Naylor has mentioned it to me.”
“Still, you’d like to be ready with your answer when the offer is made, wouldn’t you?” He drew suddenly away from her, and stood still on the road, opposite to her. His face lost its playfulness; as it set into gravity, the lines upon it deepened, and his eyes looked rather sad. “This is wrong of me, perhaps, but I can’t help it. I’m not going to talk to you about myself. Confessions and apologies and excuses, and so on, aren’t in my line. I should probably tell lies if I attempted anything of the sort. You must take me or leave me on your own judgment, on your own feelings about me, as you’ve seen and known me—not long, but pretty intimately, Mary.” He suddenly reached his hand into his pocket and pulled out the combination knife-and-fork. “That’s all I’ve brought away of his from Tower Cottage. And I brought it away as much for your sake as for his. It was during our encounter over this instrument that I first thought of you as a woman, Mary. And, by Jove, I believe you knew it!”
“Yes, I believe I did,” she answered, her eyes set very steadily on his.
He slipped the thing back into his pocket. “And now I love you, and I want you, Mary.”
She fell into a sudden agitation. “Oh, but this doesn’t seem for me! I’d put all that behind me! I—” She could scarcely find words. “I, I’m just Doctor Mary!”
“Lots of people to practice on—bodies and souls too, in the moral latitude I’m going to!”
Her body seemed to shiver a little, as though before a plunge into deep water. “I’m very safe here,” she whispered.
“Yes, you’re safe here,” he acknowledged gravely, and stood silent, waiting for her choice.
“What a decision to have to make!” she cried suddenly. “It’s all my life in a moment! Because I don’t want you to go away from me!” She drew near to him, and put her hands on his shoulders. “I’m not a child, like Cynthia. I can’t dream dreams and make idols any more. I think I see you as you are, and I don’t know whether your love is a good thing.” She paused, searching his eyes with hers very earnestly. Then she went on, “But if it isn’t, I think there’s no good thing left for me at all.”
“Mary, isn’t that your answer to me?” “Yes.” Her arms fell from his shoulders, and she stood opposite to him, in silence again for a moment. Then her troubled face cleared to a calm serenity. “And now I set doubts and fears behind me. I come to you in faith, and loyalty, and love. I’m not a missionary to you, or a reformer, God forbid! I’m just the woman who loves you, Hector.”
“I should have mocked at the missionary, and tricked the reformer.” He bared his head before her. “But by the woman who loves me and whom I love, I will deal faithfully.” He bent and kissed her forehead.
“And now, let’s walk on. No, not to old Place—back home, past Tower Cottage.”
She put her arm through his again, and they set out through the soft dusk that had begun to hover about them. So they came to the cottage, and here, for a while, instinctively stayed their steps. A light shone in the parlor window; the Tower was dark and still. Mary turned her face to Beaumaroy’s with a sudden smile of scornful gladness.
“Aye, aye, you’re right!” His smile answered hers. “Poor devils! I’m sorry; for them, upon my soul I am!”
“That really is just like you!” she exclaimed in mirthful exasperation. “Sorry for the Radbolts now, are you?”
“Well, after all, they’ve only got the gold. We’ve got the treasure, Mary!”