“The cell is large, lighted by a swinging lamp. In centre is a steel gate through which a soldier on guard is seen pacing to and fro——”
“The cell is large, lighted by a swinging lamp. In centre is a steel gate through which a soldier on guard is seen pacing to and fro——”
“Good God!” said Michael, and went white.
The “u’s” in the type were blurred, the “g” was indistinct. The page had been typed on the machine from which the Head-Hunter sent forth his gruesome tales of death.
CHAPTER VMR. LAWLEY FOSS
“Whatis wrong?” asked Adele, seeing the young man’s grave face.
“Where did this come from?”
He showed her the sheet of typewritten script.
“I don’t know: it was with the other sheets. I knew, of course, that it didn’t belong to ‘Roselle.’ ”
“Is that the play you’re acting in?” he asked quickly. And then: “Who would know?”
“Mr. Knebworth.”
“Where shall I find him?”
“You go through that door,” she said, “and you will find him on the studio floor.”
Without a word, he walked quickly into the building. Instinctively he knew which of the party was the man he sought. Jack Knebworth looked up under lowering brows at the sight of the stranger, for he was a stickler for privacy in business hours; but before he could demand an explanation, Michael was up to him.
“Are you Mr. Knebworth?”
Jack nodded.
“I surely am,” he said.
“May I speak to you for two minutes?”
“I can’t speak to anybody for one minute,” growled Jack. “Who are you, anyway, and who let you in?”
“I am a detective from the Foreign Office,” said Michael, lowering his voice, and Jack’s manner changed.
“Anything wrong?” he asked, as he accompanied the detective into his sanctum.
Jack laid down the sheet of paper with its typed characters on the table.
“Who wrote that?” he asked.
Jack Knebworth looked at the manuscript and shook his head.
“I’ve never seen it before. What is it all about?”
“You’ve never seen this manuscript at all?”
“No, I’ll swear to that, but I dare say my scenario man will know all about it. I’ll send for him.”
He touched a bell, and, to the clerk who came:
“Ask Mr. Lawley Foss to come quickly,” he said.
“The reading of books, plots and material for picture plays is entirely in the hands of my scenario manager,” he said. “I never see a manuscript until he considers it’s worth producing; and even then, of course, the picture isn’t always made. If the story happens to be a bad one, I don’t see it at all. I’m not so sure that I haven’t lost some good stories, because Foss”—he hesitated a second—“well, he and I don’t see exactly eye to eye. Now, Mr. Brixan, what is the trouble?”
In a few words Michael explained the grave significance of the typewritten sheet.
“The Head-Hunter!” Jack whistled.
There came a knock at the door, and Lawley Foss slipped into the room. He was a thinnish man, dark and saturnine of face, shifty of eye. His face was heavily lined as though he suffered from some chronic disease. But the real disease which preyed on Lawley Foss was the bitterness of mind that comes to a man at war with the world. There had been a time in his early life when he thought that same world was at his feet. He had written two plays that had been produced and had run a few nights. Thereafter, he had trudged from theatre to theatre in vain, for the taint of failure was on him, and no manager would so much as open the brown-covered manuscripts he brought to them. Like many another man, he had sought easy ways to wealth, but the Stock Exchange and the race track had impoverished him still further.
He glanced suspiciously at Michael as he entered.
“I want to see you, Foss, about a sheet of script that’s got amongst the ‘Roselle’ script,” said Jack Knebworth. “May I tell Mr. Foss what you have told me?”
Michael hesitated for a second. Some cautioning voice warned him to keep the question of the Head-Hunter a secret. Against his better judgment he nodded.
Lawley Foss listened with an expressionless face whilst the old director explained the significance of the interpolated sheet, then he took the page from Jack Knebworth’s hand and examined it. Not by a twitch of his face or a droop of his eyelid did he betray his thoughts.
“I get a lot of stuff in,” he said, “and I can’t immediately place this particular play; but if you’ll let me take it to my office, I will look up my books.”
Again Michael considered. He did not wish that piece of evidence to pass out of his hands; and yet without confirmation and examination, it was fairly valueless. He reluctantly agreed.
“What do you make of that fellow?” asked Jack Knebworth when the door had closed upon the writer.
“I don’t like him,” said Michael bluntly. “In fact, my first impressions are distinctly unfavourable, though I am probably doing the poor gentleman a very great injustice.”
Jack Knebworth sighed. Foss was one of his biggest troubles, sometimes bulking larger than the temperamental Mendoza.
“He certainly is a queer chap,” he said, “though he’s diabolically clever. I never knew a man who could take a plot and twist it as Lawley Foss can—but he’s—difficult.”
“I should imagine so,” said Michael dryly.
They passed out into the studio, and Michael sought the troubled girl to explain his crudeness. There were tears of vexation in her eyes when he approached her, for his startling disappearance with a page of the script had put all thoughts of the play from her mind.
“I am sorry,” he said penitently. “I almost wish I hadn’t come.”
“And I quite wish it,” she said, smiling in spite of herself. “What was the matter with that page you took—youarea detective, aren’t you?”
“I admit it,” said Michael recklessly.
“Did you speak the truth when you said that my uncle——” she stopped, at a loss for words.
“No, I did not,” replied Michael quietly. “You uncle is dead, Miss Leamington.”
“Dead!” she gasped.
He nodded.
“He was murdered, in extraordinary circumstances.”
Suddenly her face went white.
“He wasn’t the man whose head was found at Esher?”
“How did you know?” he asked sharply.
“It was in this morning’s newspaper,” she said, and inwardly he cursed the sleuth-hound of a reporter who had got on to the track of this latest tragedy.
She had to know sooner or later: he satisfied himself with that thought.
The return of Foss relieved him of further explanations. The man spoke for a while with Jack Knebworth in a low voice, and then the director beckoned Michael across.
“Foss can’t trace this manuscript,” he said, handing back the sheet. “It may have been a sample page sent in by a contributor, or it may have been a legacy from our predecessors. I took over a whole lot of manuscript with the studio from a bankrupt production company.”
He looked impatiently at his watch.
“Now, Mr. Brixan, if it’s possible I should be glad if you would excuse me. I’ve got some scenes to shoot ten miles away, with a leading lady from whose little head you’ve scared every idea that will be of the slightest value to me.”
Michael acted upon an impulse.
“Would you mind my coming out with you to shoot—that means to photograph, doesn’t it? I promise you I won’t be in the way.”
Old Jack nodded curtly, and ten minutes later Michael Brixan was sitting side by side with the girl in a char-à-banc which was carrying them to the location. That he should be riding with the artistes at all was a tribute to his nerve rather than to his modesty.
CHAPTER VITHE MASTER OF GRIFF
Adeledid not speak to him for a long time. Resentment that he should force his company upon her, and nervousness at the coming ordeal—a nervousness which became sheer panic as they grew nearer and nearer to their destination—made conversation impossible.
“I see your Mr. Lawley Foss is with us,” said Michael, glancing over his shoulder, and by way of making conversation.
“He always goes on location,” she said shortly. “A story has sometimes to be amended while it’s being shot.”
“Where are we going now?” he asked.
“Griff Towers first,” she replied. She found it difficult to be uncivil to anybody. “It is a big place owned by Sir Gregory Penne.”
“But I thought we were going to the Dower House?”
She looked at him with a little frown.
“Why did you ask if you knew?” she demanded, almost in a tone of asperity.
“Because I like to hear you speak,” said the young man calmly. “Sir Gregory Penne? I seem to know the name.”
She did not answer.
“He was in Borneo for many years, wasn’t he?”
“He’s hateful,” she said vehemently. “I detest him!”
She did not explain the cause of her detestation, and Michael thought it discreet not to press the question, but presently she relieved him of responsibility.
“I’ve been to his house twice. He has a very fine garden, which Mr. Knebworth has used before—of course, I only went as an extra and was very much in the background. I wish I had been more so. He has queer ideas about women, and especially actresses—not that I’m an actress,” she added hastily, “but I mean people who play for a living. Thank heaven there’s only one scene to be shot at Griff, and perhaps he will not be at home, but that’s unlikely. He’s always there when I go.”
Michael glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. His first impression of her beauty was more than confirmed. There was a certain wistfulness in her face which was very appealing; an honesty in the dark eyes that told him all he wanted to know about her attitude toward the admiration of the unknown Sir Gregory.
“It’s queer how all baronets are villains in stories,” he said, “and queerer still that most of the baronets I’ve known have been men of singular morals. I’m bothering you, being here, aren’t I?” he asked, dropping his tone of banter.
She looked round at him.
“You are a little,” she said frankly. “You see, Mr. Brixan, this is my big chance. It’s a chance that really never comes to an extra except in stories, and I’m frightened to death of what is going to happen. You make me nervous, but what makes me more panic-stricken is that the first scene is to be shot at Griff. I hate it, I hate it!” she said almost savagely. “That big, hard-looking house, with its hideous stuffed tigers and its awful looking swords——”
“Swords?” he asked quickly. “What do you mean?”
“The walls are covered with them—Eastern swords. They make me shiver to see them. But Sir Gregory takes a delight in them: he told Mr. Knebworth, the last time we were there, that the swords were as sharp now as they were when they came from the hands of their makers, and some of them were three hundred years old. He’s an extraordinary man: he can cut an apple in half on your hand and never so much as scratch you. That is one of his favourite stunts—do you know what ‘stunt’ means?”
“I seem to have heard the expression,” said Michael absently.
“There is the house,” she pointed. “Ugh! It makes me shiver.”
Griff Towers was one of those bleak looking buildings that it had been the delight of the early Victorian architects to erect. Its one grey tower, placed on the left wing, gave it a lopsided appearance, but even this distortion did not distract attention from its rectangular unloveliness. The place seemed all the more bare, since the walls were innocent of greenery, and it stood starkly in the midst of a yellow expanse of gravel.
“Looks almost like a barracks,” said Michael, “with a parade ground in front!”
They passed through the lodge gates, and the char-à-banc stopped half-way up the drive. The gardens apparently were in the rear of the building, and certainly there was nothing that would attract the most careless of directors in its uninteresting façade.
Michael got down from his seat and found Jack Knebworth already superintending the unloading of a camera and reflectors. Behind the char-à-banc came the big dynamo lorry, with three sun arcs that were to enhance the value of daylight.
“Oh, you’re here, are you?” growled Jack. “Now you’ll oblige me, Mr. Brixan, by not getting in the way? I’ve got a hard morning’s work ahead of me.”
“I want you to take me on as a—what is the word?—extra,” said Michael.
The old man frowned at him.
“Say, what’s the great idea?” he asked suspiciously.
“I have an excellent reason, and I promise you that nothing I do will in any way embarrass you. The truth is, Mr. Knebworth, I want to be around for the remainder of the day, and I need an excuse.”
Jack Knebworth bit his lip, scratched his long chin, scowled, and then:
“All right,” he said gruffly. “Maybe you’ll come in handy, though I’ll have quite enough bother directing one amateur, and if you get into the pictures on this trip you’re going to be lucky!”
There was a man of the party, a tall young man whose hair was brushed back from his forehead, and was so tidy and well arranged that it seemed as if it had originally been stuck by glue and varnished over. A tall, somewhat good-looking boy, who had sat on Adele’s left throughout the journey and had not spoken once, he raised his eyebrows at the appearance of Michael, and, strolling across to the harassed Knebworth, his hands in his pockets, he asked with a hurt air:
“I say, Mr. Knebworth, who is this johnny?”
“Which johnny?” growled old Jack. “You mean Brixan? He’s an extra.”
“Oh, an extra, is he?” said the young man. “I say, it’s pretty desperately awful when extras hobnob with principals! And this Leamington girl—she’s simply going to mess up the pictures, she is, by Jove!”
“Is she, by Jove?” snarled Knebworth. “Now see here, Mr. Connolly, I ain’t so much in love with your work that I’m willing to admit in advance that even an extra is going to mess up this picture.”
“I’ve never played opposite to an extra in my life, dash it all!”
“Then you must have felt lonely,” grunted Jack, busy with his unpacking.
“Now, Mendoza is an artiste——” began the youthful leading man, and Jack Knebworth straightened his back.
“Get over there till you’re wanted, you!” he roared. “When I need advice from pretty boys, I’ll come to you—see? For the moment you’rede trop, which is a French expression meaning that you’re standing on ground there’s a better use for.”
The disgruntled Reggie Connolly strolled away with a shrug of his thin shoulders, which indicated not only his conviction that the picture would fail, but that the responsibility was everywhere but under his hat.
From the big doorway of Griff Towers, Sir Gregory Penne was watching the assembly of the company. He was a thick-set man, and the sun of Borneo and an unrestricted appetite had dyed his skin a colour which was between purple and brown. His face was covered with innumerable ridges, his eyes looked forth upon the world through two narrow slits. The rounded feminine chin seemed to be the only part of his face that sunshine and stronger stimulants had left in its natural condition.
Michael watched him as he strolled down the slope to where they were standing, guessing his identity. He wore a golf suit of a loud check in which red predominated, and a big cap of the same material was pulled down over his eyes. Taking the stub of a cigar from his teeth, with a quick and characteristic gesture he wiped his scanty moustache on his knuckles.
“Good morning, Knebworth,” he called.
His voice was harsh and cruel; a voice that had never been mellowed by laughter or made soft by the tendernesses of humanity.
“Good morning, Sir Gregory.”
Old Knebworth disentangled himself from his company.
“Sorry I’m late.”
“Don’t apologize,” said the other. “Only I thought you were going to shoot earlier. Brought my little girl, eh?”
“Your little girl?” Jack looked at him, frankly nonplussed. “You mean Mendoza? No, she’s not coming.”
“I don’t mean Mendoza, if that’s the dark girl. Never mind: I was only joking.”
Who the blazes was his little girl, thought Jack, who was ignorant of two unhappy experiences which an unconsidered extra girl had had on previous visits. The mystery, however, was soon cleared up, for the baronet walked slowly to where Adele Leamington was making a pretence of studying her script.
“Good morning, little lady,” he said, lifting his cap an eighth of an inch from his head.
“Good morning, Sir Gregory,” she said coldly.
“You didn’t keep your promise.” He shook his head waggishly. “Oh, woman, woman!”
“I don’t remember having made a promise,” said the girl quietly. “You asked me to come to dinner with you, and I told you that that was impossible.”
“I promised to send my car for you. Don’t say it was too far away. Never mind, never mind.” And, to Michael’s wrath, he squeezed the girl’s arm in a manner which was intended to be paternal, but which filled the girl with indignant loathing.
She wrenched her arm free, and, turning her back upon her tormentor, almost flew to Jack Knebworth with an incoherent demand for information on the reading of a line which was perfectly simple.
Old Jack was no fool. He watched the play from under his eyelids, recognizing all the symptoms.
“This is the last time we shall shoot at Griff Towers,” he told himself.
For Jack Knebworth was something of a stickler on behaviour, and had views on women which were diametrically opposite to those held by Sir Gregory Penne.
CHAPTER VIITHE SWORDS AND BHAG
Thelittle party moved away, leaving Michael alone with the baronet. For a period, Gregory Penne watched the girl, his eyes glittering; then he became aware of Michael’s presence and turned a cold, insolent stare upon the other.
“What are you?” he asked, looking the detective up and down.
“I’m an extra,” said Michael.
“An extra, eh? Sort of chorus boy? Put paint and powder on your face and all that sort of thing? What a life for a man!”
“There are worse,” said Michael, holding his antagonism in check.
“Do you know that little girl—what’s her name, Leamington?” asked the baronet suddenly.
“I know her extremely well,” said Michael untruthfully.
“Oh, you do, eh?” said the master of Griff Towers with sudden amiability. “She’s a nice little thing. Quite a cut above the ordinary chorus girl. You might bring her along to dinner one night. She’d come with you, eh?”
The contortions of the puffy eyelids suggested to Michael that the man had winked. There was something about this gross figure that interested the scientist in Michael Brixan. He was elemental; an animal invested with a brain; and yet he must be something more than that if he had held a high administrative position under Government.
“Are you acting? If you’re not, you can come up and have a look at my swords,” said the man suddenly.
Michael guessed that, for a reason of his own, probably because of his claim to be Adele’s friend, the man wished to cultivate the acquaintance.
“No, I’m not acting,” replied Michael.
And no invitation could have given him greater pleasure. Did their owner realize the fact, Michael Brixan had already made up his mind not to leave Griff Towers until he had inspected that peculiar collection.
“Yes, she’s a nice little girl.”
Penne returned to the subject immediately as they paced up the slope toward the house.
“As I say, a cut above chorus girls. Young, unsophisticated, virginal! You can have your sophisticated girls: there is no mystery to ’em! They revolt me. A girl should be like a spring flower. Give me the violet and the snowdrop: you can have a bushel of cabbage roses for one petal of the shy dears of the forest.”
Michael listened with a keen sense of nausea, and yet with an unusual interest, as the man rambled on. He said things which were sickening, monstrous. There were moments when Brixan found it difficult to keep his hands off the obscene figure that paced at his side; and only by adopting toward him the attitude with which the enthusiastic naturalist employs in his dealings with snakes, was he able to get a grip of himself.
The big entrance hall into which he was ushered was paved with earthen tiles, and, looking up at the stone walls, Michael had his first glimpse of the famous swords.
There were hundreds of them—poniards, scimitars, ancient swords of Japan, basket-hilted hangers, two-handed swords that had felt the grip of long-dead Crusaders.
“What do you think of ’em, eh?” Sir Gregory Penne spoke with the pride of an enthusiastic collector. “There isn’t one of them that could be duplicated, my boy; and they’re only the rag, tag and bobtail of my collection.”
He led his visitor along a broad corridor, lighted by square windows set at intervals, and here again the walls were covered with shining weapons. Throwing open a door, Sir Gregory ushered the other into a large room which was evidently his library, though the books were few, and, so far as Michael could see at first glance, the conventional volumes that are to be found in the houses of the country gentry.
Over the mantelshelf were two great swords of a pattern which Michael did not remember having seen before.
“What do you think of those?”
Penne lifted one from the silver hook which supported it, and drew it from its scabbard.
“Don’t feel the edge unless you want to cut yourself. This would split a hair, but it would also cut you in two, and you would never know what had happened till you fell apart!”
Suddenly his manner changed, and he almost snatched the sword from Michael’s hand, and, putting it back in its sheath, he hung it up.
“That is a Sumatran sword, isn’t it?”
“It comes from Borneo,” said the baronet shortly.
“The home of the head-hunters.”
Sir Gregory looked round, his brows lowered.
“No,” he said, “it comes from Dutch Borneo.”
Evidently there was something about this weapon which aroused unpleasant memories. He glowered for a long time in silence into the little fire that was burning on the hearth.
“I killed the man who owned that,” he said at last, and it struck Michael that he was speaking more to himself than to his visitor. “At least, I hope I killed him. I hope so!”
He glanced round, and Michael Brixan could have sworn there was apprehension in his eyes.
“Sit down, What’s-your-name,” he commanded, pointing to a low settee. “We’ll have a drink.”
He pushed a bell, and, to Michael’s astonishment, the summons was answered by an under-sized native, a little copper-coloured man, naked to the waist. Gregory gave an order in a language which was unintelligible to Michael—he guessed, by its sibilants, it was Malayan—and the servant, with a quick salaam, disappeared, and came back almost instantly with a tray containing a large decanter and two thin glasses.
“I have no white servants—can’t stand ’em,” said Penne, taking the contents of his glass at a gulp. “I like servants who don’t steal and don’t gossip. You can lick ’em if they misbehave, and there’s no trouble. I got this fellow last year in Sumatra, and he’s the best butler I’ve had.”
“Do you go to Borneo every year?” asked Michael.
“I go almost every year,” said the other. “I’ve got a yacht: she’s lying at Southampton now. If I didn’t get out of this cursed country once a year, I’d go mad. There’s nothing here, nothing! Have you ever met that dithering old fool, Longvale? Knebworth said you were going on to him—pompous old ass, who lives in the past and dresses like an advertisement for somebody’s whisky. Have another?”
“I haven’t finished this yet,” said Michael with a smile, and his eyes went up to the sword above the mantelpiece. “Have you had that very long? It looks modern.”
“It isn’t,” snapped the other. “Modern! It’s three hundred years old if it’s a day. I’ve only had it a year.” Again he changed the subject abruptly. “I like you, What’s-your-name. I like people or I dislike them instantly. You’re the sort of fellow who’d do well in the East. I’ve made two millions there. The East is full of wonder, full of unbelievable things.” He screwed his head round and fixed Michael with a glittering eye. “Full of good servants,” he said slowly. “Would you like to meet the perfect servant?”
There was something peculiar in his tone, and Michael nodded.
“Would you like to see the slave who never asks questions and never disobeys, who has no love but love of me”—he thumped himself on the chest—“no hate but for the people I hate—my trusty—Bhag?”
He rose, and, crossing to his table, turned a little switch that Michael had noticed attached to the side of the desk. As he did so, a part of the panelled wall at the farther end of the room swung open. For a second Michael saw nothing, and then there emerged, blinking into the daylight, a most sinister, a most terrifying figure. And Michael Brixan had need for all his self-control to check the exclamation that rose to his lips.
CHAPTER VIIIBHAG
Itwas a great orang-outang. Crouched as it was, gazing malignantly upon the visitor with its bead-like eyes, it stood over six feet in height. The hairy chest was enormous; the arms that almost touched the floor were as thick as an average man’s thigh. It wore, a pair of workman’s dark blue overalls, held in place by two straps that crossed the broad shoulders.
“Bhag!” called Sir Gregory in a voice so soft that Michael could not believe it was the man’s own. “Come here.”
The gigantic figure waddled across the room to where they stood before the fireplace.
“This is a friend of mine, Bhag.”
The great ape held out his hand, and for a second Michael’s was held in its velvet palm. This done, he lifted his paw to his nose and sniffed loudly, the only sound he made.
“Get me some cigars,” said Penne.
Immediately the ape walked to a cabinet, pulled open a drawer, and brought out a box.
“Not those,” said Gregory. “The small ones.”
He spoke distinctly, as if he were articulating to somebody who was deaf, and, without a moment’s hesitation, the hideous Bhag replaced the box and brought out another.
“Pour me out a whisky and soda.”
The ape obeyed. He did not spill a drop, and when his owner said “Enough,” replaced the stopper in the decanter and put it back.
“Thank you, that will do, Bhag.”
Without a sound the ape waddled back to the open panelling and disappeared, and the door closed behind him.
“Why, the thing is human,” said Michael in an awe-stricken whisper.
Sir Gregory Penne chuckled.
“More than human,” he said. “Bhag is my shield against all trouble.”
His eyes seemed to go instantly to the sword above the mantelpiece.
“Where does he live?”
“He’s got a little apartment of his own, and he keeps it clean. He feeds with the servants.”
“Good Lord!” gasped Michael, and the other chuckled again at the surprise he had aroused.
“Yes, he feeds with the servants. They’re afraid of him, but they worship him: he’s a sort of god to them, but they’re afraid of him. Do you know what would have happened if I’d said ‘This man is my enemy?’ ” He pointed his stubby finger at Michael’s chest. “He would have torn you limb from limb. You wouldn’t have had a chance, Mr. What’s-your-name, not a dog’s chance. And yet he can be gentle—yes, he can be gentle.” He nodded. “And cunning! He goes out almost every night, and I’ve had no complaints from the villagers. No sheep stolen, nobody frightened. He just goes out and loafs around in the woods, and doesn’t kill as much as a hen partridge.”
“How long have you had him?”
“Eight or nine years,” said the baronet carelessly, swallowing the whisky that the ape had poured for him. “Now let’s go out and see the actors and actresses. She’s a nice girl, eh? You’re not forgetting you’re going to bring her to dinner, are you? What is your name?”
“Brixan,” said Michael. “Michael Brixan.”
Sir Gregory grunted something.
“I’ll remember that—Brixan. I ought to have told Bhag. He likes to know.”
“Would he have known me again, suppose you had?” asked Michael, smiling.
“Known you?” said the baronet contemptuously. “He will not only know you, but he’ll be able to trail you down. Notice him smelling his hand? He was filing you for reference, my boy. If I told him ‘Go along and take this message to Brixan,’ he’d find you.”
When they reached the lovely gardens at the back of the house, the first scene had been shot, and there was a smile on Jack Knebworth’s face which suggested that Adele’s misgivings had not been justified. And so it proved.
“That girl’s a peach,” Jack unbent to say. “A natural born actress, built for this scene—it’s almost too good to be true. What do you want?”
It was Mr. Reggie Connolly, and he had the obsession which is perpetual in every leading man. He felt that sufficient opportunities had not been offered to him.
“I say, Mr. Knebworth,” he said in a grieved tone, “I’m not getting much of the fat in this story! So far, there’s about thirty feet of me in this picture. I say, that’s not right, you know! If a johnny is being featured——”
“You’re not being featured,” said Jack shortly. “And Mendoza’s chief complaint was that there was too much of you in it.”
Michael looked round. Sir Gregory Penne had strolled toward where the girl was standing, and, in her state of elation, she had no room in her heart even for resentment against the man she so cordially detested.
“Little girl, I want to speak to you before you go,” he said, dropping his voice, and for once she smiled at him.
“Well, you have a good opportunity now, Sir Gregory,” she said.
“I want to tell you how sorry I am for what happened the other day, and I respect you for what you said, for a girl’s entitled to keep her kisses for men she likes. Aren’t I right?”
“Of course you’re right,” she said. “Please don’t think any more about it, Sir Gregory.”
“I’d no right to kiss you against your will, especially when you’re in my house. Are you going to forgive me?”
“I do forgive you,” she said, and would have left him, but he caught her arm.
“You’re coming to dinner, aren’t you?” He jerked his head toward the watchful Michael. “Your friend said he’d bring you along.”
“Which friend?” she asked, her eyebrows raised. “You mean Mr. Brixan?”
“That’s the fellow. Why do you make friends with that kind of man? Not that he isn’t a decent fellow. I like him personally. Will you come along to dinner?”
“I’m afraid I can’t,” she said, her old aversion gaining ground.
“Little girl,” he said earnestly, “there’s nothing you couldn’t have from me. Why do you want to trouble your pretty head about this cheap play acting? I’ll give you a company of your own if you want it, and the best car that money can buy.”
His eyes were like points of fire, and she shivered.
“I have all I want, Sir Gregory,” she said.
She was furious with Michael Brixan. How dared he presume to accept an invitation on her behalf? How dare he call himself her friend? Her anger almost smothered her dislike for her persecutor.
“You come over to-night—let him bring you,” said Penne huskily. “I want you to-night—do you hear? You’re staying at old Longvale’s. You can easily slip out.”
“I’ll do nothing of the kind. I don’t think you know what you’re asking, Sir Gregory,” she said quietly. “Whatever you mean, it is an insult to me.”
Turning abruptly, she left him. Michael would have spoken to her, but she passed, her head in the air, a look on her face which dismayed him, though, after a moment’s consideration, he could guess the cause.
When the various apparatus was packed, and the company had taken their seats in the char-à-banc, Michael observed that she had very carefully placed herself between Jack Knebworth and the sulking leading man, and wisely himself chose a seat some distance from her.
The car was about to start when Sir Gregory came up to him, and, stepping on the running-board:
“You said you’d get her over——” he began.
“If I said that,” said Michael, “I must have been drunk, and it takes more than one glass of whisky to reduce me to that disgusting condition. Miss Leamington is a free agent, and she would be singularly ill-advised to dine alone with you or any other man.”
He expected an angry outburst, but, to his surprise, the squat man only laughed and waved him a pleasant farewell. Looking round as the car turned from the lodge gates, Michael saw him standing on the lawn, talking to a man, and recognized Foss, who, for some reason, had stayed behind.
And then his eyes strayed past the two men to the window of the library, where the monstrous Bhag sat in his darkened room, waiting for instructions which he would carry into effect without reason or pity. Michael Brixan, hardened as he was to danger of every variety, found himself shuddering.
CHAPTER IXTHE ANCESTOR
TheDower House was away from the main road. A sprawling mass of low buildings, it stood behind untidy hedges and crumbling walls. Once the place had enjoyed the services of a lodge-keeper, but the tiny lodge was deserted, the windows broken, and there were gaps in the tiled roof. The gates had not been closed for generations; they were broken, and leant crazily against the walls to which they had been thrust by the last person who had employed them to guard the entrance to the Dower House.
What had once been a fair lawn was now a tangle of weeds. Thistle and mayweed grew knee-deep where the gallants of old had played their bowls; and it was clear to Michael, from his one glance, that only a portion of the house was used. In only one of the wings were the windows whole; the others were broken or so grimed with dirt, that they appeared to have been painted.
His amusement blended with curiosity, Michael saw for the first time the picturesque Mr. Sampson Longvale. He came out to meet them, his bald head glistening in the afternoon sunlight, his strapped fawn-coloured trousers, velvet waistcoat and old-fashioned stock completely supporting Gregory Penne’s description of him.
“Delighted to see you, Mr. Knebworth. I’ve a very poor house, but I offer you a very rich welcome! I have had tea served in my little dining-room. Will you please introduce me to the members of your company?”
The courtesy, the old-world spirit of dignity, were very charming, and Michael felt a warm glow toward this fine old man who brought to this modern atmosphere the love and the fragrance of a past age.
“I should like to shoot a scene before we lose the light, Mr. Longvale,” said Knebworth, “so, if you don’t mind the meal being a scrambling one, I can give the company a quarter of an hour.” He looked round. “Where is Foss?” he asked. “I want to change a scene.”
“Mr. Foss said he was walking from Griff Towers,” said one of the company. “He stopped behind to speak to Sir Gregory.”
Jack Knebworth cursed his dilatory scenario man with vigour and originality.
“I hope he hasn’t stopped to borrow money,” he said savagely. “That fellow’s going to ruin my credit if I’m not careful.”
He had overcome his objection to his new extra; possibly he felt that there was nobody else in the party whom he could take into his confidence without hurt to discipline.
“Is he that way inclined?”
“He’s always short of money and always trying to make it by some fool trick which leaves him shorter than he was before. When a man gets that kind of bug in his head he’s only a block away from prison. Are you going to stay the night? I don’t think you’ll be able to sleep here,” he said, changing the subject, “but I suppose you’ll be going back to London?”
“Not to-night,” said Michael quickly. “Don’t worry about me. I particularly do not wish to give you any trouble.”
“Come and meet the old man,” said Knebworth under his breath. “He’s a queer old devil with the heart of a child.”
“I like what I’ve seen of him,” said Michael.
Mr. Longvale accepted the introduction all over again.
“I fear there will not be sufficient room in my dining-room for the whole company. I have had a little table laid in my study. Perhaps you and your friends would like to have your tea there?”
“Why, that’s very kind of you, Mr. Longvale. You have met Mr. Brixan?”
The old man smiled and nodded.
“I have met him without realizing that I’ve met him. I never remember names—a curious failing which was shared by my great-great-uncle Charles, with the result that he fell into extraordinary confusion when he wrote his memoirs, and in consequence many of the incidents he relates have been regarded as apocryphal.”
He showed them into a narrow room that ran from the front to the back of the house. Its ceilings were supported by black rafters; the open wainscoting, polished and worn by generations of hands, must have been at least five hundred years old. There were no swords over this mantelpiece, thought Michael with an inward smile. Instead, there was a portrait of a handsome old gentleman, the dignity of whose face was arresting. There was only one word with an adequate description: it was majestic.
He made no comment on the picture, nor did the old man speak of it till later. The meal was hastily disposed of, and, sitting on the wall, Michael watched the last daylight scene shot, and was struck by the plastic genius of the girl. He knew enough of motion pictures and their construction to realize what it meant to the director to have in his hands one who could so faithfully reproduce the movements and the emotions which the old man dictated.
In other circumstances he might have thought it grotesque to see Jack Knebworth pretending to be a young girl, resting his elderly cheek coyly upon the back of his clasped hand, and walking with mincing steps from one side of the picture to the other. But he knew that the American was a mason who was cutting roughly the shape of the sculpture and leaving it to the finer artiste to express in her personality the delicate contours that would delight the eye of the picture-loving world. She was no longer Adele Leamington; she was Roselle, the heiress to an estate of which her wicked cousin was trying to deprive her. The story itself he recognized; a half-and-half plagiarism of “The Cat and the Canary,” with which were blended certain situations from “The Miracle Man.” He mentioned this fact when the scene was finished.
“I guess it’s a steal,” said Jack Knebworth philosophically, “and I didn’t inquire too closely into it. It’s Foss’s story, and I should be pained to discover there was anything original in it.”
Mr. Foss had made a tardy reappearance, and Michael found himself wondering what was the nature of that confidential interview which the writer had had with Sir Gregory.
Going back to the long sitting-room, he stood watching the daylight fade and speculating upon the one mystery within a mystery—the extraordinary effect which Adele had produced upon him.
Mike Brixan had known many beautiful women, women in every class of society. He had known the best and the worst, he had jailed a few, and had watched one face a French firing squad one grey wintry morning at Vincennes. He had liked many, nearly loved one, and it seemed, cold-bloodedly analysing his emotions, that he was in danger of actually loving a girl whom he had never met before that morning.
“Which is absurd,” he said aloud.
“What is absurd?” asked Knebworth, who had come into the room unnoticed.
“I also wondered what you were thinking,” smiled old Mr. Longvale, who had been watching the young man in silence.
“I—er—well, I was thinking of the portrait.” Michael turned and indicated the picture above the fireplace, and in a sense he spoke the truth, for the thread of that thought had run through all others. “The face seemed familiar,” he said, “which is absurd, because it is obviously an old painting.”
Mr. Longvale lit two candles and carried one to the portrait. Again Michael looked, and again the majesty of the face impressed him.
“That is my great-great-uncle, Charles Henry,” said old Mr. Longvale with pride. “Or, as we call him affectionately in our family, the Great Monsieur.”
Michael’s face was half-turned toward the window as the old man spoke. . . . Suddenly the room seemed to spin before his eyes. Jack Knebworth saw his face go white and caught him by the arm.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Nothing,” said Michael unsteadily.
Knebworth was staring past him at the window.
“What was that?” he said.
With the exception of the illumination from the two candles and the faint dusk light that came from the garden, the room was in darkness.
“Did you see it?” he asked, and ran to the window, staring out.
“What was it?” asked old Mr. Longvale, joining him.
“I could have sworn I saw a head in the window. Did you see it, Brixan?”
“I saw something,” said Michael unsteadily. “Do you mind if I go out into the garden?”
“I hoped you saw it. It looked like a monkey’s head to me.”
Michael nodded. He walked down the flagged passage into the garden, and, as he did so, slipped a Browning from his hip, pressed down the safety-catch, and dropped the pistol into his jacket pocket.
He disappeared, and five minutes later Knebworth saw him pacing the garden path, and went out to him.
“Did you see anything?”
“Nothing in the garden. You must have been mistaken.”
“But didn’t you see him?”
Michael hesitated.
“I thought I saw something,” he said with an assumption of carelessness. “When are you going to shoot those night pictures of yours?”
“You saw something, Brixan—was it a face?”
Mike Brixan nodded.