The candle showed him the bed – all a mass of white flowers – and what was lying on it under the white sheet had laid there dead long afore he came anigh the place. I’ve heard say as corpses can’t bleed … Well, all I know is … Well, I won’t say any more about that part of it, sir, if you don’t like it. It ain’t pleasant even to hear about and the sight of it sent ’im clean off ’is head. It was a corpse’s throat he’d cut, the blundering, murdering villain, and when the servants ran in with lights they found him lying across the bed-foot, foaming at the mouth and mad as a hatter. If he’d had any sense left for thinking he wouldn’t ha’ known what to think.
But this is what really happened. The other chap – once our man was out of the way – thinks to have a try for the diamonds off his own bat; but meantime the young lady at the Abbey’d found out the filed window-bars, and, when he tried it on, the young master an’ the undergardener was ready for him, and took him with the knife in his hand bending over the empty bed. Thinks he, t’other chap shan’t get off then, neither; so off he goes to jail, leaving his mate to be copped when he comes back to try it on according to agreement. And in jail he turned funky, and choked himself with his belt, for there was other things against him, besides their having found out he was the Peckham Mystery.
And no-one in the Abbey expecting any more visitors through the window, they didn’t have the bars mended; but a silly maid who’s frightened out of her wits sticks ’em up again to look like they did afore.
And how come the young lady to be dead already? Why, bless your soul, sir, didn’t I tell you? It wasn’t the young lady at all; it was the old housekeeper, as had been ailing this long time, and had gone off sudden with the turn the first chap give her when he screamed as he was took. And they laid her out in that room, being furthest from the other rooms.
And if he’d had an ounce of pluck our man might ha’ got away. But it’s my belief he wasn’t meant to. The judgment takes folk queer ways sometimes.
To the Adventurous
1
His mind was made up. There should be no looking back, no weakening, no foolish relentings. Civilisation had no place for him in her scheme of things; and he in his turn would show the jade that he was capable of a scheme in which she had no place, she and her pinchbeck meretricious substitutions of stones for bread, serpents for eggs. What exactly it was that had gone wrong does not matter. There was a girl in it perhaps; a friend most likely. Almost certainly money and pride and the old detestation of arithmetic played their part. His mother was now dead, and his father was dead long since. There was no one nearer than a great-uncle to care where he went or what he did; whether he throve or went under, whether he lived or died. Also it was springtime.
His thoughts turned longingly to the pleasant green country, the lush meadows, the blossoming orchards, nesting birds and flowering thorn, and to roads that should wind slowly, pleasantly between these. The remembrance came to him of another spring day when he had played truant, had found four thrushes’ nests and a moorhen’s, and tried to draw a kingfisher on the back of his Latin prose; had paddled in a mill stream between bright twinkling leaves and the bright twinkling counterfeits in the glassy water, had been caned at school next day, and his mother had cried when he told her. He remember how he had said: ‘I will be good, oh, mother, I will!’ and then added with one of those odd sudden cautions that lined the fluttering garment of his impulsive soul, ‘at least, I’ll try to be good.’
Well, he had tried. For more than a year he had tried, bearing patiently the heavy yoke of ledger and costs book, the weary life of the office the great-uncle had found for him. There had been a caged bird at the cobbler’s in the village at home, that piped sweetly in its prison and laboured to draw up its own drinking water by slow chained thimblefulls. He sometimes thought that he was like that caged bird, straining and straining for ever at the horrible machinery which grudgingly yielded to his efforts the little pittance that kept him alive. And all the while the woods and fields and the long white roads were calling, calling.
And now the chief had been more than usually repulsive, and the young man stood at the top of the stairs, smoothing the silk hat that stood for so much, and remembering in detail the unusual repulsiveness of the chief. An error of two and sevenpence in one column, surely a trivial error, and of two hundred pounds in another, quite an obvious error that, and easily rectified, had been the inspiration of the words that sang discordantly to his revolted soul. He suddenly tossed his hat in the air, kicked it as it fell, black and shining, and sent it spinning down the stairs. The office boy clattered out, thin-necked, red-eared, slack mouth well open.
‘My hat!’ was his unintentionally appropriate idiom.
‘Pardon me, my hat,’ said the young man suavely. But the junior was genuinely shocked.
‘I say, Mr Sellinge,’ he said solemnly, ‘it’ll never be the same again, that tile won’t. Ironing it won’t do it, no, nor yet blocking.’
‘Bates,’ the young man retorted with at least equal solemnity, ‘I shall never wear that hat again. Remove your subservient carcase. I’m going back to tell the chief.’
‘About your hat?’ the junior asked, breathless, incredulous.
‘About my hat,’ Sellinge repeated.
The chief looked up a little blankly. Clerks who had had what he was well aware they called the rough side of his tongue rarely returned to risk a second helping. And now this hopeless young incompetent, this irreverent trifler with the columns of the temple of the gods L. S. and D., was standing before him, and plainly standing there to speak, not merely to be spoken to.
‘Well, Sellinge,’ he said, frowning a little, but not too much, lest he should scare away an apology more ample than that with which Sellinge had met the rough side. ‘Well, what is it?’
Sellinge, briefly, respectfully, but quite plainly told him what it was. And the chief listened, hardly able to believe his respectable ears.
‘And so,’ the tale ended, ‘I should like to leave at once, please, sir.’
‘Do you realise, young man,’ the head of the firm asked heavily, ‘that you are throwing away your career?’
Sellinge explained what he did realise.
‘Your soul, did you say?’ the portly senior looked at him through gold-rimmed glasses. ‘I never heard of such a thing in my life.’
Sellinge waited respectfully, and the head of the house looked suddenly older. The unusual is the disconcerting. The chief was not used to hearing souls mentioned except on Sundays. Yet the boy was the grand-nephew of an old friend, a valued and useful business friend, a man whom it would be awkward for him to offend or annoy. This is the real meaning of friendship in the world of business. So he said: ‘Come, come, now, Sellinge; think it over. I’ve had occasion to complain, but I’ve not complained unjustly – not unjustly, I think. Your opportunities in this office – what did you say?’
The young man had begun to say, quite politely, what he thought of the office.
‘But, God bless my soul!’ said the older man, quite flustered by this impossible rebellion. ‘What is it you want? Come now,’ he said, remembering the usefulness of that eminent great-uncle, and unbending as he remembered, ‘if this isn’t good enough for you, a respectable solicitor’s office and every chance of rising – every chance,’ he repeated pensively, oblivious now of all that the rough side had said; ‘if this isn’t good enough for you, what is? What would you like?’ he asked, with a pathetic mixture of hopelessness, raillery, and the certitude that his question was unanswerable.
‘I should like,’ said Sellinge slowly, ‘to be a tramp, or a burglar … ’
(‘Great Heavens!’ said the chief.)
‘– or a detective. I want to go about and do things. I want …’
‘A detective?’ said the chief. ‘Have you ever …’
‘No,’ said Sellinge, ‘but I could.’
‘A new Sherlock Holmes, eh?’ said the chief, actually smiling.
‘N
ever,’ said the clerk firmly, and he frowned. ‘May I go now, sir? I’ve no opening in the burgling or the detective line, so I shall be a tramp, for this summer at least. Perhaps I’ll go to Canada. I’m sorry I haven’t been a success here. Bates is worth twice my money. He never wavers in his faith. Seven nines are always sixty-three with Bates.’
Again the chief thought of his useful city friend.
‘Never mind Bates,’ he said. ‘Is the door closed? Right. Sit down, if you please, Mr Sellinge. I have something to say to you.’
Sellinge hesitated, looked round at the dusty leather-covered furniture, the worn Turkey carpet, the black, shiny deed-boxes, and the shelves of dull blue and yellow papers. The brown oblong of window framed a strip of blue sky and a strip of the opposite office’s dirty brickwork. A small strayed cloud, very white and shining, began to cross the strip of sky.
‘It’s very kind of you, sir,’ said Sellinge, his mind more made up than ever; ‘but I wouldn’t reconsider my decision for ten times what I’ve been getting.’
‘Sit down,’ said the chief again. ‘I assure you I do not propose to raise your salary, nor to urge you to reconsider your decision. I merely wish to suggest an alternative – one of your own alternatives,’ he added persuasively.
‘Oh!’ said Sellinge, sitting down abruptly, ‘which?’
2
And now behold the dream realised. A young man with bare sun-bleached hair that looks as though it had never known the shiny black symbol of civilisation, boots large and dusty, and on his back the full equipment of an artist in oils; a little too new the outfit, but satisfactory and complete. He goes slowly along through the clean white dust of the roads, and his glance to right and left embraces green field and woodland with the persuasive ardour of a happy lover. The only blot on the fair field of life outspread before him the parting words of the chief.
‘It’s a very simple job for a would-be detective. Just find out whether the old chap’s mad or not. You get on with the lower orders, you tell me. Well, get them to talk to you. And if you find that out, well, there may be a career for you. I’ve long been dissatisfied with the ordinary enquiry agent. Yes, two pounds a week, and expenses. But in reason. Not first-class, you know.’
This much aloud. To himself he had said: ‘A simpleton’s useful sometimes, if he’s honest. And if he doesn’t find out anything we shall be no worse off than we were before, and I shall be able to explain to his uncle that I really gave him exceptional opportunities – exceptional.’
Sellinge also, walking along between the dusty powdered white-flowered hedges, felt that the opportunity was exceptional. All his life people had told him things, and the half-confidences of two people often make up a complete sphere of knowledge, if only the confidant possess the power of joining the broken halves. This power Sellinge had. He knew many things; the little scandals, the parochial intrigues and intricacies of the village where he was born were clearer to him than to the principal performers. He looked forward pleasantly to the lodging in the village ale-house, and to the slow gossip on the benches by the door.
The village (he was nearing it now) was steep and straggling, displaying its oddly assorted roofs amid a flutter of orchard trees, a carpet of green spaces. The Five Bells stood to the left, its tea-gardens beside it, cool and alluring.
Sellinge entered the dark sandy passage where the faint smell of last night’s tobacco and this morning’s beer contended with the fresh vigour of a bunch of wallflowers in a blue jug on the ring-marked bar.
Within ten minutes he had engaged his room, a little hot white attic under the roof, and had learned that it was Squire who lived in the big house, and that there was a lot of tales, so there was, but it didn’t do to believe all you heard, nor yet more’n half you see, and least said soonest mended, and the house was worth looking at, or so people said as took notice of them old ancient tumble-down places. No, it wasn’t likely you could get in. Used to be open of a Thursday, the ’ouse and grounds, but been closed to visitors this many year. Also that, for all it looked so near, the house was a good four and a half miles by the road.
‘And Squire’s mighty good to the people in the village,’ the pleasant-faced old landlady behind the bar went on: ‘pays good wages, ’e does, and if anyone’s in trouble he’s always got his hand in his pocket. I don’t believe he spends half on himself to what he gives away. It’ll be a poor day for Jevington when anything happens to him, sir, you take that from me. No harm in your trying to see the house, sir, but as for seeing him, he never sees no one. Why, listen,’ – there was the sound of hoofs and wheels in the road – ‘look out, sir, quick!’
Sellinge looked out to see an old-fashioned carriage and pair sweep past, in the carriage a white-haired old man with a white thin face and pale clouded eyes.
‘That’s him,’ said the landlady beside him, ducking as the carriage passed. ‘Yes, four and a half miles by the road, sir.’
Harnessed in his trappings of colour-box and easel, the young detective set out. There was about him none of the furtivity of your stage detective. His disguise was perfect, mainly because it was not a disguise. Such disguise as there was hung over his soul, which was pretending to itself that the errand was one of danger and difficulty. The attraction of the detective’s career was to him not so much the idea of hunting down criminals as the dramatic attitude of one who goes about the world with a false beard and a make-up box in one hand and his life in the other. To find out the truth about an old gentleman’s eccentricities was quite another pair of sleeves, but of these, as yet, our hero perceived neither the cut nor the colour. He had wanted to be a tramp or a detective, and here he was, both. One has to earn one’s bread, and what better way than this?
A smooth worn stile prefaced a path almost hidden in grass up for hay, a blaze of red sorrel, buttercups, ox-eyed daisies in the feathery foam of flowered grasses. The wood of the stile was warm to his hand, and the grasses that met over the path powdered his boots with their little seeds.
Then there was a copse, and a rabbit warren, and short crisp grass dry on the chalk it thinly covered. The sun shone hardly in a sky of brass. The wayfarer panted for shade. It showed far ahead like a mirage in a desert, a group of pines, a flat whiteness of pond-water, a little house. One might ask the way at that house, and get – talk.
He fixed his eyes on it and walked on, the leather straps hot on his shoulders, his oak stick-handle hot in his hand. Then suddenly he saw on the hill, pale beyond the pines, someone coming down the path. He knew the magnet that a planted easel is to rustic minds. This might perhaps be, after all, the better way. Never did artist prepare so rapidly the scene that should attract the eye of the rustic gazer, the lingering but inevitable approach of the rustic foot.
In three minutes he was seated on his camp-stool, a canvas before him, his palette half-set. Four minutes saw a good deal of blue on the canvas. Purple, too, at the fifth minute, because the sky had turned that colour in the west, purple and, moreover, a strange threatening tint that called for burnt sienna and mid chrome and a dash of madder. The white advancing figure had disappeared among the pines. He madly squeezed green paint on to the foreground; one must at least have a picture begun. And the sun searched intolerably every bit of him as he sat in the shadeless warren awaiting the passing of the other.
And then, more sudden than an earthquake or the birth of love, a mighty rushing wind fell on him, caught up canvas and easel, even colour-box and oak staff, and whirled them away like leaves in an autumn equinox. His hat went too, not that that mattered, and the virgin sketch book whirled white before a wind that, the papers said next day, travelled at the rate of five-and-fifty miles an hour. The wonderful purple and copper of the west rushed up across the sky, a fierce spatter of rain stung face and hands. He pursued the colour-box, which had lodged in the front entry of a rabbit’s house, caught at the canvas, whose face lay closely pressed to a sloe-bush, and ran for the nearest shelter, the house among the pines. In a rain li
ke that one has to run head down or be blinded, and so he did not see till he drew breath in the mouldering rotten porch of it that his shelter was not of those from which hospitality can be asked.
A little lodge it was, long since deserted; walls and ceiling bulging and discoloured with damp, its latticed windows curtained only by the tapestry of the spider, its floors carpeted with old dust and drift of dry pine needles, and on its hearth the nests of long-fledged birds had fallen on the ashes of a fire gone out a very long time ago. A blazing lightning-flash dazzled him as he tried the handle of the door, and the door, hanging by one rusty hinge, yielded to his push as the first shattering peal of thunder clattered and cracked over-head. So a shelter it was, though the wind drove the rain almost horizontally through the broken window and across the room. He reached through the casement, and at the cost of a soaked coat-sleeve pulled to a faded green shutter, and made this fast. Then he explored the upper rooms. Holes in the thatch had let through the weather, and the drop, drop of the water that wears away stone had worn away the boards of the floor, so that they bent dangerously to his tread. The half-way landing of the little crooked staircase seemed the dryest place. He sat down there with his back against the wall and listened to the cracking and blundering of the thunder, watched through the skylight the lightning shoot out of the clouds, rapid and menacing as the tongue from the mouth of a snake.
No man who is not a dreamer chooses as a symbolic rite the kicking of a tall black hat down the stairs of the office he has elected to desert. Sellinge, audience at first to the glorious orchestra, fell from hearing to a waking dream, and the waking dream merged in a dreamless sleep.