CHAPTER XI
INFORMATION RECEIVED
"Sarcastic swine!" muttered Armstrong, savagely, as he set off withWarrender behind the rotund little chef.
"So confoundedly polite I could have kicked him," returned Warrender, inthe same undertone. "His beastly Latin, too! What did he take us for?"
"What we are--a couple of mugs. And Pratt's worse, with his absurdtheories. Of course these chaps aren't in it. Rush is at the bottom ofit, and the other fellow, though he looked like a foreigner, is verylikely only some ugly freak of a Devonian after all."
"Well, I'll be hanged if I stand any more of Rush's nonsense. Next timeanything happens, I'll get old Crawshay to set that bobby moving we sawthe other day. I'm sick of it."
Ill-humour had for the moment got the upper hand, and they wereconscious only of their soreness as they followed their guide throughthe unkempt grounds. Their attention was attracted presently by thetower that reared itself out of a thicket some little distance on theirleft. It was a square much-dilapidated building of stone, encrustedwith moss and ivy, reaching a height of some fifty or sixty feet. Thewindow openings were boarded up with deal planks that were evidentlynew.
"Is the tower used for anything now?" Warrender asked the Swiss.
"Ze tower? No, it is ruin, fall to pieces," replied the man.
"'ZE TOWER? NO, IT IS RUIN, FALL TO PIECES.'"]
"I say, we _are_ a couple of lunatics!" cried Armstrong. "We've leftthe dinghy at the ferry. What's the good of the short cut? Pratt can'twork the motor."
"Hang it! I'd clean forgotten."
"Zen ve go back?" said the guide, eagerly. He had come to the end of theopen grounds; the rest of the way lay through a wilderness of shrubsthat promised laborious walking.
"No, I'm hanged if we do," said Warrender. "Now we've come so far we'llnot go back."
"Zen how you cross ze river?"
"Swim it. You needn't come. We'll forge straight ahead. Thanks."
He tipped the man, and plunged with Armstrong into the thicket. Tenminutes' battling with the intricately woven mass of greenery broughtthem to the brink of the stream almost exactly opposite to theircamping-place. They stripped, bundled their clothes upon their heads,and made short work of the thirty-foot channel.
"My aunt! In native garb!" cried Pratt, as they walked up stillunclothed. "'Here be we poor mariners.' Shipwrecked? Lost thedinghy?"
"No, only our tempers," replied Armstrong. "The dinghy's still at theferry."
"I say, my uncle hasn't got back, has he?" asked Pratt.
"No. Why?"
"I thought perhaps you had met him, and got a taste of _his_ temper,that's all. 'Tell me not in mournful numbers'--but tell me anyhow youlike the cause of this Ulyssean exhibition."
Warrender began the narrative as he towelled himself, continued itthrough his dressing, and concluded it when he had dropped into hischair by Pratt's side. Pratt listened with ever-growing merriment.
"You priceless old fatheads!" he exclaimed. "When the beggar chuckedLatin at you why didn't you pelt him with Greek, Phil?--or with sinesand hypotenuses, and all that, Jack? Don't you remember how someCambridge josser floored a heathen bargee by calling him an isoscelestriangle? I wish I'd gone."
"I wish you had!" echoed Warrender. "But when a fellow's so dashedpolite----"
"Polite! I tell you what it is: you're both too serious for thisflighty world. When you consider that it's gyrating at the rate of Idon't know how many thousand miles a minute, it's unnatural, positivelyindecent, for any one to be so stuggy. The art of life is toeffervesce. But, you know, the important feature of your morning'sentertainment seems not to have sufficiently impressed you."
"What's that?" asked Armstrong.
"Rod's wife. _Cherchez la femme_! You oughtn't to have come awaywithout having had a word with her."
"How on earth could we?" said Warrender. "We weren't asked into thehouse, and if we had been----"
"My dear chap, if a fair lady beckoned to me out of her casement windowI'd find some means of receiving her behests. Rod's wife, _nee_ MollyRogers, didn't make signs to you for nothing, and I foresee that I shallhave to turn our skipping-rope into a rope ladder, and----"
"Oh, don't go on gassing," Armstrong interposed, irascibly. "Can't yoube serious?"
"Solemnity itself. We've got to fetch that dinghy. I want to go to thepost office. Very well, after lunch Phil shall run me up in themotorboat. I'll have a word with Rogers on the way, and I bet my bootsI won't come back without some little addition to our dossier."
Pratt's programme was carried out. Warrender and he found Joe Rogerspulling spring onions in his garden behind the inn. The man had placedhis wig on a pea-stick, and his bald pate glowed in the sunlight like apink turnip.
"Good-afternoon, Joe," said Pratt, genially. "I wonder how it is thatyou sailormen so often take to gardening when your sea days are over?"
"I can't tell 'ee, sir, 'cept it be as we loves the look o' vegetables,being without 'em so long at a time. The old woman do say it keeps meout o' mischief."
"Now, Rogers," called his better half from an upper window, "put on yourhair this minute. Drat the man! Do 'ee want to catch your death ofsunstroke?"
Rogers gave a sly look at his visitors as he donned his wig.
"It do make my skull itch terrible," he said. "But she's a good woman."
"I jolly well hope I shall be looked after as well when my time comes,"said Pratt. "But I'm not thinking of matrimony yet. What age did youmarry at, Joe?"
"Thirty-one, just the same age as my sister Molly, but not in such ahurry. My missus took a deal o' courting; 'twas five years' hardlabour; whereas Molly give in in less than a month."
"He came, he saw--he conquered. Must be something fascinating abouthim. Has she lost her cold, by the way? My friends happened to see herthis morning."
"Well now, if that ain't too bad. She haven't been nigh me for a goodfortnight, and she didn't ought to go about the village without lookingin."
"They saw her at the house. She seemed to be catching flies orsomething at the window. I gather you don't like her husband."
"I've nothing against him, 'cept his name and furren nature. My missustold her she was cutting a rod for her own back."
"Surely he doesn't beat her?"
"That wasn't her meaning. Rod's his name, and the missus do have a wayof taking up a word and twisting of it about, you may say. 'A rod inpickle,' says she. 'Tis just a clappering tongue; there's no sense init. But it do seem as Molly have turned her back on all her oldfriends. 'Tis like this: they furriners bain't favourites in the parish,and Molly sticks to her husband, as 'tis her duty. That's what I makeof it."
"Well, I dare say she chose the pick of the bunch. How many are thereof them, by the bye?"
"Four, leaving out the secretary. They don't go about in the villagemuch. None of 'em comes here 'cept that feller you saw t'other day, andhe don't come often. _I_ don't get no good of 'em. 'Twas different inthe old days."
"Things will take a turn," said Pratt, consolingly. "When my--when Mr.Pratt returns I dare say he'll quarrel with the foreigners, and getEnglish servants again."
"And be ye all right on the island, sir?"
"Having a ripping time. We're always on the look-out for the ghost, buthe seems rather shy. I can sympathise with him, being so bashfulmyself."
"You do seem to have a bit of a bump one side of the head, sir. Noinseck have been poisoning 'ee, I hope."
"No. Insects love me too well to disfigure me. I'm inclined to thinkit was a worm, or something like a leech, perhaps. It's a trifle; amolehill, not a mountain. To-morrow both sides will be equal, and theangles subtended at the base as right as ever. Good-bye; keep your hairon."
"Well, old man, we've spent a profitable quarter of an hour," saidPratt, as he went on with Warrender to the village. "The number ofGradoff s staff is confir
med; therefore the chap I collared is not oneof them. As to Rod's wife, there's no mystery about her. She'sdisgusted, as any sensible person would be, at the pettynarrow-mindedness of the natives who dislike her husband simply becausehe's of another breed, and so she cuts 'em dead."
"But what did her movements at the window mean?" asked Warrender. "Itcertainly looked as if she wanted help or something."
"Nothing of the sort, depend upon it. She was waving you off; she's ascareful of Rod as Rogers's missus is of him; she was afraid Armstrongwould go for Rod as he went for the Swede. I'm always ready to own upwhen I'm wrong. My old theories won't hold water. I think I'll give updetecting and go in for the Bar. You only have to stick to your brief;needn't have an idea of your own."
"Well, it seems to me we're not much for'arder."
"Quite a mistake. The issue is narrowed down. Clear our minds of theforeign menagerie and all that, and concentrate on Rush. That's theticket."
Calling at the post office, he was handed a letter from his Londonfriend, who reported that the scrap of paper was torn from a copy of the_Pravda_. Only part of the date of issue was visible--the word June; andthe incomplete paragraph of text appeared to relate to the high pricesof perambulators.
"There you are," said Pratt. "Much cry and little wool. It provesnothing except that some one, some time or other, had a Russiannewspaper, which was partly burnt along with other papers, no doubtequally uninteresting and unimportant. What we have to do is simply toweave a spider's web for Rush."
"You change your mind twice a day, and are cock-sure every time,"Warrender remarked.
"A clear proof that I ought to go in for politics, after all. I'm gladit's settled at last. Percy Pratt, M.P.--reverse 'em, you get P.M.,Prime Minister; then Sir Percy, Bart.; Baron Pratt, Viscount, Earl--whynot Duke while I'm about it? But do dukes play the banjo, I wonder?"
"You're better qualified for the part of Mad Hatter, I fancy. Come,let's step it out."
The evening of that day turned out rather cool and overcast. A breezesprang up in the south-west, refreshing after the still heat. Afterearly supper, Armstrong, declaring that he was getting flabby for wantof exercise, set off in the dinghy for a pull down the river. Prattthought it a good opportunity for testing Armstrong's report of thesounds he had heard in the cottage, and went off alone, leavingWarrender on guard at the camp.
He had not yet come within sight of the ruins when, above the rustle ofthe stirred leaves, a strange moaning broke upon his ear. He stopped tolisten. While far more impressionable than Armstrong, he had solidmusical knowledge which his schoolfellow lacked, and he was struck atonce by an unusual quality in the sound he heard.
"That's not the wind in the eaves," he thought. "It's more like thewhining of an organ pipe when a lazy blower is letting the wind out."
He hurried on. The sound rose and fell. For some moments it maintaineda steady, pure organ note; then with rising pitch it became almost ashriek.
"I don't wonder the rustics are a bit scared," he thought, "but no ghostcould produce a tone like that--unless he'd been a cathedral alto in hislifetime. It's due, I expect, to some metal chimney-pot that's gotdisplaced and partly closed. Wonder if I can find it?"
He entered the ruins, and ran up the staircase. A roseate twilightsuffused the western sky. Led by the persistent sound, he came to theunroofed room facing the west. The moaning proceeded from some spotabove his head. He tried to clamber up the mass of broken masonry thatlittered the floor, but found that he could not gain the level of theroof except by climbing the jagged brickwork of the broken wall, a feattoo perilous in the half light.
"That's the worst of being fat," he said to himself. "I believeArmstrong could do it."
Leaving the room presently, he went idly, without definite motive, intothe second room, facing east and overlooking the river and his uncle'sgrounds. In this direction dusk was already deepening into night; thenearer trees were still distinguishable, but beyond the river allindividual objects were blurred by the darkness.
He sat on the paneless window-sill, listening to the strange sound fromabove, looking out towards the Red House, wondering whereabouts in thewide world his uncle was travelling. All at once, far away, almost on alevel with his eyes, he thought he saw a faint red glow. It disappearedin a moment--so quickly that it seemed an illusion. But there it wasagain, indubitably some small luminous body. "Some one with a lamp inone of the top rooms of the Red House," he thought. Again itdisappeared, only to show again after an interval--a third time--afourth.
To Pratt these phenomena were at first merely sensations of sight, notperceptions of intelligence. But by and by he was struck by the factthat the glow always appeared at the same spot, not here and there, likea lamp carried by a person moving about a room. Then he found himselfmentally measuring the intervals between its appearances, expectingtheir occurrence as regularly as the beats of a striking clock. It waswith surprise and a sort of disappointment that he discovered that theintervals were irregular, and with curiosity, after a while, that theywere regular and irregular both, as it seemed, fitfully; the glowappeared two or three times at equal intervals, then the intervalsbecame shorter or longer. "Signals, of course," he thought, when theimpression of order and purpose became fixed in him. "Who is it? Whereis it? What's the game?"
The alternations continued for several minutes, then finally ceased.Pratt got up, left the ruins, and made his way with some difficulty backto camp.
"Armstrong back?" he asked.
"Not yet," replied Warrender. "Time he was. This is the darkestevening we've had. See any one?"
"Not a soul. All quiet here?"
"Absolute peace. _You_ weren't here."
"Thanks. Glad you missed me. Will the sweet, melodious strains of mygentle banjo disturb your serenity?"
"Not a bit. Strum away. But hadn't you better turn in? It's pastnine. Old Jack won't get much sleep before second watch if he isn'there soon; no reason why you shouldn't have your full whack, especiallyafter last night's affair."
"I'll stay up till he comes."
Pratt softly thrummed his strings, musing on his discoveries. Half-pastnine came; ten o'clock.
"I say, what's happened to Armstrong?" said Warrender. "Surely hehasn't been carried out to sea? Come and help me shove off; I'll rundown and see if I can find him. You won't turn in, so you won't mindtaking part of my watch."
"Righto! But I dare say Jack's enjoying himself."
They were just about to launch the motor-boat when they caught the dullsound of oars in the distance. They waited. The rising moon struggledthrough the rack, and cast a faint light on the stream. Presently thedinghy appeared from among the overarching foliage. Armstrong wassculling very quietly.
"Thought you were lost," said Warrender. "It's past ten; your watchstarts at eleven-forty."
"All right. Pratt, tie up, will you? Come with me, Warrender."
Armstrong led the way at a long, rapid stride across the clearing andinto the thicket. He said nothing, and did not pause until he came tothe shore of the western channel.
"Keep well behind this tree," he said, in a whisper, placing himself inshadow.
In a few minutes they heard the splash of oars. A boat emerged from theshades down stream, lit up fitfully by the transient moonbeams. Itpassed close beneath their hiding-place. It held a single oarsman,whose thickset frame would have been unmistakable even if the moonlighthad not touched his face. He pulled out of sight.
"What's he been up to?" said Warrender.
"Let's get back," replied Armstrong. "I wanted a second witness. Prattwill wish to start a new career now, I expect."