CHAPTER VI. THE ORDER FROM LONDON
Henry Lennox suffered as he had not suffered even during the horrorsof war. For the first time in his life he felt fear. He lowered theunconscious man to the ground, and knew that he was dead, for he hadlooked on sudden death too often to feel in any doubt. Others, however,were not so ready to credit this, and after he hastened downstairs withhis evil message, both Sir Walter and Masters found it hard to believehim.
When he descended, his uncle and May were standing at the dining roomdoor, waiting for him and Peter Hardcastle. Mary had just joined them.
"He's dead!" was all the youth could say; then, thoroughly unnerved, hefell into a chair and buried his face in his hands.
Again through his agency had a dead man been discovered in the GreyRoom. In each case his had been the eyes first to confront a tragedy,and his the voice to report it. The fact persisted in his mind with adark obstinacy, as though some great personal tribulation had befallenhim.
Mary stopped with her cousin and asked terrified questions, while SirWalter, calling to Masters, hastened upstairs, followed by Septimus May.The clergyman was also agitated, yet in his concern there persisted anote almost of triumph.
"It is there!" he cried. "It is close to us, watching us, powerless totouch either you or me. But this unhappy sceptic proved an easy victim."
"Would to God I had listened to you yesterday," said Sir Walter. "Thenthis innocent man had not perhaps been snatched from life."
"You were directed not to listen. Your heart was hardened. His hour hadcome."
"I cannot believe it. We may restore him. It is impossible that he canbe dead in a moment."
They stood over the detective, and Masters and Fred Caunter, withcourage and presence of mind, carried him out into the corridor.
The butler spoke.
"Run for the brandy, Fred," he said. "We must get some down his neck ifwe can. I don't feel the gentleman's heart, but it may not have stopped.He's warm enough."
The footman obeyed, and Hardcastle was laid upon his back. Then SirWalter directed Masters.
"Hold his head up. It may be better for him."
They waited, and, during the few moments before Caunter returned, SirWalter spoke again. His mind wandered backward and seemed for the momentincapable of grasping the fact before him.
"Almost the last thing the man said was to ask me why ghosts haunted thenight rather than the day."
"Poor fool--poor fool! He is answered," replied the priest.
All attempts to restore the vanished life proved useless, and theycarried Hardcastle downstairs presently. Henry Lennox was already gonefor the doctor, and when, within an hour, Mannering joined them, hecould only pronounce that the man was dead. No sign of life rewardedtheir protracted efforts to restore circulation. How he had come by hisend, how death had broken into his frame, it was impossible todetermine. Not an unusual sign marked the body. It revealed neitherwound nor outward evidence of shock. The case seemed parallel with thatof Thomas May. Death had struck the man like a flash of lightning anddropped him, where he stood, making his notes by the fireplace.
Whereupon a complication faced Dr. Mannering. Mary came to him, where hespoke in the library with Sir Walter and Henry Lennox. She implored himto use his influence with her father-in-law; for they had forgottenSeptimus May, while hastily deliberating as to what telegrams should bedispatched; but now they learned that Mr. May was in the Grey Boom andrefused to leave it.
"He is very excited," she said. "He is walking up and down, speakingaloud, quoting texts from Scripture, addressing the spirit that hebelieves to be listening to him. It would be grotesque were it not sohorrible. He must be made to come away."
"He is justified of his faith," declared Sir Walter. "I have withstoodhim until now, but I can do so no longer."
"Indeed you must. He is playing with death," said Mannering.
They sought Tom's father, to find him, as Mary had said, walking up anddown, with fierce joy of battle on his thin, stern face and in hisshining eyes.
"Now shall the powers of Light triumph and the will of God be done!" hesaid to them.
He made no demur, however, when they drew him away.
"The future is mine," he declared, and grew calm. "You cannot standbetween me and my duty again, Sir Walter. You have gravely erred, andthis is the result of your error. But you will not err a second time."
His excitation ceased, and it was he who proposed that they shouldreturn to their forgotten meal. In the matter of the man just dead, herevealed an indifference almost callous.
"His God will justly judge him according to his deserving," he declared."If he sinned through ignorance and false teaching, his punishment willnot be heavy; if he hardened his heart against truth and rejected thefaith from pride--but even then the Father of Mercy may pardon him. Hehas failed, even as I knew he must, and paid a terrible penalty forfailure."
Sir Walter, sorely stricken, hardly heard the other. He ate a little atMary's entreaty, then, driven by some impulse to leave hisfellow-creatures and court solitude, excused himself, begged Lennox andMannering to bring him news when the telegram dispatched to ScotlandYard was answered, and prepared to leave them.
As he rose, he marked his old spaniel standing whimpering by his side.
"What is the matter with Prince?" he asked.
"He has not had his dinner," said Mary.
"Let him be fed at once," answered her father, and went out alone.
She rose to follow him immediately, but Mannering, who had stopped andwas with them, begged her not to do so.
"Leave him to himself," he said. "This has shaken your father, as wellit may. He's all right. Make him take his bromide to-night, and letnobody do anything to worry him."
The master of Chadlands meantime went afield, walked half a mile to afavorite spot, and sat down upon a seat that he had there erected. Astorm was blowing up from the south-west, and the weather of his mindwelcomed it. He alternated between bewilderment and indignation. Hisown life-long philosophy and trust in the ordered foundations of humanexistence threatened to fail him entirely before this second stroke. Itseemed that the punctual universe was suddenly turned upside down, andhad emptied a vial of horror upon his innocent head.
Reality was a thing of the past. A nightmare had taken its place, anightmare from which there was no waking. He considered the stabilityof his days--a lifetime followed upon high principles and founded onreligious convictions that had comforted his sorrows and countenancedhis joys. It seemed a trial undeserved, that in his old age he should bethrust upon a pinnacle of publicity, forced into the public eye,robbed of dignity, denied the privacy he esteemed as the most preciousprivilege that wealth could command. Stability was destroyed; tocount upon the morrow seemed impossible. His thought, strung to a newmorbidity, unknown till now, ran on and pictured, with painful, vividstroke upon stroke, the insufferable series of events that lay beforehim.
Life was become a bizarre and brutal business for a man of fine feeling.He would be thrust into the pitiless mouth of sensation-mongers,called to appear before tribunals, subjected to an inquisition ofhis fellow-men, made to endure a notoriety infinitely odious evenin anticipation. Indeed, Sir Walter's simple intellect wallowed inanticipation, and so suffered much that, given exercise of restraint, hemight have escaped altogether. He was brave enough, but personal braverywould not be called for. He sat now staring dumbly at an imaginaryseries of events abominable and unseemly in every particular to hisorder of mind. He was so concerned with what the future must hold instore for him that for a time the present quite escaped his thoughts.
He returned to it, however, and it was almost with the shock of a newsurprise he remembered that Peter Hardcastle, a man of European repute,had just died in his house. But he could not in the least realize thenew tragedy. He had as yet barely grasped the truth of his son-in-law'send, and still often found himself expecting Tom's footfall and hisjolly voice. That such an abundant vitality was stilled, that such aninf
ectious laugh would never sound again on mortal ear he yet sometimesfound it hard to believe.
But now it seemed that the impact of this second blow rammed home thefirst. He brooded upon his dead son-in-law, and it was long before hereturned to the event of that day. A thought struck him, and thoughelementary enough, it seemed to Sir Walter an important conclusion.There could be no shadow of doubt that Tom May and Peter Hardcastle haddied by the same secret force. He felt that he must remember this.
Again he puzzled, and then decided with himself that, if he meant tokeep sane, he must practice faith and trust in God. Septimus May hadsaid that such unparalleled things sometimes happened in the world totry man's faith. Doubtless he was right.
Henceforth the old man determined to stand firmly on the side ofthe supernatural with the priest. He went further, and blamed hisscepticism. It had cost the world a valuable life. He could not, indeed,be censured for that in any court of inquiry. Sceptical men woulddoubtless say that he had done rightly in refusing Mr. May hisexperiment. But Sir Walter now convinced himself that he had donewrongly. At such a time, with landmarks vanishing and all accepted lawsof matter resolved into chaos, there remained only God to trust. Sucha burden as this was not to be borne by any mortal, and Sir Walterdetermined that he would not bear it.
Were we not told to cast our tribulations before the Almighty? Here, ifever, was a situation beyond the power of human mind to approach, unlessa man walked humbly with his hand in his Maker's. Septimus May had beenemphatically right. Sir Walter repeated this conviction to himself againand again, like a child.
He descended to details presently. The hidden being, that it had beenimplicitly agreed could only operate by night in the Grey Room, provedequally potent under noonday sun. But why should it be otherwise? Tolimit its activities was to limit its powers, and the Almighty aloneknew what powers had been granted to it. He shrank from furtherinquiries or investigations on any but a religious basis. He was nowconvinced that no natural explanation would exist for what had happenedin the Grey Room, and he believed that only through the paths ofChristian faith would peace return to him or his house.
Then the present dropped out of his thoughts. They wandered into thepast, and he concerned himself with his wife. She it was who had taughthim to care for foreign travel. Until his marriage he had hardly leftEngland, save when yachting with friends, and an occasional glimpse of aMediterranean port was all that Sir Walter knew of the earth outside hisown country. But he remembered with gratitude the opportunities won fromher. He had taken her round the world, and found himself much the richerin great memories for that experience.
He was still thinking when Mary found him, with his old dog asleep athis feet. She brought him a coat and umbrella, for the threatened stormadvanced swiftly under clouds laden with rain. Reluctantly enough hereturned to the present. A telegram had been received from London,directing Dr. Mannering to reach the nearest telephone and communicatedirect. The doctor was gone to Newton Abbot, and nothing could be doneuntil he came back. Not knowing what had occupied Sir Walter's mind,Mary urged him to leave Chadlands without delay.
"Put the place into the hands of the police and take me with you," shesaid. "Nothing can be gained by our stopping, and, after this, it iscertain the authorities will not rest until they have made a far moresearching examination than has ever yet been carried out. They will feelthis disaster a challenge."
"Thankfully I would go," he answered. "Most thankfully I would avoidwhat is hanging over my head. It was terrible enough when your dearhusband died; but now we shall be the centre of interest to halfEngland. Every instinct cries to me to get out of it, but obviously thatis impossible, even were I permitted to do so. It is the duty of thepolice to suspect every man and woman under my roof--myself with therest. These appalling things have occurred in my home, and I must bearthe brunt of them and stand up to all that they mean. No Lennox ever ranfrom his duty, however painful it might be. The death of this man--soeminent in his calling--will attract tremendous attention and be, as yousay, a sort of direct challenge to the authorities for whom he worked.They will resent this second tragedy, and with good reason. The poorman, though I cannot pretend that I admired him, was a force for good inthe world, and his peculiar genius was devoted to the detection of crimeand punishment of criminals--a very worthy occupation, however painfulto our ideas."
They sat in the library now, and Henry Lennox spoke to his uncle, withhis eye on the window, waiting for the sight of the doctor's car.
"They'll want to tear the place down, very likely. They'll certainlyhave no mercy on the stones and mortar, any more than they will on us."
"They can spare themselves that trouble, and you your fears," declaredSeptimus May, who had joined them. "It is impossible that they will behere until to-morrow. Meantime--"
"It is easy to see what they will do," proceeded young Lennox, "and whatthey will think also. Nor can we prevent them, even if we wanted to. Iimage their theory will be this. They will suppose that Mr. Hardcastle,left in that room alone, was actually on the track of those responsiblefor Tom's death. They will guess that, in some way, or by some accident,he surprised the author of the tragedy, and the assassin, seeing hisdanger, resorted to the same unknown means of murder as before. They mayimagine some hidden lunatic concealed here, whose presence is only knownto some of us. They may suspect a homicidal maniac in me, or my uncle,or Masters, or anybody. Certainly they will seek a natural explanationand flout the idea of any other."
The clergyman protested, but Henry was not prepared to traverse the oldground again.
"I have as much right to my opinions as you to yours," he said. "And Iam positive this is man's work."
Then Mary announced that Mannering's car was in sight. The librarywindows opened on the western side of the house and afforded a view ofthe main drive, along which the doctor's little hooded car came flying,like a dead leaf in a storm. But it was not alone. A hospital motorambulance followed behind it.
They soon learned of curious things, and the house was first thrown intoa great bustle and then restored to peace.
Mannering had spoken for half an hour with London, and receiveddirections that puzzled him not a little by their implication. For amoment he seemed unwilling to speak before Mary. Then he begged herbluntly to leave them for a while.
"It's this way," he said when she was gone. "They're harboring a madidea in London, though, of course, the facts will presently convincethem to the contrary. Surely I must know death when I see it? But adivisional surgeon, or some other medical official, directs me to bringthis poor fellow's body to London to-night. Every care must be taken,warmth and air applied, and so on. They've evidently got a notionthat, since life appears to go so easily in the Grey Room, and leaveno scratch or wound, either life has not gone at all, or that it may bewithin the power of science to bring it back again. In a sense this isa reflection upon me--as though it were possible that I could make anymistake between death and suspended animation; but I must do as I'mordered. I travel to town with the dead man to-night, and if they findhe is anything but dead as a doornail, I'll--"
The doctor was writing his reminiscences, "The Recollections of aCountry Physician," and he could not fail to welcome these events,for they were destined to lend extraordinary attraction to a volumeotherwise not destined to be much out of the common.
He spoke again.
"I should be very glad if you would accompany me, Lennox. I shall havea police inspector from Plymouth; but it would be a satisfaction if youcould come. Moreover, you would help me in London."
"I'll come up, certainly. You don't mind, Uncle Walter?"
"Not if Mannering wishes it. We owe him more than we can ever repay.Anything that we can do to lessen his labors ought to be done."
"I should certainly welcome your company. A small saloon carriage isto be put on to the Plymouth train that leaves Newton for London beforemidnight. We shall be met at Paddington by some of their doctors. And asto Chadlands, four men arrive to-morr
ow morning by the same train thatPeter Hardcastle came down in last night. We shall pass them on the way.They will take charge both of the Grey Room and the house as soon asthey arrive."
"And they will be welcome. I would myself willingly pull down Chadlandsto the foundations if by so doing I could discover the truth."
"It demands no such sacrifice," declared May, who had listened to thesefacts. "Bricks and mortar, stone and timber are innocent things. Onemight as soon dissect a thunder-cloud to find the lightning as destroymaterial substances to discover what is hidden in this house. Theunknown being, about his Master's business here, will no more yield itssecret to four detectives, or an army of them, than it did to one. 'WhatI do thou knowest not now.' It is all summed up in that."
He turned to Mannering and asked a sudden question.
"Why did you object to Mary hearing these facts? In what way should theydistress her particularly?"
"Can you not see? Indeed, one might fairly have objected to yourpresence also. But you are a man. There is an implied horror of thedarkest sort for poor Mary in the suggestion that Hardcastle may stilllive. If he can be brought back to life, then she would surely thinkthat perhaps her husband and your son might have been. Imagine the agonyof that. I speak plainly; indeed, there is no rational or sentimentalreason why I should not, for the truth is, of course, that the signs ofdeath were clearly evident on your poor boy before what we had to do wasdone. But the bare thought must have shocked Mary. We know emphaticallythat Hardcastle is dead, and we need not mention to her this fantastictheory from London."
"I appreciate your consideration," said Sir Walter; and the clergymanalso acknowledged it.
"There can be no shadow of doubt concerning my son," he said; "nor isthere any in the matter of this unfortunate man."
Henry Lennox went to prepare for the journey. Then, obeying thedoctor's directions and treating the dead man as though he were merelyunconscious, they carried him to the ambulance car. It was an unseemlyfarce in Mannering's opinion, and he only realized the painful natureof his task when he came to undertake it; but he carried it through inevery particular as directed, conveyed the corpse to Newton after dark,and had the ambulance bed, in which it reposed, borne to the salooncarriage when the night mail arrived from Plymouth, between eleven andtwelve. He was able to regulate the temperature with hot steam, and kepthot bottles to the feet and sides of the dead.
He felt impatient and resentful; he poured scorn on the superiorauthority for the benefit of the inspector and Henry Lennox, whoaccompanied him; but in secret he experienced emotions of undoubtedsatisfaction that life had broken from its customary monotonous roundto furnish him with an adventure so unique. He pointed out a fact to thepoliceman before they had started.
"You will observe," he said, with satire, "that, despite the heat weare directed to apply to this unfortunate man, rigor mortis has set in.Whether the authority in London regards that as an evidence of death, ofcourse I cannot pretend to say. Perhaps not. I may be behind the times."
Neither Mannering nor Lennox had spared much thought for those leftbehind them at Chadlands. The extraordinary character of the task putupon them sufficed to fill their minds, and it was not until the smallhours, when they sat with their hands in their pockets and the trainran steadily through darkness and storm, that the younger spoke of hiscousin.
"I hope those old men won't bully Mary to-night," he said. "I'd meant toask you to give Uncle Walter a caution. May's not quite all there, in myopinion, and very likely, now you're out of the way, he'll get round SirWalter about that infernal room."
Mannering became interested.
"D'you mean for an instant he wants to try his luck after what'shappened?"
"You forget. Your day has been so full that you forget what did happen."
"I do not, Lennox. Mary begged me to tackle the man. I calmed him, andhe came down to his luncheon. He must have thought over the matter sincethen, and seen that he was playing with death."
"Far from it, 'The future is mine!' That's what he said. And that meanshe'll try and be in the Grey Room alone to-night."
"I wish to Heaven you'd made this clear before we'd started. Butsurely we can trust Sir Walter; he knows what this means, even if thatsuperstitious lunatic doesn't."
"I don't want to bother you," answered Henry; "but, looking back, I'mnone so sure that we can trust my uncle. He's been pretty wild to-day,and who shall blame him? Things like this crashing into his life leavehim guessing. He's very shaken, and has lost his mental grip, too.Reality's played him such ugly tricks that he may be tempted to fallback on unreality now."
"You don't mean he'll let May go into that room to-night?"
"I hope not. He was firm enough last night when the clergyman clamoredto do so. In fact, he made me keep watch to see he didn't. But I thinkhe's weakened a lot since Hardcastle came to grief in broad daylight.And I sha'n't be there to do anything."
"All this comes too late," answered the other. "If harm has happened--ithas happened. We can only pray they've preserved some sanity amongthem."
"That's why I say I hope they're not bullying Mary," answered Lennox."Of course, she'd be dead against her father-in-law's idea. But shewon't count. She can't control him if Sir Walter goes over to his side."
"Let us not imagine anything so unreasonable. We'll telegraph to hear ifall's well at the first moment we can."
The storm sent a heavy wash of rain against the side of the carriage. Itwas a famous tempest, that punished the South of England from Land's Endto the North Foreland.
They were distracted from their thoughts by the terrific impact of thewind.
"Wonder we can stop on the rails," said Mannering. "This is a fifty-knotgale, or I'm mistaken."
"I'm thinking of the Chadlands trees," answered the other. "It's rumhow, in the middle of such an awful business as this, the mind switchesoff to trifles. Does it on purpose, I suppose, to relieve the strain.Yes, the trees will catch it to-night. I expect I shall hear a grim taleof fallen timber from Sir Walter by the time I get back to-morrow."
"If nothing's fallen but timber, I sha'n't mind," answered Mannering;"but you've made me devilish uneasy now. If anything further wentwrong--well, to put it mildly, they would say your uncle ought to haveknown a great deal better."
"He does know a great deal better. It's only that temporarily he'sknocked off his balance. But I hardly feel as anxious as you do. There'sMary against May; and even if my uncle were for him, on a general, vaguetheory of something esoteric and outside nature, which you can't fairlycall unreasonable any more, Mannering, seeing what's happened--even ifSir Walter felt tempted to let him have his way, I don't believe he'dreally consent when it came to the point."
"I hope not--I hope not," answered the other. "Such a concession wouldtake a lot of explanation if the result were another of these disasters.There ought to be an official guard over the room."
"After to-morrow there certainly will be," replied Henry. "You may besure the police won't leave it again till they've satisfied themselves.All the same, I don't see how a dozen of them will be any safer thanone--even if it's some material and physical thing that happens, aswe must suppose. And for that matter, if it's really supernatural, whyshould a dozen be safer than one? Obviously they wouldn't. Whatever itis, it can strike as it likes and without being struck back."
But Dr. Mannering did not answer these questions. He was consideringa little book in his pocket, which he would hand over to the police inLondon next morning.
"Poor chap--if he could have begun by taking the problem by the throat,as he has written here. But, instead, it took him by the throat!"
He took Hardcastle's notebook from his pocket and read again the lastfew pages.
"He was dreaming of his theories to the last, when he should surelyhave been girt up in every limb to face facts," said Lennox. "He neverrealized the horrible danger."
Perusal of the detective's data had revealed an interesting fact. Itwas known by his colleagues that he d
esigned a book on the theory andpractice of criminal investigations, and in many of his pocket-books,subsequently examined, were found memoranda and jottings, doubtlessdestined to be worked out at another time. It was clear that he had, fora few moments, drifted away from the Grey Room in thought when hisdeath overtook him. Past events, not present problems, were apparentlyresponsible for the reflections that occupied his mind. He was notconcentrating on the material phenomena actually under his observationwhen he died, but following some private meditations provoked by hisexperiences.
"Elimination embraces the secret of success," he had written. "Exercisethe full force of your intelligence and spare no pains to eliminate fromevery case all matter not bearing directly upon the actual problem. Ninetimes out of ten the issue is direct, and once permit side issues todraw their tracks across it, once admit metaphysical lines of reasoning,the result will be confusion and a problem increasing in complexityat every stage. Only in romances, where a plot is invented and thencomplicated by deliberate art, shall we find the truth ultimatelypermitted to appear in some subordinate incident, or individual,studiously kept in the background--that is the craft of tellingdetective stories. But, in truth, one needs to lay hold of the problemby the throat at the outset. Deception is too much the province of thecriminal and too little the business of the investigator; and where itmay be possible to creep, like a snake, into a case, unknown for whatyou truly are, then your opportunities and chances of success areenormously increased. It is, however, the exception when one can startwithout the knowledge of anybody involved, and the Scotland Yard of thefuture will pursue its business under very different circumstances fromthe present. The detective's work should be made easier and notmore difficult. None should know who is working on a case. The law'srepresentatives should be disguised and move among the characterssurrounding the crime as something other than they really are. Theywill--"
Here Hardcastle's reflections came to an end. Some previous notes therewere of superficial accidents in the Grey Room and a rough ground planof it; but nothing more. He had evidently, for the time being, brokenaway from his environment and was merely thinking, with a pen on paper,when he died.