III
IN THE TRAIN
Discussion was inevitable on the way up to town next morning.
The silly season was by no means over; a sensational inquest was worthevery inch that it could fill in most of the morning papers; and the twostrange friends, planted opposite each other in the first-class smoker,traveled inland simultaneously engrossed in a copious report of theprevious day's proceedings at the coroner's court.
Of solid and significant fact, they learned comparatively little thatthey had been unable to gather or deduce the night before. There was themedical evidence, valuable only as tracing the fatal blow to some suchweapon as the missing truncheon; there was the butler's evidence,finally timing the commission of the deed to within ten minutes; therewas the head gardener's evidence, confirming and supplementing that ofthe butler; and there was the evidence of a footman who had answered thetelephone an hour or two before the tragedy occurred.
The butler had explained that the dinner-hour was seven thirty; that,not five minutes before, he had seen his master come down-stairs andenter the library, where, at seven fifty-five, on going to ask if he hadheard the gong, he had obtained no answer but found the door locked onthe inside; that he had then hastened round by the garden, and inthrough the French window, to discover the deceased gentleman lying inhis blood.
The head gardener, who lived in the lodge, had sworn to having seen abareheaded man rush past his windows and out of the gates about the samehour, as he knew by the sounding of the gong up at the house; they oftenheard it at the lodge, in warm weather when the windows were open, andthe gardener swore that he himself had heard it on this occasion.
The footman appeared to have been less positive as to the time of thetelephone call, thought it was between four and five, but remembered theconversation very well. The gentleman had asked whether Mr. Craven wasat home, had been told that he was out motoring, asked when he would beback, told he couldn't say, but before dinner some time, and what nameshould he give, whereupon the gentleman had rung off without answering.The footman thought he was a gentleman, from the way he spoke. Butapparently the police had not yet succeeded in tracing the call.
"Is it a difficult thing to do?" asked Cazalet, touching on this lastpoint early in the discussion, which even he showed no wish to avoidthis morning. He had dropped his paper, to find that Toye had alreadydropped his, and was gazing at the flying English fields with thoughtfulpuckers about his somber eyes.
"If you ask me," he replied, "I should like to know what wasn'tdifficult connected with the telephone system in this country! Why, youdon't have a system, and that's all there is to it. But it's not at thatend they'll put the salt on their man."
"Which end will it be, then?"
"The river end. That hat, or cap. Do you see what the gardener saysabout the man who ran out bareheaded? That gardener deserves to becashiered for not getting a move on him in time to catch that man, evenif he did think he'd only been swiping flowers. But if he went and lefthis hat or his cap behind him, that should be good enough in the longrun. It's the very worst thing you _can_ leave. Ever hear of FranzMueller?"
Cazalet had not heard of that immortal notoriety, nor did his ignoranceappear to trouble him at all, but it was becoming more and more clearthat Hilton Toye took an almost unhealthy interest in the theory andpractise of violent crime.
"Franz Mueller," he continued, "left his hat behind him, only that andnothing more, but it brought him to the gallows even though he got overto the other side first. He made the mistake of taking a slow steamer,and that's just about the one mistake they never did make at ScotlandYard. Give them a nice, long, plain-sailing stern-chase and they getthere by bedtime--wireless or no wireless!"
But Cazalet was in no mind to discuss other crimes, old or new; and heclosed the digression by asserting somewhat roundly that neither hat norcap had been left behind in the only case that interested him.
"Don't be too sure," said Toye. "Even Scotland Yard doesn't show all itshand at once, in the first inquiry that comes along. They don't give outany description of the man that ran away, but you bet it's beingcirculated around every police office in the United Kingdom."
Cazalet said they would give it out fast enough if they had it to give.By the way, he was surprised to see that the head gardener was the samewho had been at Uplands in his father's time; he must be getting an oldman, and no doubt shakier on points of detail than he would be likely toadmit. Cazalet instanced the alleged hearing of the gong as in itself anunconvincing statement. It was well over a hundred yards from the gatesto the house, and there were no windows to open in the hall where thegong would be rung.
He sighed heavily as in his turn he looked out at the luxuriant littlepaddocks and the old tiled homesteads after every two or three. But hewas not thinking of the weather-board and corrugated iron strewn sosparsely over the yellow wilds that he had left behind him. The oldEnglish panorama flew by for granted, as he had taken it before ever hewent out to Australia. It was as though he had never been out at all.
"I've dreamed of the old spot so often," he said at length. "I'm notthinking of the night before last--I meant in the bush--and now to thinkof a thing like this happening, there, in the old governor's den, of allplaces!"
"Seems like a kind of poetic justice," said Hilton Toye.
"It does. It is!" cried Cazalet, fetching moist yet fiery eyes in fromthe fields. "I said to you the other night that Henry Craven never was awhite man, and I won't unsay it now. Nobody may ever know what he's doneto bring this upon him. But those who really knew the man, and sufferedfor it, can guess the kind of thing!"
"Exactly," murmured Toye, as though he had just said as much himself.His dark eyes twinkled with deliberation and debate. "How long is it, bythe way, that they gave that clerk and friend of yours?"
A keen look pressed the startling question; at least, it startledCazalet.
"You mean Scruton? What on earth made you think of him?"
"Talking of those who suffered for being the dead man's friends, Iguess," said Toye. "Was it fourteen years?"
"That was it."
"But I guess fourteen doesn't mean fourteen, ordinarily, if a prisonerbehaves himself?"
"No, I believe not. In fact, it doesn't."
"Do you know how much it would mean?"
"A little more than ten."
"Then Scruton may be out now?"
"Just."
Toye nodded with detestable aplomb. "That gives you something to chewon," said he. "Of course, I don't say he's our man--"
"I should think you didn't!" cried Cazalet, white to the lips withsudden fury.
Toye looked disconcerted and distressed, but at the same time franklypuzzled. He apologized none the less readily, with almost ingeniouscourtesy and fulness, but he ended by explaining himself in a singlesentence, and that told more than the rest of his straightforwardeloquence put together.
"If a man had done you down like that, wouldn't you want to kill him thevery moment you came out, Cazalet?"
The creature of impulse was off at a tangent. "I'd forgive him if he didit, too!" he exclaimed. "I'd move heaven and earth to save him, guiltyor not guilty. Wouldn't you in my place?"
"I don't know," said Hilton Toye. "It depends on the place you're in, Iguess!" And the keen dark eyes came drilling into Cazalet's skull likeaugers.
"I thought I told you?" he explained impatiently. "We were in the officetogether; he was good to me, winked at the business hours I was inclinedto keep, let me down lighter in every way than I deserved. You may sayit was part of his game. But I take people as I find them. And then, asI told you, Scruton was ten thousand times more sinned against thansinning."
"Are you sure? If you knew it at the time--"
"I didn't. I told you so the last night."
"Then it came to you in Australia?" said Toye, with a smile as whimsicalas the suggestion.
"It did!" cried Cazalet unexpectedly. "In a letter," he added withhesitation.
"W
ell, I mustn't ask questions," said Hilton Toye, and began folding uphis newspaper with even more than his usual deliberation.
"Oh, I'll tell you!" cried Cazalet ungraciously. "It's my own fault fortelling you so much. It was in a letter from Scruton himself that Iheard the whole thing. I'd written to him--toward the end--suggestingthings. He managed to get an answer through that would never have passedthe prison authorities. And--and that's why I came home just when Idid," concluded Cazalet; "that's why I didn't wait till after shearing.He's been through about enough, and I've had more luck than I deserved.I meant to take him back with me, to keep the books on our station, ifyou want to know!" The brusk voice trembled.
Toye let his newspaper slide to the floor. "But that was fine!" heexclaimed simply. "That's as fine an action as I've heard of in a longtime."
"If it comes off," said Cazalet in a gloomy voice.
"Don't you worry. It'll come off. Is he out yet, for sure? I mean, doyou know that he is?"
"Scruton? Yes--since you press it--he wrote to tell me that he wascoming out even sooner than he expected."
"Then he can stop out for me," said Hilton Toye. "I guess I'm notrunning for that reward!"