VII
AFTER MICHELANGELO
"I was thinking of his cap," said Cazalet, but only as they returned tothe tradesmen's door, and just as Blanche put in her word, "What aboutme?"
Mr. Drinkwater eyed the trim white figure standing in the sun. "The morethe merrier!" his grim humor had it. "I dare say you'll be able to teachus a thing or two as well, miss."
She could not help nudging Cazalet in recognition of this shaft. ButCazalet did not look round; he had now set foot in his old home.
It was all strangely still and inactive, as though domestic animationhad been suspended indefinitely. Yet the open kitchen door revealed afemale form in mufti; a sullen face looked out of the pantry as theypassed; and through the old green door (only now it was a red one) theyfound another bowler hat bent over a pink paper at the foot of thestairs. There was a glitter of eyes under the bowler's brim as Mr.Drinkwater conducted his friends into the library.
The library was a square room of respectable size, but very close anddim with the one French window closed and curtained. But Mr. Drinkwatershut the door as well, and added indescribably to the lighting andatmospheric effects by switching on all the electric lamps; they burnedsullenly in the partial daylight, exposed as thin angry bunches ofred-hot wire in dusty bulbs.
The electric light had been put in by the Cravens; all the otherfixtures in the room were as Cazalet remembered them. The bookshelvescontained different books, and now there were no busts on top. Certaincupboards, grained and varnished in Victorian days, were undeniablyimproved by being enameled white.
But the former son of the house gave himself no time to waste insentimental comparisons. He tapped a pair of mahogany doors, like thoseof a wardrobe let into the wall.
"Have you looked in here?" demanded Cazalet in yet another key. His airwas almost authoritative now. Blanche could not understand it, but theexperienced Mr. Drinkwater smiled his allowances for a young fellow onhis native heath, after more years in the wilderness than were good foryoung fellows.
"What's the use of looking in a cigar cupboard?" that dangerous man ofthe world made mild inquiry.
"Cigar cupboard!" echoed Cazalet in disgust. "Did he really only use itfor his cigars?"
"A cigar cupboard," repeated Drinkwater, "and locked up at the time ithappened. What was it, if I may ask, in Mr. Cazalet's time?"
"I remember!" came suddenly from Blanche; but Cazalet only said, "Oh,well, if you know it was locked there's an end of it."
Drinkwater went to the door and summoned his subordinate. "Just fetchthat chap from the pantry, Tom," said he; but the sullen sufferer frompolice rule took his time, in spite of them, and was sharply rated whenhe appeared.
"I thought you told me this was a cigar cupboard?" continued Drinkwater,in the browbeating tone of his first words to Cazalet outside.
"So it is," said the man.
"Then where's the key?"
"How should I know? _I_ never kept it!" cried the butler, crowing overhis oppressor for a change. "He would keep it on his own bunch; find hiswatch, and all the other things that were missing from his pockets whenyour men went through 'em, and you may find his keys, too!"
Drinkwater gave his man a double signal; the door slammed on a pettytriumph for the servants' hall; but now both invaders remained within.
"Try your hand on it, Tom," said the superior officer. "I'm a free-lancehere," he explained somewhat superfluously to the others, as Tom appliedhimself to the lock in one mahogany door. "Man's been drinking, Ishould say. He'd better be careful, because I don't take to him, drunkor sober. I'm not surprised at his master not trusting him. It's justpossible that the place _was_ open--he might have been getting out hiscigars before dinner--but I can't say I think there's much in it, Mr.Cazalet."
It was open again--broken open--before many minutes; and certainly therewas not much in it, to be seen, except cigars. Boxes of these werestacked on what might have been meant for a shallow desk (the wholeplace was shallow as the wardrobe that the doors suggested, but lightedhigh up at one end by a little barred window of its own) and accordingto Cazalet a desk it had really been. His poor father ought never tohave been a business man; he ought to have been a poet. Cazalet saidthis now as simply as he had said it to Hilton Toye on board the_Kaiser Fritz_. Only he went rather farther for the benefit of thegentlemen from Scotland Yard, who took not the faintest interest in thelate Mr. Cazalet, beyond poking their noses into his diminutive sanctumand duly turning them up at what they saw.
"He used to complain that he was never left in peace on Saturdays andSundays, which of course were his only quiet times for writing," saidthe son, elaborating his tale with filial piety. "So once when I'd beentrying to die of scarlet fever, and my mother brought me back fromHastings after she'd had me there some time, the old governor told ushe'd got a place where he could disappear from the district at amoment's notice and yet be back in another moment if we rang the gong. Ifancy he'd got to tell her where it was, pretty quick; but I only foundout for myself by accident. Years afterward, he told me he'd got theidea from Jean Ingelow's place in Italy somewhere."
"It's in Florence," said Blanche, laughing. "I've been there and seenit, and it's the exact same thing. But you mean Michelangelo, Sweep!"
"Oh, do I?" he said serenely. "Well, I shall never forget how I foundout its existence."
"No more shall I. You told me all about it at the time, as a terrificsecret, and I may tell you that I've kept it from that day to this!"
"You would," he said simply. "But think of having the nerve to pull upthe governor's floor! It only shows what a boy will do. I wonder if thehole's there still!"
Now all the time the planetary detective had been watching hissatellite engaged in an attempt to render the damage done to themahogany doors a little less conspicuous. Neither appeared to be takingany further interest in the cigar cupboard, or paying the slightestattention to Cazalet's reminiscences. But Mr. Drinkwater happened tohave heard every word, and in the last sentence there was one thatcaused him to prick up his expert ears instinctively.
"What's that about a hole?" said he, turning round.
"I was reminding Miss Macnair how the place first came to be--"
"Yes, yes. But what about some hole in the floor?"
"I made one myself with one of those knives that contain all sorts ofthings, including a saw. It was one Saturday afternoon in the summerholidays. I came in here from the garden as my father went out by thatdoor into the hall, leaving one of these mahogany doors open by mistake.It was the chance of my life; in I slipped to have a look. He came backfor something, saw the very door you've broken standing ajar, and shutit without looking in. So there I was in a nice old trap! I simplydaren't call out and give myself away. There was a bit of loose oilclothon the floor--"
"There is still," said the satellite, pausing in his task.
"I moved the oilcloth, in the end; howked up one end of the board(luckily they weren't groove and tongue), sawed through the next one toit, had it up, too, and got through into the foundations, leavingeverything much as I had found it. The place is so small that theoilcloth was obliged to fall in place if it fell anywhere. But I hadplenty of time, because my people had gone in to dinner."
"You ought to have been a burglar, sir," said Mr. Drinkwater ironically."So you covered up a sin with a crime, like half the gentlemen who gothrough my hands for the first and last time! But how did you get out ofthe foundations?"
"Oh, that was as easy as pie; I'd often explored them. Do you rememberthe row I got into, Blanche, for taking you with me once and simplyruining your frock?"
"I remember the frock!" said Blanche.
It was her last contribution to the conversation; immediate developmentsnot only put an end to the further exchange of ancient memories, butrendered it presently impossible by removing Cazalet from the scene withthe two detectives. Almost without warning, as in the harlequinade ofwhich they might have been the rascal heroes, all three disappeared downthe makeshift tra
p-door cut by one of them as a schoolboy in hisfather's floor; and Blanche found herself in sole possession of thestage, a very envious Columbine, indeed!
She hardly even knew how it happened. The satellite must have poppedback into the Michelangelo cigar cupboard. He might have called to Mr.Drinkwater, but the only summons that Blanche could remember hearing wasalmost a sharp one from Drinkwater to Cazalet. A lot of whisperingfollowed in the little place; it was so small that she never saw thehole until it had engulfed two of the trio; the third explorer, Mr.Drinkwater himself, had very courteously turned her out of the librarybefore following the others. And he had said so very little beforehandfor her to hear, and so quickly prevented Cazalet from saying anythingat all, that she simply could not think what any of them were doingunder the floor.
Under her very feet she heard them moving as she waited a bit in thehall; then she left the house by way of the servants' quarters, ofcourse without holding any communication with those mutineers, and onlyindignant that Mr. Drinkwater should have requested her not to do so.
It was a long half-hour that followed for Blanche Macnair, but shepassed it characteristically, and not in morbid probings of the manychanges that had come over one young man in less than the course of asummer's day. He was excited at getting back, he had stumbled into astill more exciting situation, so no wonder he was one thing one momentand another the next. That was all that Blanche allowed herself to thinkof Sweep Cazalet--just then.
She turned her wholesome mind to dogs, which in some ways she knewbetter and trusted further than men. She had, of course, a dog of herown, but it happened to be on a visit to the doctor or no doubt it wouldhave been in the way all the afternoon. But there was a dog at Uplands,and as yet she had seen nothing of him; he lived in a large kennel inthe yard, for he was a large dog and rather friendless. But Blanche knewhim by sight, and had felt always sorry for him.
The large kennel was just outside the back door, which was at the top ofthe cellar steps and at the bottom of two or three leading into thescullery; but Blanche, of course, went round by the garden. She foundthe poor old dog quite disconsolate in a more canine kennel in a cornerof the one that was really worthy of the more formidable carnivora.There was every sign of his being treated as the dangerous dog thatBlanche, indeed, had heard he was; the outer bars were further protectedby wire netting, which stretched like a canopy over the whole cage; butBlanche let herself in with as little hesitation as she proceeded tobeard the poor brute in his inner lair. And he never even barked at her;he just lay whimpering with his tearful nose between his two front paws,as though his dead master had not left him to the servants all his life.
Blanche coaxed and petted him until she almost wept herself; thensuddenly and without warning the dog showed his worst side. Out heleaped from wooden sanctuary, almost knocking her down, and barkinghorribly, but not at Blanche. She followed his infuriated eyes; and theback doorway framed a dusty and grimy figure, just climbing into fulllength on the cellar stairs, which Blanche had some difficulty inidentifying with that of Cazalet.
"Well, you really _are_ a Sweep!" she cried when she had slipped outjust in time, and the now savage dog was still butting and clawing athis bars. "How did you come out, and where are the enemy?"
"The old way," he answered. "I left them down there."
"And what did you find?"
"I'll tell you later. I can't hear my voice for that infernal dog."
The dreadful barking followed them out of the yard, and round to theright, past the tradesmen's door, to the verge of the drive. Here theymet an elderly man in a tremendous hurry--an unstable dotard whoinstantly abandoned whatever purpose he had formed, and came to anchorin front of them with rheumy eyes and twitching wrinkles.
"Why, if that isn't Miss Blanche!" he quavered. "Do you hear our Roy,miss? I ha'n't heard that go on like that since the night thathappened!"
Then Cazalet introduced himself to the old gardener whom he had knownall his life; and by rights the man should have wept outright, or elseemitted a rustic epigram laden with wise humor. But old Savage hailedfrom silly Suffolk, and all his life he had belied his surname, butnever the alliterative libel on his native country. He took thewanderer's return very much as a matter of course, very much as thoughhe had never been away at all, and was demonstrative only in hisfurther use of the East Anglian pronoun.
"That's a long time since we fared to see you, Mus' Walter," said he;"that's a right long time! And now here's a nice kettle of fish for youto find! But I seen the man, Mus' Walter, and we'll bring that home tohim, never you fear!"
"Are you sure that you saw him?" asked Blanche, already under Cazalet'sinfluence on this point.
Savage looked cautiously toward the house before replying; then helowered his voice dramatically. "Sure, Miss Blanche. Why, I see him thatnight as plain as I fare to see Mus' Walter now!"
"I should have thought it was too dark to see anybody properly," saidBlanche, and Cazalet nodded vigorously to himself.
"Dark, Miss Blanche? Why, that was broad daylight, and if that wasn'tthere were the lodge lights on to see him by!" His stage voice fell asepulchral semitone. "But I see him again at the station this veryafternoon, I did! I promised not to talk about that--you'll keep that asecret if I tell 'e somethin'?--but I picked him out of half a dozen atthe first time of askin'!"
Savage said this with a pleased and vacuous grin, looking Cazalet fullin the face; his rheumy eyes were red as the sunset they faced; andCazalet drew a deep breath as Blanche and he turned back toward theriver.
"First time of prompting, I expect!" he whispered. "But there's hope ifSavage is their strongest witness."
"Only listen to that dog," said Blanche, as they passed the yard.