CHAPTER II
The House with Red Blinds
Uvo Delavoye had developed a theory to match his name for the Estate.The baleful spirit of the notorious Lord Mulcaster still brooded overWitching Hill, and the innocent occupiers of the Queen Anne houses wereone and all liable to the malign influence. Such was the modestproposition, put as fairly as can be expected of one who resisted itfrom the first; for both by temperament and training I was perhapsunusually proof against this kind of thing. But then I always held thatDelavoye himself did not begin by believing in his own idea, that henever thought of it before our subterranean adventure, and would haveforgotten all about it but for the house with red blinds.
That vermilion house with the brave blinds of quite another red! I canstill see them bleaching in the glare of those few August days.
It was so hot that the prematurely bronze leaves of the horse-chestnuts,behind the odd numbers in Mulcaster Park, were as crisp as tinfoil,while a tawny stubble defied the garden rollers of those tenants who hadnot been driven to the real country or the seaside. Half our inhabitedhouses were either locked up empty, or in the hands of servants whospent their time gossiping at the gate. And I personally was notsurprised when the red blinds stayed down in their turn.
The Abercromby Royles were a young couple who might be expected tomobilise at short notice, in spite of the wife's poor health, for theyhad no other ties. The mere fact of their departure on Bank Holiday,when the rest of the Estate were on the river, meant no more to me thana sudden whim on the lady's part; but then I never liked the looks ofher or her very yellow hair, least of all in a bath chair drawn by herindulgent husband after business hours. Mr. Royle was a littlesolicitor, who himself flouted tradition with a flower in his coat anda straw hat worn slightly on one side; but with him I had made friendsover an escape of gas which he treated as a joke rather than agrievance. He seemed to me just the sort of man to humour his sort ofwife, even to the extent of packing off the servants on board wages, asthey were said to have done before leaving themselves. Certainly I neverthought of a sinister explanation until Uvo Delavoye put one into myhead, and then I had no patience with him.
"It's this heat," I declared; "it's hot enough to uproot anybody."
"I wonder," said he, "how many other places they've found too hot forthem!"
"But why should you wonder any such rot, when you say yourself thatyou've never even nodded to Abercromby Royle?"
"Because I've had my eye on him all the same, Gillon, as obviousmaterial for the evil genius of the place."
"I see! I forgot you were spoiling for a second case."
"Case or no case," replied Uvo, "house-holds don't usually disperse at amoment's notice, and their cook told our butcher that it was onlysprung on them this morning. I have it from our own old treasure, if youwant to know, so you may take it or leave it at that for what it'sworth. But if I had your job, Gilly, and my boss was away, I don't knowthat I should feel altogether happy about my Michaelmas rent."
Nor was I quite so happy as I had been. I was spending the evening at myfriend's, but I cut it rather shorter than I had intended; and on my wayto the unlet house in which I lodged, I could not help stopping outsidethe one with the drawn red blinds. They looked natural enough at thistime of night; but all the windows were shut as well; there was no signof life about the house. And then, as I went my way, I caught a soundwhich I had just heard as I approached, but not while standing outsidethe gate. It was the sound of furtive hammering--a few taps and then apause--but I retraced my steps too quietly to prolong the pause a secondtime. It was some devil's tattoo on the very door of the empty house,and as I reached up my hand to reply with the knocker, the door flewopen and the devil was Abercromby Royle himself.
He looked one, too, by the light of the lamp opposite, but only for amoment. What impressed me most about our interview, even at the time,was the clemency of my reception by an obviously startled man. Heinterrupted my apologies to commend my zeal; as for explanations, it wasfor him to explain to me, if I would be good enough to step inside. Idid so with a strange sense of impersonal fear or foreboding, due partlyto the stuffy darkness of the hall, partly to a quiver of the kindlyhand upon my shoulder. The dining-room, however, was all lit up, andlike an oven. Whisky was on the side-board, and I had to join Mr. Roylein the glass that loosened his tongue.
It was quite true about the servants; they had gone first, and he wasthe last to leave the ship. The metaphor did not strike me asunfortunate until it was passed off with a hollow laugh. Mr. Royle nolonger disguised his nervous worry; he seemed particularly troubledabout his wife, who appeared to have followed the servants into thecountry, and whom he could not possibly join. He mentioned that he hadtaken her up to town and seen her off; then, that he was going up againhimself by the last train that night; finally--after a pause and betweenourselves--that he was sailing immediately for America. When I heardthis I thought of Delavoye; but Royle seemed so glad when he had toldme, and soon in such a stew about his train, that I felt certain therecould be nothing really wrong. It was a sudden call, and a great upsetto him; he made no secret of either fact or any of his plans. He hadleft his baggage that morning at the club where he was going to sleep.He even told me what had brought him back, and that led to an equallyvoluntary explanation of the hammering I had heard in the road.
"Would you believe it? I'd forgotten all about our letters!" exclaimedAbercromby Royle as we were about to leave the house together. "Havingthe rest of the day on my hands, I thought I might as well come backmyself to give the necessary instructions. But it's no use simplyfilling up the usual form; half your correspondence still finds its wayinto your empty house; so I was just tacking this lid of an old cigarbox across the slot. I'll finish it, if you don't mind, and then we cango so far together."
But we went together all the way, and I saw him off in a train ladenwith Bank Holiday water-folk. I thought he scanned them somewhat closelyon the platform, and that some of my remarks fell on deaf ears. Amongother things, I said I would gladly have kept the empty house aired, hadhe cared to trust me with his key. It was an office that I hadundertaken for more than one of our absentee tenants. But the lawyer'sonly answer was a grip of the hand as the train began to move. And itseemed to me a haunted face that dissolved into the night, despite thedrooping flower in the flannel coat and the hat worn a little on oneside.
It would be difficult to define the impression left upon my mind by thewhole of this equivocal episode; enough that, for more than one obviousreason, I said not a word about it to Uvo Delavoye. Once or twice I wastempted by his own remarks about Abercromby Royle, but on each occasionI set my teeth and defended the absent man as though we were bothequally in the dark. It seemed a duty, after blundering into his affairsas I had done. But that very week brought forth developments which madea necessary end of all such scruples.
I was interviewing one of our foremen in a house that had to be ready byhalf-quarter-day, when Delavoye came in with a gleaming eye to tell me Iwas wanted.
"It's about our friend Royle," he added, trying not to crow. "I wasperfectly right. They're on his tracks already!"
"Who are?" I demanded, when we were out of earshot of the men.
"Well, only one fellow so far, but he's breathing blood-hounds andScotland Yard! It's Coysh, the trick-bicycle inventor; you must know thelunatic by name; but let me tell you that he sounds unpleasantly saneabout your limb of the law. A worse case----"
"Where is he?" I interrupted hotly. "And what the devil does he wantwith me?"
"Thinks you can help him put salt on the bird that's flown, as sort ofclerk to the whole aviary! I found him pounding at your office door.He'd been down to Royle's and found it all shut up, of course--like hisoffice in town, he says! Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Gilly! It'sa clear case, I'm afraid, but you'd better have it from thefountain-head. I said I thought I could unearth you, and he's waitingoutside for you now."
I looked through a window with a scroll of whi
tewash on the pane. In theroad a thick-set man was fanning his big head with a wide soft hat,which I could not but notice that he wore with a morning coat and brownboots. The now eminent engineer is not much more conventional than thehot-headed patentee who in those days had still to find himself (and hadlately been looking in the wrong place, with a howling Press at hisheels). But even then the quality of the man outshone the eccentricitiesof the super-crank. And I had a taste of it that August morning; aforetaste, when I looked into the road and saw worry and distress whereI expected only righteous indignation.
I went down and asked him in, and his face lit up like a stormy sunbeam.But the most level-headed man in England could not have come to thepoint in fewer words or a more temperate tone.
"I'm glad your friend has told you what I've come about. I'm a plainspeaker, Mr. Gillon, and I shall be plainer with you than I've been withhim, because he tells me you know Abercromby Royle. In that case youwon't start a scandal--because to know the fellow is to like him--and Ionly hope it may prove in your power to prevent one."
"I'll do anything I can, Mr. Coysh," I went so far as to say. But I wasalready taken by surprise. And so, I could see, was Uvo Delavoye.
"I'll hold you to that," said Coysh frankly. "When did you see him last,Mr. Gillon?"
"Do you mean Mr. Royle?" I stammered, turning away from Delavoye. Ifonly he had not been there!
"Of course I do; and let me tell you, Mr. Gillon, this is a seriousmatter for the man, you know. You won't improve his chances by keepinganything back. When did you see him last?"
"Monday night," I mumbled.
But Delavoye heard.
"Monday _night_?" he interjected densely. "Why, it was on Monday he wentaway!"
"Exactly--by the last train."
"But we heard they'd gone hours before!"
"We heard wrong, so far as Royle was concerned. I came across him afterI left you, and I saw him off myself."
Coysh had a sharp eye on both of us, and Delavoye's astonishment was notlost upon him. But it was at me that he looked last and longest.
"And you keep this to yourself from Monday night till now?"
"What's about it?" I demanded, falling into my own vernacular in myembarrassment.
"It only looks rather as though you were behind the scenes," repliedCoysh simply. And his honesty called to mine.
"Well, so I was, to a certain extent," I cried; "but I got there byaccident, I blundered in where I wasn't wanted, and yet the fellowtreated me like a gentleman! That's why I never gave it away. But," Iadded with more guile, "there was really nothing to give away." And withthat I improvised a garbled version of my last little visit to the housewith red blinds, which I did not say I had discovered in utter darkness,any more than I described the sound which had attracted my attention, orthe state of the householder's nerves.
"Very good," said Coysh, making notes on an envelope. "And then you sawhim off by the last train: did he say where he was going at that time ofnight?"
"To sleep at some club, I understood."
"And next morning?"
But I was sorry I had gone so far.
"Mr. Coysh," I said, "I'm here to let the houses on this Estate, and tolook after odd jobs for the people who take them. It's not my businessto keep an eye on the tenants themselves, still less to report theirmovements, and I must respectfully decline to say another word about Mr.Abercromby Royle."
The engineer put away his envelope with a shrug.
"Oh, very well; then you force me to go into details which I on my sidewould vastly prefer to keep to myself; but if you are sincere you willtreat them as even more confidential than your own relations with Mr.Royle. You say you are hardly friends. I shall believe it if you stickto your present attitude when you've heard my story. Royle and I,however, have been only too friendly in the past, and I should notforget it even now--if I could find him."
He made a meaning pause, of which I did not avail myself, thoughDelavoye encouraged me with an eager eye.
"He was not only my solicitor," continued Coysh; "he has acted as myagent in a good many matters which neither lawyers nor patent agentswill generally undertake. You've heard of my Mainspring bicycle, ofcourse? It was in his hands, and would have paid him well when it comesoff, which is only a question of time." His broad face lit withirrelevant enthusiasm and glowed upon us each in turn. "When you thinkthat by the very act of pedalling on the level we might be windingup--but there! It's going to revolutionise the most popular pastime ofthe day, and make my fortune incidentally; but meanwhile I've one or twopot-boilers that bring me in a living wage in royalties. One's anappliance they use in every gold-mine in South Africa. It was taken upby the biggest people in Johannesburg, and of course I've done very wellout of it, this last year or two; but ever since Christmas my little bithas been getting more and more overdue. Royle had the whole thing inhand. I spoke to him about it more than once. At last I told him that ifhe couldn't cope with our paymasters out there, I'd have a go at themmyself; but what I really feared was that he was keeping the remittancesback, never for a moment that he was tampering with each one as it came.That, however, is what has been going on all this year. I have thecertified accounts to prove it, and Royle must have bolted just when heknew the mail would reach me where I've been abroad. I don't wonder,either; he's been faking every statement for the last six months!"
"But not before?" cried Delavoye, as though it mattered.
Coysh turned to him with puzzled eyes.
"No; that's the funny part of it," said he. "You'd think a man who wentso wrong--hundreds, in these few months--could never have been quitestraight. But not a bit of it. I've got the accounts; they were as rightas rain till this last spring."
"I knew it!" exclaimed Delavoye in wild excitement.
"May I ask what you knew?"
Coysh was staring, as well he might.
"Only that the whole mischief must have happened since these people camehere to live!"
"Do you suggest that they've been living beyond their means?"
"I shouldn't be surprised," said Delavoye, as readily as though nothingelse had been in his mind.
"Well, and I should say you were right," rejoined the engineer, "if itwasn't for the funniest part of all. When a straight man goes off therails, there's generally some tremendous cause; but one of thesurprises of this case, as my banker has managed to ascertain, is thatAbercromby Royle is in a position to repay every penny. He has more thanenough to do it, lying idle in his bank; so there was no apparent motivefor the crime, and I for my part am prepared to treat it as a suddenaberration."
"Exactly!" cried Delavoye, as though he were the missing man's oldestfriend and more eager than either of us to find excuses for him.
"Otherwise," continued Coysh, "I wouldn't have taken you gentlemen intomy confidence. But the plain fact is that I'm prepared to condone thefelony at my own risk in return for immediate and complete restitution."He turned his attention entirely to me. "Now, Royle can't make goodunless you help him by helping me to find him. I won't be hard on him ifyou do, I promise you! Not a dozen men in England shall ever know. Butif I have to hunt for him it'll be with detectives and a warrant, andthe fat'll be in the fire for all the world to smell!"
What could I do but give in after that? I had not promised to keep anysecrets, and it was clearly in the runaway's interests to disclose hisdestination on the conditions laid down. Of his victim's good faith Ihad not a moment's doubt; it was as patent as his magnanimous compassionfor Abercromby Royle. He blamed himself for not looking after his ownshow; it was unfair to take a poor little pettifogging solicitor andturn him by degrees into one's trusted business man; it was trying himtoo high altogether. He spoke of the poor wretch as flying from a wraththat existed chiefly in his own imagination, and even for that he blamedhimself. It appeared that Coysh had vowed to Royle that he would have nomercy on anybody who was swindling him, no matter who it might be. Hehad meant it as a veiled warning, but Royle might have known his barkwa
s worse than his bite, and have made a clean breast of the whole thingthere and then. If only he had! And yet I believe we all three thoughtthe better of him because he had not.
But it was not too late, thanks to me! I could not reveal the boat orline by which Royle was travelling, because it had never occurred to meto inquire, but Coysh seemed confident of finding out. His confidencewas of the childlike type which is the foible of some strong men. Heknew exactly what he was going to do, and it sounded the simplest thingin the world. Royle would be met on the other side by a cable whichwould bring him to his senses--and by one of Pinkerton's young men whowould shadow him until it did. Either he would cable back the uttermostfarthing through his bank, or that young man would tap him on theshoulder without more ado. It was delightful to watch a powerful mindclearing wire entanglements of detail in its leap to a picturesqueconclusion; and we had further displays for our benefit; for there wasno up-train for an hour and more, and that set the inventor off upon hiswonderful bicycle, which was to accumulate hill power by getting woundup automatically on the level. Nothing is so foolish as the folly ofgenius, and I shall never forget that great man's obstinate defence ofhis one supreme fiasco, or the diagram that he drew on an unpaperedwall while Uvo Delavoye and I attended with insincere solemnity.
But Uvo was no better when we were at last alone. And his craze seemedto me the crazier of the two.
"It's as plain as a pikestaff, my good Gillon! This fellow Royle comeshere an honest man, and instantly starts on a career of fraud--for noearthly reason whatsoever!"
"So you want to find him an unearthly one?"
"I don't; it's there--and a worse case than the last. Old SirChristopher was the only sober man at his own orgy, but my satanicancestor seems to have made a mighty clean job of this poor brute!"
"I'm not so sure," said I gloomily. "I'm only sure of one thing--thatthe dead can't lead the living astray--and you'll never convince me thatthey can."
It was no use arguing, for we were oil and vinegar on this matter, andwere beginning to recognise the fact. But I was grateful to Uvo Delavoyefor his attitude on another point. I tried to explain why I had nevertold him about my last meeting with Abercromby Royle. It was notnecessary; there he understood me in a moment; and so it was in almosteverything except this one perverse obsession, due in my opinion to amorbid imagination, which in its turn I attributed to the wretchedmuddle that the Egyptian climate had made of poor Uvo's inner man. Whilenot actually an invalid, there was little hope of his being fit for workof any sort for a year or more; and I remember feeling glad when he toldme he had obtained a reader's ticket for the British Museum, but verysorry when I found that his principal object was to pursue his WitchingHill will-o'-the-wisp to an extent impossible in the local library.Indeed, it was no weather for close confinement on even the healthiestintellectual quest. Yet it was on his way home from the museum that Uvohad picked up Coysh outside my office, and that was where he was whenCoysh came down again before the week was out.
This time I was in, and sweltering over the schedule of finishings forthe house in which he had found me before, when my glass door darkenedand the whole office shook beneath his ominous tread. With his back tothe light, the little round man looked perfectly black with rage; and ifhe did not actually shake his fist in my face, that is the impressionthat I still retain of his outward attitude.
His words came in a bitter torrent, but their meaning might have beenstated in one breath. Royle had not gone to America at all. Neither inhis own name nor any other had he booked his passage at the Londonoffice of the Tuesday, or either of the Wednesday steamers, nor as yetin any of those sailing on the following Saturday. So Coysh declared,with characteristic conviction, as proof positive that a given beingcould not possibly have sailed for the United States under anyconceivable disguise or alias. He had himself made a round of the saidLondon offices, armed with photographs of Abercromby Royle. That settledthe matter. It also branded me in my visitor's blazing eyes as accessorybefore or after the flight, and the deliberate author of a false scentwhich had wasted a couple of invaluable days.
It was no use trying to defend myself, and Coysh told me it was none. Hehad no time to listen to a "jackanapes in office," as he called me to myface. I could not help laughing in his. All he wanted and intended todiscover was the whereabouts of Mrs. Royle--the last thing I knew, orhad thought about before that moment--but in my indignation I referredhim to the post-office. By way of acknowledgment he nearly shivered myglass door behind him.
I mopped my face and awaited Delavoye with little patience, which ranout altogether when he entered with a radiant face, particularly full ofhis own egregious researches in Bloomsbury.
"I can't do with that rot to-night!" I cried. "Here's this fat littlefool going to get on the tracks of Mrs. Royle, and all through me! Thewoman's an invalid; this may finish her off. If it were the man himselfI wouldn't mind. Where the devil do you suppose he is?"
"I'll tell you later," said Uvo Delavoye, without moving a muscle of hismobile face.
"You'll tell me----see here, Delavoye!" I spluttered. "This is aserious matter to me; if you're going to rot about it I'd rather youcleared out!"
"But I'm not rotting, Gilly," said he in a different tone, yet with asuperior twinkle that I never liked. "I never felt less like it in mylife. I really have a pretty shrewd idea of my own, but you're such anunbelieving dog that you must give me time before I tell you what it is.I should like first to know rather more about these alleged peculationsand this apparent flight, and whether Mrs. Royle's in it all. I'm ratherinterested in the lady. But if you care to come in for supper you shallhear my views."
Of course I cared. But across the solid mahogany of more spacious days,though we had it to ourselves, we both seemed disinclined to resume thetopic. Delavoye had got up some choice remnant of his father's cellar,grotesquely out of keeping with our homely meal, but avowedly in myhonour, and it seemed a time to talk about matters on which we wereagreed. I was afraid I knew the kind of idea he had described as"shrewd"; what I dreaded was some fresh application of his ingeniousdoctrine as to the local quick and dead, and a heated argument in ourextravagant cups. And yet I did want to know what was in my companion'smind about the Royles; for my own was no longer free from presentimentsfor which there was some ground in the facts of the case. But I was notgoing to start the subject; and Delavoye steadily avoided it until westrolled out afterward (with humble pipes on top of that Madeira!). Thenhis arm slipped through mine, and it was with one accord that we driftedup the road toward the house with the drawn blinds.
All these days, on my constant perambulations, it had stared me in theface with its shut windows, its dirty step, its idle chimneys. Everymorning those odious blinds had greeted me like red eyelids hidingdreadful eyes. And once I had remembered that the very letter-box wasset like teeth against the outer world. But this summer evening, as thehouse came between us and a noble moon, all was so changed and chastenedthat I thought no evil until Uvo spoke.
"I can't help feeling that there's something wrong!" he exclaimed belowhis breath.
"If Coysh is not mistaken," I whispered back, "there's something verywrong indeed."
He looked at me as though I had missed the point, and I awaited animpatient intimation of the fact. But there had been something strangeabout Uvo Delavoye all the evening; he had singularly little to say forhimself, and now he was saying it in so low a voice that I insensiblylowered mine, though we had the whole road almost to ourselves.
"You said you found old Royle quite alone the other night?"
"Absolutely--so _he_ said."
"You've no reason to doubt it, have you?"
"No reason--none. Still, it did seem odd that he should hang on to theend--the master of the house--without a soul to do anything for him."
"I quite agree with you," said Delavoye emphatically. "It's very odd. Itmeans something. I believe I know what, too!"
But he did not appear disposed to tell me, and I was not go
ing to presshim on the point. Nor did I share his confidence in his own powers ofdivination. What could he know of the case, that was unknown tome--unless he had some outside source of information all the time?
That, however, I did not believe; at any rate he seemed bent uponacquiring more. He pushed the gate open, and was on the doorstep beforeI could say a word. I had to follow in order to remind him that hisproceedings might be misunderstood if they were seen.
"Not a bit of it!" he had the nerve to say as he bent over the tarnishedletter-box. "You're with me, Gillon, and isn't it your job to keep aneye on these houses?"
"Yes, but----"
"What's the matter with this letter-box? It won't open."
"That's so that letters can't be shot into the empty hall. He nailed itup on purpose before he went. I found him at it."
"And didn't it strike you as an extraordinary thing to do?" Uvo wasstanding upright now. "Of course it did, or you'd have mentioned it toCoysh and me the other day."
It was no use denying the fact.
"What's happening to their letters?" he went on, as though I could know.
"I expect they're being re-directed."
"To the wife?"
"I suppose so."
And my voice sank with my heart, and I felt ashamed, and repeated myselfaggressively.
"Exactly!" There was no supposing about Uvo. "The wife at somemysterious address in the country--poor soul!"
"Where are you going now?"
He had dived under the front windows, muttering to himself as much as tome. I caught him up at the high side gate into the back garden.
"Lend me a hand," said Delavoye when he had tried the latch.
"You're not going over?"
"That I am, and it'll be your duty to follow. Or I could let youthrough. Well--if you won't!"
And in the angle between party-fence and gate he was strugglingmanfully when I went to his aid as a lesser evil; in a few seconds wewere both in the back garden of the empty house, with the gate stillbolted behind us.
"Now, if it were ours," resumed Delavoye when he had taken breath, "Ishould say the lavatory window was the vulnerable point. Lavatorywindow, please!"
"But, Delavoye, look here!"
"I'm looking," said he, and we faced each other in the broad moonlightthat flooded the already ragged lawn.
"If you think I'm going to let you break into this house, you're verymuch mistaken."
I had my back to the windows I meant to hold inviolate. No doubt themoon revealed some resolution in my face and bearing, for I meant what Isaid until Delavoye spoke again.
"Oh, very well! If it's coming to brute force I have no more to say. Thepolice will have to do it, that's all. It's their job, when you come tothink of it; but it'll be jolly difficult to get them to take it on,whereas you and I----"
And he turned away with a shrug to point his admirable aposiopesis.
"Man Uvo," I said, catching him by the arm, "what's this job you'rejawing about?"
"You know well enough. You're in the whole mystery of these people fardeeper than I am. I only want to find the solution."
"And you think you'll find it in their house?"
"I know I should," said Uvo with quiet confidence. "But I don't sayit'll be a pleasant find. I shouldn't ask you to come in with me, butmerely to accept some responsibility afterwards--to-night, if we'respotted. It will probably involve more kudos in the end. But I don'twant to let you in for more than you can stand meanwhile, Gillon."
That was enough for me. I myself led the way back to the windows,angrily enough until he took my arm, and then suddenly more at one withhim than I had ever been before. I had seen his set lips in themoonlight, and felt the uncontrollable tremor of the hand upon mysleeve.
It so happened that it was not necessary to break in after all. I hadgenerally some keys about me and the variety of locks on our back doorswas not inexhaustible. It was the scullery door in this case that ahappy chance thus enabled me to open. But I was now more determined thanDelavoye himself, and would have stuck at no burglarious excess to testhis prescience, to say nothing of a secret foreboding which had beenforming in my own mind.
To one who went from house to house on the Estate as I did, and knew byheart the five or six plans on which builder and architect had rung thechanges, darkness should have been no hindrance to the unwarrantableexploration I was about to conduct. I knew the way through thesekitchens, and found it here without a false or noisy step. But in thehall I had to contend with the furniture which makes one interior asdifferent from another as the houses themselves may be alike. TheAbercromby Royles had as much furniture as the Delavoyes, only of adifferent type. It was not massive and unsuitable, but only too daintyand multifarious, no doubt in accordance with the poor wife's taste. Iretained an impression of artful simplicity--an enamelled drain-pipe forthe umbrellas--painted tambourines and counterfeit milk-stools--whichrather charmed me in those days. But I had certainly forgotten a tallflower-stand outside the kitchen door, and over it went crashing as Iset foot in the tessellated hall. I doubt if either of us drew breathfor some seconds after the last bit of broken plant-pot lay still uponthe tiles. Then I rubbed a match on my trousers, but it did not strike.Uvo had me by the hand before I could do it again.
"Do you want to blow up the house?" he croaked. "Can't you smell it foryourself?"
Then I realised that the breath which I had just drawn was acrid withescaped gas.
"It's that asbestos stove again!" I exclaimed, recalling my first visitto the house.
"Which asbestos stove?"
"It's in the dining-room. It was leaking as far back as June."
"Well, we'd better go in there first and open the window. Stop a bit!"
The dining-room was just opposite the kitchen, and I was on thethreshold when he pulled me back to tie my handkerchief across my noseand mouth. I did the same for Delavoye, and thus we crept into the roomwhere I had been induced to drink with Royle on the night he went away.
The full moon made smouldering panels of the French window leading intothe garden, but little or no light filtered through the long red blind.Delavoye went round to it on tip-toe, and I still say it was a naturalinstinct that kept our voices down and our movements stealthy; that anyother empty house, where we had no business at dead of night, would havehad the same effect upon us. Delavoye speaks differently for himself;and I certainly heard him fumbling unduly for the blind-cord while Iwent over to the gas-stove. At least I was going when I stumbled againsta basket chair, which creaked without yielding to my weight, and creakedagain as though some one had stirred in it. I recoiled, panic-stricken,and so stood until the blind flew up. Then the silence was sharplybroken by a voice that I can still hear but hardly recognise as my own.
It was Abercromby Royle who was sitting in the moonlight over theescaping stove; and I shall not describe him; but a dead flower stilldrooped from the lapel of a flannel jacket which the dead man hadhorribly outgrown.
I drove Delavoye before me through the window he had just opened; it washe who insisted on returning, ostensibly to turn off the gas, and Icould not let him go alone. But neither could I face the ghastlyoccupant of the basket chair; and again it was Uvo Delavoye who was busydisengaging something from the frozen fingers when a loud rat-tatresounded through the house.
I drove Delavoye before me.]
It was grim to see how the corpse sat still and let us jump; but Uvo washimself before the knock was repeated.
"You go, Gillon!" he said. "It's only somebody who's heard or seen us.Don't you think we smelt the gas through the letter-box, and wasn't ityour duty----"
The second knock cut him short, and I answered it without more ado. Thenight constable on the beat, who knew me well by sight, was standing onthe doorstep like a man, his right hand on his hip till he had blindedme with his lantern. A grunt of relief assured me of his recognition,while his timely arrival was as promptly explained by an insensatevolley in a more familiar voice.
"Do
n't raise the road, Mr. Coysh!" I implored. "The man you want hasbeen here all the time, and dead for the last five days!"
That was a heavy night for me. If Coysh could have made it somethingworse, I think just at first he would; for he had been grossly deceived,and I had unwittingly promoted the deception. But his good sense andheart had brought him to reason before I accompanied the policeman tothe station, leaving the other two on guard over a house as hermeticallysealed as Delavoye and I had found it.
At the police station I was stiffly examined by the superintendent; butthe explanations that I now felt justified in giving, at Delavoye'sinstigation, were received without demur and I was permitted to departin outward peace. Inwardly I was not so comfortable, for Delavoye hadnot confined his hints to an excuse for entry, made the more convincingby the evil record of the asbestos stove. We had done some morewhispering while the constable was locking up, and the impulsive Coyshhad lent himself to our final counsels. The upshot was that I saidnothing about my own farewell to Royle, though I dwelt upon my genuinebelief that he had actually gone abroad. And I did say I was convincedthat the whole affair had been an accident, due to the same loosegas-stove tap which had caused an escape six weeks before.
That was my only actual lie, and on later consideration I began towonder whether even it was not the truth. This was in Delavoye'ssanctum, on the first-floor-back at No. 7, and after midnight; for I hadreturned to find him in the clutches of excited neighbours, and hadwaited about till they all deserted him to witness the immediate removalof the remains.
"What is there, after all," I asked, "to show that it really was asuicide? He might have come back for something he'd forgotten, andkicked against the tap by accident, as somebody did in June. Why make apoint of doing the deed at home?"
"Because he didn't want his wife to know."
"But she was bound to know."
"Sooner or later, of course; but the later the better from his point ofview, and their own shut-up house was the one place where he might nothave been found for weeks. And that would have made all thedifference--in the circumstances."
"But what do you know about the circumstances, Uvo?" I could not helpasking a bit grimly; for his air of omniscience always prepared me forsome specious creation of his own fancy. But for once I was misled, andI knew it from his altered face before I heard his unnatural voice.
"What do I know?" repeated Uvo Delavoye. "Only that one of theneighbours has just had a wire from Mrs. Royle's people to say thatshe's got a son! That's all," he added, seizing a pipe, "but if youthink a minute you'll see that it explains every other blessed thing."
And I saw that so it did, as far as the unfortunate Royle was concerned;and there was silence between us while I ran through my brief relationswith the dead man and Delavoye filled his pipe.
"I never took to the fellow," he continued, in a callous tone thatalmost imposed upon me. "I didn't like his eternal buttonhole, or thehat on one side, or the awful shade of their beastly blinds, or thecolour of the good lady's hair for that matter! Just the wrong red andyellow, unless you happen to wear blue spectacles; and if you'd everseen them saying good-bye of a morning you'd have wished you werestone-blind. But if ever I marry--which God forbid--may I play the gameby my wife as he has done by his! Think of his feelings--with two suchthings hanging over him--those African accounts on the way as well! Ishe to throw himself on his old friend's mercy? No; he's too much of aman, or perhaps too big a villain--but I know which I think now. Whatthen? If there's a hue and cry the wife'll be the first to hear it; butif he lays a strong false scent, through an honest chap like you, it mayjust tide over the days that matter. So it has, in point of fact; butfor me, there'd have been days and days to spare. But imagine yourselfcreeping back into your empty hole to die like a rat, and still thinkingof every little thing to prevent your being found!"
"And to keep it from looking like suicide when you were!" said I, withyet a lingering doubt in my mind.
"Well, then I say you have the finest suicide ever!" declared UvoDelavoye. "I only wish I knew when he began to think it all out. Was itbefore he called you in to see the tap that didn't turn off? Or was itthe defective tap that suggested the means of death? In either case,when he nailed up his letter-box, it was not, of course, to keep thepostman from the door, but to keep the smell of gas inside if he oranybody else did come. That, I think, is fairly plain."
"It's ingenious," I conceded, "whether the idea's your own or Royle's."
"It must have been his," said Delavoye with conviction. "You don'tengineer an elaborate fake and get in one of your best bits by accident.No; there was only one mistake poor Royle made, and it _was_unpremeditated. It was rather touching too. Do you remember my trying toget something from his fingers, just when the knock came?"
I took a breath through my teeth.
"I wish I didn't. What was it?"
"A locket with yellow hair in it. And he'd broken the glass, and histhumb was on the hair itself! I don't suppose," added Delavoye, "itwould have meant to anybody else what it must to you and me, Gillon; butI'm not sorry I got it out of his clutches in time."
Yet now he could shudder in his turn.
"And to think," I said at last, recalling the secret and forgottenforeboding with which I myself had entered the house of death; "only tothink that at the last I was more prepared for murder than suicide! Ialmost suspected the poor chap of having killed his wife, and shut herup there!"
"Did you?" said Delavoye, with an untimely touch of superiority. "Thatnever occurred to me."
"But you must have thought something was up?"
"I didn't think. I knew."
"Not what had happened?"
"More or less."
"I wish you'd tell me how!"
Uvo smiled darkly as he shook his head.
"It's no use telling certain people certain things. You shall see foryourself with your own two eyes." He got up and crossed the room. "Youknow what I'm up to at the British Museum; did I tell you they'd got afine old last-century plan of the original Estate? Well, for weeks I'vehad a man in Holborn trying to get me a copy for love or money. He'sjust succeeded. Here it is."
A massive hereditary desk, as mid-Victorian as all the Delavoyepossessions, stood before the open window that looked out into themoonlight; on this desk was a reading gas-lamp, with a smelly rubbertube, of the same maligned period; and there and thus was the planspread like a tablecloth, pinned down by ash-tray, inkpot, and the lampitself, and duly overhung by our two young heads. I carry it prettyclearly still in my mind's eye. The Estate alone, or rather the wholeoriginal property and nothing else, was outlined and filled in, and therest left as white as age permitted. It was like a map of India upsidedown. The great house was curiously situated in the apex, but across theroad a clump of shrubberies stood for Ceylon. Our present Estate was atthe thick end, as Delavoye explained, and it was a thrilling moment whenhe laid his nail upon the Turkish Pavilion, actually so marked, and welooked out into the moonlit garden and beheld its indubitable site. Thetunnel was not marked. But Delavoye ran his finger to the left, andstopped on an emblem illegibly inscribed in small faint ancient print.
"It's 'Steward's Lodge,'" said he as I peered in vain; "you shall have amagnifying glass, if you like, to show there's no deception. But thestory I'm afraid you'll have to take on trust for the moment. If youwant to see chapter and verse, apply for a reader's ticket and I'll showyou both any day at the B.M. I only struck them myself this afternoon,in a hairy tome called 'The Mulcaster Peerage'--and a whole page ofsub-titles. They're from one of the epistles of the dear old sinnerhimself, written as though other people's money had never melted in hisnoble fist. I won't spoil it by misquotation. But you'll find that therewas once an unjust steward, who robbed the wicked lord of this veryvineyard, and then locked himself into his lodge, and committed suiciderather than face the fearful music!"
I did not look at Delavoye; but I felt his face glowing like a live coalclose to mine.
"This r
oad isn't marked," I said as though I had been simply buried inthe plan.
"Naturally; it wasn't made. Would you like to see where it ran?"
"I shouldn't mind," I said with the same poor quality of indifference.
He took a bit of old picture-rod, which he kept for a ruler on his desk,and ran a pair of parallel lines in blue pencil from west to east. Thetop line came just under the factor's cottage.
"It's in this very road!" I exclaimed.
"Not only that," returned Delavoye, "but if you go by the scale, andpace the distance, you'll find that the Steward's Lodge was on thepresent site of the house with red blinds!"
And he turned away to fill another pipe, as though finely determined notto crow or glow in my face. But I did not feel myself an object formagnanimity.
"I thought it was only your ignoble kinsman, as you call him," I said,"who was to haunt and influence us all. If it's to be his man-servant,his maid-servant----"
"Stop," cried Delavoye; "stop in time, my dear man, before you come toone or other of us! Can you seriously think it a mere coincidence that athing like this should happen on the very spot where the very same thinghas happened before?"
"I don't see why not."
"I had only the opposite idea to go upon, Gilly, and yet I found exactlywhat I expected to find. Was that a fluke?"
"Or a coincidence--call it what you like."
"Call it what _you_ like," retorted Delavoye with great good-humour."But if the same sort of thing happens again, will it still be acoincidence or a fluke?"
"In my view, always," I replied, hardening my heart for ever.
"That's all right, then," said he with his schoolboy laugh. "You paysyour money and you takes your choice."