The Vanished Messenger

by Edward Phillips Oppenheimer

  "I am awfully sorry," Hamel said. "Can't I go out of sight somewhere?"

  Mr. Fentolin sighed.

  "I will not ask your pardon for my absurd humours," he continued, a little sadly. "Their existence, however, I cannot deny. I will wait."

  "It seems a pity for you to do that," Hamel remarked. "You see, I might stay here for some time."

  Mr. Fentolin's face darkened. He looked at the young man with a sort of pensive wrath.

  "If," the latter went on, "you say 'yes' to something I am going to ask you, I might even stay—in the neighbourhood—for longer still."

  Mr. Fentolin sat quite motionless in his chair; his eyes were fixed upon Hamel.

  "What is it that you are going to ask me?" he demanded.

  "I want to marry your niece."

  Mr. Fentolin looked at the young man in mild surprise.

  "A sudden decision on your part, Mr. Hamel?" he murmured.

  "Not at all," Hamel assured him. "I have been ten years looking for her."

  "And the young lady?" Mr. Fentolin enquired. "What does she say?"

  "I believe, sir," Hamel replied, "that she would be willing."

  Mr. Fentolin sighed.

  "One is forced sometimes," he remarked regretfully, "to realise the selfishness of our young people. For many years one devotes oneself to providing them with all the comforts and luxuries of life. Then, in a single day, they turn around and give everything they have to give to a stranger. So you want to marry Esther?"

  "If you please."

  "She has a very moderate fortune."

  "She need have none at all," Hamel replied; "I have enough."

  Mr. Fentolin glanced towards the house.

  "Then," he said, "I think you had better go and tell her so; in which case, I shall be able to paint."

  "I have your permission, then?" Hamel asked, rising to his feet eagerly.

  "Negatively," Mr. Fentolin agreed, "you have. I cannot refuse. Esther is of age; the thing is reasonable. I do not know whether she will be happy with you or not. A young man of your disposition who declines to study the whims of an unfortunate creature like myself is scarcely likely to be possessed of much sensibility. However, perhaps your views as to a solitary residence here will change with your engagement to my niece."

  Hamel did not reply for a moment. He was trying to ask himself why, even in the midst of this rush of anticipatory happiness, he should be conscious of a certain reluctance to leave the Tower—and Mr. Fentolin. He was looking longingly towards the Hall. Mr. Fentolin waved him away.

  "Go and make love," he ordered, "and leave me alone. We are both in pursuit of beauty—only our methods differ."

  Hamel hesitated no longer but walked up the narrow path with swift, buoyant footsteps. Everywhere he seemed to be surrounded by the glorious spring sunshine. It glittered in the little pools and creeks by his side. It drew a new colour from the dun-coloured marshes, the masses of emerald seaweed, the shimmering sands. It flashed in the long row of windows of the Hall. As he drew nearer, he could see the banks of yellow crocuses in the sloping gardens behind. There were odours of spring in the air. He ran lightly up the terrace steps. There was an easy-chair drawn into her favourite corner, and a book upon the table, but no sign of Esther. He hesitated for a moment, and then, retracing his steps along the terrace, entered the house by the front door, which stood wide open. There was no one in the hall, scarcely a sound about the place. A great clock ticked solemnly from the foot of the stairs. There was not even a servant in sight. Hamel wandered around, a a loss what to do. He opened the door of the drawing-room and looked in. It was empty. He turned away, meaning to ring a bell. On his way across the hall he paused. A curiously suggestive sound reached him faintly from the end of one of the passages. It was the click of a typewriter.

  Hamel stood for a moment perfectly still. He had hurried up to the Hall, filled with the one selfish joy common to all mankind. He had had no thought save the thought of seeing Esther. The click of that machine brought him hack to the stern realities of life. He remembered his talk to Kinsley, his promise. On the hall table he could see from where he was standing the great headlines which announced the nation's anxiety. He was in the house of a suspected spy. The click of the typewriter was an accompaniment to his thought. He looked around once more and listened. Then he made his way quietly across the hail and down the long passage, at the end of which the room which Mr. Fentolin called his workroom was situated. He turned the handle of the door and entered, closing it immediately behind him. The woman who was typing paused with her fingers upon the keys. Her eyes met his coldly, without curiosity. She had paused in her work, but she took no other notice of his coming.

  "Has Mr. Fentolin sent you here?" she asked at last.

  He came over to the typewriter.

  "Mr. Fentolin has not sent me," he said slowly. "I am here on my own account. I dare say you will think that I am a lunatic to come to you like this. Nevertheless, please listen to me."

  Her fingers left the keys. She laid her hands upon the table in front of her. He drew a little nearer. She covered over the sheets of paper with which she was surrounded with a pad of blotting-paper. He pointed suddenly to them.

  "Why do you do that?" he demanded. "What is there in your work that you are afraid I might see?"

  She answered him without hesitation.

  "These are private papers of Mr. Fentolin's. No one has any business to see them. No one has any business to enter this room. Why are you here?"

  "I came to the Hall to find Miss Fentolin," he replied. "I heard the click of your typewriter. I came to you, I suppose I should say, on impulse."

  Her eyes rested upon his, filled with a cold and questioning light.

  "There's an impression up in London," Hamel went on, "that Mr. Fentolin has been interfering by means of his wireless in affairs which don't concern him, and giving away valuable information. This man Dunster's disappearance is as yet unexplained. I feel myself justified in making certain investigations, and among the first of them I should like you to tell me exactly the nature of the work for which Mr. Fentolin finds a secretary necessary?"

  She glanced towards the bell. He moved to the edge of the table as though to intercept her.

  "In any ordinary case," he continued, "I would not ask you to betray your employer's confidence. As things are, I think I am justified. You are English, are you not? You realise, I suppose, that the country is on the brink of war?"

  She looked at him from the depths of her still, lusterless eyes.

  "You must be a very foolish person," she remarked, "if you expect to obtain information in this manner."

  "Perhaps I am," he confessed, "but my folly has brought me to you, and you can give me the information if you will."

  "Where is Mr. Fentolin?" she asked.

  "Down at the Tower," he replied. "I left him there. He sent me up to see Miss Fentolin. I was looking for her when the click of your typewriter reminded me of other things."

  She turned composedly back to her work.

  "I think," she said, "that you had better go and find Miss Fentolin."

  "Don't talk nonsense! You can't think I have risked giving myself away to you for nothing? I mean to search this room, to read the papers which you are typing."

  She glanced around her a little contemptuously.

  "You are welcome," she assured him. "Pray proceed."

  They exchanged the glances of duelists. Her plain black frock was buttoned up to her throat. Her colourless face seemed set in exact and expressionless lines. Her eyes were like windows of glass. He felt only their scrutiny; nothing of the reason for it, or of the thoughts which stirred behind in her brain. There was nothing about her attitude which seemed in any way threatening, yet he had the feeling that in this interview it was she who possessed the upper hand.

  "You are a foolish person," she said calmly. "You are so foolish that you are not, in all probability, in the slightest degree dangerous. Believe me, ours
is an unequal duel. There is a bell upon this table which has apparently escaped your notice. I sit with my finger upon the button—so. I have only to press it, and the servants will be here. I do not wish to press it. I do not desire that you should be, as you certainly would be, banished from this house."

  He was immensely puzzled. She had not resented his strange intrusion. She had accepted it, indeed, with curious equanimity. Her forefinger lingered still over the little ivory knob of the bell attached to her desk. He shrugged his shoulders.

  "You have the advantage of me," he admitted, a little curtly. "All the same, I think I could possess myself of those sheets of paper, you know, before the bell was answered."

  "Would it be wise, I wonder, then, to ensure their safety?" she asked coolly.

  Her finger pressed the bell. He took a quick step forward. She held out her hand.

  "Stop!" she ordered. "These sheets will tell you nothing which you do not know already unless you are a fool. Never mind the bell. That is my affair. I am sending you away."

  He leaned a little towards her.

  "It wouldn't be possible to bribe you, I suppose?"

  She shook her head.

  "I wonder you haven't tried that before. No, it would not—not with money, that is to say."

  "You'll tell Mr. Fentolin, I presume?" he asked quickly.

  "I have nothing to tell him," she replied. "Nothing has happened. Richards," she went on, as a servant entered the room, "Mr. Hamel is looking for Miss Fentolin. Will you see if you can find her?"

  The man's expression was full of polite regret.

  "Miss Fentolin went over to Legh Woods early this morning, sir," he announced. "She is staying to lunch with Lady Saxthorpe."

  Hamel stood quite still for a moment. Then he turned to the window. In the far distance he could catch a glimpse of the Tower. Mr. Fentolin's chair had disappeared from the walk.

  "I am sorry," he said. "I must have made a mistake. I will hurry back."

  There were more questions which he was longing to ask, but the cold negativeness of her manner chilled him. She sat with her fingers poised over the keys, waiting for his departure. He turned and left the room.

  Chapter XXVIII

  Mr. Fentolin, his carriage drawn up close to the beach, was painting steadily when Hamel stood once more by his side. His eyes moved only from the sea to the canvas. He never turned his head.

  "So your wooing has not prospered, my young friend," he remarked gently. "I am sorry. Is there anything I can do?"

  "Your niece has gone out to lunch," Hamel replied shortly.

  Mr. Fentolin stopped painting. His face was full of concern as he looked up at Hamel.

  "My dear sir," he exclaimed, "how can I apologise! Of course she has gone out to lunch. She has gone out to Lady Saxthorpe's. I remember the subject being discussed. I myself, in fact, was the instigator of her going. I owe you a thousand apologies, Mr. Hamel. Let me make what amends are possible for your useless journey. Dine with us to-night."

  "You are very kind."

  "A poor amends," Mr. Fentolin continued. "A morning like this was made for lovers. Sunshine and blue sky, a salt breeze flavoured just a little with that lavender, and a stroll through my spring gardens, where my hyacinths are like a field of purple and gold, a mantle of jewels upon the brown earth. Ah, well! One's thoughts will wander to the beautiful things of life. There were once women who loved me, Mr. Hamel."

  Hamel looked doubtfully at the strange little figure in the chair. Was this genuine, he wondered, a voluntary outburst, or was it some subtle attempt to incite sympathy? Mr. Fentolin seemed almost to have read his thought.

  "It is not for the sake of your pity that I say this," he continued. "Mine is only the passing across the line which age as well as infirmity makes inevitable. No one in the world who lives to grow old, and who has loved and felt the fire of it in his veins, can pass that line without sorrow, or look back without a pang. I am among a great army. Well, well, I shall paint no more to-day," he concluded abruptly.

  "Where is your servant?" Hamel asked.

  Mr. Fentolin glanced around him carelessly.

  "He has wandered away out of sight. He knows well how necessary solitude is to me if once I take the brush between my fingers—solitude natural and entire, I mean. If any one is within a dozen yards of me I know it, even though I cannot see them. Meekins is wandering somewhere the other side of the Tower."

  "Shall I call him?"

  "On no account," Mr. Fentolin begged. "Presently he will appear, in plenty of time. There is the morning to be passed—barely eleven o'clock, I think, now. I shall sit in my chair, and sink a little down, and dream of these beautiful lights, these rolling, foam-flecked waves, these patches of blue and shifting green. I can form them in my brain. I can make a picture there, even though my fingers refuse to move. You are not an aesthete, I think, Mr. Hamel? The study of beauty does not mean to you what it did to your father, and my father, and, in a smaller way to me."

  "Perhaps not," Hamel confessed. "I believe I feel these things somewhere, because they bring a queer sense of content with them. I am afraid, though, that my artistic perceptions are not so keen as some men's."

  Mr. Fentolin looked at him thoughtfully.

  "It is the physical life in your veins—too splendid to permit you abstract pleasures. Compensations again, you see—compensations. I wonder what the law is that governs these things. I have forgotten sometimes," he went on, "forgotten my own infirmities in the soft intoxication of a wonderful seascape. Only," he went on, his face a little grey, "it is the physical in life which triumphs. There are the hungry hours which nothing will satisfy."

  His head sank, his chin rested upon his chest. He had all the appearance now of a man who talks in bitter earnest. Yet Hamel wondered. He looked towards the Tower; there was no sign of Meekins. The sea-gulls went screaming above their heads. Mr. Fentolin never moved. His eyes seemed half closed. It was only when Hamel rose to his feet that he looked swiftly up.

  "Stay with me, I beg you, Mr. Hamel," he said. "I am in one of the moods when solitude, even for a moment, is dangerous. Do you know what I have sometimes thought to myself?"

  He pointed to the planked way which led down the steep, pebbly beach to the sea.

  "I have sometimes thought," he went on, "that it would be glorious to find a friend to stand by my side at the top of the planks, just there, when the tide was high, and to bid him loose my chair and to steer it myself, to steer it down the narrow path into the arms of the sea. The first touch of the salt waves, the last touch of life. Why not? One sleeps without fear."

  He lifted his head suddenly. Meekins had appeared, coming round from the back of the Tower. Instantly Mr. Fentolin's whole manner changed. He sat up in his chair.

  "It is arranged, then," he said. "You dine with us to-night. For the other matters of which you have spoken, well, let them rest in the hands of the gods. You are not very kind to me. I am not sure whether you would make Esther a good husband. I am not sure, even, that I like you. You take no pains to make yourself agreeable. Considering that your father was an artist, you seem to me rather a dull and uninspired young man. But who can tell? There may be things stirring beneath that torpid brain of yours of which no other person knows save yourself."

  The concentrated gaze of Mr. Fentolin's keen eyes was hard to meet, but Hamel came out of the ordeal without flinching.

  "At eight o'clock, Mr. Fentolin," he answered. "I can see that I must try to earn your better opinion."

  Hamel read steadily for the remainder of the morning. It was past one o'clock when he rose stiffly from his seat among the sand knolls and, strolling back to the Tower, opened the door and entered. The cloth was laid for luncheon in the little sitting-room, but there were no signs of Hannah Cox. He passed on into the kitchen and came to a sudden standstill. Once more the memory of his own work passed away from him. Once more he was back again among that queer, clouded tangle of strange suspicions, of thrilling, ha
lf-formed fears, which had assailed him at times ever since his arrival at St, David's. He stopped quite short. The words which rose to his lips died away. He felt the breathless, compelling need for silence and grew tense in the effort to make no sound.

  Hannah Cox was kneeling on the stone floor. Her ear was close to the crack of the door which led into the boat-house. Her face, half turned from it, was set in a strange, concentrated passion of listening; her lips were parted, her eyes half closed. She took no more notice of Hamel or his arrival than if he had been some useless piece of furniture. Every faculty seemed to be absorbed in that one intense effort of listening. There was no need of her out-stretched finger. Hamel fell in at once with a mood so mesmeric. He, too, listened. The small clock which she had brought with her from the village ticked away upon the mantelpiece. The full sea fell with placid softness upon the high beach outside. Some slight noise of cooking came from the stove. Save for these things there was silence. Yet, for a space of time which Hamel could never have measured, they both listened. When at last the woman rose to her feet, Hamel, finding words at last, was surprised to find that his throat was dry.

  "What is it, Mrs. Cox?" he asked. "Why were you listening there?"

  Her face was absolutely expressionless. She was busying herself now with a small saucepan, and her back was turned towards him.

  "I spend my life, sir," she said, "listening and waiting. One never knows when the end may come."

  "But the boat-house," Hamel objected. "No one has been in there his morning, have they?"

  "Who can tell?" she answered. "He could go anywhere when he chose, or how he chose—through the keyhole, if he wanted."

  "But why listen?" Hamel persisted. "There is nothing in there now but some odds and ends of machinery."

  She turned from the fire and looked at him for a moment. Her eyes were colourless, her tone unemotional.

  "Maybe! There's no harm in listening."

  "Did you hear anything which made you want to listen?"

  "Who can tell?" she answered. "A woman who lives well-nigh alone, as I live, in a quiet place, hears things so often that other folk never listen to. There's always something in my ears, night or day. Sometimes I am not sure whether it's in this world or the other. It was like that with me just then. It was for that reason I listened. Your luncheon's ready, sir."