Incident began early on the Monday. We had sallied forth from a desolate little junction within quite a few miles of Milchester, had been caught in a shower, had run for shelter to a wayside inn. A florid, overdressed man was drinking in the parlour, and I could have sworn it was at the sight of him that Raffles recoiled on the threshold, and afterwards insisted on returning to the station through the rain. He assured me, however, that the odour of stale ale had almost knocked him down. And I had to make what I could of his speculative, downcast eyes and knitted brows.
Milchester Abbey is a grey, quadrangular pile, deep-set in rich woody country, and twinkling with triple rows of quaint windows, every one of which seemed alight as we drove up just in time to dress for dinner. The carriage had whirled us under I know not how many triumphal arches in process of construction, and past the tents and flag-poles of a juicy-looking cricket-field, on which Raffles undertook to bowl up to his reputation. But the chief signs of festival were within, where we found an enormous house-party assembled, including more persons of pomp, majesty, and dominion than I had ever encountered in one room before. I confess I felt overpowered. Our errand and my own pretences combined to rob me of an address upon which I have sometimes plumed myself; and I have a grim recollection of my nervous relief when dinner was at last announced. I little knew what an ordeal it was to prove.
I had taken in a much less formidable young lady than might have fallen to my lot. Indeed I began by blessing my good fortune in this respect. Miss Melhuish was merely the rector’s daughter, and she had only been asked to make an even number. She informed me of both facts before the soup reached us, and her subsequent conversation was characterised by the same engaging candour. It exposed what was little short of a mania for imparting information. I had simply to listen, to nod, and to be thankful. When I confessed to knowing very few of those present, even by sight, my entertaining companion proceeded to tell me who everybody was, beginning on my left and working conscientiously round to her right. This lasted quite a long time, and really interested me; but a great deal that followed did not; and, obviously to recapture my unworthy attention, Miss Melhuish suddenly asked me, in a sensational whisper, whether I could keep a secret.
I said I thought I might, whereupon another question followed, in still lower and more thrilling accents:
“Are you afraid of burglars?”
Burglars! I was roused at last. The word stabbed me. I repeated it in horrified query.
“So I’ve found something to interest you at last!” said Miss Melhuish, in naïve triumph. “Yes—burglars! But don’t speak so loud. It’s supposed to be kept a great secret. I really oughtn’t to tell you at all!”
“But what is there to tell?” I whispered with satisfactory impatience.
“You promise not to speak of it?”
“Of course!”
“Well, then, there are burglars in the neighbourhood.”
“Have they committed any robberies?”
“Not yet.”
“Then how do you know?”
“They’ve been seen. In the district. Two well-known London thieves!”
Two! I looked at Raffles. I had done so often during the evening, envying him his high spirits, his iron nerve, his buoyant wit, his perfect ease and self-possession. But now I pitied him; through all my own terror and consternation, I pitied him as he sat eating and drinking, and laughing and talking, without a cloud of fear or of embarrassment on his handsome, taking, daredevil face. I caught up my champagne and emptied the glass.
“Who has seen them?” I then asked calmly.
“A detective. They were traced down from town a few days ago. They are believed to have designs on the Abbey!”
“But why aren’t they run in?”
“Exactly what I asked papa on the way here this evening; he says there is no warrant out against the men at present, and all that can be done is to watch their movements.”
“Oh! so they are being watched?”
“Yes, by a detective who is down here on purpose. And I heard Lord Amersteth tell papa that they had been seen this afternoon at Warbeck Junction!”
The very place where Raffles and I had been caught in the rain! Our stampede from the inn was now explained; on the other hand, I was no longer to be taken by surprise by anything that my companion might have to tell me; and I succeeded in looking her in the face with a smile.
“This is really quite exciting, Miss Melhuish,” said I. “May I ask how you come to know so much about it?”
“It’s papa,” was the confidential reply. “Lord Amersteth consulted him, and he consulted me. But for goodness’ sake don’t let it get about! I can’t think what tempted me to tell you!”
“You may trust me, Miss Melhuish. But—aren’t you frightened?”
Miss Melhuish giggled.
“Not a bit! They won’t come to the rectory. There’s nothing for them there. But look round the table: look at the diamonds: look at old Lady Melrose’s necklace alone!”
The Dowager Marchioness of Melrose was one of the few persons whom it had been unnecessary to point out to me. She sat on Lord Amersteth’s right, flourishing her ear-trumpet, and drinking champagne with her usual notorious freedom, as dissipated and kindly a dame as the world has ever seen. It was a necklace of diamonds and sapphires that rose and fell about her ample neck.
“They say it’s worth five thousand pounds at least,” continued my companion. “Lady Margaret told me so this morning (that’s Lady Margaret next your Mr. Raffles, you know); and the old dear will wear them every night. Think what a haul they would be! No; we don’t feel in immediate danger at the rectory.”
When the ladies rose, Miss Melhuish bound me to fresh vows of secrecy; and left me, I should think, with some remorse for her indiscretion, but more satisfaction at the importance which it had undoubtedly given her in my eyes. The opinion may smack of vanity, though, in reality, the very springs of conversation reside in that same human, universal itch to thrill the auditor. The peculiarity of Miss Melhuish was that she must be thrilling at all costs. And thrilling she had surely been.
I spare you my feelings of the next two hours. I tried hard to get a word with Raffles, but again and again I failed. In the dining-room he and Crowley lit their cigarettes with the same match, and had their heads together all the time. In the drawing-room I had the mortification of hearing him talk interminable nonsense into the ear-trumpet of Lady Melrose, whom he knew in town. Lastly, in the billiard-room, they had a great and lengthy pool, while I sat aloof and chafed more than ever in the company of a very serious Scotchman, who had arrived since dinner, and who would talk of nothing but the recent improvements in instantaneous photography. He had not come to play in the matches (he told me), but to obtain for Lord Amersteth such a series of cricket photographs as had never been taken before; whether as an amateur or a professional photographer I was unable to determine. I remember, however, seeking distraction in little bursts of resolute attention to the conversation of this bore. And so at last the long ordeal ended; glasses were emptied, men said good-night, and I followed Raffles to his room.
“It’s all up!” I gasped, as he turned up the gas and I shut the door. “We’re being watched. We’ve been followed down from town. There’s a detective here on the spot!”
“How do you know?” asked Raffles, turning upon me quite sharply, but without the least dismay. And I told him how I knew.
“Of course,” I added, “it was the fellow we saw in the inn this afternoon.”
“The detective?” said Raffles. “Do you mean to say you don’t know a detective when you see one, Bunny?”
“If that wasn’t the fellow, which is?”
Raffles shook his head.
“To think that you’ve been talking to him for the last hour in the billiard-room, and couldn’t spot what he was!”
“The Scotch phot
ographer—”
I paused aghast.
“Scotch he is,” said Raffles, “and photographer he may be. He is also Inspector Mackenzie of Scotland Yard—the very man I sent the message to that night last April. And you couldn’t spot who he was in a whole hour! O Bunny, Bunny, you were never built for crime!”
“But,” said I, “if that was Mackenzie, who was the fellow you bolted from at Warbeck?”
“The man he’s watching.”
“But he’s watching us!”
Raffles looked at me with a pitying eye, and shook his head again before handing me his open cigarette-case.
“I don’t know whether smoking’s forbidden in one’s bedroom, but you’d better take one of these and stand tight, Bunny, because I’m going to say something offensive.”
I helped myself with a laugh.
“Say what you like, my dear fellow, if it really isn’t you and I that Mackenzie’s after.”
“Well, then, it isn’t, and it couldn’t be, and nobody but a born Bunny would suppose for a moment that it was! Do you seriously think he would sit there and knowingly watch his man playing pool under his nose? Well, he might; he’s a cool hand, Mackenzie; but I’m not cool enough to win a pool under such conditions. At least I don’t think I am; it would be interesting to see. The situation wasn’t free from strain as it was, though I knew he wasn’t thinking of us. Crowley told me all about it after dinner, you see, and then I’d seen one of the men for myself this afternoon. You thought it was a detective who made me turn tail at that inn. I really don’t know why I didn’t tell you at the time, but it was just the opposite. That loud, red-faced brute is one of the cleverest thieves in London, and I once had a drink with him and our mutual fence. I was an Eastender from tongue to toe at the moment, but you will understand that I don’t run unnecessary risks of recognition by a brute like that.”
“He’s not alone, I hear.”
“By no means; there’s at least one other man with him; and it’s suggested that there may be an accomplice here in the house.”
“Did Lord Crowley tell you so?”
“Crowley and the champagne between them. In confidence, of course, just as your girl told you; but even in confidence he never let on about Mackenzie. He told me there was a detective in the background, but that was all. Putting him up as a guest is evidently their big secret, to be kept from the other guests because it might offend them, but more particularly from the servants whom he’s here to watch. That’s my reading of the situation, Bunny, and you will agree with me that it’s infinitely more interesting than we could have imagined it would prove.”
“But infinitely more difficult for us,” said I, with a sigh of pusillanimous relief. “Our hands are tied for this week, at all events.”
“Not necessarily, my dear Bunny, though I admit that the chances are against us. Yet I’m not so sure of that either. There are all sorts of possibilities in these three-cornered combinations. Set A to watch B, and he won’t have an eye left for C. That’s the obvious theory, but then Mackenzie’s a very big A. I should be sorry to have any boodle about me with that man in the house. Yet it would be great to nip in between A and B and score off them both at once! It would be worth a risk, Bunny, to do that; it would be worth risking something merely to take on old hands like B and his men at their own old game! Eh, Bunny? That would be something like a match. Gentlemen and Players at single wicket, by Jove!”
His eyes were brighter than I had known them for many a day. They shone with the perverted enthusiasm which was roused in him only by the contemplation of some new audacity. He kicked off his shoes and began pacing his room with noiseless rapidity; not since the night of the Old Bohemian dinner to Reuben Rosenthall had Raffles exhibited such excitement in my presence; and I was not sorry at the moment to be reminded of the fiasco to which that banquet had been the prelude.
“My dear A. J.,” said I in his very own tone, “you’re far too fond of the uphill game; you will eventually fall a victim to the sporting spirit and nothing else. Take a lesson from our last escape, and fly lower as you value our skins. Study the house as much as you like, but do—not—go and shove your head into Mackenzie’s mouth!”
My wealth of metaphor brought him to a standstill, with his cigarette between his fingers and a grin beneath his shining eyes.
“You’re quite right, Bunny. I won’t. I really won’t. Yet—you saw old Lady Melrose’s necklace? I’ve been wanting it for years! But I’m not going to play the fool; honour bright, I’m not; yet—by Jove!—to get to windward of the professors and Mackenzie too! It would be a great game, Bunny, it would be a great game!”
“Well, you mustn’t play it this week.”
“No, no, I won’t. But I wonder how the professors think of going to work? That’s what one wants to know. I wonder if they’ve really got an accomplice in the house? How I wish I knew their game! But it’s all right, Bunny; don’t you be jealous; it shall be as you wish.”
And with that assurance I went off to my own room, and so to bed with an incredibly light heart. I had still enough of the honest man in me to welcome the postponement of our actual felonies, to dread their performance, to deplore their necessity: which is merely another way of stating the too patent fact that I was an incomparably weaker man than Raffles, while every whit as wicked. I had, however, one rather strong point. I possessed the gift of dismissing unpleasant considerations, not intimately connected with the passing moment, entirely from my mind. Through the exercise of this faculty I had lately been living my frivolous life in town with as much ignoble enjoyment as I had derived from it the year before; and similarly, here at Milchester, in the long-dreaded cricket week, I had after all a quite excellent time.
It is true that there were other factors in this pleasing disappointment. In the first place, mirabile dictu, there were one or two even greater duffers than I on the Abbey cricket field. Indeed, quite early in the week, when it was of most value to me, I gained considerable kudos for a lucky catch; a ball, of which I had merely heard the hum, stuck fast in my hand, which Lord Amersteth himself grasped in public congratulation. This happy accident was not to be undone even by me, and, as nothing succeeds like success, and the constant encouragement of the one great cricketer on the field was in itself an immense stimulus, I actually made a run or two in my very next innings. Miss Melhuish said pretty things to me that night at the great ball in honour of Viscount Crowley’s majority; she also told me that was the night on which the robbers would assuredly make their raid, and was full of arch tremors when we sat out in the garden, though the entire premises were illuminated all night long. Meanwhile, the quiet Scotchman took countless photographs by day, which he developed by night in a dark room admirably situated in the servants’ part of the house; and it is my firm belief that only two of his fellow-guests knew Mr. Clephane of Dundee for Inspector Mackenzie of Scotland Yard.
The week was to end with a trumpery match on the Saturday, which two or three of us intended abandoning early in order to return to town that night. The match, however, was never played. In the small hours of the Saturday morning a tragedy took place at Milchester Abbey.
Let me tell of the thing as I saw and heard it. My room opened upon the central gallery, and was not even on the same floor as that on which Raffles—and I think all the other men—were quartered. I had been put, in fact, into the dressing-room of one of the grand suites, and my two near neighbours were old Lady Melrose and my host and hostess. Now, by the Friday evening the actual festivities were at an end, and, for the first time that week, I must have been sound asleep since midnight, when all at once I found myself sitting up breathless. A heavy thud had come against my door, and now I heard hard breathing and the dull stamp of muffled feet.
“I’ve got ye,” muttered a voice. “It’s no use struggling.”
It was the Scotch detective, and a new fear turned me cold. There was no reply
, but the hard breathing grew harder still, and the muffled feet beat the floor to a quicker measure. In sudden panic I sprang out of bed and flung open my door. A light burnt low on the landing, and by it I could see Mackenzie swaying and staggering in a silent tussle with some powerful adversary.
“Hold this man!” he cried, as I appeared. “Hold the rascal!”
But I stood like a fool until the pair of them backed into me, when, with a deep breath I flung myself on the fellow, whose face I had seen at last. He was one of the footmen who waited at table; and no sooner had I pinned him than the detective loosed his hold.
“Hang on to him,” he cried. “There’s more of ’em below.”
And he went leaping down the stairs, as other doors opened and Lord Amersteth and his son appeared simultaneously in their pyjamas. At that my man ceased struggling; but I was still holding him when Crowley turned up the gas.
“What the devil’s all this?” asked Lord Amersteth, blinking. “Who was that ran downstairs?”
“Mac—Clephane!” said I hastily.
“Aha!” said he, turning to the footman. “So you’re the scoundrel, are you? Well done! Well done! Where was he caught?”
I had no idea.
“Here’s Lady Melrose’s door open,” said Crowley. “Lady Melrose! Lady Melrose!”
“You forget she’s deaf,” said Lord Amersteth. “Ah! that’ll be her maid.”
An inner door had opened; next instant there was a little shriek, and a white figure gesticulated on the threshold.
“Où donc est l’écrin de Madame la Marquise? La fenêtre est ouverte. Il a disparu!”
“Window open and jewel-case gone, by Jove!” exclaimed Lord Amersteth. “Mais comment est Madame la Marquise? Est-elle bien?”
“Oui, milor. Elle dort.”
“Sleeps through it all,” said my lord. “She’s the only one, then!”
“What made Mackenzie—Clephane—bolt?” young Crowley asked me.
Murder at the Manor Page 9
