The Rasp
Page 17
‘Good,’ said Anthony. ‘What I came for this morning was to ask you two questions. Are you ready?’
‘Aye, ready!’
‘Have you any money? Besides the salary you got from Hoode, I mean.’
‘About two hundred and fifty a year,’ said Deacon. ‘When Cousin James dies of port it’ll be about three thousand.’
‘That’s good. You made that point with the solicitor, I hope. It tends to destroy that insane theft theory.’
‘I told the bloke all right. But it won’t count much, I’m afraid. You see, I’ve been awfully broke for quite a time now. One thing and another, you know. However!’ He shrugged.
Anthony said: ‘Now the second question. And it’s really important! Think carefully before you answer. When recently—say within the last week—have you had in your hands any implement of any kind with a wooden handle four inches long and about three and a half round? Think, man, think!’
II
Ten minutes later, Anthony was running up the High Street towards his inn. Arrived there, he found a telegram. It read: ‘Authentic astounding revelations by Pellett what next Hastings.’
Anthony wrote on a telegraph form: ‘Wait with you afternoon office keep Pellett Gethryn.’ The form he gave to the barman with a ten-shilling note and instructions for immediate despatch, and then set off for Abbotshall at a fast walk.
As he entered the gates, a car—an unfamiliar green Daimler, a woman seated primly beside the chauffeur—left them. In spite of the heat it was closed. Peering, Anthony saw the only occupant of the tonneau to be a woman. She was veiled. He deduced the flirtatious Mrs Mainwaring and her Gallic maid. The sight appeared to amuse him. He walked on to the house humming beneath his breath.
Sir Arthur, he was told by a rejuvenated Belford, was believed to be in his own sitting-room.
Anthony mounted the stairs. He found Sir Arthur’s door ajar; on it was pinned a notice in red ink: ‘Please do not disturb’. From where he stood, all Anthony could see was the big arm-chair drawn up to the window, the top of an immaculate head above its back, some six inches of trouser and a boot-sole by each of its front legs.
Anthony chuckled, knocked, and entered. Sir Arthur rose, turning a frowning face towards the intruder. As he saw who it was, a smile replaced the frown.
‘You looked,’ said Anthony, ‘like some weird animal, sitting like that. Hope I haven’t disturbed you.’
‘Not a bit, my boy, not a bit. Very glad to see you.’ He picked up some sheets of paper from the chair. ‘As a matter of fact, I was just jotting down a few notes. I’d like you to read them—not now, but when they’re finished.’ He hesitated; then added rather shyly: ‘They’re just some ideas I’ve had about this awful business. Somehow, I can put them more clearly in writing. I want to give them to Marshall before the boy’s tried, but I’d like you to see them first. There might possibly be some points which have escaped you, though I expect not.’
‘I’d like to look at ’em very much,’ Anthony said. ‘Get them done as quick as you can, won’t you? Now, what I interrupted you for: is there in the house a good collection of reference books?’
‘There is. Right-hand book-case in the study. You’ll find anything you want from sawdust to Seringapatam. John got together the most comprehensive reference library I’ve ever seen.’
‘Good!’ Anthony turned to the door. ‘No, don’t trouble to come, I’ll find ’em!’
It was, as Sir Arthur had said, a most comprehensive collection. Anthony locked the study door and sat at the big writing-table, now back in its old place, surrounded by the volumes of his choice. They were many and varied.
He worked for an hour, occasionally scribbling notes on a slip of paper. At last he rose, stretched himself, and returned the books to their shelves. Again sitting at the table, he studied his notes. They appeared to afford him satisfaction. He folded the paper and took out his note-case. As he opened it, the bunch of newspaper-cuttings fluttered down to rest upon the table.
He picked them up and slid them, with the notes he had scribbled, back into the case. As he did so a line of the topmost cutting caught his eye. It was the quotation from the Aeneid which Masterson had referred to and which then had titillated some elusive memory. Now where, recently, had he seen this unusual and meticulous dative case?
His mind wrestled with forgetfulness; then suddenly tired, refused to work longer on so arduous a task. As minds will, it switched abruptly off to the matter with which it most wished to be occupied. Before Anthony’s eyes came a picture of a dark, proud face whose beauty was enhanced by its pallor. He thought of her as he had seen her that morning; as he had seen her that first time; as she had sat in her drawing-room that night—the night he had made her tell him all about it.
His mind, remorseful, perhaps, made a half-hearted attempt to get back to that tiresome business of the correct quotation from Virgil. Suddenly, it connected the work and the woman. The great light of recaptured memory burst upon him.
He jumped for the telephone; asked for Greyne 23; was put through at once; thought: ‘Wonder who’ll answer?’ then heard the ‘Hallo’ of a servant.
‘Miss Masterson in?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sir. What name shall I say?’
He told her. Waiting, he grew excited. If by any chance he was right, here was yet more confirmation of his theory.
Dora Masterson’s voice came to his ears. ‘Hallo! Is that Mr Gethryn? I—’
Anthony interrupted. ‘Yes. I wonder whether you can help me. The second time I was in your house I picked up a book. Little green book. Soft leather binding. Essays. Pleasantly written. One was called “Love at First Sight”. Author’s name on title-page was a woman’s. D’you know the book I mean?’
‘Is it one called Here and There?’
‘Yes, now who wrote it? Was it really a woman? And is that her real name? I meant to ask at the time, but forgot.’
III
At twenty minutes to two that afternoon, Anthony stopped his car outside The Owl’s office. He had broken no record this time; his mind had been much occupied on the journey. The interviews he had held with Belford, Mabel Smith, and Elsie Syme before leaving Abbotshall had given him food for thought.
He found Hastings in his room, with him a little, dapper, sly-eyed Jew. ‘Discreet Inquiries. Divorces, Watching, etc.’, thought Anthony.
‘This,’ murmured Hastings, ‘is Mr Pellett.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Anthony sat down heavily. He was tired and very hungry. He had not eaten since breakfast. Mr Pellett displeased him.
‘Mr Pellett,’ said Hasting, ‘has some information which should interest you. I have paid him fifty pounds. He wants another two hundred.’
‘He would,’ Anthony said. ‘And if he’s got what I want he shall have it.’
‘Thath right,’ said Mr Pellett with a golden smile.
‘It may be.’ Anthony fixed him with a glittering eye. ‘Let us hear you, Mr—er—Pellett.’
Mr Pellett cleared his throat, produced a packet of papers, wiped his hands on a pink silk handkerchief and began.
‘About theeth three newthpaperth,’ he said—and went on for one hour and fifty-seven minutes by the clock on Hastings’s table.
He got his two hundred pounds.
IV
There was a matinée at the Regency. At half-past four, Anthony was at the stage-door.
The stage-door keeper remembered that five-pound note and the foreign gent. He was civil. Yes, Madarm Vander was in the theatre. She had, indeed, just finished her performance. He would see if the—the prince could be admitted. The prince scribbled on a card, placed the card in an envelope, and sealed the envelope. As balm for tender feelings, he gave the doorkeeper a flashing foreign smile and a pound note.
He was kept waiting not more than three minutes. After four, he was ushered into the most sacred dressing-room in Europe.
From a silken couch in a silken corner a silken scented vision rose to meet him.
She peered at the card in her hand. ‘Who air you,’ she said, ‘that write to me of—of John?’
Anthony proceeded to make himself clear.
It was nearly six o’clock when he left the theatre.
V
By half past six Anthony was in his flat. At seven he bathed; at eight dined. From eight-thirty to nine he smoked—and thought. From nine until midnight he wrote, continuing his work of the night before. Save for occasional reference to notes, he wrote for those three hours without a pause. From midnight until one he considered what he had written. Then, after a long and powerful drink, he unearthed from its lair his typewriter.
It was lucky, he reflected, that two years ago he had wearied at last of professional typists and taken a machine unto himself.
From one-thirty in the morning until five—three whole hours and a half—he typed. There were two reasons why the work took him so long; the first, that he had not used the machine for six months; the second, that in copying what he had written he was constantly polishing, correcting, altering, improving.
At five he discarded the typewriter, took pen and paper and wrote a letter. This, together with the typewritten document, he placed in a large envelope. He stamped the envelope; was about to leave the flat and post it; then changed his mind. It should be sent by special messenger as early as one could be found awake.
He did not go to bed, feeling that if he did, nothing could wake him for at least twelve hours. He had another drink, another bath, and, when he had roused his man, a breakfast.
CHAPTER XVI
REVELATION AND THE SPARROW
I
HIS meal over, he left the flat, going first to a District Messengers’ office and then back to the garage for his car.
He knew the road to Marling so well by this time that he could almost have driven blindfold, and he has said that on this morning he once or twice found himself to have been sleeping at the wheel. It is certain, anyhow, that he barely saw where he was going. Such thought as his tired brain could compass was not of murders and murderers, but of Love, a Lover and a Lady.
It was, if one is to believe him, at the cross-roads beyond Beachmere that he made up his mind to see Her, to drive straight to the house on the bank of the Marle.
He looked at his watch. The hands pointed to ten. He settled down in his seat. The needle on the speedometer jerked to twenty, to twenty-five; then gradually crept on till it hesitated between forty-five and fifty.
His spirits mounted with the speed. The car tore her way into Marling and down the cobbled slope of the High Street, swung to the left, took the little bridge at a bound, raced on, turned the corner next on the left after the river-bank on two wheels, ploughed up the little lane, and pulled up at the gates of the house which was graced with Her presence.
Or should have been. For the parlourmaid informed him that her mistress and her mistress’s sister were out. For the day, she thought. She was not sure, but she imagined the ladies to have gone to London.
Anthony, his fatigue heavy upon him, walked slowly back to his car. For a moment he sat idle in the driving-seat; then suddenly quickened to life. Though their ultimate destination might indeed be London, the women would surely stop on their way through Greyne. For in Greyne’s jail was Deacon.
So to Greyne he drove at speed. He missed them by five minutes.
Had Anthony Gethryn been a man of common sense he would have returned at once to his Marling inn, fallen upon his bed, and let Sleep have her way with him. But he was not, so he stayed with Deacon. Deacon was so obviously—in spite of his flippancy—delighted at this visit, Anthony stayed with him until two o’clock, when the great Sir Edward Marshall, K.C. arrived in person for consultation for his latest case, and then set out for Marling. This he did not reach for two hours, fatigue and preoccupation having cost him no fewer than three wrong turnings.
At the inn was waiting the reply to the letter he had sent by District Messenger that morning. It had come, this reply, in the form of a seemingly ordinary message over the inn’s telephone. It was what he had expected, but nevertheless it made it necessary for him to think.
And think he did, sitting on the hot grass bank at the edge of the little bowling-green behind the inn, for as long as it takes to smoke one cigar and two pipes. Then he sought the bar, to slake a savage thirst.
He ordered a meal to be served at seven. To pass the hour that must elapse before this and to throw off the lassitude brought on by this fatigue and the oppression of the day’s heavy, airless heat, he sought the bathroom and much cold water.
After the bath he felt better. He returned to his quarters whistling. Crossing his sitting-room to get to the bedroom which opened out of it, he saw something he had not noticed when going bathwards. The whistling ceased abruptly. On the table in the centre of the room lay an envelope. His name was on it, in hurried, pencilled scrawl. The writing was feminine.
He ripped it open, read, and jumped for the door. The pink-cheeked chambermaid came running. She would not have believed this quiet gentleman could shout so loud, nor so angrily.
Anthony, his lank black hair dishevelled, his long, lean body swathed in a bath-gown, towered wrathfully above her.
‘When did this note arrive?’ He waved the envelope in her face.
The girl fingered her apron. ‘Oh, sir! It came this morning, please, sir. Lady left it, sir. Just after ten, it was. Mrs Lermeesherer, sir.’
‘I know, I know!’ Anthony snorted. ‘But why in Satan’s name wasn’t I told about it when I got back this evening?’ He went back into his room, slamming the door and feeling not a little ashamed of himself.
The little chambermaid clattered downstairs to discuss with her colleagues the strange effect of a note upon a gentleman before so pleasant.
Anthony clad himself with speed; then ran downstairs to the telephone. The answer to his first call was disappointing. No, Mrs Lemesurier was not back; would not be, probably, until eight.
He rang off, swore, bethought him of his work, made sure that the door of the telephone cabinet was closed, lifted the receiver and asked for another number.
It was ten minutes before he left the cabinet and went slowly to his dinner. He ate little, fatigue, preoccupation, and the stifling heat of the evening combining to deprive him of appetite. Over coffee he re-read his letter. It is a tribute to his self-restraint that he had delayed so long. It was a short letter, running thus:
DEAR MR GETHRYN—I am sorry you were out: I wanted to apologise for my unpardonable behaviour. I can’t think what made me so foolish; and quite see now that you had to talk to Jim and also that he was none the worse for the interview—in fact I hear from Mr Hastings, who rang up early this morning, that he is ever so much better!
If you are not too busy and would care to, do come and see us this evening. I would ask you to dinner, but we shall probably be late and have a very scrappy meal.
Yours gratefully,
LUCIA LEMESURIER.
P.S.—You were rather hard on me, weren’t you? You see, I had asked Dot and she had urged me to go to town!
There is a peculiar and subtle and quite indefinable pleasure that comes to a man when the woman he loves first writes to him. Soever curt, soever banal the letter, there is no matter. It is something from Her to him; something altogether private and secret; something She has set down for him to read; something not to be shared with a sordid world.
Anthony lost himself in this sea of subtle delight, varying joy with outbursts against himself for having exhibited such boorishness and for being so insanely, so youthfully in love. ‘For, after all,’ he told himself, ‘I haven’t known her for a week yet. I’ve spoken with her not a dozen times. I am clearly a fool!’
Unpleasant thoughts broke in upon him. He looked at his watch; then jumped to his feet and made his way upstairs to his rooms. He
reached them mopping his forehead. He could not remember a day in England so oppressive.
He took his hat and turned to leave the room. As he did so a rush of wind swept in through the open window, and a long, low angry mutter of thunder came to his ears. Then, with a rush, came the rain; great sheets of it, glistening in the half-dusk.
Anthony put on a mackintosh, substituted a cap for the hat, and left the inn. He did not take his car. Even as he turned out of the yard into the cobbled street, the thunder changed from rumble to sharp, staccato reports, and three jagged swords of lightning tore the black of the sky.
Anthony strode on, hands thrust deep into pockets, chin burrowed into the upturned collar of the trench-coat. Incredibly almost, the volume of rain increased and increased.
II
Mr Poole the butler—Anthony once said that he sounded like a game of Happy Families—was in a state of nervous agitation verging upon breakdown. The events of the past few days had shaken him, for some time an old man aged beyond his years, to such extent that he would not, he was sure, ‘ever be the same man again’.
He sat in the little room opposite that which had been the master’s study. He shivered with age, vague fears, and fervent distaste for the storm whose rain beat upon the windows, whose sudden furies of wind shook the old house, whose flashes of lightning played such havoc with the nerves.
Mr Poole was alone. Miss Hoode had retired. Sir Arthur was reading in the billiard-room at the other end of the house. Belford was on three days’ holiday, his wife, it seemed, being an invalid. The other servants were certainly either in bed or huddled together moaning as women will at the violence of the storm.
Mr Poole was alone. All manner of lurking terrors preyed upon him. There were noises. Sounds which seemed like the master’s voice. Sounds which seemed like the rustling of curtains, whispering and soft footsteps. Elusive sounds as of doors opening and shutting. Mr Poole trembled. He knew his fears groundless; imaginings born of the roaring rattle of the Universe. But nevertheless he trembled.