Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  “You are the luckiest of dogs, confound you,” William Bats told his friend. “But I’d give all the rest of your great possessions for your library, and you don’t ever use it.”

  “I often sit there,” Drelincourt protested.

  “Sit there! “ said Bats in deep disgust.

  Anthony showed his house to the Septet with the thoroughness of a child exhibiting a new toy, reserving to the last, of course, the faded boudoir and the little room whose skylight had been cleaned, and the octagonal laboratory, now once again neatly ordered. But the working of the machinery he did not show, nor the book, nor did he tell them of the roof that moved. One must have some secrets even from one’s best friend and the girl of one’s choice; and this secret seemed at least as innocent as the secrets of most young men.

  “And you give us leave to explore?” Bats asked. “That chest looks to me very much like the mistletoe bough.”

  “We’ll find a key to it, never fear,” said Anthony.

  Wilfred Wilton found his chief interest in the herb garden, a curious winter garden of tropical and subtropical plants, mostly medicinal, which had “always been there,” the gardener told him.

  Nothing happened that was not good to live, and is not dull to chronicle, till the night when St. Maur and Lord Alfriston came to dine, and Lady Blair had the inspiration to make it a costume dinner. She turned out old chests and old wardrobes till heaps of old and beautiful clothes lay piled on the floors of the great bedchambers, beautiful clothes of the bygone days when not only women dressed beautifully.

  “We’ll all dress up,” said Lady Blair gaily. “I shall be a Marquise, and I hope somebody will be black Monsieur de Voltaire for a contrast.”

  It was at the end of that evening — an evening of joyous and successful folly — that William Bats, white in his Charles the First suit, came to Anthony, took his arm and led him to a window, and without word of warning said —

  “Look here, I want you to know that I know.”

  “That you know what, you old duffer?” Anthony asked.

  “About that body,” said Bats, without further phrase. Anthony said, “What body?” and laughed.

  And Bats replied, not laughing, “The dead body. I’ve stood your guinea-pigs and monkeys, but when it comes to human beings—”

  “We’re going to do a minuet,” Lady Blair interrupted; coming into the embrasure of the window where they stood. “Come!”

  “In a moment,” Anthony said. “Half a moment — may I?” And she left them again.

  “Are you mad, or am I?” Anthony asked.

  “I propose to find out later,” said Bats quietly; “in the meantime you had better join the dance.”

  “On with the dance! Let joy be unrefined!” said Anthony. “Silly trick, you almost frightened me! Though I’ve no idea what you meant. Only body sounded bad.”

  He laughed and joined the dance, and Bats, left alone in the window, rubbed his chin doubtfully and fingered a little key.

  CHAPTER XIII. THE DISCOVERY

  “GOOD night, everybody. Now be good boys, and don’t stay up till the grey dawn, smoking and talking.” Lady Blair turned at the bend of the staircase to throw the last word over her graceful shoulder at the group of men who stood at the stairfoot looking up at the bright flock she shepherded.

  The evening had “gone like the change of a five pound note,” as the doctor put it. Mullinger had found that Linda Smith could look pretty in the dress of a Dresden shepherdess, and he wondered whether she were not perhaps pretty even in her ordinary clothes, if one were to notice. Such discoveries, such speculations add new feathers to the wings of time. Lord Alfriston was astonished to find these girls, from a Bohemia unknown to him, quite as amusing as the dwellers in the Bohemia he knew, and much more intelligent.

  Lady Blair had a genius for the lighting of interiors. No cruel revealing glare was ever suffered to spoil a scene for her. And the soft shading silks, of pink and pale apricot, made the fair women look like roses, gave to the dark ones the bloom and colour of nectarines. Each woman had been conscious that she looked her best, and every man had seemed to think so too. What more can one need to make an evening a success?

  And now it was over, and the bright dresses and laughing faces showed for a moment against the dark panelling of the staircase, a massed bouquet of pink and blue and white, eyes that sparkled, and red lips that smiled, made vivid by the little blue and yellow flames of the candles, and the gleam of reflected light on the silver candlesticks.

  “A charming picture,” said Lord Alfriston, as soon as the picture had ceased to be.

  “I hear you have discovered your uncle’s secret laboratory,” he went on, as they turned back into the library; “most thrilling! I’ve heard my father speak of that laboratory as being something very curious, but he never would tell me any more than that. I suppose he was bound to secrecy. They were great friends, you know. Thank you — a very little, and plenty of soda. I should very much like to see the secret room, Drelincourt.”

  “I’ll show it you now,” said Anthony, picking up a candlestick. “Come on!”

  “I wouldn’t to-night,” said Bats suddenly.

  “But night is the time for these explorations, surely,” Lord Alfriston urged, and Anthony said, “Why ever not? “ and moved towards the door.

  “Well,” said Bats, with a sort of laugh, “I see I shall have to own up. I hid there when we were playing hide-and-seek, and it didn’t strike me as very safe. I thought there might be some accident with those stairs, and I locked the room up. It was a confounded liberty, I know, Tony, and now I’m sorry to say I can’t produce the key. Heaven knows where it has got to! I’m frightfully sorry.”

  There was a shade of annoyance in Anthony’s eyes as they met those of Bats, but he said —

  “All right, Bill. Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter. It will turn up all right.”

  Lord Alfriston also said it did not matter, and Mullinger said it was extraordinary how keys did get lost; and the doctor told a story of a boy who swallowed a key, and had worn it in his inside for twenty years, when a surgeon, operating for something quite different, had the unexpected pleasure of finding the lost object. And they all got sleepy, and said good night, and went their ways with their bedroom candles.

  Anthony, alone in his great room with the funereal four-poster and the large inter-mahogany spaces, felt for the first time a thrill of complete satisfaction with destiny. What luck he had had! Some men went to their graves without ever having had a gleam of such luck as had shone on him. Everything had happened just as one would have chosen it to happen. He had known poverty, and so he could enjoy his inheritance as no man born to the expectation of it could ever have enjoyed. As to his family, he had known nothing and feared much. Well, that was all right. And the Idea, that had been with him, sleeping and waking, in his work and in his play, as a background to everything he did and thought and was, that had come near to him, suffered him to clasp and hold it. He was young, and he had done work that would make the greybeards of life and history seem mere children playing at science. The work was done. He would do more, but this at least was done, and soon he would give his discovery to the world, his wonderful discovery, the greatest birth of time. In the meantime, how jolly everything was. Just a little while he would enjoy it, not looking before or after. Presently, when he had revealed his great secret — he would tell Bats first — when he had become famous, a life like this would be impossible to him. How pleasant the evening had been. They had danced and sung and acted charades, and played games, blind-man’s buff, and hide-and-seek! What a house for hide-and-seek! How jolly everything was. How jolly it was to be able to give his old friends a good time like this. And he would give good times to other people. His discovery would make him rich beyond any man’s need of riches. He would be a millionaire, as they called it, and such a millionaire as the world had never seen. He walked up and down the room thinking. “What luck!” he said, “what luck
! It’s almost unbelievable.”

  Then there was Rose. He must marry Rose, and soon. She was a part of the simple and splendid life, the life which he meant to enjoy now, the life which, when once he had announced his secret, could never, in full completeness, be his again. And Rose was a dear, and really very beautiful. How the powdered hair and diamonds had become her. Yes, they would be married quite soon.

  “Life’s a glorious thing,” he told himself; “ but what a lot of rot they talk about love! One would think, from the way poets write about it, that it was something quite different from what it really is. All those hearts and darts and stars and roses; poetic license; but it’s carried too far. I’ll tell Bats the secret to-morrow. He deserves to know it first. If it hadn’t been for him—”

  He got his coat off and his waistcoat and his tie, and was fumbling with his collar stud when a little discreet soft tap sounded at his door. The door opened, and William Bats came in.

  “Hullo! “ said Anthony, dropping the collar stud; “never mind the stud, what’s Sebastien for, anyhow!”

  “Where is Sebastien?”

  “In bed, I trust. I told him hours ago that I shouldn’t want him.”

  “Then I can talk to you without being interrupted,” said Bats deliberately.

  “What’s up? “ Drelincourt asked, for Bats had shut the door in a stealthy but purposeful way.

  “You know what’s up. I told you. I must have it out with you, Tony. I can’t sleep till I have. I don’t like it. And I suppose we’re friends enough still for me to tell you so?”

  “I don’t like it,” said Anthony, “if you come to that. ‘Still friends enough sounds a little bit rum between us two, Bats, doesn’t it? What have I done? Out with it.”

  “You know,” said Bats deliberately. “I told you I knew. Of course I always knew about the dogs and monkeys and things. But I didn’t think you’d experiment on human bodies. At any rate I didn’t think you’d do it here. Why, Good God, man, it was the merest luck that I found it. Suppose it had been any one else? Suppose it had been one of the girls? Suppose it had been Rose?”

  “Suppose what had been Rose? Found what? I haven’t been experimenting on human bodies, here or anywhere else. At least not lately. You aren’t drunk, II — suppose. You never are. So I suppose you’re either kidding or else mad. And if you’re kidding it’s too late for larks, and I don’t see any fun in it anyhow. And if you’re mad you’d better go to bed and see the doctor in the morning.”

  “Look here,” said Bats, “you know I’m not mad, and I’m not a jackape to play the ass at two in the morning for nothing. You say you haven’t been experimenting here. Well, then, some one else has played the fool.”

  “You’re convinced, are you,” said Anthony smoothly, “that I’ve not been leaving corpses about the place by accident? Now then,” he turned angrily and suddenly on the other, “out with it. What the devil is all this rot about?”

  “When we were playing hide-and-seek,” said Bats very quietly, “I thought I would hide in your secret room. And I did. And then I remembered that Lady Blair had limited the hiding to the stairs and the hall and the sitting-rooms. So I came out from under the end of the bench, and as I got up my shoulder caught in the barometer and it swung up on its nail, and something clicked. And when I stood up I saw a crack in the wall and it was a door. The barometer is fastened to the wall and works a spring. I went in. I daresay II — oughtn’t to have, but I did. There’s a little room, and inside that room, whoever put it there, there’s a dead body. So now you know.”

  Anthony sat down on the sofa at the foot of the bed and looked at Bats.

  “But there can’t be,” he said. “A body? Nonsense. There can’t be,” he repeated.

  “I tell you I saw it.”

  “Some curious effect of light, I expect. I suppose you didn’t go in?”

  “Oh yes, I went in right enough. And I took a candle with me.”

  “Perhaps it was a statue or something,” said Anthony vaguely, “because it couldn’t have been what you say it was. It’s impossible. These things don’t happen.”

  “It isn’t a statue,” said Bats. “I touched it.”

  “You were upset by finding it. Marble does feel very like...”

  “I wasn’t upset, if you mean frightened. I was only furious with you for having such things in a house where there are women.”

  “But I tell you..

  “I know. I know. Well, what are you going to do?”

  Anthony was putting on his coat.

  “I’m going down,” he said deliberately, “to find out what the devil’s given you the impression of a perfectly impossible thing’s having happened. There must be something. And it can’t be what you say it is.”

  “All right,” said Bats, “come on.”

  “You needn’t come if you feel at all — what was it you said? — furious. I’m not afraid to go alone.”

  “Don’t be a silly ass,” said Bats. “I made a mistake. I thought what you’d have thought if you’d found what I found in any other physiologist’s cupboard. Don’t let’s row. We shall have enough to do without that. I tell you the thing’s there. And it’s not been put there for any kind and wise purpose either. Some one’s played this on you, and not to do you good. Come down and look. And then we’ll see what’s to be done. Or would you rather leave it till the morning? We can’t do anything about it to-night, and now that I know that you—”

  “Thanks,” said Anthony grimly, “when I do go to bed I want to sleep and not to lie awake wondering what the deuce has sent my best friend off his head...”

  “I say,” said Bats abruptly, standing with his hand on the door, “when I said I didn’t mind when I found it, I was — well, it wasn’t true exactly. I felt sick. I thought I’d gone off my head; and if I hadn’t made sure, I shouldn’t ever have been able to look myself in the face again.”

  Anthony pulled down his coat by the lapels.

  “I know perfectly well,” he said, “that I am not drunk. I have been drunk, I say it without shame, as one who has inadvertently ventured beyond his depth, and I know what it feels like. And yet all this is not sane common life. It’s like a drunkard’s dream of what he doesn’t want to have happen.”

  “Old chap,” said Bats, “it’s quite simple. Somebody’s played you a trick. Some one who doesn’t like physiologists. What we’ve got to do is to find out who’s done it, and why. Come on. Let’s get it over.”

  They went on. Along the dim gallery, down the stairs which creaked a little and protested that this was no hour for any feet, even those of the master of the house, to be treading their shining surface; along the corridor to the door of the library, vast and quiet with its tiers of brown books and its heavy scent of leather and days long dead. Their candles showed in its spacious gloom like glow-worms in a forest.

  They went, Anthony ahead, towards the Empire furnished boudoir, that led to the staircase and the laboratory.

  The predominant sentiment in Drelincourt’s mind was annoyance. If Bats was playing a trick on him, — well, that was annoying. If really the inconceivable had happened, and some one else in sheer spitefulness had played him a solid and definite trick — anti-vivisectionists and Brown Dog people were capable of it — that too was annoying. Especially now and here and thus.

  Besides, it was late and he was tired, and the kingdoms and the glories and the powers were calling to him to lie down and rest on a bed of roses and laurels. The world was waiting for him. He had only to unfold his secret, and all the world must hail him victor, discoverer, master. And then some duffing outsider had suddenly tumbled a silly corpse into the middle of everything. Or perhaps hadn’t. But in that case Bats, one’s oldest friend, was as mad as a March hare, and that fact in itself was disconcerting and difficult to deal with. Yet Anthony found himself unable to take the position seriously.

  “Oh, come on! “ said Anthony, with the candlestick; “either you’re mad or I am, and I should like to kn
ow which.”

  So they went.

  Bats fumbled a little with the key of the room.

  “How finely you lied about it,” said Anthony, “to Lord Alfriston, I mean.”

  “Oh, well,” Bats answered, “if a thing’s worth doing at all, it’s worth doing well, I don’t know what to think or what to do or what to say.”

  “Exactly,” said Anthony, and then the door opened and they went in and down the stairs to the laboratory.

  Bats twisted the barometer and the door opened. There was nothing to be seen.

  Anthony told himself that he had felt certain there wouldn’t be. Things like that didn’t happen. He could not bring himself to expect anything but nothing. And nothing was here, sure enough, answering to his expectations. A black oblong, nothing more.

  “Don’t let it unnerve you,” said Bats surprisingly. “No doubt there’s a perfectly natural explanation. But in the meantime here the thing is, and we’ve got to go through with it. Something must be done, and when you’ve seen it and made up you’re mind that I’m not playing an elaborate and silly joke on you, we can decide what to do. Look here,” he said, leaning on the bench and holding up the candle so that he could see the other’s face. “I am not playing the fool. So hold tight to your nerves, if you’ve got any. Come on.”

  With that he stooped his head, for the doorway was low, and went into the inner room.

  “You see,” he said, holding the candle high.

  It could plainly be seen that the room was another vaulted chamber, like the first but lower. In the middle of it, no couch or bed between it and the ground, lay a shape, to which a sheet or pale wrap of some kind moulded itself.