‘What do you mean by that, Uncle Max?’ she flatly demanded.
‘Some people don’t believe in luck, you know, Nora—I imagine they prefer to regard it as an intelligent anticipation of contributory circumstances. Perhaps Dr Olivant is one of them,’ he temporised.
‘Look here, Uncle, I don’t want a fencing lesson just now, thank you. I want to understand things.’
‘That’s what most people really want, Nora. It’s what I’ve been wanting all my life. It’s what I go on for. Generally I have to wait someone else’s good time for it.’
‘Well, won’t you help me to understand here—or even let me help you? It’s all simple and straightforward to Miss Tilehurst; I mean she accepts it just as it appears on the surface. I can’t do that because I know that you don’t do curious things without some motive behind and now you’ve started my suspicions and I … It’s very strange that Geoffrey shouldn’t know even me.’
‘Are you quite sure that even you know this Geoffrey of yours?’
‘That I know Geoffrey—?’
‘Well, very often a girl thinks that she knows a man through and through, only to find out that she doesn’t … It’s even been known to happen with a husband and wife who’ve lived all their life together.’
‘No, it wasn’t that,’ declared Nora, shaking her head rather sadly. ‘You didn’t mean that—only you don’t quite trust me … Uncle Max, you are going on with this, aren’t you? You’re thinking and planning and finding clues and putting this and that together. Aren’t you?’
‘A little time ago I came up against a locked door, and something baffling, perhaps even villainous, was going on the other side of it,’ vouchsafed the provoking Carrados. ‘This afternoon I have picked up a key; it fits the lock but it doesn’t work the levers—not just yet.’
‘And I don’t even know how to begin to set about looking; but I feel as though a shadow, mysterious and sinister, is creeping up. Something has happened to this bright summer afternoon and to this peaceful garden and—I think—to me. It’s that sort of feeling … And you sit there like a heathen idol, turning everything over in your wonderful mind and not letting me share a particle. Uncle Max’—taking hold of his shoulders and all but shaking him in a transport of exasperation—‘don’t you understand? I must do something; I can’t just sit down and wait. I can’t have Geoffrey change—I can’t lose him like this. Yes, lose, Uncle Max; we were all but engaged lovers. Of course I know it’s the doctor’s job about treatment and all that, but isn’t one of the first things towards putting him right to find out what it was that put him wrong? Suppose it was done by someone deliberately?’
‘Yes, there may be something in that—perhaps more than one might think,’ admitted Mr Carrados.
‘Let me help you to do it then. You mayn’t find me such an utter little rabbit as you might think after all. There are damned few things that I feel I’m afraid of, let me tell you, Uncle Max, and I’m quite ready to take the risks if it comes to that sort of business.’
‘My dear,’ protested the blind man with his incurable air of insouciance, ‘you seem determined to plunge us both into the thick of battle.’
‘Well, even you can’t be in two places at once and sometimes you have had to make use of other people’s eyes to see by. I think I’m up to the intellectual standard of your Parkinson and at any rate you certainly wouldn’t miss me half as much as you would him if anything went wrong … Dear Uncle Max, if the chance comes along won’t you give me a try—can’t you use me?’
‘That’s all very well, my dear, but I don’t want to have to fight a duel with Tilehurst when he comes round if I’ve led you into any scrape meanwhile,’ he protested lightly. ‘Thank you all the same child, but seriously you know if there should be any real unpleasantness ahead it would hardly be the sort of work to bring a young lady into.’
‘Young lady!’ Nora achieved almost a shriek of despair. ‘Bad language fails me! I always say you are an old dear, Uncle, but you are—oh, you are—you really are—the most utter—’
‘Ssh!’ warned Carrados. ‘Someone coming.’
‘Yes; perhaps I had better “ssh”!’ retorted Nora, subsiding.
CHAPTER X
NIPPER CONTRIBUTES TO THE PROBLEM
‘WILL it do in here?’ asked Miss Tilehurst.
It was the door of the dining-room she had opened. ‘The morning-room is so dreadfully hot at this time of day and the drawing-room rather overcrowded.’
‘This will do admirably,’ he replied, taking a deliberate look round. ‘Now—’
‘There is something you need?’
‘A little warm water in a bowl, sponge, towel, and the tincture of iodine if you have any.’
This simple list of requirements was passed on to the palpitating Ophelia and in a commendably short time—scarcely more than sufficient, indeed, for Dr Olivant to stroll across to the window and, having ascertained that it was not inconveniently overlooked, commend the prospect—a tray containing them appeared. The doctor turned to Miss Tilehurst with his nicely discriminative lady-side manner.
‘Now I shall ask you to withdraw for a few minutes, Miss Tilehurst. After I have attended to these superficial trifles I shall put our man through a pretty thorough examination.’
‘I quite understand,’ replied Miss Tilehurst delicately, though, of course, she was yearning to be of some use. ‘There is the bell by the mantelpiece. You will not hesitate to ring if there is the slightest—?’
‘Now my dear sir,’ directed Olivant, as they were in the process of becoming alone, ‘I think if you sit down there’—‘there’ being a severe mahogany chair whose suitability consisted in its position, well out of the line of vision from the door—‘it will do nicely. Yes, we will have your coat off for a start. Capital.’
The door being now closed and the window reasonably safe—especially as Olivant, with his back that way, stood between it and his patient—the process of sponging away the traces of injury began and this naturally brought the two heads close together.
‘O.K.?’ dropped from the elder man’s lips, but so circumspectly that one might have been in the room and still not heard the whisper or seen any facial movement.
‘O.K. And you?’
‘Lapped it. But how the hell have you got yourself in this state? You weren’t to have any bumps—it was to be all mental. Had a spill actually?’
‘Nothing like. I simply thought it better … And then that little s— Mae—oh well, well can all that backwash. I’m here, aren’t I?’
‘I see. Temperamental. Still, let me tell you, my young friend, it might easily have queered my bit of business. However … want anything doing?’
‘Nit. But how about the two extras? They’re outside calculations.’
‘Dropped ins. Man called Carrados; blind. Girl, Nora Melhuish. They’ll drift back after a while. They don’t matter.’
‘Not so sure. She looks like being a snag. Side line I hadn’t thought to handle.’
‘Oh-ha?’
‘T. was damned close about her, I must say. Neither Nickle nor I had an inkling. We’re evidently some distance on, but where? As soon as I pick up I shall be expected to do something.’
‘Well, that oughtn’t to be difficult for you.’
‘It wouldn’t if I knew where to leave off but it’s so infernally easy for me to overact the part in a case like that. Anyway, I shouldn’t be sorry if Nora vanished. She’s safe to be the sharp one—the old geezer wouldn’t have tumbled to it if I’d turned up cross-eyed.’
‘I’ll tell J., but we can hardly yank the girl out as well. It would raise fire and brimstone.’
‘I’m not asking you to. But that’s how it stands. You can vamoose now—no question of having to get me out. We’ve arranged for messages.’
‘Right-o. Closing down now … Yes, I think we’ll be satisfied with that’—this resumption of Dr Olivant’s hearty self-confident voice coincided with the completion of the use of sp
onge and towel and the application of iodine to his patient’s scratches. ‘Now suppose we move across to this couch for the next part of our job. I shall want a little more removed to get on with that. Then you can lie down quite comfortable and it won’t take long … You do understand? Oh capital! Capital!’
‘He is with Geoffrey in the dining-room now and they don’t expect to be very long. It will be such a relief for me to know that there is no internal complication to fear. I do hope that Nora has been attending to you, Mr Carrados?’
‘Steadily, Miss Tilehurst. And I have been capably responding. One of the great advantages of eating is that it enables you to disguise emotion. To the cynical observation that speech is given us to conceal our thoughts it might be added that eating and drinking enable us to hide our feelings. I think that is why food is an institution almost whenever human beings have anything to say to one another. A man has sufficient time to pull himself together under the excuse of even so simple an action as drinking from a cup of coffee.’
‘If he didn’t there’d be a spill,’ said Nora. ‘In fact there always is when it happens on the stage. The startled man blowing out his drink is one of the surest laugh-getters of the modern drama … Don’t think me unfeeling, Miss Tilehurst dear—it’s only my way of keeping it up. I must be doing something or saying something very fast and Mr Carrados is considerately giving me a lead.’
‘Mr Carrados … lead … dog,’ automatically responded some obscure process in Miss Tilehurst’s sorely tried brain. ‘Nora! Nipper!’
‘Nipper? I haven’t seen him at all since I came. Why, where is Nipper?’
‘No; that’s it. He went with Geoffrey this afternoon. But he didn’t come back with him.’
‘Your little terrier, eh?’ remarked Mr Carrados. ‘Yes, Nipper may have involved a certain difficulty, mayn’t he?’
‘He would never have left Geoffrey of his own free will, whatever it was that took place. He always recognised his footstep long before we even heard it and ran out of the house to meet him. What can have happened to him?’
‘I think I can tell you that,’ volunteered Mr Carrados quietly. ‘You must be prepared for another shock, Miss Tilehurst, although, of course, it doesn’t compare with the other. Nipper is no more.’
‘You mean—dead?’
‘Yes, dead, I am sorry to have to tell you. He was found less than an hour ago in Birling Wood and though his collar had seen removed the man who found him recognised the dog as yours.’
‘But—an hour ago! You were here then, Mr Carrados. How could you possibly know of such a thing happening?’
For an answer the blind man raised his hand in the direction of the house and nodded. Miss Tilehurst turned to see Ophelia coming along the path towards them. She carried something white in her bent arms and the simple girl was crying.
‘Oh, mum—it’s poor Nipper! Mr Batts, the keeper, has just brought him to the back door. He says he found him, not a hour ago, under a clump in Birling Wood, because his own dog knew there was something there and as good as said so. I thought it sounded queer too, mum, but Mr Batts did say that his dog stood and pointed at the bush and there when he looked was Nipper. At least he guessed it was yours through seeing it about with Mr Geoffrey although the collar was gone, so he brought it round as he thought you’d better know what had happened.’
‘Dead, killed; run over, I suppose, and then thrown aside to save any unpleasantness.’
‘Yes, mum, Mr Batts said he reckoned it was one of them hemmed stink kettles on wheels and if he had his way they’d pave the roads with broken bottles ’stead of tarring them. And if you please, mum …’
‘Yes, Ophelia?’ said Miss Tilehurst, gently stroking dead Nipper and smiling sadly. ‘What is it?’
‘If you please, mum,’ wailed Ophelia, bringing her resolution to the boiling point so that a rush of words welled over, ‘it wasn’t true what I said just now about that there green dish and Nipper. It was me that broke it—not ’im. There’—with obvious relief—‘I hope he’s heard me say it!’
‘Oh, Ophelia!’
‘Yes, mum,’ acquiesced Ophelia to the pained tone of reproach, in penitent agreement.
‘Well, leave it here now and go back. There’s nothing to be done by talking and Dr Olivant may be wanting something more. And, oh, Ophelia, ask Mr Batts if he will kindly wait for a few minutes longer as I would like to see him. Isn’t it unfortunate?’ she continued, to the others. ‘It would be bad enough at any time but coming just at this moment—’
‘Poor doggie,’ said Nora, surrendering the form to Carrados who had stretched out his hands for it. ‘I never thought about it but I suppose we must all have been fond of old Nipper.’
‘Yes, I’m sure you were,’ agreed Miss Tilehurst, ‘but I was thinking more of Geoffrey at the moment. He isn’t one to make a fuss of his affections but I know that, without becoming maudlin as so many doggy people unfortunately do, he thought a great deal of his faithful little companion. He’s sure to ask for him as soon as he begins to speak again and I dread to think how it may upset him. Would it be better to tell him now so as to get it over—or not yet? What do you think?’
‘On the whole I should say that it would perhaps be unnecessary to tell him,’ replied Mr Carrados.
‘You mean until he asks?’
‘Exactly—until he asks. When he does of course that will be another matter.’
‘I expect you are quite right. Then perhaps we ought to bury the little body now—it would be dreadful if he should happen to come upon it without knowing. But I can’t just now—’
‘We could hide it for the time—somewhere in the tool-shed,’ suggested Nora, seeing that the usually decisive Miss Tilehurst was becoming painfully uncertain. ‘Then Draycott could dig a grave when he next comes gardening, couldn’t he?’
‘Yes, but Draycott only comes two days a week you know, and he won’t be here again until Wednesday. I don’t know—in this weather—’
‘Then why shouldn’t Uncle and I get it done while we are only waiting? I can’t go until I know what the doctor says—oh, but if he is—I mean if he isn’t—’ Nora began to flounder.
‘We cannot possibly go until we hear, no matter how long the doctor may be, Nora,’ reproved Mr Carrados gravely.
‘No, of course we can’t,’ accepted Nora. ‘And it will be such a relief to be doing something vigorous like digging. We shall find a spade all right. Mayn’t we as well, Miss Tilehurst?’
‘But your clothes, your shoes, my dear,’ protested the more experienced gardener. ‘It would simply ruin those flimsy leathers.’
‘I will do the actual digging, Miss Tilehurst,’ undertook Carrados, and rather wanly, since only one thing in the world seemed to matter then, Miss Tilehurst stroked Nipper’s chalk-white back for the last time and said it would be a weight off her mind if they really would undertake the disposal while Geoffrey was safely out of the way.
‘In the rough grass beyond the espalier would be the most suitable place I think,’ she added. ‘Shall I run down and show you?’
‘I know where you mean quite well,’ replied Nora, ‘and I’m sure you’re only worrying if you are away from here for a minute. We’ll get on all right, never fear.’
Miss Tilehurst had not long to wait; in fact she met Dr Olivant coming down the steps as she was making for the hall, to take up a useless vigil outside the dining-room door, after she had stood for a moment absently following Nipper’s last progress down the garden. On his side there was no inducement for Olivant to linger once he had played his part. He had now to cope his carefully built-up fabric and when that was done the sooner he made himself scarce the better.
‘Ah, Miss Tilehurst,’ he exclaimed, with a jauntiness appropriate to the character of the report he brought, ‘I think now that I can set your mind at rest completely.’
‘Oh, Doctor—completely,’ she said quickly. ‘Does that mean that he is really all right again—that he can speak and answer?’<
br />
Dr Olivant made a deprecatory gesture and looked quizzically reproachful.
‘Well, no, perhaps not quite all that just yet,’ he admitted, ‘but what I meant was that you need have no fear—absolutely no apprehension whatever—as regards the future. I have gone thoroughly over our young friend in there—by the way he seems quite content to sit quietly alone and so you’d better let him—and he is definitely uninjured. With the exception of the trifling facial bruises that you have seen he has not been touched; his condition is purely the result of mental disturbance—he has received a shock to put it simply.’
‘We have just found out that our little dog that went with him has been killed and the body thrown aside—a man who knew the dog has kindly brought it here. Do you think—?’
‘Very likely; very likely indeed. Nothing more probable,’ replied the doctor, looking extremely sagacious. ‘These reckless drivers! Full speed along a narrow winding lane—no warning. Your nephew sees the inevitable a yard ahead. He hears the despairing death cry of his unfortunate dog and barely escapes by the merest chance himself—the luck of being flung into the hedge and clear of the rushing moloch instead of into the road and beneath it. Yes, there we have the case in a nutshell I think, Miss Tilehurst. Is it any wonder that he emerges from that hedge with his mind temporarily seared?’
‘Temporarily, Doctor? You still think that he will get over it before very long then?’
‘I don’t think, my dear lady; I know. Such cases are—to use rather a vulgar boast—my speciality, and I can absolutely guarantee it. You will find that gradually the normal faculties will come back. Probably he will begin to write—very shakily and unrecognisable at first—when he wants to communicate with you. As we saw just now he is more disposed to write than to speak when the occasion requires.’
‘I see. And when he does speak will it be the same as with the writing—not coming back suddenly restored?’
‘All experience points that way! Semi-coherent speech at first—stammering and broken you understand—but sufficient to make himself understood and to indicate his requirements. You mustn’t be disconcerted if the voice sounds rather strange to your ears at the start—it’s only a matter of time, like the writing.’
The Bravo of London Page 14
