OLD MAN'S BEARD

by H. R. Wakefield

  ‘Why couldn’t I slip past him? All I’ve got to do is to walk straight forward and past him, through him, and eat and drink in the kitchen. Easy, isn’t it! I’m getting weak; I should have done it in the beginning. I’ll think about the window again. It’s high but I might manage it. I’ll keep my head down and put him off his guard, then run for it — that’s what he did before, he’s too quick for me. Didn’t I drown you, you bastard? Didn’t they bury you deep? Didn’t they cover you up? That hot little piece! Always hanging round. She got what was coming to her. I wasn’t the first, she told me that. Nor second, nor third. If he got that sort, it’s his business if she gets into trouble. And then threatening me, asking me what I was going to do about it! Well, I showed him what I was going to do about it — and he swallowed some water. Water! By God, I want water! He’s got to let me past. Why is he here? They buried him deep. I’ll see what he does if I get up and go towards him. I’ve tried that too many times. I know what he does. He always goes round with my eyes. All right, stare at me, you bastard! I drowned you, didn’t I? You’re down deep, aren’t you? I’m getting weak. Water! Water!

  ‘I didn’t mean to shout out like that, for I’ve got to keep a head on me and get past him. Now, I’ll think out a way of doing it. Suppose I make a move quickly towards the window, then he’ll come over and get between it and me. Then if I dodge back and run for it, he’ll be behind me. I might have done it on Thursday likely, but I’m weak and slow now. Now, you dead devil, I’m going for the window! And don’t you watch me like that. Do you know what I’m planning? If I could see you plainer, I’d know. Yet you go round with my eyes. Supposing I stare one way and then make a dash the other. No, I’ve tried that. You’re always there! I’ll make it right for her if you’ll let me past. You’re dead! I saw the bubbles come up. I saw you buried deep. . . . Suppose I pretend not to be up to anything and then make a dash for it! Or shall I make a show of going for the window? Then he’ll come across and I might slip past him and get behind him——’

  Young Stokes said that after this there was a moment’s pause and then a muffled crash — and directly after the Wireless Symphony Orchestra came through with the selection from Tosca.

  Now, I did not disguise from myself that this interruption might have been a hoax perpetrated by someone with a perverted sense of humour and a powerful ‘sending’ set. But the phrasing of this monologue did not seem to me such as a hoaxer would employ. I therefore paid another visit to the local newspaper office and went through its files from the 14th of April till the end of the month.

  My attention was caught by a paragraph in the issue of April 17th which stated that a farmer named Amos Willans had been found dead in his parlour the day before. He had been found lying on the floor and had apparently been dead for about three days. So I asked the editor if I could have a few words with the reporter who had ‘covered’ the inquest. He is a lanky, inky, ambitious and thwarted young Scotsman, longing, of course, to get to Fleet Street, and with precious little chance of getting there. His name is Donald Paton. These ‘small rag’ reporters have a disheartening existence, their hopes crushed and their style murdered by having to describe ‘cold collations’, the minutiae of a stagnant local society, and the small, flat beer of a minor country town. Therefore, as Mr Paton showed himself intelligent, and proved of good service to the Club, I should be pleased if his name could be mentioned in the report of the case we issue to the Press. This report invariably has a wide publicity and it may be the means of translating Donald Paton to that dubious paradise east of Temple Bar of which he dreams.

  This is the gist of what he told me:

  Old Willans — he was about sixty-four — had been a ‘character’, and a very unpopular one. He had possessed a miserly temperament and an ungovernable temper. He had lived entirely alone, cooking for himself and only allowing a local charwoman to come in once a week to clean the place up. He had, however, sufficiently retained his vital forces to make himself somewhat of a problem to the better-looking young women of the neighbourhood. He was said to have had a certain ‘way’ with him which had occasionally prevented his solicitations from receiving the rebuffs they merited. He seems to have been an original, if highly unpleasant, old person, capable of arousing heightened emotions towards himself — hate, fear, curiosity and a kind of grudging passion in the unwise and wantonly inclined local females.

  Paton had obviously studied him with insight and understanding, so that he made the old devil stand starkly out before me as he described him to me. It was known that some time before his death he had been seen in company with the daughter of another farmer. She was a notorious young person, extremely promiscuous in her ‘love’ affairs. She was seen leaving old Willans’s farm late one night, and, not long after, suddenly went up to London and no news has been heard of her since. Her father had been found drowned in the River Axe, two miles from his farm. Since he was given to insobriety this caused little surprise.

  To sum up, the facts are so vague and any coherent explanation of them would be so empirical and ill-substantiated that I do not think the Club would be justified in visiting the area. At the same time, a discussion of these events might be of interest.

  Hoping that I shall be considered to have carried out my inquiry with zeal, if not with intelligence, I beg to subscribe myself,

  Your obedient Investigator,

  Charles Baber

  (Number 5).

  A Case of Mistaken Identity

  WHEN DR FENDER RETIRED from an enormous practice in Wimpole Street he built himself a charming specimen of the modern small country house just south of Poole Harbour, there to watch the changing seasons and the ranging seas, to placate his thin vein of poetry which the grim but absorbing business of earning a living had consistently snubbed, and to write that monograph on Stanzioni, material for which he had been slowly collecting during the last thirty years. Grizzled, humane, cultured, with a brain trained to perfection for its job, he had never taken a fee he didn’t consider he had fully earned, and he had relied not at all on a Bedside Manner. He had always been just too busy to think seriously about marrying.

  Though he had rigidly retired from practice, he was always at the service of the inhabitants of Comble Churton and neighbourhood if they urgently required his aid. He entertained very little, but always had a small house-party for Christmas, which he refused to allow to break up till January 1st.

  On December 31st, 1926, these six persons, besides himself and his servants, were present in Bradlaugh Lodge (the doctor had had to call his house something and he greatly admired that intrepid pioneer). First and most important his sister, Miss Angela Fender, an eccentric spinster with psychic leanings, chronic absent-mindedness and a horrible tendency to indiscreet utterance. She had been engaged twice many years before, but in each case the rather conventional young person had shrunk from her freedom of expression and thought better of it. So she had been compelled to accept her celibate destiny, and she did so with a vague resignment. She was a ‘Dear Old Thing’ in the best sense of the phrase, devoted to her brother, who regarded her with amused affection.

  Then there was a married couple, John and Mabel Kent, old friends of the doctor. Supers in this drama, they need no description. Again, there was the person who related to me some of the events in this narrative of which he was an eye-witness. I shall not give his name, for he has a loathing of publicity, with a special reference to his tailor, who might be encouraged to premature optimism by seeing my friend’s name in print. Let sleeping bills lie!

  Lastly, there were the doctor’s niece, Mrs Cannon, and Rex Lakeford, to whom she had just announced her engagement. After losing both her parents from influenza in 1906 when she was ten years old, she had come to live with the doctor and had done so till her marriage in 1921 to Robert Cannon. She had lost him in tragic circumstances six months before, when he had been caught by the boom and swept from his yacht, the Wavelength, off Bembridge. Dorothea and Rex Lakeford had been the
only other persons on board at the time. Cannon had been wearing oilskins and sea-boots and had never reappeared above the surface; the yacht was out of control for some time, and no attempt at rescue had been possible. Eventually they had succeeded in bringing her alongside Seaview Pier.

  Both appeared shattered by the tragedy, and the doctor, who had hurried to Bembridge when he heard of the accident, refused to allow Dorothea to attend the inquest — Cannon’s body had been washed ashore two days after his death. At the inquest Lakeford, who seemed near a nervous breakdown, told a rather incoherent story, containing some confusion and contradictions, but the coroner sympathetically asked him few questions.

  The doctor stayed on at a hotel in Bembridge till his niece was fit to be moved to Bradlaugh Lodge. On the evening after the inquest he was sitting in the lounge after dinner, smoking a last pipe before going to bed and reading an evening paper. There was a group of rather noisy young men sitting and drinking at the other end of the room. The doctor attempted to disregard their slightly alcoholic exuberance, but presently his ear was caught by the word ‘squall’. This, very naturally, interested the doctor, so, though pretending otherwise, he listened.

  ‘Damn funny squall, I call it,’ a rather husky voice was saying. ‘I must have been within half a mile of ’em and I got nothing more than a decent sailing breeze. The visibility was pretty ruddy, I grant you, but that was a damn local squall.’

  ‘Oh, dry up, you blasted ass!’ said another. ‘Think what you like but keep your fool mouth shut!’

  ‘I was not suggesting anything,’ replied the husky voice in an aggrieved tone. ‘I merely said it was a damn funny squall. Squalls are damn funny things, some funnier than others. This was a very funny one. And I didn’t like the look of the fellar, and he’s been the subject of gossip — silly thing to be the subject of gossip. Now, how does one square a triangle? Try a squall, a damn funny, damn local squall!’

  ‘Take him home, Bill,’ replied the other. ‘He thinks he’s damn funny.’

  The doctor glanced up quickly and saw several pairs of eyes regarding him nervously. And then he heard some whispering and the group presently departed, noisily but in haste.

  The doctor had only just succeeded in holding himself in. ‘That foul young slanderer,’ he thought. ‘What is it that makes humanity so devilish that it loves to insinuate vilely when anything like this happens?’ He lay awake for many hours. ‘Silly thing to be the subject of gossip.’ That sentence kept recurring to him. What had he meant? Were there many people on the island repeating just that same sort of beastly thing? What was the gossip? Probably just the usual dirty-hearted sidelong hinting which even the most innocent companionship of the kind gives rise to. He thought of his niece and her great sorrow, and his blood-pressure rose and kept sleep from him.

  Three days later Mrs Cannon was well enough to make the journey to Bradlaugh Lodge, and from then on her convalescence was gratifyingly rapid. So much so that within a month she had taken a flat in London and therein established herself. After that he received an occasional letter from her which told him little of her doings, but at the beginning of November he got news indeed. She was secretly engaged to Rex Lakeford. It seemed rather soon to announce it, she said, but she would do so before the New Year.

  In the meantime, the doctor had almost forgotten that young man’s existence; he had, indeed, no inclination to remember it. And now he was engaged to Dorothea. The doctor made no attempt to pretend to himself that he felt the slightest satisfaction at this prospective union. Why? Well, what did he know of Lakeford? Apparently he had met the Cannons casually in London, and being a keen yachtsman had arranged to go to Bembridge with them for a couple of months. He remembered hearing that he sold motor-cars on commission, a profession that the doctor had never rated very highly. As far as his accent was concerned, he appeared to be an educated person. He had the knack of wearing clothes or, perhaps, of not wearing them out. Of course, he was in no position to judge him, for he had only seen him in the shadow of a shocking catastrophe, and unnerved thereby. Very possibly he was all right. All right for Dorothea? Faced by this question, the doctor realised he had never attempted any serious analysis of his niece’s character. In a sense she was still to him the impulsive, and in a way formidable, little girl whom he had taken into his care and provided with governesses and schooling, and to whom he had devoted as much as he could of his scanty leisure. Women to him had always been patients, frightened, in pain, dying; battle-grounds between invading organisms and his therapeutic skill. Never wives, mistresses, temptresses, things which dominated and ‘made’ or ruined men; incalculable forces. Only just a species of animal which came to him when in trouble.

  On the screen of his inner eye was projected Dorothea’s image; those restless, impatient dark eyes; hair, thick gold; a nose, a shade too ‘full’ and dominating; her lips a shade too thin, her chin a shade too strong. He had loved his brother Tom, but had never really been on easy terms with Ethel, who had also possessed uncompromising lips and chin. A wheedling bully and inclined to unscrupulousness, though a beautiful and, within her range, intelligent woman. Dorothea took after her. And that was really all he knew about her; she reminded him of her mother, a woman he had instinctively disliked; but he didn’t dislike Dorothea, though he realised she was almost a complete stranger to him. Otherwise he would not have felt so intensely astonished and disturbed on learning that she was going to marry this Lakeford fellow. Well, it was just something to make the best of, and no business of his. (‘A damn funny squall.’) That sly insinuation of the young fool at Bembridge recurred to him occasionally, and sometimes with an almost ferocious insistence — its echo pouring through his ears.

  During the six days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve the doctor’s guests had amused themselves in such ways as appealed to them. Mrs Cannon and Rex Lakeford, as was natural in the circumstances, chiefly amused themselves by segregating themselves from the rest of the company. Not, thought the doctor, that it appeared greatly to agree with them. Dorothea was restless, inclined to sudden nervous tricks, almost sometimes as if she could see something or hear something not perceptible to anyone else. The doctor’s expert eye diagnosed nervous strain or insomnia. As for Rex Lakeford, his appreciation of existence seemed to vary in exact ratio with his distance from alcoholic refreshment. (‘None of my business,’ thought the doctor, uneasily.)

  My friend — whose anonymity it is so prudent to maintain — also noticed the rather eccentric manifestations of approaching marital felicity exhibited by those two persons. He, himself, has a stout head and a fearless approach to bottles and tantali, but Lakeford’s capacity for ‘shifting it’ filled him with amazement. And Mrs Cannon’s repeated inability to concentrate on what he said to her — and some of his conversation, he assures me, was of a high order — somewhat disconcerted him. But he eventually decided that the union would probably be a happy one, because Lakeford’s chat was just the sort of chat which it was better not to concentrate on.

  Dinner on New Year’s Eve was a qualified success. Miss Fender qualified it somewhat, for she was in a talkative and disconnected frame of mind, and inclined to be ‘psychic’ — the doctor had mixed quite testing cocktails and she drank a full glass of champagne in almost record time. In fact, the heightening of the tension, caused by the nervous emanations from the engaged couple, had affected all the others and there was a prevailing sense of unease.

  Miss Fender, after a number of over-pertinent and somewhat disconcerting observations, suddenly lifted her second glass of champagne, and looking across at Dorothea and Lakeford said:

  ‘Well, I hope you’ll be very happy and your married life be quite free from squalls.’

  And then there was a sudden silence; Dorothea’s face became dead-white and her hands shook; Lakeford’s eyes widened and his lower jaw dropped, and he stared across the table at the smiling and benevolent face of Miss Fender.

  The doctor did his best to repair the damage ca
used by the dropping of this characteristic ‘brick’ — the tension relaxed, and presently a tolerable imitation of care-free conversation was re-established. After dinner they played a game of cards, Lakeford’s inability to distinguish between hearts and diamonds complicating it somewhat.

  And presently the doctor looked at his watch, and finding the time 11:55 led his party down to the hall. Dorothea, as the owner of the darkest eyes (and the whitest face), was deputed to let the New Year in. They lined up in the passage from the morning-room to the front door, each with a glass of champagne in the right hand.

  It was a wild and streaming night, blowing like the wrath of God, and with a driving deluge from the sou’-west, so the doctor told Dorothea she need not go out but just open the door.

  They were ready a few moments before their time, but presently the grandfather clock on the landing began striking solemnly. And when it ceased, Dorothea went forward and opened the door.

  And there, on the threshold, was a figure clad in dripping oilskins, its face almost hidden by a sou’-wester. And it started to move forward, and Dorothea screamed and slid along the wall and crumpled to the ground. Rex Lakeford dropped his glass and cried out, ‘Bob! Bob!’ and began flinging out his arms as if to thrust that figure back.

  But it was only one of the men from the Coastguard Station come up to ask the doctor if he could give him something for his mate, who was queer with influenza.

  Also by H. R. Wakefield

  They Return at Evening

  Imagine a Man in a Box

  The Clock Strikes Twelve

  Strayers from Sheol

  Reunion at Dawn

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