The Moon Rock

by Arthur J. Rees

  CHAPTER XVII

  The bell in the darkened chambers rang with the insistent clamour ofmechanism responding with blind obedience to a human hand, but Mr. AnthonyBrimsdown suffered it to pass unnoticed. As an elderly bachelor, livingalone, he was sufficiently master of his own affairs to disregard thearrival of the last post, leaving the letters as they were tumbled throughthe slit in the door downstairs until he felt inclined to go and get them.

  He was standing in the centre of the room examining an unusual trinket--agold hoop like a bracelet, with numbers and the zodiac signs engraved onthe inner surface. Mr. Brimsdown had discovered it in a Kingsway curiosityshop a week before. It was a portable sun-dial of the sixteenth century. Aslide, pushed back a certain distance in accordance with the zodiac signs,permitted the sun to fall through a slit on the figures of the hourswithin--a dainty timekeeper for mediaeval lovers. Mr. Brimsdown was nogallant, nor had he sufficient imagination to prompt him to wonder whatdead girl's dainty fingers had once held up the bright fragile circle tothe sun to see if Love's tryst was to be kept. His joy in the sun-dial wasthe pride of the collector in the possession of a rare thing.

  But that night it failed to interest him. He put it down with a sigh, andresumed his restless pacing of the room.

  It was his office, but he preferred it to his chambers at the end of thepassage. He said the air was better, but it is doubtful whether that wasthe reason. Perhaps Mr. Brimsdown felt less lonely among his legaldocuments, meditating over battles he had won for dead legatees. As asolicitor he was "strong on the Chancery side" and had gained some famousjudgments for notorious litigants--men who had loved the law so well thattheir souls might well have been found--knowing no higher heaven--in theoffice where the records of their forgotten lawsuits were buried. And indeath, as in life, they would have been glad to confide their affairs tothe man whose lot it had been to add "Deceased" to so many of the names onthe black steel deed-boxes which lined the shelves.

  Mr. Brimsdown lived for the law. As a family lawyer he was the soul ofdiscretion, an excellent fighter, wary and reticent, deep as the grave,but far safer. The grave sometimes opens and divulges a ghastly secretfrom its narrow depths. There was no chance of getting anything out of Mr.Brimsdown, dead or alive. He had no wife to extract bedroom confidencesfrom him, no relations to visit in expansive moments, he trusted nothingto paper or diary, and he did not play golf. He was a solitary man, of anhabitual secretiveness deepened by years of living alone.

  His lips moved now, and he spoke aloud. His voice sounded sharply in theheavy silence.

  "A calamity--nothing less. How did it happen? Was it grief for his wife?"

  His face showed unusual agitation--distress even. It was well his clientscould not see him at that moment. To them he was a remote enigmatic figureof conveyances and legal deeds; one deeply versed in human follies andfoibles, but impervious to human feeling, independent of humancompanionship. The reserved glance of his cold grey eye betokened that heguarded his own secrets as closely as he guarded the secrets entrusted tohim professionally. But there was human nature in him--deep down. It wasnot much--a lock of hair in a sealed packet in his pocket-book. The giverwas dead and gone to dust, sleeping in an old churchyard near the Strand,forgotten by all who had ever known her--except one. Sometimes in thetwilight a tall figure would stand musing beside that forgotten grave forawhile, then turn away and walk swiftly up the narrow river street, acrossthe Strand, and through the archway to Grey's Inn.

  "Thirty years!" he murmured. Then his mind seemed to hark back to hisprevious thought, after the fashion of a man who thinks aloud--"No, no;not his wife. He did not care enough for her for that. Thirtyyears--wasted. My heart bleeds when I think of it. Ought I to go down? Didhe wish for me? I wonder--"

  His distress as he paced the room was more apparent than ever. Again, hisclients would have been astonished if they had witnessed it. In theiropinion he was hard as nails and a stranger to the softer feelings of theheart. They would as soon thought of attributing sentiment to one of thejapanned deed-boxes. But they would have accepted the surprisingrevelation with well-bred English tolerance for eccentricity, not allowingit to affect their judgment that Mr. Brimsdown was one of the soundest andsafest lawyers in England.

  His agitation arose from the death of Robert Turold--his client. He hadgathered that piece of news from an evening newspaper in the restaurantwhere he had dined. Mr. Brimsdown had reached an age when the mostpoignant events of human life seem little more than trifles. It was in thenature of things for men to die. As a lawyer he had prepared many lastwills and testaments--had helped men into their graves, as itwere--unmoved. But that unexpected announcement of Robert Turold's deathhad come to him as an over-whelming shock. He had left his mealunfinished, and returned to his chambers to seek consolation, not inprayer, but in his collection of old clocks and watches. In the dusk hehad set out his greatest treasures--the gold sun-dial, a lamp clock, anearly French watch in blue enamel, and a bed repeating clock in a velvetcase. But the solace had failed him for once. Even the magic name of DanQuare on the jewelled face of the repeater failed to stir his collector'sheart.

  His regard for Robert Turold was deep and sincere. His dead client hadbeen his ideal of a strong man. Strong and unyielding--like a rock. Thatwas the impression Robert Turold had conveyed at their first interviewmany years before, and his patience and tenacity in pursuit of his purposehad deepened the feeling since. The object of his search had the lawyer'ssympathy. Mr. Brimsdown had a reverence for titles--inherited titles, notmere knighthoods, or Orders of the British Empire. For those he feltnothing but contempt. He drew the sharpest distinction between suchtitled vulgarians and those who were born into the world with the bloodrunning blue in their veins. He regarded Robert Turold as belonging tothis latter class. It was nothing to him that he was a commoner in theeyes of the world, with no more claim to distinction than a golf-playingcity merchant. He had believed in his story from the first, and had helpedhim in that belief. Turrald of Missenden! It was a great old name. Mr.Brimsdown rolled it round his tongue as though it were a vintageport--pronounced it lingeringly, rolling the "rr's" sonorously, andhissing the "ss's" with a caressing sibilant sound.

  Turrald of Missenden! Robert Turold was the lineal descendant of the name,and worthy of the title. Mr. Brimsdown had always felt that, from the veryfirst. There was something noble and dominating in his presence. Bloodtold; there could be no doubt of that.

  What stronger proof of it could be found than the dogged strength withwhich the dead man had persisted for thirty years in his effort to claimas his rightful due a baronial title which had been in abeyance for fourhundred years?

  And he would have succeeded--was on the verge of success--but for thisunlucky stroke of Death's.

  With a sigh for the frailty of human hopes, Mr. Brimsdown put an end tohis reflections and went downstairs for the post.

  By the dim light of the lowered hall gas he saw an envelope lying on thefloor--a thick grey envelope addressed to himself in a thin irregularhand. The sight of that superscription startled him like a glimpse of theunseen. For it was the handwriting of the subject of his thoughts--RobertTurold.

  With the stiff movement of an ageing man he picked up the letter and wentupstairs again. In some subtle way the room seemed changed. He had asudden inexplicable sensation of nervousness and depression. Shaking itoff with an effort, he opened the envelope in his hand with an oddreluctance--the feeling that he was prying into something which was noconcern of his. He drew out the single grey sheet and unfolded it. Theletter was dated from Flint House on the previous day. There was but a fewlines, but the lawyer was pulled up at the beginning by the unusualfamiliarity of the address. "My dear Brimsdown" was unusual in one soformal as Robert Turold. But the handwriting was his--undoubtedly. Mr.Brimsdown had seen it too often to be mistaken. With the growing idea thatthe whole thing was confounding to sober sense and reason, he read on--

  "Can you postpone all your other engagements
and come to Cornwall on receipt of this? If you will telegraph the train you travel by I will have a conveyance to meet you at Penzance and bring you to Flint House. This is a matter of importance."

  A postscript followed in the strangest contrast to the formal note--apostscript hasty and blotted, which had evidently been added in extremeagitation of mind--

  "For God's sake lose no time. Come at once."

  The tremulous urgent words stared out from the surface of the grey paperin all the piteous futility of an appeal made too late. Glancing up, Mr.Brimsdown's eye rested on the shelf where the deed box of Robert Turoldreposed, and he mechanically reflected that it would be necessary to havethe word "Deceased" added to the white-lettered inscription on the blacksurface. Mr. Brimsdown sighed. Then, shaking off the quiescence of mindwhich his brooding had engendered, he applied his faculties to theconsideration of a situation which at first sight seemed fantastic as anightmare.

  The letter was not more remarkable than its despatch after the writer'sdeath, but the summons to Cornwall was not in itself surprising. Herecalled a similar visit to Norfolk some years before, and the recentcorrespondence between them made it clear that the claim had reached astage which required careful legal handling. Robert Turold had forwardedcopies of the final proofs of the family descent discovered in Cornwall,and Mr. Brimsdown had prepared the claim for the termination of abeyancewhich was to be heard by the House of Lords. Mr. Brimsdown was also awareof the summoning of the other members of the family to Cornwall to impartthe news to them. A very natural and proper proceeding on Robert Turold'spart, he had deemed it.

  He believed he knew every intimate detail of the ambition on which RobertTurold had immutably set his heart. Had they not been discussed betweenthem, again and again, in that room--his bitterness that he had no son,his fear that the regained title might be extinguished again in femaledescent, his grievance that the succession could not be altered. It washis dream to found a new line of Turralds, and be remembered as the headof it. "If you could only get the descent taken outside the limits of theoriginal creation, Brimsdown--" The harsh voice, uttering these words,seemed to reach Mr. Brimsdown in the muffled silence at that moment. Hehad told him, again and again, that the thing was impossible. If theTurrald barony was called out of abeyance it was an act of Royal grace andfavour. They had no rights--he insisted on that--and any attempt toinfluence the Crown about the line of succession might endanger the claim.

  And now Robert Turold was dead in the midst of his plans--dead when he hadalmost gained the peak of his dreams.

  It seemed incredible, almost impossible. Death at such a moment assumed anunexpected reality as an actual and tangible mocker of human ambitions.And this letter with its postscript--what was the meaning of it? Thelawyer knew nothing of Robert Turold's announcement to his family on theprevious day. If he had, it would have intensified his feeling that theletter hinted at some terrible secret hidden behind the thick curtain ofhis client's strange and sudden death. The hasty postscript suggested aquickened sense of a growing danger which Robert Turold had seen too lateto avert.

  What danger? Mr. Brimsdown could form no idea. He reflected that he reallyknew very little of Robert Turold's private life in spite of the longassociation between them. He must have had other interests at one time orother beside the eternal question of the title. Mr. Brimsdown had vaguelyunderstood that the money he had invested for Robert Turold had beengained abroad--in the wilds of the earth--in his client's early life, buthis client had never confided to him the manner of the gathering. That wasa page in the dead man's life of which his trusted legal adviser knewnothing whatever. It was unsafe to assume that the page, if revealed,would throw any light on his tragic death, but there was a possibilitythat it might.

  The evening newspaper he had brought home lay on the carpet at his feetexposing the headline--"A Cornish Mystery"--which had caught his eye atthe restaurant. Mr. Brimsdown picked up the sheet and read the reportagain. There was nothing in it to help him. It was only a briefnotification of the facts--of a death which, in the words of thenewspaper's local correspondent, "pointed to suicide."

  Suicide! The letter on which the ink was still bluish and fresh, seemed toconvey Robert Turold's denial of the suggestion that he had taken hislife. It was the cry of a man who had looked into the dark place of fearand seen Death lurking within. Only mortal terror could have called forththat passionate frantic appeal. And that appeal accomplished its purpose,although it came too late. Robert Turold was dead, but the call forelucidation rang loudly from his coffin. The dead man's hand beckoned him,and he dared not disobey. He determined to go to Cornwall.

  Outside in the darkness a clock chimed, and one of his own treasuresrepeated the hour with a soft mellifluous note. Eleven! He had an ideathat there was--or used to be--a midnight train to Cornwall. He crossed tohis bureau and consulted a time-table. Yes--to Penzance from Paddington.He decided to catch it.

  His preparations for departure were quickly made. The writing of a note tohis clerk and the packing of a bag were matters soon accomplished. In aquarter of an hour he had picked up a taxicab at the Holborn stand nearhis chambers and was on his way to the station.

  There was plenty of light and stir at Paddington, which appeared like agreat and glowing cavern in the cold darkness of the night. There wereengines shunting, cabs arriving, porters and passengers rushing about withluggage, throngs of people. It happened that the midnight train fromCornwall was overdue, and fluttered women waiting for friends wereimportuning bored officials about the delay. Sleepy children stared withwondering eyes at pictorial efforts to beguile the tedium of waiting fortrains. There were geographical posters comparing Cornwall favourably toItaly; posters of girls in bathing costume beckoning to "the CornishRiviera;" posters of frolicsome puppies in baskets ticketed "Lucky Dogs,They're Off to Penzance."

  The passengers waiting for the midnight train to that resort did not doequal justice to this flattering assumption of its delights. They seemed,on the whole, rather to regard themselves as unlucky dogs (if the termcould be applied to parties of women), and were huddled together on thestation seats in attitudes suggestive of despair. Men flirting withbarmaids in the bars may have considered themselves lucky dogs, but whiskyplayed an important part in their exhilaration.

  The belated train came rushing in with an effusion of steam, like a latearrival puffing out apologies, bringing a large number of passengers backto London from Penzance. They scrambled on to the platform with thedishevelled appearance of people who had been cooped up for hours.First-class passengers eased their pent-up energy by shouting for luggageporters and bundling their women into taxicabs. The third-classpassengers, whose minor importance in the scheme of things did not warrantsuch displays of self-importance, made meekly and wearily for the exits.

  They were dammed back at the barriers by two ticket collectors, whoseadroit manipulation of the gates prevented more than one person tricklingthrough at a time, and turned the choked stream of humanity within into awhirlpool of floating faces and struggling forms. As Mr. Brimsdown stoodregarding this distracting spectacle from the outside, he saw one of theticket collectors grasp the arm of a girl who was just emerging, at thesame time shutting the gate on a stout woman following, thus effectuallyblocking the egress of those behind.

  The girl turned quickly at the touch of the detaining hand, and there wasfear in her face.

  "What do you want?" she said, framing the words with an obvious effort.

  The ticket collector was a man whose natural choleric temperament wasaccentuated by the harassing nature of his employment. He tore in twoportions the ticket which the girl had just given him, and thrust halfinto her hand.

  "Here's your return half. Why don't you look what yer doin' when givin' upyer ticket? You women are the limit. Now, mother, for God's sake don't beall night getting through that there barrier. There's others want to get'ome, if you don't."

  Having by this adroit remonstrance spiked the wrath, as it wer
e, of thestout and angry woman he had jammed in the gate, he permitted theresumption of the trickle of impatient passengers.

  Mr. Brimsdown followed with his eye the pretty girl who had been forgetfulenough to give up a return ticket instead of a half one. She had stoppedoutside the barrier, gazing round with a troubled face at the immensity ofthe station and the throngs of hurrying people.

  The lawyer looked at her hard, from a little distance. "Where have I seenthat face before?" he murmured to himself.

  Her beauty was of a sufficiently rare type to attract attention anywhere,except, perhaps, at a London railway station at midnight. She was unusedto her surroundings and she was not a city product. So much was obvious,though her clear pale face and slim young figure did not suggestrusticity. Her dark eyes glanced quickly and nervously around her, andthen she started to walk slowly towards one of the main entrances.

  A luggage porter hurried towards her, intent on tips. The broad back of apoliceman was outlined in the entrance. The girl looked wistfully from thepoliceman to the porter, then appeared to make up her mind. She extracteda silver coin from her purse, and proffered it timidly to the porter. Theporter showed no timidity in accepting it.

  "Luggage, miss, in the van?" he asked. "Just you wait 'ere."

  "I have no luggage," Mr. Brimsdown heard her say. Her eyes wandereddownward to the little handbag she carried. "I wanted to ask you--I am astranger to London. Can you tell me a place where I could stay; for thenight--somewhere quiet and respectable?"

  Mr. Brimsdown found himself listening anxiously for the porter's reply. Byall the laws of Romance he should have had an old mother in a clean andhumble home who would have been delighted to give the girl shelter for thesight of her pretty face. But pretty girls are plentiful in London, andkind-hearted old women are rare. The porter seemed surprised at theinquiry. He pushed his blue cap back from a shock of red hair, andpondered the question deeply. Then he made a valiant feint of earning hisshilling by throwing out suggestions of temperance hotels in RussellSquare and the Euston Road. He warmed to the subject and depicted theattractions of these places. Quiet and cheap, and nothing respectabler inthe 'ole city of London. They was open at all hours. His own sister stayedin one when she come to town.

  "Would you give me the address?" the girl wistfully asked.

  The porter shook his head cautiously. He had evidently no intention ofpawning his sister's reputation for a shilling given him by a strange girlwho might have designs on the spoons of temperance hotels.

  "How do I get to Euston Road?" asked the girl with a quick realization ofthe fact that she had obtained London value for her shilling.

  "By the Metropolitan." He pointed to a blazing subterranean archway whichat that late hour was still vomiting forth a mass of people. "Book at thefirst winder."

  Mr. Brimsdown watched the girl until she disappeared out of sight down thesteps. He then turned away to seek his own train, the insistent feelingstill haunting him that he had seen her pretty wistful face before. Hetaxed his memory to recall where, but memory made no response. It seemed along time ago--like a glimpse from the face of the dead. Mr. Brimsdownstrove to put the idea from him as a trick of the imagination.

  He beckoned to a porter, who took his bag to a first-class carriage in thePenzance train. Mr. Brimsdown settled himself comfortably in a cornerseat. A few minutes later the train moved out on the long night journey toPenzance.