The Red House Mystery, Page 8

  "Then what do you want to do?"

  "Talk."

  "Oh, right-o!" said Bill eagerly.

  "There's a seat on the lawn I saw it. Let's bring these things along in case we want to play, after all."

  "Right-o!" said Bill again. He felt safe with that, not wishing to commit himself until he knew what he was wanted to say.

  As they went across the lawn, Antony dropped the bowls and took out his pipe.

  "Got a match?" he said loudly.

  As he bent his head over the match, he whispered, "There'll be somebody listening to us. You take the Cayley view," and then went on in his ordinary voice, "I don't think much of your matches, Bill," and struck another. They walked over to the seat and sat down.

  "What a heavenly night!" said Antony.

  "Ripping."

  "I wonder where that poor devil Mark is now."

  "It's a rum business."

  "You agree with Cayley that it was an accident?"

  "Yes. You see, I know Mark."

  "H'm." Antony produced a pencil and a piece of paper and began to write on his knee, but while he wrote, he talked. He said that he thought Mark had shot his brother in a fit of anger, and that Cayley knew, or anyhow guessed, this and had tried to give his cousin a chance of getting away.

  "Mind you, I think he's right. I think it's what any of us would do. I shan't give it away, of course, but somehow there are one or two little things which make me think that Mark really did shoot his brother I mean other than accidentally."

  "Murdered him?"

  "Well, manslaughtered him, anyway. I may be wrong. Anyway, it's not my business."

  "But why do you think so? Because of the keys?"

  "Oh, the keys are a wash-out. Still, it was a brilliant idea of mine, Wasn't it? And it would have been rather a score for me if they had all been outside."

  He had finished his writing, and now passed the paper over to Bill. In the clear moonlight the carefully printed letters could easily be read:

  "GO ON TALKING AS IF I WERE HERE. AFTER A MINUTE OR TWO, TURN ROUND AS IF I WERE SITTING ON THE GRASS BEHIND YOU, BUT GO ON TALKING."

  "I know you don't agree with me," Antony went on as Bill read, "but you'll see that I'm right."

  Bill looked up and nodded eagerly. He had forgotten golf and Betty and all the other things which had made up his world lately. This was the real thing. This was life. "Well," he began deliberately, "the whole point is that I know Mark. Now, Mark—"

  But Antony was off the seat and letting himself gently down into the ditch. His intention was to crawl round it until the shed came in sight. The footsteps which he had heard seemed to be underneath the shed; probably there was a trap-door of some kind in the floor. Whoever it was would have heard their voices, and would probably think it worth while to listen to what they were saying. He might do this merely by opening the door a little without showing himself, in which case Antony would have found the entrance to the passage without any trouble to himself. But when Bill turned his head and talked over the back of the seat, it was probable that the listener would find it necessary to put his head outside in order to hear, and then Antony would be able to discover who it was. Moreover, if he should venture out of his hiding-place altogether and peep at them over the top of the bank, the fact that Bill was talking over the back of the seat would mislead the watcher into thinking that Antony was still there, sitting on the grass, no doubt, behind the seat, swinging his legs over the side of the ditch.

  He walked quickly but very silently along the half-length of the bowling-green to the first corner, passed cautiously round, and then went even more carefully along the width of it to the second corner. He could hear Bill hard at it, arguing from his knowledge of Mark's character that this, that and the other must have happened, and he smiled appreciatively to himself. Bill was a great conspirator worth a hundred Watsons. As he approached the second corner he slowed down, and did the last few yards on hands and knees. Then, lying at full length, inch by inch his head went round the corner.

  The shed was two or three yards to his left, on the opposite side of the ditch. From where he lay he could see almost entirely inside it. Everything seemed to be as they left it. The bowls-box, the lawn-mower, the roller, the open croquet-box, the—

  "By Jove!" said Antony to himself, "that's neat."

  The lid of the other croquet-box was open, too. Bill was turning round now; his voice became more difficult to hear. "You see what I mean," he was saying. "If Cayley—"

  And out of the second croquet-box came Cayley's black head.

  Antony wanted to shout his applause. It was neat, devilish neat. For a moment he gazed, fascinated, at that wonderful new kind of croquet-ball which had appeared so dramatically out of the box, and then reluctantly wriggled himself back. There was nothing to be gained by staying there, and a good deal to be lost, for Bill showed signs of running down. As quickly as he could Antony hurried round the ditch and took up his place at the back of the seat. Then he stood up with a yawn, stretched himself and said carelessly, "Well, don't worry yourself about it, Bill, old man. I daresay you're right. You know Mark, and I don't; and that's the difference. Shall we have a game or shall we go to bed?"

  Bill looked at him for inspiration, and, receiving it, said, "Oh, just let's have one game, shall we?"

  "Right you are," said Antony.

  But Bill was much too excited to take the game which followed very seriously. Antony, on the other hand, seemed to be thinking of nothing but bowls. He played with great deliberation for ten minutes, and then announced that he was going to bed. Bill looked at him anxiously.

  "It's all right," laughed Antony. "You can talk if you want to. Just let's put 'em away first, though."

  They made their way down to the shed, and while Bill was putting the bowls away, Antony tried the lid of the closed croquet-box. As he expected, it was locked.

  "Now then," said Bill, as they were walking back to the house again, "I'm simply bursting to know. Who was it?"

  "Cayley."

  "Good Lord! Where?"

  "Inside one of the croquet-boxes."

  "Don't be an ass."

  "It's quite true, Bill." He told the other what he had seen.

  "But aren't we going to have a look at it?" asked Bill, in great disappointment. "I'm longing to explore. Aren't you?"

  "To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow. We shall see Cayley coming along this way directly. Besides, I want to get in from the other end, if I can. I doubt very much if we can do it this end without giving ourselves away. Look, there's Cayley."

  They could see him coming along the drive towards them. When they were a little closer, they waved to him and he waved back.

  "I wondered where you were," he said, as he got up to them. "I rather thought you might be along this way. What about bed?"

  "Bed it is," said Antony.

  "We've been playing bowls," added Bill, "and talking, and—and playing bowls. Ripping night, isn't it?"

  But he left the rest of the conversation, as they wandered back to the house, to Antony. He wanted to think. There seemed to be no doubt now that Cayley was a villain. Bill had never been familiar with a villain before. It didn't seem quite fair of Cayley, somehow; he was taking rather a mean advantage of his friends. Lot of funny people there were in the world funny people with secrets. Look at Tony, that first time he had met him in a tobacconist's shop. Anybody would have thought he was a tobacconist's assistant. And Cayley. Anybody would have thought that Cayley was an ordinary decent sort of person. And Mark. Dash it! one could never be sure of anybody. Now, Robert was different. Everybody had always said that Robert was a shady fellow.

  But what on earth had Miss Norris got to do with it? What had Miss Norris got to do with it? This was a question which Antony had already asked himself that afternoon, and it seemed to him now that he had found the answer. As he lay in bed that night he reassembled his ideas, and looked at them in the new light which the events of the evening thre
w upon the dark corners in his brain.

  Of course it was natural that Cayley should want to get rid of his guests as soon as the tragedy was discovered. He would want this for their own sake as well as for his. But he had been a little too quick about suggesting it, and about seeing the suggestion carried out. They had been bustled off as soon as they could be packed. The suggestion that they were in his hands, to go or stay as he wished, could have been left safely to them. As it was, they had been given no alternative, and Miss Norris, who had proposed to catch an after-dinner train at the junction, in the obvious hope that she might have in this way a dramatic cross-examination at the hands of some keen-eyed detective, was encouraged tactfully, but quite firmly, to travel by the earlier train with the others. Antony had felt that Cayley, in the tragedy which had suddenly befallen the house, ought to have been equally indifferent to her presence or absence. But he was not; and Antony assumed from this that Cayley was very much alive to the necessity for her absence.

  Why?

  Well, that question was not to be answered off-hand. But the fact that it was so had made Antony interested in her; and it was for this reason that he had followed up so alertly Bill's casual mention of her in connection with the dressing-up business. He felt that he wanted to know a little more about Miss Norris and the part she had played in the Red House circle. By sheer luck, as it seemed to him, he had stumbled on the answer to his question.

  Miss Norris was hurried away because she knew about the secret passage.

  The passage, then, had something to do with the mystery of Robert's death. Miss Norris had used it in order to bring off her dramatic appearance as the ghost. Possibly she had discovered it for herself; possibly Mark had revealed it to her secretly one day, never guessing that she would make so unkind a use of it later on; possibly Cayley, having been let into the joke of the dressing-up, had shown her how she could make her appearance on the bowling-green even more mysterious and supernatural. One way or another, she knew about the secret passage. So she must be hurried away.

  Why? Because if she stayed and talked, she might make some innocent mention of it. And Cayley did not want any mention of it.

  Why, again? Obviously because the passage, or even the mere knowledge of its existence, might provide a clue.

  "I wonder if Mark's hiding there," thought Antony; and he went to sleep.

  Chapter X - Mr. Gillingham Talks Nonsense

  *

  Antony came down in a very good humour to breakfast next morning, and found that his host was before him. Cayley looked up from his letters and nodded.

  "Any word of Mr. Ablett—of Mark?" said Antony, as he poured out his coffee.

  "No. The inspector wants to drag the lake this afternoon."

  "Oh! Is there a lake?"

  There was just the flicker of a smile on Cayley's face, but it disappeared as quickly as it came.

  "Well, it's really a pond," he said, "but it was called 'the lake.'"

  "By Mark," thought Antony. Aloud he said, "What do they expect to find?"

  "They think that Mark—" He broke off and shrugged his shoulders.

  "May have drowned himself, knowing that he couldn't get away? And knowing that he had compromised himself by trying to get away at all?"

  "Yes; I suppose so," said Cayley slowly.

  "I should have thought he would have given himself more of a run for his money. After all, he had a revolver. If he was determined not to be taken alive, he could always have prevented that. Couldn't he have caught a train to London before the police knew anything about it?"

  "He might just have managed it. There was a train. They would have noticed him at Waldheim, of course, but he might have managed it at Stanton. He's not so well-known there, naturally. The inspector has been inquiring. Nobody seems to have seen him."

  "There are sure to be people who will say they did, later on. There was never a missing man yet but a dozen people come forward who swear to have seen him at a dozen different places at the same time."

  Cayley smiled.

  "Yes. That's true. Anyhow, he wants to drag the pond first." He added dryly, "From what I've read of detective stories, inspectors always do want to drag the pond first."

  "Is it deep?"

  "Quite deep enough," said Cayley as he got up. On his way to the door he stopped, and looked at Antony. "I'm so sorry that we're keeping you here like this, but it will only be until to-morrow. The inquest is to-morrow afternoon. Do amuse yourself how you like till then. Beverley will look after you."

  "Thanks very much. I shall really be quite all right."

  Antony went on with his breakfast. Perhaps it was true that inspectors liked dragging ponds, but the question was, Did Cayleys like having them dragged? Was Cayley anxious about it, or quite indifferent? He certainly did not seem to be anxious, but he could hide his feelings very easily beneath that heavy, solid face, and it was not often that the real Cayley peeped out. Just a little too eager once or twice, perhaps, but there was nothing to be learnt from it this morning. Perhaps he knew that the pond had no secrets to give up. After all, inspectors were always dragging ponds.

  Bill came in noisily.

  Bill's face was an open book. Excitement was written all over it.

  "Well," he said eagerly, as he sat down to the business of the meal, "what are we going to do this morning?"

  "Not talk so loudly, for one thing," said Antony. Bill looked about him apprehensively. Was Cayley under the table, for example? After last night one never knew.

  "Is er—" He raised his eyebrows.

  "No. But one doesn't want to shout. One should modulate the voice, my dear William, while breathing gently from the hips. Thus one avoids those chest-notes which have betrayed many a secret. In other words, pass the toast."

  "You seem bright this morning."

  "I am. Very bright. Cayley noticed it. Cayley said, 'Were it not that I have other business, I would come gathering nuts and may with thee. Fain would I gyrate round the mulberry-bush and hop upon the little hills. But the waters of Jordan encompass me and Inspector Birch tarries outside with his shrimping-net. My friend William Beverley will attend thee anon. Farewell, a long farewell to all—thy grape-nuts.' He then left up-centre. Enter W. Beverley, R."

  "Are you often like this at breakfast?"

  "Almost invariably. Said he with his mouth full. 'Exit W. Beverley, L."

  "It's a touch of the sun, I suppose," said Bill, shaking his head sadly.

  "It's the sun and the moon and the stars, all acting together on an empty stomach. Do you know anything about the stars, Mr. Beverley? Do you know anything about Orion's Belt, for instance? And why isn't there a star called Beverley's Belt? Or a novel? Said he masticating. Re-enter W. Beverley through trap-door."

  "Talking about trap-doors—"

  "Don't," said Antony, getting up. "Some talk of Alexander and some of Hercules, but nobody talks about—what's the Latin for trap-door?—Mensa a table; you might get it from that. Well, Mr. Beverley,"—and he slapped him heartily on the back as he went past him—"I shall see you later. Cayley says that you will amuse me, but so far you have not made me laugh once. You must try and be more amusing when you have finished your breakfast. But don't hurry. Let the upper mandibles have time to do the work." With those words Mr. Gillingham then left the spacious apartment.

  Bill continued his breakfast with a slightly bewildered air. He did not know that Cayley was smoking a cigarette outside the windows behind him; not listening, perhaps; possibly not even overhearing; but within sight of Antony, who was not going to take any risks. So he went on with his breakfast, reflecting that Antony was a rum fellow, and wondering if he had dreamed only of the amazing things which had happened the day before.

  Antony went up to his bedroom to fetch his pipe. It was occupied by a housemaid, and he made a polite apology for disturbing her. Then he remembered.

  "Is it Elsie?" he asked, giving her a friendly smile.

  "Yes, sir," she said, shy but pr
oud. She had no doubts as to why it was that she had achieved such notoriety.

  "It was you who heard Mr. Mark yesterday, wasn't it? I hope the inspector was nice to you?"

  "Yes, thank you, sir."

  "'It's my turn now. You wait,'" murmured Antony to himself.

  "Yes, sir. Nasty-like. Meaning to say his chance had come."

  "I wonder."

  "Well, that's what I heard, sir. Truly."

  Antony looked at her thoughtfully and nodded.

  "Yes. I wonder. I wonder why."

  "Why what, sir?"

  "Oh, lots of things, Elsie.... It was quite an accident your being outside just then?"

  Elsie blushed. She had not forgotten what Mrs. Stevens had said about it.

  "Quite, sir. In the general way I use the other stairs."

  "Of course."

  He had found his pipe and was about to go downstairs again when she stopped him.

  "I beg your pardon, sir, but will there be an inquest?"

  "Oh, yes. To-morrow, I think."

  "Shall I have to give my evidence, sir?"

  "Of course. There's nothing to be frightened of."

  "I did hear it, sir. Truly."

  "Why, of course you did. Who says you didn't?"

  "Some of the others, sir, Mrs. Stevens and all."

  "Oh, that's just because they're jealous," said Antony with a smile.

  He was glad to have spoken to her, because he had recognized at once the immense importance of her evidence. To the Inspector no doubt it had seemed only of importance in that it had shown Mark to have adopted something of a threatening attitude towards his brother. To Antony it had much more significance. It was the only trustworthy evidence that Mark had been in the office at all that afternoon.

  For who saw Mark go into the office? Only Cayley. And if Cayley had been hiding the truth about the keys, why should he not be hiding the truth about Mark's entry into the office? Obviously all Cayley's evidence went for nothing. Some of it no doubt was true; but he was giving it, both truth and falsehood, with a purpose. What the purpose was Antony did not know as yet; to shield Mark, to shield himself, even to betray Mark it might be any of these. But since his evidence was given for his own ends, it was impossible that it could be treated as the evidence of an impartial and trustworthy onlooker. Such, for instance, as Elsie appeared to be.