Part 8

He was smiling to himself all the way back to the house, until a thought came into his mind that turned the joke of it. Suppose they were right and he was wrong? Suppose there was a treasure to be found? No sooner did the thought occur than he had laughed it out of his mind. These people merely reflected Harry’s enthusiasm and faith.

He fastened the door of his study and went up to the room that overlooked the gardens of Fossaway Manor. Immediately opposite his door was a narrow passageway ending in stairs, as narrow, that led to the servants’ quarters. As his step sounded on the grand stairway, a shadowy figure that had been prowling about the corridor slipped into the narrow entrance and crouched down. Thomas, the footman, saw Dick go into his room and close the door, and he breathed more freely. He waited, but he could hear no movement.

Silence reigned in Fossaway Manor. No sound came from the world outside. In five minutes Dick was lying in a profound slumber. He had drawn down the blinds that the light should not break his rest, and the room was in almost complete darkness.

* * *

Ordinarily he would have heard a sound, the sound of the floor boards creaking outside his door, and would have been awake instantly. Twice the planks creaked under a heavy weight, but he did not stir. And then the handle of his door turned slowly and the door itself moved the fraction of an inch. The thing outside listened, showing its white teeth in a grin. The sound of Dick Alford’s regular breathing came out to him and he pushed the door open a little farther, and, crouching, moved stealthily toward the bed, feeling for the brass rail at the foot.

Not a sound came from the intruder, and yet he was shaking with laughter. He fumbled in his pocket and took out a long-bladed clasp knife and opened it carefully, testing the edge with his thumb. Then, slowly, his long fingers went out to locate the position of the body. The Angel of Death hovered in that second above the sleeping man.

From the hall below came a woman’s voice--distraught--beside herself with fear.

“Dick--Dick, for God’s sake!”

Dick turned uneasily in his sleep and half opened his eyes.

XXII

“Dick!”

It was a girl’s voice, sharp with fear, that came from the hall below.

“Dick!”

The thing with the knife dropped the weapon and, cringing back toward the door, hesitated a second, and slipped out.

“Dick!”

Again the voice, and Dick woke. Was he dreaming? Slipping out of bed, he threw open the door and walked on to the landing.

“Who’s calling?” he asked, husky with sleep.

“It is I--Leslie! Dick, I want you.”

He went back to his bedroom, pulled a dressing gown from a hook and raced down the stairs, dressing as he went. She was standing in the gloom of the hall, a slim figure. She had no hat; her bare feet were thrust into slippers, and she wore an overcoat over what was evidently a hastily assumed skirt.

“What is the matter, dear?”

He pushed open the door of his study and led her in. She was trembling from head to foot.

“I don’t know. Something dreadful has happened,” she gasped. “I thought my car would wake you--didn’t you hear it?”

“Something dreadful has happened? What?” he asked quickly.

“I don’t know. I suppose I’ve got everything out of proportion--I saw Arthur fighting with a man on the lawn. It was dreadful. I thought I must have been mistaken and went to his room, but the bed was empty and had not been slept in. By the time I could get downstairs on to the lawn, they had disappeared. Oh, Dick, what can have happened?”

“Fighting?” He was incredulous. “I saw Arthur--I don’t know how long ago; it may have been an hour or two. I don’t know how long I’ve been sleeping.”

It was daylight now; the clock over the mantelpiece showed it to be a quarter past five.

“Just wait a moment. I’ll be with you in a jiffy.”

He ran up the stairs and in five minutes rejoined her, dressed, and, lifting her into the car, he sent the little machine flying down the drive.

“How did you get into the house?”

“I came through your study. I rang the bell at the door, but nobody answered me. And then I tried your French windows and they were open.”

“I’m always forgetting to lock them. I’m glad I did. And they will never be locked in the future,” said Dick. “Now, just tell me what happened?”

She told her story coherently. Her very association with this man had restored her failing courage. And as she grew calmer, she became penitent.

“What a scare cat you will think I am!” she said ruefully. “I don’t know what time it was--about half an hour ago, I think--but I was sleeping when I heard voices. I went to the window and looked out. It was still rather dark; there are an awful lot of trees before the house, but I could see two men, and I wouldn’t have known one of them was Arthur, only I heard him speaking angrily.”

“Did you hear anything he said?”

“No, they were too far away. They were near the laurels that hide the house from the road. And then I saw Arthur strike the man, and they began to struggle, and that is all I saw. By the time I’d got downstairs they had disappeared.”

“But you say you saw him? How could you?”

Dick gave a version of his encounter with the lawyer that was more flattering to Arthur than was deserved.

“But that couldn’t be true!” she said, in perplexity. “He hadn’t been to bed at all. What is the meaning of it, Dick?”

“The Lord knows!” said Dick piously. “I wish my friend Puttler were here.”

The car ran through the cutting and took the long, straight road to Willow House, they were turning into the drive when Dick saw a man walking in front of him.

“There’s your Arthur,” he said, and she uttered a little cry of thankfulness.

It was Arthur with a difference. His nose had been bleeding, his eye was slightly discoloured. In other circumstances Dick would have laughed, but the girl was so concerned with her brother’s injuries that it would have been brutal even to find anything amusing in the discomfiture of this dandified young lawyer.

“It was nothing,” he said gruffly. “I met a poacher and had a slight argument with him.”

The knees of his new golfing knickers were soiled and torn; the knuckles of his hand were red and bleeding. Dick felt that it was not the moment to ask him questions, and followed the brother and sister into the house, an interested and cautious observer of events.

The servants had been roused and one of them brought some coffee, and Dick, who had been half dead from sleepiness, accepted the steaming cup gratefully.

“What _do_ you think has happened, Dick?” she asked, when Arthur had gone up to his room to treat his injuries, having refused all the assistance she offered.

“I think he has told us what has happened. He had trouble with a poacher. In other words, he had a vulgar fight. It is one of those distressing happenings that the best of men cannot always avoid.”

She shot a suspicious glance at him.

“You don’t mean that, Dick. And it couldn’t have been a poacher. I’m perfectly sure it was Mr. Gilder.”

Dick was not prepared to contest this point of view. The probability of Arthur’s assailant being his head clerk was one that had occurred to him. But why should Gilder be in the vicinity of Willow House at that hour of the morning? At a suitable opportunity he would ask Arthur Gwyn for the truth.

He was conscious that she was looking at him, and, meeting her eyes, he saw something that made him catch his breath.

“What shall I ever do without you?” she asked, with a gesture of helplessness. “I run to you crying every time I am hurt, and you appear by magic whenever I’m in trouble! Dick, one of these days I’m going to be a disgrace to my sex!”

“I hope not, Leslie,” he smiled. “What particularly outrageous thing have you in mind?”

She nodded wisely.

“You will see,” she said. “I also can be mysterious!”

He declined the loan of her car and returned on foot to the house. Unless Harry’s sleeping draught had taken effect, he would have heard the car, for his room faced the drive. But no sound came from the King’s Chamber, as his sleeping apartment was magniloquently termed, and Dick went to his room and took off his clothes.

He was getting into bed when his foot touched something hard and shiny, and, stooping, he picked it up.

“Moses!” said Dick under his breath, and switched on the light.

The knife was a new one, its edge razor-sharp. He turned it over and over in his hand and frowned. Then, walking to the door, he locked it; and Dick did not usually sleep behind a locked door. But he realized that the twenty-four hours through which he was passing were pregnant with unpleasant possibilities.

XXIII

The office of Gwyn & Gwyn was thrown into some disorder the next morning by a most unexpected occurrence. Mr. Fabrian Gilder, for the first time in his twenty-five years’ association with the business, did not put in an appearance. Instead, came a note to the senior clerk, asking that a certain drawer in his desk should be opened and the contents thereof sent by special messenger to Mr. Gilder’s house in Regent’s Park. There was a postscript to the note.

It is unlikely that I shall return to the business. I have handed my resignation to Mr. Gwyn, and intend to devote my time to the development of my private affairs.

A wire from Arthur Gwyn appointed the senior clerk to take the place of the retired Gilder: an arrangement not altogether to the satisfaction of the senior clerk, for there were unpleasant whisperings about Gwyn & Gwyn, hints of dire developments to come that made the older members of the staff quake in their shoes.

Arthur did not appear that day, nor the next, and the mystery of Gilder’s resignation remained unsolved, for the confidential messenger who carried his papers to his flat, and who expected to hear from him the reason for his sudden departure, was not admitted. Mr. Gilder was in bed; he had come up from the country early in the morning and had met with a slight accident whilst getting out of his car. Apparently he had remained awake long enough to write his letter to the office, but was now sleeping, so the servant said. And she spoke the truth, though he did not sleep as soundly as he might have done had his lips not been cut and his shoulder slightly strained. You cannot indulge in fisticuffs in the uncertain light of dawn without incurring a certain amount of damage.

Curiosity was not the besetting vice of Dick Alford; even if it had been, he would not have spared the time to make a call at Gwyn & Gwyn’s to discover the extent of Mr. Gilder’s damage. He had his bath and shaved just before lunch, and came downstairs to find that the noon train had brought him a visitor.

Sergeant Puttler he recognized, though he had never seen him before, from the description that his friend had sent him. He was a tall, gaunt man of forty. The tired-looking brown eyes that gazed with gentle melancholy from their deep sockets reminded him of a sick and sorrowful chimpanzee he had once seen. His forehead was low, his upper lip long, and his arms reached almost to his knees. These features, added to a constitutional stoop, contributed to his unprepossessing appearance. Poor Mr. Puttler was not unaware of the simian mould in which his frame was cast, and it was, apparently, a matter which alternately depressed and pleased him.

“Well, sir, how do you like me?” he said without a smile, though there was a twinkle of malicious joy in his brown eyes. “I’ve known people to faint the first time they’ve seen me, especially romantical people.”

“I sha’n’t faint,” smiled Dick, “possibly because I’m not romantical.”

The footman came in at that moment, and evidently romance tinged his soul, for at the sight of the strange, long-armed man he visibly staggered and blinked.

“Take Mr. Puttler up to his room. Afterward, Puttler, come and dine and I have something to tell you.”

The dazed Thomas led the way up the stairs to a room next door to that occupied by Dick. The housekeeper had been warned of his coming and the room was ready. He deposited his suitcase and took stock of his rather handsome surroundings.

“Is there anything further I can do, sir?” asked Thomas.

Sergeant Puttler blinked at him.

“Nothing, thank you.” And, as Thomas was going: “What do you call yourself now?”

“Me, sir--my name is Thomas Luck.”

Puttler shook his head sadly.

“Thomas Bad Luck,” he said: “William Hard Lines or Henry Too Bad. Does your master know that your name is Sleisser and that you’ve done a stretch in Dartmoor?”

“No,” said the man sullenly.

“He will, Thomas--he will,” said the detective gently, and with murder in his eyes the footman slunk out of the room.

Mr. Puttler came downstairs purring with satisfaction.

“Are you sure that is my room, Mr. Alford?” he asked. “Not expecting the Prince of Wales, are you? I’ve always been ambitious to sleep in a four-poster bed.… Now, Mr. Alford.”

“First of all, I must introduce you to my brother. By the way, he is rather of a nervous disposition, and I’ve told him that you’re a member of an accountancy firm who has come down to help me with my books.”

Mr. Puttler expressed his agreement with this mild form of deception. He was taken to the big library and formally introduced. Harry Chelford was so used to the advent of Dick’s extraordinary guests that he saw nothing unusual in the appearance of the simian Puttler. Happily, he was near-sighted, and though it was a startling experience to find himself shaking hands across a very broad desk, which an ordinary man could not have spanned, he did not realize the cause of the phenomenon.

Dick entertained accountants, land agents, an occasional bailiff or two, so that there was no novelty in the invitation. Learned-looking strangers came to his table from time to time and were introduced and passed out of his mind.

“He will be staying six weeks,” Dick had told him, “and you mustn’t object to his prowling round the place, because I want to get a true valuation of the estate, and he has his own peculiar methods.”

“You might get him to price the Black Abbot,” said Harry, half dourly, half amused. “What we want, Dick, is not so much a valuer as a good policeman.”

Dick Alford thought that the coming guest might fulfil both functions, but he did not say so.

He ushered his visitor back to his own little office, carefully closed the door and sat down at his desk.

“Now, make yourself comfortable. Do you smoke?”

Mr. Puttler fumbled in his pocket and produced a black pipe.

“It’s not very aristocratic,” he apologized, “but I prefer ’bacca to cigars and cigarettes.”

“I’ll join you,” said Dick.

His study had two doors: one that opened into the hall and one into a side corridor running back to the housekeeper’s room. The two men had been talking for ten minutes, though, as far as Mr. Puttler was concerned, his contribution to the discourse was limited to an occasional question, when Thomas came noiselessly down the side corridor, peeped into the hall, and walked back to the study door. There was a look of apprehension upon his lean and shapeless face which was not without cause. Stooping, he put his eye to the keyhole. He could just see the end of the settee and the head and shoulders of the strange visitor. He was holding something in his hand--a white-handled knife, and was examining it with curiosity. Thomas bent his head and pressed his ear against the hole.

Dick’s back was to the door and he was speaking in a lower tone than usual, and this reacted to the disadvantage of the eavesdropper, for only a few distinct and intelligible sentences came to him.

“… might have been somebody admitted to the house by one of the servants,” was the first thing he heard. A few minutes later, Mr. Puttler, whose voice was distinct, asked: “Was the window in the library open?” And he heard Dick say, “Yes,” and add something which he could not catch.

The soles and heels of Thomas’s boots were of rubber. He passed into the hall and made another reconnaissance, then returned to his listening post, in time to hear Dick say:

“My brother hasn’t an enemy in the world.… I am afraid I can’t say the same.…”

Once the listener caught the word “treasure” and once he heard the name of “Arthur Gwyn,” but in what association he could not learn. Again Thomas visited the hall. He could not take the risk of being seen listening at the door. He was free from observation so far as he knew. The old Chelford butler was in the servants’ hall. Dick and his brother did not lunch till two, an unholy hour from the point of view of servants, but very suitable for Dick and his peculiar occupation.

He squinted through the keyhole again. The detective still had the knife in his hand and was looking at it intently. He heard him say, “This is new,” and then Dick entered upon a long and apparently explanatory statement, not a word of which came to the disgusted man who was listening. He was most anxious to hear some reference to himself, but, if it was made, he did not overhear his name.

Soon after, however, a familiar phrase caught his ear. Dick Alford was talking about the Black Abbot, and he heard rather a sketchy description of that spook. Then his voice dropped again, and coincident with this Thomas heard the stately footsteps of the butler, slipped back to the housekeeper’s room, and was busy in the pantry when the stout Mr. Glover found him.

XXIV

The luncheon was not a genial meal. Harry had acquired the disgraceful habit of bringing a book to his meals, and he was utterly absorbed in the volume and left Dick and his visitor to carry on a conversation as though he were not present.

Mr. Puttler, who was a man of wide experience, was neither embarrassed by his magnificent surroundings--for Lord Chelford lived in a princely style, three footmen and a butler waiting upon them--nor did he feel it necessary to live up to the state in which he found himself. He was altogether unaffected, had a fund of anecdotes, and could tell funny stories without apparently enjoying them himself, which is the art of amusement. Only once did Dick interrupt his brother’s reading.

“Leslie is coming to tea,” he said. “She ’phoned over just before lunch.”

Harry Chelford looked up and his face fell.

“That is very unfortunate,” he said. “I had promised myself an uninterrupted afternoon with Fra Hickler. I’ve just had a facsimile edition sent to me from Leipzig. Hickler, you remember, Dick, was a cloistered monk in the days of Elizabeth, our abbey being one of the few that was not interfered with by Henry the Eighth or by Elizabeth either; partly, I think, because our particular order of monks were antagonistic to the Jesuits.…”

Dick listened patiently, and when his brother had exhausted the history of the Black Fathers of Chelfordbury--

“You’ll have to be civil and come to tea, and after that I’ve no doubt Leslie will not object to your going back to Fra Hickler, who was a German, I presume?”

“He was a German,” said Harry gravely. “And the circumstances which brought him to Chelfordbury were rather peculiar.”

“The best German I ever read about”--it was Mr. Puttler who interrupted--“was Robinson Crusoe.”

Dick thought it was a crude jest on the part of his guest, but, if it was so, Mr. Puttler was unconscious of his humour. Harry stared at the “accountant.” He took such statements as these very seriously indeed.

“I am not well acquainted with Robinson Crusoe,” he said, “but surely you are wrong in saying that he was a German? I have always regarded such characters as typically English.”

“He was a German,” said Mr. Puttler firmly, “though few people are aware of the fact. If you look at the first page of the story you’ll see these words: ‘My father was a merchant of Bremen,’ and Bremen’s in Germany, or I’m a Dutchman. And if his father was a German, he was a German, because there was no such thing as naturalization in those days.”

Having dropped his literary thunderbolt, Puttler was prepared to take up the subject which Dick had interrupted by his question.

“The trouble with church music, Mr. Alford, is that it’s a little too sugary. It appeals to the senses. I’ve had many an argument with my brother churchwardens----”

“Are you a churchwarden?” asked Dick, in surprise.

Again the gleam of laughter in the man’s deep-set eyes.

“It’s hard to believe,” he said modestly, “but I am.”

Soon after this, Harry left the table, and was gone five minutes when he returned with a fat volume under his arm.

“You’re right, Mr.----”

“Puttler,” suggested Dick.

“You’re right about Robinson Crusoe. What an extraordinary fact, to think that one has lived all one’s life under such a mistaken impression!”

This evidence of literary skill on the part of the visitor brought a remarkable change in Harry’s attitude. Before, Puttler might have had no existence. He was one with the milkman, the grocer, and the village postman.

He took Puttler affectionately by the arm and led him into the library, and there Dick left them, knowing exactly the course of instruction that Mr. Puttler would receive; for Harry’s first act was to unlock his desk and take out the Diary. He was relieved to have Puttler off his hands for an hour or two. Dick that day was experiencing a sense of unbelievable relief. A great burden had been lifted from his shoulders, and one of his more pressing and secret troubles had been half dissipated.

He ran halfway down the drive to meet Leslie’s car, and leapt on the running-board while the car was moving.

“Practising for a tram-conductor,” he said cheerily. “I’ve decided on my profession, when you arrive at Fossaway Manor, mistress of all these demesnes.”

“When will that be, Dick?” she asked, looking steadily ahead.

“Never, I hope.”

In his lightness of heart he had not kept that usual guard on his tongue, and the words were out before he could stop them. Twice he had been taken off his guard, and he would have given anything to unsay his words.

Apparently she did not attach any great significance to them, for she did not turn her head, sending the car spinning to the broad gravelled place before the old porch. He jumped down when she stopped the machine and helped her alight.

“I have to prepare you for a curious bird,” he said, and described Mr. Puttler with more truth than flattery.

“What is he, Dick?”