uvo delavoye had developed a theory to match his name for the estate. the baleful spirit of the notorious lord mulcaster still brooded over witching hill, and the innocent occupiers of the queen anne houses were one and all liable to the malign influence. such was the modest proposition, put as fairly as can be expected of one who resisted it from the first; for both by temperament and training i was perhaps unusually proof against this kind of thing. but then i always held that delavoye himself did not begin by believing in his own idea, that he never thought of it before our subterranean adventure, and would have forgotten all about it but for the house with red blinds.
that vermilion house with the brave blinds of quite another red! i can still see them bleaching in the glare of those few august days.
it was so hot that the prematurely bronze leaves of the horse-chestnuts, behind the odd numbers in mulcaster park, were as crisp as tinfoil, while a tawny stubble defied the garden rollers of those tenants who had not been driven to the real country or the seaside. half our inhabited houses were either locked up empty, or in the hands of servants who spent their time gossiping at the gate. and i personally was not surprised when the red blinds stayed down in their turn.
the abercromby royles were a young couple who might be expected to mobilise at short notice, in spite of the wife's poor health, for they had no other ties. the mere fact of their departure on bank holiday, when the rest of the estate were on the river, meant no more to me than a sudden whim on the lady's part; but then i never liked the looks of her or her very yellow hair, least of all in a bath chair drawn by her indulgent husband after business hours. mr. royle was a little solicitor, who himself flouted tradition with a flower in his coat and a straw hat worn slightly on one side; but with him i had made friends over an escape of gas which he treated as a joke rather than a grievance. he seemed to me just the sort of man to humour his sort of wife, even to the extent of packing off the servants on board wages, as they were said to have done before leaving themselves. certainly i never thought of a sinister explanation until uvo delavoye put one into my head, and then i had no patience with him.
"it's this heat," i declared; "it's hot enough to uproot anybody."
"i wonder," said he, "how many other places they've found too hot for them!"
"but why should you wonder any such rot, when you say yourself that you've never even nodded to abercromby royle?"
"because i've had my eye on him all the same, gillon, as obvious material for the evil genius of the place."
"i see! i forgot you were spoiling for a second case."
"case or no case," replied uvo, "house-holds don't usually disperse at a moment's notice, and their cook told our butcher that it was only sprung on them this morning. i have it from our own old treasure, if you want to know, so you may take it or leave it at that for what it's worth. but if i had your job, gilly, and my boss was away, i don't know that i should feel altogether happy about my michaelmas rent."
nor was i quite so happy as i had been. i was spending the evening at my friend's, but i cut it rather shorter than i had intended; and on my way to the unlet house in which i lodged, i could not help stopping outside the one with the drawn red blinds. they looked natural enough at this time of night; but all the windows were shut as well; there was no sign of life about the house. and then, as i went my way, i caught a sound which i had just heard as i approached, but not while standing outside the gate. it was the sound of furtive hammering—a few taps and then a pause—but i retraced my steps too quietly to prolong the pause a second time. it was some devil's tattoo on the very door of the empty house, and as i reached up my hand to reply with the knocker, the door flew open and the devil was abercromby royle himself.
he looked one, too, by the light of the lamp opposite, but only for a moment. what impressed me most about our interview, even at the time, was the clemency of my reception by an obviously startled man. he interrupted my apologies to commend my zeal; as for explanations, it was for him to explain to me, if i would be good enough to step inside. i did so with a strange sense of impersonal fear or foreboding, due partly to the stuffy darkness of the hall, partly to a quiver of the kindly hand upon my shoulder. the dining-room, however, was all lit up, and like an oven. whisky was on the side-board, and i had to join mr. royle in the glass that loosened his tongue.
it was quite true about the servants; they had gone first, and he was the last to leave the ship. the metaphor did not strike me as unfortunate until it was passed off with a hollow laugh. mr. royle no longer disguised his nervous worry; he seemed particularly troubled about his wife, who appeared to have followed the servants into the country, and whom he could not possibly join. he mentioned that he had taken her up to town and seen her off; then, that he was going up again himself by the last train that night; finally—after a pause and between ourselves—that he was sailing immediately for america. when i heard this i thought of delavoye; but royle seemed so glad when he had told me, and soon in such a stew about his train, that i felt certain there could be nothing really wrong. it was a sudden call, and a great upset to him; he made no secret of either fact or any of his plans. he had left his baggage that morning at the club where he was going to sleep. he even told me what had brought him back, and that led to an equally voluntary explanation of the hammering i had heard in the road.
"would you believe it? i'd forgotten all about our letters!" exclaimed abercromby royle as we were about to leave the house together. "having the rest of the day on my hands, i thought i might as well come back myself to give the necessary instructions. but it's no use simply filling up the usual form; half your correspondence still finds its way into your empty house; so i was just tacking this lid of an old cigar box across the slot. i'll finish it, if you don't mind, and then we can go so far together."
but we went together all the way, and i saw him off in a train laden with bank holiday water-folk. i thought he scanned them somewhat closely on the platform, and that some of my remarks fell on deaf ears. among other things, i said i would gladly have kept the empty house aired, had he cared to trust me with his key. it was an office that i had undertaken for more than one of our absentee tenants. but the lawyer's only answer was a grip of the hand as the train began to move. and it seemed to me a haunted face that dissolved into the night, despite the drooping flower in the flannel coat and the hat worn a little on one side.
it would be difficult to define the impression left upon my mind by the whole of this equivocal episode; enough that, for more than one obvious reason, i said not a word about it to uvo delavoye. once or twice i was tempted by his own remarks about abercromby royle, but on each occasion i set my teeth and defended the absent man as though we were both equally in the dark. it seemed a duty, after blundering into his affairs as i had done. but that very week brought forth developments which made a necessary end of all such scruples.
i was interviewing one of our foremen in a house that had to be ready by half-quarter-day, when delavoye came in with a gleaming eye to tell me i was wanted.
"it's about our friend royle," he added, trying not to crow. "i was perfectly right. they're on his tracks already!"
"who are?" i demanded, when we were out of earshot of the men.
"well, only one fellow so far, but he's breathing blood-hounds and scotland yard! it's coysh, the trick-bicycle inventor; you must know the lunatic by name; but let me tell you that he sounds unpleasantly sane about your limb of the law. a worse case——"
"where is he?" i interrupted hotly. "and what the devil does he want with me?"
"thinks you can help him put salt on the bird that's flown, as sort of clerk to the whole aviary! i found him pounding at your office door. he'd been down to royle's and found it all shut up, of course—like his office in town, he says! put that in your pipe and smoke it, gilly! it's a clear case, i'm afraid, but you'd better have it from the fountain-head. i said i thought i could unearth you, and he's waiting outside for you now."
i looked through a window with a scroll of whitewash on the pane. in the road a thick-set man was fanning his big head with a wide soft hat, which i could not but notice that he wore with a morning coat and brown boots. the now eminent engineer is not much more conventional than the hot-headed patentee who in those days had still to find himself (and had lately been looking in the wrong place, with a howling press at his heels). but even then the quality of the man outshone the eccentricities of the super-crank. and i had a taste of it that august morning; a foretaste, when i looked into the road and saw worry and distress where i expected only righteous indignation.
i went down and asked him in, and his face lit up like a stormy sunbeam. but the most level-headed man in england could not have come to the point in fewer words or a more temperate tone.
"i'm glad your friend has told you what i've come about. i'm a plain speaker, mr. gillon, and i shall be plainer with you than i've been with him, because he tells me you know abercromby royle. in that case you won't start a scandal—because to know the fellow is to like him—and i only hope it may prove in your power to prevent one."
"i'll do anything i can, mr. coysh," i went so far as to say. but i was already taken by surprise. and so, i could see, was uvo delavoye.
"i'll hold you to that," said coysh frankly. "when did you see him last, mr. gillon?"
"do you mean mr. royle?" i stammered, turning away from delavoye. if only he had not been there!
"of course i do; and let me tell you, mr. gillon, this is a serious matter for the man, you know. you won't improve his chances by keeping anything back. when did you see him last?"
"monday night," i mumbled.
but delavoye heard.
"monday night?" he interjected densely. "why, it was on monday he went away!"
"exactly—by the last train."
"but we heard they'd gone hours before!"
"we heard wrong, so far as royle was concerned. i came across him after i left you, and i saw him off myself."
coysh had a sharp eye on both of us, and delavoye's astonishment was not lost upon him. but it was at me that he looked last and longest.
"and you keep this to yourself from monday night till now?"
"what's about it?" i demanded, falling into my own vernacular in my embarrassment.
"it only looks rather as though you were behind the scenes," replied coysh simply. and his honesty called to mine.
"well, so i was, to a certain extent," i cried; "but i got there by accident, i blundered in where i wasn't wanted, and yet the fellow treated me like a gentleman! that's why i never gave it away. but," i added with more guile, "there was really nothing to give away." and with that i improvised a garbled version of my last little visit to the house with red blinds, which i did not say i had discovered in utter darkness, any more than i described the sound which had attracted my attention, or the state of the householder's nerves.
"very good," said coysh, making notes on an envelope. "and then you saw him off by the last train: did he say where he was going at that time of night?"
"to sleep at some club, i understood."
"and next morning?"
but i was sorry i had gone so far.
"mr. coysh," i said, "i'm here to let the houses on this estate, and to look after odd jobs for the people who take them. it's not my business to keep an eye on the tenants themselves, still less to report their movements, and i must respectfully decline to say another word about mr. abercromby royle."
the engineer put away his envelope with a shrug.
"oh, very well; then you force me to go into details which i on my side would vastly prefer to keep to myself; but if you are sincere you will treat them as even more confidential than your own relations with mr. royle. you say you are hardly friends. i shall believe it if you stick to your present attitude when you've heard my story. royle and i, however, have been only too friendly in the past, and i should not forget it even now—if i could find him."
he made a meaning pause, of which i did not avail myself, though delavoye encouraged me with an eager eye.
"he was not only my solicitor," continued coysh; "he has acted as my agent in a good many matters which neither lawyers nor patent agents will generally undertake. you've heard of my mainspring bicycle, of course? it was in his hands, and would have paid him well when it comes off, which is only a question of time." his broad face lit with irrelevant enthusiasm and glowed upon us each in turn. "when you think that by the very act of pedalling on the level we might be winding up—but there! it's going to revolutionise the most popular pastime of the day, and make my fortune incidentally; but meanwhile i've one or two pot-boilers that bring me in a living wage in royalties. one's an appliance they use in every gold-mine in south africa. it was taken up by the biggest people in johannesburg, and of course i've done very well out of it, this last year or two; but ever since christmas my little bit has been getting more and more overdue. royle had the whole thing in hand. i spoke to him about it more than once. at last i told him that if he couldn't cope with our paymasters out there, i'd have a go at them myself; but what i really feared was that he was keeping the remittances back, never for a moment that he was tampering with each one as it came. that, however, is what has been going on all this year. i have the certified accounts to prove it, and royle must have bolted just when he knew the mail would reach me where i've been abroad. i don't wonder, either; he's been faking every statement for the last six months!"
"but not before?" cried delavoye, as though it mattered.
coysh turned to him with puzzled eyes.
"no; that's the funny part of it," said he. "you'd think a man who went so wrong—hundreds, in these few months—could never have been quite straight. but not a bit of it. i've got the accounts; they were as right as rain till this last spring."
"i knew it!" exclaimed delavoye in wild excitement.
"may i ask what you knew?"
coysh was staring, as well he might.
"only that the whole mischief must have happened since these people came here to live!"
"do you suggest that they've been living beyond their means?"
"i shouldn't be surprised," said delavoye, as readily as though nothing else had been in his mind.
"well, and i should say you were right," rejoined the engineer, "if it wasn't for the funniest part of all. when a straight man goes off the rails, there's generally some tremendous cause; but one of the surprises of this case, as my banker has managed to ascertain, is that abercromby royle is in a position to repay every penny. he has more than enough to do it, lying idle in his bank; so there was no apparent motive for the crime, and i for my part am prepared to treat it as a sudden aberration."
"exactly!" cried delavoye, as though he were the missing man's oldest friend and more eager than either of us to find excuses for him.
"otherwise," continued coysh, "i wouldn't have taken you gentlemen into my confidence. but the plain fact is that i'm prepared to condone the felony at my own risk in return for immediate and complete restitution." he turned his attention entirely to me. "now, royle can't make good unless you help him by helping me to find him. i won't be hard on him if you do, i promise you! not a dozen men in england shall ever know. but if i have to hunt for him it'll be with detectives and a warrant, and the fat'll be in the fire for all the world to smell!"
what could i do but give in after that? i had not promised to keep any secrets, and it was clearly in the runaway's interests to disclose his destination on the conditions laid down. of his victim's good faith i had not a moment's doubt; it was as patent as his magnanimous compassion for abercromby royle. he blamed himself for not looking after his own show; it was unfair to take a poor little pettifogging solicitor and turn him by degrees into one's trusted business man; it was trying him too high altogether. he spoke of the poor wretch as flying from a wrath that existed chiefly in his own imagination, and even for that he blamed himself. it appeared that coysh had vowed to royle that he would have no mercy on anybody who was swindling him, no matter who it might be. he had meant it as a veiled warning, but royle might have known his bark was worse than his bite, and have made a clean breast of the whole thing there and then. if only he had! and yet i believe we all three thought the better of him because he had not.
but it was not too late, thanks to me! i could not reveal the boat or line by which royle was travelling, because it had never occurred to me to inquire, but coysh seemed confident of finding out. his confidence was of the childlike type which is the foible of some strong men. he knew exactly what he was going to do, and it sounded the simplest thing in the world. royle would be met on the other side by a cable which would bring him to his senses—and by one of pinkerton's young men who would shadow him until it did. either he would cable back the uttermost farthing through his bank, or that young man would tap him on the shoulder without more ado. it was delightful to watch a powerful mind clearing wire entanglements of detail in its leap to a picturesque conclusion; and we had further displays for our benefit; for there was no up-train for an hour and more, and that set the inventor off upon his wonderful bicycle, which was to accumulate hill power by getting wound up automatically on the level. nothing is so foolish as the folly of genius, and i shall never forget that great man's obstinate defence of his one supreme fiasco, or the diagram that he drew on an unpapered wall while uvo delavoye and i attended with insincere solemnity.
but uvo was no better when we were at last alone. and his craze seemed to me the crazier of the two.
"it's as plain as a pikestaff, my good gillon! this fellow royle comes here an honest man, and instantly starts on a career of fraud—for no earthly reason whatsoever!"
"so you want to find him an unearthly one?"
"i don't; it's there—and a worse case than the last. old sir christopher was the only sober man at his own orgy, but my satanic ancestor seems to have made a mighty clean job of this poor brute!"
"i'm not so sure," said i gloomily. "i'm only sure of one thing—that the dead can't lead the living astray—and you'll never convince me that they can."
it was no use arguing, for we were oil and vinegar on this matter, and were beginning to recognise the fact. but i was grateful to uvo delavoye for his attitude on another point. i tried to explain why i had never told him about my last meeting with abercromby royle. it was not necessary; there he understood me in a moment; and so it was in almost everything except this one perverse obsession, due in my opinion to a morbid imagination, which in its turn i attributed to the wretched muddle that the egyptian climate had made of poor uvo's inner man. while not actually an invalid, there was little hope of his being fit for work of any sort for a year or more; and i remember feeling glad when he told me he had obtained a reader's ticket for the british museum, but very sorry when i found that his principal object was to pursue his witching hill will-o'-the-wisp to an extent impossible in the local library. indeed, it was no weather for close confinement on even the healthiest intellectual quest. yet it was on his way home from the museum that uvo had picked up coysh outside my office, and that was where he was when coysh came down again before the week was out.
this time i was in, and sweltering over the schedule of finishings for the house in which he had found me before, when my glass door darkened and the whole office shook beneath his ominous tread. with his back to the light, the little round man looked perfectly black with rage; and if he did not actually shake his fist in my face, that is the impression that i still retain of his outward attitude.
his words came in a bitter torrent, but their meaning might have been stated in one breath. royle had not gone to america at all. neither in his own name nor any other had he booked his passage at the london office of the tuesday, or either of the wednesday steamers, nor as yet in any of those sailing on the following saturday. so coysh declared, with characteristic conviction, as proof positive that a given being could not possibly have sailed for the united states under any conceivable disguise or alias. he had himself made a round of the said london offices, armed with photographs of abercromby royle. that settled the matter. it also branded me in my visitor's blazing eyes as accessory before or after the flight, and the deliberate author of a false scent which had wasted a couple of invaluable days.
it was no use trying to defend myself, and coysh told me it was none. he had no time to listen to a "jackanapes in office," as he called me to my face. i could not help laughing in his. all he wanted and intended to discover was the whereabouts of mrs. royle—the last thing i knew, or had thought about before that moment—but in my indignation i referred him to the post-office. by way of acknowledgment he nearly shivered my glass door behind him.
i mopped my face and awaited delavoye with little patience, which ran out altogether when he entered with a radiant face, particularly full of his own egregious researches in bloomsbury.
"i can't do with that rot to-night!" i cried. "here's this fat little fool going to get on the tracks of mrs. royle, and all through me! the woman's an invalid; this may finish her off. if it were the man himself i wouldn't mind. where the devil do you suppose he is?"
"i'll tell you later," said uvo delavoye, without moving a muscle of his mobile face.
"you'll tell me——see here, delavoye!" i spluttered. "this is a serious matter to me; if you're going to rot about it i'd rather you cleared out!"
"but i'm not rotting, gilly," said he in a different tone, yet with a superior twinkle that i never liked. "i never felt less like it in my life. i really have a pretty shrewd idea of my own, but you're such an unbelieving dog that you must give me time before i tell you what it is. i should like first to know rather more about these alleged peculations and this apparent flight, and whether mrs. royle's in it all. i'm rather interested in the lady. but if you care to come in for supper you shall hear my views."
of course i cared. but across the solid mahogany of more spacious days, though we had it to ourselves, we both seemed disinclined to resume the topic. delavoye had got up some choice remnant of his father's cellar, grotesquely out of keeping with our homely meal, but avowedly in my honour, and it seemed a time to talk about matters on which we were agreed. i was afraid i knew the kind of idea he had described as "shrewd"; what i dreaded was some fresh application of his ingenious doctrine as to the local quick and dead, and a heated argument in our extravagant cups. and yet i did want to know what was in my companion's mind about the royles; for my own was no longer free from presentiments for which there was some ground in the facts of the case. but i was not going to start the subject; and delavoye steadily avoided it until we strolled out afterward (with humble pipes on top of that madeira!). then his arm slipped through mine, and it was with one accord that we drifted up the road toward the house with the drawn blinds.
all these days, on my constant perambulations, it had stared me in the face with its shut windows, its dirty step, its idle chimneys. every morning those odious blinds had greeted me like red eyelids hiding dreadful eyes. and once i had remembered that the very letter-box was set like teeth against the outer world. but this summer evening, as the house came between us and a noble moon, all was so changed and chastened that i thought no evil until uvo spoke.
"i can't help feeling that there's something wrong!" he exclaimed below his breath.
"if coysh is not mistaken," i whispered back, "there's something very wrong indeed."
he looked at me as though i had missed the point, and i awaited an impatient intimation of the fact. but there had been something strange about uvo delavoye all the evening; he had singularly little to say for himself, and now he was saying it in so low a voice that i insensibly lowered mine, though we had the whole road almost to ourselves.
"you said you found old royle quite alone the other night?"
"absolutely—so he said."
"you've no reason to doubt it, have you?"
"no reason—none. still, it did seem odd that he should hang on to the end—the master of the house—without a soul to do anything for him."
"i quite agree with you," said delavoye emphatically. "it's very odd. it means something. i believe i know what, too!"
but he did not appear disposed to tell me, and i was not going to press him on the point. nor did i share his confidence in his own powers of divination. what could he know of the case, that was unknown to me—unless he had some outside source of information all the time?
that, however, i did not believe; at any rate he seemed bent upon acquiring more. he pushed the gate open, and was on the doorstep before i could say a word. i had to follow in order to remind him that his proceedings might be misunderstood if they were seen.
"not a bit of it!" he had the nerve to say as he bent over the tarnished letter-box. "you're with me, gillon, and isn't it your job to keep an eye on these houses?"
"yes, but——"
"what's the matter with this letter-box? it won't open."
"that's so that letters can't be shot into the empty hall. he nailed it up on purpose before he went. i found him at it."
"and didn't it strike you as an extraordinary thing to do?" uvo was standing upright now. "of course it did, or you'd have mentioned it to coysh and me the other day."
it was no use denying the fact.
"what's happening to their letters?" he went on, as though i could know.
"i expect they're being re-directed."
"to the wife?"
"i suppose so."
and my voice sank with my heart, and i felt ashamed, and repeated myself aggressively.
"exactly!" there was no supposing about uvo. "the wife at some mysterious address in the country—poor soul!"
"where are you going now?"
he had dived under the front windows, muttering to himself as much as to me. i caught him up at the high side gate into the back garden.
"lend me a hand," said delavoye when he had tried the latch.
"you're not going over?"
"that i am, and it'll be your duty to follow. or i could let you through. well—if you won't!"
and in the angle between party-fence and gate he was struggling manfully when i went to his aid as a lesser evil; in a few seconds we were both in the back garden of the empty house, with the gate still bolted behind us.
"now, if it were ours," resumed delavoye when he had taken breath, "i should say the lavatory window was the vulnerable point. lavatory window, please!"
"but, delavoye, look here!"
"i'm looking," said he, and we faced each other in the broad moonlight that flooded the already ragged lawn.
"if you think i'm going to let you break into this house, you're very much mistaken."
i had my back to the windows i meant to hold inviolate. no doubt the moon revealed some resolution in my face and bearing, for i meant what i said until delavoye spoke again.
"oh, very well! if it's coming to brute force i have no more to say. the police will have to do it, that's all. it's their job, when you come to think of it; but it'll be jolly difficult to get them to take it on, whereas you and i——"
and he turned away with a shrug to point his admirable aposiopesis.
"man uvo," i said, catching him by the arm, "what's this job you're jawing about?"
"you know well enough. you're in the whole mystery of these people far deeper than i am. i only want to find the solution."
"and you think you'll find it in their house?"
"i know i should," said uvo with quiet confidence. "but i don't say it'll be a pleasant find. i shouldn't ask you to come in with me, but merely to accept some responsibility afterwards—to-night, if we're spotted. it will probably involve more kudos in the end. but i don't want to let you in for more than you can stand meanwhile, gillon."
that was enough for me. i myself led the way back to the windows, angrily enough until he took my arm, and then suddenly more at one with him than i had ever been before. i had seen his set lips in the moonlight, and felt the uncontrollable tremor of the hand upon my sleeve.
it so happened that it was not necessary to break in after all. i had generally some keys about me and the variety of locks on our back doors was not inexhaustible. it was the scullery door in this case that a happy chance thus enabled me to open. but i was now more determined than delavoye himself, and would have stuck at no burglarious excess to test his prescience, to say nothing of a secret foreboding which had been forming in my own mind.
to one who went from house to house on the estate as i did, and knew by heart the five or six plans on which builder and architect had rung the changes, darkness should have been no hindrance to the unwarrantable exploration i was about to conduct. i knew the way through these kitchens, and found it here without a false or noisy step. but in the hall i had to contend with the furniture which makes one interior as different from another as the houses themselves may be alike. the abercromby royles had as much furniture as the delavoyes, only of a different type. it was not massive and unsuitable, but only too dainty and multifarious, no doubt in accordance with the poor wife's taste. i retained an impression of artful simplicity—an enamelled drain-pipe for the umbrellas—painted tambourines and counterfeit milk-stools—which rather charmed me in those days. but i had certainly forgotten a tall flower-stand outside the kitchen door, and over it went crashing as i set foot in the tessellated hall. i doubt if either of us drew breath for some seconds after the last bit of broken plant-pot lay still upon the tiles. then i rubbed a match on my trousers, but it did not strike. uvo had me by the hand before i could do it again.
"do you want to blow up the house?" he croaked. "can't you smell it for yourself?"
then i realised that the breath which i had just drawn was acrid with escaped gas.
"it's that asbestos stove again!" i exclaimed, recalling my first visit to the house.
"which asbestos stove?"
"it's in the dining-room. it was leaking as far back as june."
"well, we'd better go in there first and open the window. stop a bit!"
the dining-room was just opposite the kitchen, and i was on the threshold when he pulled me back to tie my handkerchief across my nose and mouth. i did the same for delavoye, and thus we crept into the room where i had been induced to drink with royle on the night he went away.
the full moon made smouldering panels of the french window leading into the garden, but little or no light filtered through the long red blind. delavoye went round to it on tip-toe, and i still say it was a natural instinct that kept our voices down and our movements stealthy; that any other empty house, where we had no business at dead of night, would have had the same effect upon us. delavoye speaks differently for himself; and i certainly heard him fumbling unduly for the blind-cord while i went over to the gas-stove. at least i was going when i stumbled against a basket chair, which creaked without yielding to my weight, and creaked again as though some one had stirred in it. i recoiled, panic-stricken, and so stood until the blind flew up. then the silence was sharply broken by a voice that i can still hear but hardly recognise as my own.
it was abercromby royle who was sitting in the moonlight over the escaping stove; and i shall not describe him; but a dead flower still drooped from the lapel of a flannel jacket which the dead man had horribly outgrown.
i drove delavoye before me through the window he had just opened; it was he who insisted on returning, ostensibly to turn off the gas, and i could not let him go alone. but neither could i face the ghastly occupant of the basket chair; and again it was uvo delavoye who was busy disengaging something from the frozen fingers when a loud rat-tat resounded through the house.
it was grim to see how the corpse sat still and let us jump; but uvo was himself before the knock was repeated.
"you go, gillon!" he said. "it's only somebody who's heard or seen us. don't you think we smelt the gas through the letter-box, and wasn't it your duty——"
the second knock cut him short, and i answered it without more ado. the night constable on the beat, who knew me well by sight, was standing on the doorstep like a man, his right hand on his hip till he had blinded me with his lantern. a grunt of relief assured me of his recognition, while his timely arrival was as promptly explained by an insensate volley in a more familiar voice.
"don't raise the road, mr. coysh!" i implored. "the man you want has been here all the time, and dead for the last five days!"
that was a heavy night for me. if coysh could have made it something worse, i think just at first he would; for he had been grossly deceived, and i had unwittingly promoted the deception. but his good sense and heart had brought him to reason before i accompanied the policeman to the station, leaving the other two on guard over a house as hermetically sealed as delavoye and i had found it.
at the police station i was stiffly examined by the superintendent; but the explanations that i now felt justified in giving, at delavoye's instigation, were received without demur and i was permitted to depart in outward peace. inwardly i was not so comfortable, for delavoye had not confined his hints to an excuse for entry, made the more convincing by the evil record of the asbestos stove. we had done some more whispering while the constable was locking up, and the impulsive coysh had lent himself to our final counsels. the upshot was that i said nothing about my own farewell to royle, though i dwelt upon my genuine belief that he had actually gone abroad. and i did say i was convinced that the whole affair had been an accident, due to the same loose gas-stove tap which had caused an escape six weeks before.
that was my only actual lie, and on later consideration i began to wonder whether even it was not the truth. this was in delavoye's sanctum, on the first-floor-back at no. 7, and after midnight; for i had returned to find him in the clutches of excited neighbours, and had waited about till they all deserted him to witness the immediate removal of the remains.
"what is there, after all," i asked, "to show that it really was a suicide? he might have come back for something he'd forgotten, and kicked against the tap by accident, as somebody did in june. why make a point of doing the deed at home?"
"because he didn't want his wife to know."
"but she was bound to know."
"sooner or later, of course; but the later the better from his point of view, and their own shut-up house was the one place where he might not have been found for weeks. and that would have made all the difference—in the circumstances."
"but what do you know about the circumstances, uvo?" i could not help asking a bit grimly; for his air of omniscience always prepared me for some specious creation of his own fancy. but for once i was misled, and i knew it from his altered face before i heard his unnatural voice.
"what do i know?" repeated uvo delavoye. "only that one of the neighbours has just had a wire from mrs. royle's people to say that she's got a son! that's all," he added, seizing a pipe, "but if you think a minute you'll see that it explains every other blessed thing."
and i saw that so it did, as far as the unfortunate royle was concerned; and there was silence between us while i ran through my brief relations with the dead man and delavoye filled his pipe.
"i never took to the fellow," he continued, in a callous tone that almost imposed upon me. "i didn't like his eternal buttonhole, or the hat on one side, or the awful shade of their beastly blinds, or the colour of the good lady's hair for that matter! just the wrong red and yellow, unless you happen to wear blue spectacles; and if you'd ever seen them saying good-bye of a morning you'd have wished you were stone-blind. but if ever i marry—which god forbid—may i play the game by my wife as he has done by his! think of his feelings—with two such things hanging over him—those african accounts on the way as well! is he to throw himself on his old friend's mercy? no; he's too much of a man, or perhaps too big a villain—but i know which i think now. what then? if there's a hue and cry the wife'll be the first to hear it; but if he lays a strong false scent, through an honest chap like you, it may just tide over the days that matter. so it has, in point of fact; but for me, there'd have been days and days to spare. but imagine yourself creeping back into your empty hole to die like a rat, and still thinking of every little thing to prevent your being found!"
"and to keep it from looking like suicide when you were!" said i, with yet a lingering doubt in my mind.
"well, then i say you have the finest suicide ever!" declared uvo delavoye. "i only wish i knew when he began to think it all out. was it before he called you in to see the tap that didn't turn off? or was it the defective tap that suggested the means of death? in either case, when he nailed up his letter-box, it was not, of course, to keep the postman from the door, but to keep the smell of gas inside if he or anybody else did come. that, i think, is fairly plain."
"it's ingenious," i conceded, "whether the idea's your own or royle's."
"it must have been his," said delavoye with conviction. "you don't engineer an elaborate fake and get in one of your best bits by accident. no; there was only one mistake poor royle made, and it was unpremeditated. it was rather touching too. do you remember my trying to get something from his fingers, just when the knock came?"
i took a breath through my teeth.
"i wish i didn't. what was it?"
"a locket with yellow hair in it. and he'd broken the glass, and his thumb was on the hair itself! i don't suppose," added delavoye, "it would have meant to anybody else what it must to you and me, gillon; but i'm not sorry i got it out of his clutches in time."
yet now he could shudder in his turn.
"and to think," i said at last, recalling the secret and forgotten foreboding with which i myself had entered the house of death; "only to think that at the last i was more prepared for murder than suicide! i almost suspected the poor chap of having killed his wife, and shut her up there!"
"did you?" said delavoye, with an untimely touch of superiority. "that never occurred to me."
"but you must have thought something was up?"
"i didn't think. i knew."
"not what had happened?"
"more or less."
"i wish you'd tell me how!"
uvo smiled darkly as he shook his head.
"it's no use telling certain people certain things. you shall see for yourself with your own two eyes." he got up and crossed the room. "you know what i'm up to at the british museum; did i tell you they'd got a fine old last-century plan of the original estate? well, for weeks i've had a man in holborn trying to get me a copy for love or money. he's just succeeded. here it is."
a massive hereditary desk, as mid-victorian as all the delavoye possessions, stood before the open window that looked out into the moonlight; on this desk was a reading gas-lamp, with a smelly rubber tube, of the same maligned period; and there and thus was the plan spread like a tablecloth, pinned down by ash-tray, inkpot, and the lamp itself, and duly overhung by our two young heads. i carry it pretty clearly still in my mind's eye. the estate alone, or rather the whole original property and nothing else, was outlined and filled in, and the rest left as white as age permitted. it was like a map of india upside down. the great house was curiously situated in the apex, but across the road a clump of shrubberies stood for ceylon. our present estate was at the thick end, as delavoye explained, and it was a thrilling moment when he laid his nail upon the turkish pavilion, actually so marked, and we looked out into the moonlit garden and beheld its indubitable site. the tunnel was not marked. but delavoye ran his finger to the left, and stopped on an emblem illegibly inscribed in small faint ancient print.
"it's 'steward's lodge,'" said he as i peered in vain; "you shall have a magnifying glass, if you like, to show there's no deception. but the story i'm afraid you'll have to take on trust for the moment. if you want to see chapter and verse, apply for a reader's ticket and i'll show you both any day at the b.m. i only struck them myself this afternoon, in a hairy tome called 'the mulcaster peerage'—and a whole page of sub-titles. they're from one of the epistles of the dear old sinner himself, written as though other people's money had never melted in his noble fist. i won't spoil it by misquotation. but you'll find that there was once an unjust steward, who robbed the wicked lord of this very vineyard, and then locked himself into his lodge, and committed suicide rather than face the fearful music!"
i did not look at delavoye; but i felt his face glowing like a live coal close to mine.
"this road isn't marked," i said as though i had been simply buried in the plan.
"naturally; it wasn't made. would you like to see where it ran?"
"i shouldn't mind," i said with the same poor quality of indifference.
he took a bit of old picture-rod, which he kept for a ruler on his desk, and ran a pair of parallel lines in blue pencil from west to east. the top line came just under the factor's cottage.
"it's in this very road!" i exclaimed.
"not only that," returned delavoye, "but if you go by the scale, and pace the distance, you'll find that the steward's lodge was on the present site of the house with red blinds!"
and he turned away to fill another pipe, as though finely determined not to crow or glow in my face. but i did not feel myself an object for magnanimity.
"i thought it was only your ignoble kinsman, as you call him," i said, "who was to haunt and influence us all. if it's to be his man-servant, his maid-servant——"
"stop," cried delavoye; "stop in time, my dear man, before you come to one or other of us! can you seriously think it a mere coincidence that a thing like this should happen on the very spot where the very same thing has happened before?"
"i don't see why not."
"i had only the opposite idea to go upon, gilly, and yet i found exactly what i expected to find. was that a fluke?"
"or a coincidence—call it what you like."
"call it what you like," retorted delavoye with great good-humour. "but if the same sort of thing happens again, will it still be a coincidence or a fluke?"
"in my view, always," i replied, hardening my heart for ever.
"that's all right, then," said he with his schoolboy laugh. "you pays your money and you takes your choice."
