I
I owed it to my colleague Glossop that I was in the centre of the
surprising things that occurred that night. By sheer weight of
boredom, Glossop drove me from the house, so that it came about
that, at half past nine, the time at which the affair began, I was
patrolling the gravel in front of the porch.
It was the practice of the staff of Sanstead House School to
assemble after dinner in Mr Abney's study for coffee. The room was
called the study, but it was really more of a master's common
room. Mr Abney had a smaller sanctum of his own, reserved
exclusively for himself.
On this particular night he went there early, leaving me alone
with Glossop. It is one of the drawbacks of the desert-island
atmosphere of a private school that everybody is always meeting
everybody else. To avoid a man for long is impossible. I had been
avoiding Glossop as long as I could, for I knew that he wanted to
corner me with a view to a heart-to-heart talk on Life Insurance.
These amateur Life Insurance agents are a curious band. The world
is full of them. I have met them at country-houses, at seaside
hotels, on ships, everywhere; and it has always amazed me that
they should find the game worth the candle. What they add to their
incomes I do not know, but it cannot be very much, and the trouble
they have to take is colossal. Nobody loves them, and they must
see it; yet they persevere. Glossop, for instance, had been trying
to buttonhole me every time there was a five minutes' break in the
day's work.
He had his chance now, and he did not mean to waste it. Mr Abney
had scarcely left the room when he began to exude pamphlets and
booklets at every pocket.
I eyed him sourly, as he droned on about 'reactionable endowment',
'surrender-value', and 'interest accumulating on the tontine
policy', and tried, as I did so, to analyse the loathing I felt
for him. I came to the conclusion that it was partly due to his
pose of doing the whole thing from purely altruistic motives,
entirely for my good, and partly because he forced me to face the
fact that I was not always going to be young. In an abstract
fashion I had already realized that I should in time cease to be
thirty, but the way in which Glossop spoke of my sixty-fifth
birthday made me feel as if it was due tomorrow. He was a man with
a manner suggestive of a funeral mute suffering from suppressed
jaundice, and I had never before been so weighed down with a sense
of the inevitability of decay and the remorseless passage of time.
I could feel my hair whitening.
A need for solitude became imperative; and, murmuring something
about thinking it over, I escaped from the room.
Except for my bedroom, whither he was quite capable of following
me, I had no refuge but the grounds. I unbolted the front door and
went out.
It was still freezing, and, though the stars shone, the trees grew
so closely about the house that it was too dark for me to see more
than a few feet in front of me.
I began to stroll up and down. The night was wonderfully still. I
could hear somebody walking up the drive--one of the maids, I
supposed, returning from her evening out. I could even hear a bird
rustling in the ivy on the walls of the stables.
I fell into a train of thought. I think my mind must still have
been under Glossop's gloom-breeding spell, for I was filled with a
sense of the infinite pathos of Life. What was the good of it all?
Why was a man given chances of happiness without the sense to
realize and use them? If Nature had made me so self-satisfied that
I had lost Audrey because of my self-satisfaction why had she not
made me so self-satisfied that I could lose her without a pang?
Audrey! It annoyed me that, whenever I was free for a moment from
active work, my thoughts should keep turning to her. It frightened
me, too. Engaged to Cynthia, I had no right to have such thoughts.
Perhaps it was the mystery which hung about her that kept her in
my mind. I did not know where she was. I did not know how she
fared. I did not know what sort of a man it was whom she had
preferred to me. That, it struck me, was the crux of the matter.
She had vanished absolutely with another man whom I had never seen
and whose very name I did not know. I had been beaten by an unseen
foe.
I was deep in a very slough of despond when suddenly things began
to happen. I might have known that Sanstead House would never
permit solitary brooding on Life for long. It was a place of
incident, not of abstract speculation.
I had reached the end of my 'beat', and had stopped to relight my
pipe, when drama broke loose with the swift unexpectedness which
was characteristic of the place. The stillness of the night was
split by a sound which I could have heard in a gale and recognized
among a hundred conflicting noises. It was a scream, a shrill,
piercing squeal that did not rise to a crescendo, but started at
its maximum and held the note; a squeal which could only proceed
from one throat: the deafening war-cry of the Little Nugget.
I had grown accustomed, since my arrival at Sanstead House, to a
certain quickening of the pace of life, but tonight events
succeeded one another with a rapidity which surprised me. A whole
cinematograph-drama was enacted during the space of time it takes
for a wooden match to burn.
At the moment when the Little Nugget gave tongue, I had just
struck one, and I stood, startled into rigidity, holding it in the
air as if I had decided to constitute myself a sort of limelight
man to the performance.
It cannot have been more than a few seconds later before some
person unknown nearly destroyed me.
I was standing, holding my match and listening to the sounds of
confusion indoors, when this person, rounding the angle of the
house in a desperate hurry, emerged from the bushes and rammed me
squarely.
He was a short man, or he must have crouched as he ran, for his
shoulder--a hard, bony shoulder--was precisely the same distance
from the ground as my solar plexus. In the brief impact which
ensued between the two, the shoulder had the advantage of being in
motion, while the solar plexus was stationary, and there was no
room for any shadow of doubt as to which had the worst of it.
That the mysterious unknown was not unshaken by the encounter was
made clear by a sharp yelp of surprise and pain. He staggered.
What happened to him after that was not a matter of interest to
me. I gather that he escaped into the night. But I was too
occupied with my own affairs to follow his movements.
Of all cures for melancholy introspection a violent blow in the
solar plexus is the most immediate. If Mr Corbett had any abstract
worries that day at Carson City, I fancy they ceased to occupy his
mind from the moment when Mr Fitzsimmons administered that historic
left jab. In my case the cure was instantaneous. I can remember
reeling across the gravel and falling in a heap and trying to
breathe and knowing that I should never again be able to, and
then for some minutes all interest in the affairs of this world
left me.
How long it was before my breath returned, hesitatingly, like some
timid Prodigal Son trying to muster up courage to enter the old
home, I do not know; but it cannot have been many minutes, for the
house was only just beginning to disgorge its occupants as I sat
up. Disconnected cries and questions filled the air. Dim forms
moved about in the darkness.
I had started to struggle to my feet, feeling very sick and
boneless, when it was borne in upon me that the sensations of this
remarkable night were not yet over. As I reached a sitting
position, and paused before adventuring further, to allow a wave
of nausea to pass, a hand was placed on my shoulder and a voice
behind me said, 'Don't move!'
II
I was not in a condition to argue. Beyond a fleeting feeling that
a liberty was being taken with me and that I was being treated
unjustly, I do not remember resenting the command. I had no notion
who the speaker might be, and no curiosity. Breathing just then
had all the glamour of a difficult feat cleverly performed. I
concentrated my whole attention upon it. I was pleased, and
surprised, to find myself getting on so well. I remember having
much the same sensation when I first learned to ride a bicycle--a
kind of dazed feeling that I seemed to be doing it, but Heaven
alone knew how.
A minute or so later, when I had leisure to observe outside
matters, I perceived that among the other actors in the drama
confusion still reigned. There was much scuttering about and much
meaningless shouting. Mr Abney's reedy tenor voice was issuing
directions, each of which reached a dizzier height of futility
than the last. Glossop was repeating over and over again the
words, 'Shall I telephone for the police?' to which nobody
appeared to pay the least attention. One or two boys were darting
about like rabbits and squealing unintelligibly. A female voice--I
think Mrs Attwell's--was saying, 'Can you see him?'
Up to this point, my match, long since extinguished, had been the
only illumination the affair had received; but now somebody, who
proved to be White, the butler, came from the direction of the
stable-yard with a carriage-lamp. Every one seemed calmer and
happier for it. The boys stopped squealing, Mrs Attwell and
Glossop subsided, and Mr Abney said 'Ah!' in a self-satisfied
voice, as if he had directed this move and was congratulating
himself on the success with which it had been carried out.
The whole strength of the company gathered round the light.
'Thank you, White,' said Mr Abney. 'Excellent. I fear the
scoundrel has escaped.'
'I suspect so, sir.'
'This is a very remarkable occurrence, White.'
'Yes, sir.'
'The man was actually in Master Ford's bedroom.'
'Indeed, sir?'
A shrill voice spoke. I recognized it as that of Augustus
Beckford, always to be counted upon to be in the centre of things
gathering information.
'Sir, please, sir, what was up? Who was it, sir? Sir, was it a
burglar, sir? Have you ever met a burglar, sir? My father took me
to see Raffles in the holidays, sir. Do you think this chap was
like Raffles, sir? Sir--'
'It was undoubtedly--' Mr Abney was beginning, when the identity
of the questioner dawned upon him, and for the first time he
realized that the drive was full of boys actively engaged in
catching their deaths of cold. His all-friends-here-let-us-
discuss-this-interesting-episode-fully manner changed. He became
the outraged schoolmaster. Never before had I heard him speak so
sharply to boys, many of whom, though breaking rules, were still
titled.
'What are you boys doing out of bed? Go back to bed instantly. I
shall punish you most severely. I--'
'Shall I telephone for the police?' asked Glossop. Disregarded.
'I will not have this conduct. You will catch cold. This is
disgraceful. Ten bad marks! I shall punish you most severely if
you do not instantly--'
A calm voice interrupted him.
'Say!'
The Little Nugget strolled easily into the circle of light. He was
wearing a dressing-gown, and in his hand was a smouldering
cigarette, from which he proceeded, before continuing his remarks,
to blow a cloud of smoke.
'Say, I guess you're wrong. That wasn't any ordinary porch-climber.'
The spectacle of his _bete noire_ wreathed in smoke, coming
on top of the emotions of the night, was almost too much for Mr
Abney. He gesticulated for a moment in impassioned silence, his
arms throwing grotesque shadows on the gravel.
'How _dare_ you smoke, boy! How _dare_ you smoke that cigarette!'
'It's the only one I've got,' responded the Little Nugget amiably.
'I have spoken to you--I have warned you--Ten bad marks!--I will
not have--Fifteen bad marks!'
The Little Nugget ignored the painful scene. He was smiling
quietly.
'If you ask _me_,' he said, 'that guy was after something better
than plated spoons. Yes, sir! If you want my opinion, it was Buck
MacGinnis, or Chicago Ed., or one of those guys, and what he was
trailing was me. They're always at it. Buck had a try for me in the
fall of '07, and Ed.--'
'Do you hear me? Will you return instantly--'
'If you don't believe me I can show you the piece there was about
it in the papers. I've got a press-clipping album in my box.
Whenever there's a piece about me in the papers, I cut it out and
paste it into my album. If you'll come right along, I'll show you
the story about Buck now. It happened in Chicago, and he'd have
got away with me if it hadn't been--'
'Twenty bad marks!'
'Mr Abney!'
It was the person standing behind me who spoke. Till now he or she
had remained a silent spectator, waiting, I suppose, for a lull in
the conversation.
They jumped, all together, like a well-trained chorus.
'Who is that?' cried Mr Abney. I could tell by the sound of his
voice that his nerves were on wires. 'Who was that who spoke?'
'Shall I telephone for the police?' asked Glossop. Ignored.
'I am Mrs Sheridan, Mr Abney. You were expecting me to-night.'
'Mrs Sheridan? Mrs Sher--I expected you in a cab. I expected you
in--ah--in fact, a cab.'
'I walked.'
I had a curious sensation of having heard the voice before. When
she had told me not to move, she had spoken in a whisper--or, to
me, in my dazed state, it had sounded like a whisper--but now she
was raising her voice, and there was a note in it that seemed
familiar. It stirred some chord in my memory, and I waited to hear
it again.
When it came it brought the same sensation, but nothing more
definite. It left me groping for the clue.
'Here is one of the men, Mr Abney.'
There was a profound sensation. Boys who had ceased to squeal,
squealed with fresh vigour. Glossop made his suggestion about the
telephone with a new ring of hope in his voice. Mrs Attwell
shrieked. They made for us in a body, boys and all, White leading
with the lantern. I was almost sorry for being compelled to
provide an anticlimax.
Augustus Beckford was the first to recognize me, and I expect he
was about to ask me if I liked sitting on the gravel on a frosty
night, or what gravel was made of, when Mr Abney spoke.
'Mr Burns! What--dear me!--_what_ are you doing there?'
'Perhaps Mr Burns can give us some information as to where the man
went, sir,' suggested White.
'On everything except that,' I said, 'I'm a mine of information. I
haven't the least idea where he went. All I know about him is that
he has a shoulder like the ram of a battleship, and that he
charged me with it.'
As I was speaking, I thought I heard a little gasp behind me. I
turned. I wanted to see this woman who stirred my memory with her
voice. But the rays of the lantern did not fall on her, and she
was a shapeless blur in the darkness. Somehow I felt that she was
looking intently at me.
I resumed my narrative.
'I was lighting my pipe when I heard a scream--' A chuckle came
from the group behind the lantern.
'I screamed,' said the Little Nugget. 'You bet I screamed! What
would _you_ do if you woke up in the dark and found a strong-armed
roughneck prising you out of bed as if you were a clam? He tried to
get his hand over my mouth, but he only connected with my forehead,
and I'd got going before he could switch. I guess I threw a scare
into that gink!'
He chuckled again, reminiscently, and drew at his cigarette.
'How dare you smoke! Throw away that cigarette!' cried Mr Abney,
roused afresh by the red glow.
'Forget it!' advised the Little Nugget tersely.
'And then,' I said, 'somebody whizzed out from nowhere and hit me.
And after that I didn't seem to care much about him or anything
else.' I spoke in the direction of my captor. She was still
standing outside the circle of light. 'I expect you can tell us
what happened, Mrs Sheridan?'
I did not think that her information was likely to be of any
practical use, but I wanted to make her speak again.
Her first words were enough. I wondered how I could ever have been
in doubt. I knew the voice now. It was one which I had not heard
for five years, but one which I could never forget if I lived for
ever.
'Somebody ran past me.' I hardly heard her. My heart was pounding,
and a curious dizziness had come over me. I was grappling with the
incredible. 'I think he went into the bushes.'
I heard Glossop speak, and gathered from Mr Abney's reply; that he
had made his suggestion about the telephone once more.
'I think that will be--ah--unnecessary, Mr Glossop. The man has
undoubtedly--ah--made good his escape. I think we had all better
return to the house.' He turned to the dim figure beside me. 'Ah,
Mrs Sheridan, you must be tired after your journey and the--ah unusual
excitement. Mrs Attwell will show you where you--in fact, your room.'
In the general movement White must have raised the lamp or stepped
forward, for the rays shifted. The figure beside me was no longer
dim, but stood out sharp and clear in the yellow light.
I was aware of two large eyes looking into mine as, in the grey
London morning two weeks before, they had looked from a faded
photograph.