He bowed distantly to his wife and nodded familiarly to the police
official.
“Well, Inspector,” he remarked, “you’ve cornered me at last, you see.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” retorted Beedel shortly.
“Oh, come now; you are too modest. My unconvincing alibi that you broke
down. The printed letter so conclusively from my hand. And Grigson--your
irrefutable, steadfast witness from the station here, Inspector. There’s
no getting round Grigson now, you know.”
Beedel rubbed his chin helpfully but made no answer. Things seemed to
have reached a momentary impasse.
“Perhaps we may at least all sit down,” suggested Ellerslie, to break
the silence. “There are rather a lot of us, but I think the chairs will
go round.”
“If I wasn’t just dead tired I would sooner drop than sit down in the
house of a man calling himself a doctor,” declared Miss Julp. Then she
sat down rather heavily. Sharp on the action came a piercing yell, a
deep-wrung “Yag!” of pain and alarm, and the lady was seen bounding to
her feet, to turn and look suspiciously at the place she had just
vacated.
“It was a needle, Cornelia,” said Mrs Severe, who sat next to her. “See,
here it is.”
“Dear me, how unfortunate,” exclaimed Ellerslie, following the action;
“one of my surgical needles. I do hope that it has been properly
sterilised since the last operation.”
“What’s that?” demanded Miss Julp sharply.
“Well,” explained the doctor slowly, “I mean that there is such a thing
as blood-poisoning. At least,” he amended, “for me there is such a thing
as blood-poisoning. For you, fortunately, it does not exist. Any more
than pain does,” he added thoughtfully.
“Do you mean,” demanded Miss Julp with slow precision, “that through
your carelessness, your criminal carelessness, I run any risk of
blood-poisoning?”
“Cornelia!” exclaimed Mrs Severe in pale incredulity.
“Of course not,” retorted the surgeon. “How can you if such a thing does
not exist?”
“I don’t care whether it exists or not----”
“Cornelia!” repeated her faithful disciple in horror.
“Be quiet, Ida. This is my business. It isn’t like an ordinary illness.
I’ve always had a horror of blood-poisoning. I have nightmare about it.
My father died of it. He had to have glass tubes put in his veins, and
the night he died----Oh, I tell you I can’t stand the thought of it.
There’s nothing else I believe in, but blood-poisoning----” She
shuddered. “I tell you, doctor,” she declared with a sudden descent to
the practical, “if I get laid up from this you’ll have to stand the
racket, and pretty considerable damages as well.”
“But at the worst this is a very simple matter,” protested Ellerslie.
“If you will let me dress the place----”
Miss Julp went as red as a swarthy-complexioned lady of forty-five could
be expected to go.
“How can I let you dress the place?” she snapped. “It is----”
“Oh, Cornelia, Cornelia!” exclaimed Mrs Severe reproachfully, through
her disillusioned tears, “would you really be so false to the great
principles which you have taught me?”
“I have a trained nurse here,” suggested the doctor. “She would do it as
well as I could.”
“Are you really going?” demanded Mrs Severe, for there was no doubt that
Miss Julp was going and going with alacrity.
“I don’t abate one iota of my principles, Ida,” she remarked. “But one
has to discriminate. There are natural illnesses and there are unnatural
illnesses. We say with truth that there can be no death, but no one will
deny that Christian Scientists do, as a matter of fact, in the ordinary
sense, die. Perhaps this is rather beyond you yet, dear, but I hope that
some day you will see it in the light of its deeper mystery.”
“Do you?” replied Mrs Severe with cold disdain. “At present I only see
that there is one law of indulgence for yourself and another for your
dupes.”
“After all,” interposed Ellerslie, “this embarrassing discussion need
never have arisen. I now see that the offending implement is only one of
Mrs Glass’s darning needles. How careless of her! You need have no fear,
Miss Julp.”
“Oh, you coward!” exclaimed Miss Julp breathlessly. “You coward! I won’t
stay here a moment longer. I will go home.”
“I won’t detain you,” said Mrs Severe as Cornelia passed her. “Your home
is in Chicago, I believe? Ann will help you to pack.”
Carrados rose and touched Beedel on the arm.
“You and I are not wanted here, Inspector,” he whispered. “The bottom’s
dropped out of the case,” and they slipped away together.
Mrs Severe looked across the room towards her late husband, hesitated
and then slowly walked up to him.
“There is a great deal here that I do not understand,” she said, “but is
not this so, that you were willing to go to prison to shield this man
who has been good to Marie?”
Severe flushed a little. Then he dropped his deliberate reply.
“I am willing to go to hell for this man for his goodness to Marie,” he
said curtly.
“Oh!” exclaimed Mrs Severe with a little cry. “I wish----You never said
that you would go to hell for me!”
The outcast stared. Then a curious look, a twisted smile of tenderness
and half-mocking humour crossed his features.
“My dear,” he responded gravely, “perhaps not. But I often thought it!”
Dr Ellerslie, who had followed out the last two of his departing guests,
looked in at the door.
“Marie is awake, I hear,” he said. “Will you go up now, Mrs Severe?”
With a shy smile the lady held out her hand towards the shabby man.
“You must go with me, Arthur,” she stipulated.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
III
The Secret of Dunstan’s Tower
It was a peculiarity of Mr Carrados that he could drop the most
absorbing occupation of his daily life at a moment’s notice if need be,
apply himself exclusively to the solution of some criminological
problem, possibly a matter of several days, and at the end of the time
return and take up the thread of his private business exactly where he
had left it.
On the morning of the 3rd of September he was dictating to his secretary
a monograph to which he had given the attractive title, “The Portrait of
Alexander the Great, as Jupiter Ammon, on an unedited octadrachm of
Macedonia,” when a telegram was brought in. Greatorex, the secretary,
dealt with such communications as a matter of course, and, taking the
envelope from Parkinson’s salver, he cut it open in the pause between a
couple of sentences.
“This is a private matter of yours, sir,” he remarked, after glancing at
the message. “Handed in at Netherhempsfield, 10.48 A.M. Repeated. One
step higher. Quite baffled. Tulloch.”
“Oh yes; that’s all right,” said Carrados. “No reply, Parkinson. Have
you got down ‘the Roman supremacy’?”
“‘... the type of workmanship that still enshrined the memory of Spartan
influence down to the era of Roman supremacy,’” read the secretary.
“That will do. How are the trains for Netherhempsfield?”
Greatorex put down the notebook and took up an “ABC.”
“Waterloo departure 11----” He cocked an eye towards the desk clock.
“Oh, that’s no good. 12.17, 2.11, 5.9, 7.25.”
“The 5.9 should do,” interposed Carrados. “Arrival?”
“6.48.”
“Now what has the gazeteer to say about the place?”
The yellow railway guide gave place to a weightier volume, and the
secretary read out the following details:
“Netherhempsfield, parish and village, pop. 732, South Downshire. 2728
acres land and 27 water; soil rich loam, occupied as arable, pasture,
orchard and woodland; subsoil various. The church of St Dunstan
(restored 1740) is Saxon and Early English. It possesses an oak roof
with curious grotesque bosses, and contains brasses and other memorials
(earliest 13th century) of the Aynosforde family. In the ‘Swinefield,’
1½ miles south-west of the village, are 15 large stones, known locally
as the Judge and Jury, which constitute the remains of a Druidical
circle and temple. Dunstan’s Tower, a moated residence built in the
baronial style, and probably dating from the 14th century, is the seat
of the Aynosfordes.”
“I can give three days easily,” mused Carrados. “Yes, I’ll go down by
the 5.9.”
“Do I accompany you, sir?” inquired Greatorex.
“Not this time, I think. Have three days off yourself. Just pick up the
correspondence and take things easy. Send on anything to me, care of Dr
Tulloch. If I don’t write, expect me back on Friday.”
“Very well, Mr Carrados. What books shall I put out for Parkinson to
pack?”
“Say ... Gessner’s _Thesaurus_ and--yes, you may as well add Hilarion’s
_Celtic Mythology_.”
Six hours later Carrados was on his way to Netherhempsfield. In his
pocket was the following letter, which may be taken as offering the only
explanation why he should suddenly decide to visit a place of which he
had never even heard until that morning:--
“DEAR MR CARRADOS (‘old Wynn,’ it used to be),--Do you remember a
fellow at St Michael’s who used to own insects and the name of
Tulloch--‘Earwigs,’ they called him? Well, you will find it at the end
of this epistle, if you have the patience to get there. I ran across
Jarvis about six months ago on Euston platform--you’ll recall him by
his red hair and great feet--and we had a rapid and comprehensive
pow-wow. He told me who you were, having heard of you from Lessing,
who seems to be editing a high-class review. He always was a trifle
eccentric, Lessing.
“As for yours t., well, at the moment I’m local demon in a G-f-s
little place that you’d hardly find on anything less than a 4-inch
ordnance. But I won’t altogether say it mightn’t be worse, for there’s
trout in the stream, and after half-a-decade of Cinder Moor, in the
Black Country, a great and holy peace broods on the smiling land.
“But you will guess that I wouldn’t be taking up the time of a busy
man of importance unless I had something to say, and you’d be right.
It may interest you, or it may not, but here it is.
“Living about two miles out of the village, at a sort of mediæval
stronghold known as Dunstan’s Tower, there is an ancient county family
called Aynosforde. And, for the matter of that, they are about all
there is here, for the whole place seems to belong to them, and their
authority runs from the power to charge you twopence if you sell a pig
between Friday night and Monday morning to the right to demand an
exchange of scabbards with the reigning sovereign whenever he comes
within seven bowshot flights of the highest battlement of Dunstan’s
Tower. (I don’t gather that any reigning sovereign ever has come, but
that isn’t the Aynosfordes’ fault.) But, levity apart, these
Aynosfordes, without being particularly rich, or having any title, are
accorded an extraordinary position. I am told that scarcely a living
duchess could hold out against the moral influence old dame Aynosforde
could bring to bear on social matters, and yet she scarcely ever goes
beyond Netherhempsfield now.
“My connection with these high-and-mighties ought to be purely
professional, and so, in a manner, it is, but on the top of it I find
myself drawn into a full-blooded, old haunted house mystery that takes
me clean out of my depth.
“Darrish, the man whose place I’m taking for three months, had a sort
of arrangement that once a week he should go up to the Tower and amuse
old Mrs Aynosforde for a couple of hours under the pretence of feeling
her pulse. I found that I was let in for continuing this. Fortunately
the old dame was quite amiable at close quarters. I have no social
qualifications whatever, and we got on very well together on those
terms. I have heard that she considers me ‘thoroughly responsible.’
“For five or six weeks everything went on swimmingly. I had just
enough to do to keep me from doing nothing. People have a delightful
habit of not being taken ill in the night, and there is a comfortable
cob to trot round on.
“Tuesday is my Dunstan’s Tower day. Last Tuesday I went as usual. I
recall now that the servants about the place seemed rather wild and
the old lady did not keep me quite as long as usual, but these things
were not sufficiently noticeable to make any impression on me at the
time. On Friday a groom rode over with a note from Swarbrick, the
butler. Would I go up that afternoon and see Mrs Aynosforde? He had
taken the liberty of asking me on his own responsibility as he thought
that she ought to be seen. Deuced queer it struck me, but of course I
went.
“Swarbrick was evidently on the look-out. He is a regular family
retainer, taciturn and morose rather than bland. I saw at once that
the old fellow had something on his mind, and I told him that I should
like a word with him. We went into the morning-room.
“‘Now, Swarbrick,’ I said, ‘you sent for me. What is the matter with
your mistress since Tuesday?’
“He looked at me dourly, as though he was still in two minds about
opening his mouth. Then he said slowly:
“‘It isn’t since Tuesday, sir. It was on that morning.’
“‘What was?’ I asked.
“‘The beginning of it, Dr Tulloch. Mrs Aynosforde slipped at the foot
of the stairs on coming down to breakfast.’
“‘She did?’ I said. ‘Well, it couldn’t have been very serious at the
time. She never mentioned it to me.’
“‘No, sir,’ the old monument assented, with an appalling surface of
sublime pride, ‘she would not.’
“‘Why wouldn’t she if she was hurt?’ I demanded. ‘People do mention
these things to their medical men, in strict confidence.’
“‘The circumstances are unusual, sir,’ he replied, without a ruffle of
his imperturbable respect. ‘Mrs Aynosforde was not hurt, sir. She did
not actually fall, but she slipped--on a pool of blood.’
“‘That’s unpleasant,’ I admitted, looking at him sharply, for an owl
could have seen that there was something behind all this. ‘How did it
come there? Whose was it?’
“‘Sir Philip Bellmont’s, sir.’
“I did not know the name. ‘Is he a visitor here?’ I asked.
“‘Not at present, sir. He stayed with us in 1662. He died here, sir,
under rather unpleasant circumstances.’
“There you have it, Wynn. That is the keystone of the whole business.
But if I keep to my conversation with the still reluctant Swarbrick I
shall run out of foolscap and into midnight. Briefly, then, the
‘unpleasant circumstances’ were as follows:--Just about two and a half
centuries ago, when Charles II. was back, and things in England were
rather gay, a certain Sir Philip Bellmont was a guest at Dunstan’s
Tower. There were dice, and there was a lady--probably a dozen, but
the particular one was the Aynosforde’s young wife. One night there
was a flare-up. Bellmont was run through with a rapier, and an ugly
doubt turned on whether the point came out under the shoulder blade,
or went in there. Dripping on to every stair, the unfortunate man was
carried up to his room. He died within a few hours, convinced, from
the circumstances, of treachery all round, and with his last breath he
left an anathema on every male and female Aynosforde as the day of
their death approached. There are fourteen steps in the flight that
Bellmont was carried up, and when the pool appears in the hall some
Aynosforde has just two weeks to live. Each succeeding morning the
stain may be found one stair higher. When it reaches the top there is
a death in the family.
“This was the gist of the story. As far as you and I are concerned, it
is, of course, merely a matter as to what form our scepticism takes,
but my attitude is complicated by the fact that my nominal patient has
become a real one. She is seventy-two and built to be a nonagenarian,
but she has gone to bed with the intention of dying on Tuesday week.
And I firmly believe she will.
“‘How does she know that she is the one?’ I asked. There aren’t many
Aynosfordes, but I knew that there were some others.
“To this Swarbrick maintained a discreet ambiguity. It was not for him
to say, he replied, but I can see that he, like most of the natives
round here, is obsessed with Aynosfordism.
“‘And for that matter,’ I objected, ‘your mistress is scarcely
entitled to the distinction. She will not really be an Aynosforde at
all--only one by marriage.’
“‘No, sir,’ he replied readily, ‘Mrs Aynosforde was also a Miss
Aynosforde, sir--one of the Dorset Aynosfordes. Mr Aynosforde married
his cousin.’
“‘Oh,’ I said, ‘do the Aynosfordes often marry cousins?’
“‘Very frequently, sir. You see, it is difficult otherwise for them to
find eligible partners.’
“Well, I saw the lady, explaining that I had not been altogether
satisfied with her condition on Tuesday. It passed, but I was not able
to allude to the real business. Swarbrick, in his respectful,
cast-iron way, had impressed on me that Sir Philip Bellmont must not
be mentioned, assuring me that even Darrish would not venture to do
so. Mrs Aynosforde was certainly a little feverish, but there was
nothing the matter with her. I left, arranging to call again on the
Sunday.
“When I came to think it over, the first form it took was: Now who is
playing a silly practical joke, or working a deliberate piece of
mischief? But I could not get any further on those lines, because I do
not know enough of the circumstances. Darrish might know, but Darrish
is cruising off Spitzbergen, suffering from a nervous breakdown. The
people here are amiable enough superficially, but they plainly regard
me as an outsider.
“It was then that I thought of you. From what Jarvis had told me I
gathered that you were keen on a mystery for its own sake.
Furthermore, though I understand that you are now something of a dook,
you might not be averse to a quiet week in the country, jogging along
the lanes, smoking a peaceful pipe of an evening and yarning over old
times. But I was not going to lure you down and then have the thing
turn out to be a ridiculous and transparent hoax, no matter how
serious its consequences. I owed it to you to make some reasonable
investigation myself. This I have now done.
“On Sunday when I went there Swarbrick, with a very long face,
reported that on each morning he had found the stain one step higher.
The patient, needless to say, was appreciably worse. When I came down
I had made up my mind.
“‘Look here, Swarbrick,’ I said, ‘there is only one thing for it. I
must sit up here to-night and see what happens.’
“He was very dubious at first, but I believe the fellow is genuine in
his attachment to the house. His final scruple melted when he learned
that I should not require him to sit up with me. I enjoined absolute
secrecy, and this, in a large rambling place like the Tower, is not
difficult to maintain. All the maid-servants had fled. The only people
sleeping within the walls now, beyond those I have mentioned, are two
of Mrs Aynosforde’s grandchildren (a girl and a young man whom I
merely know by sight), the housekeeper and a footman. All these had
retired long before the butler admitted me by an obscure little door,
about half-an-hour after midnight.
“The staircase with which we are concerned goes up from the dining
hall. A much finer, more modern way ascends from the entrance hall.
This earlier one, however, only gives access now to three rooms, a
lovely oak-panelled chamber occupied by my patient and two small
rooms, turned nowadays into a boudoir and a bathroom. When Swarbrick
had left me in an easy-chair, wrapped in a couple of rugs, in a corner
of the dark dining hall, I waited for half-an-hour and then proceeded
to make my own preparations. Moving very quietly, I crept up the
stairs, and at the top drove one drawing-pin into the lintel about a
foot up, another at the same height into the baluster opposite, and
across the stairs fastened a black thread, with a small bell hanging
over the edge. A touch and the bell would ring, whether the thread
broke or not. At the foot of the stairs I made another attachment and
hung another bell.
“‘I think, my unknown friend,’ I said, as I went back to the chair,
‘you are cut off above and below now.’
“I won’t say that I didn’t close my eyes for a minute through the
whole night, but if I did sleep it was only as a watchdog sleeps. A
whisper or a creak of a board would have found me alert. As it was,
however, nothing happened. At six o’clock Swarbrick appeared,
respectfully solicitous about my vigil.
“‘We’ve done it this time, Swarbrick,’ I said in modest elation. ‘Not
the ghost of a ghost has appeared. The spell is broken.’
“He had crossed the hall and was looking rather strangely at the
stairs. With a very queer foreboding I joined him and followed his
glance. By heavens, Wynn, there, on the sixth step up, was a bright
red patch! I am not squeamish; I cleared four steps at a stride, and
stooping down I dipped my finger into the stuff and felt its slippery
viscidity against my thumb. There could be no doubt about it; it was
the genuine thing. In my baffled amazement I looked in every direction
for a possible clue to human agency. Above, more than twenty feet
above, were the massive rafters and boarding of the roof itself. By my
side reared a solid stone wall, and beneath was simply the room we
stood in, for the space below the stairway was not enclosed.
“I pointed to my arrangement of bells.
“‘Nobody has gone up or down, I’ll swear,’ I said a little warmly.
Between ourselves, I felt a bit of an ass for my pains, before the
monumental Swarbrick.
“‘No, sir,’ he agreed. ‘I had a similar experience myself on Saturday
night.’
“‘The deuce you did,’ I exclaimed. ‘Did you sit up then?’
“‘Not exactly, sir,’ he replied, ‘but after making all secure at night
I hung a pair of irreplaceable Dresden china cups in a similar way.
They were both still intact in the morning, sir.’
“Well, there you are. I have nothing more to say on the subject. ‘Hope
not,’ you’ll be muttering. If the thing doesn’t tempt you, say no more
about it. If it does, just wire a time and I’ll be at the station.
Welcome isn’t the word.--Yours as of yore,
“JIM TULLOCH.
“_P.S._--Can put your man up all right.
“J. T.”
Carrados had “wired a time,” and he was seized on the platform by the
awaiting and exuberant Tulloch and guided with elaborate carefulness to
the doctor’s cart, which was, as its temporary owner explained,
“knocking about somewhere in the lane outside.”
“Splendid little horse,” he declared. “Give him a hedge to nibble at and
you can leave him to look after himself for hours. Motors? He laughs at
them, Wynn, merely laughs.”
Parkinson and the luggage found room behind, and the splendid little
horse shook his shaggy head and launched out for home. For a mile the
conversation was a string of, “Do you ever come across Brown now?” “You
know Sugden was killed flying?” “Heard of Marling only last week; he’s
gone on the stage.” “By the way, that appalling ass Sanders married a
girl with a pot of money and runs horses now,” and doubtless it would
have continued in a similar strain to the end of the journey if an
encounter with a farmer’s country trap had not interrupted its tenor.
The lane was very narrow at that point and the driver of the trap drew
into the hedge and stopped to allow the doctor to pass. There was a
mutual greeting, and Tulloch pulled up also when their hubs were clear.
“No more sheep killed, I hope?” he called back.
“No, sir; I can’t complain that we have,” said the driver cheerfully.
“But I do hear that Mr Stone, over at Daneswood, lost one last night.”
“In the same way, do you mean?”
“So I heard. It’s a queer business, doctor.”
“It’s a blackguardly business. It’s a marvel what the fellow thinks he’s
doing.”
“He’ll get nabbed, never fear, sir. He’ll do it once too often.”
“Hope so,” said the doctor. “Good-day.” He shook the reins and turned to
his visitor. “One of our local ‘Farmer Jarges.’ It’s part of the
business to pass the time o’ day with them all and ask after the cow or
the pig, if no other member of the family happens to be on the sick
list.”
“What is the blackguardly business?” asked Carrados.
“Well, that is a bit out of the common, I’ll admit. About a week ago
this man, Bailey, found one of his sheep dead in the field. It had been
deliberately killed--head cut half off. It hadn’t been done for meat,
because none was taken. But, curiously enough, something else had been
taken. The animal had been opened and the heart and intestines were
gone. What do you think of that, Wynn?”
“Revenge, possibly.”