THE MARKS OF THE BEAST
“ON the contrary, it is not the room,” said Michael quietly. “The room
is at the end of the passage.”
The man hesitated.
“Can’t you believe me?” he asked in an almost affable tone of voice.
“What a sceptical chap you are! Now come, Brixan! I don’t want to be bad
friends with you. Let’s go down and have a drink and forget our past
animosities. I’m feeling rotten——”
“I want to see that room,” said Michael.
“I haven’t the key.”
“Then get it,” said Michael sharply.
Eventually the baronet found a pass-key in his pocket, and, with every
sign of reluctance, he opened the door.
“She went away in a bit of a hurry,” he said. “She was taken so ill that
I had to get rid of her.”
“If she left here because she was ill she went into an institution of
some kind, the name of which you will be able to give me,” said Michael,
as he turned on the light.
One glance at the room told him that the story of her hasty departure
may have been accurate. But that the circumstances were normal, the
appearance of the room denied. The bed was in confusion; there was blood
on the pillow, and a dark brown stain on the wall. A chair was broken;
the carpet had odd and curious stains, one like the print of a bare
foot. On a sheet was an indubitable hand-print, but such a hand as no
human being had ever possessed.
“The mark of the beast,” said Michael, pointing. “That’s Bhag!”
Again the baronet licked his lips.
“There was a bit of a fight here,” he said. “The man came up and
pretended to identify the servant as his wife——”
“What happened to him?”
There was no reply.
“What happened to him?” asked Michael with ominous patience.
“I let him go, and let him take the woman with him. It was easier——”
With a sudden exclamation, Michael stooped and picked up from behind the
bed a bright steel object. It was the half of a sword, snapped clean in
the middle, and unstained. He looked along the blade, and presently
found the slightest indent. Picking up the chair, he examined the leg
and found two deeper dents in one of the legs.
“I’ll reconstruct the scene. You and your Bhag caught the man after he
had got into this room. The chair was broken in the struggle, probably
by Bhag, who used the chair. The man escaped from the room, ran
downstairs into the library and got the sword from the wall, then came
up after you. That’s when the real fighting started. I guess some of
this blood is yours, Penne.”
“Some of it!” snarled the other. “All of it, damn him!”
There was a long silence.
“Did the woman leave this room—alive?”
“I believe so,” said the other sullenly.
“Did her husband leave your library—alive?”
“You’d better find that out. So far as I know—I was unconscious for
half an hour. Bhag can use a sword——”
Michael did not leave the house till he had searched it from attic to
basement. He had every servant assembled and began his interrogation.
Each of them except one spoke Dutch, but none spoke the language to such
purpose that they made him any wiser than he had been.
Going back to the library, he put on all the lights.
“I’ll see Bhag,” he said.
“He’s out, I tell you. If you don’t believe me——” Penne went to the
desk and turned the switch. The door opened and nothing came out.
A moment’s hesitation and Michael had penetrated into the den, a
revolver in one hand, his lamp in another. The two rooms were
scrupulously clean, though a strange animal smell pervaded everything.
There was a small bed, with sheets and blankets and feather pillow,
where the beast slept; a small larder, full of nuts; a running water tap
(he found afterwards that, in spite of his cleverness, Bhag was
incapable of turning on or off a faucet); a deep, well-worn settee,
where the dumb servitor took his rest; and three cricket balls, which
were apparently the playthings of this hideous animal.
Bhag’s method of entering and leaving the house was now apparent. His
exit was a square opening in the wall, with neither window nor curtain,
which was situated about seven feet from the ground; and two projecting
steel rungs, set at intervals between the window and the floor, made a
sort of ladder. Michael found corresponding rungs on the garden side of
the wall.
There was no sign of blood, no evidence that Bhag had taken any part in
the terrible scene which must have been enacted the night before.
Going back to the library, he made a diligent search, but found nothing
until he went into the little drawing-room where he had hidden the night
before. Here on the window-sill he found traces enough. The mark of a
bare foot, and another which suggested that a heavy body had been
dragged through the window.
By this time his chauffeur, who, after dropping him at Griff Towers,
went on to Chichester, had returned with the two police officers, and
they assisted him in a further search of the grounds. The trail of the
fugitive was easy to follow: there were bloodstains across the gravel,
broken plants in a circular flower-bed, the soft loam of which had
received the impression of those small bare feet. In the vegetable field
the trail was lost.
“The question is, who carried whom?” said Inspector Lyle, after Michael,
in a few words, had told him all that he had learnt at the Towers. “It
looks to me as if these people were killed in the house and their bodies
carried away by Bhag. There’s no trace of blood in his room, which means
no more than that in all probability he hasn’t been there since the
killing,” said Inspector Lyle. “If we find the monkey we’ll solve this
little mystery. Penne is the Head-Hunter, of course,” the Inspector went
on. “I had a talk with him the other day, and there’s something
fanatical about the man.”
“I am not so sure,” said Michael slowly, “that you’re right. Perhaps my
ideas are just a little bizarre; but if Sir Gregory Penne is the actual
murderer, I shall be a very surprised man. I admit,” he confessed, “that
the absence of any footprints in Bhag’s quarters staggered me, and
probably your theory is correct. There is nothing to be done but to keep
the house under observation until I communicate with headquarters.”
At this moment the second detective, who had been searching the field to
its farthermost boundary, came back to say that he had picked up the
trail again near the postern gate, which was open. They hurried across
the field and found proof of his discovery. There was a trail both
inside and outside the gate. Near the postern was a big heap of leaves,
which had been left by the gardener to rot, and on this they found the
impression of a body, as though whoever was the carrier had put his
burden down for a little while to rest. In the field beyond the gate,
however, the trail was definitely lost.