THE MUTE SERVITOR.
Meanwhile the man who, to all appearance, had just re-enacted before
them the tragedy which had so lately taken place in this room, rose to
his feet, and, with a dazed air as unlike his former violent expression
as possible, stooped for the glass he had let fall, and was carrying it
out when Mr. Gryce called to him:
"Wait, man! You needn't take that glass away. We first want to hear how
your master comes to be lying here dead."
It was a demand calculated to startle any man. But this one showed
himself totally unmoved by it, and was passing on when Styles laid a
detaining hand on his shoulder.
"Stop!" said he. "What do you mean by sliding off like this? Don't you
hear the gentleman speaking to you?"
This time the appeal told. The glass fell again from the man's hand,
mingling its clink (for it struck the floor this time and broke) with
the cry he gave--which was not exactly a cry either, but an odd sound
between a moan and a shriek. He had caught sight of the men who were
seeking to detain him, and his haggard look and cringing form showed
that he realized at last the terrors of his position. Next minute he
sought to escape, but Styles, gripping him more firmly, dragged him back
to where Mr. Gryce stood beside the bearskin rug on which lay the form
of his dead master.
Instantly, at the sight of this recumbent figure, another change took
place in the entrapped butler. Joy--that most hellish of passions in the
presence of violence and death--illumined his wandering eye and
distorted his mouth; and, seeking no disguise for the satisfaction he
felt, he uttered a low but thrilling laugh, which rang in unholy echo
through the room.
Mr. Gryce, moved in spite of himself by an abhorrence which the
irresponsible condition of this man seemed only to emphasize, waited
till the last faint sounds of this diabolical mirth had died away in the
high recesses of the space above. Then, fixing the glittering eye of
this strange creature with his own, which, as we know, so seldom dwelt
upon that of his fellow-beings, he sternly said:
"There now! Speak! Who killed this man? You were in the house with him,
and should know."
The butler's lips opened and a string of strange gutturals poured forth,
while with his one disengaged hand (for the other was held to his side
by Styles) he touched his ears and his lips, and violently shook his
head.
There was but one interpretation to be given to this. The man was deaf
and dumb.
The shock of this discovery was too much for Styles. His hand fell from
the other's arms, and the man, finding himself free, withdrew to his
former place in the room, where he proceeded to enact again and with
increased vivacity first the killing of and then the mourning for his
master, which but a few moments before had made so suggestive an
impression upon them. This done, he stood waiting, but this time with
that gleam of infernal joy in the depths of his quick, restless eyes
which made his very presence in this room of death seem a sacrilege and
horror.
Styles could not stand it. "Can't you speak?" he shouted. "Can't you
hear?"
The man only smiled, an evil and gloating smile, which Mr. Gryce thought
it his duty to cut short.
"Take him away!" he cried. "Examine him carefully for blood marks. I am
going up to the room where you saw him first. He is too nearly linked to
this crime not to carry some trace of it away with him."
But for once even this time-tried detective found himself at fault. No
marks were found on the old servant, nor could they discover in the
rooms above any signs by which this one remaining occupant of the house
could be directly associated with the crime which had taken place within
it. Thereupon Mr. Gryce grew very thoughtful and entered upon another
examination of the two rooms which to his mind held all the clews that
would ever be given to this strange crime.
The result was meagre, and he was just losing himself again in
contemplation of the upturned face, whose fixed mouth and haunting
expression told such a story of suffering and determination, when there
came from the dim recesses above his head a cry, which, forming itself
into two words, rang down with startling clearness in this most
unexpected of appeals:
"Remember Evelyn!"
Remember Evelyn! Who was Evelyn? And to whom did this voice belong, in a
house which had already been ransacked in vain for other occupants? It
seemed to come from the roof, and, sure enough, when Mr. Gryce looked up
he saw, swinging in a cage strung up nearly to the top of one of the
windows I have mentioned, an English starling, which, in seeming
recognition of the attention it had drawn upon itself, craned its neck
as Mr. Gryce looked up, and shrieked again, with fiercer insistence than
before:
"Remember Evelyn!"
It was the last uncanny touch in a series of uncanny experiences. With
an odd sense of nightmare upon him, Mr. Gryce leaned forward on the
study table in his effort to obtain a better view of this bird, when,
without warning, the white light, which since his last contact with the
electrical apparatus had spread itself through the room, changed again
to green, and he realized that he had unintentionally pressed a button
and thus brought into action another slide in the curious lamp over his
head.
Annoyed, for these changing hues offered a problem he was as yet too
absorbed in other matters to make any attempt to solve, he left the
vicinity of the table, and was about to leave the room when he heard
Styles's voice rise from the adjoining antechamber, where Styles was
keeping guard over the old butler:
"Shall I let him go, Mr. Gryce? He seems very uneasy; not dangerous, you
know, but anxious; as if he had forgotten something or recalled some
unfulfilled duty."
"Yes, let him go," was the detective's quick reply. "Only watch and
follow him. Every movement he makes is of interest. Unconsciously he may
be giving us invaluable clews." And he approached the door to note for
himself what the man might do.
"Remember Evelyn!" rang out the startling cry from above, as the
detective passed between the curtains. Irresistibly he looked back and
up. To whom was this appeal from a bird's throat so imperatively
addressed? To him or to the man on the floor beneath, whose ears were
forever closed? It might be a matter of little consequence, and it might
be one involving the very secret of this tragedy. But whether important
or not, he could pay no heed to it at this juncture, for the old butler,
coming from the front hall whither he had hurried on being released by
Styles, was at that moment approaching him, carrying in one hand his
master's hat and in the other his master's umbrella.
Not knowing what this new movement might mean, Mr. Gryce paused where he
was and waited for the man to advance. Seeing this, the mute, to whose
face and bearing had returned the respectful immobility of the trained
servant, handed over the articles he had brought, and then noiselessly,
and with the air of one who had performed an expected service, retreated
to his old place in the antechamber, where he sat down again and fell
almost immediately into his former dazed condition.
"Humph! mind quite lost, memory uncertain, testimony valueless," were
the dissatisfied reflections of the disappointed detective as he
replaced Mr. Adams's hat and umbrella on the hall rack. "Has he been
brought to this state by the tragedy which has just taken place here, or
is his present insane condition its precursor and cause?" Mr. Gryce
might have found some answer to this question in his own mind if, at
that moment, the fitful clanging of the front door bell, which had
hitherto testified to the impatience of the curious crowd outside, had
not been broken into by an authoritative knock which at once put an end
to all self-communing.
The coroner, or some equally important person, was at hand, and the
detective's golden hour was over.