Yes--stone dead. There could be no possible mistake about it. Mervyn
touched the face. It was icy cold. But how on earth could this have
befallen? The man had seemed as well as any one could be when he had
bidden him good-night and retired to his own room. Certainly he had
appeared none the worse for his immersion. Quite himself after his
hearty supper and generous liquid refreshment, he had sat and chatted
and smoked in the enjoyment of perfect comfort for an hour or so. The
room was still warm, the ashes of the glowing fire not yet dead in the
grate. Heavens, what a thing to happen! Well, it had happened, and the
next thing was to send Joe with the pony and cart into Clancehurst--
incidentally five miles distant--for a doctor.
To that end he moved towards the door. But before he reached it
something caused him to turn. Ever so faint a sound had fallen upon his
ear. Something had fallen--had fallen from the couch where the dead man
lay--had fallen with ever so faint a clink. It lay on the ground--a
small object--and it shone. He picked it up--and then as he stood there
in the winter sunlight holding it in his fingers, John Seward Mervyn
felt the hair upon him rise, and his flesh creep, and his face grow
rather more ghastly and livid than that of the dead man lying there.
For one dazed moment he stood gazing at the thing, then went over to the
mantelpiece and dropped it into one of the queer old vases of quaint
ware that stood thereon.
"Good God!" he ejaculated. "That--and now!"
Outside he could hear the movements of his old retainer. The latter had
come into the kitchen, which adjoined this room, and could be heard
fussing about and grumbling in very audible tones.
"Why, what be it, Mus' Mervyn?" he exclaimed, startled at the perturbed
apparition presented by his master. "Look as if you'd seed a ghoast,
sure-ly."
"Well, I've seen the next thing to it, and that's a dead man," was the
answer; and even amid his own perturbation, the speaker's sense of
humour could not resist watching the effect the announcement was bound
to have upon his ancient servitor. But upon the mind of the stolid
countryman the statement had just no effect at all.
"Thass better," came the almost unconcerned reply. "We'm all bound to
die come the day; but them things what goes a-creepin' about at night,
and what you can't always see, like in this 'ere 'ouse some nights--why
they're a deal wuss. And--who's the dead 'un, sir?"
"Why the stranger I pulled out of the pond last night. I left him
comfortably tucked up on the couch in the room there, and now this
morning he's as dead as a stone."
"Talking o' he," said the countryman, whom the tragical side seemed to
impress not in the least. "I bin over to th' ice to get that ladder
out, but it's that hard froze in, and that heavy I can't move it.
You'll have to lend a hand, Muster."
"And a devilish good thing you can't move it, Joe. Why don't you see,
lying just where it was it'll furnish a very important item of
evidence."
Now old Joe's stolidity did undergo a shock. That last word conveyed an
unpleasant suggestiveness of the atmosphere of courts, and of the
atmosphere of courts the rustic mind stands in holy terror.
"There'll be an inquess then, a crowner's inquess?" he said, with sudden
awe. "Lor sakes, Mus' Mervyn they can't bring in as _we_ had to do with
it?"
"Of course not, you old juggins. But don't you see--the first thing
they'll ask was how he got here and where he came from, and all that.
Well, the position of the ladder--left exactly where it was, you
understand--will confirm my explanation as to how he got here. So it's
devilish important that it should be left there. Now, do you see?"
Joe did see--and saw something else, or thought he did. For now his
little rustic cunning suggested to his little rustic mind that his
master seemed rather over anxious to supply material for explanation.
"Well, _I_ didn't see the gemmun," he answered, with a note of sulkiness
underlying his tone. "You'll mind I said so, Mus' Mervyn. I didn't see
he."
"No, but you've got to now, so come along and look at him. After that
you must hitch up the pony and cart, and get along to Clancehurst, and
tell Dr Sandys and the Police Inspector to come along here at once.
And--look. There are the strange gentleman's clothes, hanging up on
that clothes-horse to dry. I didn't change mine--wasn't wet enough."
The clothes were hung in front of the kitchen fire now roaring and
crackling merrily. Joe eyed them with surly disgust. He was becoming
more and more imbued with a horrid suspicion that he would be involved
in a charge of murdering the stranger--whom as yet he had not even
seen--and in the result, duly hanged in Clancehurst gaol; incidentally
that edifice was not of sufficient county importance to be used for
capital executions, but of this, of course, he was ignorant.
"Well, come along," said his master, turning. But Joe didn't move.
"Beggin' pardon, sur," he said, "but I'd rather not. I said I didn't
see he, and I don't want to now."
"Oh, that's it is it? Well you'd better. They'll be asking all sorts
of questions--and we are the only two people in the house. You'll have
to give evidence in any case, and you'll do it all the better for having
seen all there is to be seen. So, don't be a fool. I only want you to
see just how the man was when I found him. Of course he won't be
touched or moved or anything until the doctor comes."
The old man gave way, although reluctantly, and followed his master into
the chamber of death.
"Who be he, sur, do you know?" he asked in lowered voice, as he stood
gazing, awed, upon the still features. "'E be a middlin' likely sort of
gent, for sure."
"I know just as much about him as you do, Joe. As I told you this
morning--I never ask people about themselves, and he didn't tell me
anything. No doubt he would have done so this morning, poor chap, but--
there he is. Well, get away now and fetch the doctor and the police,
and the sooner we get all the bother over and done with the better."
Mervyn went out, and superintended the harnessing of the pony, and saw
his old retainer start. It would take the latter well over the hour to
jog along the hilly road, between Heath Hover and Clancehurst.
"Straight on and straight back, Joe," was his parting injunction. "You
don't want to wet your whistle at any pubs this journey you know. The
business is too important. And keep your tongue in your head about it,
too. The only people you've got to wag it to are the doctor and the
inspector. To any one else might make things unpleasant to you. See?"
Having, as he thought, effectually frightened his ancient servitor into
discretion, and duly seen him start, Mervyn went back to the house, but
did not enter. Instead, he took his way up to the sluice and stood
gazing out over the ice-bound pond. There was nothing to be done until
the representatives of medicine and the law should arrive, and meanwhile
he felt a sort of disinclination to enter the house. But for its rather
thick coating of snow he would have put on his skates and amused himself
upon the said ice, cutting a few figures. Then he remembered he had had
no breakfast, and suddenly felt the want of it.
Accordingly he descended the path, and entering began to get out the
requisite materials. He was accustomed largely to doing for himself, so
in a trice he had brewed his tea in the kitchen and got out other things
needed. But some of the said other things were in the living-room, left
there from the night before. He did not care to breakfast there with
the dead man lying on the couch in the same room.
The latter seemed unusually, supernaturally still. He glanced at the
couch. It was just as he had left it. There was nothing particularly
repellant in the dead man's aspect. On the whole it was rather
peaceful--still, he preferred to have his breakfast somewhere else. And
then, while collecting what he required, his thoughts went again to the
thing he had deposited within the vase on the mantelpiece.
This he now extracted. Had there been any one to witness the process,
they would have seen that it was effected with extraordinary care. For
instance, he did not touch the object, he turned it out upon the table,
and when he moved it at all it was with a bit of stick which he took
from the remains of what had been used to make the fire with. Yet it
was a harmless looking thing enough--a small, shining disk not more than
an inch and a half in diameter, and it had five points like those of a
star.
What an extraordinary thing was that which had happened, he said to
himself. The omen of the door handle and the open door; and
involuntarily now he glanced at the latter. But it was fast shut, and
the handle at its usual angle. It had been the means of saving the
stranger's life--for what a very short time, as events had proved--and
he remembered how he had marvelled that contrary to all report the
manifestation had been effected in bringing any _good_ to anybody. Well
the "good" had not been effectual enough to last, so that far the
grimness of the tradition did not belie itself. It was indeed
extraordinary, and here in the broad daylight he could afford to
contemplate it from a purely speculative point of view. Yet as he
looked more and more at the little disk a good deal of an uneasy
fascination was upon him, and well it might be--none knew this better
than himself.
Then he did a strange thing. He went out of the room, returning
immediately wearing a thick pair of fur-lined gloves. He took up the
trinket, even then holding it gingerly. He looked round for something
to wrap it in, then thought better of it. He rose, and carried the
thing out, holding it behind him, and ascended again to the sluice.
There was a small hole in the ice, where the overflow ran out over an
iron door. That would do. No, it would not. He paused--just in time,
as he realised he had been on the point of making a most fatal mistake.
He looked around, not furtively, not pointedly, just casually. Not a
soul was in sight, but he knew, none better, that it does not follow
that because you cannot see a soul therefore not a soul can see you. A
cloud of blue titmice was twittering in a leafless alder, glancing from
twig to twig. Overhead a little red kestrel was hovering against the
cloudless blue of the dazzling winter sky, and two squirrels gambolled
and chirked among the feathering boughs of a dark yew tree which still
had a few berries left. Blackbirds clucked and flickered over the ice
surface. All Nature was joyous and at peace this bracing, invigorating
winter morning, and within the room down yonder the dead man lay.
Mervyn turned to regain the house. The little black kitten, its bushy
tail erect, came bounding up the path stairway to meet him, but he did
not take it up, as it rubbed against his legs, purring a greeting.
Halfway down the earth stairway a large stone lay, partly embedded in
the soil. Mervyn bent down as though to tie up his bootlace. When he
rose again that stone was the custodian of something. It was the
tombstone of the strange small disk he had held in his hand.
Mervyn went into the kitchen, where he had left his breakfast all ready;
and then he did another strange thing. He took off the big fur gloves
he had been wearing, and put both well to the back of the red, roaring,
kitchen fire. In an instant they were absorbed in the furnace-like
heat. Then he sat down to his breakfast, but, in view of the
proceedings just detailed he thought he could in a degree estimate the
sensations of a murderer, who has carefully and effectually--as he
thinks--disposed of every item of evidence.