I
Mr. Twiss was a great walker, and it was his habit, after his day's
work was done, to walk from his pleasant office in the Adelphi to his
home at Hampstead. On an afternoon he was detained to a later hour
than usual by one of his clients, a Captain Brayton, over some matter
of a mortgage. Mr. Twiss looked at his office clock.
"You are going west, I suppose?" he said. "I wonder if you would walk
with me as far as Piccadilly? It will not be very much out of your
way, and I have a reason for wishing your company."
"By all means," replied Captain Brayton, and the two men set forth.
Mr. Twiss, however, seemed in a difficulty as to how he should broach
his subject, and for a while the pair walked in silence. They, indeed,
reached Pall Mall, and were walking down that broad thoroughfare,
before a word of any importance was uttered. And even then it was
chance which furnished the occasion. A young man of Captain Brayton's
age came down from the steps of a club and walked towards them. As he
passed beneath a street lamp, Mr. Twiss noticed his face, and ever so
slightly started with surprise. At almost the same moment, the young
man swerved across the road at a run, as though suddenly he remembered
a very pressing appointment. The two men walked on again for a few
paces, and then Captain Brayton observed: "There is a screw loose
there, I am afraid."
Mr. Twiss shook his head.
"I am sorry to hear you say so," he replied. "It was, indeed, about
Archie Cranfield that I was anxious to speak to you. I promised his
father that I would be something more than Archie's mere man of
affairs, if I were allowed, and I confess that I am troubled by him.
You know him well?"
Captain Brayton nodded his head.
"Perhaps I should say that I did know him well," he returned. "We were
at the same school, we passed through Chatham together, but since he
has relinquished actual service we have seen very little of one
another." Here he hesitated, but eventually made up his mind to
continue in a guarded fashion. "Also, I am bound to admit that there
has been cause for disagreement. We quarrelled."
Mr. Twiss was disappointed. "Then you can tell me nothing of him
recently?" he asked, and Captain Brayton shrugged his shoulders.
"Nothing but what all the little world of his acquaintances already
knows. He has grown solitary, forbidding in his manner, and, what is
most noticeable, sly--extraordinarily sly. While he is speaking with
you, he will smile at some secret thought of his; the affairs of the
world have lost their interest for him; he hardly listens and seldom
speaks. He is concerned with some private matter, and he hides it
cunningly. That is the character, at all events, which his friends
give of him."
They had now reached the corner of St. James's Street, and as they
turned up the hill, Mr. Twiss took up the tale.
"I am not surprised at what you tell me. It is a great pity, for we
both remember him ambitious and a good soldier. I am inclined to blame
the house in the country for the change in him."
Captain Brayton, however, did not agree.
"It goes deeper than that," he said. "Men who live alone in the
country may show furtive ways in towns, no doubt. But why does he live
alone in the country? No, that will not do"; and at the top of St.
James's Street the two men parted.
Mr. Twiss walked up Bond Street, and the memory of that house in the
country in which Archie Cranfield chose to bury himself kept him
company. Mr. Twiss had travelled down into the eastern counties to see
it for himself one Saturday afternoon when Cranfield was away from
home, and a walk of six miles from the station had taken him to its
door. It stood upon the borders of Essex and Suffolk, a small
Elizabethan house backed upon the Stour, a place of black beams and
low ceilings and great fireplaces. It had been buttressed behind,
where the ground ran down to the river-bank, and hardly a window was
on a level with its neighbour. A picturesque place enough, but Mr.
Twiss was a lover of towns and of paved footways and illuminated
streets. He imagined it on such an evening as this, dark, and the rain
dripping cheerlessly from the trees. He imagined its inmate crouching
over the fire with his sly smile upon his face, and of a sudden the
picture took on a sinister look, and a strong sense of discomfort made
Mr. Twiss cast an uneasy glance behind him. He had in his pocket a
letter of instructions from Archie Cranfield, bidding him buy the
house outright with its furniture, since it had now all come into the
market.
It was a week after this when next Captain Brayton came to Mr. Twiss's
office, and, their business done, he spoke of his own accord of Archie
Cranfield.
"I am going to stay with him," he said. "He wrote to me on the night
of the day when we passed him in Pall Mall. He told me that he would
make up a small bachelor party. I am very glad, for, to tell the
truth, our quarrel was a sufficiently serious one, and here, it seems,
is the end to it."
Mr. Twiss was delighted, and shook his client warmly by the hand.
"You shall bring me news of Archie Cranfield," he said--"better news
than I have," he added, with a sudden gravity upon his face. For in
making the arrangements for the purchase of the house, he had come
into contact with various neighbours of Archie Cranfield, and from all
of them he had had but one report. Cranfield had a bad name in those
parts. There were no particular facts given to account for his
reputation. It was all elusive and vague, an impression conveyed by
Archie Cranfield himself, by something strange and sly in his
demeanour. He would sit chuckling in a sort of triumph, to which no
one had the clue, or, on the other hand, he fell into deep silences
like a man with a trouble on his mind.
"Be sure you come to see me when you return," said Mr. Twiss, and
Captain Brayton replied heartily: "Surely I will." But he never did.
For in a few days the newspapers were busy with the strange enigma of
his death.