"You won't go?" Archie Cranfield pleaded with Mr. Twiss. "Linfield and
Chalmers leave to-day. If you go too, I shall be entirely alone."
"But why should you stay?" the lawyer returned.
"Surely you hardly propose to remain through the winter in this
house?"
"No, but I must stay on for a few days; I have to make arrangements
before I can go," said Cranfield; and seeing that he was in earnest in
his intention to go, Mr. Twiss was persuaded. He stayed on, and
recognised, in consequence, that the death of Captain Brayton had
amongst its consequences one which he had not expected. The feeling in
the neighbourhood changed towards Archie Cranfield. It cannot be said
that he became popular--he wore too sad and joyless an air--but
sympathy was shown to him in many acts of courtesy and in a greater
charity of language.
A retired admiral, of a strong political complexion, who had been one
of the foremost to dislike Archie Cranfield, called, indeed, to offer
his condolences. Archie Cranfield did not see him, but Mr. Twiss
walked down the drive with him to the gate.
"It's hard on Cranfield," said the admiral. "We all admit it. It
wasn't fair of Brayton to take his host's revolver. But for the
accident that Cranfield was in the billiard-room with Linfield and
Chalmers, the affair might have taken on quite an ugly look. We all
feel that in the neighbourhood, and we shall make it up to Cranfield.
Just tell him that, Mr. Twiss, if you will."
"It is very kind of you all, I am sure," replied Mr. Twiss, "but I
think Cranfield will not continue to live here. The death of Captain
Brayton has been too much of a shock for him."
Mr. Twiss said "Good-bye" to the admiral at the gate, and returned to
the house. He was not easy in his mind, and as he walked round the
lawn under the great trees, he cried to himself:
"It is lucky, indeed, that Archie Cranfield was in the billiard-room
with Linfield and Chalmers; otherwise, Heaven knows what I might have
been brought to believe myself."
The two men had quarrelled; Brayton himself had imparted that piece of
knowledge to Mr. Twiss. Then there was the queer change in Archie
Cranfield's character, which had made for him enemies of strangers,
and strangers of his friends--the slyness, the love of solitude, the
indifference to the world, the furtive smile as of a man conscious of
secret powers, the whole indescribable uncanniness of him. Mr. Twiss
marshalled his impressions and stopped in the avenue.
"I should have had no just grounds for any suspicion," he concluded,
"but I cannot say that I should not have suspected," and slowly he
went on to the door.
He walked through the house into the billiard-room, and so became the
witness of an incident which caused him an extraordinary disquiet. The
room was empty. Mr. Twiss lit his pipe and took down a book from one,
of the shelves. A bright fire glowed upon the hearth, and drawing up a
chair to the fender, he settled down to read. But the day was dull,
and the fireplace stood at the dark end of the room. Mr. Twiss carried
his book over to the window, which was a bay window with a broad seat.
Now, the curtains were hung at the embrasure of the window, so that,
when they were drawn, they shut the bay off altogether from the room,
and when they were open, as now, they still concealed the corners of
the window-seats. It was in one of these corners that Mr. Twiss took
his seat, and there he read quietly for the space of five minutes.
At the end of that time he heard the latch of the door click, and
looking out from his position behind the curtain, he saw the door
slowly open. Archie Cranfield came through the doorway into the room,
and shut the door behind him. Then he stood for a while by the door,
very still, but breathing heavily. Mr. Twiss was on the point of
coming forward and announcing his presence, but there was something so
strange and secret in Cranfield's behaviour that, in spite of certain
twinges of conscience, he remained hidden in his seat. He did more
than remain hidden. He made a chink between the curtain and the wall,
and watched. He saw Cranfield move swiftly over to the fireplace,
seize a little old-fashioned clock in a case of satinwood which stood
upon the mantelshelf, raise it in the air, and dash it with an
ungovernable fury on to the stone hearth. Having done this
unaccountable thing, Cranfield dropped into the chair which Mr. Twiss
had drawn up. He covered his face with his hands and suddenly began to
sob and wail in the most dreadful fashion, rocking his body from side
to side in a very paroxysm of grief. Mr. Twiss was at his wits' end to
know what to do. He felt that to catch a man sobbing would be to earn
his undying resentment. Yet the sound was so horrible, and produced in
him so sharp a discomfort and distress, that, on the other hand, he
could hardly keep still. The paroxysm passed, however, almost as
quickly as it had come, and Cranfield, springing to his feet, rang the
bell. Humphreys answered it.
"I have knocked the clock off the mantelshelf with my elbow,
Humphreys," he said. "I am afraid that it is broken, and the glass
might cut somebody's hand. Would you mind clearing the pieces away?"
He went out of the room, and Humphreys went off for a dustpan. Mr.
Twiss was able to escape from the billiard-room unnoticed. But it was
a long time before he recovered from the uneasiness which the incident
aroused in him.
Four days later the two men left the house together. The servants had
been paid off. Humphreys had gone with the luggage to London by an
earlier train. Mr. Twiss and Archie Cranfield were the last to go.
Cranfield turned the key in the lock of the front door as they stood
upon the steps.
"I shall never see the inside of that house again," he said with a
gusty violence.
"Will you allow me to get rid of it for you?" asked Mr. Twiss; and for
a moment Cranfield looked at him with knotted brows, blowing the while
into the wards of the key.
"No," he said at length, and, running down to the stream at the back
of the house, he tossed the key into the water. "No," he repeated
sharply; "let the house rot empty as it stands. The rats shall have
their will of it, and the sooner the better."
He walked quickly to the gate, with Mr. Twiss at his heels, and as
they covered the six miles to the railway station, very little was
said between them.