A few friends of Murgatroyd, the physician, sat about his
dinner-table, discussing that perplexing question, "How much of the
truth should a doctor tell?" In the middle of the discussion a quiet
voice spoke up from a corner, and all turned towards a middle-aged man
of European reputation who sat fingering the stem of his wine-glass.
"It is dangerous to lay down a general rule," said Sir James Kelsey.
"But I should say, if you want to keep a secret tell half the truth.
People accept it and pass on to their own affairs." He hesitated for a
moment and continued, rather slowly: "I am thinking of a tremendous
secret which has been kept that way for a good number of years. I call
it the story of the Brown Book."
At once the discussion ceased. It was so seldom that Kelsey indulged
in anything like a confidence. Now on this one evening amongst his
brethren it seemed that he was in the mood to talk.
"All of you will remember the name of John Rymer, and some of you
his meteoric career and the tragic circumstances of his death. There
was no doubt that he was a master of surgery. Yet at the age of
thirty-seven, at eleven o'clock on a July morning, after performing
three operations with all his accustomed skill, he walked into his
consulting-room and blew his brains out."
Here and there a voice was raised.
"Yes, I remember."
"It was overwork, I think."
Sir James Kelsey smiled.
"Exactly," he said. "That's the half-truth. Overwork there was. I am
familiar with the details of the inquest, for I married John Rymer's
niece. It was proved, for instance, that during the last week of his
life he had been curtailing his operations and spending more time over
his dressings--a definite policy of his when the strain became too
heavy. Moreover, there was some mention made of a sudden reasonless
fear which had attacked him, a fear that his practice was dropping
away, and that he would be left with a wife and young family to
support, and no means to do it with. Well, we all know round this
table that that particular terror is one of the commonest results of
overwork. So overwork there undoubtedly was. A spell of tropical heat
no doubt, too, had its effect. Anyway, here was enough for a quite
acceptable verdict, and so the world thought. The usual platitudes
about the tension of modern life made their appearance. The public
read, accepted, and passed on to its own affairs. But behind John
Rymer's death there lay a tremendous secret."
Once more he hesitated. Then he took a cigar from the box which his
host held out to him, and said, in a kind of rush: "No one could make
any use of it now. For there's no longer any evidence but my word, and
I should deny it. It's overwork John Rymer died of. Let us not forget
it."
And then he told the story of the Brown Book. At the end of it his
cigar was still alight, for he smoked while he talked. But it was the
only cigar alight in that room.
I was twenty-five, and I had bought a practice at Chailsey, a village
deep amongst tall, dark trees in the very heart of the Berkshire
Downs. You'll hardly find a place more pastoral and remote in all that
country of remote villages. But a couple of training stables were
established there, and, what with kicks and jumping accidents, there
was a good deal of work at times. I quite liked the spot, and I liked
it still more when Bradley Rymer and his daughter took the big house
on the slope of the Down above the village.
John Rymer, the surgeon, had then been dead eight months, and Bradley
Rymer was his brother, a shortish, broad man of forty-five with a big,
pleasant face. Gossip had it that he had been very poor, so poor,
indeed, that his daughter had made her living at a typewriting
machine. There was no doubt, however, that he was rich now. "Canada's
the country," he used to say. "I made my money out of Canadian land,"
and when he fell into conversation of a morning with any of the
stable-boys on the gallops he was always urging them to better
themselves in that country.
His daughter Violet--a good many of you know her as my wife--had
little of his fore-gathering disposition. She was an extremely pretty
girl of nineteen, with eyes which matched her name. But she held
herself apart. She seldom came down into the village, and even when
one met her in her own house there was a constraint in her manner and
a look upon her face which I was at a loss to understand. It wasn't
merely trouble. It was a kind of perplexity, as though she did not
know where to turn. For the rest, the couple did not entertain.
"We have had hard lives," Bradley Rymer said to me one rare evening
when I dined there, "and a year or two of quiet is what we want beyond
everything." And never did man speak a truer word.
Bradley Rymer had lived for three months at Chailsey when Queen
Victoria died, and all the great kings and the little kings flocked
from Europe to her funeral. We at Chailsey--like the rest of Great
Britain--determined to set up a memorial, and a committee of five was
appointed to determine the form it was to take.
"It must be a drinking-fountain," said I.
"No; a stained-glass window," the vicar interrupted; and there we
were, Grayly the trainer and I on one side, the vicar and Hollams the
grocer on the other. The fifth member of the committee was absent.
"Well, I shall go up and see Mr. Bradley Rymer this afternoon," I
said. "He has the casting vote."
"You may do just as you please," said the vicar, with some
acerbity--Bradley Rymer did not go to church; "but until Mr. Bradley
Rymer condescends to be present at our committee meetings, I shall pay
not the slightest attention to his opinion."
Thereupon the committee broke up. I had a good many visits to pay to
patients, and it was close upon eight o'clock when I set out upon my
walk, and darker than it usually is at that time of the year. Bradley
Rymer, I knew, did not dine until late, and I hoped to catch him just
before he and Violet sat down.
The house stood a good half-mile from the village, even by the short
cut which I took up the side of the Down. It was a big, square
Georgian house with rows of high, flat windows; a large garden of
lawns and flowers and beech trees surrounded it; and the whole
property was enclosed in high red-brick walls. I was kept for a little
while at the great wrought-iron gates. That always happened. You rang
the big bell, the corner of a white curtain was cautiously lifted in
the window of the lodge, you were inspected, and at last the gates
swung open. Berkshire people were slow in those days, and, like most
country-folk, curious. I walked up the drive to the house. The front
door stood open. I rang the bell. A big mastiff came out from the hall
and sniffed at me. But we were good friends, and he retired again to
the corner. Finally a maid-servant appeared. It was perhaps a curious
fact that Bradley Rymer had no man-servant living in the house.
"A butler is a spy you set upon yourself," he once said to me. Another
case of the half-truth, you see. I accepted it, and passed on to my
own affairs. So when only a maid answered the bell I was not
surprised.
"Can I see Mr. Rymer?" I asked.
"He is in the library, I think, sir," she answered.
"Very well. I know my way." And, putting down my hat, I climbed the
stairs.
The library was a long, comfortably-furnished room upon the first
floor, lighted by a row of windows upon one side and lined to the
ceiling with bookshelves upon the other. Rymer had a wonderful
collection of books bound in vellum and calf, but he had bought the
lot at a sale, and I don't think he ever read one of them. However, he
liked the room, and it was the one which he usually used.
I opened the door and went into the library. But the servant had been
mistaken. The library was empty. I waited, however, and while I waited
a noise in the next room attracted my attention. I don't think that I
was conscious of it at first, for when I did notice it, It seemed to
me that the room had perceptibly darkened. It was so familiar a noise,
too, that one wouldn't notice it unless there were some special
unsuitability of time and place to provoke one's curiosity. For
a busy man walks through life to the sound of it. It was the sharp
tack-tack-tack of a typewriting machine, with the little clang and
break when the end of a line is reached. I listened to it first of all
surprised at the relentless rapidity with which the machine was
worked, and then, wondering why at this hour, in this house of leisure
and wealth, so tremendous an assiduity was being employed. Then in a
rush the gossip of the village came back to me. Violet Rymer, in the
days of her father's poverty, had made her living in a typewriting
office. Yes; but why should she continue so monotonous a practice now?
I couldn't think that she, if it were she, was keeping up her
proficiency for amusement. You can always tell whether the typist is
interested or whether she is working against time from the sound of
the machine. In the former case it becomes alive, one is conscious of
a personality; in the latter one thinks of an absent-minded clergyman
gabbling through the Lessons in church.
Well, it was just that last note which was being struck. The machine
was racing to the end of a wearisome task, and, since already Violet
Rymer was very much to me, I thought with a real discomfort of her
bending over the keys. Moreover, I seemed to be stumbling upon a
secret which I was not meant to know. Was this tack-tack-tacking the
explanation of why Chailsey saw so little of her?
While I was asking myself this question a door opened and shut
violently. It was the door into that next room, and as it was banged
the typewriting ceased altogether. There was a moment's pause, and
then a voice was raised in passion. It was Bradley Rymer's voice, but
I hardly recognised it.
"What is it now?" he cried, bitterly. "A novel, a volume of sermons, a
pamphlet? Am I never to see you, Violet? You remain hidden in this
room, breaking your back for sixpence an hour. Why, I bought this
house for you. My one aim was to get rich for you." And the girl
interrupted him with an agonised cry.
"Oh, don't say that, father!"
"But I do say it." And suddenly his voice softened. "It's true, Vi.
You know it's true. The one thing I hated was that you should lose all
the fun of your youth at that grinding work. And now you're still at
it. Why? Why?"
And through the door came her voice, in a passionate, broken reply:
"Because--because--I feel--that not even the clothes I am wearing
really belong to me."
The dispute suddenly ceased. A third voice spoke so low that I could
not hear the words, but I heard Bradley Rymer's startled reply:
"In the library?"
I had just time to get away into the farthest window before he entered
the room. It was almost dark now, and he peered about in search of me.
I moved from the window towards him.
"Oh, you are there, Kelsey," he said, suavely. "We'll have a light.
It's so confoundedly dark that I can hardly see you."
He rang a bell and a lamp was brought, which he took from the hands of
the servant and set down on the corner of his writing-table between
us.
"How long have you been here?" he asked, and--I can't account for
it--he stood facing me in his dinner-jacket, with his usual pleasant,
friendly smile; but I suddenly became quite sure that he was
dangerous. Yes, that's the word--dangerous.
"Just a minute or so," I answered, as indifferently as I could, and
then, with a strangely swift movement, he crossed the room again to
the fireplace and rang the bell. "Will you tell Miss Violet that Dr.
Kelsey is here?" he said to the parlourmaid, as soon as she appeared.
"You will find her in the next room."
He came softly back and seated himself at the writing-table.
"And why do you want to see me?" he asked, in a queer voice.
I spoke about the memorial, and he answered at random. He was
listening, but he was not listening to me. In a sort of abstraction he
drew open a drawer in his writing-table on a level with his hand, and
every now and then he shut it, and every now and then he drew it open
again.
I cannot hope to make you realise the uncanny feeling of discomfort
which crept over me. Most of us at this table, I imagine, have some
knowledge of photography and its processes. We have placed a gaslight
paper in the developing-dish, and seen the face of our portrait flash
out in a second on the white surface. I can never get accustomed to
it. I can never quite look upon it as not a miracle. Well, just that
miracle seemed to me to be happening now. Bradley Rymer suddenly
became visible to me, a rogue, a murderous rogue, and I watched with
an increasing fear that drawer in his table. I waited for his hand to
slip into it.
But while I waited the door of the next room was opened, and Rymer and
I both ceased to talk. We pretended no more. We listened, and,
_although we heard voices, we could not distinguish words_. Both
Violet and the servant were speaking in their ordinary tones, and
Rymer and I were now on the far side of the room. An expression of
immense relief shone upon Bradley Rymer's face for a moment, and he
rose up with the smile and the friendliness I knew.
"Will you stay to dinner?" he asked. "Do!" But I dared not. I should
have betrayed the trouble I was in. I made a lame excuse and left the
house.
It was now quite dark, and in the cool night air I began, before I had
reached the lodge, to wonder whether I had not been misled altogether
by some hallucination. Bradley Rymer brought to my memory the tragic
case of his brother, and I asked myself for a moment if the long and
late hours of a country practice were unbalancing me. But I looked
back towards the house as I took the track over the turf, and the
scene through which I had passed returned too vividly to leave me in
any doubt. I could see Bradley Rymer clearly as he opened and shut the
drawer of his writing-table. I could hear his voice raised in bitter
reproach to Violet and the click of the typewriting machine. No, I had
not been dreaming.
I had walked about a hundred yards down the slope when a sharp whistle
of two notes sounded a little way off upon my right, and almost before
I had stopped a man sprang from the grass at my very feet with a
guttural cry like a man awakened from a doze. Had I taken another step
I should have trodden upon him. The next moment the light from an
electric torch flashed upon my face, blinding me. I stepped back and
put up my hand to my eyes. But even while I raised my hand the button
of the torch was released and the light went out. I stood for a moment
in utter blackness, then dimly I became aware of some one moving away
from in front of me.
"What do you want?" I cried.
"Nothing," was the word spoken in answer.
I should have put the fellow down for one of the gipsies who infest
those Downs in the summer, and thought no more about him, but for one
reason. He had spoken with a pronounced German accent. Besides, there
was the warning whistle, the flash of the torch. I could not resist
the conviction that Bradley Rymer's house was being watched.
I walked on without quickening my pace, for perhaps a hundred yards.
Then I ran, and as fast as I could, down to the village. I did not
stop to reason things out. I was in a panic. Violet was in that house,
and it was being watched by strangers. We had one policeman in the
village, and he not the brainiest of men. I got out my bicycle and
rode fourteen miles, walking up the hills and coasting down them until
I reached the town of Reading. I rode to the house of the Chief
Constable, whom I happened to know.
"Is Captain Bowyer in?" I asked of the servant.
"No, sir; he's dining out to-night."
"In the town?"
"Yes, sir."
I was white with dust and wet through with sweat. The girl looked me
over and said:
"I have orders to telephone for him if he is wanted."
"He is," I replied, and she went off to the telephone at once.
I began to cool down in more ways than one while I waited. It seemed
to me very likely that I had come upon a fool's errand. After all,
what had I got to go upon but a German accent, a low, sharp whistle,
and an electric torch? I waited about half an hour before Bowyer came
in. He was a big man, with a strong face and a fair moustache,
capable, but not imaginative; and I began my story with a good deal of
diffidence. But I had not got far before his face became serious,
though he said not a word until I had done.
"Bradley Rymer's house," he then remarked. "I know it." He went out
into the passage, and I heard his voice at the telephone. He came back
in a moment.
"I have sent for some men," he said, "and a car. Will you wait here
while I change?"
"Yes."
I glanced at the clock. For now that he took the affair seriously all
my fears had returned.
"What time did you leave the house?" he asked.
"Nine."
"And it's now eleven. Yes, we must hurry. Bradley Rymer's house! So
that's where they are."
He hurried away. But before he had changed his clothes a great touring
motor-car whirred and stopped in front of the door. When we went out
on to the steps of the house there were four constables waiting. We
climbed into the car, and the hilly road to Streatley, which had taken
me so long and painful a time to traverse, now rose and fell beneath
the broad wheels like the waves of a sea. At Streatley we turned
uphill along the Aldworth Road, and felt the fresh wind of the
downland upon our faces. Then for the first time upon the journey I
spoke.
"You know these men?" I asked of Captain Bowyer.
"I know of them," he answered, and he bent forwards to me. "With all
these kings and emperors in London for the funeral, of course a great
many precautions were taken on the Continent. All the known Anarchists
were marked down; most of them on some excuse or another were
arrested. But three slipped through the net and reached England."
"But they would be in London," I urged.
"So you would think. We were warned to-day, however, that they had
been traced into Berkshire and there lost sight of."
A hundred questions rose to my lips, but I did not put them. We were
all in the dark together.
"That's the house," I said at length, and Captain Bowyer touched the
chauffeur on the shoulder.
"We'll stop, then, by the road."
Very quietly we got out of the car and crept up the hill. The night
was dark; only here and there in a chink of the clouds a star shone
feebly. Down in the village a dog barked and the wind whistled amongst
the grasses under our feet. We met no one. The lodge at the gates was
dark; we could not see the house itself, but a glare striking upon the
higher branches of the trees in the garden showed that a room was
brightly lit.
"Do you know which room that is?" Bowyer asked of me in a whisper.
"The library."
We spread out then and made a circuit of the garden wall. There was no
one any longer watching, and we heard no whistle.
"They have gone," I said to Bowyer.
"Or they are inside," he replied, and as he spoke we heard feet
brushing upon the grass and a constable loomed up in front of us.
"This way, sir," he whispered. "They are inside."
We followed him round to the back of the garden. Just about the middle
of that back wall the men stood in a cluster. We joined them, and saw
that an upright ladder rose to the parapet. On the other side of the
wall a thick coppice of trees grew, dark and high. Without a word, one
after another we mounted the ladder and let ourselves down by the
trees into the garden. A few paces took us to the edge of the coppice,
and the house stood in the open before us. Standing in the shadow of
the branches, we looked up. The house was in complete darkness but for
the long row of library windows upon the first floor. In these,
however, the curtains were not drawn, and the light blazed out upon
the green foliage. There was no sound, no sign of any disorder. Once
more I began to think that I had brought Bowyer and his men here upon
a fool's errand. I said as much to him in a whisper.
"But the ladder?" he answered, "my men found it there." And even while
he spoke there appeared at one of these windows a stranger. It was as
much as I could do in that awful moment to withhold a cry, I gripped
Bowyer's arm with so much violence that he could show me the bruises
of my fingers a week afterwards. But he stood like a rock now.
"Is that Rymer?"
"No. I have never seen him in my life before."
He was a dark man, and his hair and moustache were turning grey. He
had the look of a foreigner, and he lounged at the window with as much
assurance as if he owned the place. Then he turned his face towards
the room with a smile, and, as if in obedience to an order, carelessly
drew down the blinds.
They were in the house, then--these men who had slipped through the
net of the Continental police; more, they were masters in the house;
and there was no sound. They were in peaceful possession. My heart
sank within me when I thought of Violet Rymer and her father. What had
become of them? In what plight were they?
Bowyer made a sign, and, stepping carefully on the turf border and
keeping within the shadow of the trees, we crept round to the back of
the house. One of the party ran swiftly and silently across a gravel
path to the house-wall and followed it for a little way. Then as
swiftly he came back.
"Yes, there's a window open," he said. We crossed to it. It yawned
upon black emptiness. We listened; not a sound reached us.
"What does it give on to?" asked Bowyer.
"A passage. At the end of the passage there's a swing door. Beyond the
swing door the hall."
We climbed in through the window.
"There should be a mastiff in the hall," I said.
"Oh!" and Bowyer came to a stop. "Do you think Rymer expected these
men?" he asked. I had begun to ask myself that question already. It
was clear the dog had not given any alarm. But we found out the reason
when we crept into the hall. He was lying dead upon the stone floor,
with a piece of meat at his side.
"Quick!" whispered Bowyer, and I led the way up the great staircase.
At the head of it at last we heard voices, and stopped, holding our
breath. A few words spoken in a foreign accent detached themselves
from the general murmur.
"Where is it? You won't say! Very well, then!" A muffled groan
followed the words, and once more the voice spoke. "Wait, Adolf! He
gives in. We shall know now," and as the voice continued, some one, it
was clear, between each question asked, answered with a sign, a shake
of the head, or a nod. "It is in the bookcase? Yes. Behind the books?
Good. There? No. To the right? Yes. Higher? Yes. On that shelf? Good.
Search well, Adolf!" And with that Bowyer burst into the room with his
men behind him. He held a revolver in his hand.
"I shall shoot the first man who moves," he said; and no one did move.
They stood like wax figures moulded in an attitude for ever. Imagine,
if you can, the scene which confronted me! On the library ladder, with
a hand thrust behind the books on one of the highest shelves, was
mounted one of the three foreigners. A second--he whom we had seen at
the window--stood over a chair into which Bradley Rymer was strapped
with a gag over his mouth. The third supported Violet. She was
standing in the middle of the room, with her hands tied behind her and
a rope in a noose about her neck. The end of the rope had been passed
through a big ring in the ceiling which had once carried a lamp. I
sprang towards her, cast off the noose, and she fainted there and then
in my arms.
At the back of the bookshelf we found a slim little book of brown
morocco with a broken lock.
At this point in Sir James Kelsey's story Dr. Murgatroyd leaned
forward and interrupted.
"John Rymer's private case-book," he said.
"Exactly," replied Kelsey, "and also Bradley Rymer's boom in Canadian
land."
There was a quick stir about that table, and then a moment of
uncomfortable silence. At last one spoke the thought in the minds of
all.
"Blackmail!"
"Yes."
There was hardly a man in the room who had not some record of a case
locked away in a private drawer which was worth a fortune of gold, and
each one began to think of the security of his locks.
"But where do your foreign revolutionaries come in?" asked Murgatroyd,
and Kelsey took up his tale again.
"Bowyer and I went through that brown book together in my house, after
the prisoners had been sent off. For a long time we could find no
explanation. But right at the end of the book there was a case which
puzzled me. A Mr. Johnson had entered Rymer's nursing-home on June
17th of the year before at five o'clock in the morning, a strange time
to arrive. But there it was, noted down with every other particular of
his case. Three days later Mr. Johnson was operated on for cancer of
the throat. The operation was remarkably successful, and the patient
left the home cured seven weeks later. I think it was the unusual time
of Mr. Johnson's arrival which first directed my suspicions; and the
more I thought of them the more credible they became. I had lighted a
fire in the sitting-room, for the morning had come, and it was chilly.
I said to Bowyer:
"'Just wait a moment here. I keep a file of _The Times_,' and I went
upstairs, blessing the methodical instinct which had made me for so
long keep in due order this record of events. I brought down the file
of June of the year before, and, turning over the pages, I found under
the date of June 14th the official paragraph of which I was in search.
I put it under Bowyer's eyes. He read it through and sprang to his
feet with a cry. The paragraph ran like this. I can remember every
word of it. I am inventing a name for the country, that's all, instead
of giving you the real one:
"'The Crown Prince of Galicia left the capital yesterday for his
annual visit to his shooting-box in the Tyrol, where he will remain
for two months. This news effectually dispels the rumours that His
Royal Highness's recent indisposition was due to a malignant growth in
the throat.'
"Underneath this paragraph there was an editorial note:
"'The importance of this news cannot be overrated. For by the
constitution of Galicia no one suffering from or tainted by any
malignant disease can ascend the throne.'
"Identify now Rymer's Mr. Johnson with the Crown Prince of Galicia,
and not only Bradley Rymer's fortune but the attack upon his house by
the revolutionaries was explained, for whether they meant to use the
Brown Book for blackmail as Bradley Rymer had done, or to upset a
monarchy, it would be of an inestimable value to them.
"'What are we to do?' asked Bowyer.
"'What John Rymer's executors would have done if the book had not been
stolen,' I answered, balancing it above the fire.
"He hesitated. The official mind said 'No.' Then he realised the
stupendous character of the secret. He burst through forms and rules.
"'Yes, by Heaven,' he cried, 'destroy it!' And we sat there till the
last sheet blackened and curled up in the flames.
"I had not a doubt as to what had happened. I took the half-truth
which the public knew and it fitted like a piece of a Chinese puzzle
with our discovery. John Rymer, assailed with a causeless fear of
penury, had consented for a huge fee to take the Crown Prince into his
home under the false name. Bradley Rymer had got wind of the
operation, had stolen the record of the case, and had the Galician
Crown and Government at his mercy. John Rymer's suicide followed
logically. Accused of bad faith, and already unbalanced, aware that a
deadly secret which he should have guarded with his life had escaped,
he had put the muzzle of a revolver into his mouth and blown his
brains out."
"What became of the foreigners?" asked one of the guests, as Kelsey
finished.
"They were kept under lock and key until the funeral was over. Then
they were sent out of the country."
Kelsey rose from his chair. The hands of the clock pointed to eleven.
But before anyone else got up Dr. Murgatroyd asked a final question:
"And what of Mr. Johnson?"
Kelsey laughed.
"I told you Rymer was a great surgeon. Mr. Johnson has been King of
Galicia, as we are calling it, for the past ten years."