Rex was home! His telegram handed in at the docks preceded him only by
half-an-hour, and his thunderous knock at the door and his long and
continuous peal on the bell told Tab the identity of the impatient
caller, long before he had thrown open the door and gripped the hand of
the returned traveller.
“Yes, I’m back,” said Rex heartily, as he dropped himself into a chair
and fanned himself with his hat. He was looking thinner, a little more
peaked of face, but the colour of health was on his cheeks and his eyes
were bright.
“You’ll have to put me up, old man,” he said, “I simply will not go to
an hotel while you’ve an available bed in the flat, and besides I want
to tell you something about my plans for the future.”
“Before we start dreaming,” said Tab, “listen to a little bit of sordid
reality. You have been burgled, my lad!”
“Burgled?” said Rex incredulously. “How do you mean, Tab? I left
nothing to be burgled.”
“You left a couple of trunks which have been thoroughly and
scientifically examined by somebody who has got a grudge against you.”
“Good God!” said Rex. “Did they find the key? I only saw the story of
the second murder when I landed.”
“You did leave the key in the trunk?”
Rex nodded.
“I left it in a box, a small wooden box with a sliding lid. There were
two of these boxes, I remember, one in each trunk, they were compass
boxes.”
“Then they were the object of the visit. Why he should mutilate poor me
I find it difficult to explain.”
He told Rex Lander what happened on the night of the second burglary
and Rex listened fascinated.
“I’ve lost all the fun being away,” he grumbled. “So poor old Brown was
the victim, eh? And we thought he was the murderer. And Carver--what
has he got to say about it?”
“Carver is rattled, but mysterious,” said Tab.
Rex was deep in thought.
“I am going to have that strong-room bricked up,” he said, “I made up
my mind while I was on the ship. Anyway, I don’t suppose anybody will
want to buy the beastly place, and I shall have it on my hands for
years. But I’ll take pretty good care that tragedy number two doesn’t
become tragedy number three.”
“Why not remove the door?” suggested Tab, but Rex shook his head.
“I won’t have the vault turned into a show place,” he said quietly.
“Besides, it will likely enough stop a good sale. My own inclinations
are to pull the house down and have it rebuilt; dig it out from
foundation to roof and start fresh. But I don’t think that even that
would induce me to go and live there,” he said. “Poor old Jesse’s blood
would rise up from the ground and find us wherever we were. There is a
curse upon the house,” he went on solemnly. “Some evil spirit seems to
brood over it and inspire innocent men to these hideous crimes.”
Tab stared at him in amazement.
“Babe,” he said, “you’ve got poetical. I guess it is the air of Italy.”
Rex went red, as he always did when he was embarrassed.
“I feel very strongly about the house,” he said curtly and Tab saw that
he had hurt his feelings, but Rex’s huff did not last long. He spoke of
his voyage, the interesting places he had seen, and then: “You got my
ring?”
“Yes, Rex, thank you, it is a beauty,” said Tab. “It seems to me to be
worth a terrible lot of money.”
“It didn’t cost so much,” said the other carelessly. “I’ve got a rich
way of thinking nowadays, Tab. I shudder at myself sometimes.”
They fell to discussing Rex’s immediate movements and Tab succeeded in
persuading him to go to the hotel. He had a reason for this; knowing
the lazy nature of his former companion, he guessed that if Rex once
got himself settled down in the flat, he would never leave it.
Rex questioned him closely about the second tragedy, plying him with
innumerable questions.
“Yes, I shall certainly have that place bricked up. I will put it in
the hands of the builders right away,” he said. “And as you decided to
chuck me out, perhaps you will come and dine pretty frequently.”
He sent for his trunks the following day and made a call upon Carver.
Tab heard later that under the personal direction of Rex, all the deed
boxes and other movables in the vault had been removed by a gang of
workmen and that immediate preparations were being made to wall up this
sinister chamber.
It was like Rex to take up with enthusiasm some unexpected hobby.
Carver told him, when next they met, that Rex haunted the builders’
yard, was having elaborate plans drawn for a new house and was himself
entering with enthusiasm into the mysteries of mortar-making and
brick-laying.
“In fact,” said Tab, “poor Rex is making himself an infernal nuisance.
He has these spasms. About three years ago, he decided, in defiance of
his Uncle’s intentions, to become a great crime reporter, and spent
so much time in the ‘Megaphone’ library, that the news editor kicked.
Whenever he wanted a book, Rex had it; whenever he wanted to look up
some old and forgotten crime, there was Rex, in the midst of a chaos
of cuttings. The present fit will last exactly three weeks; after
that, Rex will buy a large hammock and a large bed and spend his time
alternately in one or the other!”
Tab did not see Ursula Ardfern for a week. He wrote to her once, for he
was a little worried, remembering her fainting fit on her last night at
the theatre, but he received a reassuring, indeed a flippant message
from Stone Cottage.
“I have come back here and am entrenched against all mysterious Men
in Black with an aged but active butler, who has served in the army
and is acquainted with the use of lethal weapons. The late roses are
out--won’t you come and see them? They are glorious. And Yeh Ling’s
Temple of Peace is roofed with shining red tiles, and the villagers
are breathing freely again at the prospect of his queer little
labourers leaving the neighborhood.
“I drove over there yesterday and found Yeh Ling very sombre and
quiet, watching the final touches being put on what looked to be
a huge barrel but which I found was the mould in which the second
of his great pillars is to be cast. It is the Pillar of Grateful
Recollection, or something of the sort, and it is to be dedicated
to--me. I feel thrilled. It is hard to believe that all these years
Yeh Ling has remembered the trifling services I gave to his son, and
isn’t it curious that in all those years, although I have met him
many times, for I used to dine regularly at his restaurant (I dined
there this week) he has never made one reference to the old days. It
is a little eerie, isn’t it?
“I am learning to shoot. Forgive this inconsequence, but my butler
(how grand that sounds!) is very insistent, and I practice every day
in the meadows behind the house. I had no idea that a revolver was
so very heavy or jumped so when you pressed the trigger, and the
noise is appalling! I was scared almost to death the first day of the
practice, but I am getting quite used to it now and Turner says I
shall make a crack shot.
“If you come you will not lack for excitement. Personally I should
have preferred that Turner would have given me lessons in archery; it
is much more graceful and ladylike. Every time the pistol fires (it
is an automatic) it blackens my hands horribly--and it stings!”
Tab read the letter through very many times before he took the Hertford
Road. He stopped en route to admire the monument which Yeh Ling had
erected to his prosperity. He could admire in all sincerity, for the
house presented not only a striking, but a beautiful appearance. Its
unusual lines, the quaint setting in which it stood, for the garden had
now taken shape, the one lusty pillar that flanked the broad yellow
path, made a striking picture.
The workmen had not gone and presently he spied Yeh Ling himself coming
down the broad short flight of steps from the upper terrace.
If he did not distinguish him at first, it was excusable, for he wore
the blue blouse and baggy trousers of his workmen, but Yeh Ling had
seen him and came straight to where he was standing.
“You’ve nearly finished,” said Tab with a smile of greeting. “I
congratulate you, Yeh Ling.”
“You think it is pretty,” said Yeh Ling, in his grave, cultured voice.
“I have had the best builder I could get from China and I have not
stinted him. Some day perhaps you will come and see the interior.”
“What are they doing now?” asked Tab.
“In a few days we shall cast a second pillar,” said Yeh Ling, “and then
the work is finished. You think I am at heart a barbarian?” Yeh Ling
seldom smiled, but now his pale lips curled momentarily, “and you will
take these pillars as proof?”
“I wouldn’t say that--” began Tab.
“Because you are so polite, Mr. Holland,” said Yeh Ling, “but then you
see, we look at things from a different angle. I think your church
steeples are ridiculous! Why is it necessary to stick a great stone
spike on to a building to emphasise your reverence?”
He searched in his blouse and brought out a gold cigarette case, and
offered it to Tab. Then he lit a cigarette himself, inhaled deeply
before he sent a blue cloud into the still air.
“My Pillar of Grateful Memories will have a greater significance than
all your steeples,” he said, “than all your stained glass windows. It
is to me what your War Memorial Crosses are to you, a concrete symbol
(literally concrete) of an intangible sentiment.”
“You are a Taoist?” asked Tab interested.
Yeh Ling shrugged his shoulders.
“I am a believer in God,” he said, “in ‘_x_’ in something beyond
definition. Churches and sects, religions of all kinds are monopolies.
God is like the water that flows down the mountain-side and fills the
brooks and the rivers. There come certain men who bottle the waters,
some in ugly bottles, some in beautiful bottles, and these bottles they
sell, saying that ‘only this water will quench your thirst.’ That it
does quench thirst we will not deny, but the water is often a little
stale and flat, and the sparkle has gone out of it. You can drink
better from the hollow of your hands kneeling by a brook. In China
we bottle it with mystic writings and flavour it with cinnamon and
spices. Here it is bottled without any regard to the water, but with
punctilious care as to the shape of the bottle! I go always to the
brook.”
“You are a queer devil,” said Tab surveying the other curiously.
Yeh Ling did not answer for a while, and then he asked:
“Is there any news about the murder of Brown?”
“No,” said Tab, “where was he, Yeh Ling?”
“He was in a smoke house,” said Yeh Ling without hesitation. “I took
him there at the request of my patron, Mr. Trasmere. The man had come
over to give him trouble and Trasmere wanted me to look after him
and see that he didn’t make himself a nuisance. Apparently Brown had
these bouts and then recovered, as opium smokers sometimes do, with a
distaste for the drug. He must have recovered very suddenly and was
gone before I could stop him and before the man who owned the house
could let me know. I searched for him, but he disappeared and I heard
no more about him until I read in the newspapers that he was dead.”
Tab was thoughtful.
“Had he any friends? You knew him in China?”
Yeh Ling nodded.
“Was there anybody who had a particular grudge against him--or against
Trasmere?”
“Many,” said the other, “I, for example, did not like Brown.”
“But apart from you?”
Yeh Ling shook his head.
“Then you have not the slightest idea who was the murderer?”
Again the inscrutable gaze of Yeh Ling met his.
“I have an idea,” he said deliberately, “I know the murderer. I could
lay my hands upon him without the slightest difficulty.”