I am getting on excellently,’ said Richard to himself as he descended
from the car; but his self-satisfaction was momentarily checked by the
glance flashed at him by the old man--a glance which seemed to penetrate
at once to that locked chamber where Richard kept his secret intentions
and desires.
He returned the glance modestly, and then wondered whether, after all,
Mr. Craig was as old as he looked. The manager of the Kilburn branch of
the British and Scottish Bank had white hair, rather long at the back,
and a heavy white beard; a pale face with prominent bones, the lower
jaw large and protruding, the nose fine and delicate, the black eyes
deep-set; the forehead was rather narrow, but the bossy temples gave
indication of unusual intellectual force. The face was the face of an
old man, yet the eyes were young and fresh. Richard remembered that
Simon Lock had stated the manager’s age to be fifty-five, and he came
to the conclusion that this might be a fact, though any merely casual
observer would have put it at sixty-five at least.
‘Who is----’ Raphael Craig began questioning in tones of singular
politeness, with a gesture in the direction of Richard, after he had
returned his daughter’s salutation.
‘This is a gentleman from the Williamson Company, dad,’ Teresa
explained. ‘He has brought the new car. He likes travelling at night,
and thought our house was much further on.’
Then she explained the circumstance of the elephant’s attack.
‘Humph!’ exclaimed Raphael Craig.
Richard affected to be occupied solely with the two motor-cars. He
judged it best to seem interested in nothing else. He blew out the
oil-lamps of the old car, and switched off the electric lights of the
new one. Teresa turned instantly to the latter, and began to turn the
light off and on. Her father, too, joined in the examination of the car,
and both father and daughter appeared to be wholly wrapped up in this
new toy. Richard had to explain all the parts. He soon perceived that
he had chanced on one of those households where time is of no account.
Teresa and Raphael Craig saw nothing extraordinary in thus dawdling
over a motor-car at one o’clock in the morning by the light of the moon.
After a thorough inspection of the machine Teresa happened to make some
remark about three-speed gears, and a discussion was launched in which
Richard had to join. A clock within the house chimed two.
‘Suppose we have supper, dad?’ said Teresa, as if struck by a novel and
rather pleasing idea--‘suppose we have supper. The moon will soon be
setting.’
‘And Mr. ----’ said Raphael.
‘Redgrave,’ said Richard. ‘Richard Redgrave.’
‘Will sup with us, I trust,’ said Teresa.
‘True, there are seven inns in the village, but the village is asleep,
and a mile off. We must offer Mr. Redgrave a bed, dad.’
‘Humph!’ exclaimed the old man again.
It was, perhaps, a strange sort of remark, yet from his lips it sounded
entirely correct and friendly.
‘I am getting on excellently,’ mused Richard once more.
‘Mike!’ the girl called. ‘Micky!’
A very small, alert man instantly appeared round the corner of the
garden wall, running towards them. He kept his head bent, so that
Richard could not clearly see his face.
‘What is it ye’ll be after, Miss?’ Micky asked.
‘Take charge of these cars. Put them in the shed. Perhaps Mr. Redgrave
will be good enough to assist you with the new one.’
Raphael Craig walked towards the house. In three minutes, the cars
being safely housed in a shed which formed part of some farm buildings,
Richard and Teresa joined him in the spacious hall of the abode. Supper
was served in the hall, because, as Teresa said, the hall was the
coolest place in the house. Except an oldish, stout woman, who went up
the stairs while they were at supper, Richard saw no sign of a domestic
servant. Before the meal, which consisted of cold fowl, a pasty, and
some more than tolerable claret, was finished, Raphael Craig excused
himself, said ‘Good-night’ abruptly, and retired into one of the rooms
on the ground-floor. Richard and Teresa were then left alone. Not a
word further had been exchanged between father and daughter as to the
daughter’s adventures on the road. So far as the old man’s attitude
implied anything at all, it implied that Teresa’s regular custom was to
return home at one in the morning after adventures with motor-cars and
elephants. Richard thought this lack of curiosity on the part of the
old man remarkably curious, especially as Raphael and his daughter were
obviously very much attached to each other.
‘The circus was amusing this afternoon,’ Richard remarked.
The talk had flagged.
‘Where was it?’ Teresa asked.
‘At Dunstable,’ said Richard.
‘Really!’ she said, ‘I had not heard!’
This calm and nonchalant lie astounded
Richard. She was a beautiful girl--vivacious, fresh, charming. She could
not have long passed her twentieth year, and her face seemed made of
innocence and lilies. Yet she lied like a veteran deceiver. It was
amusing. Richard removed his spectacles, wiped them, and replaced them.
‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘I went to the afternoon performance. The clowns
were excellent, and there was a lady rider, named Juana, who was the
most perfect horsewoman I have ever seen.’
Not a muscle of that virginal face twitched.
‘Indeed!’ said Teresa.
‘I thought, perhaps, you had been with friends to the evening
performance,’ Richard said.
‘Oh no!’ Teresa answered. ‘I had had a much longer journey. Of course,
as I overtook those absurd elephants in the cutting, I knew that there
must be a circus somewhere in the neighbourhood.’
Then there was another lull in the conversation.
‘More wine, Mr. Redgrave?’ Teresa invited him.
He thanked her and took another glass, and between the sips said:
‘I am told this is a great chalk district--there are large chalk-pits,
are there not?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you can see them from our windows. Very ugly they
look, too!’
‘So far, good!’ Richard privately reflected.
He had, at any rate, learnt that the Craigs had something to conceal.
The hall clock struck three. Outside it was broad daylight.
‘That is a quarter of an hour fast,’ said Teresa. ‘But perhaps it might
be as well to go to bed. You are probably not used to these hours, Mr.
Redgrave? I am. Micky! Micky!’
The small, alert man came down the side-passage leading into the hall
from the back part of the house.
‘This is decidedly a useful sort of servant,’ thought Richard, as he
looked intently at Mike’s wrinkled, humorous face.
The Irishman seemed to be about thirty-five years of age.
‘Micky,’ said Teresa, ‘show Mr. Redgrave to his room--the room over
here. Bridget has prepared it; but see that all is in order.’
‘That I will, miss,’ said Micky, but only after a marked pause.
Richard shook hands with his hostess and ascended the stairs in Micky’s
wake, and was presently alone in a not very large bedroom, plainly
but sufficiently furnished, and with some rather good prints of famous
pictures on the walls.
‘Without doubt,’ he said, as he got into bed, ‘I have had a good day
and deserve a good night. I must take measures to stop here as long as I
can.’
He had scarcely closed his eyes when there was a tap at the door, the
discreetest possible tap.
‘Well?’ he inquired.
‘It’s myself, sorr,’ said the voice of Micky familiarly.
‘Come in, then, Mike,’ Richard said with equal familiarity.
He already liked Micky; he felt as though he had known Micky for many
years.
Richard had drawn both the blind and the curtains, and the room was in
darkness; he could only discern the outline of a figure.
‘The mistress told me to remind your honour that breakfast was at seven
sharp.’
‘I was aware of it,’ Richard said dryly; ‘but I thank your mistress for
the reminder.’
‘An’ begging pardon, sorr, but d’ye know where it is you’re sleeping?’
‘At present,’ said Richard, ‘I’m not sleeping anywhere.’
‘Ah, sorr! Don’t joke. Mr. Featherstone slept in this room, sorr. Did ye
know Mr. Featherstone?’
‘What!’ cried Richard, starting up. ‘Do you mean the man that committed
suicide?’
‘The same, sorr. But speak low, your honour. It’s myself that should not
have mentioned it.’
‘Why not?’ Richard asked, subduing his voice.
‘The master might not like it.’
‘Then why do you tell me?’
‘They say it’s unlucky to sleep in a room where a suicide slept the last
night of his life.’
‘Then Mr. Featherstone killed himself the day he left here?’
‘Sure he did so. And I thought I’d warn you.’
‘Oh, well,’ said Richard, ‘it’s no matter. I dare say it won’t affect my
repose. Goodnight. Thanks.’
‘I’d like ye to sleep in another room--I’d like ye to,’ urged Mike in a
persuasive whisper.
‘No, thanks,’ said Richard firmly; ‘I’m settled now, and will take the
risk.’
Micky sighed and departed. As soon as he was gone Richard rose out of
bed, pulled the curtains aside, and made a minute examination of the
room. But he could discover nothing whatever beyond the customary
appurtenances of an ordinary middle-class bedchamber. There was a chest
of drawers, of which every drawer was locked. He tried to push the chest
away from the wall in order to look behind it, but the thing was so
heavy that he could not even move it. He returned to bed. At the same
time his ear caught the regular chink of coins, such a sound as might
be made by a man monotonously counting money. It continued without
interruption. At first Richard imagined it to proceed from under the
bed, but he knew that this was impossible. Then he thought it came
from the room to the left, then from the room to the right.
Chink--chink--chink; the periodic noise had no cessation.
‘What coins can they be?’ Richard asked himself; and decided that such a
full, rich chink could only be made by half-crowns or crowns.
He endeavoured to sleep, but in vain; for the sound continued with an
exasperating regularity. Then he seemed uneasily to doze, and woke up
with a start; the sound was still going on. The hall clock struck five.
He jumped out of bed, washed and dressed himself, and went quietly
downstairs. The sound had mysteriously ceased. With a little difficulty
he opened the hall door and passed out into the garden.
It was a lovely morning; the birds sang ravishingly, and a gentle
breeze stirred the cypress-trees which lined the drive. The house was
absolutely plain as regards its exterior--a square, solid, British
farmhouse. A meadow that was half orchard separated it from the
high-road. Away from the house, on the other side of it, and at the end
of a large garden, was a long range of low buildings, in the form of
a quadrangle, which had, presumably, once been the farmstead; they
presented, now, a decayed and forlorn look. Richard walked past the
front of the house, under its shuttered windows, across the garden,
towards these farm buildings. As he opened a gate in the garden wall he
saw Mike issuing cautiously from one of the sheds.
Simultaneously there was a tremendous crash from the house--an
ear-splitting crash, a crash that might have been caused by ten domestic
servants dropping ten trays of crockery on a brick floor. But the crash
had a metallic ring with it that precluded the idea of a catastrophe in
earthenware.
Richard and Micky glanced at each other.