In the Night
by R. Gorell Barnes
published by Longmans, Green and Co., 1917
CONTENTS
Foreword
I. At the Rose and Crown
II. Philip and Evelyn
III. Foul Play
IV. A Mystery in the Night
V. Upstairs
VI. New Lights
VII. Fears and Discoveries
VIII. The Broken Window
IX. Evelyn and Philip
X. The Little Dancing Girl
XI. A Chain of Confusion
XII. Out of the Darkness
XIII. How It Happened
XIV. Sight at Last
To
Lt. Vivian Morse
FOREWORD
This tale of mystery must be regarded as a diversion from war, a word
which does not occur in its pages. It was planned in a base-hospital
in France, and written during recovery at home; if it serves to
interest for an hour or two those similarly placed and those still in
the trenches, its existence is amply justified.
It tries, at any rate, to deal fairly with its readers, who are not
called upon to admire clevernesses of deduction they are prevented
from performing for themselves. Nothing is more irritating, and more
common, in tales of the investigation of crime, than to find such
sentences as “the great detective rose from his knees and put away his
magnifying-glass with a self-satisfied air,” and not be told what he
saw to make him self-satisfied. In the following pages, therefore,
every essential fact is related as it is discovered and readers are,
as far as possible, given the eyes of the investigators and equal
opportunities with them of arriving at the truth.
R. G. B.
CHAPTER I
At the Rose and Crown
The quiet of a fine summer evening was falling on the little village
of Salting; the fields were slowly emptying as the dusk settled down,
and the bar of the Rose and Crown was steadily filling with the
heavy-footed, silent-minded labourers. Salting lies a mile or two away
from a branch-line which ends with apparent inconsequence at a sleepy
town some ten miles further; and the pursuits of its inhabitants, and
in consequence their conversation, range eternally round the topics of
the season and the crops and the simple, but not necessarily
good-natured, personalities concerning one another. Nor is it a social
district in the sense in which so many English neighbourhoods are,
galvanized sporadically into an appearance of life by the moneyed
activities of the upper classes. There are no small gentry, only
farmers of varying prosperity; there is only one large estate, and
though the great house which is hidden in the woods of it had been
built for twenty-five years or more, it had never become in any sense
part of the life of the place.
Salting Towers was the residence of Sir Roger Penterton, a man who
cared nothing for the village which had happened to lie in the hollow
below the hill selected as a suitable site for his house. He was not
interested in agricultural affairs; he had chosen the locality solely
because it was sufficiently convenient for the visits he continued to
pay two and three times a week to the town in which he had pursued a
highly successful career at the head of a big business; hence an
appearance in a birthday honour list and that accretion of dignity and
pride which proclaims itself in the carriage of a Knight. He liked,
however, to fancy himself as a landed proprietor even while holding
that class in the greatest contempt as a set of idle and unthrifty
folk; the type of man of whom he was a shining example was, as he
often used to proclaim as he stood astride of the fire in hall or
smoking-room, the real backbone of the country. By years of hard work
he had built up a fine business, amassed a large fortune, and
incidentally married above himself. He had succeeded and not by any
stroke of luck, but, as he would declare, by sheer industry, and so
could any one else; he had no pity for failures. “Show me a failure
and I’ll show you an idler,” was a favourite remark of his to those
who tried to enlist his purse in aid of some charitable scheme.
As Inspector Humblethorne sat finishing his supper in the dingy
coffee-room of the Rose and Crown, he could see the grandiloquent
sweep of the drive as it crossed the park and disappeared into the
wood which shut off the Towers from the village, and idly wondered
where it led to. He had never heard of Sir Roger Penterton. The warmth
of the evening and the freshness of the air had their usual subtle
effect upon him, which the draining of a big glass of ale did nothing
to dispel. He felt mellowed, sociable and well-pleased with himself,
and heaved a big sigh to say so to all whom it might concern. It
concerned nobody; that was the one objection to an otherwise entirely
satisfactory state of things.
As he gazed out with dreamy eyes across the lane, watching the cattle
which showed dimly in the meadow beyond and listening to the slow,
ceaseless chatter of voices in the bar and the occasional sounds of
the village, he had a vague feeling in his mind that he was ripe for
conversation. He was not yet sufficiently accustomed to solitude to
feel bored; ease and inactivity were still delightful companions, but
nevertheless his mind did take hold for the first time of a certain
indefinite feeling that he didn’t know quite what he was going to do
with himself in this self-contained and seemingly lifeless spot. In
town, whilst still shackled with work, nothing had seemed to him more
deliciously original than to bury himself for his holiday in a
picturesque and unexciting village, but it must be confessed that on
this first evening a vague doubt as to the wisdom of this originality
began to present itself to him. There wasn’t a soul to talk to, and he
felt talkative, not to say, witty.
In this last it is possible he may have been deceived, for no one had
yet associated wit with Emmanuel Humblethorne. His colleagues in the
Force would have described him as a good little fellow, painstaking
and accurate rather than intuitive in his work, and kind and helpful
in his social relations. He was universally popular, even with those
against whom his work was necessarily directed, but not exactly
celebrated for his wit; he was of too sterling and quiet a strain to
seem to incur that dangerous reputation. Nevertheless the fact remains
on record that on this first free evening of his holiday he felt
almost witty, and had no one upon whom to exercise the unusual
faculty.
He was about to feel in his pocket for his pipe and rise from the
table with the idea of strolling out and seeking amusement for
himself, as it seemed obvious that none was coming to him of its own
accord, when sounds outside indicated the arrival of another visitor
to the Rose and Crown. But much to Humblethorne’s disappointment the
newcomer, when at length he entered the coffee-room, showed himself
openly, almost aggressively, indisposed to be sociable; he glanced at
Humblethorne in a swift and rather nervous way which was certainly not
suggestive of geniality, sat down at the furthest end of the table
without a word and, after glancing at his watch, drew out a crumpled
newspaper, put his elbows on the table and, resting his head upon his
hands, began to read.
Humblethorne, checked in the casual greeting which he was about to
give, filled his pipe with the studious regard of the completely idle
man and let his eyes rest vacantly upon the stranger. Now that he was
cheated of a companion the little curiosity he would have had was
without reason, but the mind is often above reason and after its bent
has been given it by years of training and application will proceed
quite happily on its own account. Humblethorne did not know he was
taking in the stranger detail by detail, but his mind in fact received
a clear and reproducible impression of a tall, thin man of about
thirty-three or thirty-four years of age, with hands which bore
indistinct indications of refinement and clothes that bore none. A few
minutes later when the stranger’s supper was brought in and he was
compelled to give over his steady reading of the paper, Humblethorne
also noted in the same uninterested way that he had a mouth of
delicate sensibility unusual for a man of his apparent status, and
above it a pair of restless and perhaps anxious eyes.
These met his as the stranger, after another glance at his watch,
began his supper; and he gave a curt nod in forced recognition of the
other’s presence, of which Humblethorne took immediate advantage.
“Mind my lighting up?” he inquired affably as he struck a match.
“Not at all,” replied the stranger, but without the least sociability.
“A fine evening,” resumed Humblethorne, “and looks like keeping fine
for a bit.”
The stranger took no notice whatever of this original
conversationalism, but Humblethorne, undaunted, tried again: “Know
this part of the country at all?”
The other mumbled an unwilling, “Not very well.”
“Stopping here long, then,” persisted Humblethorne.
“What the devil’s that to you?” answered the stranger, suddenly
looking up with surprising surliness.
“Nothing, nothing at all,” replied Humblethorne, rising in high
indignation, “except that if you are, I’m not,” after which he slammed
the door violently behind him and felt slightly better.
“Jolly sort of philanthropist to run up against on a holiday,”
grumbled the little man to himself as he left the inn and struck out
down the lane. “What boors we English are! Now if that had been a
Frenchman we’d have been bowing and parlevooing away like anything by
this time. Damn the fellow, he’s quite put me out of temper.”
He wandered on in an absent manner and his anger quickly cooled as he
drew in the fresh, sweet air of the July night and exchanged a
pleasant “Good evening” with a couple of labourers plodding by in the
gloom. By the time that he had found a convenient stile, which seemed
to invite a man to lean on it and look along the misty darkness of the
valley, his good humour was quite restored and he had even begun to
blame himself. “What an infernal thing it is,” he mused, “to get into
the habit of always asking questions; it’s bad enough when you’re
interested in the answers, but hopeless when you aren’t in the least.
I suppose it’s too late, though, for me to alter that, and it has
certainly proved useful once or twice; I doubt if I should ever have
got onto the track in the Scrawley case if it hadn’t been for that
chance conversation in the ’bus!” He was thinking, as he often did, of
the one great case in his career when, favoured by a singular piece of
luck, he had succeeded where a much more brilliant man had been
totally at sea; it had won him promotion and gained for him a
temporary reputation, subsequently to sink to a more solidly based but
less elevated level, and it was a harmless belief of his that he might
have succeeded without it. “I suppose I resented his seeming to think
I had a reason for my remarks just because I might have had,” he
thought, and drifted away into a reverie on the inconsequent
perversity of human nature.
When at last he returned to the inn after a long silent communing with
the stars, which on this still, clear night powdered the heavens with
peculiar brilliance, he found the landlord standing at the door and
entered immediately into the easy conversation he had been so long
denied.
“A glorious night,” he said, “do you often have weather like this?”
“Well, it’s middlin’ good here as a rule about this time o’ year,”
replied the man with something of that rather sententious
condescension with which inhabitants of a place so often speak of fine
weather to a stranger, as if suggesting that they have had some hand
in it and should be regarded with gratitude accordingly. “You don’t
get much of this sort in Lunnon, likely,” he added, “and I s’pose it’s
natural you should notice it. Powerful lot of rain we had last night,
though. The other gennelman, ’e’s out somewhere too, enjoying hisself;
I shall be locking ’im out if ’e don’t come in soon.”
“Who is he, d’you know?” asked Humblethorne incuriously.
“No, sir. Traveller, I should say; leastways ’e ain’t stayin’ here,
except just for the night, as you might say.”
“Well, I’m not sorry to hear it; he’s an unsociable sort of devil. Now
I like a fellow who can talk a bit. Pretty place you have here.”
“Ay, it is that, so I’m told.”
“What’s the best walk about here?” continued Humblethorne. “Not too
far; I’m not much of a walker, but I should like to see a bit of the
country whilst I’m here.”
“I couldn’t rightly say,” answered the landlord slowly; “I don’t hold
for walkin’ myself, and besides I ain’t been here long.”
“No! I thought you’d have been born here.”
“Lord, no; what made you think that, sir? I’ve been here six months
come Michaelmas; ’ad a place down Melbury way before that, that’s
where I was bred.”
Conversation flourished on similarly simple lines for some time and
presently from the clock in the village church midnight boomed out
slowly.
“Twelve o’clock!” exclaimed the landlord. “Time I was abed. Wunnerful
how time goes when you get talkin’. If you ain’t a-comin’ in just yet,
sir, will you have the kindness to lock this door and put out the
lamp?”
“With pleasure,” replied Humblethorne. “I shall just finish this pipe
and then I shall be turning in, too.”
The continued absence of the stranger had passed out of mind, and
Humblethorne had just knocked out the pipe he always declared was the
best of the whole day and turned to obey the injunction of the
landlord, when he heard hurried steps in the lane, and in another
minute the surly stranger came into the little ring of light cast by
the lamp. He shot a keen glance of apparent resentment at the sight of
Humblethorne standing with one hand on the door, brushed past him
without a word, passed through and closed the door quickly and with
unnecessary force behind him.
“Quite the gentleman,” murmured Humblethorne as he reopened it; “my
gratitude for not being locked out is amazing. Now I should say,” he
added thoughtfully as he lit his candle and put the light out, “that
that young fellow was following a true instinct in taking a dislike to
me—but it’s no concern of mine.”
With which piece of philosophy he went to bed.