Murder in the Maze
by J. J. Connington
CONTENTS
I. The Hackleton Case
II. The Affair in the Maze
III. The Immediate Results
IV. The Chief Constable
V. The Evidence in the Case
VI. The Toxicologist
VII. The Pot of Curare
VIII. Opportunity, Method, and Motive
IX. The Burglary at Whistlefield
X. The Third Attack in the Maze
XI. The Squire’s Theories
XII. The Fourth Attack
XIII. The Dart
XIV. The Forged Cheque
XV. The Secretary’s Affairs
XVI. The Last Attack in the Maze
XVII. The Siege of the Maze
XVIII. The Truth of the Matter
CHAPTER I.
The Hackleton Case
Neville Shandon stood at the window of his brother’s study gazing
contentedly out over the Whistlefield grounds. This was a good place
to recuperate in, he reflected, especially when one could only snatch
a couple of days at a time from the grinding pressure of a barrister’s
practice. His eye travelled slowly over the prospect of greenery which
lay before him, lawn beyond lawn, down to where a glint of silver
showed where the river cut across the estate. Beyond that came the
stretches of the Low Meadows, intersected here and there by the darker
green of the hedges; then the long curve of the main road; and at
last, closing the horizon, the gentle slope of Longshoot Hill
surmounted by its church spire. A bee hummed lazily at the open
window; then, startled by a movement, it shot away, the note of its
wings growing higher and fainter as it receded in the sunlight. The
King’s Counsel let his attention wander for a moment to the rooks
sailing, in their effortless flight around the tree-crests by the
river; then, with something more than apparent reluctance, he turned
away from the landscape.
“You did pretty well when you bought Whistlefield, Roger,” he
commented as he moved back into the room. “It’s as restful a place as
I know. If it weren’t that I can get down here from time to time, I’d
be hard put to it to keep fit for my work. Think of the Law Courts on
a day like this! And that Hackleton case has been a bit of a strain, a
bigger business than usual.”
His twin brother nodded a general assent, but made no audible reply.
There was more than the normal family resemblance between the two men.
In height and build they were much alike; both were grey-haired and
clean-shaven; and even the hard lines at the corners of the
barrister’s mouth found their counterparts in the deeply-chiselled
curves which made Roger Shandon’s face a slightly forbidding one.
Whether deliberately or not, the twins accentuated their physical
resemblance by a similarity in their dress.
“We have the same tailor,” Roger once explained. “When I go to him, I
say: ‘Make me a suit like my brother’s last one.’ I believe Neville
says the same. The fellow has our measurements, so there’s no more
needed on that visit. Neville and I have much the same taste in
shades, so it generally comes out all right.”
The likeness between the twins went even deeper than the surface. Both
owed their success in life to a certain hardness of character coupled
with an abundance of energy. Neville, going to the Bar, had made
himself feared from the first as a brutal and domineering
cross-examiner; and his criminal practice had done little to soften
his professional manners. Roger’s rise to prosperity had been more
mysterious. It was vaguely known that he had made money in South
Africa and South America; but the exact methods which had led to his
fortune were never discussed by him. He had come home at the age of
forty-five to find his brother one of the leading lights of the Bar.
The purchase of the little Whistlefield estate had followed, and Roger
had apparently been content to settle down in the countryside and make
a clean break with the interests of his past.
The third brother, Ernest, seemed hardly to belong to the same family
as the twins. Though five years younger, he had none of the vitality
and energy which were so manifest in his elders; and the contrast was
accentuated by the weakness of his eyes, which gazed incuriously at
the world from behind the concave lenses of his pince-nez. Left to
fend for himself by the time he was twenty, and with a couple of
hundred a year of his own, he had simply vegetated without even
attempting to go into any business; and when his brothers had made
their fortunes, he had slipped into the role of parasite without a
thought, had transferred himself to Whistlefield, and had continued to
live there ever since. Roger had fallen into the habit of giving him a
fluctuating allowance, which he eked out as best he could by betting
on a small scale.
“What’s this Hackleton case that you were talking about?” he inquired
with a certain dull interest.
Neville looked at his brother with an expression half quizzical and
half contemptuous. For days the Hackleton case had extended in sordid
detail over a good many columns of most daily newspapers, for its
intricacy had been enlivened by frequent dramatic interchanges between
witnesses and counsel. It had shown Neville Shandon at his best,
relentlessly driving the defendants into one damaging admission after
another.
“Do you never read newspapers, Ernest?” the barrister demanded, quite
unnettled by his brother’s ignorance of one of the greatest cases in
which he himself had taken a leading part. Ernest’s interests were
limited, as Neville knew; and it was useless to expect him to go
outside his normal range merely from family concern. Wide-ranging
curiosity was the last quality one could expect from him.
Ernest blinked, took off his glasses and cleaned them, then replaced
them carefully before replying.
“No. At least, not all of them. (Confound these glasses, they won’t
grip my nose to-day, somehow. This is the fifth time they’ve fallen
off.) I often look at the newspapers, Neville. I glance through the
sporting news every day. I never read the law column, though. I can’t
understand it, usually; and when I do understand it, it seems so
damned dull. At least, it’s dull to me; so I don’t look at it,
usually.”
The barrister shrugged his shoulders slightly. He was above petty
vanity, and he felt no sting from his brother’s lack of interest in
his work.
“Just as well you left the Hackleton case alone, then,” he said. “It’s
an infernal tangle. It’s taken me months of work to see my way through
it; and if I happened to break down before it comes to a finish, I
doubt if a junior could take it on with anything like success. But I
think this week will see the end of it.”
Roger had listened to the dialogue without moving a muscle. Ernest’s
complete incuriosity was no surprise to him. He could almost have
predicted it. The youngest brother had never had the slightest
interest in anything which did not touch himself. Family triumphs
meant nothing to him, except that indirectly they contributed to his
welfare.
The barrister moved again to the window and looked out over the
landscape. A cloud of rooks caught his eye, sailing together and then
breaking up into a mass of wheeling individuals.
“After this sort of thing, the very thought of the air in the Law
Courts makes one sick,” he said at last.
“Hackleton’s coming up for the rest of your cross-examination the day
after to-morrow, isn’t he?” Roger asked.
“Yes. He’s a clever devil—sees a concealed point as well as I do
myself, and generally manages to skate round it more or less. He’s
just scraped through, so far; but I’ll have him yet. It’ll be a bad
business for him if he makes a slip. This civil suit for breach of
contract is only a preliminary canter, if things turn out as I expect.
One single breach in his case, and the Public Prosecutor will be down
on Hackleton instanter. There’s ever so much in the background which
we can’t bring to light in this particular suit, but it would all come
out if the thing were to be transferred to the Criminal Court. Then we
could really get to the bottom of the business.”
“So I gathered, by reading the case. Anyone could see that there was a
lot in the background that you couldn’t touch on.”
“Once it all comes out, it’ll be the end of Hackleton. Five years
penal is the least he could look forward to. Pleasant prospect for a
man who lives on champagne. He’s an amazing fellow: drinks like a fish
and yet has almost as good a brain as I have.”
“And you think you’ll get him? Does he realise that?”
“I expect he does.”
“From all I’ve heard of him he hasn’t much to boast of in the way of
scruples. He started his career by speculations in coffin ships,
didn’t he? I seem to remember some trouble with the insurance
companies in more than one case.”
The barrister nodded:
“Constructive murder, simply. But that would be a trifle to Hackleton.
He’d do anything for money.”
Roger seemed to turn this over in his mind for a moment or two before
he spoke again.
“If he’s as hard a case as all that, I think I’d put on my
considering-cap if I were in your shoes, Neville. It seems to me that
you’re the weak joint in the harness.”
“I? How do you make that out? I’ve got this case at my finger-ends, I
tell you. No one knows it inside out as I do.”
“That’s precisely what I mean. Suppose he loosed a gang of roughs on
you before this cross-examination comes off? A good sand-bagging would
put you out of action for just the time necessary to keep you out of
the case; and that’s all he needs. You say yourself that you have all
the strings in your hands, and I don’t suppose you’ve brought every
card out of your sleeve even for the benefit of your junior. It
wouldn’t be like you if you have. You were always one to keep a good
deal in reserve.”
“That’s true enough,” Neville conceded with a grim smile. “No one
could handle Hackleton in just the way that I shall this week. But I’m
not particularly afraid of sand-bags or that sort of thing. No one
could tackle me here, so far as I can see. One can’t do that kind of
business in broad daylight on the Whistlefield lawns. And there won’t
be much chance of getting at me on the way up to town or in London
itself. I quite admit the possibility of the thing when one’s dealing
with Hackleton. It’s quite on the cards; and because it’s never been
done before, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be done sometimes. I’m
not nervous, of course; but I’m not likely to run any risks by going
about much after dark until this affair is squared up.”
Roger Shandon’s face reflected the grimness of his brother’s smile.
“I quite understand what you feel about it. In fact, I’m in much the
same boat myself. That’s what turned my mind to the possibility in
your case.”
The barrister glanced at him keenly.
“Some more of your disreputable past cropping up, eh? I don’t care
much for some of your old acquaintances. Who’s this fresh one?”
Roger grinned shamelessly. His brother knew something of the way in
which he had made his money; for at times it had been useful to Roger
to take legal advice without bringing an outsider into problems which
came too near the edge of the law.
“It’s another gentleman with a grievance—from Cape Town this time,” he
explained. “He _says_ he acted as my agent in some I.D.B. business
when I was out there. He _says_ that I got the profit out of it and
that the profit was big enough to split comfortably into two.
According to him, I gave him away to the authorities later on; and he
spent a period of retirement, on the Breakwater or some such health
resort. The cure took some years in the sanatorium; and he hated the
treatment. Too much open-air exercise with plain food; and too many
uniforms about for his taste. That part’s true enough—he’s just out of
gaol. As to the rest, he needn’t expect me to corroborate it on oath.”
“Blackmail, I suppose?” asked the barrister, perfunctorily. “I’ll have
a talk with him, if you like. Perhaps my persuasive style”—the harsh
lines about his mouth deepened—“would help to convert him to honesty.
It’ll be no trouble.”
Roger nodded his thanks.
“I’ll turn you on if necessary; but it’s hardly likely. He seems to me
a vapouring sort of beast. ‘Your money or your life’ style of thing,
you know. When I naturally refused point-blank to pay him a stiver, he
frothed over at once with threats to do me in. ‘Tim Costock, the
Red-handed Avenger’—and all that sort of thing. I left him frothing.
He didn’t seem to me the sort of type that would do more than
froth—and he can prove nothing.”
“I don’t suppose he can.” Neville agreed, knowing from past experience
that his brother left very little behind him for enemies to pick up.
“Well, I want to run over my notes for the Hackleton case this
afternoon. Where can I find a place where I’ll be free from
interruption? With these youngsters in the house, one can never be
sure of having a room to oneself for half an hour at a time; and even
if one retires to one’s bedroom, somebody’s sure to start a duel with
the piano. I thought piano-playing had gone out of fashion; but I’ve
heard it every day since I came here.”
“That’s Arthur,” Roger Shandon interjected, irritably. “No one else
touches the damned thing.”
Ernest had apparently been cogitating deeply. He now turned a dull eye
on his elder brother.
“Try the Maze,” he advised.
“What do you mean by that?” demanded Neville. “Try the Maze? It sounds
like an advertisement for tea or one of these riddles, like: ‘Why is a
hen?’”
Ernest elaborated his suggestion.
“I mean the Maze,” he explained laboriously. “The thing like the one
at Hampton Court, down by the river, close to the boat-house. None of
the visitors is likely to find a way to either of the centres; and
none of us is likely to disturb you. We don’t usually go there; at
least, I don’t myself.”
Neville’s face had shown enlightenment at the first sentence.
“Oh, our Maze, you mean? We were talking about the piano when you
burst in, Ernest, and I didn’t quite take the connection. That’s not a
bad notion. As you say, nobody’s likely to bother me if I plant myself
in either of the centres. Besides, I want all the fresh air I can get
just now; it’ll be better out there than anywhere inside the house.
Right. I’ll go to Helen’s Bower.”
He moved towards the door as he spoke; but before he reached it a
piano sounded not far off, and the opening bars of Sinding’s
_Frühlingsrauschen_ came to their ears. Neville turned back with his
hand on the door-handle.
“By the way, Roger, what about that young nephew of ours? He seems all
right—a bit moody, perhaps, but nothing out of the common. What does
the doctor say?”
Roger’s face clouded.
“Arthur? He’s a young pest. About thrice a week he takes a fancy to
the piano, and then he spends the whole day playing one piece over and
over again, like an automatic machine—except for the mistakes.
Damnable. You don’t know how I hate the sound of the _Spring Song_ and
_Frühlingsrauschen_. You must have heard him at it this morning; and
now he’s starting all over again.”
The barrister nodded.
“Yes, but what about his general tone?” he asked. “Has he got over the
encephalitis completely? Did the Harley Street man find anything
permanently wrong?”
Roger’s face betrayed little satisfaction.
“Oh, the specialist looked devilish wise the last time he examined
him; but that was about all it amounted to. It seems they know next to
nothing about sleepy sickness. I understood him to say that the brain
cells are all churned up with the inflammation; and the result may be
anything you please. Of course Arthur was lucky to get off with no
physical damage—his eyesight and hearing and all that are quite all
right. But it seems one can never tell what changes may have taken
place in the brain structure—things that don’t normally show at all.
He may be all right, for all one can tell. Or again, he might turn
into a homicidal maniac any day; and then, as like as not, he’d go for
the nearest relation handy. A nice sort of fellow to have in one’s
neighbourhood.”
The barrister evidently considered this prophecy exaggerated.
“He seems quite normal to me,” he said.
“Oh, I don’t worry much over him,” Roger admitted. “It’s just that
he’s got on my nerves so much that I can hardly see him without
snapping at him. I’ll have to get rid of him, I think; send him on a
sea-voyage or something of that sort.”
“Perhaps you get on his nerves, just the same way as he gets on
yours,” Ernest began in his low voice. “That’s what usually happens.
When one starts it, the other takes it up. Usually that’s the way
these things go. I shouldn’t wonder—hullo, Sylvia! I didn’t expect you
just yet; not for quite a while. I’m not quite ready.”
A girl in her early twenties had come into the room and now stood
looking at her uncle with a fair pretence of indignation.
Sylvia Hawkhurst, the sister of the piano-playing Arthur, had been
left an orphan before she came of age; and as her uncles were her
trustees, she and her brother had been brought to Whistlefield by
Roger Shandon. She liked “to play at house-keeping,” as she put it:
and Roger soon learned that she could run his small establishment
better than any paid housekeeper. Things went like clockwork after she
had taken command; and he soon realised that the secret of her
management was that everyone in the house adored her. One thing she
had set her face against: “We’ll have no men-servants, if you please,
uncle; at least, not in the house itself. I don’t mind a chauffeur, of
course. But I know what a girl can do, and I’d prefer to keep within
my limitations, if it’s all the same to you.” Her uncle had let her
have her way, and he had never found any reason to complain of the
results.
Sylvia’s housekeeping, however, occupied very little of her time. She
hunted in the season, drove her own car, played tennis well and golf
better still, and was reckoned one of the best dancers in the
neighbourhood. Most characteristic of all, in spite of her looks, she
was as popular with girls as with men.
As she came into the room, Ernest got out of his chair with his usual
deliberation and began a faintly shamefaced apology for his
unpreparedness; but she cut him short in mock irritation.
“He hasn’t even got his boots on!” she complained. “How is it that I
can run everything to time in this house except you? Are you _ever_ in
time for anything, Uncle Ernest?”
“I always seem to have so much to do, Sylvia, usually. It’s been a
very busy day.”
The corners of Sylvia’s mouth quivered a little in spite of her effort
to look indignant.
“Very busy! I remember exactly what you did. You played tennis for
precisely thirty-five minutes this morning. Then you organised a grand
shooting tournament with the air-guns and bored everyone stiff with it
except Arthur, who happens to be able to beat everyone else. Then you
came into the house; and I suppose you looked at the newspapers till
lunch. And since then, you’ve sat and smoked. You must be dog-tired,
poor thing. Do you think you could wrestle with your boots now; or
shall I have them brought here on a silver salver and give you a hand
with them myself? I’d rather not; so if you can manage by yourself,
I’ll go and bring the car round. Put your watch in front of you and
pinch yourself once a minute. Then you won’t fall quite asleep. Do
hurry up, uncle,” she concluded, more seriously, “I want to get off as
soon as I can.”
“Where are you taking him?” asked Roger.
“I’m going over to Stanningleigh village to do some shopping first of
all. Then I’m going to the Naylands to ask them to come across and
play tennis. When Uncle Ernest heard that he begged me to take him
along part of the way and drop him at the East Gate, so that he could
walk along the main road to the bridge and have a look at the river.”
“I thought I’d like to see if it was worth fishing, just at present,”
Ernest added, in further explanation. “I’ve been thinking about it for
a day or two, but I’ve never found time, somehow. Usually, just when I
was starting out something always seemed to come in the way. So
to-day, since Sylvia was going that way in the car anyhow, I
thought. . .”
He broke off, observing Sylvia’s indignant eyes fastened upon him.
“Boots!” she said, scathingly, and held the door open for him to go
out.
“I’ll be ready in a minute or two,” he assured her hastily as he left
the room.
“Men are a wonderful lot, aren’t they?” she said confidentially to her
two remaining uncles, as the door closed. “It seems to me high time
Uncle Ernest got married. He’s simply incapable of looking after
himself. You two are at least able to cross the street for yourselves;
but Uncle Ernest really gives me a lot of worry. I think I saw a fresh
wrinkle when I was brushing my hair this morning.”
“I wondered what made you look peculiar at lunch-time,” Neville
admitted. “Now you mention it, I see it on your brow. About as deep as
this.”
He touched one of the deep-scored lines running down to the side of
his own mouth.
Sylvia laughed.
“You alarm me, uncle. I must have a look at the ravages in a mirror
before I venture out. Good-bye!”
She hurried out of the room. Neville looked at his watch.
“Time I was moving,” he said. “I think I’ll take Ernest’s advice and
try the Maze for seclusion. It’s hardly likely that anyone will bother
to go into it this afternoon; and I can’t stand this piano-playing of
Arthur’s. It grows irritating, as you say. I’ll go now. But I must get
my notes first.”
A thought seemed to strike Roger as the barrister opened the door.
“I think I’ll try the Maze myself this afternoon. I feel a bit sleepy;
and it’s quiet in there. I shan’t disturb you. But if it’s all the
same to you, I’ll take Helen’s Bower myself. I’m used to a chair
there; it suits me. You can go to Narcissus’s Pool instead. There’s
nothing to pick and choose between them, since they’re both in the
Maze.”
“Very good,” the barrister agreed. “It’s all the same to me, so long
as no one interrupts me.”
He nodded abruptly and left the room.
When his brother had gone, Roger Shandon went over to his
writing-table and busied himself with some papers. The distant piano
seemed to have become more intrusive now that he was left alone. It
repeated _Frühlingsrauschen_ with brain-wearying persistence and a
reiterated error in one particular chord. Roger frowned irritably as
he busied himself with the documents before him, jotting down a note
from time to time on a scribbling-block.
“Damn that young whelp! I must talk to him about this. One can’t
concentrate one’s attention when half one’s mind’s wondering if he’s
going to make that same slip for the hundred and first time.”
He continued his work for a few minutes, then rose and rang the bell.
“Send Mr. Stenness, if you can find him,” he ordered when the maid
appeared.
In Ivor Stenness, Roger had secured an ideal private secretary.
Stenness not only had the efficiency of a machine, but he possessed a
full measure of qualities hardly less important. If his employer was
out of sorts, even the gruffest order failed to ruffle the secretary’s
temper. He was capable of taking just the right amount of
responsibility in emergencies without ever going a hair’s breadth over
the score. And his especial recommendation in Roger’s eyes was that he
could keep his mouth shut. He never asked for explanations which might
have been difficult to give; and he never betrayed the slightest
surprise when, as sometimes happened, he opened threatening letters.
“If I ever have a confession of murder to put on paper,” Roger used to
say, “Stenness will take it down in shorthand, type it out, and get my
signature, without turning a hair. So far as he was concerned, it
would be just a letter.”
Stenness’s other qualities were more in demand among the remainder of
the household. He had good natural manners; and he could play games
well enough to make him useful where someone was often needed to make
up a golf foursome or a bridge table. A casual glance at him would
have suggested that he must employ a first-class valet; for his
clothes always looked new and he had the knack of carrying them well.
With all this, he was a perfectly safe person to have in a house with
a young girl. He was, somehow, too inhumanly efficient to be
attractive to girls younger than himself; and he showed not the
slightest desire to attract. Sylvia treated him as a good friend, but
she had dozens of friends whom she treated in exactly the same
fashion.
“Ah, Stenness!” Roger looked up as the secretary came in. “I’ve gone
over these letters and jotted down some notes. You might get them off
sometime to-day. There’s only one of them that needs any explanation.
Here it is. . . .”
Neville Shandon’s grim face appeared at the door for a moment. In his
hand was a sheaf of papers. Seeing his brother engaged with the
secretary, he nodded without saying anything and closed the door
behind him.
Roger continued his explanation of the matter in hand while the
secretary took a note or two. As the instructions ended, the whirr of
a car leaving the front of the house attracted Roger’s attention and
he crossed the room to look out of the window. Sylvia was driving, and
beside her was Ernest Shandon. They glanced up as they passed under
the study window, and Sylvia waved her hand. Roger watched the car
swing sharply off the main avenue on its way to the East Gate, and
soon it vanished behind a belt of rhododendrons.
“They might have given Neville a lift,” Roger reflected as he turned
back into the room again. “They’ll be passing the Maze on the road to
the East Gate.”
The sound of the piano reasserted itself in the comparative silence
which followed the passing of the car. Roger made a gesture of
impatience.
“I suppose that’s my nephew playing?” he demanded.
“He was shooting darts at a target in the garden, a short time ago,”
Stenness explained, “but I think he came in a few minutes ago.”
“It sounds like him. Since he had that attack of sleepy sickness he
always fumbles a bit on his chords—doesn’t seem able to manage his
fingers perfectly. That makes this din all the harder to bear.”
Stenness refrained from any comment. Roger, after a pause, continued
irritably.
“Where are the visitors, Stenness? I wish they’d attract him out of
the house. Some days he’s all right and one never sees him. Other days
he sits and pounds that piano till one’s head rings with it.”
“I noticed Miss Forrest and Mr. Torrance going towards the rose garden
a few minutes ago.”
Stenness confined himself to answering the direct question and quietly
ignored Roger’s exasperation. It was no business of his to intervene
in family squabbles.
“Well, that’s all I have for you at present, Stenness. As you’re
passing the door, send my nephew to me, will you? I must put a stop to
this nuisance. It’s gone on quite long enough.”
The secretary made a gesture of assent, then gathered up his papers
and left the room. A few seconds later, the piano-playing stopped
abruptly in the middle of a bar, and Roger’s ear caught the clang of
the keyboard lid being carelessly slammed. After a moment or two, his
nephew entered the study.
In order to give his irritation time to cool down, Roger refrained
from speaking immediately. He motioned his nephew to sit down, whilst
he himself pulled out his cigar-case and became busy with the
preparations for a smoke. Having got his cigar well alight, he turned
round.
“Must you hammer that piano for hours at a time, Arthur? I hate to
interfere with your simple pleasures, of course; but the infernal din
you make has had quite a long enough run. You’ve played
_Frühlingsrauschen_ at least two dozen times to-day; and that’s just
twenty-four times oftener than I want to hear it. You can cut it out
of the bill, after this. In fact, you can leave the piano alone, once
for all. I’m sick of hearing you play. You’re a nuisance to everyone,
raising Pandemonium at all hours of the day. Find some quieter
amusement, or clear out of the house.”
Arthur Hawkhurst’s eyebrows rose in mild surprise at his uncle’s
complaint.
“I’d no idea it worried you, uncle.”
“Well, drop it.”
“Perhaps I have been overdoing _Frühlingsrauschen_ a bit. I hadn’t
thought of that. Somehow I never seem to get through it without a
mistake in one or two chords, and I want to make a clean job of it,
once at least.”
“I’ve got a pair of quite good ears. You needn’t think I missed your
mistakes. They make it more irritating, that’s all.”
Arthur hastened to admit his errors.
“Well, no more _Frühlingsrauschen_, then. What about the _Barcarolle_?
Offenbach’s, I mean. Any objection to that?”
“Yes. Will you be good enough to understand that you’re not to bang on
that piano again.”
“Oh, you mean it? I thought it was just your fun, uncle. But I like
the piano. Surely you’ll let me use it sometimes.”
“No. I’ve had enough of it.”
“But . . .”
Roger’s face had been darkening.
“That’s enough! I’ve more important things to talk to you about. What
age are you nowadays? Twenty-two or twenty-three, isn’t it? And you’ve
never done a stroke of work in your life, so far? A pretty record,
isn’t it?”
He paused, and paced over to the window and back again.
“That’s got to stop. I’ve had to support one loafer—your Uncle Ernest.
But if you imagine that I have a fad for collecting loafers, you’re
mistaken. I’ve got your uncle on my hands permanently, I suppose; but
I don’t propose to increase my stock of parasites for your benefit.
You’ll have to find something to do. I’m not going to let you hang
around Whistlefield for ever.”
Arthur’s good-natured face had darkened in its turn.
“You might increase your stock of politeness without overdoing things,
it seems to me. I’m not altogether a loafer. I’m an invalid.”
Roger took no notice of the plea.
“Whistlefield isn’t a hospital.”
“Or an asylum—I suppose that’s what you mean? You’d better take care,
uncle. There are some things a fellow doesn’t forget, once they’re
said.”
Roger’s temper, never very far below the surface, boiled up at his
nephew’s remark.
“That’s enough, Arthur. I’ll give you three months more. After that,
you can fend for yourself. You won’t starve. You’ve got enough money
to keep you alive even if the worst comes to the worst. Anyhow, I wash
my hands of you.”
Arthur Hawkhurst’s control was no better than his uncle’s when once
the point had penetrated through the skin.
“A pretty specimen of an uncle! The kind one meets in the ‘Babes in
the Wood,’ eh? Go out into the world and starve, Arthur dear. The
little dicky-birds will put leaves on you—_and I’ll get the money your
mother left you!_ That’s the scheme, I suppose. It’s a wonder a thing
like you is allowed to live.”
The flagrant absurdity of the charge checked Roger for a moment. After
all, the boy was off his balance. One shouldn’t take him seriously.
“You’re an ass, Arthur!” was all he vouchsafed in reply.
But Arthur’s disturbed brain had tilted out of its normal equilibrium,
and his rage found vent in a wild threat as he flung himself out of
the room.
“I’ve a good mind to get in first myself; and do for you, before you
can do me any more harm. Look out for yourself!”
As the door slammed behind his nephew, Roger settled himself back into
his chair. Arthur’s outbreak had come as a complete surprise. Since
his illness, the boy had given the impression that he merely needed a
firm hand. He had loafed about the house in a condition not far from
melancholia; and at first it had required steady pressure to bring him
to take any interest in normal affairs. Gradually he had improved and
had passed over into a state of cheerful irresponsibility. And now,
just as the specialists were taking an optimistic view of the future,
had come this collapse into something which seemed little short of
mania, absolutely without warning.
“I’ll have to get this looked into,” Roger reflected. “He’s evidently
not so far on the road to recovery as we thought.”
Arthur’s threat had left him completely indifferent. He had almost
forgotten it when he rose again from his chair. In itself it seemed
unimportant, merely some wild words flung out in a brain-storm. He
left the house and took the road to the Maze.
Stenness saw his figure pass into the belt of rhododendrons; and as
soon as it had disappeared, the secretary made his way to Roger’s
study. An ABC time table was on one of the shelves; and Stenness,
taking it down, began to study the times of trains.
“I can’t leave it later than that,” he said to himself at last. “The
next one wouldn’t get me into London in time for the boat-train.”
His eye turned to the window and ranged over the lawns.
“Well, it’ll be a hard wrench to leave here, no matter what happens.
And I wish I saw to-night over and knew where I stand.”
He passed to a fresh line of thought.
“At the worst, nothing will matter much if I don’t pull it off.”
He replaced the ABC on its shelf and went up to his own room. First
locking the door, he began deliberately to pack his razors and other
toilette articles in an attaché case. When he had completed this task,
he glanced round the room.
“Nothing else? No, all the rest of the stuff is waiting for me in
London.”