A DISCOVERY
Harkings was not a large house. Some three hundred years ago it had
been a farm, but in the intervening years successive owners had so
altered it by pulling down and building on, that, when it passed into
the possession of Hartley Parrish, little else than the open fireplace
in the lounge remained to tell of the original farm. It was a queer,
rambling house of only two stories whose elongated shape was
accentuated by the additional wing which Hartley Parrish had built on.
For the decoration of his country-house, Parrish had placed himself
unreservedly in the hands of the firm entrusted with the work. Their
architect was given _carte blanche_ to produce a house of character out
of the rather dingy, out-of-date country villa which Harkings was when
Hartley Parrish, attracted by the view from the gardens, first
discovered it.
The architect had gone to his work with a zest. He had ripped up walls
and ceilings and torn down irrational matchwood partitions, discovering
some fine old oak wainscot and the blackened roof-beams of the original
farmstead. In the upshot he transformed Harkings into a very fair
semblance of a late Jacobean house, fitted with every modern
convenience and extremely comfortable. Furnished throughout with
genuine “period” furniture, with fine dark oak panelling and parquet
floors, it was altogether picturesque. Neither within nor without, it
is true, would a connoisseur have been able to give it a date.
But that did not worry Hartley Parrish. He loved a bargain and he had
bought the house cheap. It was situated in beautiful country and was
within easy reach by car of his town-house in St. James’s Square where
he lived for the greater part of the week. Last but not least Harkings
was the casket enshrining a treasure, the realization of a lifelong
wish. This was the library, Parrish’s own room, designed by himself and
furnished to his own individual taste.
It stood apart from the rest of the house at the end of the wing which
Parrish had constructed. The wing consisted of a single ground floor
and contained the drawing-room—which was scarcely ever used, as both
Parrish and his guests preferred the more congenial surroundings of the
lounge—and the library. A long corridor panelled in oak led off the
hall to the new wing. On to this corridor both the drawing-room and the
library gave. Halfway down the corridor a small passage ran off. It
separated the drawing-room from the library and ended in a door leading
into the gardens at the back of the house.
It was to the new wing that Horace Trevert and Dr. Romain now hastened.
They hurried across the hall, where the big lamp of dulled glass threw
a soft yellow light, and entered the corridor through the heavy oak
door which shut it off from the hall. The corridor was wrapt in
silence. Halfway down, where the small passage ran to the garden door,
the electric light was burning.
Horace Trevert ran down the corridor ahead of the doctor and was the
first to reach the library door. He knocked sharply, then turned the
handle. The door was locked.
“Hartley!” he cried and rapped again. “Ha-a-artley! Open the door! It’s
me, Horace!”
Again he knocked and rattled the handle. Not a sound came from the
locked room. There was an instant’s silence. Horace and the doctor
exchanged an interrogatory look.
From behind the closed door came the steady ticking of a clock. The
silence was so absolute that both men heard it.
Then the door at the end of the corridor was flung open and Bude
appeared. He was running at a quick ambling trot, his heavy tread
shaking the passage.
“Oh? sir,” he cried, “whatever is it? What has happened?”
Horace spoke quickly, incisively.
“Something’s happened to Mr. Parrish, Bude,” he said. “The door’s
locked and he doesn’t answer. We’ll have to break the door down.”
Bude shook his head.
“It’s solid oak, sir,” he began.
Then he raised his hand.
“Pardon me, gentlemen,” he said, as though an idea had struck him. “If
we were to go out by the garden door here, we might get in through the
window. We could break the glass if needs be!”
“That’s it!” exclaimed Horace. “Come on, Doctor!”
He dashed down the corridor towards the little passage. The doctor laid
a hand on Bude’s arm.
“One of us had better stay here,” he said with a meaning glance at the
closed door.
The butler raised an affrighted face to his.
“Go with Sir Horace, Bude,” said the doctor. “I’ll stay!”
Outside in the gardens of Harkings it was a raw, damp evening,
pitch-black now, with little gusts of wind which shook the naked bushes
of the rosery. The garden door led by a couple of shallow steps on to a
gravel path which ran all along the back of the house. The path
extended right up to the wall of the house. On the other side it
flanked the rosery.
The glass door was banging to and fro in the night wind as Bude, his
coat-collar turned up, hurried out into the darkness. The library,
which formed the corner of the new wing, had two windows, the one
immediately above the gravel path looking out over the rosery, the
other round the corner of the house giving on the same path, beyond
which ran a high hedge of clipped box surrounding the so-called
Pleasure Ground, a plot of smooth grass with a sundial in the centre.
A glow of light came from the library window, and in its radiance Bude
saw silhouetted the tall, well-knit figure of young Trevert. As the
butler came up, the boy raised something in his hand and there was a
crash of broken glass.
The curtains were drawn, but with the breaking of the window they began
to flap about. With the iron grating he had picked up from the drain
below the window young Trevert smashed the rest of the glass away, then
thrust an arm through the empty window-frame, fumbling for the
window-catch.
“The catch is not fastened,” he whispered, and with a resolute thrust
he pushed the window up. The curtains leapt up wildly, revealing a
glimpse of the pleasant, book-lined room. Both men from the darkness
without saw Parrish’s desk littered with his papers and his habitual
chair beyond it, pushed back empty.
Trevert turned an instant, a hand on the window-sill.
“Bude,” he said, “there’s no one there!”
“Best look and see, sir,” replied the butler, his coat-tails flapping
in the wind.
Trevert hoisted himself easily on to the window-sill, knelt there for
an instant, then thrust his legs over the sill and dropped into the
room. As he did so he stumbled, cried aloud.
Then the heavy grey curtains were flung back and the butler saw the
boy’s face, rather white, at the open window.
“My God,” he said slowly, “he’s dead!”
A moment later Dr. Romain, waiting in the corridor, heard the key turn
in the lock of the library door. The door was flung open. Horace
Trevert stood there, silhouetted in a dull glow of light from the room.
He was pointing to the open window, beneath which Hartley Parrish lay
on his back motionless.