THE FIGURE IN THE DOORWAY
The rain was coming down in torrents and the night was black as pitch
when, leaving the lights of Rotterdam behind, the car swung out on to
the main road leading to the Villa Bergendal. Thanks to a powerful
headlight, Robin was able to get a good turn of speed out of her as
soon as they were clear of the city. As they slowed down at the gate in
the side road Herr Schulz tapped him on the shoulder.
“Better leave the car here and put the lights out,” he counselled. “And
Miss Trevert should stay if the doctor here would remain to look after
her ...”
“You think there’ll be a scrap?” whispered the doctor.
“With a man like Marbran,” returned the Chief, “you never know what may
happen ...”
“Zere will be no faight,” commented the Dutch police officer in
lugubrious accents, “my vriends, ve are too laite ...”
But the Chief insisted that Mary should stay behind and the doctor
agreed to act as her escort. Then in single file the party proceeded up
the drive, Robin in front, then the Dutchman, after him the Chief, and
Mr. Manderton in the rear.
They walked on the grass edging the avenue. On the wet turf their feet
made no sound. When they came in view of the house, they saw it was in
darkness. No light shone in any window, and the only sound to be heard
was the melancholy patter of the rain drops on the laurel bushes. When
they saw the porch looking black before them, they left the grass and
stepped gently across the drive, the gravel crunching softly beneath
their feet. Robin led the way boldly under the porch and laid a hand on
the doorknob. The door opened easily and the next moment the four men
were in the hall.
As Robin moved to the wall to find the electric light switch, a torch
was silently thrust into his hand.
“Better have this, sir,” whispered Manderton. “I have my finger on the
switch now, but we’d best wait to put the light up until we know where
they are. Where do we go first?”
“Into the sitting-room,” Robin returned.
Switching the torch on and off only as he required it, he crept
silently over the heavy carpet to the door of the room in which that
morning he had come upon Mary. Manderton remained at the switch in the
hall whilst the other two men followed Robin through the door.
The room was in darkness. It struck chill; for the fire had gone out.
The beam of the torch flitting from wall to wall showed the room to be
empty.
“I don’t believe there’s a soul in the house,” whispered the Chief to
Robin.
“Ve are too laite; I have said it!” muttered the Dutchman.
“There is another room leading out of this,” replied Robin, turning the
torch on to the blue curtain covering the door leading into the office.
“We’ll have a look in there and then try upstairs. Manderton will give
us warning if anybody comes down ...”
So saying he drew the curtain aside and pushed open the door. Instantly
a gush of cold air blew the curtain back in his face. Before he could
disentangle himself the door slammed to with a crash that shook the
house.
“That’s done it!” muttered the Chief.
The three men stood and listened. They heard the dripping of the rain,
the soughing of the wind, but no sound of human kind came to their
ears.
“The place is empty,” whispered the Chief. “They’ve cleared ...”
“It is too laite; I have said it.” The Dutchman spoke in a hoarse bass.
“We’ll go in here, anyway,” answered Robin, lifting up the curtain
again. “They may have heard us and be hiding ...”
He opened the door, steadying it with his foot. The curtain flapped
wildly round them as they crossed the threshold. The broad white beam
of the electric torch swung from window to desk, from desk to safe.
“The door over there is open,” exclaimed the Chief; “that’s the way
they’ve gone.”
Suddenly he clutched Robin’s arm.
“Steady,” he whispered, “look there ... in the doorway ... there’s
somebody moving ... quick, the torch!”
The light flashed across the room, blazed for an instant on a
window-pane, then picked out a man’s form swaying in the doorway. He
had his back to the room and was rocking gently to and fro with the
wind which they felt cold on their faces.
“It’s only a coat and trousers hanging in the door ...” began Robin.
Then, with a suddenness which pained the eyes, the room was flooded
with light. The Dutch detective stepped from the electric light switch
and moved to the open door.
“Too laite!” he cried, shaking his head; “have I not tell you?”
Suspended by a strip of coloured stuff, the body of Mr. Jeekes dangled
from the cross-beam of the door. The corpse oscillated in the breeze,
silhouetted against an oblong of black sky, turning this way and that,
loose, unnatural, horrible, and, as the body, twisting gently, faced
the room, it gave a glimpse of startling eyes, swollen, empurpled
features, protruding tongue.
Without the least trace of emotion the black-bearded detective picked
up a rush-bottom chair and gathering up the corpse by its collar
hoisted it up without an effort so that the feet rested on the chair.
Then, producing a clasp-knife, he mounted the chair and, with a
vigorous slash, cut the coloured strip which had been fastened to a
staple projecting from the brickwork above the door on the outside of
the house.
He caught the body in his arms and laid it face upwards on the matting
which covered the floor. He busied himself for an instant at the neck,
then rose with a twisted strip of coloured material in his hand.
“His braces,” he remarked, “very common. The stool what he has stood
upon and knocked avay, she lies outsaide! My vriends, ve are too
laite!”
The doctor, fetched in haste by Manderton, examined the body. The man
had been dead, he said, for several hours. Mary remained in the hall
with Manderton while Robin and the Dutch detective went over the house.
There was no trace either of Marbran or of the chauffeur. In the two
bedrooms which showed signs of occupation the beds had been made up,
but the ward-robes were empty.
“Marbran’s made a bolt for it,” said Robin, coming into the office
where he had left the Chief, “and taken everything with him ...”
“I gathered as much,” answered that astute gentleman, pointing at the
fireplace. A pile of charred paper filled the grate. “There’s nothing
here, and I think we can wipe Mr. Victor Marbran off the slate. I doubt
if we shall see him again. At any rate we can leave him to the tender
mercies of our black-bearded friend here. As for us, I don’t really see
that there is anything more to detain us here ...”
“But,” remarked Robin, looking at the still figure on the floor, the
face now mercifully covered by the doctor’s white handkerchief, “surely
this is a confession of guilt. Has he left nothing behind in writing?
No account of the crime?”
“Not a thing,” responded the Chief, “and I’ve been through every
drawer. Even the safe is open ... and empty!”
“But how does it happen then,” asked Robin, “that Marbran has legged it
while Jeekes here ...”
“Marbran left him in the lurch,” the Chief broke in decisively. “I
think that’s clear. While you were upstairs with our Dutch friend, I
went through the dead man’s pockets. He had no money, Greve, except a
few coppers and a little Dutch change. He had not even got a return
ticket to London. Which makes me think that Master Jeekes had left old
England for good.”
“Another thing that puzzles me,” remarked Robin, “is how Jeekes knew
that Miss Trevert had a letter to you, sir? Or, for a matter of that,
how he knew that she had gone to Rotterdam at all?”
“That’s not hard to answer,” said Mr. Manderton, who had just entered
the room. “On Sunday night Jeekes rang up Harkings from his club and
asked to speak to Miss Trevert. Bude told him she had gone away. Jeekes
then asked to speak to Sir Horace Trevert, who told him that his sister
had gone to Rotterdam. Jeekes takes the first available train in the
morning, recognizes Miss Trevert on the way across, and tags her to her
hotel in Rotterdam. The next morning he follows her again, shadows her
to Sir ... to this gentleman’s rooms, and there, as we know, contrived
by a trick to see to whom she had a letter.”
“But why did he not attempt to get the letter away from her as soon as
she arrived? Miss Trevert never suspected Jeekes. She might have shown
him the letter if he’d asked her for it ...”
The detective shook his head sagely.
“Jeekes was pretty ’cute,” he said. “Before letting the girl know he
was in Rotterdam, he wanted to find out what she wanted here and whom
she knew. Remember, he had no means of knowing if the girl suspected
him or not ...”
“So he devised this trick of impersonating Mr. Schulz on the telephone,
eh?”
“Bah!” broke in the Chief; “I bet that was Marbran’s idea. Look at
Jeekes’s face and tell me if you see in it any feature indicating the
bold, ingenious will to try a bluff like that. I never knew this fellow
here. But I know Marbran, a resolute, undaunted type. You can take it
from me, Marbran directed—Jeekes merely carried out instructions. What
do you say, Manderton?”
But the detective had retired into his shell again.
“If you will come to Harkings with me the day after to-morrow, sir, I
shall hope to show you exactly how Mr. Parrish met his death ...”
“No, no, Manderton,” responded the Chief; “I can’t leave here for a
bit. There are bigger murderers than Jeekes at liberty in Holland
to-day ...”
The detective slapped his thigh.
“I’d have laid a shade of odds,” he cried merrily, “that you were
watching the gentleman at Amerongen, sir ...”
“Tut, tut, Manderton,” said the Chief, raising his hand to silence the
other; “you run on too fast, my friend! I wish,” he went on, changing
the subject, “I could be with you at Harkings to-morrow to witness your
reconstruction of the crime, Manderton. You’ll go, I suppose, Greve?”
“I certainly shall,” answered the barrister, “I have had some
experience of criminals, but I must say I never saw one less endowed
with criminal characteristics than little Jeekes. A strange
character!...”
The Chief laughed sardonically.
“Anyway,” he remarked, “he had a damn good notion of the end that
befitted him ...”
It was a still, starry night. The Flushing boat stood out of harbour on
a calm sea. The high arc lamps threw a blue gleam over the deserted
moles and glinted in the oily swell lapping the quays. From the
fast-receding quayside the rasping of a winch echoed noisily across the
silent water. On the upper deck of the mail-boat Robin Greve and Mary
Trevert stood side by side at the rail. They had the deck to
themselves. Above their heads on the bridge the captain stood immobile,
a square black figure, the helmsman at his elbow. Otherwise, between
the stars and the sea, the man and the girl were alone.
Thus they had stood ever since the mail-boat had cast off from the
quay. Robin had made some banal attempt at conversation, urging (but
without much sincerity) that, after her experiences of the day, the
girl should go to her cabin and rest. But Mary Trevert had merely
shaken her head impatiently, without speaking.
Presently he put his arm through hers. He felt against his wrist the
warm softness of her travelling-coat, and it seemed to him that, though
the girl made no sign, some slight answering pressure met his touch. So
they leaned upon the rail for a space watching the water fall hissing
from the vessel’s side as the steamer, jarring and quivering, met the
long steady roll from the open sea.
Then Mary Trevert spoke.
“Robin,” she said gently, “I owe you an apology ...”
Robin Greve looked at her quickly. But Mary had her eyes fixed seaward
in contemplation of a distant light that flared and died with
persistent regularity.
“My dear,” he answered, “I’ve only myself to blame. When you told me
you were going to marry Hartley Parrish, I should have known that you
had your reasons and that those reasons were good. I should have held
my tongue ...”
This time the girl stole a glance at him. But now he was gazing away to
the horizon where the light came and went.
“All this misunderstanding between us,” he went on, “came about because
of what I said in the billiard-room that afternoon ...”
The girl shook her head resolutely.
“No,” she answered, “it was my fault. I’m a proud devil, Robin, and
what you said about Hartley and ... and ... other women, Robin, hurt
and ... and made me angry. No, no, don’t apologize again. You and I are
old enough friends, my dear, to tell one another the truth. You made me
angry because what you said was true. I _was_ selling myself, selling
myself with my eyes open, too, and you’ve got a perfect right never to
speak to me again ...”
She did not finish the sentence but broke off. Her voice died away
quaveringly. Robin took her hand in his.
“Dear,” he said, “don’t cry! It’s over and done with now ...”
Mary shook herself with an angry gesture.
“What’s the good of telling me not to cry?” she protested tearfully;
“I’ve disgraced myself in my own eyes as well as in yours. If you can’t
forget what I was ready to do, I never shall ...”
Very gently the young man turned the girl towards him.
“I’m not such a prig as all that,” he said. “We all make mistakes. You
know I understand the position you were in. Parrish is dead. I shall
forget the rest ...”
Slowly the girl withdrew her hands from his grasp.
“Yes,” she said wearily, “you will find it easy to forget!”
She drew her fur closer about her neck and turned her back on the sea.
“I must go down,” she said. And waited for the man to stand aside. He
did not move and their eyes met. Suddenly, like a child, she buried her
face in her arm flung out across his chest. She began to sob bitterly.
“That afternoon ... in the billiard-room ...” she sobbed, “you will
forget ... that ... too ... I suppose ...”
Robin took her face in his hands, a hot, tear-stained face, and
detached it from the sheltering arm.
“My dear,” he said, “I shall have to try to forget it. But I know I
shan’t succeed. To the end of my life I shall remember the kiss you
gave me. But we are farther apart than ever now!”
There was a great sadness in his voice. It arrested the girl’s
attention as he dropped his hands and turned back to the rail.
“Why?” she said in a low voice, without looking up.
“Because,” replied the young man steadily, “you’re rich now, Mary ...”
The girl looked up quickly.
“Will men ever understand women?” she cried, a new note in her voice.
She stepped forward and, putting her two hands on the young man’s
shoulders, swung him round to face her.
“I’m as poor as ever I was,” she said, “for Hartley Parrish’s money is
not for me ...”
“Mary!” exclaimed the young man joyfully.
“Robin Greve,” cried the girl, “do you mean to tell me you’d stand
there thinking I’d accept money made like that ...”
But now she was in his arms. With a little fluttering sigh she yielded
to his kiss.
“Oh, the man on the bridge!...” she murmured with her woman’s instinct
for the conventions.
“Come behind the boat, then!” commanded Robin.
And in the shadow of a weather-stained davit he kissed her again.
“So you’ll wait for me, after all, Mary?”
“No,” retorted the girl firmly. “We’ll read the Riot Act to Mother and
you must marry me at once!”
The wind blew cold from the North Sea. It rattled in the rigging,
flapped the ensign standing out stiffly at the stern, and whirled the
black smoke from the steamer’s funnels out into a dark aerial wake as
far as the eye could reach. With a gentle rhythmic motion the vessel
rose and fell, while the stars began to pale and faint grey shadows
appeared in the eastern sky. Still the man and the girl stood by the
swaying lifeboat and talked the things that lovers say. Step by step
they went over their thoughts for one another in each successive phase
of the dark tragedy through which they had passed.
“And that van der Spyck letter,” asked Robin; “how did you get hold of
it? I’ve been wanting to ask you that ever since this afternoon ...”
“I found it in the library,” replied the girl, “on the desk. It had got
tucked away between two letter-trays—one fits into the other, you
know.”
“I wondered how Jeekes had come to miss it,” said Robin. “But when was
this?” he added.
“On Sunday afternoon.”
“But what were you doing in the library?”
The girl became a little embarrassed.
“I knew Mr. Manderton was suspicious of you. I heard him telephoning
instructions to London to have you watched. So I thought I’d go to the
library to see if I could find anything which would show what they had
against you exactly. And I found this letter. Then I noticed some one
hiding behind the curtains, and, as I had the letter in my hand, I hid
it in my dress. When I discovered that Bruce Wright was after it too, I
pretended I had found nothing ...”
“But, darling, why?”
“I wanted to make sure for myself why you had sent Bruce Wright, for I
guessed he had come from you, to look for this letter. So I thought I’d
go to Rotterdam to investigate ...”
Robin laughed affectionately.
“Surely it would have been simpler to have given the letter to the
police ...”
Mary gave him a look of indignant surprise.
“But it might have incriminated you!” she exclaimed.
At that Robin kissed her again.
“Will men _ever_ understand women?” he asked, looking into her tranquil
grey eyes.