Transcriber’s Note: Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
THE VALLEY OF GHOSTS
BY
EDGAR WALLACE
Author of “The Clue of the New Pin,”
“The Daffodil Murder,” etc., etc.
[Illustration]
BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1923
BY SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
_Printed by Geo. H. Ellis Co. (Inc.) Boston, Massachusetts, U. S. A.
Bound by the Boston Bookbinding Company, Cambridge, Massachusetts,
U. S. A._
TO MY FRIEND,
J. S. E.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A GIRL IN A POST OFFICE 1
II. A HINT OF ABRAHAM SELIM 12
III. A MAN WHO AVOIDED HIS OFFICE 18
IV. TWO MEN DRUNK 26
V. THE VALLEY OF GHOSTS 37
VI. THE TWENTY-FOURTH 45
VII. MEETING STELLA 58
VIII. THE DEATH SHOT 70
IX. THE RING OF STELLA NELSON 77
X. LOVE AMIDST THE RUINS 90
XI. FOUR-EYED SCOTTIE 102
XII. THE MAN FROM NOWHERE 112
XIII. THE LADY FROM SANTA BARBARA 120
XIV. A GAMEKEEPER WHO HEARD A SHOT 129
XV. THE BED DRAWER 143
XVI. THE INQUEST 153
XVII. A DIAMOND CLUSTER 162
XVIII. WHO WAS THE WOMAN? 172
XIX. THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN 179
XX. A VISIT TO THE HALL 191
XXI. MR. WENTWORTH DISAPPEARS 200
XXII. MR. DOWNER FOLLOWS A LADY 211
XXIII. AN INTERESTING INVALID 219
XXIV. MR. WILMOT’S PROFESSION 228
XXV. A MORNING AT SEA BEACH 236
XXVI. MEETING MRS. BONSOR 246
XXVII. THE GHOST OF A NAME 260
XXVIII. THE MAN IN THE DRESSING-GOWN 267
XXIX. MRS. BONSOR SPEAKS 274
XXX. THE STATEMENT OF MRS. CRAFTON-BONSOR 281
XXXI. THE LAYING OF GHOSTS 293
THE VALLEY OF GHOSTS
CHAPTER ONE
A GIRL IN A POST OFFICE
Fate and an easy-running Spanz brought Andrew Macleod to the environs
of Beverley. The town itself is at the end of a reluctant branch line,
and has no visible excuse for existence, or means of support. Yet, for
some extraordinary reason, the people of Beverley did not starve and
the queer little shops that formed its one broad, shaded street had
the appearance of prosperity. This it could not have drawn from its
aristocratic suburb, for Beverley Green had its supplies from the great
department stores elsewhere, and came only to the town for such stocks
as had been overlooked in the ordering.
Andy brought his long-bonneted car to a rest before the post office
and got down. In five minutes he was chatting to headquarters, and the
subject of his conversation was Allison John Wicker, _alias_ Four-Eyed
Scottie, from his practice of wearing spectacles. Scottie was one of
the few men of his profession who enjoyed walking. When the manager
of the Regent Diamond Syndicate came to his office one Monday morning
and found that somebody had saved him the bother of opening the large
fire and thief-resisting safe by means of an acetylene blower, it
was as clearly Scottie’s work as though he had left his receipt for
the seven parcels of stones he had taken. Railway stations and ports
of embarkation were instantly picketed by extra police, hotels were
visited, and all constabularies warned.
Andy Macleod, spending his holiday with a fishing rod and an
accumulation of books which he had not time to read during the year,
was dragged away from his recreation to organise the search.
He had started life as Dr. Macleod, an assistant pathologist at
headquarters, and had drifted into the profession of thief-catcher
without exactly knowing how. Officially, he was still a pathologist,
a man to be called to the witness-stand to testify the manner of
deceased’s death; unofficially, though they called him “sir,” he was
“Andy” to the youngest policeman that walked a beat.
“He passed through Panton Mills three days ago on a walking tour.
I’m pretty certain it was Scottie,” he said. “I’m quartering the
country between here and Three Lakes. The local police swear that he
hasn’t been near Beverley, which means that he must have been living
under their noses. They are a bright lot; asked me if he had done
anything wrong, and they have had full particulars of the theft and a
description of Scottie for a week.”
A girl walked into the post office at this moment. Glancing sideways
through the glass panel of the telephone booth, Andy noted her
admiringly. Attractive—pretty—beautiful? All women look their best to
all men in tailored costumes of severe cut. She was tall for a woman;
slim, but not thin.
“Yes, I think so,” he answered his chief mechanically, his eyes on the
girl.
She raised her hand, and he saw a ring on the engagement finger; a gold
ring with little emeralds, or they may have been sapphires—no, they
were emeralds. He caught the sea-green of them.
He had opened the door of the booth an inch after the secret portion of
his report had been made, and with one free ear he caught the murmur of
her voice.
More than pretty, he decided, and admired the profile turned towards
him.
And then a curious thing happened. She must have looked at him when
his eyes were turned. Possibly she asked who he was; more likely the
garrulous old postmaster, to whom Andy had shown his card to facilitate
his call, volunteered the information. Andy heard the word “detective.”
From where he stood he had a clear view of her face.
“Detective!” she no more than whispered the word, but he heard—and saw.
Her hands gripped the edge of the counter and the colour went out of
her face, leaving it a deathly white. Even the lips changed their hue
queerly.
So intent, so startled was he, that he took the receiver from his ear,
and at that moment she turned and met his gaze. Fear, panic, horror
were in those eyes. He had a sense of something trapped and tortured
as he stared at her, open-mouthed. Her eyes left his, and she fumbled
at the money on the counter, the change the old man had put there, her
hands shaking so that at last she scooped the coins into her palm and
went out of the office hurriedly.
Unconscious of the fact that at the other end of the wire a puzzled
police official was tapping the hook urgently, having his own views to
express, Andy hung up the black cylinder and passed into the shop.
“Who was that lady?” he asked as he paid the telephone charge.
“That, sir? Why, that’s Miss Nelson, from the Green—Beverley Green,
over by the hills. Wonderful place; you ought to see it. Lot of rich
people live there. Mr. Boyd Salter, you’ve heard of him? And Mr.
Merrivan, he’s a rich man, too, though he’s a bit mean, and oh, a
lot of swell people. It’s a sort of a—what do you call it? A garden
city, that’s what it is. Some of the biggest houses in the county. Mr.
Nelson’s family lived there for years, long before there was any garden
city. Remember his grandfather; a fine old fellow he was.”
The postmaster was prepared to offer detailed biographies of the
favoured folk who lived at Beverley Green, and Andy was anxious to
catch another glimpse of the girl, and cut short the explanation.
He saw her walking quickly down the middle of the road, and guessed
that she was on her way to the railway station.
He was puzzled and irritated. How might he explain her agitation? What
had she to fear from detectives? What folly, big or small, had been
responsible for the cold terror that had come to her eyes?
It was a waste of time to consider the cause. The folk of these little
towns, picturesque, aloof from the world, where the stream of life
seemed so idyllic and unruffled by the great passion storms which lash
the surfaces of the cities, must inevitably experience crises no less
tragic than these which disturb the people of the greater world. But——
The word “detective,” implying, as it would, the secret investigations
of the law, holds no discomfort for normal, law-abiding people.
“Humph!” said Andy, and rubbed his smooth chin. “This won’t catch
Scottie!”
He drove the car out of the village, intending to push forward to the
main road and begin his quartering of the network of secondary feeders
which lie to the south from a point twenty miles away.
Slowing to take a sharp bend, a mile or more from Beverley, he saw
an opening in the hedge to the right. There was a broad, gravelled
boulevard flanked by trees, the paths, bordered by well-trimmed turf,
curved out of view. An artistic signpost said “Private Road to Beverley
Green.”
His speed had carried him beyond the opening, and he backed, looked
thoughtfully at the sign, then turned into the drive. It was hardly
likely that Scottie would pass into what was probably a dead-end. On
the other hand, Scottie was a versatile genius and a great opportunist.
And Beverley Green was a rich community. So Andy told himself by way
of excuse, though in his heart he knew that his curiosity had its
causation in a new interest. He wanted to see the house in which she
lived. What kind of style did Mr. Nelson keep up?
The drive twisted and turned and at last took a sharper turn than
usual, and Beverley Green, in all its summery beauty, came suddenly
into view. Andy reduced speed to a walking pace. Before him was a
broad space. It was almost flat, and was fringed with an unbroken
border of flowering shrubs. Within a dozen yards from the drive was a
tee, an indication of a golf course which probably extended along the
valley. Set about the green, half-revealed through the trees which
surrounded them, were a dozen houses. A glimpse of a gable, a flash of
a white-sashed window, a hint of timbering, the upstanding lift of a
twisted Elizabethan chimney, indicated the type of architecture.
Andy looked around for somebody to question. The road bent sharply left
and right from where he sat, and at the corner was a quaintly-shingled
building which suggested a club. He guessed it was a notice-board
attached to the gate-post, and was getting out of the car to
investigate further when a man came into view around the corner on
which the building was situated.
“Prosperous city merchant—retired,” said Andy mentally. “Black alpaca
coat, broad-toed shoes, stiff collar, and a double watch-guard.
Probably pompous, and wondering what the devil I mean by trespassing in
these Elysian fields.”
Certainly the newcomer eyed the intruder gravely, though it would be an
exaggeration to say that he looked in any way resentful.
His age might have been anything between forty-five and sixty. The
big, smooth face was unlined, and his gait was alert to the point of
briskness. A big man, he supported his stoutness so well that Andy did
not notice that he was inclined to fat until some time later.
The greeting he offered dispelled any doubt of welcome that the visitor
may have harboured.
“Good morning, sir,” he said. “You seem to be looking for somebody. The
Green is a difficult locality for strangers; our houses have no names
or numbers.”
He laughed sedately.
“I am not looking for anybody in particular,” said Andy, giving smile
for smile. “I was led here by curiosity. It is a beautiful spot. I
heard about it at Beverley.”
The other inclined his head.
“We get very few visitors—I nearly said ‘happily,’ but that would be
unkind. The estate is privately owned by myself and my neighbours, and
we have no inn to tempt visitors to stay. A guest house.” He waved his
hand to the wisteria-covered building which Andy had thought might be a
club. “We maintain that for visitors. Sometimes we cannot accommodate
all our friends, and sometimes we have a distinguished—ah—person who
is, so to speak, the guest of our little community. At present, for
example,” he went on, “we have an eminent Canadian geologist.”
“Happy man,” smiled Andy, “and happy community. Are all these houses
occupied?”
He asked the question well knowing that every house would be in
occupation, but anticipating the form a reply would take.
“Oh indeed, yes. That last house on the left is Mr. Pearson’s, the
great architect, now of course retired. The next house with the
gables is Mr. Wilmot’s, a gentleman who is—er—well, I don’t exactly
know what he is, even though he is my nephew—shall we say something
in the city? The next house, where you see the rambler roses, is Mr.
Nelson’s—Kenneth Leonard Nelson, of whom you must have heard.”
“The artist?” Andy was interested.
“Exactly. A great artist. He has a studio, but you cannot see it from
here; it is on the northern side. Artists, I understand, prefer the
northern light. The house on the far corner—you may not observe the
corner from here, but there is a lane at the side leading to the tennis
courts—that is my feudal mansion,” he chuckled good-humouredly.
So her father was Nelson the artist. Now what had he heard about Nelson
the artist? The name suggested something unpleasant.
“What is that big mansion on the side of the hill?” asked Andy.
“That house on the hill?” replied the guide. “That, unhappily, is not
of our community. It is, in fact, the real feudal castle around which
we humble—er—peasants have built our hovels.”
The conceit seemed to please him, and he repeated “Built our hovels”
before he went on:
“That is Mr. Boyd Salter’s place. The family has lived here or
hereabouts for centuries, sir. The Salters come down from—well, I won’t
inflict their history upon you. Mr. Boyd Salter is a very rich man, but
a semi-invalid.”
Andy nodded, and the other went on:
“There is our guest, Professor Bellingham. My name, by the way, is
Merrivan.”
So this was Mr. Merrivan. “Rich, but a bit mean,” was the description
the postmaster gave.
Andy was eyeing the approaching figure of the Canadian geologist—a
spare man in baggy breeches with a studious stoop.
“Been out on the hills collecting fossils. Quite a number have been
found here,” explained Mr. Merrivan.
“I think I know him rather well,” said Andy, more than interested.
He walked across to meet the professor, and when they were separated by
a few yards the geologist looked up and stopped.
“Hard lines, Scottie,” said Andrew Macleod, with ill-simulated sorrow.
“Are you going to make a fuss, or shall I take you somewhere to lunch?”
“Logic is my weakness,” confessed Scottie, “and if you’ll let me go up
to my room to pack a few articles of raiment I’ll step along with you.
I see you’ve got a car, but I’d rather walk.”
Andy said nothing, but when they joined Mr. Merrivan:
“The professor is going to show me some of his specimens,” he said
pleasantly, “and thank you very much, Mr. Merrivan, for your kindness
and courtesy.”
“Perhaps you will come back one day and let me show you round?” invited
the big man.
“I should be delighted,” answered Andy, and meant it.
He followed Scottie up the oaken stairs of the guest house to the
delightful little room that he had occupied for two days.
“Scepticism is the curse of this age,” said Scottie bitterly. “Do you
think I wouldn’t have come back if you’d let me go alone to my room?”
There were times when Scottie was childish, and Andy Macleod did not
trouble to reply.
The lank man stepped into the car, wearing on his countenance an
expression of sheer distaste.
“There are too many motor-cars in these days,” he complained. “Lack of
exercise is killing thousands every day. What do you want me for, Mac?
Whatever it is, I’ve got an alibi.”
“Where did you find it? With the fossils?” demanded his captor, and
Scottie relapsed into a dignified silence.
CHAPTER TWO
A HINT OF ABRAHAM SELIM
With Scottie lodged in the inadequate lock-up, Andy discovered that
there were certain formalities that need be gone through before his
prisoner could be transferred to the area where he must answer for his
sins.
“Where can I find one?” asked Andy when he was told that the transfer
must be approved and ordered by the local justice.
“Well, sir,” meditated the sergeant of police, “there’s Mr. Staining,
but he’s ill; and there’s Mr. James Bolter, but he’s on his holidays;
and there’s Mr. Carrol, but, now I come to think of it, he’s gone up to
the horse show. He breeds——”
Andy interrupted him.
“There is something in the air of this place which makes people
talkative, sergeant,” he said patiently, “but perhaps I was a little
obscure. I don’t want the names of the men who aren’t here. Is there
anybody in the neighbourhood who is on the Commission of the Peace?”
“There is one _gentleman_,” emphasised the sergeant. “Mr. Boyd Salter.
He’ll sign the order.” He added: “If he’s at home.”
Andy grinned, and went in search of Mr. Boyd Salter.
He found that the nearest way to the house avoided Beverley Green; in
fact, Mr. Salter’s demesne ran well into Beverley, and was reached
through a pair of lodge gates at the end of the town. He had seen them
before and wondered who lived beyond them.
Beverley Hall was a handsome mansion of the type that Inigo Jones had
made famous.
It was a house of silence. The first sound he heard as he was taken
into a spacious, stone-flagged hall was the ticking of a clock. The
man-servant moved noiselessly to carry Andy’s visiting card, and Andy
saw that he wore rubber-soled shoes. He was a long time gone, and when
he returned he beckoned the caller forward.
“Mr. Salter is a martyr to nerve trouble, sir,” he whispered. “If you
would speak quietly to him he would be obliged, I am sure.”
Andy expected to meet an invalid, and had a vision of a trembling
figure propped in a cushioned chair. Instead he found a healthy-looking
man of fifty who looked up quickly as, unannounced, Andy was shown into
the room.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Macleod. What can I do for you? I see you are on
police business,” he said, examining the card.
Andy explained the reason for his visit.
“You needn’t lower your voice,” smiled the other. “I suppose Tilling
told you? Sometimes I am rather jumpy, but this is one of my good
days.”
He looked at the document which Andy put before him and signed it.
“Our friend is the jewel burglar, isn’t he?” he said. “Where has he
been hiding?”
“In your garden city,” said Andy, and a frown puckered Mr. Salter’s
handsome face.
“Beverley Green? At the guest house, of course?”
Andy nodded.
“Did you meet any of the citizens?”
“One; Mr. Merrivan.”
There was nothing said for a little while, then:
“A curious lot of people! Wilmot is a rum fish. I can’t quite get the
measure of him. I’ve often thought he was an aristocratic burglar. What
is the name of that fellow in the book—Ruffles? Ah, Raffles, that’s it!
A queer fish, Wilmot. Then there’s Nelson. There is a weird fellow!
Drinks like the devil! He’d drink the sea dry.”
It was then Andy remembered the story he had heard about the artist.
“He has a daughter,” he suggested.
“Ah, yes. Nice girl; very pretty. Wilmot is engaged to her or something
of the sort. My son is a great news-gatherer when he’s at home. He
ought to be in the police service—at school now. H’m.”
He looked down at the warrant, blotted it, and passed it across to
Andy.
“Mr. Merrivan seems a very nice man,” he suggested.
The justice shook his head.
“Know nothing about him whatever,” he said. “I’ve just said ‘How d’ye
do’ to him, nothing more. He appears an inoffensive gentleman. Rather a
bore, but inoffensive. Talks too fluently; everybody does in Beverley.”
To emphasise this local weakness he went on, without stopping, to give
the history of Beverley and its people. Presently he spoke of the Hall.
“Yes, it’s a beautiful little place, but the estate is a very expensive
one to keep up. I’ve not been able to do what I should have done, if——”
He looked quickly away, as though he feared his visitor could read his
thoughts.
It was some time before he spoke again.
“Have you ever been associated with the devil, Mr. Macleod?”
He was not joking. The look he shot at Andy was straight and stern.
“I have associated with a number of minor devils,” smiled Andy, “but I
cannot lay claim to knowing the father of them.”
The eyes of Mr. Salter did not waver. They fixed Andy absently, it is
true, but steadfastly, for fully thirty seconds.
“There is a man in London called Abraham Selim,” he said, speaking
slowly, “who is a devil, I am not telling you this as a police
officer. I don’t know why I am telling you at all. I think it comes
of a natural association of ideas. I have had to sign many orders of
arrest, but never once have I put pen to paper without thinking of this
greatest of criminals. He is a murderer—a murderer!”
Andy, startled, moved in his chair.
“He has killed men; broken their hearts; ground them into the earth. He
had a friend of mine like that!” He clasped his hand tight until the
knuckles showed white.
“Abraham Selim?” Andy could think of nothing else to say, and his host
nodded.
“If, as I believe, he will one day make a slip and fall into your
hands, send me word. No, no, I don’t mean that; he will never be
trapped!”
“Is he Semitic—or Turkish? His name suggests both origins.”
Boyd Salter shook his head.
“I’ve never seen him. I’ve not met anybody who has,” he said
surprisingly. “Now off you go, Mr. Macleod. What is your rank, by the
way?”
“I’ve been trying to discover for years,” said Andy. “I’m by way of
being a medical.”
“A doctor?”
Andy nodded.
“I do a lot of analytical work. I’m sort of assistant pathologist.”
Boyd Salter smiled.
“Then I should have called you ‘doctor,’” he said. “Edinburgh, of
course.”
Andy agreed.
“I’ve a weakness for doctors. My nerves are—terrible. Is there any
cure?”
“Psycho-analysis,” said Andy promptly. “It enables you to take out your
inhibited worries and stare ’em out of countenance. Good-bye, sir.”
There was no more effectual way of giving Andy Macleod his _congé_ than
to talk medicines with him.
“Good-bye—er—doctor. You look very young for such a position—thirty or
thirty-one?”
“You guessed midway, sir,” laughed Andy, and went out.
CHAPTER THREE
A MAN WHO AVOIDED HIS OFFICE
Stella Nelson left the post office in a panic. Though she did not turn
her head, she was conscious that the good-looking, strong-faced man
she had seen in the telephone box was looking after her. What would he
think, he, a man to whom, in all probability, the flicker of a eyelash
had significance?
She had nearly swooned at the shock of that word “detective,” and he
had seen her sway and turn pale, and must have wondered what was the
cause.
She wanted to run, and it required all her reserve of will to keep her
from increasing her already hurried pace. She went rapidly down the
declivity to the railway station and found she had half an hour to
wait, and only then remembered that when she had left the house she had
given herself time to order a number of commodities that were required
for the kitchen. Should she go back? Dare she face the grave scrutiny
which had so terrified her?
Eventually she did go back. The spur of self-contempt urged her, yet
she was relieved to discover that the blue car had gone. She hurried
from store to store with her orders, and then, after a moment’s
hesitation, went across to the post office and bought some stamps.
“What did you say that man was?”
With an effort she kept her voice steady.
“A detective, miss,” said the old postmaster with relish. “You could
have knocked me down with a feather duster when he showed me his card.
I don’t know what he’s after.”
“Where has he gone?” she asked, dreading the reply.
“He’s gone up to Beverley Green, miss, according to what he told me.”
The postmaster’s memory was not of the brightest, or he would have
recalled the fact that Andy had expressed no such intention.
“To Beverley Green?” she said slowly.
“That’s it, miss—Macleod!” he said suddenly. “That’s the name. I
couldn’t remember it. Macleod.” He pronounced it “Mac-lo-ed.”
“Macleod,” she corrected him. “Is he staying here?”
“No, miss, he’s just passing through. Banks, the butcher, wouldn’t
believe that we had a detective in the town—a real man from
headquarters. He’s the fellow who gave evidence in that Marchmont
poisoning murder. Do you remember it, miss? A wonderful murder it was,
too. A man poisoned his wife, being anxious to marry another lady,
and this Macleod’s evidence got him hanged. Banks told me that, but
I remembered it the moment he spoke. I’ve got a wonderful memory for
murder cases.”
She went back at a more leisurely pace to the station and took a
ticket. She was undecided, tormented by doubt and fear. She hated the
idea of going away from the place, even for a few hours whilst that man
was prying into heaven knows what, she told herself fretfully.
Again she walked back toward the village, and then she heard the scream
of the train whistle. No, she would carry out her original idea. One
danger at any rate was definite. She hated Macleod. He was an enemy.
She hated him, but she feared him too. She shivered at the recollection
of that enquiring stare of his, which said so plainly: “You have
something to fear.” She tried hard to read, but her mind was never
upon the newspaper, and, though her eyes followed the lines, she saw
nothing, read nothing.
Nearing her destination, she wondered that she had ever dreamt of
going back. She had only a week to settle this ghastly business of
hers—exactly a week—and every day counted. She might be successful. She
might be returning that afternoon, her heart singing with happiness,
passing by these very fields and bridges, her mind at peace.
Mechanically she noticed the objects of the landscape as the train
flashed through. She must remember to register her emotions when they
came to that white farmhouse on the return journey. By the time she saw
it again she might not have a care in the world.
Dreams and journey ended simultaneously. She hurried out through the
big terminus, crowded with jostling, horrible people, who would not so
much as turn their heads if she died that moment. A taxi-cab came to
her signal.
“Ashlar Building?” he pondered, and then: “I know where you mean, miss.”
The Ashlar Building was a great block of offices; she had never seen it
before, and had no idea as to how she was to find the man on whom she
was calling. Inside the hall, however, and covering both walls, was an
indicator, and her eyes went down column after column of names until
they stopped.
“309, Abraham Selim.”
The office was on the fifth floor.
It was some time before she found it, for it stood in a corner of a
long wing—two office doors, one marked “Private” the other “Abr. Selim.”
She knocked at the door, and a voice said:
“Come in.”
A small rail separated the office from the narrow gangway in which
callers were permitted to stand.
“Yes, miss?”
The man who advanced to her was brusque and a little hostile.
“I want to see Mr. Selim,” she said, and the young man shook his
well-pomaded head.
“You can’t see him, miss, without an appointment,” he said, “and even
then he won’t talk to you.” He stopped suddenly and stared at her.
“Why, Miss Nelson!” he said. “I never expected to see you here.”
She flushed, and strove vainly to recall where he had ever seen her.
“You remember me, miss—Sweeny,” he said, and her face went a deeper red.
“Why, of course, Sweeny.”
She was embarrassed, humiliated, at this discovery.
“You left Mr. Merrivan’s service rather hurriedly, didn’t you?”
He was uncomfortable in his turn.
“Yes, I did, miss.” He coughed. “I had a bit of a disagreement with Mr.
Merrivan. A very mean gentleman, and awfully suspicious.” He coughed
again. “Did you hear nothing, miss?”
She shook her head. The Nelsons did not keep their servants long enough
to reach the stage of intimacy where they could gossip with them, even
if they were so inclined.
“Well, the fact is,” said Sweeny, a trifle relieved that he had the
opportunity of getting in his version first. “Mr. Merrivan missed some
silver. Very foolishly I had lent it to a brother of mine to copy.
He was very interested in old silver, being a working jeweller, and
when Mr. Merrivan missed the silver——” He coughed again, and grew
weakly incoherent. He had been accused of stealing—he! And he had been
fired without ado. “I’d have been starving now, miss, only Mr. Selim
got to hear of me and gave me this job. It is not much,” he added
depreciatingly, “but it is something. I often wish I was back in the
happy valley. That’s what I always called Beverley Green.”
She cut short his flow of explanation and reminiscence.
“When can I see Mr. Selim?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“I can’t tell you that, miss. I’ve never seen him myself.”
“What!” she said, staring at him in amazement.
“It’s a fact, miss. He’s a moneylender—why, of course, I needn’t tell
you that.”
He looked knowingly at her, and she felt ready to sink through the
floor from very shame.
“All his business is done by letter. I receive visitors and fix
appointments. Not that he ever keeps them,” he said, “but the clients
fill in blanks—you understand, miss, the amount of money they want, the
security they can offer, and all that sort of thing—and I leave them
here in that safe for Mr. Selim when he comes.”
“When does he come?”
“God knows,” said the other piously. “He must come, because the letters
are taken away two or three times a week. He communicates with the
people himself. I never know how much they borrow or how much they pay
back.”
“But when he wants to give instructions does he write them?” asked the
girl, her curiosity getting the better of her disappointment.
“He telephones. I don’t know where from. It’s a queer job. Only two
hours a day, and only four days a week.”
“Is there no possibility of seeing him?” she asked desperately.
“Not a scrap,” said Sweeny, becoming important again. “There’s only one
way of conducting business with Abe—he wouldn’t be mad if he knew I
called him Abe, not at all—and that is by correspondence.”
She dropped her eyes to the counter and stood awhile thinking.
“Is Mr. Nelson quite well, miss?” asked Sweeny.
“Very well thank you,” she said hastily. “Thank you, Sweeny, I——” It
was hateful to take a servant into her confidence. “You won’t mention
the fact that you saw me here?”
“Certainly not,” said the virtuous Sweeny. “Lord, miss, if you knew the
people who come up here you would be surprised. Actors and actresses,
people you read about in the daily papers, ministers, religious ones——”
“Good-bye, Sweeny.”
She closed the door on his recital.
Her knees wobbled as she walked down the stairs, which she took
in preference to the lift, for she knew now just how much she had
counted upon the interview. With despair in her heart she saw the iron
inevitability of everything. What could now arrest the sword already
swinging for the blow? Nothing, nothing! The man she wanted she could
not reach—the only man, she told herself bitterly, the only man!
Looking up on the journey back she saw the white farmhouse and could
have wept.
She changed at the junction and arrived at Beverley at five o’clock,
and the first person she saw as she stepped off the train was the calm,
capable, grey-eyed man. He had seen her first, and his eyes were on
hers when she stepped down. For a second her heart stood still, and
then she saw at his side the man with the handcuffs on his wrist—the
Canadian professor! So that was whom he was after—the Canadian
professor, who had talked so entertainingly on fossils.
Scottie knew a great deal about fossils; it was his favourite subject.
In prison, if one takes up a subject, one usually discovers three or
four books in the library that have a bearing upon the matter. On
Scottie’s other side stood a uniformed policeman. As for the criminal,
he met her horrified glance with a bland smile. She supposed that
people got callous and hardened after a while, and the shame of
captivity ceased to be. But there must have been a time when even that
lean-faced man would have dropped his eyes before the gaze of a woman
who had so much as spoken to him.
She glanced quickly at Andy and went on. The relief! The dismal despair
of the return journey was lightened. She was almost cheerful as she
came up the rose-bordered path to the door.
CHAPTER FOUR
TWO MEN DRUNK
In Nelson’s house you stepped from the street to a big hall, around
three sides of which ran a gallery reached by a broad flight of stairs.
Nelson was standing at an easel examining a picture, and his face was
hidden from her. But there was no need to see his face. The attitude
was eloquent. He turned and surveyed her with a certain strange hauteur
which a king might reserve for unwelcome intruders. He was a man with
a narrow face, slightly bald. The nose was thin and aristocratic, the
chin and mouth a little weak. A thin brown moustache, turning grey,
gave him a quasi-military appearance, in keeping with a mood which at
the moment was certainly militant.
“Well,” he said, “you have come back.”
He stalked slowly towards her, his hands behind him, his thin shoulders
thrown back.
“Are you aware that I have had no lunch?” he asked ominously.
“I told you I was going to town this morning. Why didn’t you ask Mary?”
She dreaded the reply.
“I have discharged Mary,” he said, and Stella groaned inwardly.
“You haven’t discharged the cook by any chance?” she asked.
“I have also discharged the cook.”
“Did you also pay them their wages?” she demanded, angered beyond
restraint. “Oh, father, why do you do these things?”
“I discharged them because they were impertinent,” said Mr. Nelson with
a gesture. “That is sufficient. I am master in my house.”
“I wish you were a little more master of yourself,” she said wearily,
as she walked across to the mantelpiece, took down a bottle, and held
it to the light. “Why do you always discharge the servants when you are
drunk, father?”
“Drunk?” he said, shocked.
She nodded.
In such moments as these she did not use euphemisms; it was not the
occasion for delicacy.
“To-morrow you will tell me you have no recollection of anything that
happened, and you will be very penitent. But I shall have to go into
Beverley and find two servants who have not been discharged by us. They
will be difficult to find.”
Nelson raised his eyebrows.
“Drunk?” he repeated, but she took no notice of him, and presently, in
the kitchen, where she was preparing her meal, she heard him going up
the stairs, repeating “Drunk” and laughing sardonically at intervals.
She sat by the spotless kitchen table and made her meal of a cup
of chocolate and a slice of bread and butter. She looked for the
cheese, though she knew her search would be fruitless. It was another
characteristic of Mr. Nelson that in his “cups” he had a partiality for
cheese. If he had done any work—she went out into the studio at the
back of the house. The canvas she had placed for him that morning had
not felt so much as the touch of a charcoal stick. Stella Nelson sighed.
“What’s the use?” she asked, addressing her query to one of the many
half-finished studies that hung on the wall.
She was working at her household accounts at a small writing-table in
a corner of the studio when she heard the bell tinkle, and went to the
front door. It was dusk, and the figure of the man who had rung had
retreated some half-a-dozen paces from the door, so that at first she
could not distinguish him.
“Oh, is that you, Arthur? Come in, won’t you. Father’s gone to bed.”
“I guessed he had.”
Mr. Arthur Wilmot waited until she had switched on the lights in the
studio before he came in.
“You went to town to-day?”
“Did you see me?” she asked quickly.
“No. Somebody told me; I think it was Merrivan. And did you hear about
our Canadian geologist? He is quite an important burglar; important
enough to have a man like Andrew Macleod looking for him. He’s the
pathologist.”
“Who is Andrew Macleod?” she asked. She knew at once that Andrew
Macleod was the man with the grey eyes, but she wanted to be sure.
“He’s a detective. Well, he’s not exactly a detective; I believe he’s a
doctor—a pathologist. He only takes the big cases, and the professor is
a pretty big man in his business. ‘Scottie’ I think they call him; at
least, that is how Mr. Macleod addressed him.”
“I must have seen him at the station,” she said; “rather a good-looking
man with peculiar eyes.”
“I wouldn’t call Scottie good-looking,” said Wilmot, and she was so
confused that she did not correct the mistaken impression he had formed.
“I can’t ask you to stay very long,” she said. “We have lost our
domestic staff.”
“Again?” he said in surprise. “Oh, no, that’s too bad! Really, I
think your father is impossible. That means you’ve got to be cook and
house-maid until you get somebody in.”
“With a penitent parent most anxious to assist,” she said savagely,
“and all the time getting in my way! It is one of the crosses we have
to bear, and father is really a wonderful darling when——”
It was on the tip of the young man’s tongue to ask when was Mr. Nelson
ever completely sober. He was too wise, however, to let it go any
farther. Yet not so wise, as it transpired.
“To what part of the city did you go?” he asked. She was over by the
desk, tidying her papers.
“Why?” she asked, looking across at him.
“Oh, I—just asked——” he said lamely. “I wish I’d known you were in
town. We’d have gone to lunch somewhere.”
“I have a soul above food when I go to the city,” she said. “What is it
you do, Arthur?” she went on. “I have asked you that question more or
less obliquely before. Permit me the luxury of a real indiscretion. Is
it an indiscretion to ask you what you do for a living?”
He was silent.
“I just do things,” he said vaguely.
“Have you an office?”
He hesitated, then nodded.
“Yes, I have an office,” he said.
“Where?”
She saw the quick pucker of brow, and then:
“Mostly I use other people’s offices. I have any number of friends, and
my——” he stopped again. “I see my clients as near their homes as I can.”
“You’re not a lawyer and you’re not a doctor.” She ticked off the two
professions on her fingers. “You’re not a broker. Really, Arthur,
you’re almost as mysterious as”—a silence—“as Mr. Scottie, as you call
him, our poor professor. And now,” she said briskly, “I think you had
better go. I am not a stickler for the proprieties”—there was a bump
overhead, and she looked up—“but when my parent has finally retired—I
think he is just taking his boots off—you will have to retire also.”
“I suppose,” he began awkwardly, “you haven’t thought any more—about—I
don’t want to rush you or take advantage of—of things——”
She looked at him kindly enough, and took him in from the top of his
tidy hair to the points of his polished shoes. He had a broad face
and a small black moustache (it sometimes reminded Stella of a black
caterpillar that had come to rest across his upper lip), and there were
times when he appeared a little ridiculous. For some reason he was not
so to-night and her heart went out to him in sympathy.
“I have thought about it, Arthur,” she said quietly, “but it is wholly
impossible. I really do not want to marry anybody. And now go home and
forget all about it.”
He sat, his eyes looking at the floor, his finger-tips touching, and a
silence followed; she did not care to break in upon thoughts which she
guessed were not too happy.
Suddenly:
“Now, Stella, perhaps you had better drop that little-boy-don’t-bother
attitude,” he said. “You’re a woman and I’m a man. I’m offering you
something. I’m not exactly empty-handed as it is, but when Merrivan
dies—well, I’m his only relative. You’re broke, and you’ve been up to
some damned folly. I don’t know what it is, but I’ll know sooner or
later. You can’t stay in Beverley Green much longer. Your father has
drunk two mortgages on to this house and he’ll drink the furniture
before he’s through. I dare say you think it will be fine and large
to earn your living, but it isn’t. Five employers in seven will want
to cuddle you, I know. I’m willing to put that poor soak into a good
inebriates’ home. It will be kill or cure, and, anyway, it has got to
come to that. I’m speaking plainly. I’ve tried the other way and it
hasn’t worked. You’re woman enough to see that it is kindest to be
cruel. I want you, Stella; I want you more than I’ve wanted anything.
And I know!”
This significantly. Her lips moved, but the question she put had no
sound.
“I know just how bad your affairs are, and I tell you that I am going
to use my knowledge to get you. There isn’t a low-down thing on earth
that I won’t do to get you. That’s straight!”
They had been on such good terms that the reticences which separate
ordinary friends from one another had been thawed away. He was the only
man in the world, with the exception of her father, who addressed her
by her Christian name. She called him “Arthur” naturally. To Stella
Nelson he was a type of young business man who played tennis, danced
well, talked about himself with satisfaction, and owned a mid-opulent
car. He was the most engaging of that type she had met, and she had
studied him sufficiently well to know exactly what he would do in any
given set of circumstances.
Her first sensation when he began to speak was one of dismay and
chagrin. She was not hurt; it was a long time before she was hurt.
But she was annoyed by the mistake she had made. She had felt that
way when at a bridge party she had inadvertently or abstractedly led
the wrong card, knowing that it was the wrong card, and had lost the
rubber in consequence. She had an absurd desire to apologise to him for
having misjudged his character, but, even had she not recognised its
absurdity, she was incapable of speech. She was wrong, not he. He was
right, natural, his own self, aggressive and “hell-sure.” The Canadian
professor had used that expression in her hearing and it had tickled
her. Arthur Wilmot was hell-sure of himself, of his advantageous
position, of her.
Then she found her voice.
“You’d better go, Arthur,” she said gently.
In age she was little more than a child. She felt motherly toward him.
He was so pathetically foolish that she felt sorry for him.
“I’ll go when I want to,” he said. “If you want me thrown out call your
father. Why don’t you? Call the servants he fired! You think I’m being
a cad, but I’m underlining and italicizing the fact that you are alone,
not in this house, but in the world.”
She had found her strength and her weapon.
“And you are being the strong, talkative man. The silent variety was
sure to produce his opposite sooner or later,” she said.
She leant against the back of a chair, her hands behind her. Her poise
was disconcerting to this stormer of citadels. Neither hectic defiance
nor surrender met him, but the consciousness that there was some
hidden reserve. He felt it coming and was uneasy.
“I’m not frantically annoyed by your—I am trying to think of a good
description—tragic clowning; clowning because it was intended to be
tragic. I don’t want to marry you, Arthur, because—well, you admitted
that of yourself you have no particular quality or charm, didn’t you?
You must ‘get me’ by virtue of your better financial position. That
is snobbish in you, isn’t it? Or by blackmail, or some other thing.
The villain in the melodrama does that. You should have had a green
limelight focused on you—the strong, talkative man and the weak, silent
woman. That would be novel, wouldn’t it? You are the second drunken man
I have met to-day, only you have swallowed a more potent intoxicant.
You’re vanity-drunk, and you’ll find it hard to get sober again.”
Her voice never lost its command of him. He writhed, made grunting
little noises. Once he tried to break in on her, but in the end he was
beaten down, and arrested the employment of arguments which he had so
carefully thought out in a shrinking fear that they would sound silly
even to himself.
She crossed to the door and opened it.
“I only want to say——” he began, and she laughed.
“You still want to say something?” she asked.
He walked out without a word, and she closed and locked the door behind
him.
She stood with one hand on the knob, thinking, her head bent low in the
attitude of one who was listening. But she was only thinking, and still
in thought she put out the lights and went upstairs to her room. It was
very early to go to bed, but there was no reason why she should stay
below. She undressed slowly by the light of the moon. Her room was on
the top floor, on the same level as that of the servants. It was the
gable window which Andrew Macleod had seen, and she chose it because it
gave her a view uninterrupted by the trees.
She pulled a dressing-gown over her pyjamas and, throwing open the
casement windows leant her elbows on the ledge and looked out. The
world was a place of misty hues. The light flooding the central green
turned the grass to a dove grey. The beams caught the white scar of
old Beverley Quarry, and it showed like a big oyster-shell against the
wooded slope of the hill. A night of peace; no sound but the faint
screech of an owl from the hills and the crunching of feet on the
gravel road. Tramp, tramp, tramp, like the measured march of a soldier.
Who was abroad? She did not recognise the leisurely footstep. Then he
came into view.
Looking down between the branches of two trees she saw a man, and knew
him before he turned his face enquiringly toward the house.
The detective with the grey eyes—Andrew Macleod!
She bit her lip to check the cry that rose, and, stepping back, closed
the windows stealthily.
Her heart was thumping painfully; she almost heard the “Ugh!” of it.
The detective! She crept to the windows and looked out, and, waiting,
she pulled them open. There was no sound, not even the distant sound
of feet on gravel. In a moment she saw him. He was walking across the
grass, and soon after disappeared. There came to her the drone of a
motor that died away to nothing.
She staggered to her bed and sat down.
At that moment Arthur Wilmot was torturing himself with speculations.
What would she think of him? He might have spared himself that
sleepless night. She had forgotten that Arthur Wilmot existed.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE VALLEY OF GHOSTS
Waiting on the station platform, Scottie had grown suddenly
communicative, even rhetorical.
“You think that you’re tolerably well acquainted with all the dirt of
life, Macleod; because you know the hot spots in town, the Chink pipe
cellars, and the silk curtains and divan emporiums, that you know it
all. I admit you’re not so hell-sure as some of those misapplications
they call detectives, and your doctoring has taken you down to the
lining of things, but you don’t know it all.”
“I don’t,” confessed Andy.
“That is where some of you people go wrong—not you, I admit, but some
of you coppers. It isn’t the dive and the thieves’ kitchen, or the
place where the scum and scrapings are found—little hooks who reckon
they’re Rothschildren when they touch a fiver—it isn’t these that
are the bad places.” He looked round. The county policeman who was
escorting him to town was not listening. “If you want to find tabulated
hell go to Beverley Green!”
Andy eyed him keenly and felt an inexplicable thrill run down his spine.
“What do you mean? Did you hear anything?”
Scottie conveyed a negative with a curl of his lips.
“No, nothing; but I smelt it. I’m sensitive to—what’n hell’s the word?
Atmosphere, that’s it. You’ll snigger at that, but it was a fortune to
me in what I might term my unregenerate days. I’ll let you snigger now,
but you won’t laugh when you see the size and appearance of my alibi.
In those days that sort of creepy feeling has saved me many a long
stretch of wasted time. I’ve been in a prison when they brought in a
man to be hanged. Nobody knew he was there; he was transferred the day
before his execution, because the flooring of the death house caught
fire. Fact! And I knew he was in the prison, knew the hour he came in.
That is how I feel about Beverley Green. There is something—evil about
it. Queer word for me to use, Macleod, eh? They touch your elbow as you
walk—ghosts! Laugh! But I tell you there’s a bunch of ’em! That’s how
I’ve named it the Valley of Ghosts! Now I’ll tell you something that
would look bad against me if you put it in the charge. But I trust you,
Macleod, because you’re different to the general run of bulls; you’re a
gentleman. I carried a gun. Always had one in my kit, but never carried
one in my jeans before. I did. I had it on me when you pinched me. I
chucked it away as we drove into Beverley. I won’t tell you where, for
you didn’t see me do it.”
“When you pretended to yawn as we were coming round the bend into the
town,” said Andy. “But we won’t mention that, and I’ll countermand the
order I gave to search the ditches. Why, Scottie, you’re not easily
scared.”
Scottie clicked his lips. He was quite serious.
“I don’t know. I’m not nervy; never was. Not afraid of anything human.
I was just—well—shooting stars used to give me the same creep. It was a
fear. I let it out yesterday to Merrivan, the Community-Barker——”
Andy grinned at the tribute to Mr. Merrivan as the advertising agent
of, and guide to, Beverley Green.