fat. Not a bad fellow. He said the same thing—after I’d said it. Agreed
with me. Maybe he’d agree, with anybody; he’s accommodating. But it
seemed to me that I’d put into words all that he would have thought if
the Lord had given him the power of thinking. Macleod, go and stay a
day or so in Beverley Green and smell it yourself—something brooding,
the dead silence before the flash of lightning that hits your house—and
here’s the train. If you’re called to give evidence about me, say the
good word.”
“Have I ever said anything against you, Scottie?” asked Andy
reproachfully. “Good luck to the alibi!”
Scottie winked.
It was at that moment that the train stopped and Stella Nelson got out.
Andy’s eyes followed her until she was out of sight.
“And she’s in it somewhere,” whispered Scottie, almost in his ear. “So
long, Macleod.”
So Scottie went off to the bar of justice, a less disastrous experience
than he had anticipated, for his alibi was well and truly laid, and
the evidence of four apparently respectable persons who were playing
cards with him at the moment the crime was committed was unshaken by
the scorn of the prosecution and unmoved by the deft questions of a
sceptical judge.
Andy had promised himself the pleasure of a moonlight drive across
country to the holiday place whence he had been dragged. Evidence of
arrest would be given by the inspector in charge of the case, to whom
the receiving of the prisoner from the county policeman constituted
arrest. If Andy’s presence was necessary in court it would only mean a
day in town.
Scottie’s words had bitten into the surface of his mind as acid bites
into a plate. When he went back to the inn where he had garaged the car
he had no intention of leaving Beverley, although he was embarrassed
to discover that his identity was public property, and the sparse but
human population of Beverley turned to look awfully after him as he
passed.
If he had no intention of leaving Beverley that night, he had less
thought of paying a visit to Beverley Green. Subconsciously he may have
already decided his action, but consciously he was obeying a sudden
impulse, when, after dinner, he had his car out and drove towards the
happy community. He turned at the guest house, shut off his engine, and
extinguished his lights. The moon was at its full, and its magic was
working powerfully within him.
He stood for a long time greedily absorbing the delicate beauty of the
scene, and then he crossed the green, and again subconsciously his feet
carried him in the direction of the Nelson home.
An oblong of yellow light suddenly appeared; the door had opened, and
he stopped in the shadow of a clump of rhododendrons, one of many that
edged the village green.
He saw a man come out, and there was something in his gait that
immediately attracted Andy’s attention. It was literally true of Andy
that his study of mankind was man. A grimace, a movement of the hands,
the very way a man sat down to table and unfolded his napkin, had a
meaning to this student.
“There goes one who is in a very bad temper,” he thought, and watched
the form of Arthur Wilmot as he strode wrathfully along the gravelled
road. He threw open the gate of his own house and paused. As if a
thought had struck him, he came out again, closed the gate, and
continued his walk, turning into a house that stood at the corner of
the lane—Mr. Merrivan’s house, Andy noted; and remembered that they
were uncle and nephew.
He walked on, still keeping to the shadow of the bushes. Something—a
twinge of apprehension—had communicated itself to him. He was
imaginative in a practical way, but he was certainly not as susceptible
as Scottie claimed to be. He had passed the burglar’s narrative under
review, and, allowing for certain natural extravagances of language,
there remained his natural sincerity. Andy had discounted the fear
which the man had so graphically described as part and portion of the
extravagance, but now he himself was experiencing something of the same
vague dread. It was as though his soul was passing under the shadow of
a menace. He conceived that menace in the shape of a gigantic figure
with an upraised sword, and smiled to himself at the romantic conceit.
Nevertheless, he kept to the shadows, and stopped opposite Mr.
Merrivan’s house. What made him do it he never knew. He was
jeopardising a better acquaintance with the people of Beverley Green,
and, by all standards of behaviour, he was acting unpardonably. The
gate of Mr. Merrivan’s house was open as Arthur Wilmot had left it, and
crossing the road, he passed through, walking on the grass border of
the drive.
It was a house of many windows, he saw, when he was clear of the
obstructing trees—white, owlish windows, which the moon had transmuted
into polished silver. There was no sign of light, and he followed the
border until he stood under a window on the entrance floor, and then,
with startling clearness, he heard a voice.
“You won’t! By God, you won’t! I’ll see you dead before you do!”
It was not Merrivan speaking. He guessed it must be the visitor.
Presently he heard a murmur of sound. The window was opened a few
inches at the top. Behind, he guessed, were heavy curtains, and the
speakers were in this room. And now he heard Merrivan distinctly.
“You’re ridiculous, you’re absurd, my dear man. I am not afraid of your
threats. And now I will tell you something—something that will surprise
you. I know—mysterious occupation in the city——”
And then the voices dropped, and, although Andy put his ear to the
pane, he could not distinguish anything more, only he heard the quick,
urgent murmur of the visitor’s voice, and once Mr. Merrivan laughed.
Then he caught the moving of a chair and went back the way he had come,
standing by the bushes until Arthur Wilmot came out, and walking more
slowly, disappeared into his own house.
Family jars can very well seem more important, more tragic than
they are. But this was an unusual quarrel. What was this mysterious
occupation of Mr. Arthur Wilmot, the very mention of which had reduced
him from a hectoring bully, breathing fire and slaughter, to a
murmuring supplicant?
He waited until the door of the Wilmot house closed, then he stepped
down to the gravel and paced slowly back. As he came to the Nelson
residence he stopped and looked, and his heart beat a little faster.
He saw the girl distinctly. The moonlight gave her beautiful face a
delicacy which was unearthly. He saw her draw back and the window
slowly close, and knew that she had seen him. Was she afraid? Had she
recognised him? It was queer, he told himself, as he drove back to
Beverley, and queerest of all was the sudden lightening of spirit and
the rolling away of a sense of impending trouble which he experienced
as his car turned into the main road. If there was a devil at Beverley
Green he was a most potent devil. For a second he had scared Andrew
Macleod.
CHAPTER SIX
THE TWENTY-FOURTH
Stella Nelson was at breakfast when her father came down. He was no
longer a haughty dismisser of servants, but an ashamed and humble man.
His whole attitude was an apology.
Once Stella used to be deceived by his penitence. She had argued that
if a man realised and was truly sorry for his faults—and he had not
grown so callous that he passed over these acts in silence there must
be something in him and a chance of reformation. But that illusion had
passed, with many others.
“Good morning, my dear. I hardly like to look you in the face,” he said
as he sat down and unfolded his serviette with uncertain hands. “I am a
beast, a beast!”
She poured out his tea unimpressed.
“This is the last time, Stella, the very last time. I resolved as I
was dressing this morning that never again would a wine-glass touch my
lips. Was I unusually stupid? I didn’t dismiss the servants, did I?”
“They’ve gone,” she said.
He groaned.
“Perhaps I could see them,” he said eagerly. “I think I could put
things right with Nellie. She was not a bad girl, though she did lose
my gold studs. I’ll go down and explain, and we’ll have them all up by
lunch-time, my love. I can’t allow you to do the housework.”
“Nellie came for her box this morning,” said the girl in a matter
of fact tone, “and I made the same suggestion to her. She says she
wouldn’t come back if I paid her a million a year. I didn’t offer it to
her.”
“Did I—did I call her names?” he asked guiltily.
She nodded and pushed the marmalade towards him.
“Have you any money? I want to go shopping,” she said.
He shifted uneasily in his chair.
“I’m afraid I haven’t,” he said. “I went into Beverley yesterday
morning after you had gone and made one or two purchases——”
“I know,” Stella interrupted calmly. “You left exactly half a bottle,
which I poured down the sink.”
“You shouldn’t have done that, my dear,” he murmured. “It is poisonous
stuff, but it is good to have in the house in case of sudden sickness.”
Kenneth Nelson, on such occasions as these, invariably presupposed
the outbreak of some malady which could only be cured by the liberal
application of whisky.
“If we’re sick we’ll send for Dr. Granitt,” said the girl briskly.
“Are you sure you have no money, father?”
“I have a few shillings.” He put his hand in his pocket and produced a
handful of loose silver. “I shall want that,” he said hastily. “I get
my cheque from the dealers to-day. Why it hasn’t come this morning I
don’t know. These dealers are most unbusiness-like.
“The cheque came last week,” she said, without heat. “You took the
letter from the maid and asked her not to tell me anything about it.
She told me that yesterday, amongst other things.”
He groaned again.
“I’m a spendthrift, I’m a wastrel,” he wailed. “I drove your poor
mother into her grave by my beastliness. You know I did, Stella.”
In such moments of self-abnegation he found pleasure in exposure of
his weakness. That it might hurt his daughter did not occur to him. He
himself derived such complete satisfaction in his rôle of flagellant
that he could not imagine she did not share his painful pleasure.
“Don’t,” she said almost sharply, and returned instantly to the money
question. “I must have some money, father. The maids are coming up for
their wages to-day. Or, to be more exact, I promised to send it down to
them.”
He was hunched up in his chair, an injured, brooding man.
“I’ll make a start on that Pygmalion to-day,” he said. “It will take
some while to do, and it will be a long time before I get the money.
These infernal dealers——”
He had started on the Pygmalion three years before, but had not been
quite in the mood ever since. Stella had given up engaging models for
him and accepted the announcement that a start was to be made upon the
great picture with the same indifference as she received his penitence.
He brightened up as a thought occurred to him and leant across the
table, dropping his voice to a confidential tone.
“I suppose, Stella, you couldn’t get——You remember the money you
got when that wretched jam manufacturer sued me for the money he
had deposited—as if I could paint a picture to order! I was never a
tradesman, dear. I don’t sing a song about art, but art is the essence
of existence to me.”
He looked at her expectantly, pleadingly. She shook her head.
“I cannot get any more money that way,” she said. “I’d sooner die.” She
shivered at the recollection. “Don’t let us talk about it, father,” she
said.
Presently he got up and strolled disconsolately about the room, posing
before the half-finished portrait of her which had been begun when she
was three years younger.
“There’s the makings of a picture,” he said. “I’ve a jolly good mind to
concentrate on that.”
Later, however, she found him in the studio examining another
incomplete canvas.
“A couple of weeks’ work on that, Stella, and, by gad! I’ve got an
Academy picture!”
“Why don’t you make a start, father?” she asked. “I’ll help you fix the
palette. Get into your smock and start.”
“There’s tons of time,” he said airily. “I’m going to see if I can find
a professional. One round would make a man of me.”
She saw him afterwards disappearing into the valley, with his caddie
behind him and the professional walking by his side, a man without a
care in the world, without a thought of to-morrow or a real regret for
yesterday.
When he came back to lunch he was so bright and confident, so dogmatic
and optimistic, that she knew that his good resolution of the morning
was already an amusing memory.
“It is knowing where to stop, Stella, that makes all the difference
between a man and a fool,” he said. “There is nobody who knows better
than myself when he’s had enough. The trouble with me is that I am
an artist. My mind goes wandering into rosy dreamlands, and I drink
mechanically, without realising that I am drinking at all.” He laughed
outrageously and pinched her cheek. “We’ll have that Pygmalion finished
in a week,” he said. “You think that’s a stupid promise, don’t you? I
can tell you, my dear, that as a young man, when I painted the picture
which made me famous—Homer drinking the hemlock—I began to work on the
Sunday morning and the thing was finished on Tuesday night. Of course I
touched it up afterwards.”
She had heard the story innumerable times.
“Did you drink anything at the club, father?”
The club was a tiny bungalow at the end of the village, and had perhaps
the smallest membership of any golfing club in the world.
“Just a whisky and soda,” he said airily, and added something about a
man knowing when he had had enough.
Kenneth Nelson had the habit of repression, a habit to which neurotics
are susceptible. He could put out of his mind any aspect of life and
every memory of word or deed that was unpleasant to think about, or
shocked his artistic soul. He referred to this facility as a gift;
it was, in fact, a weakness, symptomatic of his neurosis. His speech
abounded in wise sayings, old saws that had chrystallised into a habit
of thought. His favourite, and, indeed, the only poetical quotation,
was that stanza from Omar which deals with the inevitability of the
moving finger.
“Oh, by the way, Stella, we have a visitor at the guest house. Upon my
word, it is poetical justice,” he chuckled. “That rascal Bellingham was
a thief, a burglar. By gad! I shouldn’t have slept soundly if I had
known that.”
The girl wondered what there was in the house, other than unfinished
paintings, that might have tempted the errant Scottie.
Before her father could continue she had an intuitive knowledge of what
he was going to say.
“The detective?” she asked quickly.
He nodded.
“He is staying here for a day or two—quite an interesting fellow, a
most charming fellow. He’s a guest of Merrivan’s in a sense. You know
how Merrivan picks up odd people, impossible people as a rule; but this
time he’s picked a winner. This detective fellow—Andrew, Andrew, what
the devil is it? A Scottish name. I never can remember all the Macs.”
“Macleod.”
“Andrew Macleod, that’s it! Well, he is the fellow who was sent down to
arrest the burglar, and very smart he was about it. He is quite a lion.
Of course, it is unusual to find a detective who is a gentleman, except
in books. You’d like to meet him, wouldn’t you, my dear? He would
interest you.”
“No,” she said, so quickly that he looked at her. “I’m really not
interested,” she went on hurriedly, “and besides, I saw him in the post
office yesterday morning and didn’t like the look of him.”
Mr. Nelson yawned and looked at his watch.
“Well, I’ll get along. I promised Pearson I’d partner him in a foursome
this afternoon. You’re sure you won’t come up to tea?”
She did not ask him inconvenient questions about the unfinished
Pygmalion. Two years ago, when she first came back from school, she
would have been surprised that he had so quickly forgotten his noble
intentions, and would have suggested that he spend the afternoon in his
studio, and he would have replied that he would get up early the next
morning and make a good start. If she had repeated the suggestion now,
she would have had the same answer. She was resigned now, resigned to
everything. Things must work out as they might. She had made her effort
and had failed. Recalling the journey to town and the high hopes she
had set upon the interview which had proved impossible, she knew that
her wild flutter to escape had been futile from the conception of the
idea. The worst must happen. It was Kismet.
When she had come down that morning she had found a letter from Arthur
Wilmot, and, after making sure that he was the writer, she had torn it
up unread and thrown it into the waste-paper basket. He was the least
disturbing element of all.
As to the detective, he also was fate. He must do whatever he wished,
what ever it was his duty to do. She was resigned to the worst, and he
was included in her category of misfortunes. To-day he headed the list.
She spent the afternoon interviewing the raw materials of service.
They were crude country girls, who gaped at her, and giggled at the
labour-saving devices to which she introduced them. It was a waste of
time to look for trained servants, for they knew the house, and they
had heard of Kenneth Nelson in his cups.
A secret and dwindling reserve of money which she kept in her desk
enabled her to discharge her liabilities to the servants whom
Nelson, in his lordly way, had dismissed. She had just finished the
heartbreaking task of teaching the new cook the delicate art of
tea-making (“I likes it hot and strong myself, miss,” said that lady)
when Mr. Merrivan arrived. She saw him through the window, and opened
the door to him herself.
He was an unwelcome visitor, though she did not dislike him. She
stilled the flutter of apprehension which she felt by committing him to
the category of her inevitabilities, and gained a certain peace of mind
thereby.
“A delicate errand, Miss—er—Nelson,” he said, shaking his head, and
thereby implying his unfitness for the mission. “A very delicate
errand. I hardly know where to begin.”
She waited, fearing that he would begin by reminding her of a certain
obligation she had once undertaken and happily discharged. To her
relief, the subject which he had come to expound was the brutality of
his nephew.
“I don’t know what he said to you. I can only guess. May I sit down?”
“I’m so sorry.”
She pushed forward a chair, and Mr. Merrivan seated himself slowly and
gave her elaborate thanks.
“He has insulted you beyond forgiveness,” he was starting, but she
stopped him.
“I do hope you’re not going to talk about that, Mr. Merrivan. Arthur is
very young, and he doesn’t know a very great deal about women.”
“Doesn’t he?” said Mr. Merrivan significantly. “I am sorry to say I
disagree with you. He knows enough about ladies to understand what is
his duty.”
“Did he tell you?” she asked, wondering how this big man came to know.
It occurred to her that Arthur must have inherited his talkativeness
from Mr. Merrivan’s branch of the family.
“He certainly told me,” nodded the other, “and he asked me to use my
influence with you—ahem!” he coughed. “I told him,” he spoke very
distinctly and slowly, “that I certainly could not hope to press the
suit of another.”
There was a pause whilst she was taking this in.
“Of another?” she repeated. “Do you mean—oh, no, you cannot mean——”
“I mean,” said Mr. Merrivan, very quietly, and, as before, very
distinctly, “myself. The disparity in our ages, Miss Nelson, is
apparently an insuperable obstacle to my happiness.”
“Age has nothing to do with it, Mr. Merrivan,” she said hastily, “only
I—I don’t want to get married. You do mean that? You want to marry me?
I hope you don’t—it would make me look a little foolish if you didn’t,
but—I’d rather feel foolish.”
“That is what I mean,” said Darius Merrivan in his stateliest manner.
“I have for a long time contemplated such a step, Miss Nelson, and
every day I have seen you I have become more and more convinced that
you are the only woman in the world with whom life would be in any way
agreeable.”
Stella laughed.
“I’m a little hysterical, I think,” she excused herself. “I never
dreamt that you——Of course, I am very honoured, Mr. Merrivan, I cannot
tell you how honoured, and you have been so good to me.”
He raised his hand in protest.
“Do not let us speak of that matter,” he said. “I can offer you——”
“Wait,” she interrupted urgently. “I don’t want to be married; that is
the truth. I am very young, and I have no fixed ideas about matrimony,
and I don’t want to be married. It isn’t because it is you, Mr.
Merrivan, any more than it was because it was Arthur. I just don’t want
to be married!”
She might have thought that he had expected some such reply, he took
his refusal so calmly and with such a little show of chagrin.
“The matter can wait,” he said. “I cannot expect a young lady to make
up her mind on the spot, but I shall not give up hoping.”
She shook her head.
“I think it would be kinder to tell you not to hope,” said she. “I
like you awfully, and you have been very kind to me.”
Again his hands protested.
“But I don’t want to marry you, Mr. Merrivan, any more than I want
to marry your nephew, and I don’t think any time you may allow me to
reconsider the matter will cause me to change my views. They are fixed
and immutable.”
Still he did not make any attempt to rise, but sat there feeling his
smooth cheek and staring past her, until she began to wonder what there
was to attract his gaze.
“Are things well with you, Miss Nelson?”
“Very well indeed,” she answered brightly.
“You are not troubled at all?”
She shook her head.
“Another delicate matter,” he said. “I am a very rich man and have no
relatives and few calls upon my purse. If a matter of two thousand
would be of any use to you, to tide over these hard times, you may
command me.”
“No, Mr. Merrivan,” she answered quietly, “it is big and generous of
you. I have once trespassed upon your kindness, but—it wasn’t a nice
experience. Oh yes, you were very sweet about it, but I can’t accept
anything more.”
He got up to his feet, flicked a speck of dust from his sleeve, and
picked up his hat.
“Arthur knows,” he said. “I told him.”
“Told him what?” she demanded, startled.
“That I was going to ask you to marry me.”
He laughed softly.
“He was very violent, Miss Nelson, and threatened—I think he threatened
to kill me.” He turned at the door. “By the way, did he say anything to
you about knowing your secret?”
“Did he tell you that too?”
He shook his head.
“No, I guessed that. The secret he knew was that you had borrowed money
from me, and how he came to know is beyond my understanding. Perhaps I
can induce you to change your mind?”
She shook her head.
He was standing in the doorway, his hand on the handle, looking out
into the garden.
“When is the twenty-fourth of the month?” he asked, not turning his
head.
A very considerable space of time elapsed before she replied.
“Next Monday,” she breathed, and stood motionless as he closed the door
behind him.
So he knew. He really did know. And the detective was here, for what
other purpose than to serve Mr. Merrivan in his discretion?
CHAPTER SEVEN
MEETING STELLA
Andy spent two unprofitable days at Beverley Green—unprofitable because
the person he had come to meet had studiously avoided him. Once he saw
a girl walking on the other side of the green. She was accompanied by
two dogs, which ran erratically before and behind, and occasionally
around her, and, quickening his steps, found that it was a Miss
Sheppard, a girl to whom he had been introduced on the links.
He dined the first night with Mr. Merrivan and Sheppard, the architect,
a man of such elusive personality that therefore Andrew could never
form a mental picture of him. Mr. Merrivan was a bachelor, he told
them; not an incorrigible one by any means. He was open to conviction,
and, if he dare talk about himself, though he was sure nobody was
particularly interested, he had been convinced.
“Indeed?” said his guests, variously impressed.
Andy wondered what kind of woman his host would marry. Mr. Sheppard did
not speculate. He gave the impression that he had stopped thinking when
he had made sufficient money to retire from his profession.
Andy recalled the great architect as a round-faced man, but was
uncertain whether he had a moustache or was clean-shaven.
He wore a large gold stud, flat, and resembling a button. It had
a small black stone in the centre. It was the only hint of his
personality that Andy could ever recollect.
“The fact is, gentlemen,” said Mr. Merrivan, lowering his voice as if
he were revealing a great secret, “beautiful as this place is, and
charming as the community is and always will be, I am sure, I have
planned an existence even more—ah—serene. Do you know Lake Como, Dr.
Macleod?”
Andy knew it rather well.