A GENTLEMANLY STRANGER
On this same Christmas Day Sergeant Hooper was feeling morose and
discontented; not because he was alone in the world (a situation
comprising many advantages); nor on the score of his wages, which were
extremely liberal; nor on account of the "old blighter's"--that is, Mr.
Saffron's--occasional outbursts of temper, these being in the nature of
the case and within the terms of the contract; nor, finally, by reason
of Beaumaroy's airy insolence, since from his youth up the Sergeant was
hardened to unfavourable comments on his personal appearance, trifling
vulgarities which a man of sense could afford to ignore.
No; the winter of his discontent--a bitter winter--was due to the
conviction, which had been growing in his mind for some time, that he
was only in half the secret, and that not the more profitable half. He
knew that the old blighter had to be humoured in certain small ways--as,
for example, in regard to the combination knife-and-fork--and the
reason for it. But, first, he did not know what happened inside the
Tower; he had never seen the inside of it; the door was always locked;
he was never invited to accompany his masters when they repaired thither
by day, and he was not on the premises by night. And, secondly, he did
not understand the Wednesday journeys to London, and he had never seen
the inside of Beaumaroy's brown bag--that, like the Tower door, was
always locked. He had handled it once, just before the pair set out for
London one Wednesday. Beaumaroy, a careless man sometimes, in spite of
the cunning which Dr. Irechester attributed to him, had left it on the
parlour table while he helped Mr. Saffron on with his coat in the
passage, and the Sergeant had swiftly and surreptitiously lifted it up.
It was very light--obviously empty, or, at all events, holding only
feather-weight contents. He had never got near it when it came back from
town; then it always went straight into the Tower and had the key turned
on it forthwith.
But the Sergeant, although slow-witted as well as ugly, had had his
experiences; he had carried weights both in the army and in other
institutions which are officially described as His Majesty's, and had
seen other men carry them too. From the set of Beaumaroy's figure as he
arrived home on at least two occasions with the brown bag, and from the
way in which he handled it, the Sergeant confidently drew the conclusion
that it was of a considerable, almost a grievous, weight. What was the
heavy thing in it? What became of that thing after it was taken into the
Tower? To whose use or profit did it, or was it to, ensure? Because it
was plain, even to the meanest capacity, that the contents of the bag
had a value in the eyes of the two men who went to London for them, and
who shepherded them from London to the custody of the Tower.
These thoughts filled and racked his brain as he sat drinking rum and
water in the bar of the Green Man on Christmas evening; a solitary man,
mixing little with the people of the village, he sat apart at a small
table in the corner, musing within himself, yet idly watching the
company--villagers, a few friends from London and elsewhere, some
soldiers and their ladies. Besides these, a tall slim man stood leaning
against the bar, at the far end of it, talking to Bill Smithers, the
landlord, and sipping a whisky-and-soda between pulls at his cigar. He
wore a neat dark overcoat, brown shoes, and a bowler hat rather on one
side; his appearance was, in fact, genteel, though his air was a trifle
raffish. In age he seemed about forty. The Sergeant had never seen him
before, and therefore favoured him with a glance of special attention.
Oddly enough, the gentlemanly stranger seemed to reciprocate the
Sergeant's interest; he gave him quite a long glance. Then he finished
his whisky-and-soda, spoke a word to Bill Smithers, and lounged across
the room to where the Sergeant sat.
"It's poor work drinking alone on Christmas night," he observed. "May I
join you? I've ordered a little something; and--well, we needn't bother
about offering a gentleman a glass to-night."
The Sergeant eyed him with apparent disfavour--as, indeed, he did
everybody who approached him--but a nod of his head accorded the desired
permission. Smithers came across with a bottle of brandy and glasses.
"Good stuff!" said the stranger, as he sat down, filled the glasses, and
drank his off. "The best thing to top up with, believe me!"
The Sergeant, in turn, drained his glass, maintaining, however, his
aloofness of demeanour. "What's up?" he growled.
"What's in the brown bag?" asked the stranger lightly and urbanely.
The Sergeant did not start; he was too old a hand for that; but his
small gimlet eyes searched his new acquaintance's face very keenly. "You
know a lot!"
"More than you do in some directions, less in others perhaps. Shall I
begin? Because we've got to confide in one another, Sergeant. A little
story of what two gentlemen do in London on Wednesdays, and of what they
carry home in a brown leather bag? Would that interest you? Oh, that
stuff in the brown leather bag! Hard to come by now, isn't it? But they
know where there's still some--and so do I, to remark it incidentally.
There were actually some people, Sergeant Hooper, who distrusted the
righteousness of the British Cause--which is to say" (the stranger
smiled cynically) "the certainty of our licking the Germans--and they
hoarded it, the villains!"
Sergeant Hooper stretched out his hand towards the bottle. "Allow me!"
said the stranger politely. "I observe that your hand trembles a
little."
It did. The Sergeant was excited. The stranger seemed to be touching on
a subject which always excited the Sergeant--to the point of hands
trembling, twitching, and itching.
"Have to pay for it too! Thirty bob in curl-twisters for every ruddy
disc; that's the figure now, or thereabouts. What do they want to do it
for? What's your governors' game? Who, in short, is going to get off
with it?"
"What is it they does--the old blighter and Boomery" (Thus he
pronounced the name Beaumaroy)--"in London?"
"First to the stockbroker's--then to a bank or two--I've known it three
even; then a taxi down East, and a call at certain addresses. The bag's
with 'em, Sergeant, and at each call it gets heavier. I've seen it
swell, so to speak."
"Who in hell are you?" the Sergeant grunted huskily.
"Names later--after the usual guarantees of good faith."
The whole conversation, carried on in low tones, had passed under cover
of noisy mirth, snatches of song, banter, and giggling; nobody paid heed
to the two men talking in a corner. Yet the stranger lowered his voice
to a whisper, as he added:
"From me to you fifty quid on account; from you to me just a sight of
the place where they put it."
Sergeant Hooper drank, smoked, and pondered. The stranger showed the
edge of a roll of notes, protruding it from his breast-pocket. The
Sergeant nodded--he understood that part. But there was much that he did
not understand. "It fair beats me what the blazes they're doing it
_for_," he broke out.
"Whose money would it be?"
"The old blighter's, o' course. Boomery's stony, except for his screw."
He looked hard at the gentlemanly stranger, and a slow smile came on his
lips. "That's your idea, is it, mister?"
"Gentleman's old--looks frail--might go off suddenly. What then? Friends
turn up--always do when you're dead, you know. Well, what of it? Less
money in the funds than was reckoned; dear old gentleman doesn't cut up
as well as they hoped! And meanwhile our friend B----! Does it dawn on
you at all--from our friend B----'s point of view, Sergeant? I may be
wrong, but that's my provisional conjecture. The question remains how
he's got the old gent into the game, doesn't it?"
Precisely the point to which the Sergeant's mind also had turned! The
knowledge which he possessed--that half of the secret--and which his
companion did not, might be very material to a solution of the problem;
the Sergeant did not mean to share it prematurely, or without necessity,
or for nothing. But surely it had a bearing on the case? Dull-witted as
he was, the Sergeant seemed to catch a glimmer of light, and mentally
groped towards it.
"Well, we can't sit here all night," said the stranger in good-humoured
impatience. "I've a train to catch."
"There's no train up from here to-night."
"There is from Sprotsfield. I shall walk over."
The Sergeant smiled. "Oh, if you're walking to Sprotsfield, I'll put you
on your way. If anybody was to see us--Boomery, for instance--he
couldn't complain of my seeing an old pal on his way on Christmas night.
No 'arm in that; no look of prowling, or spying, or such-like! And you
are an old pal, ain't you?"
"Certainly; your old pal--let me see--your old pal Percy Bennett."
"As it might be, or as it might not. What about the----?" He pointed to
Percy Bennett's breast-pocket.
"I'll give it you outside. You don't want me to be seen handing it over
in here, do you?"
The Sergeant had one more question to ask. "About 'ow much d'ye reckon
there might be by now?"
"How often have they been to London? Because they don't come to see my
friends every time, I fancy."
"Must 'ave been six or seven times by now. The game began soon after
Boomery and I came 'ere."
"Then, quite roughly--quite a shot--from what I know of the deals we--my
friends, I mean--did with them, and reasoning from that, there might be
a matter of seven or eight thousand pounds."
The Sergeant whistled softly, rose, and led the way to the door. The
gentlemanly stranger paused at the bar to pay for the brandy, and after
bidding the landlord a civil good evening, with the compliments of the
season, followed the Sergeant into the village street.
Fifteen minutes' brisk walk brought them to Hinton Avenue. At the end of
it they passed Doctor Mary's house; the drawing-room curtains were not
drawn; on the blind they saw reflected the shadows of a man and a girl,
standing side by side. "Mistletoe, eh?" remarked the stranger. The
Sergeant spat on the road; they resumed their way, pursuing the road
across the heath.
It was fine, but overclouded and decidedly dark. Every now and then
Bennett--to call the stranger by what was almost confessedly a _nom de
guerre_--flashed a powerful electric torch on the roadway. "Don't want
to walk into a gorse bush," he explained with a laugh.
"Put it away, you darned fool! We're nearly there."
The stranger obeyed. In another seven or eight minutes there loomed up,
on the left hand, the dim outline of Mr. Saffron's abode--the square
cottage with the odd round tower annexed.
"There you are!" The Sergeant's voice instinctively kept to a whisper.
"That's what you want to see."
"But I can't see it--not so as to get any clear idea."
No lights showed from the cottage, nor, of course, from the Tower; its
only window had been, as Mr. Penrose said, boarded up. The wind--there
was generally a wind on the heath--stirred the fir trees and the bushes
into a soft movement and a faint murmur of sound. A very acute and alert
ear might perhaps have caught another sound--footfalls on the road, a
good long way behind them. The two spies, or scouts, did not hear them;
their attention was elsewhere.
"Probably they're both in bed; it's quite safe to make our examination,"
said the stranger.
"Yes, I s'pose it is. But look to be ready to douse your glim. Boomery's
a nailer at turning up unexpected." The Sergeant seemed rather nervous.
Mr. Bennett was not. He took out his torch, and guided by its light
(which, however, he took care not to throw towards the cottage windows)
he advanced to the garden gate, the Sergeant following, and took a
survey of the premises. It was remarkable that, as the light of the
torch beamed out, the faint sound of footfalls on the road behind died
away.
"Keep an eye on the windows, and touch my elbow if any light shows.
Don't speak." The stranger was at business--his business--now, and his
voice became correspondingly business-like. "We won't risk going inside
the gate. I can see from here." Indeed he very well could; Tower Cottage
stood back no more than twelve or fifteen feet from the road, and the
torch was powerful.
For four or five minutes the stranger made his examination. Then he
turned off his torch. "Looks easy," he remarked, "but of course there's
the garrison." Once more he turned on his light, to look at his watch.
"Can't stop now, or I shall miss the train, and I don't want to have to
get a bed at Sprotsfield. A strayed reveller on Christmas night might be
too well remembered. Got an address?"
"Care of Mrs. Willnough, Laundress, Inkston."
"Right. Good night." With a quick turn he was off along the road to
Sprotsfield. The Sergeant saw the gleam of his torch once or twice,
receding at quite a surprising pace into the distance. Feeling the wad
of notes in his pocket--perhaps to make sure that the whole episode had
not been a dream--the Sergeant turned back towards Inkston.
After a couple of minutes, a tall figure emerged from the shelter of a
high and thick gorse bush just opposite Tower Cottage, on the other
side of the road. Captain Alec Naylor had seen the light of the
stranger's torch, and, after four years in France, he was well skilled
in the art of noiseless approach. But he felt that, for the moment at
least, his brain was less agile than his feet. He had been suddenly
wrenched out of one set of thoughts into another profoundly different.
It was his shadow, together with Cynthia Walford's, that the Sergeant
and the stranger had seen on Doctor Mary's blind. After "walking her
home," he had--well, just not proposed to Cynthia, restrained more by
those scruples of his than by any ungraciousness on the part of the
lady. Even his modesty could not blind him to this fact. He was full of
pity, of love, of a man's joyous sense of triumph, half wishing that he
had made his proposal, half glad that he had not, just because it, and
its radiant promise, could still be dangled in the bright vision of the
future. He was in the seventh heaven of romance, and his heaven was
higher than that which most men reach; it was built on loftier
foundations.
Then came the flash of the torch; the high spirits born of one
experience sought an outlet in another. "By Jove, I'll track 'em--like
old times!" he murmured, with a low light laugh. And, just for fun, he
did it, taking to the heath beside the road, twisting his long body in
and out amongst gorse, heather, and bracken, very noiselessly, with
wonderful dexterity. The light of the lamp was continuous now; the
stranger was making his examination. By it Captain Alec guided his
steps; and he arrived behind the tall gorse bush opposite Tower Cottage
just in time to hear the Sergeant say, "Mrs. Willnough, Laundress,
Inkston," and to witness the parting of the two companions.
There was very little to go upon there. Why should not one friend give
another an address? But the examination? Beaumaroy should surely know of
that? It might be nothing; but, on the other hand, it might have a
meaning. But the men had gone, had obviously parted for the night.
Beaumaroy could be told to-morrow; now he himself could go back to his
visions--and so homeward, in happiness, to his bed.
Having reached this sensible conclusion, he was about to turn away from
the garden gate which he now stood facing, when he heard the house door
softly open and as softly shut. The practice of his profession had given
him keen eyes in the dark; he discovered Beaumaroy's tall figure
stealing very cautiously down the narrow, flagged path. The next instant
the light of another torch flashed out, and this time not in the
distance, but full in his own face.
"By God, you, Naylor!" Beaumaroy exclaimed in a voice which was low but
full of surprise. "I--I--well, it's rather late----"
Alec Naylor was suddenly struck with the element of humour in the
situation. He had been playing detective; apparently he was now the
suspected!
"Give me time and I'll explain all," he said, smiling under the dazzling
rays of the torch.
Beaumaroy glanced round at the house for a second, pursed up his lips
into one of the odd little contortions which he sometimes allowed
himself, and said, "Well, then, old chap, come in and have a drink, and
do it. For I'm hanged if I see why you should stand staring into this
garden in the middle of the night! With your opportunities I should be
better employed on Christmas evening."
"You really want me to come in?" It was now Captain Alec's voice which
expressed surprise.
"Why the devil not?" asked Beaumaroy in a tone of frank but friendly
impatience.
He turned and led the way into Tower Cottage. Somehow this invitation to
enter was the last thing that Captain Alec had expected.