The Deathless Arm
October 7. 11.15 A.M.
A Spartan is among us.
Not only did Eve Bartholomew appear this morning at breakfast at the
early hour Salt had suggested, but she seemed almost in brighter mood
than before, and I can understand how the discovery of Sir Brooke, for
better or worse, may have taken a burden from her mind. Still, she is
brave, though she spoke with a rather wan utterance, addressing me,
who had the fortune to consume porridge next her in the window.
“I had expected it,” she said. “Of course I never could have hinted
such a thing before, but I realized that sooner or later such a man as
Sir Brooke must fall foul of one of his many enemies.”
I uttered some vague sound.
“Mark my words, Mr. Bannerlee, the villain will be brought to
vengeance for that blow! I understand how Miss Lebetwood feels—why,
Blenkinson, what’s the matter?”
“N-nothing, Ma’am. I beg your pardon,” said the butler, who had been
fussily arranging the window-shade, and took flight.
“What did he do?” I asked quickly.
“He made the most extraordinary grimace I have ever seen. I hope the
man is not subject to, er—anything.”
“I think not,” I answered drily, guessing well the cause of the facial
disturbance. “But you were saying, Mrs. Bartholomew?”
“I have something that would do the poor man good. I must speak to him
later. Er, what _was_ I saying?”
“That you understood how Miss Leb—”
“I do, indeed! I admire that young woman, and I intend to follow her
example. Until the murderer of Sir Brooke is found, I shall not rest!”
But this was nothing to what was in store later. An hour afterward
Salt had us all in the conservatory, very much on tenterhooks. When he
had surveyed us with calm and taken the roll mentally, he made a
little speech.
“Since you’ll all be goin’ to New Aidenn for the inquest this
afternoon, I thought I might give you a few hints. The fact is, we
want as little as possible to come out. I have those orders from
higher up. The Coroner’s business is to ascertain the cause of death,
if he can; the rest is my business. I know Dr. Niblett will play the
game accordin’ to my rules, and he won’t try to carry the question any
deeper than that the deceased came by his death by means of the stone
that Mr. Blenkinson luckily discovered. But there’s no tellin’ what
some busybody juryman or other may want to know; so I want to warn you
there’s one subject you must be shy of—that’s this ‘King in Ireland’
topic. There’s enough hullabaloo in the Emerald Isle right now without
spreadin’ that.”
“Still,” said Alberta, “I don’t see how we are quite going to tell
whether a question will lead—”
“I’m comin’ to that, now. I’m goin’ to share some facts with you. This
that I’m tellin’ you is the result of special information from Miss
Lebetwood, Mrs. Bartholomew, and Lord Ludlow, added to a few small
discoveries of my own. Now, remember, I want you to keep this budget
of facts in mind and not show by a word or a sign that you know
anything about it. That’s the only reason there is for this assembly.
Anybody behind that door, Mr. Pendleton?”
Crofts flung open the studded portal, revealing emptiness in the
corridor.
“Servants sometimes like to wait behind doors, just in case anyone
should ring for ’em,” observed Salt. “You might keep an ear open in
that direction, sir. Now, here’s the way of it.”
From what we heard in the next half-hour, what a change comes over the
picture of Sir Brooke! I had heard of him as capricious, cantankerous,
unsure-footed, gentle-hearted, weak-eyed, sick: the image of
ineptitude. Yet what was he but the emissary of the powers behind the
powers that be!—no fool at all, but the super-confidential spokesman
of an Office powerful and discreet! I had heard of him as a guest like
the others, save that he was to “propose the bride’s health.” Now we
envisage him as coming to meet Cosgrove plenipotentially under the
guise of the Bidding Feast! There had been earlier meetings here
between these men. Indeed, while the revelation increased in scope, I
began to wonder if the whole idea of the Feast was not shrewdly put
upon Crofts by Cosgrove’s suggestion, so that there might be an
out-of-the-way corner for the final tryst between the representatives
of the United Kingdom and of the Kingdom of Ireland about to be
reborn.
“It may relieve Lord Ludlow’s mind,” said Salt, “if I clear up his
connection with the affair at once. That Bangor and Newcastle address,
sir,” he went on, looking at me, “seemed to give you a turn the other
day, but it was really rather enlightenin’, you know.”
“I must be very stupid—”
“Not a bit of it—only you should have studied your geography just a
little more thorough. So should I, for that matter; I didn’t guess the
connection either. You see, both those places are in Ireland.”
“Ireland!” came several gasps as one.
“Fact. Two little towns near Belfast, nearer twenty than thirty miles
apart, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“What goes on in those places?” asked Aire. “I’ve been in Bangor,
County Down. It has no industries to speak of.”
“Yes, in the main those are seasonable towns; both on the coast, I
believe. But Lord Ludlow and the other principals have projected a
tolerable business in the linen-weavin’ line to give employment to
every inhabitant the winter through; so there’ll be flourishin’
manufactories in both a year or two from now. And that properly
explains Lord Ludlow’s interest: day by day here he was tryin’ to find
what was goin’ to happen to his pet lamb.”
“I don’t see what you were in a sweat about,” said Crofts, turning to
Ludlow. “Cosgrove wouldn’t have matured his plans in a generation.”
“That’s where you’re sure to be wrong, sir,” contradicted Salt. “The
truth is, nobody except Sir Brooke could have had an idea how near
Cosgrove’s coup was to takin’ place. One or two more parties to sound,
a little time to work out the final details and give the final
orders—and the fat would have been in the fire! Why, the papers say
Ireland’s half-mad to-day as it is.”
“Where do you come in?” asked Crofts belligerently, fixing his eye on
Oxford this time, and that well-nurtured gentleman lost countenance,
but Salt made answer.
“Mr. Oxford has been pretty close to Mr. Cosgrove all along, as you’ll
recall,” he said to our host. “He may have excited Mr. Cosgrove once
or twice, but that was in another connection altogether.” Although
guardedly, the Superintendent gave a swift look toward Miss Lebetwood.
I intercepted it. “Another connection altogether. I think perhaps that
it was due to Mr. Oxford keepin’ such a good watch on Mr. Cosgrove and
his servant that Sir Brooke made up his mind to come down here when he
did and have the cards laid plain on the table.”
“This servant, who was he?” put in the insatiable Crofts. “Cosgrove
never brought a servant to any house of mine before.”
“He’s in the mortuary, too, now.”
“What, the gorilla-man!” I exclaimed.
It was so. I comprehended many things in an instant, and Salt’s
re-enforcement of them came tumbling after. The creature I had met
near the top of Mynydd Tarw, who had dwelt in the cleft of the hill,
had been an Irishman, Cosgrove’s servant. That was an Irish yell he
had yelled plump in my face, some adjuration to bid a demon begone,
for he must have taken me for a fiend of the mist when I fell in his
path. The unaccountable burned paper in Cosgrove’s grate was a message
from this man; he it was whom Cosgrove had intended to smuggle into
the House as an “extra progeny for the elephant.”
I recollected our meeting, how he had seemed to be straining,
staggering, spent with haste, even before he had encountered me and
found a new cause for flight. The presumption was strong that he had
lately met with some alarming experience. What could that have been?
Had he seen the black-bearded unknown, the menagerie-keeper? There was
nothing in that person’s colloquy with me to suggest it.
More likely the gorilla-man had run across Sir Brooke. Still, in the
mere encounter there could have been no cause for terror; neither was
anything to the other, and the Knight was hardly a figure to inspire
awe. What was more probable than a meeting on the Water bank above the
tennis court? One man was skulking secretly; the other had lost his
way. Possibly there had been a collision, or perhaps the prowler had
only seen the shape of Sir Brooke taking form in the fog, then
suddenly falling in the Water at a fatal mis-step. That abrupt fall,
perhaps one choking cry, no more, before the instant total
disappearance of the body beneath the tunnel arch (of which the
gorilla-man could have no knowledge)—these account sufficiently for
the fear in Cosgrove’s servant, spurring him hillward. This, I
believe—and it is Salt’s belief as well as mine—is the true story.
“Maybe it’s not quite cricket to criticize Cosgrove, now he’s gone,”
said Crofts in an unusually reflective manner. “I do think that he
might have shot straighter, you know. I don’t see what he was driving
at when he brought this ruffianly man of his down here in secret, to
lurk about, perhaps to thieve, and above all, to be brought among us
in disguise that evening. What was the point of that, I’d like to
know!”
“No doubt about it,” declared Salt. “Mr. Cosgrove, havin’ no idea what
had happened to Sir Brooke the night before, expected him surely to be
here by the time the Noah thing commenced.”
“What’s that to do with it?”
“Why, Mr. Cosgrove was particularly anxious to bring the pair of ’em
together, I expect.”
Crofts looked at Salt as at one suddenly seized with dementia. “To
bring them together? Why should he want to do that?”
“To show he meant business, Mr. Pendleton.”
Aire asked quickly, “Who was this wild man?”
“Ah, I was wonderin’ who’d ask me,” said Salt. “Please don’t mention
it, ladies and gentlemen, but the man killed by the landslide was sure
to be Toban First, the royal King of Ireland!”
Same day. 10.10 P.M.
A couple of snubbed and highly aggrieved juries brought in verdicts of
“Wilful Murder” and “Misadventure” respectively, as they were told to,
and within half an hour of my entering the mortuary, I was in the
street again. For a few minutes I was busy resisting the minions of
the press, who buzzed about all of us but secured small plenishments
of honey. I surmise that the likelihood of exposure to blandishing
newsgatherers was the principal reason why Blenkinson, finder of the
stone, was the only servant brought from the Vale to give testimony.
Alberta suggested that instead of returning to the House immediately
the party should spend the afternoon in motors. Everyone gladly
acceded to this means of relief from the oppressive atmosphere of the
Vale; everyone, that is, save Aire, who, having given his evidence in
the second inquest, had withdrawn to prepare for the third, which will
be held in a day or so. At the last moment, since we made too large a
crowd to be packed loosely into the pair of available cars, I, too,
seceded from the group, alleging quite truly that since the afternoon
was fine, tramping and exploring would do me perfectly.
Time-wracked New Aidenn lies in the shadow of its huge castle mound
whose fortress no longer stands atop, and the vestiges of old city
walls are far out in the fields where the cows find succulent grazing.
In ordinary circumstances these vestiges of greatness and evidences of
decay would have kindled my ardour in the antiquarian way, but now I
was resolved upon two queerer visits.
I found Aire with Sir Brooke in a side chamber of the mortuary itself.
There was a faint scent of balsam in the room, which was fitted with
some of the appurtenances of a laboratory, and Aire, in a white smock,
had a slip of glass and a pipette in his hand. Sir Brooke lay on a
table at the far end of the room, mercifully covered with a sheet.
“Ceremonies over?”
“They are, and no one the wiser. Your duties finished?”
“Oh, this isn’t duty, exactly. I could shunt it if I wished. Only
chance, you know, has made me the responsible medical witness in all
three deaths; so I have assumed the mantle of whoever corresponds to a
divisional police surgeon in the country. I’m well paid—curiosity, and
all that sort of thing.”
“Well, has curiosity received any communicable reward?”
“Prophecy fulfilled, at any rate. As I said, this man was
drowned—drowned and nothing else.”
“But didn’t you say something about a bruise on the forehead? Mrs.
Bartholomew won’t give you peace until that’s explained.”
“No, I mentioned a mark, not a bruise. Peculiar thing, you know—no
contusion, just scraping and scratching of the skin above the left
eye. In itself nothing unusual, but there was a long wood splinter
stuck there; that’s the oddest feature of the death.”
“What’s it like?”
Aire took from a rack on the wall an envelope, and from it extracted a
thin fragment, about an inch long, dark brown in colour, and feeling
like rock.
“Why, this isn’t—”
“It requires microscopy to show that it’s wood at all.”
“I’d never believe it, surely.”
“It’s almost petrified. That happens, extremely rarely, when certain
kinds of wood are immersed in running water for long periods. The
organic substance is replaced by precipitated mineral matter.”
“Well, it doesn’t strike me as being of such vast importance.”
“One wonders, for instance, what’s kept it submerged and stationary.”
At the door of departure I laughed. “A question indeed. But I must be
off.”
“Sounds as if you had plans for the afternoon.”
“I have. I am going to take a walk—Belvoir’s hint, you remember.”
“I can’t say I do.”
“A walk into the past. By the way, you had a letter this morning. May
I ask if it was in reference to the blood-test?”
“It was, indeed. And pig’s blood you found that night for a certainty.
The test reaction of the blood I sent with anti-human sera was
negative.”
“There’s some comfort in that, but it leaves the problem no less vexed
than before.”
“More vexed, if you ask me. If it had been the vital fluid of a man,
we’d have some notion of what we’re looking for. As it is, even the
nature of the problem is vague.”
“Cannibal,” I said. “Well, I must be going; these roads are new to me.
When I return to New Aidenn, I expect a bit of interesting mail
myself.”
“Oh, yes?”
“Yes; I’ve sent for my copy of the Book of Sylvan Armitage—not that
the missing portion of the manuscript is in it. I’ve thumbed the
volume too much to have overlooked anything of that sort. Well,
cheerio.”
“Cheerio.” Aire returned to his far from cheery work while I set my
footsteps out of town and eastward.
On every side around the graceful slopes of hills intercepted one
another in a little-changing prospect while I trod the highway across
green Radnor Plain. I passed the prehistoric Four Stones in their
black-grey stoicism, passed Doomsday parks, passed old cottages with
slate-shingled roofs. Above an avenue of oaks the square tower of St.
Stephen’s in Old Aidenn had been gradually mounting the sky ahead of
me, and in due time I diverged from the road and climbed the oak
avenue to the village.
What would I find beneath that Norman tower? Hints of symbolic
meanings of the “deathless arm” were rife in mind. Are the descendants
of Sir Pharamond Kay living yet? Perhaps—and the suggestion caused me
to bate my breath—one of us guests in Highglen House actually belongs
to the family of Kay. This supposition had not occurred to me before
as a live idea. Now it had force. It was, too, an hypothesis that
offered scope and direction for investigating, and in a subject where
I was more or less at home. Perhaps (a big perhaps) I might play a
large part yet in the untwining of these twisted skeins.
I will not say that I was growing excited while I procured the church
key from its custodian in one of the handful of straggling houses
remaining of the mediæval town: I had, in fact, been excited and eager
all during my walk across the monotonous plain. I entered the
churchyard by the lych-gate; the place was overcrowded with crumbling
stones among the red-barked yews. The men and women with shears, who
trimmed the grass along the graves of dear ones, looked at me, I
thought, with more than ordinary interest; there must have been marks
of eagerness in my face. I unlocked the wire-screen outer door, found
the portal within the vestibule unfastened, and entered the little
church.
The empty air smelled sweet and sanctified. The hour was clouded, and
I wished that some of the oil lamps hanging from the low roof might be
lit, for the interior was rather cavernous in the absence of sun.
Searching, I seemed fated to encounter everything but the thing I
sought. These were features with a reputation: the rood screen of fan
tracery and leaf-flower-and-grape carvings, that unique organ-case
dating back to the Gothic period, the window of St. Catherine’s
Wheel—but I spent not a second apiece on them, looking with greater
interest at the tombstones in the floor, at the memorial tablets
between the windows, and at the ’scutcheons painted on the wall with
colours still bright.
A flash of lightning drove the darkness from even the remotest corners
of the church, and my heart gave a leap. That instant I had seen a
long, bulky object in a recess of the chapel on my left.
It was the tomb of Sir Pharamond, stained and gnawed by centuries. The
effigies of the lord of Aidenn and his lady rested there in stone,
with small beasts recumbent at their feet. I lit a match to examine
the face and figure of the man. The crown of the head was clean gone,
and a fragment of the chin had fallen away, but it was impossible not
to recognize the sharp, malignant features, the keen lips, the
close-set eyes as being those of the paintings in Highglen House.
The left arm of the effigy lay across the breast, the mailed fist
clasping a broken sword. The right arm was missing.
At first I thought that, like the pieces of the head, it had been a
prey to time, but careful examination by the light of a second match
proved the carving to be complete: the chain mail ended neat at the
shoulder. No right arm had ever been there.
In haste I stooped and lit a third match to read what might be
decipherable of the inscription, but another lightning flash disclosed
the words still distinct on the side of the tomb, and I read while it
thundered:
Let Trecchours be Ware My Right Arme Shall Not
Dye For soo I have Ordeyned
These were all the words upon the monument.