And now I come to that part of my story which I find most difficult to
write. From the story-teller’s point of view pure and simple, it is the
easiest; from the human point of view I have never tackled anything
harder. Because, though the events I am describing took place months
ago—and the first shock is long since past—I still cannot rid myself
of a feeling that I was largely to blame. By the cold light of reason I
can exonerate myself; but one does not habitually have one’s being in
that exalted atmosphere. Jack blames himself; but in view of what
happened the night before—in view of the look in Bill’s eyes that
Sunday morning—I feel that I ought to have realised that there were
influences at work which lay beyond my ken—influences which at present
lie not within the light of reason. And then at other times I wonder if
it was not just a strange coincidence and an—accident. God knows:
frankly, I don’t.
We spent that evening just as we had spent the preceding one, save that
in view of shooting on Monday morning we went to bed at midnight. This
time I fell asleep at once—only to be roused by someone shaking my arm.
I sat up blinking: it was Jack Drage.
“Wake up, Tom,” he whispered. “There’s a light in the dining-room, and
we’re going down to investigate. Dick is getting Bill.”
In an instant I was out of bed.
“It’s probably Bill himself,” I said. “I found him down there last night
walking in his sleep.”
“The devil you did!” muttered Jack, and at that moment Dick Armytage
came in.
“Bill’s room is empty,” he announced; and I nodded.
“It’s Bill right enough,” I said. “He went back quite quietly last
night. And, for Heaven’s sake, you fellows, don’t wake him. It’s very
dangerous.”
Just as before the dining-room door was open, and the light filtered
through into the passage as we tiptoed along it. Just as before we saw
Bill standing by the table—his hand outstretched.
Then came the same words as I had heard last night.
“You lie, Sir Henry!—you lie!”
“What the devil——” muttered Jack; but I held up my finger to ensure
silence.
“He’ll come to bed now,” I whispered. “Keep quite still.”
But this time Bill Sibton did not come to bed; instead, he turned and
stared into the shadows of the musicians’ gallery. Then, very slowly, he
walked away from us and commenced to mount the stairs. And still the
danger did not strike us.
Dimly we saw the tall figure reach the top and walk along the gallery,
as if he saw someone at the end—and at that moment the peril came to
the three of us.
To Dick and Jack the rottenness of the balustrade; to me—_the end of
the vicar’s story_. What they thought I know not; but to my dying day I
shall never forget my own agony of mind. In that corner of the
musicians’ gallery—though we could see her not—stood Lady Wrothley; to
the man walking slowly towards her the door was opening slowly—the door
which had remained shut the night before—the door behind which lay the
terror.
And then it all happened very quickly. In a frenzy we raced across the
room, to get at him—but we weren’t in time. There was a rending of
wood—a dreadful crash—a sprawling figure on the floor below. To me it
seemed as if he had hurled himself against the balustrade, had literally
dived downwards. The others did not notice it—so they told me later.
But I did.
And then we were kneeling beside him on the floor.
“Dear God!” I heard Drage say in a hoarse whisper. “He’s dead; he’s
broken his neck.”
· · · · ·
Such is my story. Jack Drage blames himself for the rottenness of the
woodwork, but I feel it was my fault. Yes—it was my fault. I ought to
have known, ought to have done something. Even if we’d only locked the
dining-room door.
And the last link in the chain I haven’t mentioned yet. The vicar
supplied that—though to him it was merely a strange coincidence.
The baby-girl—born in the gallery—a strange, imaginative child, so run
the archives, subject to fits of awful depression and, at other times,
hallucinations—married. She married in 1551, on the 30th day of
October, Henry, only son of Frank Sibton and Mary his wife.
God knows: I don’t. It may have been an accident.
_VIII_ _When Greek meets Greek_
I
“BUT, Bill, I don’t understand. How much did you borrow from this man?”
Sybil Daventry looked at her brother, sitting huddled up in his chair,
with a little frown.
“I borrowed a thousand,” he answered, sulkily. “And like a fool I didn’t
read the thing he made me sign—at least, not carefully. Hang it, I’ve
only had the money six months, and now he’s saying that I owe him over
two. I saw something about twenty-five per cent., and now I find it was
twenty-five per cent. a month. And the swine is pressing for payment
unless——” He broke off and stared into the fire shamefacedly.
“Unless what?” demanded his sister.
“Well, you see, it’s this way.” The boy stammered a little, and refused
to look at her. “I was jolly well up the spout when this blighter told
me what I owed him, and I suppose I must have showed it pretty clearly.
Anyway, I was propping up the bar at the Cri., getting a cocktail, when
a fellow standing next me started gassing. Not a bad sort of cove at
all; knows you very well by sight.”
“Knows me?” said the girl, bewildered. “Who was he?”
“I’m coming to that later,” went on her brother. “Well, we had a couple
more and then he suggested tearing a chop together. And I don’t know—he
seemed so decent and all that—that I told him I was in the soup. Told
him the whole yarn and asked his advice sort of business. Well, as I
say, he was bally sporting about it all, and finally asked me who the
bird was who had tied up the boodle. I told him, and here’s the lucky
part of the whole show—this fellow Perrison knew him. Perrison was the
man I was lunching with.”
He paused and lit a cigarette, while the girl stared at him gravely.
“Well,” she said at length, “go on.”
“It was after lunch that he got busy. He said to me: ‘Look here,
Daventry, you’ve made a bally fool of yourself, but you’re not the
first. I’ll write a note to Messrs. Smith and Co.’—those are the
warriors who gave me the money—‘and try and persuade them to give you
more time, or even possibly reduce the rate of interest.’ Of course, I
was all on this, and I arranged to lunch with him again next day, after
Smith and Co. had had time to function. And sure enough they did. Wrote
a letter in which they were all over me; any friend of Mr. Perrison’s
was entitled to special treatment, and so on and so forth. Naturally I
was as bucked as a dog with two tails, and asked Perrison if I couldn’t
do something more material than just thank him. And—er—he—I mean it
was then he told me he knew you by sight.”
He glanced at his sister, and then quickly looked away again.
“He suggested—er—that perhaps I could arrange to introduce him to you;
that it would be an honour he would greatly appreciate, and all that
sort of rot.”
The girl was sitting very still. “Yes,” she said, quietly, “and
you—agreed.”
“Well, of course I did. Hang it, he’s quite a decent fellow. Bit Cityish
to look at, and I shouldn’t think he knows which end of a horse goes
first. But he’s got me out of the devil of a hole, Sybil, and the least
you can do is to be moderately decent to the bird. I mean it’s not
asking much, is it? I left the governor looking at him in the hall as if
he was just going to tread on his face, and that long slab—your pal—is
gazing at him through his eyeglasses as if he was mad.”
“He’s not my pal, Bill.” Sybil Daventry’s colour heightened a little.
“Well, you asked him here, anyway,” grunted the boy. Then with a sudden
change of tone he turned to her appealingly. “Syb, old girl—for the
Lord’s sake play the game. You know what the governor is, and if he
hears about this show—especially as it’s—as it’s not the first
time—there’ll be the deuce to pay. You know he said last time that if
it happened again he’d turn me out of the house. And the old man is as
stubborn as a mule. I only want you to be a bit decent to Perrison.”
She looked at him with a grave smile. “If Mr. Perrison is satisfied with
my being decent to him, as you put it, I’m perfectly prepared to play
the game. But——” She frowned and rose abruptly. “Come on, and I’ll
have a look at him.”
In silence they went downstairs. Tea had just been brought in, and the
house-party was slowly drifting into the hall. But Sybil barely noticed
them; her eyes were fixed on the man talking to her father. Or rather,
at the moment, her father was talking to the man, and his remark was
painfully audible.
“There is a very good train back to London at seven-thirty,
Mr.—ah—Mr.——”
Her brother stepped forward. “But I say, Dad,” he said, nervously, “I
asked Perrison to stop the night. I’ve just asked Sybil, and she says
she can fix him up somewhere.”
“How do you do, Mr. Perrison?” With a charming smile she held out her
hand. “Of course you must stop the night.”
Then she moved away to the tea-table, feeling agreeably relieved; it was
better than she had expected. The man was well-dressed; perhaps, to her
critical eye, a little too well-dressed—but still quite presentable.
“You averted a catastrophe, Miss Daventry.” A lazy voice beside her
interrupted her thoughts, and with a smile she turned to the speaker.
“Dad is most pestilentially rude at times, isn’t he? And Bill told me he
left _you_ staring at the poor man as if he was an insect.”
Archie Longworth laughed.
“He’d just contradicted your father flatly as you came downstairs. And
on a matter concerning horses. However—the breeze has passed. But, tell
me,” he stared at her gravely, “why the sudden invasion?”
Her eyebrows went up a little. “May I ask why not?” she said, coldly.
“Surely my brother can invite a friend to the house if he wishes.”
“I stand corrected,” answered Longworth, quietly. “Has he known him
long?”
“I haven’t an idea,” said the girl. “And after all, Mr. Longworth, I
hadn’t known you very long when I asked you.”
And then, because she realised that there was a possibility of
construing rather more into her words than she had intended, she turned
abruptly to speak to another guest. So she failed to see the sudden
inscrutable look that came into Archie Longworth’s keen blue eyes—the
quick clenching of his powerful fists. But when a few minutes later she
again turned to him, he was just his usual lazy self.
“Do you think your logic is very good?” he demanded. “You might have
made a mistake as well.”
“You mean that you think my brother has?” she said, quickly.
“It is visible on the surface to the expert eye,” he returned, gravely.
“But, in addition, I happen to have inside information.”
“Do you know Mr. Perrison, then?”
He nodded. “Yes, I have—er—met him before.”
“But he doesn’t know you,” cried the girl.
“No—at least—er—we’ll leave it at that. And I would be obliged, Miss
Daventry, in case you happen to be speaking to him, if you would refrain
from mentioning the fact that I know him.” He stared at her gravely.
“You’re very mysterious, Mr. Longworth,” said the girl, with an attempt
at lightness.
“And if I may I will prolong my visit until our friend departs,”
continued Longworth.
“Why, of course,” she said, bending over the tea-tray. “You weren’t
thinking of going—going yet, were you?”
“I was thinking after lunch that I should have to go to-morrow,” he
said, putting down his tea-cup.
“But why so soon?” she asked, and her voice was low. “Aren’t you
enjoying yourself?”
“In the course of a life that has taken me into every corner of the
globe,” he answered, slowly, “I have never dreamed that I could be so
utterly and perfectly happy as I have been here. It has opened my mind
to a vista of the Things that Might Be—if the Things that Had Been were
different. But as you grow older, Sybil, you will learn one bitter
truth: no human being can ever be exactly what he seems. Masks? just
masks! And underneath—God and that being alone know.”
He rose abruptly, and she watched him bending over Lady Granton with his
habitual lazy grace. The indolent smile was round his lips—the
irrepressible twinkle was in his eyes. But for the first time he had
called her Sybil; for the first time—she _knew_. The vague forebodings
conjured up by his words were swamped by that one outstanding fact; she
_knew_. And nothing else mattered.