THE STRANGE BEHAVIOUR OF MR. BRYCE.
I made an excellent dinner. Bryce's kitchen and the meat-safes attached
proved on investigation to contain enough food for a family. First of
all I had a wash, and then when I felt a little more presentable, I dug
up a frying-pan, asked Bryce if he liked sausages and, being told that
he did, thanked Heaven that his tastes were similar to mine and set
about cooking them. Now I like my sausages fried nice and crisp, but I
have yet to find the lodging-house keeper this side of Gehenna who can
fry anything without burning it to a cinder. Though I don't wish to
crack up my own work, I'll say this for it--that, if I do like things
done any particular way, I can always be sure of pleasing myself if I do
the cooking.
I cooked with one eye on the gas-stove and the other on Bryce. I had
scarcely set to work before he wandered into the kitchen, found the
nail-brush or whatever it was that the cook used for cleaning the pots,
washed the black loam off the piece of wood which had so excited my
curiosity earlier in the day, and then commenced to scrub it. He used up
an inordinate amount of soap and quite a lot of elbow-grease, but when
he had finished the wood looked as if it had just been newly cut and
trimmed. What took my attention about it was that it was covered from
end to end with queer little marks or scratches. These seemed to
interest Bryce very much, for he pored over them like an antiquary who
has discovered a new kind of hieroglyphics. He got so interested in them
that he forgot my presence altogether. Once when I asked him some simple
question about the dinner he jumped as if he were shot, colored up and
then said, "Oh, I beg your pardon. What did you say?"
I repeated my question and he answered me as if his thoughts were miles
away. He was wide-awake enough when I walked over to the kitchen sink on
some errand or another to slip the wood into his pocket and face me with
a look in his eye that said as plainly as so many words, "You're not
going to steal a march on me, my lad. That's for my eyes alone." Only
once during the dinner-hour did he say anything that stuck in my memory.
On this occasion he turned to me and asked, "Can you use a typewriter?"
"Now, he's going to make a private secretary of me," I thought. "I won't
bite." So I looked him straight in the eye and unblushingly answered
that I couldn't use one if I tried and hoped he didn't want me to learn,
as I was sure I'd only make a mess of it. He seemed rather relieved at
that and later in the afternoon, when I heard the "tick-tack" of his
machine drifting out from the room in which he had locked himself, I
began to wonder just what he had been driving at.
He drifted out to the kitchen later on and asked me to light the fire
for him. I did so and he watched it blaze up, and as soon as he was sure
that it was well alight he drew that inevitable piece of wood from his
pocket, soaked it in kerosene and dropped it into the heart of the fire.
I'm hanged if he didn't sit there and watch it until it had burnt into a
charred heap of ashes. While he had been attending to it he had left a
sheet of typewritten paper down on the table and as he turned to get it
it fluttered to the floor. I was the nearer to it so I picked it up and
handed it to him. As I did so I caught a glimpse of the characters that
covered most of it. I got just the one look at them, but one line I
noticed ran somehow like this--
--3¼½743 ½3:3; "335 "49--5@3 3¼½534; 3; £
He looked at me queerly as he took the paper. "Have you ever done any
timber measurements?" he asked.
"None at all," I answered promptly, and this time I told the truth.
"You wouldn't understand this then," he ran on, indicating the paper,
though he was careful not to let me have another look at it.
"I saw some of it," I said off-handedly, as if it were no affair of
mine, "and it looked to me like the sort of thing a mathematician would
see if he ever got the willies."
"You have a most expressive way of putting things, Carstairs," he said
with a smile. There was more than humor in that smile; there was
something in it that looked remarkably like relief.
"I can't stand figures of any sort," I volunteered with a fervent hope
in my heart that I wasn't over-doing my part. "A sheet of them'd just
about give me the D.Ts."
He laughed out loud at that and then, expressing a hope that I would
make myself at home, he padded out of the room. It was astonishing how
quietly he could walk when he was moving about the house. For all his
gross bulk there was something furtive and cat-like about him that told
me just how insistent must be the menace of a sudden death. He moved so
silently that I never knew he was there until I looked up and saw him.
He glided from room to room like some obese ghost. At first it got on my
nerves, but pretty soon I settled down to it, and in a day or so got
quite used to seeing a silent bulk sliding noiselessly about the house,
appearing at all sorts of odd times in all sorts of queer places.
The cook returned about 5 o'clock and seemed rather inclined to take up
a high-handed attitude with me, until a few well-chosen words from her
master quietened her down a little. She was not slow to show me in other
ways that she regarded me as an intruder in the house, and if any one
thing about me was more preferable than another it was my room rather
than my company. Still as I kept out of her way as much as possible, and
as my sole duties consisted in keeping an eye on all strangers that
approached the place and in listening for any unaccountable sounds, I
came into conflict with her very seldom.
Matters progressed so quietly for the next couple of days that I began
to wonder whether I had not fallen into a sinecure after all. Bryce had
procured me a decent outfit so that I was now my own man again, ready to
argue the right-of-way with all comers. Added to that my feet were well
on the mend and my general health was keeping pretty near to the
top-notch mark, so I wasn't finding life such a bad thing after all.
Bryce worried me but little. At times I went odd messages for him, but
all my trips were so arranged that I was never away from the house more
than half an hour at a time. The more I thought over the mystery
surrounding him the deeper and more inexplicable it became. I knew of
whom he was afraid, but I had no more idea of the reason of his fear
than I had of the name of the man in the moon. My occupation was more
reminiscent of revolutionary South America than of a civilised country,
and the thought of it set me wondering whether Bryce had ever lived
amongst the volatile Latins on the other side of the Pacific. Come to
think of it the one man I had seen closely had been a dark type. It was
just barely possible that Bryce had somehow tangled himself in something
of the kind. But then that cipher business--I was fully convinced by now
that it was some original kind of cryptogram--rather pointed the other
way. One of the things I had noticed had been a £ sign, and anything
dealing with any of the Latin Republics would almost assuredly have been
written with a $ sign. Ultimately I came to the conclusion that I had
been barking up the wrong tree.
I jotted down the figures that I remembered, but I must have had some of
the signs down wrong, for, try as I would, I could make nothing out of
them. As a matter of fact the solution was so simple that in the end I
only stumbled on it by accident.
Bryce had a bad habit of locking himself in his room for hours at a
time, and it occurred to me that such a course wasn't in his own
interest any more than mine, so I tackled him about it at the first
opportunity.
"Here you are," I said, "paying me for being a mixture of Swiss Guard
and watch-dog, but for all the looking-after you get I might as well be
miles away. I don't want to be hanging on to your skirts every ten
minutes or so, but doesn't it strike you as a reasonable man that you're
inviting trouble by locking yourself in so securely?"
"I do that so I won't be disturbed," he urged.
"That's a reason that cuts both ways," I said. "Suppose somebody
happened to be in the room when you arrived. Don't you see that he could
do all he wanted to do without being disturbed either."
"But you'd hear any uncommon noise," Bryce objected.
"Maybe I would and then maybe I wouldn't. I'm not infallible, you know,
and anyway it's quite possible that any visitor you had wouldn't make a
row at all. And while I'm on it, wouldn't it be just as well to give me
a sketch of the plot? I'm working in the dark as it is, but, if I had
some idea of what's at the back of all this, I might be able to look
after you better."
"I'm afraid I can't do that," he said slowly, and for the first time
since we had met he eyed me with suspicion. There was doubt in his
glance, the sort of doubt that a man does not care to see in the eyes of
a friend. I saw that I had made a radical mistake in even hinting that I
wished to know his secret, and I hastened to make what amends I could.
"I'm sorry," I said, "if you look at it in that way. I was only doing it
for your own good. You're paying what's an enormous sum to me, and I'm
trying to justify your expenditure. If I know your enemies and all about
them, I can certainly plan level and, maybe, occasionally outguess them.
That's the only thing I had in mind when I spoke, and if I gave you any
other impression I'm sorry I said what I did."
He moved his shoulders in a kind of half-shrug. It was at once a gesture
of relief and of dismissal, so without more ado I said, "If there's
nothing further you want, I'll make off now. If you want me any time
I'll be pottering around the house somewhere."
"Well, there is something I'd like you to do, Jim," he said. "I want
half-a-dozen parish maps. Here's the list of them"--he handed me a piece
of paper with a few names scribbled on the back--"and here's the money.
Go down to the Lands Department and they'll fix you up. Mind that they
are large scale maps, the largest they've got. You'd better take the
car, and don't be any longer than you can help."
"It's a twenty minutes' run at the outside," I said. "I won't waste any
time."
He nodded quite cheerfully to me and went into his room. I heard the key
grate in the lock as I walked down the passage and I remember saying to
myself, "That habit's going to get him into trouble yet."
I reached the office in record time. They had some trouble in finding
the maps I wanted--most of them were of parishes situated around the
foot of the Grampians--but in the end they produced some that I fancied
would suit my man. My twenty minutes' limit had almost expired and, as
it is a matter of pride with me to be punctual, I let the car out a
little. That, I suppose, was my undoing, for just as I crossed over the
busiest street a motor-lorry swerved out and nearly collided with me. I
did some very neat wheel-work, but my new course took me right across to
the gutter, and before I had quite realised what had happened I had
speared my tyre with a jagged piece of glass. The tyre popped off with a
report like that of a small revolver, and the next second I was bumping
on the frame. I pulled up as quickly as I could, but the mischief was
done and the tyre was just one great rip from end to end. Luckily I
carried a spare wheel, but I am an unhandy man at the merely mechanical
part of the work, and I took twice as long over it as a professional
would have. By the time I was ready to start again my twenty minutes had
lengthened into an hour, and somehow the knowledge of that worried me.
I packed my tools anyhow, hopped back into the car and threw over my
clutch. The car started with a little jerk that I didn't quite relish,
and on looking over the side I saw that the new wheel was wobbling, not
very much indeed, but just enough to show me that I had bungled my work.
I immediately cut down my speed and proceeded for the rest of the
journey at something closely approaching a snail's pace.
"Now," I said to myself, "if this was in a novel I'd say that the lorry
cut across my path deliberately. But as this is in real life and the
lorry belongs to a firm of respectable grocers it can't be anything else
but just my own darned bad luck."
I dismissed the incident at that and turned my attention to my driving.
I had no intention of mixing myself up in another such accident if I
could possibly avoid it, and now that I had definitely taken service
with Bryce I felt I owed it to him to exercise all reasonable care.
After my first few spasmodic attempts at resistance I had succumbed
rather quickly to his enticing offer. After all, I thought, I wouldn't
be putting myself in any greater danger than I had been in for the past
four years. I had faced sudden death in many shapes and forms during my
sojourn in the strange wild lands about the Line, so much so that, once
I had taken into account the money Bryce was giving me, the present
adventure rather degenerated into a pleasant little game of
hide-and-seek.
I was still turning this over in that portion of my mind which wasn't
occupied with the sheerly mechanical side of my work when I reached the
house. More from force of habit than from any other cause I cast my eyes
along the road, much as if it had been a forest trail that held secrets
only a woodsman could read. Plainly marked in the dust of the roadway
were the tracks of a vehicle that I instinctively knew to be a cab. It
had veered right in towards the kerb, and a moment's study convinced me
that it had stopped at Bryce's house. Now that meant that somebody had
arrived during my absence, and, as Bryce had said nothing to me about
expecting a visitor, I decided that the sooner I entered the house and
investigated the better for the safety of all concerned. I drove the car
into the garage in record time and darted into the house as if the devil
were at my heels. There wasn't a sound to be heard; even the eternal
clatter of the typewriter had ceased. With a caution born of experience
I tip-toed up the passage, all my senses instinctively on the alert. The
door of Bryce's room was still locked and everything, to all outward
seeming, was just as I had left it. I don't know what I had expected to
find in the passage, but the very apparent quietness of the place
sobered me considerably, and I realised abruptly on what a slender
foundation I had based my fears. If anything had happened during my
absence it was almost certain that I would have found some trace of it
in the hall, a rug disarranged, or a mat kicked away from the door. All
the odds were on Bryce working quietly behind the locked door. Yet of
all the foolish things in the world for me to think of the idea that
entered my mind just then was that something that concerned me very
intimately was being worked out in the room across the passage.
I made one step forward and then I stopped abruptly. Some one else than
Bryce was in the room. Out of the silence came a voice, a woman's voice.
It was smooth and well-modulated, and there was the faintest touch of
music in it. In some curious way it touched a stray chord in my memory.
I knew at once that I had heard it before, but how or where I could no
more say than I could fly. Perhaps that was because its full notes were
muffled by the door that intervened.
"I'd do anything," the woman said in the quietest tones imaginable,
"anything but that. You don't understand. If you knew all the
circumstances, if you knew just how and why we parted you wouldn't ask
me. I'm sorry for it all now, more sorry than you could believe, but you
can't expect me to take up things just where they left off--as if
nothing had happened."
"Bryce's got a little romance tucked away up his sleeve," I thought.
"This sort of complicates matters. Wonder who the lady is?"
"My dear girl," came the reply in Bryce's tones, softer and more
persuasive than I had ever heard them, "I know more perhaps than you
think. I'm doing this out of the fullness of my knowledge in the hope
that when I'm gone...."
"Don't!" the woman interrupted sharply. "Don't talk like that!"
"It's one of the things we've got to face," Bryce said gently. "I won't
live for ever anyway, and you know as well as I do just what chance I
run of having a period put to me ... any time now." The last three words
were spoken very slowly and distinctly, as if Bryce wished them to sink
into the mind of his companion. "You're the only person in the world
that I care a hang about," he continued with a note of indescribable
pathos in his voice, "and I'm doing all this for you ... and him."
"But I tell you," the girl said with a little flash of anger, "I tell
you I won't have anything to do with him. If you bring him to the house
I'll cut him dead."
"And put yourself doubly in the wrong and make it all the harder for
everybody," Bryce told her.
There was a dogged note in the girl's voice as she replied. "I know I
was wrong, but I just can't do what you want. I can't say more than
that."
"I'm sorry you look at things that way," Bryce said. "I had hoped...." I
did not catch the nature of his hope, for his voice dropped an octave or
so and his sentence ended in whispers.
"Jimmy Carstairs," I said to myself, "you've been eavesdropping and you
know it. You mustn't be caught doing those kind of things. Get out of
the way as fast as you can," and at that I twisted round on my heel and
went back down the hall. I hadn't any desire to be caught listening to
conversations that were obviously not intended for me and that anyway
weren't of the least interest. So you can be sure that when I did return
up the hall I walked fairly heavily and coughed discreetly as soon as I
was within hearing distance of Bryce's room.
The key turned in the lock of a sudden and the door was flung wide open.
The girl stood in her own light so that the shadows masked her face, but
the sun fell full on mine and my features must have been clearly visible
to her.
"You!" she said, with a little catch in her voice.
"Shut the door, please," I said, in the most matter-of-fact tones I
could muster. "Shut the door and come out here."
I knew her now. God! Could I ever forget her? In a flash my mind flew
back through four years--or was it five?--to that evening when she had
caused my little world to rock and tremble, and then to fall in pieces
at my feet. I had loved her then--I thought I loved her more than
anything or anyone in this world--but a dying father's wish had come
between us. The poor old Dad had made a life study of the Islands--how
monumental a study it was let his three volumes of Solomon Island
Ethnology bear witness--yet he died before he had quite completed his
notes. Though he had said nothing to me I knew the wish that lay nearest
his heart, and I made his dying hour almost the happiest of his life by
promising to carry on his work.
I remember the night I came out to tell her. The sky was streaked with
dead gold and cerise and warm-tinted clouds trailed across the heavens
like the ends of a scarf streaming from the neck of a hurrying woman.
All the world was gay that evening and I whistled as I went. She was
waiting at the gate as always she had waited for me. She greeted me with
a smile and some bright little remark that I forgot practically the
instant it was uttered.
"I want to talk to you," I said; "I want to talk seriously."
She smiled up at me, a trusting little smile as I thought. She had no
idea what was coming, but she always gave me my head in the things that
do not matter much.
"What is it, Jim?" she asked.
"It's this," I said, and then I told what I had promised.
"But that," she protested, "means burying yourself in New Guinea and the
Solomons for four whole years."
"It does," I said. "There is no other way."
I had not been looking at her face--there had been no need, for I was
quite convinced that she would see things in a proper light--but now I
turned on her. To my surprise there was just the least little touch of
annoyance in her face.
"You don't quite relish the idea," I said.
"It's a very foolish idea," she said quite frankly. "I don't know what
you could have been thinking of."
"I was thinking of my father," I told her. "I was making his last hour
happy, and he died in the knowledge that I would carry his work on to
the conclusion he had planned."
"Are you going to see it through?" The abruptness of the question took
me aback.
"Of course," I said. "What else could I do?"
"Four years!" she said. "What is to become of me?"
"The time will soon go by," I answered, "and then I'll come back to you
and everything will be right."
"You seem to think of everyone but me," she said hotly. "You promised so
that your father would die easy, and that's the end of it. If you are
going to be bound by such a thing as that you're nothing more than an
impractical idealist."
"I passed my word and a Carstairs never breaks a promise."
"You mean that, Jim? You mean that you are going away to ... carry out
that absurd promise?"
"It's not absurd," I declared.
"I think it is," she said wilfully. "If you go, you need never come
back."
"I am going," I said steadily. "As an honorable man there is no other
course open to me. I'm sorry that you look at it this way, but I can't
do anything else."
"At last I know how much you think of me," she said with that little
touch of anger with which a woman always defends the indefensible. "You
never did care for me."
"I do, I do," I protested. "Can't you see it?"
"I can't see anything," she said stubbornly, "except that you'd do this
rather than listen to me. It shows all you think of me. Oh, I hate you!
I never, never want to see you again!"
"Is that your last word?" I demanded.
"Absolutely my last," she answered firmly.
"Well," I said, "here's my last too. I'm going to carry out my promise,
and if a man had spoken to me about it as you have spoken to me to-night
I would have pulped his face."
"I really believe you would," she said exasperatingly. "You see, Jim,
you were always something of a savage. That, I suppose, is why you are
so anxious to go to the Islands ... where the savages are."
That was the very last word she had said to me, for the next moment the
gate was banged behind her and shut me out of her life. I was hurt,
badly hurt in my self-esteem, but my rising anger, burning hot within
me, kept me from feeling as bad as I might have felt. In two months'
time I landed at Tulagi on Florida Island, and for the next four years
or so the civilised world knew me not. I reached finality, but I spent
my fortune and came back to Australia to all intents and purposes a
pauper. Four years...! Here she was facing me at last--just as if
nothing had ever come between us.
"Yes, it's me," I said ungrammatically. "Why?"
She raised her hand to her throat with a queer little gesture. "I didn't
quite expect to see you ... yet," she said.
"It's the unexpected that happens," I remarked. "I've come back at last,
though in slightly different circumstances."
"I know, Jim. I've heard."
"He told you," I suggested, and nodded towards the door she had just
closed.
"How do you know that?" she asked quickly.
"It is my business to know things," I told her. "I'm a professional
caretaker of secrets now."
She looked at me blankly and I saw that he had not told her everything.
It behoved me to play the game warily until I was sure of my ground.
"What are you doing here, Moira?" I asked her point-blank.
"That's a question I could ask you," she countered. "But I am here, not
from any desire to meet you--I didn't know you were here--but because he
sent for me."
"And why should he send for you?" I persisted.
There was just the faintest flicker of a smile moving about her lips
now; she had turned a little and the light was playing on her face.
"For just the simplest reason in the world. He wanted me."
"Why should he want you?" I demanded.
She looked at me a moment as if astonished that I should ask such a
question. But there was that in my eyes which told her that my ignorance
was anything but assumed.
"You really mean to say you don't know?" she asked incredulously.
"If I did know I wouldn't question you about it," I said shortly. "What
is the reason?"
"Well, you see," she answered lightly, with just a slight uplift of her
eyebrows--an old theatrical trick that I used to admire in the days gone
by--"he happens to be my uncle."
"That puts another complexion on matters," I said half to myself. But
her quick ear caught the drift of my remark and she was down on me like
the wolf on the fold.
"You're in with him, are you?" she questioned, with that devouring flame
I knew so well flaring up in her golden-brown eyes. "You're in with
him ... in this?"
In a way I wasn't. As a matter-of-fact I suspected from her last words
that she knew more about everything than I did, but I was perfectly sure
that she wouldn't believe me if I denied it, so I said instead, "Yes, I
am."
"I might have known it," she said with a little shake of her head. I
didn't quite follow her logic, but I judged it best to let it pass. One
would think from the way she spoke that there was something
reprehensible in being mixed up in anything conducted by her venerable
relative. I wondered why.
"Yes, you might have known it," I said, falling in with her own humor.
"I have a habit of doing things I shouldn't."
I knew she understood my veiled allusion, for I saw her bite her lip and
again the lambent flame leaped up in her eyes. But it died as suddenly
as it had come, and in another instant the old tantalising smile was
playing about the corners of her mouth. In the smoky interminable depths
of the Solomon Island jungle I had crushed that smile out of my life,
for ever I had thought. I had deliberately erased it from my memory, and
at night beside the smudge fire, when my eyes closed for an instant and
that beautiful imperious face peeped at me from out of the mazes of
recollection, I would open my eyes and stared fixedly at the misshapen
headhunters who were my sole companions in that wilderness. "These," I
would say, "are the kindred of us both. Their women smile as she smiles,
and the men respond to it as I used to respond." And with that thought
in my head I would fall asleep and not dream.
"Jim," she said with abrupt irrelevance, "you've changed. You usen't to
be like that before. You're different somehow ... cynical, I think."
"That's more than likely," I agreed. "I'm learning to hit back. And now
if you'll excuse me," I ran on before she had time to answer, "I'll just
drop in with this parcel."
Then without more ado I turned on my heel and knocked at Bryce's door.