I
The sun, whose rays had roused Sergeant-Major Flannery from his
slumbers at Healthward Ho that morning, had not found it necessary to
perform the same office for Lester Carmody at Rudge Hall. In spite of
the fact that he had not succeeded in getting to sleep till well on in
the small hours, Mr. Carmody woke early. There is no alarm clock so
effective as a disturbed mind.
And Mr. Carmody's mind was notably disturbed. On the previous night he
had received shock after shock, each more staggering than the last.
First, Bolt, the chauffeur, had revealed the fact that he had given the
fateful ticket to John. Then Sturgis, after letting fall in the course
of his babblings the information that Mr. Molloy knew that John had the
ticket, had said that that young man, when last seen, had been going
off in the company of Dolly Molloy. And finally, John had not only
failed to appear at dinner but was not to be discovered anywhere on the
premises at as late an hour as midnight.
In these circumstances, it is scarcely to be wondered at that Mr.
Carmody's repose was not tranquil. To one who, like himself, had had
the advantage of hearing the views of the Molloy family on the virtues
of knock-out drops there could be no doubt as to what had happened.
John, suspecting nothing, must have allowed himself to be lured into
the trap, and by this time the heirlooms of Rudge Hall were probably in
London.
Having breakfasted, contrary to the habit of years, quickly and
sketchily, Mr. Carmody, who had haunted the stable yard till midnight,
went there again in the faint hope of finding that his nephew had
returned. But except for Emily, who barked at him, John's room was
empty. Mr. Carmody wandered out into the grounds, and for some half
hour paced the gravel paths in growing desolation of soul. Then, his
tortured nerves becoming more and more afflicted by the behaviour of
one of the under-gardeners who, full of the feudal spirit, insisted on
touching his hat like a clockwork toy every time his employer passed,
he sought refuge in his study.
It was there, about one hour later, that John found him.
Mr. Carmody's first emotion on beholding his long-lost nephew was one
of ecstatic relief.
"John!" he cried, bounding from his chair.
Then, chilling his enthusiasm, came the thought that there might be no
occasion for joy in this return. Probably, he reflected, John, after
being drugged and robbed of the ticket, had simply come home in the
ordinary course of events. After all, there would have been no reason
for those scoundrels to detain him. Once they had got the ticket, John
would have ceased to count.
"Where have you been?" he asked in a flatter voice.
A rather peculiar smile came and went on John's face.
"I spent the night at Healthward Ho," he said. "Were you worried about
me?"
"Extremely worried."
"I'm sorry. Doctor Twist is a hospitable chap. He wouldn't let me go."
Mr. Carmody, on the point of speaking, checked himself. His position,
he suddenly saw, was a delicate one. Unless he were prepared to lay
claim to the possession of special knowledge, which he certainly was
not, anything in the nature of agitation on his part must inevitably
seem peculiar. To those without special knowledge Mr. Twist, Mr.
Molloy, and Dolly were ordinary, respectable persons and there was no
reason for him to exhibit concern at the news that John had spent the
night at Healthward Ho.
"Indeed?" he said carefully.
"Yes," said John. "Most hospitable he was. I can't say I liked him,
though."
"No?"
"No. Perhaps what prejudiced me against him was the fact of his having
burgled the Hall the night before last."
More and more Mr. Carmody was feeling, as Ronnie Fish had no doubt
felt at the concert, that he had been forced into playing a part to
which he was not equal. It was obviously in the rôle that at this point
he should register astonishment, and he did his best to do so. But
the gasp he gave sounded so unconvincing to him that he hastened to
supplement his words.
"What! What are you saying? Doctor Twist?"
"Doctor Twist."
"But.... But...!"
"It's come as quite a surprise to you, hasn't it?" said John. And for
the first time since this interview had begun Mr. Carmody became alive
to the fact that in his nephew's manner there was a subtle something
which he did not like, something decidedly odd. This might, of course,
simply be due to the circumstance that the young man's chin was
bristling with an unsightly growth and his eyes red about the rims.
Perhaps it was merely his outward appearance that gave the suggestion
of the sinister. But Mr. Carmody did not think so. He noted now that
John's eyes, besides being red, were strangely keen. Their expression
seemed, to his sensitive conscience, accusing. The young man was
looking at him--yes, undoubtedly the young man was looking at him most
unpleasantly.
"By the way," said John, "Bolt gave me this ticket yesterday to give to
you. I forgot about it till it was too late."
The relatively unimportant question of whether or not there was a
peculiar look in his nephew's eyes immediately ceased to vex Mr.
Carmody. All he felt at this instant was an almost suffocating elation.
He stretched out an unsteady hand.
"Oh, yes," he heard himself saying. "That ticket. Quite so, of course.
Bolt left a bag for me at Shrub Hill Station."
"He did."
"Give me the ticket."
"Later," said John, and put it back in his pocket.
Mr. Carmody's elation died away. There was no question now about
the peculiar look in his companion's eye. It was a grim look. A
hard, accusing look. Not at all the sort of look a man with a tender
conscience likes to have boring into him.
"What--what do you mean?"
John continued to regard him with that unpleasantly fixed stare.
"I hear you have offered a reward of a thousand pounds for the recovery
of those things that were stolen, Uncle Lester."
"Er--yes. Yes."
"I'll claim it."
"What!"
"Uncle Lester," said John, and his voice made a perfect match for his
eye, "before I left Healthward Ho I had a little talk with Mr. Twist
and his friend Mr. Molloy. They told me a lot of interesting things. Do
you get my meaning, or shall I make it plainer?"
Mr. Carmody, who had bristled for a moment with the fury of a
parsimonious man who sees danger threatening his cheque book, sank
slowly back into his chair like a balloon coming to rest.
"Good!" said John. "Write out a cheque and make it payable to Colonel
Wyvern."
"Colonel Wyvern?"
"I am passing the reward on to him. I have a particular reason for
wanting to end all that silly trouble between you two, and I think this
should do it. I know he is simply waiting for you to make some sort of
advance. So you're going to make an advance--of a thousand pounds."
Mr. Carmody gulped.
"Wouldn't five hundred be enough?"
"A thousand."
"It's such a lot of money."
"A nice round sum," said John.
Mr. Carmody did not share his nephew's views as to what constituted
niceness and roundness in a sum of money, but he did not say so. He
sighed deeply and drew his cheque book from its drawer. He supposed in
a vague sort of way that he ought to be feeling grateful to the young
man for not heaping him with reproaches and recrimination, but the
agony of what he was about to do prevented any such emotion. All he
could feel was that dull, aching sensation which comes to most of us
when we sit down to write cheques for the benefit of others.
It was as if some malignant fate had brooded over him, he felt, ever
since this business had started. From the very first, life had been
one long series of disbursements. All the expense of entertaining the
Molloy family, not to mention the unspeakable Ronnie Fish.... The car
going to and fro between Healthward Ho and Rudge at six shillings per
trip.... The five hundred pounds he had had to pay to get Hugo out of
the house.... And now this appalling, devastating sum for which he had
just begun to write his cheque. Money going out all the time! Money ...
money ... money ... And all for nothing!
He blotted the cheque and held it out.
"Don't give it to me," said John. "You're coming with me now to Colonel
Wyvern's house, to hand it to him in person with a neat little speech."
"I shan't know what to say."
"I'll tell you."
"Very well."
"And after that," said John, "you and he are going to be like two
love-birds." He thumped the desk. "Do you understand? Love-birds."
"Very well."
There was something in the unhappy man's tone as he spoke, something so
crushed and forlorn that John could not but melt a little. He paused at
the door. It crossed his mind that he might possibly be able to cheer
him up.
"Uncle Lester," he said, "how did you get on with Sergeant-Major
Flannery at Healthward Ho?"
Mr. Carmody winced. Unpleasant memories seemed to be troubling him.
"Just before I left," said John, "I blacked his eye and we fell
downstairs together."
"Downstairs?"
"Right down the entire flight. He thumped his head against an oak
chest."
On Mr. Carmody's drawn face there hovered for an instant a faint
flickering smile.
"I thought you'd be pleased," said John.
II
Colonel Wyvern hitched the celebrated eyebrows into a solid mass across
the top of his nose, and from beneath them stared hideously at Jane,
his parlour maid. Jane had just come into the morning room, where he
was having a rather heated conversation with his daughter, Patricia,
and had made the astounding statement that Mr. Lester Carmody was
waiting in his front hall.
"Who?" said Colonel Wyvern, rumbling like a thunder cloud.
"Sir, please, sir, Mr. Carmody."
"Mr. Carmody?"
"And Mr. Carroll, sir."
Pat, who had been standing by the French windows, caught in her breath
with a little click of her firm white teeth.
"Show them in, Jane," she said.
"Yes, miss."
"I will not see that old thug," said Colonel Wyvern.
"Show them in, Jane," repeated Pat, firmly. "You must, Father," she
said as the door closed. "He may have come to apologize about that
dynamite thing."
"Much more likely he's come about that business of yours. Well, I've
told you already and I say it again that nothing will induce me..."
"All right, Father. We can talk about that later. I'll be out in the
garden if you want me."
She went out through the French windows, and almost simultaneously the
door opened and John and his uncle came in.
John paused in the doorway, gazing eagerly toward the garden.
"Was that Pat?" he asked.
"I beg your pardon," said Colonel Wyvern.
"Was that Pat I thought I caught a glimpse of, going into the garden?"
"My daughter has just gone into the garden," said Colonel Wyvern with
cold formality.
"Oh?" said John. He seemed about to follow her but a sudden bark from
the owner of the house brought him to a halt.
"Well?" said Colonel Wyvern, and the monosyllable was a verbal pistol
shot. It brought John back instantly from dreamland, and, almost more
than the spectacle of his host's eyebrows, told him that life was stern
and life was earnest.
"Oh, yes," he said.
"What do you mean, Oh yes?"
John advanced to the table, meeting the Colonel's gaze with a steady
eye. There is this to be said for being dosed with knock-out drops and
shut up in locked rooms and having to take your meals through bars from
the hands of a sergeant-major whom only a mother could love--it fits
a normally rather shy and diffident young man for the battles of life
as few other experiences would be able to fit him. The last time he
and this bushy-eyebrowed man had met, John had quailed. But now mere
eyebrows meant nothing to him. He felt hardened, like one who has been
through the furnace.
"I suppose you are surprised to see us here?"
"More surprised than pleased."
"My uncle was anxious to have a few words with you."
"I have not the slightest desire...."
"If you will just let me explain...."
"I repeat, I have not the slightest desire...."
"SIT DOWN!" said John.
Colonel Wyvern sat down, rather as if he had been hamstrung. The action
had been purely automatic, the outcome of that involuntary spasm of
acquiescence which comes upon everybody when someone speaks very
loudly and peremptorily in their presence. His obsequiousness was only
momentary, and he was about to inquire of John what the devil he meant
by speaking to him like that, when the young man went on.
"My uncle has been very much concerned," said John, "about that
unfortunate thing that happened in the park some weeks ago. It has been
on his mind."
The desire to say something almost inhumanely sarcastic and the
difficulty of finding just the right words caused the Colonel to miss
his chance of interrupting at this point. What should have been a
searing retort became a mere splutter.
"He feels he behaved badly to you. He admits freely that in grabbing
you round the waist and putting you in between him and that dynamite he
acted on the spur of an impulse to which he should never have yielded.
He has been wondering ever since how best he might heal the breach.
Haven't you, Uncle Lester?"
Mr. Carmody swallowed painfully.
"Yes."
"He says 'Yes'," said John, relaying the information to its receiving
station. "You have always been his closest friend, and the thought that
there was this estrangement has been preying on my uncle's mind. This
morning, unable to endure it any longer, he came to me and asked my
advice. I was very glad to give it him. And I am still more glad that
he took it. My uncle will now say a few words.... Uncle Lester!"
Mr. Carmody rose haltingly from his seat. He was a man who stood on the
verge of parting with one thousand pounds in cool cash, and he looked
it. His face was haggard, and his voice, when he contrived to speak,
thin and trembling.
"Wyvern, I...."
"... thought ..." prompted John.
"I thought," said Mr. Carmody, "that in the circumstances...."
"It would be best...."
"It would be best if...."
Words--and there should have been sixty-three more of them--failed Mr.
Carmody. He pushed a slip of paper across the table and resumed his
seat, a suffering man.
"I fail to...." began Colonel Wyvern. And then his eye fell on the slip
of paper, and pomposity slipped from him like breath off a razor blade.
"What--what----?" he said.
"Moral and intellectual damages," said John. "My uncle feels he owes it
to you."
Silence fell upon the room. The Colonel had picked up the cheque and
was scrutinizing it as if he had been a naturalist and it some rare
specimen encountered in the course of his walks abroad. His eyebrows,
disentangling themselves and moving apart, rose in an astonishment he
made no attempt to conceal. He looked from the cheque to Mr. Carmody
and back again.
"Good God!" said Colonel Wyvern.
With a sudden movement he tore the paper in two, burst into a crackling
laugh and held his hand out.
"Good God!" he cried jovially. "Do you think I want money? All I ever
wanted was for you to admit you were an old scoundrel and murderer, and
you've done it. And if you knew how lonely it's been in this infernal
place with no one to speak to or smoke a cigar with...."
Mr. Carmody had risen, in his eyes the look of one who sees visions and
beholds miracles. He gazed at his old friend in awe. Long as he had
known him, it was only now that he realized his true nobility of soul.
"Wyvern!"
"Carmody," said Colonel Wyvern, "how are the pike?"
"The pike?" Mr. Carmody blinked, still dazed. "Pike?"
"In the moat. Have you caught the big one yet?"
"Not yet."
"I'll come up and try for him this afternoon, shall I?"
"Yes."
"He says 'Yes'," said John, interpreting.
"And only just now," said Colonel Wyvern, "I was savaging my daughter
because she wanted to marry into your family!"
"What's that?" cried Mr. Carmody, and John clutched the edge of the
table. His heart had given a sudden, ecstatic leap, and for an instant
the room had seemed to rock about him.
"Yes," said Colonel Wyvern. He broke into another of his laughs, and
John could not help wondering where Pat had got that heavenly tinkle of
silver bells which served her on occasion when she was amused. Not from
her father's side of the family.
"Bless my soul!" said Mr. Carmody.
"Yes," said Colonel Wyvern. "She came to me just before you arrived and
told me that she wanted to marry your nephew Hugo."