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SCARHAVEN KEEP
BY J.S. FLETCHER
1922
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I WANTED AT REHEARSAL
II GREY ROOK AND GREY SEA
III THE MAN WHO KNEW SOMETHING
IV THE ESTATE AGENT
V THE GREYLE HISTORY
VI THE LEADING LADY
VII LEFT ON GUARD
VIII RIGHT OF WAY
IX HOBKIN'S HOLE
X THE INVALID CURATE
XI BENEATH THE BRAMBLES
XII GOOD MEN AND TRUE
XIII MR. DENNIE
XIV BY PRIVATE TREATY
XV THE CABLEGRAM FROM NEW YORK
XVI IN TOUCH WITH THE MISSING
XVII THE OLD PLAYBILL
XVIII THE LIE ON THE TOMBSTONE
XIX THE STEAM YACHT
XX THE COURTEOUS CAPTAIN
XXI MAROONED
XXII THE OLD HAND
XXIII THE YACHT COMES BACK
XXIV THE TORPEDO-BOAT DESTROYER
XXV THE SQUIRE
XXVI THE REAVER'S GLEN
XXVII THE PEEL TOWER
XXVIII THE FOOTPRINTS
XXIX SCARVELL'S CUT
XXX THE GREENGROCER'S CART
XXXI AMBASSADRESS EXTRAORDINARY
CHAPTER I
WANTED AT REHEARSAL
Jerramy, thirty years' stage-door keeper at the Theatre Royal, Norcaster,
had come to regard each successive Monday morning as a time for the
renewal of old acquaintance. For at any rate forty-six weeks of the
fifty-two, theatrical companies came and went at Norcaster with unfailing
regularity. The company which presented itself for patronage in the first
week of April in one year was almost certain to present itself again in
the corresponding week of the next year. Sometimes new faces came with
it, but as a rule the same old favourites showed themselves for a good
many years in succession. And every actor and actress who came to
Norcaster knew Jerramy. He was the first official person encountered on
entering upon the business of the week. He it was who handed out the
little bundles of letters and papers, who exchanged the first greetings,
of whom one could make useful inquiries, who always knew exactly what
advice to give about lodgings and landladies. From noon onwards of
Mondays, when the newcomers began to arrive at the theatre for the
customary one o'clock call for rehearsal, Jerramy was invariably employed
in hearing that he didn't look a day older, and was as blooming as ever,
and sure to last another thirty years, and his reception always
culminated in a hearty handshake and genial greeting from the great man
of the company, who, of course, after the fashion of magnates, always
turned up at the end of the irregular procession, and was not seldom late
for the fixture which he himself had made.
At a quarter past one of a certain Monday afternoon in the course of a
sunny October, Jerramy leaned over the half-door of his sanctum in
conversation with an anxious-eyed man who for the past ten minutes had
hung about in the restless fashion peculiar to those who are waiting for
somebody. He had looked up the street and down the street a dozen times;
he had pulled out his watch and compared it with the clock of a
neighbouring church almost as often; he had several times gone up the
dark passage which led to the dressing-rooms, and had come back again
looking more perplexed than ever. The fact was that he was the business
manager of the great Mr. Bassett Oliver, who was opening for the week at
Norcaster in his latest success, and who, not quite satisfied with the
way in which a particular bit of it was being played called a special
rehearsal for a quarter to one. Everything and everybody was ready for
that rehearsal, but the great man himself had not arrived. Now Mr.
Bassett Oliver, as every man well knew who ever had dealings with him,
was not one of the irregular and unpunctual order; on the contrary, he
was a very martinet as regarded rule, precision and system; moreover, he
always did what he expected each member of his company to do. Therefore
his non-arrival, his half hour of irregularity, seemed all the more
extraordinary.
"Never knew him to be late before--never!" exclaimed the business
manager, impatiently pulling out his watch for the twentieth time. "Not
in all my ten years' experience of him--not once."
"I suppose you've seen him this morning, Mr. Stafford?" inquired Jerramy.
"He's in the town, of course?"
"I suppose he's in the town," answered Mr. Stafford. "I suppose he's at
his old quarters--the 'Angel.' But I haven't seen him; neither had
Rothwell--we've both been too busy to call there. I expect he came on to
the 'Angel' from Northborough yesterday."
Jerramy opened the half-door, and going out to the end of the passage,
looked up and down the street.
"There's a taxi-cab coming round the corner now," he announced presently.
"Coming quick, too--I should think he's in it."
The business manager bustled out to the pavement as the cab came to a
halt. But instead of the fine face and distinguished presence of Mr.
Bassett Oliver, he found himself confronting a young man who looked like
a well-set-up subaltern, or a cricket-and-football loving undergraduate;
a somewhat shy, rather nervous young man, scrupulously groomed, and
neatly attired in tweeds, who, at sight of the two men on the pavement,
immediately produced a card-case.
"Mr. Bassett Oliver?" he said inquiringly. "Is he here? I--I've got an
appointment with him for one o'clock, and I'm sorry I'm late--my train--"
"Mr. Oliver is not here yet," broke in Stafford. "He's late,
too--unaccountably late, for him. An appointment, you say?"
He was looking the stranger over as he spoke, taking him for some
stage-struck youth who had probably persuaded the good-natured actor to
give him an interview. His expression changed, however; as he glanced at
the card which the young man handed over, and he started a little and
held out his hand with a smile.
"Oh!--Mr. Copplestone?" he exclaimed. "How do you do? My name's
Stafford--I'm Mr. Oliver's business manager. So he made an
appointment with you, did he--here, today? Wants to see you about
your play, of course."
Again he looked at the newcomer with a smiling interest, thinking
secretly that he was a very youthful and ingenuous being to have written
a play which Bassett Oliver, a shrewd critic, and by no means easy to
please, had been eager to accept, and was about to produce. Mr. Richard
Copplestone, seen in the flesh, looked very young indeed, and very
unlike anything in the shape of a professional author. In fact he very
much reminded Stafford of the fine and healthy young man whom one sees
on the playing fields, and certainly does not associate with pen and
ink. That he was not much used to the world on whose edge he just then
stood Stafford gathered from a boyish trick of blushing through the tan
of his cheeks.
"I got a wire from Mr. Oliver yesterday--Sunday," replied Mr.
Copplestone. "I ought to have had it in the morning, I suppose, but I'd
gone out for the day, you know--gone out early. So I didn't find it until
I got back to my rooms late at night. I got the next train I could from
King's Cross, and it was late getting in here."
"Then you've practically been travelling all night?" remarked Stafford.
"Well, Mr. Oliver hasn't turned up--most unusual for him. I don't know
where--" Just then another man came hurrying down the passage from the
dressing-rooms, calling the business manager by name.
"I say, Stafford!" he exclaimed, as he emerged on the street. "This is a
queer thing!--I'm sure there's something wrong. I've just rung up the
'Angel' hotel. Oliver hasn't turned up there! His rooms were all ready
for him as usual yesterday, but he never came. They've neither seen nor
heard of him. Did you see him yesterday?"
"No!" replied Stafford. "I didn't. Never seen him since last thing
Saturday night at Northborough. He ordered this rehearsal for one--no, a
quarter to one, here, today. But somebody must have seen him yesterday.
Where's his dresser--where's Hackett?"
"Hackett's inside," said the other man. "He hasn't seen him either, since
Saturday night. Hackett has friends living in these parts--he went off to
see them early yesterday morning, from Northborough, and he's only just
come. So he hasn't seen Oliver, and doesn't know anything about him; he
expected, of course, to find him here."
Stafford turned with a wave of the hand towards Copplestone.
"So did this gentleman," he said. "Mr. Copplestone, this is our
stage-manager, Mr. Rothwell. Rothwell, this is Mr. Richard Copplestone,
author of the new play that Mr. Oliver's going to produce next month. Mr.
Copplestone got a wire from him yesterday, asking him to come here today
at one o'clock, He's travelled all night to get here."
"Where was the wire sent from?" asked Rothwell, a sharp-eyed,
keen-looking man, who, like Stafford, was obviously interested in the new
author's boyish appearance. "And when?"
Copplestone drew some letters and papers from his pocket and selected
one. "That's it," he said. "There you are--sent off from Northborough at
nine-thirty, yesterday morning--Sunday."
"Well, then he was at Northborough at that time," remarked Rothwell.
"Look here, Stafford, we'd better telephone to Northborough, to his
hotel. The 'Golden Apple,' wasn't it?"
"No good," replied Stafford, shaking his head. "The 'Golden Apple' isn't
on the 'phone--old-fashioned place. We'd better wire."
"Too slow," said Rothwell. "We'll telephone to the theatre there, and ask
them to step across and make inquiries. Come on!--let's do it at once."
He hurried inside again, and Stafford turned to Copplestone.
"Better send your cab away and come inside until we get some news," he
said. "Let Jerramy take your things into his sanctum--he'll keep an eye
on them till you want them--I suppose you'll stop at the 'Angel' with
Oliver. Look here!" he went on, turning to the cab driver, "just you wait
a bit--I might want you; wait ten minutes, anyway. Come in, Mr.
Copplestone."
Copplestone followed the business manager up the passage to a
dressing-room, in which a little elderly man was engaged in unpacking
trunks and dress-baskets. He looked up expectantly at the sound of
footsteps; then looked down again at the work in hand and went silently
on with it.
"This is Hackett, Mr. Oliver's dresser," said Stafford. "Been with
him--how long, Hackett?"
"Twenty years next January, Mr. Stafford," answered the dresser quietly.
"Ever known Mr. Oliver late like this?" inquired Stafford.
"Never, sir! There's something wrong," replied Hackett. "I'm sure of it.
I feel it! You ought to go and look for him, some of you gentlemen."
"Where?" asked Stafford. "We don't know anything about him. He's not come
to the 'Angel,' as he ought to have done, yesterday. I believe you're the
last person who saw him, Hackett. Aren't you, now?"
"I saw him at the 'Golden Apple' at Northborough at twelve o'clock
Saturday night, sir," answered Hackett. "I took a bag of his to his rooms
there. He was all right then. He knew I was going off first thing next
morning to see an uncle of mine who's a farmer on the coast between here
and Northborough, and he told me he shouldn't want me until one o'clock
today. So of course, I came straight here to the theatre--I didn't call
in at the 'Angel' at all this morning."
"Did he say anything about his own movements yesterday?" asked Stafford.
"Did he tell you that he was going anywhere?"
"Not a word, Mr. Stafford," replied Hackett. "But you know his habits as
well as I do."
"Just so," agreed Stafford. "Mr. Oliver," he continued, turning to
Copplestone, "is a great lover of outdoor life. On Sundays, when we're
travelling from one town to another, he likes to do the journey by
motor--alone. In a case like this, where the two towns are not very far
apart, it's his practice to find out if there's any particular beauty
spot or place of interest between them, and to spend his Sunday there. I
daresay that's what he did yesterday. You see, all last week we were at
Northborough. That, like Norcaster, is a coast town--there's fifty miles
between them. If he followed out his usual plan he'd probably hire a
motor-car and follow the coast-road, and if he came to any place that was
of special interest, he'd stop there. But--in the usual way of
things--he'd have turned up at his rooms at the 'Angel' hotel here last
night. He didn't--and he hasn't turned up here, either. So where is he?"
"Have you made inquiries of the company, Mr. Stafford?" asked Hackett.
"Most of 'em wander about a bit of a Sunday--they might have seen him."
"Good idea!" agreed Stafford. He beckoned Copplestone to follow him on
to the stage, where the members of the company sat or stood about in
groups, each conscious that something unusual had occurred. "It's really
a queer, and perhaps a serious thing," he whispered as he steered his
companion through a maze of scenery. "And if Oliver doesn't turn up, we
shall be in a fine mess. Of course, there's an understudy for his part,
but--I say!" he went on, as they stepped upon the stage, "Have any of you
seen Mr. Oliver, anywhere, since Saturday night? Can anybody tell
anything about him--anything at all? Because--it's useless to deny the
fact--he's not come here, and he's not come to town at all, so far as we
know. So--"
Rothwell came hurrying on to the stage from the opposite wings. He
hastened across to Stafford and drew him and Copplestone a little aside.
"I've heard from Northborough," he said. "I 'phoned Waters, the manager
there, to run across to the 'Golden Apple' and make inquiries. The
'Golden Apple' people say that Oliver left there at eleven o'clock
yesterday morning. He was alone. He simply walked out of the hotel. And
they know nothing more."