This is a work of fiction, and all characters in the book are drawn from the author's imagination. If any names or titles belonging to living persons have been used, this has been done inadvertently and no reference to such person or persons is intended.
CHAPTER I
MR. THOMAS BIRCHALL put down the test-tube which he had been holding up to the light of his single electric bulb, in the hope of seeing that change of colour which would not come. He had heard the rattle of the letter-box flap of his outer door, and the fainter sound of a letter as it struck the uncarpeted boards of the tiny hall of his two-room South-west London flat.
Failures of experiments were frequent enough, but his was an address to which letters would rarely come. Even tradesmen's bills imply credit, which he did not take; and the last quarter's rent had been lately paid.
He rose at once, though with no particular anticipation in his mind, and went to pick up the letter.
Interest quickened at the sight of a woman's writing, and one with which he had had an earlier familiarity. Why, he thought, should Dorothy be writing to me? But the Dorset postmark confirmed his recognition.
He did not return to the laboratory, but to the meagrely-furnished bed-sitting-room in which he lived during the intervals of sleep and food which disturbed his work. Here a cold supper had been laid out by the woman who came in daily, and had left at an earlier hour. He might eat it within ten minutes of her departure, or she might find it untouched when she returned on the next day, and Mr. Birchall still working in the laboratory, oblivious of the course of time. . . . Now he sat down and read:
Highview House,
Osbury,
DORSET.
April 15th, 1935.
DEAR TOM,
We were talking about you and old times yesterday, and Alfred asked me to write. We thought that, if you had nothing better to do, you might like to come here for a few days over Easter.
I don't know what it's like in London, but the weather's wonderful here - almost like midsummer.
We are about three miles from Osbury station, but Alfred will meet you if you will let us know by what train you are coming.
Always sincerely,
DOROTHY.
He read this twice over, as though a second perusal would reveal some explanation that was not there. It was, to his mind, an amazing letter. Not as regards Dorothy. He had never credited her own coldness toward himself: would always think that she would have married him in the end if his cousin had not appeared on the scene. But he had a fixed belief that Alfred Cuthbertson hated him, and a certain knowledge of his feelings toward the cousin who was in every way more successful than himself, and who had robbed him, as he thought, of the girl he loved.
Talked over old times, had they? And the result - the most bewildering result - had been an invitation to him to spend Easter at Highview House!
His own recollections went back on the same road, to the events of four - three - years ago, and the effect upon himself was of an opposite kind. Of course, he would not go! Bitter memories - bitter quarrels - what was the sense of reviving these?
That he could meet Alfred without quarrelling - was it a reasonable probability? That he should find satisfaction in seeing Dorothy happy in his cousin's possession - he knew himself better than to entertain so preposterous an idea!
But was she happy? The doubt, rising to sudden hope, shook his resolution. Had he thought that there was the faintest hope of success, he would have had no scruple in accepting the invitation, and seducing her in his cousin's house; nor was he sufficiently free from vanity to recognize the improbability of her preferring his uncouth, slovenly-clothed person to that of his handsome light-witted cousin.
But reason told him that Alfred's consent to the invitation - in itself an unlikelihood only made credible by the fact that the letter was here before him - would be made more probable by the hypothesis that Dorothy and he were on quarrelsome terms.
By the most reasonable explanation, it was the patronizing gesture, half-kindly, half-contemptuous, of success to failure, of plenty to penury, of victory to defeat. Well, he would let them know at once that he was not to be patronized by them.
He searched for letter-paper he could not find; discovered a dirty post card with a note covering half of one side concerning the cause for the oblique rhombic prism which is the primary form of Glauber's Salts (NaO,SO3); scrawled across this, and wrote on the remaining space: "Sorry, but no money and no time. T. B."; put his hat on, and went out to post it at once at the pillar-box at the corner of Horseferry Road.
That would show Dorothy (and more particularly Alfred!) that he was not going to be patronized by them. No doubt, Alfred made thousands now, by work requiring neither knowledge nor brains. A fool doing that for which his brother-fools, being able to understand, were willing to pay. And his own research work, of so different quality, had brought him, as yet, neither money nor the fame for which he would have had a higher regard. Well, it would be different when his grandfather died! - his grandfather, whose stinginess only allowed him now the four pounds weekly which was the sole income he had but from whom he expected to inherit, at his death, which could not be much longer delayed, a sum of not less than sixty thousand pounds. When he had that to spend, he might have a better chance of making Dorothy recognize her mistake.
So his thoughts went on through the night. In fact, the letter revived memories which their own bitterness had buried too deeply for thought to stir them during the last years, unless prompted by such a reminder as he had now. Speculation as to why the invitation should have been given stimulated his mind to dwell upon that which, for his own peace, had been better left. In the end he came to regret that he had been so prompt in posting the curtly-worded refusal. . . .
CHAPTER II
THE post card was sorted out next morning from the little pile of correspondence which lay on the breakfast-table at Highview House, at Dorothy Cuthbertson's left hand, and to which it was her habit to give attention when the coffee had been poured out, and she was satisfied that nothing of Alfred's immediate wants had been overlooked. . . .
She was accustomed to give the morning correspondence a preliminary examination before passing across the table such letters as were addressed to her husband, and which her judgment decided were suitable for his immediate perusal.
It was a method of which he fully approved, holding that it is the first duty of a novelist to protect himself (and of his wife to protect him) from any mental disturbance which may obstruct the free exercise of his imagination in the morning's work on which it is (at least in theory) so constantly occupied. Wishing to judge all men fairly, and having soon to face a problem in which Alfred's character must be carefully weighed, it is fair for us to recognize that he could have had no correspondence which he was unwilling for his wife to see.
She turned over the pile of letters, observed the preponderance of bills without surprise or any other strong emotion, paused upon a letter which she opened with hesitation, and then said, with the inward relief of a trouble deferred: "Jorrocks can't get their royalty statement out till next week. They say you shall have it not later than Wednesday." (Alfred was always disappointed and angry of late when royalty statements came. However much they might resolve to anticipate disappointing results, the fact was always a bit worse.)
She glanced next at a card in a condition of dirt for which the post office had no responsibility, and hesitated again; but it was a matter which could not be concealed, and there would be no benefit from delay. She said: "Tom won't come. He says he's got no money and no time."
"He must come. The idea's too good to drop, and I don't know anyone else I can put it to as I could to him."
"I don't see how we can make him. The card reads a bit snorty to me. I don't suppose he's forgiven me for marrying you. I wonder what sort of life I should have had among all his smells. And living on the two-pound-ten, or whatever it is, that your grandfather lets him have."
"Is that about what he gets?"
"I don't know exactly. I don't suppose it's much more. You know what your grandfather is. He probably thinks it's a fortune for an unmarried man. He'd call it being liberal with his favourite grandchild."
"If that's all he's getting, he ought to jump at the offer."
"Perhaps he would. I'm a bit doubtful myself. Anyhow, he can't jump at it before he knows what it is. . . . It looks as though you'll have to go to him. It's not exactly a thing that you'd care to write."
"I'm not going to him." Alfred's voice was decided, and with a tone of displeasure at the suggestion. There was the dignity of a famous - or well, perhaps, distinguished - novelist to be maintained. To go to Tom with the proposal he had in mind would be far too like asking a favour. It would be the wrong atmosphere, the wrong environment. The idea would have to be too abruptly spoken. It was a matter to be propounded with discretion. Perhaps in a moment of conviviality. Perhaps first as a jest, until Tom's reaction had been observed. Go to him, and blurt it out in the first ten minutes while Tom would sit glowering at him, wanting to get back to his work, and wondering what the visit might mean? No, certainly not.
"I meant," Dorothy said in her equable manner, ignoring her husband's petulance, "you may have to fetch him here."
"You mean he mayn't have the fare?"
"He mayn't be willing to spend it, which comes to the same thing."
"You think I ought to run up to town in the car, and fetch him down?"
"You're really serious about this? The more I think about it, I like it the less."
"Of course I am. There's thousands in it - thousands take the car?"
"He makes two excuses - money and time. If they're genuine, it removes one. Of course, the truth is more likely to be that he just doesn't care to come."
Alfred considered this with the concentration which the importance of the issue required. He had taken a second helping of eggs-and-bacon - he was not one of those fanatics who consider that abstinence assists the clarity of the brain - before he spoke further.
"You'll come up with me?" he asked.
Dorothy looked doubtful. She understood clearly that she was to be bait for the trap, and that she must be prepared, if necessary, to persuade a reluctant man, which she had no will to do. But she was accustomed to let Alfred have his way in all but the fundamental issues of life, and thousands - if Alfred were right, as he mostly was when his own comfort or prosperity was concerned - would be very welcome indeed. She remembered opportunely that his credit was still good at the London stores.
"Yes," she said. "There are some things in town I should like to do. . . . I'll send Tom a few lines in answer to this."
"All right. I'll trust you to pull it off."
Alfred went into the garden, and Dorothy moved over to the bureau to write:
April 17th, 1935.
DEAR TOM,
I've had your card, but you won't get out of it so easily as you think!
We're shopping in London tomorrow, and I'll call for you about two-thirty, and we'll run you down in the car.
Yours
DOROTHY.
P.S. Don't be silly! It's certain to do you good.
Mr. Thomas Birchall received this next morning, hesitated, and decided that if she liked to call for him with no more encouragement, it would show that she was very much in earnest in her desire for his company during the coming Easter.
When she came, about fifteen minutes later than she had proposed, she found him with a suit-case ready packed, and he made no difficulty about going down with her to encounter Alfred and the waiting car.
CHAPTER III
THOMAS BIRCHALL, whatever awkwardness he may have felt in his first meeting with a cousin who was now his host, but with whom he had seldom before exchanged any but quarrelsome words, was unable to observe any sign either of unfriendliness or constraint on the part of Alfred Cuthbertson, or of the girl who had made her choice between them two or three years earlier.
They arrived at Highview House on Thursday evening in time for a rather late dinner, at which meal, and at breakfast on Good Friday morning, he was treated not only with the casual courtesy which is usually reserved for those whose friendship is too firmly based for the formalities that greater distance requires, but also, both then and at the subsequent walk which Dorothy took him along the top of the cliffs, with a measure of confidence as to the finances of his cousin's household, and other circumstances of his publishing experiences, which were the more surprising in that they were not of a wholly satisfactory character.
Somewhat bewildered by this sudden and almost intimate friendliness, he exercised a naturally morose and suspicious mind to discover its cause, and concluded that he was to be used as the medium of requesting their grandfather to render some monetary assistance, either by gift or loan, which, as the favourite grandchild, and one who was already receiving an income from him, it might seem natural to ask him to undertake.
It was an improbable hypothesis, such as the mind will only accept for lack of a more probable explanation; and it was one with which, he resolved in advance, he would have nothing to do. He knew the contempt his grandfather had for the writer's craft, and that news of Alfred's difficulties would only stir him to sarcasm, and the hope that they might incline him to do some useful work in the world.
But Dorothy's response to a few rather clumsy words which he spoke as they were returning along the cliffs, and which were intended to let her know in advance that he was not to be used in such a manner, was of a kind to convince him that he must look for a different interpretation of this sudden, inexplicable familiarity.
He decided that he must wait, in a guarded caution, until the explanation should appear; and, meanwhile, the food was good, the weather delightful. He enjoyed the comforts of a house which contrasted with his own manner of life, and which he had the leisure to appreciate in this enforced respite from work. He thought enviously that the financial privations at which both Alfred and Dorothy had hinted were very comfortably endured.
At dinner, conversation developed again on the same lines. Dorothy repeated the remark he had made about their grandfather during the morning, and he took the opportunity of emphasizing it in the direction he had intended previously.
He mentioned that he was himself requiring a sum of about two hundred pounds for some apparatus without which he could not carry out the experiments on which he was engaged to the conclusion at which he aimed, but he dared not ask the old man for the sum he needed, lest he should take offence, and withdraw the allowance already made, for he was of the temperament which will rather assist success than make the path of failure smooth.
He did not add, being too discreet for what might have been a dangerous confidence, that he had already drawn several smaller sums for similar uses, and each one with an increasing difficulty, and by means of lying as to the results and rewards which he had already obtained. He was now too deeply entangled in these mendacities to risk a further application, and preferred to accept his meagre allowance in silence, while waiting impatiently for the death which was slow to come.
Alfred met his half-measure of confidence with an unexpected sympathy. He said: "I can understand how you feel. I wouldn't ask the old skinflint for a penny myself, if I didn't know where I could get the next meal. . . . But I don't like to think of you being held up for such a beggarly sum. I'd lend it you myself if the publishers weren't such ghastly frauds. But we must think out what we can do."
Thomas was more puzzled by this than he had been before. Was Alfred really disposed to contrive some way by which he could gain command of the sum he needed? Probably not. It was more likely that he had uttered no more than empty, courteous words. But if these people had suddenly gone mad with friendship for himself, there was no reason that he should not accept the benefits that the circumstances allowed. He saw that some increase of cordiality on his side might be more profitable than his present attitude of watchful reserve.
And while he thought this, Dorothy did not let the conversation die.
"You see," she said, "Alfred made a lot of money with his first book, The Blood-stained Beads, and then he made a contract for two more, with good deposits from the publishers, and it seemed as though he'd got nothing to do but to write two books a year and the money would roll in faster than we should know how to spend it; so that when we bought this house with the money we got from the first book, it seemed a very prudent thing to have done.
"And, of course, it's very pleasant to have no rent to pay, though the rates and the mortgage interest come to a big sum, and it's a good deal more expensive to keep up than we reckoned at first.
"But that wouldn't have mattered at all, if the publishers hadn't let Alfred down. They didn't advertise the next books half enough, and they hadn't sufficient enterprise to send them out on sale to the shops, and so when the contract was at an end it seemed prudent to make a change.
"So Alfred moved to Jorrocks, and, so far, they have proved to be worse than the firm he left."
Thomas murmured appropriate sounds of sympathy, in a voice ill-adapted by nature for such exercises, while he calculated: "Two books a year! Say 200,000 words; probably less. That's about 550 words a day - an hour's work if you reckon over 6 seconds for every word, which is absurd, especially for the pronouns. And he calls that work! . . . I wonder whether he's going to ask me to collaborate with him to put some more guts into them. I suppose I could write half - 300 words a day - without much interference with my real work, but it's not the kind of thing I should like Bevan to know that I'd taken on."
Edward Bevan, M.D., was Thomas's single friend - he who occupied a flat of more commodious extent under that in which Thomas lived. He was a consultant of some reputation, and an enthusiast in studying the course of various diseases by the inoculation of mice, and other quadrupeds. Obviously, Thomas would not like him to know that he had been reduced to augmenting his income by the childish expedient of writing tales.
While these thoughts passed through his mind, Alfred continued the conversation. He gave many details respecting royalties, cheap editions, foreign translation and serial rights, and other fluctuant and too-precarious sources of a novelist's income, which it would be wearisomc to record; but the point emerged clearly that, without fault or failure on Alfred's side, the family income was falling short of the figure which Alfred's comfort and the upkeep of Highview required.
It seemed clear to the scientist that he was about to be asked to strengthen those wretched books, most probably by the addition of solid facts, such as people would naturally be eager to know. He thought now that he understood the reception which the confession of his own necessity had received. Doubtless, he was to be offered the £200 he required in return for the literary service so urgently needed. Well, if so, he might not decline. But there should be no hint of willingness on his part. Let them beg it of him, however awkward or humiliating it might be!
But, for the moment at least, he found that no such request, nor any other, was to be made. Dorothy was talking now, and she made her theme the difficulty of following public caprice, and the importance of seemingly-irrelevant notoriety on the part of the author in inducing the public to read his books.
"You mean," he asked, "that if Alfred were to climb the Nelson Monument during the night. and be seen on the top next morning wearing nothing but his School Tie, there would be more people who would want to read his books during the week?"
It seemed an absurd theory to Thomas. Indeed, he would have reversed it in his mind, and thought that such an antic would supply convincing reason why sensible people would leave them alone; but Dorothy said, Yes, that was the idea. And though Alfred had looked annoyed at the vision of his somewhat lanky figure being so indecorously displayed, he answered with equal definiteness.
Well, after all, people who read such books could not be expected to have their logical faculties in active and regular use! And if Alfred needed publicity, could it not be gained by the announcement that he had donated £200 of his surplus wealth to the endowment of scientific research?
But having reached this point, the conversation drifted inconclusively in other directions. It was not until evening came, and they were having coffee together in the drawing-room after dinner, that the affability of which Thomas had been making unaccustomed demonstration had its reward, and Alfred put the proposition that was in his mind squarely before him.
CHAPTER IV
"IT isn't the merit of a book on which sales depend," Alfred said. "Any publisher will admit that. If they could make even an approximate guess at how any book will go, they would amass fortunes without any risk at all.
"It's partly luck, and partly a number of other factors, some of which are very difficult to foresee, and, of course, largely a matter of the way a book's put on the market. There are few that a publisher can't kill by issuing them in such a way that he shows he doesn't think much of them himself; but there's one sure road to big sales, and that's to get the public talking about either the book itself, or the man who wrote it.
"Every actress comes to the time when her agent tells her she's got to have her necklace stolen, or her salary halved; and those who have any brains don't wait till they're pushed up to the fence; they have the stunts while they're young, and they're sure of getting on to the front page.
"Now what I've been saying to Dorothy is, why shouldn't an author do the same thing?"
Thomas Birchall, being a literal-minded man, as most scientists are, was puzzled by this opening. He was not aware that Alfred had a necklace of any value, and if he were wrong on that point, he was averse from being publicly known as the man who had stolen it, even though he should receive the solace of £200 for any legal inconveniences that might follow. He said doubtfully:
"It's a good idea. I've no doubt of that. But I'm I afraid I shouldn't be able to help."
The reply was satisfactory to his cousin, who had not expected the idea that his assistance might be required to come so readily into Thomas's mind. It encouraged him to reach the point by a shorter route than he had intended to use.
He said: "Oh, but you could. You're about the only one I should care to ask. I mean the only one I could trust to play the game, and not to give me away.
"I shouldn't ask you to do anything difficult. Just to disappear somewhere for a few weeks, more or less, and to watch the papers, and come back at the right time. . . . Of course, I'd make it worth while. Say £200 down and ten per cent of the extra profit I make on The Clue of the Twisted Spoon, which comes out next month. compared with the book before.
"Thomas considered this proposition with some satisfaction, but more bewilderment. It sounded less repellant than stealing necklaces, but was the disappearance of a novelist's cousin sufficiently sensational to secure the desired result? Of course, he could stipulate for the £200 to be cash in advance, and he would be sure of that. But he had a sound instinct that there was more in the proposition than had yet been disclosed. He asked cautiously: "How would that help you, for me to clear out?"
Alfred felt that the opening of his proposition had been well received. It encouraged a rapid advance to the kernel of the idea, about which he had anticipated more awkwardness than he was experiencing.
"What I thought," he said, "was that we might be seen to quarrel, and then you would disappear, and enquiries would follow, and I should fall under suspicion of having made away with you, and just when the reporters were swarming round, and it would be getting very awkward for me, you would reappear, and say you'd been on a holiday somewhere out of the way, and hadn't seen any papers, and, anyhow, couldn't you go where you liked without the police making a fuss?"
"Alfred thought," Dorothy added, "that there might be some money in libel actions as well. Some of the Sunday newspapers would be almost certain to go too far."
Thomas heard this proposal without active dissent. Put in general terms, as it was, and by two people who were convinced of its practicability (at least, Alfred Cuthbertson was so convinced, and some weeks of talking with frequent reiteration of "Well, have you anything better you can suggest?" had brought Dorothy more or less to the same view), it sounded simple enough, and his part seemed to be mainly of a negative character. It was true that such a disappearance would interrupt his work, but that would soon be blocked for lack of the apparatus which he would thus be able to buy. If he had the cash in advance, he could order it before leaving, and it would be ready for delivery on his return. "Well," he said, "it's a queer idea, but I daresay you're right. You'd let me have the £200 at the start, so that I could have the things made while I'm away?"
The question brought a pause of silence. It was not entirely a matter of trusting Thomas. The money, at short notice, might not be easy to find. The original plan had been to offer half the amount, and it was only Thomas's statement that he was in urgent need of that sum that had caused Alfred to spring to what he felt would be an irresistible bribe. After next Wednesday, when Jorrocks's royalty cheque, overdue and now promised, would have arrived, it might be possible to manage it, but Dorothy had a conviction, based on past experiences of the same kind, that however moderately they estimated its amount, the reality would be something less.
Alfred was the first to speak, recollecting that the plan was not intended to be put into immediate operation. Its date must be that of the publication of The Clue of the Twisted Spoon, which was fixed for some weeks ahead. He said: "Well, I daresay we could manage that. I expect you'd want to go back to town first, and get things cleared up for leaving, but of course it wouldn't do to let anyone know that you expected to be away."
Thomas agreed that he would prefer to return to his flat. The question caused him to reflect that, if his disappearance were to be taken seriously, his rooms might be invaded by the police or other officious persons, against which he must be prepared, while avoiding anything which would have the appearance of having expected their coming. Evidently, this unusual proposition needed to be considered on many sides, as is common to any exceptional course of conduct which transgresses the normality of civilized life.
And with this thought came another doubt. If he should say nothing to anyone to stir alarm in advance, who was there who would be active enough to enquire, though he might be absent for half a year?
He understood the position sufficiently to infer that Alfred aimed at a prompt alarm. Two hundred pounds was an inviting bait, but he did not intend to go into this curious scheme without understanding every issue that might arise.
"I suppose you've thought," he asked, "that I'm not one of those who'd be missed in a few hours? You might find it simpler to do me in without any fuss following, than to get people stirred up because they didn't see me about."
"Oh, but Alfred's planned all that," Dorothy replied, with some natural pride in the genius of a husband sufficient to invent and solve the mystery of the blood-stained beads, which had been as improbable as most things are; "it will happen when some people are coming up the path, near enough to see you go over the edge, though too distant to interfere."
Thomas saw, with some inward annoyance, how completely the plan must have been developed before he had been taken into confidence. With what assurance, with what impudence, they had assumed that he could be summoned when they required his service! Anger stirred at the thought, but he controlled it with the determination that he would not allow resentment to obstruct his making of what had sounded like a very easy profit. Yet what was that which Dorothy had said, in her casual way? "When you go over the edge." It had a repellant sound. He gave his attention to Alfred, who, observing and partly understanding the effect of his wife's too-impetuous exclamation, was now giving a detailed explanation of the plan which he had evolved in a lively imagination for the resuscitation of his wilting fortunes.
"Of course," he said, adroitly meeting the feeling of annoyance which his cousin's expression showed, "we couldn't be rude enough to ask you down before we'd worked out a feasible plan. But there's nothing final in that. I daresay you'll think of a better one almost at once.
"But there's a place on the cliffs where the path goes close to the edge, or what looks like the edge to anyone coming up from this direction, but it isn't really the edge. There's a ledge a few feet lower that anyone could jump, or even fall, down to, without any danger at all, and by walking on for a dozen yards, till the ledge ends, which it does by the cliff-top sloping down a little, and the ledge rising till they become one, he would get away - perhaps having to stoop a little; we should have to test that - without anyone coming up the path from this side seeing him at all.
"They'd just see us quarrel, and you go over the edge, and perhaps see me pass them afterwards in an agitated manner. And they'd be certain to talk, if they didn't 'phone up the police.
"If they should do that, I don't think the police here would believe much without enquiries. I know them fairly well. You'd have plenty of time to get away.
"But whether they bothered the police or not, they'd be certain to talk, and Dorothy, never suspecting that I could have committed a crime, would make an innocent fuss before the servants as to why you hadn't come back with me, and I should be agitated, and make some excuse that wouldn't sound true, and - well. we know Osbury! And we know the maids we've got here. Before night, it would be the talk of every house in the town.
"The police would be bound to make some enquiries, sooner or later. They mightn't accuse me of murder but they'd call politely to know what did happen, and I should give a reply which might have more truth in it than they would be quick to believe. And, in the end, they'd get me or Dorothy to give them the address of your flat, and ask the London police to ascertain that you had got home safely.
"If necessary, I could get something said in the right quarters to reach the local editor, and make sure of some guarded but provocative references appearing in the Osbuby Advertiser. I know just how he'd rise to a bait like that.
"Or I might offer a reward myself for information by which you could be traced, saying that I was determined to clear my name. Some people would think it a proof of innocence, and some bluff. I might get the whole country discussing whether I were a criminal, or suffering from an unjust suspicion.
"Oh, you can leave that side of it to me! I'll make sure that you don't disappear without a good deal of noise resulting."
Thomas listened to these lively forecasts with something more of respect for his cousin's brain than he had felt previously. He recognized that there are different varieties of efficiency, and that Alfred Cuthbertson might be able to manage his side of the conspiracy without assistance. But it seemed to him that it was one which might become very uncomfortable for its originator, particularly if he should delay his own return, on which point he saw that he was being trusted a good deal more than he might have been willing to trust Alfred, or anyone else, had the position been contrary to what it was.
"You d be in a queer fix, wouldn't you," he enquired "if I lost my memory, say in an Irish village, and never came back at all?"
Dorothy answered that first. She said: "Not as much as you'd think, even then. Alfred says there's a law that a man cannot be prosecuted for murder unless the body can be produced, and of course it couldn't."
"I'm not worrying about that," Alfred added. "The more fuss there might be, the bigger sales we should have, and as we're to share the profits, the more you stayed away the more you'd come back, if I may put it in that way."
Thomas said that he had no doubt that he should. He made no further objections, and they went on to discuss the details of the conspiracy on a common assumption that it had been agreed in principle between them.
The next morning they took a walk along the cliff-top, and inspected the site which had been selected for the pretended crime which was to make so rich a market for The Clue of the Twisted Spoon. Thomas did not think the ledge quite as safe or as broad as it had been represented to him, but he agreed that he might jump down to it, or even fall, without real danger of continuing his descent to the sea-beaten rocks below.
He was too destitute of imagination to be nervous beyond logical cause. He did consider, with a brief seriousness, that, if he were dead, his cousin might have some hope of inheriting their grandfather's fortune, which was otherwise out of his reach. But he reassured himself with the reflection that, were murder intended, it would hardly be staged in so particularly public a manner.
He thought that Alfred might need all his plausible mental agility to avoid consequences more unpleasant than he would care to encounter, even for the harvest which his imagination foresaw. But his own part appeared to be as simple as his own profit was sure.
He went back to London on the following Tuesday, promising to return in about three weeks, and having drawn a preliminary £10 from his cousin for the incidental expenses which he said the arrangements for his absence would involve. The remaining £190 was to be ready for his next arrival.
CHAPTER V
THREE weeks later, Thomas Birchall returned to Highview House.
He had put the wild idea that Alfred might intend to murder him in earnest, to gain their grandfather's inheritance, out of his mind, and decided, during the first week, to go through with the project, though with an increasing reluctance.
Actually, his position as his grandfather's heir became less secure and his need of the £200 greater during the following fortnight, though he hoped and supposed that Alfred Cuthbertson was not aware of what had occurred.
The old gentleman, Eli Birchall, with perverse agility for one who had passed his ninetieth year, had mounted the four flights of stairs that led to his grandson's flat, and paid him a surprise visit, which may have been actuated by the curiosity of affection rather than any more malevolent impulse, but its result had been to expose the mendacity of certain statements which Thomas had made as to the condition in which he lived, and the successful activities in which his grandfather's liberality, which had now continued for nearly fifteen years, had enabled him to engage.
Mr. Birchall senior had been angry, scenting deceit. He had been sarcastic, suspecting failure. He had even hinted, in a most ominous manner, that a novelist who succeeds is preferable to a chemist who fails. Thomas had been tempted to retort that the novelist's success was not very securely based, but he saw that he might be drawn to indiscretion if he should commence to narrate the confidence that the Cuthbertsons had so recently given. With a wiser reticence, he talked of the work on which he was engaged, in which he was confident of success so soon as the new apparatus (costing £200), which he had already ordered, should be available.
The fact that he was able to spend such an amount, and that he did not ask for assistance to find it, did something to re-establish his shaken position in the old gentleman's mind, but Thomas saw clearly, when he had left, that it had become imperative that he should go on with an enterprise from which further reflection had made him more averse than he had been while under the influence of his cousin's optimistic plausibility, and Dorothy's quieter encouragement.
If he had a remaining reluctance, it arose from his dislike to doing that which, whatever profit it might bring to himself, must put ten times the amount into the pocket of a cousin whom he had never liked, and to whom his antipathy had now been stirred to greater intensity - first, by observing him in possession of the girl for whom his passion had been revived by a fresh proximity, during which she had shown a very friendly attitude to himself; and second, by the fear which his grandfather's words had roused, that he might be destined to lose the fortune which he had counted already his, and see his cousin possessing once again that to which he considered that he had staked out an earlier claim.
It was in this mood, with no goodwill in his heart, but with a determination to earn the £200, the possession of which had now become such an urgent need, that he went down to Osbury the second time.
There was, indeed, no real friendliness, and little trust beyond that which a common interest gives, between the conspirators on either side.
Alfred might be less than aware of his cousin's antipathy to himself, but his own judgment of Thomas was that he was both an uncouth boor, and a very evident fool. Dorothy, who had always felt a physical repugnance toward him which his vanity had failed to perceive, so that she would omit shaking hands, if it could be avoided in a natural way, did not like him any the better because she had been constrained to adopt the measure of affability that his persuasion required. And it was in this atmosphere of latent hostilities that two incidents occurred, trivial in themselves, but necessary to chronicle, owing to their relation to the events that followed.
The occasions came owing to a fresh evidence of their own incompetence supplied by Messrs. Jorrocks Bros., Ltd., who wrote regretting that they would not be able to bring out The Clue of the Twisted Spoon on the date originally fixed. There would be an unavoidable delay of a week.
Alfred, who had planned that his cousin's disappearance should immediately follow, not precede, the publication of his new book, would not consent to alter his view of the advantage of having it already on sale, when the expected publicity should develop. He insisted that the event should be deferred for a week, to which, after a prolonged argument, Thomas rather sulkily agreed. He said that it would be an utterly wasted week, as he could do no work, and it would prolong the period which must elapse before he could be back in his own flat. He had a minor cause for grumbling in the fact that he had brought a very meagre supply of linen and other necessities, having foreseen that he could not take a packed suit-case when he set out on the cliff-top stroll from which he would not return, and having no wish to leave behind more than the occasion required.
Beside that, he had now been at Highview House for nearly twenty-four hours, and there had been no mention of the payment of the £190 which was the condition precedent to the performance which he had undertaken. He might have been less concerned about this, had he not promised Wellers & Samuel, Ltd., the scientific apparatus manufacturers with whom his order was placed, that the amount of their pro-forma invoice, £169 3s. 10d, should be remitted to them not later than the following day. He had a conviction, which their name may have suggested, that it was only in a Pickwickian sense that they would put the order in hand until the cashier's department had recorded receipt of the required remittance.
Having this in his mind, he mentioned it with his natural bluntness.
"I hope that doesn't mean that you'll keep me out of the cash? I've promised Wellers that I'll send them a cheque tomorrow."
He caught Dorothy's eyes as he spoke, and thought that her reception of this remark implied something less than a belief that Alfred was prepared for immediate payment, though, beyond that, it was hard to read; but his cousin spoke before she attempted to do so.
"All right;" he said easily, "I'll go round to the bank in the morning, and see what can be done."
The casual tone, which treated the matter as a triviality or routine, reduced the effect of the ambiguity of the words, and Thomas felt he must wait to see what the morning brought. The conversation took place in the lounge, where afternoon tea was served, and at the conclusion of the meal he went out to sit on the terrace which overlooked the gardens on the south side of the house, beyond which was a view of undulating wooded country, falling away to the sea. On his right hand, the early April sunset had already reddened the sky. On his left was a glimpse of the blue in-curving bay. The evening was windless and warm, and most people, seated idly there, would have been conscious of the serene beauty of what they saw, to the exclusion of other thoughts.
But Thomas Birchall gave it no heed. His mind was on the plot which was not his, but in which he was now taking a willing part, and it was the sound of voices overhead which interrupted his thoughts.
The voices came from the open window of his cousin's bedroom, and though they would not normally have been audible to anyone sitting on the terrace below, anger or other kindred emotions raised the conversation at times to a pitch at which the words came clearly through the still evening air.
The fact was that the cheque which had been received from Jorrocks since Easter had not merely been disappointing, it had been of almost infinitesimal amount, the earnings of Alfred's last book having been insufficient, as yet, to cover the first advance which had been made upon it; and the receipts from the cheap editions of earlier books amounting to a very small sum, such publications doing more to increase the number of an author's readers than to augment his bank balance.
The position was therefore more critical than had been expected, and, in Dorothy's opinion, it was desperate, if so large a sum as had been agreed was to be handed over to Thomas tomorrow. Indeed, without the assistance of the bank, it could not be done. And to ask the bank was an unpleasant, and might even be an unprofitable, enterprise.
Mr. Duckfield, the manager of the local branch of the London & Northern Bank, had been of an effusive friendliness when Alfred had opened an account with him on purchasing Highview House, and first coming into that district to live. He was still affable when they met on the golf-course, as they often would on Saturday afternoons, but Alfred's sensitive pride had noticed a subtle change, as his resources of idle cash had diminished during the last two years, and he had taken a gradually increasing advantage of the credit which the Osbury tradesmen had, at first, been so anxious to give.
We may sympathize with Alfred's feelings without blaming Mr. Duckfield for that. A bank manager's smile is an important part of his professional equipment, and must be graded with care. It is his business to know, and to foresee. He did not regard Alfred Cuthbertson as being in any immediate financial difficulty. His reputation, as yet, was high. His credit good. But he foresaw the probability of a time arriving at which Mr. Cuthbertson would ask for that little temporary accommodation which is so apt to assume a permanent character if it be too readily given. When that moment came, he might not refuse; but he would have serious, probing questions to ask, perhaps serious advice to give. But even that was no more than a likely guess. Alfred Cuthbertson's books were popular. The next one might be as great a success - or even greater - than The Blood-stained Beads, and the cheques which his agents sent might again be in four figures instead of three. Mr. Duckfield watched, and smiled meanwhile on his second grade, in a friendly, non-committal way.
"I don't believe," Alfred said irritably, "the account can be as bad as you think. We can't have spent all that in the time. I expect you've made a mistake."
It was one of Dorothy's regular duties to keep a record of how the bank account stood, in the intervals of having the pass-book written up, on the sound principle that a creative brain, such as that which Alfred possessed, should be relieved of the sordid or prosaic details of earthly life. It enabled Alfred to imply, with a mixture of incredulity and irritation, that it was primarily her own fault if the figures were of an unsatisfactory character.
"I haven't made any mistake," she replied, with a tone of annoyance which the unfounded accusation may have excused. "When they've paid Portby's cheque there'll be just under £160 left."
She knew that her accounts had been very carefully entered and checked, and she had previous experience that, if any mistake were made, it was always that there was less money in the account, not more than her figures showed.
"Then you should have told Portby's to wait."
"I simply couldn't do that. I'd put them off three times before, and they said they needed it particularly this week."
"Well, I'm not going to ask any favour of Thomas now. I'd rather ask Duckfield than him. And I shouldn't be surprised if he jibbed if I did, and the whole thing would be off. He's sulky enough now. You can see it just under the surface, though he tries to keep it from coming up. If he could get the money by murdering me in earnest, instead of me pretending to murder him, he'd be a happier man."
"Don't be absurd! You think any man hates you if he isn't always on his knees licking your boots. Suppose Duckfield jibs? That's quite as likely, if not a bit more."
"He won't do that. Not for such an amount. And if he did, we could ask Thomas afterwards. But I won't unless I'm obliged."
"I wasn't thinking only of him. What are we going to do for the next three months? There's the rates due now. That's nearly £30."
"You've got some cash in the house, haven't you?"
"I've got about £20. That won't go far. There's always wages to pay."
"What do you want me to do?"
"I want you to give Tom £90 now, and say he shall have the rest when he comes back. He ought to agree to that."
"No he won't. You'll find he'll kick like a mule, and I shall have to go to the bank at last, after I've made myself cheap to him."
The fact was that Alfred had brought himself to the point of one distasteful action, which he had mentally rehearsed, and which he felt he could probably carry through in a casual off-hand way. Indeed, in the rear of his mind, he had a half-admitted intention of doing nothing at all, but to present a cheque at the counter which he felt sure that the obsequious cashier would pay without the formality of referring to the balance of so valuable a client. If he should raise any question, then there would be time for the little talk with Duckfield which should be more than sufficient to deal with the position.
Probably Duckfield would be most concerned to apologize for any hesitation the cashier might have displayed! After all, drawing £190 when your balance happens to be £160 is quite different from drawing £30 when you have no balance at all. It makes the £30 seem a comparative triviality - a mere discount upon the larger figures involved.
And after that - in a fortnight's time, when his new book would be out, and selling in quantities which could be only vaguely imagined, as the result of the publicity he would have obtained - he could either ask Duckfield for an overdraft of some really useful amount, or get his agents to draw an advance from Jorrocks, which, with the hope of a further contract to be fixed up, they would be almost eager to give!
And here was Dorothy, in her stupid, literal, unimaginative, feminine way, raising obstacles, asking him to humiliate himself further to a cousin he loathed with an intensity he had not realized until he had associated himself with him in this hateful enterprise - hateful, yes, that was the word. He realized that, as he got closer to it, he liked it much less than when it had been first, and vaguely, imagined. Now it was only pride, and the knowledge that, should it fail, his financial position would be really desperate during the next half-year, which prevented him from throwing it up, and telling Thomas to go back to the dirty room and the foul stenches from which he came! Couldn't Dorothy see that he had enough on his mind without worrying him in this senseless way?
On her side, Dorothy was even nearer to the point of throwing the whole thing up, of pleading with him to Join with her in economizing, and making that £160 go as far as it would, instead of letting it pass into his cousin's pocket, leaving her bare to the world if the wild plot they had formed - and the nearer they got to it, the wilder she saw it to be should miscarry. Suppose Tom should fluke it in some way? Should do something by which he would be discovered in a few hours, and the whole thing die out with no sensation at all? Would he return the money? She thought she knew Tom better than that!
It was only the hour she had spent that morning over the household bills, and the appalling total to which they came, which had silenced this intended proposal to call it off. She had compromised between her contending fears with the idea of giving Thomas half the amount. At the worst, there would be £60 left! There would still be the possibility of asking Mr. Duckfield's assistance at a later date! And should Tom refuse - well, she was not sure that her feeling would not be that of a great relief.
And now Alfred refused to listen, as he always would if he were crossed in his own plans. Was it fair, when he left all the contriving. all the unpleasant things, all the putting off of the tradesmen to her?
She may be excused - perhaps we should say that they may both be excused - if the argument went on to some heated exchanges, in the course of which things were said which would be regretted in cooler blood; until, in the end, Alfred gave way, as he usually would, if there should be a real contest of wills, and Dorothy found, as she would with the same frequency, that she had undertaken to do herself that which she had been urging upon him.
The bargain was that Thomas was to be asked to accept £100, and to wait for the balance until the plot had been carried through successfully, but it was Dorothy who must ask him to agree to this important modification of the bargain already made.
Thomas, listening below, and hearing high and angry voices gradually decline to more normal tones, did not understand this. Indeed, the disjointed phrases that reached his ears led him to radically misunderstand the nature of the dispute. But he understood that his cousins were liable to quarrel violently in their own room. Probably (he thought) they were at fundamental enmity, only concealed with difficulty in his presence and while they were drawn together by this plot the. success of which was essential to all. Was not he being outwardly polite to Alfred, his hatred for whom was only modified by an equally strong contempt? Might he not judge their manners in relation to their real feelings, by his own? And, even now, they could not prevent their real bitterness breaking out when they were in the privacy of their own room!
Suppose that it might still be possible to reverse the fate by which it had seemed that all things fell into Alfred's hands, while his own remained empty? He looked ahead, and there was a new hope colouring the hatred that had possessed his mind for the last three years.
He had put aside the fear that Alfred would ever gain the fortune which he had long regarded as coming to himself at his grandfather's death. Apart from other plans which were in his mind, he relied upon the money which he was now to receive to enable him to demonstrate a success which would re-establish himself to Eli Birchall's favour. There was a pleasant comedy in the fact that Alfred would be unconsciously providing the means of checkmating any prospect of the inheritance which he might otherwise have had!
And now - looking ahead, if not at the moment - might he not find himself in possession of both the fortune that he had always regarded as his, and the girl of whom he had felt that he had been robbed three years ago? As he thought this, an unpleasant smile came to his face which there was no one to see. . . . The evening became chilly, as well as dark. He went in.
CHAPTER VI
THE second episode which it is necessary to chronicle arose out of the first, and may be more briefly told. Thomas went into the lounge, there still being more than an hour before dinner, and sat there looking at the afternoon paper, and considering rather disconcerting aspects of the adventure in which he was engaged, one or two of which had not occurred to him previously, especially in relation to the postponement of date to which he had so reluctantly consented.
As a result of these considerations, he decided that it would be necessary to send a telegram to London, and was considering how best it could be despatched, when Dorothy entered the room.
She had already dressed for dinner, and looked her most attractive as well as most capable self, as she greeted Thomas with smiling eyes and a word of apology for having left him so long alone.
He did not know the errand on which she came, nor that her smile was born of no love for him, but of a determination that her husband's bank account should be £60 in credit rather than £30 overdrawn. She had resolved that she would give him some soft words, and a sight of her seductive self smiling graciously in the low-cut black-lace evening frock which, as she well knew, made the very best of what beauty she had, and the cost to him was to be either £90 or £100, according to how adroitly she could frame her request, and how complacent he might prove to be.
He only observed that she came from a quarrel with Alfred, the violence and spirit of which he overestimated (having no experience of how sharply married people may differ while maintaining a common front to the rest of the world), and that for him she had smiling lips and soft looks in the same hour.
He saw at the same moment how particularly desirable was the woman whom Alfred had meanly snatched from his arms, and (as he thought) how gladly she would now reverse the choice, if it should be possible for her to do.
But he had an immediate object he must not miss. He said: "This alteration of dates means that I may be longer away from London than I had planned. Is there a telegraph office near here?"
"There's one about ten minutes' walk on the Dorchester road. There'd be time, if it's urgent, to do that before dinner. But you can telegraph from the 'phone here."
Thomas did not appear to welcome the suggestion. He said: "Thanks, but I think I'll go out. I shan't mind the walk."
She had an apprehension that the telegram must be something he did not wish to disclose to her. If it contained any hint that he was not expecting to be back in London promptly, it might ruin everything! If there were risk of that, it became the more urgent that he should not be paid the whole sum in advance. She said: "There's no need for you to go out yourself. Annie can take it for you."
"No, I won't trouble her, thanks. I'd rather send it myself, if you don't mind."
He got up to go.
She had a moment's inclination to offer to go with him. There are advantages in a walk for such conversation as she designed, but it would mean changing twice before dinner. Apart from any question of time, it would seem an absurd suggestion to make. She fought down a cowardly impulse to postpone a distasteful task, and put the question of what the telegram might contain out of her mind, to concentrate on that which she had to do.
She saw that she must come to the point more abruptly than she had intended, if she were to detain him now Well, perhaps it would be the better way! "Wait a minute, Tom. I want to ask you something before you go."
He was aware of an undertone of excitement or nervousness in her voice, and misread its cause. He imagined, in a somewhat obtuse mind, that which he wished to believe. Having quarrelled with Alfred, she had come for counsel or consolation to him!
His thoughts leapt ahead to the time when Alfred Cuthbertson would be in the jail to which his crazy scheme would certainly lead - especially if his own return were delayed!
But how, if he were away, could he use the time as he (and doubtless Dorothy) would desire to do? For him to reappear would be the relief of whatever trouble Alfred might be experiencing. He must look farther ahead. And perhaps to a different end from that which Alfred designed.
He paused more willingly, and with a more amiable expression than she had expected to meet, giving her hope that the work of persuasion would be less difficult than she had feared. Alfred had been right, as he often was! She was the one to carry through her own plan to success, at which she must not fail through her cold dislike of the man to whom she would make appeal.
"I've been talking to Alfred," she began, "and I'm afraid there's rather more difficulty - but what I'm going to ask you isn't from him, but myself. It's my own idea, and when I've explained how Alfred - - "
"You needn't trouble to do that," he answered, elated by her tone and manner as much by the half-finished sentences, the import of which he misread in his own way, and at the same time anxious to reach the point as promptly as possible, with the thought of the telegraph office in the back of his mind. He was not one to allow any woman, at whatever crisis of emotion, to interfere with his business life. "I heard," he went on, "the row you had in the bedroom. I was sitting on the terrace below."
The blunt admission confused her for a moment with the memory of the quarrel, and an effort to recall what had been said in those heated and confidential exchanges, and to realize what effect they might have on his mind. But he did not seem angered or even displeased. She felt that, however much or little might really have reached his ears, it must be boldly faced, and it would, at least, avert the necessity of explaining the purpose for which she came.
"Then," she began, "you'll understand how it is, and what I'm going to ask you now."
He misread her again, and with more excuse than before. It did not occur to him that she might blush with sudden confusion on learning that her quarrel with Alfred was overheard, for he supposed that it was the subject on which she was preparing to confide in him. He had simply helped her over a difficult stile. Helped her to come to the point, at which women are sometimes so slow to arrive. He supposed that he was helping her further now, as he said: "Of course, I do. We'll find a way to put that silly ass in his place, and - - "
He might have finished the sentence without interruption, and before its implications would have been perceived by Dorothy's utterly unreceptive mind, if he had not accompanied it by what he felt to be an appropriate gesture, his arm coming round her shoulder, and his hand resting on her bare neck.
It was no more than that, but Dorothy was one of those people who are particularly averse from such physical contacts. With an exclamation of sharp astonishment, she pushed off his arm, and as she did so they were both aware that Alfred had entered the room.
There was a moment of angry, disconcerted, or bewildered silence, which Thomas was the first to break. He said: "I'd better be going, if I'm to be back for dinner," and pushed past his scowling but irresolute cousin, out of the room. He went in a doubt of whether Dorothy's action had been one of spontaneous repulsion, or that she had been aware of Alfred's entrance a half-second before himself Finally, he decided that the latter was the true solution. How ready women were at difficult moments! Did it not suggest that she was more experienced in such situations than her cool aloofness would lead anyone but an observant scientist to suppose?
CHAPTER VII
"WHAT the devil," Alfred asked, "was the meaning of that?"
He felt uncertain what had been the nature of the incident that his entrance had so abruptly terminated; doubtful, like Thomas, of whether Dorothy's sharp withdrawal from his cousin's embrace had been inspired by the revulsion her face expressed, or by the knowledge that he was a witness of what she did. He felt curiously unequal to the position, as he often would in the real crises of life, unless they could be turned aside with a light wit. It is so much easier to handle such situations in books, where everyone is under equal control, and the consequences can be decided without haste, at the author's will!
"I don't know," Dorothy answered angrily. "He said he'd do what we want, and then he put his hand on my neck, and I threw it off. I shouldn't have thought he'd dare! . . . He heard the row we had in the bedroom, but I don't see what that could have done to make him think he could insult me like that. I suppose he thought that you didn't care."
The explanation gave a new direction to Alfred's mind. As Dorothy had done before, he began to wonder what could have been overheard, to endeavour to recollect what had been said. He asked: "What did he hear?"
"I don't know how much. He was on the seat under the window. We ought to have been more careful. . . . He seemed to know what I was going to say before I could get it out, and I understood that he agreed."
"Well, I don't, if he does. I'm not going to have any favours that make him think he can be cheeky to you. I've a good mind to throw him out of the house."
Alfred felt very pleased with himself as he said this. He felt that he was handling the situation in the manly style it required, and at the same time getting his own way, after all, about paying the fellow off. He regretted this on after reflection, when he realized that (as Dorothy's misunderstanding led him to believe) he might have paid the smaller sum without further humiliation than the overhearing of the bedroom dispute had already caused. But these noble attitudes often do seem more satisfactory at the time than they will appear at a later hour.
Dorothy made no objection. She said: "I'm certainly not going to ask him anything further after the way he's behaved." She was conscious herself of a possible ambiguity in the incident as it had come to her husband's eyes, and her first intention at the moment was to let him see that it had been repugnant to her.
Seeing him to be convinced on this point, she was willing to persuade him that there was no occasion for it to be further noticed. In future, would Alfred be careful that she should not be left alone with his cousin, whose visit would so soon be over? She did not wish the plot to be upset because he had acted with a momentary boorish familiarity. It would be more dignified to pass it in silence, as a lapse of manners to be ignored in an uncultured guest.
Magnanimously, and with expressed reluctance, Alfred allowed himself to be talked over to this view.
It followed that Thomas did not become aware of the nature of the request that Dorothy had been about to make. He sat through dinner in a sulky silence, waiting for a storm which declined to burst. As the evening passed, he realized that, so far as Alfred was concerned the incident was not to be a subject of further reference. He supposed that, while he had been at the post office Dorothy had been clever enough to explain it away! He had read an old tale somewhere of a woman who had persuaded her husband to trust her against the evidence of his own eyes. Well, when she had come into his hands, she would have to watch her steps better than that.
He observed without resentment her subsequent coldness, which he supposed to be a garment of discretion which the occasion required; and the fact that he did not see her alone during the following day could be naturally ascribed to her husband's jealousy.
Alfred went to the bank in the morning, and though he talked to Dorothy, who walked down with him into Osbury, of what he would say to Mr. Duckfield, he found it much easier to stroll up to the counter and present his cheque for £190 for payment in his usual casual manner. He chatted pleasantly to a cashier who was simple enough to regard a live novelist with some reverence as he picked up the notes and stuffed them into his pocket-book.
He paid Thomas on his return, and they discussed once again some of the finer points of the plot, the success of which he was determined should not be hazarded b any oversight of detail on his part. Doing this, they regained something of their previous superficial affability; but the incident had increased the fundamental antipathies which could only be held in check as long, or so far, as a common interest remained.
CHAPTER VIII
IT was shortly after breakfast on the morning of Tuesday, May 14th, that Dorothy rang the dining-room bell, and instructed Bertha, the parlour-maid, on her appearance, to inform the cook that Mr. Cuthbertson and Mr. Birchall would be out for lunch. From the conversation which took place in the girl's presence, it was made evident that the two gentlemen were proposing a long walk on the cliff-tops in a westerly direction, when Alfred would show his guest something more of the beauties of the district before his return to town on the following day.
Dorothy said that she wished to provide the gentlemen with some sandwiches for their midday refreshment, which she would make up herself, on the necessary materials being brought to the breakfast-table, together with an attaché-case of suitable size in which to pack them.
These orders were, in themselves, sufficient to excite comment among the domestic staff, who knew that their master was disposed to prefer a lunch more adequate to the intellect of a great novelist and more elaborately served; and that his opinion of those who self-eluded themselves that they prefer the discomforts of a picnic meal had been forcibly expressed in The Mystery of the Blood-stained Beads.
It might seem surprising also that Dorothy, having a very capable cook, should wish to prepare the sandwiches herself, but there was a good reason for that.
Anyway, Dorothy was not one who allowed question or argument concerning any order she gave. The ham potted meat, fish-paste, and minor requirements which she had ordered promptly appeared, and Bertha was able to observe her mistress cutting very regular slices of bread-and-butter as she commenced clearing the table, which she continued until Dorothy said: "You'd better leave the rest, Bertha. I'll ring when I've finished."
The cutting of sandwiches slackened as the parlour-maid left the room. The fact was that those which had been made already had to be eaten immediately by the three conspirators, and though they had been frugal in breakfasting, in anticipation of this ordeal, it can be easily understood that they had not wished to be faced by such a quantity as the cook would have been sure to supply.
It is proverbial that nature abhors a vacuum, and in this case the space in the attaché-case which was left vacant by the consumption of the sandwiches was promptly filled with a pair of black shoes, a soft hat, a tie of pronounced colour, spats, and horn-rimmed glasses, with which Thomas was to vary his appearance, after taking off the cap, the brown canvas shoes, and the neutral tie which he now wore.
These arrangements had been planned by Alfred, who said confidently that such minor alterations would be as efficient as a complete change of clothing in preventing identification through any casual observation which Thomas might encounter before reaching Dorchester, from which city it was agreed that he should proceed to Ireland by an indirect route.
At Dorchester, he was to purchase a light raincoat, of such material as might be worn without attracting observation on a fine spring day, and it had been calculated that he would be far from any probable following or identification, before alarm would be raised or systematic enquiry made. This was, at least, Alfred Cuthbertson's confident opinion; and it was received with the respect due to his reputation as an expert in mystery, and crimes of the more complicated descriptions.
The plan certainly worked smoothly enough at this stage. No one interrupted the consumption of those unwanted sandwiches, or observed Thomas filling the attaché-case with less edible articles. The three conspirators left the house together, Dorothy saying that she had some shopping to do in the town, and that they could go in company till the roads divided. There was nothing singular in that, for Dorothy was a good walker, and frequently took her morning exercise in that way.
It was about noon when she returned, and about half an hour afterwards when Alfred also came back, with an appearance of some agitation, whether real or simulated.
He found Dorothy alone in the lounge, and she asked him, very naturally: "Gone all right?" expecting at least a few words of preliminary frankness, before the staging of the next scene in the drama which they had planned. But it seemed that Alfred had resolved that he must say nothing to reduce, even to his own mind, the realism of the part he played.
"I left Thomas," he said, "on the cliffs. He seemed to prefer his own company. I don't think we shall see him back."
Dorothy said: "Wait a moment," and put her finger to the bell. As Bertha entered the room, she spoke to Alfred again, and the maid must stand waiting for instructions while the conversation persisted.
"Tom not coming back!" her mistress was saying. "He can't really have meant that. Why, he's left his things!"
Bertha, who was an intelligent girl, and who found most of the interests of her own life in observing those of her master and mistress, did not overlook the combination of confusion and annoyance that were evident in Mr. Cuthbertson's reply: "Well, that's how it is. We had a few words, and he took the hump and walked off. I suppose we'd better send his things on." She had an impression that her master preferred not to be questioned while she was in the room.
As he said this, Dorothy turned to the maid, and gave the order for which she had been summoned: "Bertha, you'd better tell Cook that Mr. Cuthbertson will be in for lunch after all."
"But not Mr. Birchall, madam?"
"Not so far as we know at present." Bertha spoke and acted as a well-trained parlour-maid should, as though unable to hear anything not directly addressed to herself, but she was no less observant for that; and when she waited at lunch she learned some further curious facts concerning the details of Mr. Birchall's going, which became the common gossip of the household staff, inside and out, in the next hour.
"I suppose," her mistress had said in the half-incredulous, half-sarcastic voice in which she addressed her husband in all allusions to the disappearance of their guest, "that Tom didn't eat up all the sandwiches while you were quarrelling? You'd better tell Bertha where you put the case down, so that she can give them to Cook. I expect she'll be able to make some use of them, before they get any staler."
Alfred looked confused at this, and was not quick to reply.
"You'll tell me next," Dorothy went on, "that Tom's gone off with the sandwiches."
"Well, he was carrying the case," her husband answered angrily. "I wish you wouldn't worry me about nothing." He shot her an angry glance, which Bertha supposed he had not meant her to see. He might be acting, which the maid was not likely to guess; but, if so, it was an exceptionally good performance.
Dorothy said stubbornly: "Well, it's all such a queer tale." The telephone rang in the lounge-hall as she spoke, and she added: "Bertha, we'll excuse you a moment. You'd better see who it is, and tell them that we're at lunch."
Dorothy had made it a strict rule that Alfred's digestion was not to be jeopardized by his being called to the telephone during meal-time hours, and she expected Bertha to tell whoever might be put through, with such curtness or courtesy as their names required, that they must please ring up later; but she returned to the room to say: "If you please, sir, it's Sergeant Poole on the 'phone He says could you please spare him a minute? He said he must please speak to you now, sir. He couldn't ring up again."
CHAPTER IX
POLICE-SERGEANT POOLE, who had been in charge of the Baycliffe Road Police Station for several years to the satisfaction of his superiors, was a slow, silent, capable man, who was unlikely to allow himself to be stampeded into any rashness of act or speech; and the tale which Mary Gilkins brought to him, just as he was about to sit down to his midday meal, was not one which any experienced police-sergeant would lightly credit. That is, not if he knew the parties concerned, as Sergeant Poole did, for he had been born in the same street as Mary Banning (which had been the woman's unmarried name), and was well aware that she had a somewhat hysterical imagination, which might be described in a worse way by unfriendly tongues.
He knew Mr. Cuthbertson also as a respected, law-abiding resident, and a literary man of some celebrity, who always had a joking word for himself, and was, from whatever angle his experienced observation considered him, particularly unlikely to throw strange men into the sea before he went home to lunch.
Still, the fact remained that Mrs. Gilkins had a circumstantial accusation to make, and that she was obviously disturbed and shaken by what she said that she (and two other people) had witnessed from the foot of the cliff road.
Mr. Cuthbertson (she said) had been quarrelling violently with another man, who was a stranger to her. High words had come on the wind, though they had been too distant to understand. Blows had been struck, and, from one of these, Mr. Cuthbertson's opponent had been seen to fall backward over the edge of the cliff.
Mr. Cuthbertson had leaned over for a few moments, so as though looking, with whatever emotion, upon the man who must have been dashed to death on the sea-beaten rocks below, and had then turned, and come back down the cliff path, passing her without apparent recognition (though her Annie had been employed at Highview House for the last eight months, and it was not Mr. Cuthbertson's habit to pass her without a pleasant greeting), in a state of obvious agitation, as he hurried back to his own home.
She said that it was not she alone who had seen the tragedy, but two other people - a young lady and gentleman who, walking more quickly than herself, had just caught her up and passed her - had also observed it, and had been equally horrified.
Indeed, the young man had made a motion as though to detain Mr. Cuthbertson as he passed, but the young lady had put a hand on his arm and said something which had caused him to desist, and they had then turned and hurried back, as though wishing to avoid association with the event.
Sergeant Poole listened to this surprising narrative with outward stolidity. He avoided several more or less obvious questions to ask: "Now, Mary, this young man and woman, I suppose you don't know who they were?"
"I can't rightly say that I do. They're not people belonging here. But I saw them turning up Crumbles Road. I should say they'll be staying at Mrs. Rickards more like than not."
"Yes," Sergeant Poole agreed, "I should say they might. You'd better sit there a minute, Mary, while I find out."
He went into the next room, where the telephone was, and rang up the Rickards Temperance Hotel, which was the only guest-house as yet completed and occupied in the newly-developed Crumbles Road.
Mrs. Rickards answered the call. Yes, she said, she had guests in the house. A Mr. and Mrs. Wilber. Mr. Wilber had come last night, and his wife, as had been expected, had joined him this morning, having come from Bournemouth by the early train. She said, rather anxiously, that they seemed very pleasant young people. She hoped there was nothing wrong.
Sergeant Poole's well-known and comforting voice assured her that there was nothing against her new lodgers. He just wanted to know whether they had been out during the morning, and, if so, had they returned.
Mrs. Rickards said yes, they had. She became communicative. Like Mary Gilkins, she had known the Sergeant from childhood, and he was one of those men to whom others are inclined to confide the more because they are not likely to repeat what is said in a random way.
She said that, almost immediately that Mrs. Wilber arrived, they had asked her advice as to the best direction to take, and had gone out for a walk along the cliff-tops. saying that they might not be back before tea-time; but they had returned within an hour, in some apparent agitation.
When she had made a natural exclamation of surprise at this unexpected appearance, Mr. Wilber had appeared confused and was not quick to reply, but Mrs. Wilber, with more feminine readiness, had said that she had a headache, and they had thought it best to come in out of the sun. In fact, she had said, they hadn't got up to the cliffs. They hadn't been much beyond where the roads forked - where Mrs. Rickards had told them to be careful to turn to the left.
Since then there had been some exciting topic of conversation between them on which they had appeared to differ - not exactly quarrelling, the Sergeant would understand what she meant - but they were careful to sink their voices if she should approach, so that she could say nothing of the subject on which they talked.
Sergeant Poole received this information without offering any similar confidence. He contented himself with repeating that Mrs. Rickards need have no doubt of the character of her guests. Should she tell them, she asked, that he had rung up? No, certainly not.
He went back to Mrs. Gilkins, and told her to go home, and not keep Albert waiting any longer for his dinner.
She had done rightly to come to him, but she had better say nothing, even to her husband, of what she had seen. She wouldn't like her Annie to lose her job owing to any mischief her mother made?
Left alone, Sergeant Poole would have settled down to his own bachelor meal while he considered the probabilities of the queer tale he had heard, and weighed the value of the support it received from the conduct of the two boarders at Rickards's Temperance Hotel. But before he had got the sausages out of the frying-pan Constable Ringwood came in.
"Mary Gilkins been in hindering me," the Sergeant said, in explanation of the fact that he was only preparing a meal to which he should have sat down half an hour before. "Seen Mr. Cuthbertson about anywhere this morning, Bill?"
Bill replied that he had. The novelist and his wife had passed him at about ten, or a bit later, with a gentleman who had been staying with them for the last few days. He had seen them separate, and Mrs. Cuthbertson take the Osbury road. Nothing singular in that, he remarked. Mrs. Cuthbertson often walked into Osbury in the mornings to give the trades people her orders. He supposed she liked to see what she bought. Showed more sense in that than most ladies did. And there weren't many these days who'd tackle the walk. Must have a better pair of legs than most ladies had.
Sergeant Poole listened patiently to this chatter until he saw that there was no more grain in the chaff. Constable Ringwood had a strain of flippancy in his narrative style which was not approved by his superior officer, though he rarely commented upon it.
Now he said: "You'd get further, Bill, if you said less. I didn't ask about Mrs. Cuthbertson's legs. Seen any of them go back?"
"The lady went back about the time you'd expect. I haven t seen the gentlemen since."
"All right, Bill. That's all I wanted to know."
Silently, he tipped the sizzling sausages on the heat-discoloured plate which was accustomed to receive the various delicacies which he fried for the three substantial meals of the day. When he had done this, he moved over to the telephone, and asked to be put through to Highview House.
CHAPTER X
"MR. CUTHBERTSON in?" the Sergeant asked, without giving his own name.
Bertha's voice answered: "Yes. But he's at lunch. He can't speak to anyone now. Who shall I say rang up?"
"It's the Baycliffe Road Police Station. Will you ask Mr. Cuthbertson if he will kindly come to the telephone for a moment. I shan't keep him long."
It was with this message that Bertha returned to the dining-room.
Dorothy looked at her husband, who did not rise, though he threw the napkin from his lap on to the table as though preparing to do so. She saw his hesitation, and the thought crossed her mind that he was better fitted by nature to plan than to act: that he was proving less equal to the emergency he had himself created than she had expected that he would be.
But she suppressed a disloyal thought, asking herself how much might be reality, how much acting now? If it were acting, she had to admit that it was very cleverly done.
She was conscious of a growing confusion in her own mind between what had really happened, and what everyone was to be induced to believe. But perhaps it was exactly that at which Alfred aimed? To increase the verisimilitude of the affair. . . . And, as he hesitated, her normally dominant impulse to remove the minor worries of life from his shoulders to hers caused her to say: "I'd better see what it is. You'll let the rissole get cold if you go now. They ought to know better than to ring up when we're at lunch."
As she finished this sentence, she had already risen, and was leaving the room.
Sergeant Poole heard her voice, pleasant but firm. "Mr. Cuthbertson can't come now; he's at lunch. Is it anything I can do?"
There was more than his usual deliberation in his next words. He still considered that the tale he had heard was of a particularly improbable kind, and that, even though it had some basis of fact, which he was inclined to believe, it was almost certainly exaggerated beyond recognition of the original incident.
Beside that, he was aware that the Osbury Exchange was not free from the suspicion of listening in. The telephone was not a medium which he approved for any communication of a confidential kind.
"There's a gentleman been staying with you for the last few days, Mrs. Cuthbertson," he said; "perhaps if I could have a few words with him - - "
Dorothy, under a confusion of impulses, avoided direct reply. She said: "I could give Mr. Cuthbertson a message if that would do."
"The fact is, Mrs. Cuthbertson, we had a report that the gentleman who was staying with you had had an accident on the cliffs. There may be nothing in it at all. If you could ask him to speak to me for a moment?"
"I'm afraid I can't do that. He went back to London this morning."
"Thank you, Mrs. Cuthbertson." Dorothy became aware that she was cut off somewhat abruptly, without any indication of whether her statement had been believed. She went back to the dining-room.
Bertha heard her report of the conversation. "Sergeant Poole wanted to speak to Tom. He said he'd heard that there'd been an accident, but he didn't know whether it were true. I told him Tom went back to London this morning."
Bertha thought of Mr. Birchall's bedroom, left with his things littered about, and of how the two gentlemen had started out equipped (she believed) with an attaché-case full of sandwiches; and she thought, with reason, that there was some funny business somewhere.
Dorothy thought that Alfred had engineered the event in the way that he had meant it to go; but she wished he would be less realistic in his performance so far as she was concerned. He needn't keep up the pretence when there was no one to overhear.
In the meantime, Sergeant Poole had rung up Rickards's Temperance Hotel again. He asked to speak to Mr. Wilber.
"Sorry to trouble you, sir," he said, "but I believe you may have witnessed an accident on the cliffs when you were out this morning."
There was a moment's pause, and then Mr. Wilber replied: "No, there's a mistake somewhere. I didn't see any accident."
Sergeant Poole said: "Thank you, sir. Sorry to have troubled you," and rang off. He would have taken the reply differently had he not heard, faint but unmistakable, a woman's voice while the reply paused. It had said: "Don't say we saw anything, Jack, if it's about that. Say we saw nothing at all."
He decided that this was a business for which the telephone was not a suitable medium of communication.
He put his notebook into his pocket as he said: "I may be out for the next hour, Bill. Or perhaps more."
CHAPTER XI
SERGEANT POOLE had determined to commence his enquiries by interviewing Mr. and Mrs. Wilber, and to decide upon his further actions when he had satisfied himself that they had given him a frank account of their own experiences, which he thought he should be able to obtain at a personal interview.
He was received by Mrs. Rickards, who said that her guests were upstairs. She confided to the Sergeant that she would have supposed them to be a honeymoon couple had they not arrived on different days, and from opposite directions. She hoped anxiously that there could be nothing wrong.
"Nothing," Sergeant Poole assured her, "if they'll answer a few questions sensible, as I don't doubt that they will."
She led him, as they spoke, to the lounge which was provided for the general use of her guests, whose privacy was restricted to their own bedrooms, and went upstairs to announce his presence.
He had waited about five minutes, and was pondering the advisability of a more active pursuit of these reluctant witnesses, when a young man of pleasant exterior, but in a state of obvious nervousness and annoyance, entered the room.
The Sergeant rose as he entered: "Mr. Wilber, I think?"
"My name is Berry - John William Berry."
"Mrs. Rickards said Wilber. . . . It was Mr. Wilber I wished to see."
"I expect it's the same thing. Will Berry - Wilber. You see it's an easy mistake to make."
He pronounced the first name quickly, and slurred the final syllable so that the difference was not great. Sergeant Poole, avoiding expression of opinion upon the point, went on: "I understand that you and Mrs. Berry were witnesses of something that occurred on the cliff road this morning."
"You mean Miss Mills and myself?"
"It was Mrs. Wilber, I understand."
"Officer, if I help you in this matter, will you help me? . . . I arranged to meet Miss Mills here for a few hours, and, for reasons that matter to no one except ourselves, it seemed best to say that it was my wife who was coming. If there's any trouble that you want me to get mixed up in, I shouldn't wish that to come out."
"No, sir. I don't know whether we could avoid that. We shouldn't try to make any trouble for you or the lady, beyond what we couldn't help. So I am to understand that you did see something going on that looked like being against the law?"
"I haven't said that. I saw two men quarrelling up the road. They were higher than we, and too far away to hear what it was about. They got to blows, and the one disappeared from sight. After that, the other came back and passed me, coming this way."
"You mean the one man went over the cliff?"
"I shouldn't like to say that."
"Where else could he disappear to?"
"I don't know. I haven't been that far myself. I'm a stranger here."
"You could show me the place?"
"Yes. More or less. I suppose I could."
"You could identify the man who passed you?"
"Yes. I don't think I could make a mistake about him."
"Thank you, sir. I may say you're taking the right attitude. We'll do anything to help the lady as far as justice permits. You won't mind if I make a few notes on what you've said, just to get the facts clear? And after that I should like to see Miss Mills. You can tell her that I shan't keep her long."
Mr. Berry made no direct answer to these requests. He said: "I hope it's not a serious matter?"
"I can't say yet, sir. It may be nothing at all. I shouldn't mention it to anyone, if I were you. Not till we know more."
Sergeant Poole had come to the private conclusion that it was either nothing at all, or else a crime for which Mr. Cuthbertson was likely to spend the next fifteen years in a convict's clothes, or undergo a briefer but more painful ordeal at the hangman's hands. But he had also considered that justice would be no less sure if it moved with deliberation. If Mr. Cuthbertson's visitor had gone over the cliff, he had certainly been dead for some hours, and as to the criminal, he did not suppose that he would be foolish enough to confess his guilt by attempting immediate flight, or that he could escape if he did. He intended to interview him in the next hour, and, unless his explanation were satisfactory, it would be very difficult for him to escape subsequently. But he was not going to make himself a public fool by giving credence to an improbable charge before he had established it on a solid basis.
Of course, an inspection of the rocks at the cliff-foot might give substance to the tale by providing the body of a murdered man, but he could not do everything first, and a consideration of the state of the tide caused him to decide that was, in any event, a matter which must be left to a later hour. He asked: "Can I see the young lady now?"
"I'm afraid not. Miss Mills has gone back to Bournemouth."
Sergeant Poole was a man of equable temperament but he may be excused if he looked angry.
"She was here," he said, "when I came in. So Mrs. Rickards said."
"She was just about to leave then."
"She won't do herself any good by that. I shall have to have her address."
"She says she saw nothing at all."
"Is that true?"
"Who can say but herself?"
"I should say you can, sir, if you were both looking at the same thing. . . . Mrs. Rickards told me that you were both staying for two or three days."
"It was a misunderstanding."
"You'd better let me have her Bournemouth address It'll save trouble in the end - trouble for her."
Mr. Berry hesitated. "I must take your promise for that," he said at last. "It's 33 Fountain Road."
The Sergeant noted this, wondering whether it were true, and asked: "I suppose you're not going away today too?"
"I can't answer that. Probably not before tomorrow. It depends upon whether I get through the business I've come to do."
Sergeant Poole had not expected this reply. He had supposed that the business which brought him to Osbury was abruptly ended. But Mr. Berry, willing to be confidential on any matter which diverted attention from his feminine friend, went on to explain.
"I am the representative of the Brownhills Equipment Co., Ltd. I came down here to interview a Mr. Birchall about an order which he had placed with us, concerning which a difficulty had arisen."
"Birchall?" the Sergeant repeated doubtfully. "I don't know anyone here of that name. Do you know his. address, sir?"
"He wrote us from Highview House, near Osbury. We understood that he was staying here with friends."
"That's queer, sir. I mean it looks as though he might be the gentleman - - I mean that, if I've got the tale right, the one that turned back and passed you was Mr. Cuthbertson, who is living at Highview House. I m told that his visitor went back to London this morning."
"That's bad luck for me, if it's true."
"You mean if he had gone back to London?"
"Yes. It's a wasted journey, and I shall get blamed by the firm, more likely than not."
Sergeant Poole saw an alternative. He said: "They could hardly blame you if your customer met with an accident this morning."
Mr. Berry admitted in his own mind that that would sound the better report. The fact was that he had made the journey without encouragement from his superiors, who had thought that the questions which had arisen concerning some details of the apparatus that Mr. Birchall required could have been dealt with by correspondence, and were otherwise scarcely of sufficient importance to justify a special journey in search of the customer.
It was only after considerable argument that Mr. Berry had obtained permission to make the journey, on the purpose of which his own conscience was not clear, for he had seen in it, from the first, an opportunity for the advancement of his own private affairs, such as had rendered it difficult, even for himself, to tell how much of honest judgment there had been in the urgency of his opinion that Mr. Birchall's instructions required the elucidation of a personal interview.
But if now he must return to report that his journey had been abortive, owing to Mr. Birchall having already returned to London, and it should afterwards become public knowledge that he had used the occasion for a secret meeting with Clara Mills - well, a request for his resignation might be a more probable sequel than the advance in salary which he had been confidently anticipating at the close of the financial year.
"I was intending," he said, "to call on Mr. Birchall this afternoon. If I can't see him, I ought to get back to London tonight."
"You can do that," Sergeant Poole assured him, "if you catch the five-fifteen. It's the only good train after midday. . . . If you see Mr. Cuthbertson when you call you might notice whether he's the gentleman who passed you this morning. . . . You might let me have your address, in case I want to get in touch with you again, but we'll hope there won't be any need."
Mr. Berry made no difficulty about that. He produced a business card, and crossed out his firm's address, pencilling his own above it, with a natural thought that he should prefer that such communications should come direct to himself.
Sergeant Poole departed without further reference to the written statement he had suggested. He had still a very doubtful mind as to whether it were an improbable murder with which he dealt, or no more than an empty scare. And there was still more than two hours before Mr. Berry would be due to leave on the five-fifteen.
CHAPTER XII
IT was the custom after lunch at Highview House to adjourn to the lounge, where coffee was served, without which Alfred said that he found it difficult to keep sufficiently awake to do a good afternoon's work.
It was a time at which, after Bertha had brought in the tray and retired, trivial matters of household routine would be discussed, and gossip exchanged, before Alfred retired to his study on wet afternoons, or would go out for clock-golf, or tennis, if the weather were sufficiently favourable.
Dorothy, trying to maintain the usual atmosphere on this occasion, found her husband moody and mono-syllabic in response. The feeling came over her again that, if this were his genuine mood, he was proving less equal than she had expected to meet the ordeal that he had himself contrived; or that, if it were acting, there was no need to continue it so persistently when there was none but her to observe. And from this doubt she was suddenly struck with a cold fear. Suppose realism had gone too far? Suppose that Alfred had thrust his cousin from the edge with too strong a push, and had seen him stagger over the brink of the lower edge, to fall to certain death to the rocks below? It was easy to think that the quarrel, simulated at first, might have become real, the latent antagonism between the two men being as strong as it was.
Suppose that Tom, out of perversity, or a last-minute dread of being forced over that which had the look of a sheer edge, should have refused to fulfil his part, leading to a real quarrel, and serious blows? It was easy to think of him being sent over at last with too sharp a push - -
The thought having entered her mind, she felt that she must have assurance that it was not true. The suspense would be too much to endure.
"Alfred," she asked suddenly, "there wasn't any accident, was there? Tom didn't really go over the cliff?"
He stared at her with mingled irritation and anger. "Don't be silly," he said. "Over the cliff? Why should he? Didn't I tell you he'd gone back to London? You might get me into serious trouble if you go saying things like that."
"Sorry," she said. "I think my nerves must be a bit queer today."
"So I should think," he replied, receiving the apology with less grace than she had expected. "I never heard such an absurd suggestion from you before."
She wondered again how much was acting, how much sincere, and then realized that he might be of the same doubt of herself. Either of them, if not both, might be rehearsing for later hearers, keeping up the pretence. And again the doubt came to her mind, where did reality end, and pretence begin? Grant that her momentary fear had no foundation at all - assume that Tom was now on his way to the solitary retreat from which he would emerge at his own time - it remained that they had started something which they could not stop, or at least only at the cost of a confession which would make Alfred the laughing-stock of the world.
Apart from that almost impossible relief - and even that might not be believed! - they had to go through with the comedy they had commenced (if it could be called by so light a name) until Thomas Birchall should decide that the time of intervention had come. And what reason had they for trusting Tom?
She sat silent with these thoughts, lighting a cigarette, and then another, as she rarely would in the afternoon, and Alfred sat opposite to her, equally silent, but making no motion to go to his own room, as his habit was if he did not go out. It was as though they waited nervously for some unescapable doom, as those may sit who are conscious of an unpaid rent which they have no means to discharge, knowing not the day nor the hour, but that the bailiffs will surely come.
They heard the door-bell ring, and then Bertha's voice at the door, and that of a man in reply.
"I wonder who that is," Dorothy said. "It's someone she's showing in."
Alfred made no reply, and next moment Bertha appeared at the door to say that Sergeant Poole had called, and would like a few words with Mr. Cuthbertson.
Alfred said: "Ask him to step in here."
"Shall I go?" Dorothy asked.
"No. Why should you?" he replied, with real or affected irritation. "Poole can't have any private business with me"; and then, as the police-officer appeared, with more of his habitual manner asserting itself: "Well, Sergeant, what can we do for you this afternoon?"
Sergeant Poole took the offered seat, and made a suitable acknowledgment of Dorothy's friendly greeting, without anything in his manner indicating the business on which he came. He was too conscious of his official position, and of the duties which it involved, to be diffident of social distinctions, or easily moved by the reactions of those into whose conduct he found it necessary to enquire.
Circumspectly, perhaps somewhat slowly, but with a certainty which men who would have boasted of nimbler wits would have occasion to dread, he proceeded toward his goal.
"It's about Mr. Birchall. I felt I ought to look in," he said. "I've had reports from two or three people this morning that aren't easy to believe, but which I've got to clear up one way or other."
It was Alfred to whom Sergeant Poole spoke, but Dorothy was quick to reply.
She had regained coolness and self-control now that there was something to face, something to be done, and in this more natural, recovered mood, she had seen instantly that if they appeared to understand the nature of the accusation which would be made it was like a plea of guilty on Alfred's part - a demeanour the significance of which she was sure that the police-officer would not fail to see.
And though she knew that that would be no more than to develop the plot on the lines they had first contrived, she had an instinct of danger, a feeling that they had started something that would now go on far enough, or too far, without further impulse from them.
"I hope," she said, with a smile that made light of the possibility before it was spoken, "that Mr. Birchall hasn't been doing anything wrong. He's Mr. Cuthbertson's cousin.
She mentioned the relationship in such a tone as to suggest that it removed him from suspicion of all offences beyond those of the most venial kind, and Sergeant Poole, faintly influenced by the tone and manner of her reply, answered: "No, ma'am. It's not that the gentleman has done anything wrong. It's a question of an accident, if it's not all a mistake, as I hope it is."
"Then I've no doubt that it is. Mr. Birchall hasn't been out in a car all the time that he's been here, and if he'd been involved in an accident, I'm sure he'd have told us about it. . . . It's only this morning he went back to London."
The Sergeant accepted the presumption that "an accident" implied a car, without remark, or indeed surprise, for it was a time in which most accidents did. He said: "No, ma'am. It sounds like a mistake. Could you tell me which way he took when he went back? I suppose he went from the Osbury station?"
Dorothy had sufficient discretion not to attempt reply to this question. She looked at Alfred, transferring the conversation to him.
"I really couldn't say," Alfred answered; "it was all rather sudden. You see I went for a walk with him along the cliffs, and was expecting to bring him back for another night, and he - well, he rather lost his temper over something I said, and perhaps I did too, and he said he was going back if I felt like that, and - well, we went different ways."
Sergeant Poole considered this statement with an open mind. He saw that, to a point, it was frank and true, being supported by the evidence he already had. He saw that the rest might be no more than Mary Gilkins's hysterical exaggeration, and was disposed to congratulate himself inwardly on the discretion with which his enquiries had been made. But he did not therefore deviate from his intention of clearing the matter up in a thorough way.
"Thank you, sir," he said. "That's very much what I had understood, and, of course, it's no business of mine. But when you parted, could you tell me which way he went?"
"Yes, I can tell you that I turned back, and came home, and he went on along the cliff-path."
"That wouldn't be the way to Osbury station?"
"No. It would be walking away."
"Then it doesn't look as though he were on his way to London?"
"Well, he said he was going back home, and that's where he lives. There is a road, as a matter of fact, that might have brought him back to Osbury if he turned sharp off to the right by Griffin's Inn."
"Yes. Do you think he knew that?"
"I don't think he knew the district at all. And, at the moment, I don't think he cared which direction he went in, so long as it wasn't mine. But, of course, he'd soon begin to look round and enquire. You can't easily get anywhere in this country where a way to London isn't easy to find. . . . But perhaps I could help you better if you'd tell me what the tale is that has come to you. Tom isn't very friendly to me, but I shouldn't like to think that he had got into any mess."
"The tale that was brought to me was that while you were quarrelling he went over the cliff."
"Over the cliff? You mean he fell, and would have been killed? You surely didn't believe that! Is it likely I should be sitting here without having reported it, or made any effort to save him? - or I suppose it would be a matter of recovering the body. No one could fall from those cliffs and expect to live."
"That's true, sir. No, I don't say I believed anything; but when a report comes in we're bound to make enquiries and clear it up."
"Yes, so you must of course." Mr. Cuthbertson rose with the words as though the interview would naturally conclude at that point. He added: "I expect you'll like a drink, Sergeant, before you go?"
But Sergeant Poole did not rise. He answered: "Thank you, sir, but I don't think I will. I don't often take anything. Not at this time of day. I suppose you could let me have Mr. Birchall's address?"
"Yes. You're welcome to that. What is it, Dorothy? I never can remember numbers myself"
Dorothy answered readily: "It's 22 Thames Mansions. It's a little side street off Horseferry Road. I don't remember the name of the street, but I find that's enough for letters: off Horseferry Road. I think it's S.W."
"Thank you, ma'am. That's good enough."
Sergeant Poole entered the address in his pocket-book, and got up to go.
"Sorry to have been so much trouble," he said. "I don't suppose you'll see me again."
It was an assurance which would have been more convincing had he not followed it by asking Alfred: "I suppose, sir, you could show me about where it was that he went off? That is, if it should be necessary to make any more enquiries, as I m not saying it will."
"Yes. I suppose I could, more or less. I don't see what good that would be to you. He isn't likely to be there now."
Mr. Cuthbertson smiled as he said this, as at a good joke which he had made, to which others should give a smile in response.
Very faintly, Sergeant Poole responded, as he replied: "No, sir. I shouldn't say that he would."
Dorothy touched the bell, and Bertha promptly appeared to conduct the police-officer to the door.
When he had gone, Dorothy called her into the room again. She said: "Bertha, Mr. Birchall went back to London rather suddenly. You'd better have his things packed, and send them after him. I'll let you have the address. . . . If you hear any other silly tale about him, you'll know that it hasn't a word of truth, and contradict it at once. I can rely on you for that?"
Bertha said: "Yes, madam," with the demure and ready response which a well-trained parlour-maid would give in her sleep if she were asked to drown herself in the bath.
When she had gone, Alfred said: "Quite right, Dorothy. I'm glad you said that."
The words were appreciative in tone, and brought back a little of the normal confidence that had existed before; but still neither was sure of the other, between what was acting and what was real, being too deeply entangled in the net that they had been active to weave, and uncertain what the next hour might bring.
CHAPTER XIII
A FEW minutes after Sergeant Poole had departed, a second visitor was announced.
Mr. Berry had called to see Mr. Birchall on business, and, being informed by Bertha at the door that he had left for London that morning, he had hesitated, and then asked if Mr. Cuthbertson could see him.
Mr. Berry had excuse for feeling that fate was treating him hardly in more ways than one. He did not exactly desire that the customer who had just placed a fairly important order with his firm should have been thrown over a cliff, but he had appreciated Sergeant Poole's suggestion that it might be a better tale with which to return than that he had abortively rushed to Osbury to interview a man who was on his way back to London before he had made an effort to see him.
But there was a contrary aspect of the matter leading him to prefer greatly that an accident or crime should not have occurred.
He had wired Miss Mills to meet him in Osbury at short notice, under circumstances with which this narrative is not directly concerned, and with a moral obliquity which it is not necessary to judge, but which had brought retribution in advance of the intended error. For he was well aware, in the secret counsels of his own mind, that while he had asked her to meet him for a few hours only, for which he knew that her own holiday in Bournemouth provided a simple opportunity, he had hoped that he could have persuaded her to stay for a longer time; and whatever errors there had been regarding names and probable period of occupation, they had not arisen from any misunderstanding by Mrs. Rickards of what he had said to her.
Having no intention of returning to London that night, it had seemed to him that it would be expedient in itself to defer his proposed interview with Mr. Birchall until the later part of the day, while, from a different angle, it had been as necessary as it was desirable to devote his attention to Miss Mills during its earlier hours.
In the result, while he had gained nothing at all, he had involved a girl to whom he was very passionately attached in the danger of an unpleasant ordeal, and some exposure of indiscretion (even if there should be no worse suspicion attached), in view of the fact that she was under an engagement to another man which, for the time at least, family circumstances made it difficult for her to break; and he had involved himself in the danger of being censured by his firm for an abortive journey which had only been sanctioned at his own urgency, with the possibility of even graver consequences if the subsequent disclosures should lead them to the belief that he had been actuated by consideration of his own interests rather than theirs.
He now asked to see Mr. Cuthbertson with a feeling of irritation against the malice of circumstance which might be directed very easily to a more personal antagonism.
Alfred looked at the card which Bertha presented, and the name of Wellers & Samuel, Ltd., which he had heard from Thomas before, was an indication of the status, and to some extent of the business on which Mr. Berry had called. Directly it was a business which was not his, and with which he might be wise to have nothing to do; though that question may not be easy to decide without being clearer than Dorothy was as to whether he were still seeking to augment or lessen the trouble and publicity to which he was heading, on a course which had already passed beyond his control.
"What sort of man is he?" Alfred asked; the question indicating the hesitation with which he handled the card.
"He's a pleasant young gentleman, sir, but he looks a bit flurried."
"Well, show him in."
Mr. Berry entered the room, and the eyes of the two men met in a mutual recognition and memory of that earlier hour when, but for a girl's restraining hand on his arm, the younger would have obstructed one whom he believed to be hurrying from the scene of a fatal crime.
Dorothy, having no knowledge of their previous meeting, watched with a fresh surprise the difficult effort with which her husband controlled himself to ask: "What can I do for you, Mr. Berry?"
The young man, to Dorothy's greater wonder, appeared to be in an equal confusion. He began sentences which he left unfinished: "It was Mr. Birchall. . . . I mean I wanted to see him in reference to. . . . If you could tell me where he could best be found?"
As he spoke, he had a vision of rocks and of a body flung and battered against them by the waves of a beating sea. He believed that it was a murderer who had risen as he entered the room, for though Mr. Cuthbertson had now recovered his self-control, he had looked at him, he thought, in those first seconds of recognition, with the eyes of a guilty man.
"If you could tell me where he could best be found." How would a man with such a secret upon his soul react to those sinister words? Mr. Cuthbertson, now master of himself, took them quite easily. He seemed most concerned that his visitor should not continue to stand. When he was seated, he said: "I'm sorry you've just missed Mr. Birchall. He returned to London this morning. It's bad luck if you came here specially to see him."
(Was there a sarcasm, Mr. Berry must wonder, even a threat, in that last simple-sounding expression of sympathy? A reminder that he had been seen that morning making no effort to meet with Mr. Birchall, and with a girl on his arm?)
Mr. Cuthbertson, now in control of the situation, continued: "I am Mr. Birchall's cousin. I suppose there's nothing I can do for you on his behalf?"
"No, I don't see that you could. I wanted to get clearer instructions about a certain part of some scientific apparatus he's ordered from us."
"Then I should be no good at all. I'm less interested in science than crime. I suppose you know his London address?"
Mr. Berry (such are the distressing limits of literary celebrity) was unfamiliar with Mr. Cuthbertson's name, and unaware of his occupation. The statement so casually made sounded to him like the almost incredible effrontery of a guilty and probably cornered man.
It caused him to blurt out in reply: "Yes, I know his London address. What I wasn't so sure about was whether he'd be there when I get back. If he was the gentleman I saw out with you this morning, I thought I saw him fall over the edge of the cliff."
He had scarcely uttered these words before he was half-frightened, half-ashamed, of what he had said. It seemed a monstrous accusation to make against a man in his own house, in the atmosphere of that civilized, cultured room. But Mr. Cuthbertson took it without visible offence.
"You would have alarmed me, Mr. Berry," he said, "if you had said that two hours ago. I should have feared lest my cousin had met with an accident after he left me. But a police-officer was here just before you arrived, from whom I learned that there is a tale going about that I am myself responsible for throwing Mr. Birchall over the cliff.
"Sergeant Poole was too discreet an officer to mention the origin of so absurd a tale, and I am interested to learn that I owe it to you.
"I do not know whether you may have anything to lose, but, even if not, it may be worth your while to remember that the law of slander may sometimes be invoked in the criminal courts."
Mr. Berry found it difficult to outface the assurance of Mr. Cuthbertson's manner, the cool sarcasm of his voice, but he had an obstinate unwillingness to credit the innocence of the man to whom he attributed all the anxieties and disappointments of a day which he had commenced with very different hopes.
"The police," he said stubbornly, "were not told by me."
Mr. Cuthbertson did not answer that. "Now that I have warned you," he said, "I must ask you to leave my house."
Mr. Berry went; and Dorothy said: "I suppose he'll try to make more mischief when he finds that Tom hasn't got back.
Alfred said: "Why shouldn't Tom have got back? It seems to me that you spend half your time dreaming."
She admitted to herself that he played the game more thoroughly than she was able to do. . . .
At the Railway Station Mr. Berry found Sergeant Poole waiting to see him. He gave an account of the interview from which he had come, mentioning the threat of criminal proceedings which had been made against him.
The police-officer did not appear to think that that need be regarded seriously. Certainly not so if Mr. Berry had discretion to confine his confidences to the police, as he was recommended to do.
CHAPTER XIV
THE incidents of the next three days were numerous, and, for the most part, of cumulative rather than separate importance, requiring that they shall be briefly chronicled.
The Cuthbertsons' household staff were not intentionally disloyal, nor did they believe the rumours that came to them, which stopped scarcely short, if at all, of accusing their master of the gravest crime (except treason) which is familiar to English law. But they were human and feminine. They discussed that which excited their own minds. They exchanged the gossip which came to them for that which circulated within the house. That which came from without had it