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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Secret of the Tower, by Hope, Anthony
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Secret of the Tower
+
+Author: Hope, Anthony
+
+Release Date: November 17, 2003 [EBook #10057]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET OF THE TOWER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the PG Distributed
+Proofreaders.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                        THE SECRET OF THE TOWER
+
+                            BY ANTHONY HOPE
+
+                                  1919
+
+      AUTHOR OF "THE PRISONER OF ZENDA," "RUPERT OF HENTZAU," ETC.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+      I. DOCTOR MARY'S PAYING GUEST
+
+     II. THE GENERAL REMEMBERS
+
+    III. MR. SAFFRON AT HOME
+
+     IV. PROFESSIONAL ETIQUETTE
+
+      V. A FAMILIAR IMPLEMENT
+
+     VI. ODD STORY OF CAPTAIN DUGGLE!
+
+    VII. A GENTLEMANLY STRANGER
+
+   VIII. CAPTAIN ALEC RAISES HIS VOICE
+
+     IX. DOCTOR MARY'S ULTIMATUM
+
+      X. THAT MAGICAL WORD MOROCCO!
+
+     XI. THE CAR BEHIND THE TREES
+
+    XII. THE SECRET OF THE TOWER
+
+   XIII. RIGHT OF CONQUEST
+
+    XIV. THE SCEPTER IN THE GRAVE
+
+     XV. A NORMAL CASE
+
+    XVI. DEAD MAJESTY
+
+   XVII. THE CHIEF MOURNERS
+
+  XVIII. THE GOLD AND THE TREASURE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+DOCTOR MARY'S PAYING GUEST
+
+
+"Just in time, wasn't it?" asked Mary Arkroyd.
+
+"Two days before the--the ceremony! Mercifully it had all been kept very
+quiet, because it was only three months since poor Gilly was killed. I
+forget whether you ever met Gilly? My half-brother, you know?"
+
+"Only once--in Collingham Gardens. He had an _exeat_, and dashed in one
+Saturday morning when we were just finishing our work. Don't you
+remember?"
+
+"Yes, I think I do. But since my engagement I'd gone into colors. Oh, of
+course I've gone back into mourning now! And everything was
+ready--settlements and so on, you know. And rooms taken at Bournemouth.
+And then it all came out!"
+
+"How?"
+
+"Well, Eustace--Captain Cranster, I mean. Oh, I think he really must have
+had shell-shock, as he said, even though the doctor seemed to doubt it!
+He gave the Colonel as a reference in some shop, and--and the bank
+wouldn't pay the check. Other checks turned up, too, and in the end the
+police went through his papers, and found letters from--well, from her,
+you know. From Bogota. South America, isn't it? He'd lived there ten
+years, you know, growing something--beans, or coffee, or coffee-beans, or
+something--I don't know what. He tried to say the marriage wasn't
+binding, but the Colonel--wasn't it providential that the Colonel was
+home on leave? Mamma could never have grappled with it! The Colonel was
+sure it was, and so were the lawyers."
+
+"What happened then?"
+
+"The great thing was to keep it quiet. Now, wasn't it? And there was the
+shell-shock--or so Eustace--Captain Cranster, I mean--said, anyhow. So,
+on the Colonel's advice, Mamma squared the check business and--and they
+gave him twenty-four hours to clear out. Papa--I call the Colonel Papa,
+you know, though he's really my stepfather--used a little influence, I
+think. Anyhow it was managed. I never saw him again, Mary."
+
+"Poor dear! Was it very bad?"
+
+"Yes! But--suppose we had been married! Mary, where should I have been?"
+
+Mary Arkroyd left that problem alone. "Were you very fond of him?"
+she asked.
+
+"Awfully!" Cynthia turned up to her friend pretty blue eyes suffused in
+tears. "It was the end of the world to me. That there could be such men!
+I went to bed. Mamma could do nothing with me. Oh, well, she wrote to you
+about all that."
+
+"She told me you were in a pretty bad way."
+
+"I was just desperate! Then one day--in bed--the thought of you came. It
+seemed an absolute inspiration. I remembered the card you sent on my
+last birthday--you've never forgotten my birthdays, though it's years
+since we met--with your new address here--and your 'Doctor,' and all the
+letters after your name! I thought it rather funny." A faint smile, the
+first since Miss Walford's arrival at Inkston, probably the first since
+Captain Eustace Cranster's shell-shock had wrought catastrophe--appeared
+on her lips. "How I waited for your answer! You don't mind having me, do
+you, dear? Mamma insisted on suggesting the P.G. arrangement. I was
+afraid you'd shy at it."
+
+"Not a bit! I should have liked to have you anyhow, but I can make you
+much more comfortable with the P.G. money. And your maid too--she looks
+as if she was accustomed to the best! By the way, need she be quite so
+tearful? She's more tearful than you are yourself."
+
+"Jeanne's very, very fond of me," Cynthia murmured reproachfully.
+
+"Oh, well get her out of that," said Mary briskly. "The tears, I mean,
+not the fondness. I'm very fond of you myself. Six years ago you were a
+charming kitten, and I used to enjoy being your 'visiting governess'--to
+say nothing of finding the guineas very handy while I was waiting to
+qualify. You're rather like a kitten still, one of those blue-eyed
+ones--Siamese, aren't they?--with close fur and a wondering look. But you
+mustn't mew down here, and you must have lots of milk and cream. Even if
+rations go on, I can certify all the extras for you. That's the good of
+being a doctor!" She laughed cheerfully as she took a cigarette from the
+mantelpiece and lit it.
+
+Cynthia, on the other hand, began to sob prettily and not in a noisy
+fashion, yet evidently heading towards a bout of grief. Moreover, no
+sooner had the first sound of lamentation escaped from her lips, than the
+door was opened smartly and a buxom girl, in lady's maid uniform, rushed
+in, darted across the room, and knelt by Cynthia, sobbing also and
+exclaiming, "Oh, my poor Mees Cynthia!"
+
+Mary smiled in a humorous contempt.
+
+"Stop this!" she commanded rather brusquely. "You've not been deceived
+too, have you, Jeanne?"
+
+"Me, madame? No. My poor Mees--"
+
+"Leave your poor Mees to me." She took a paper bag from the mantelpiece.
+"Go and eat chocolates."
+
+Fixed with a firm and decidedly professional glance, Jeanne stopped
+sobbing and rose slowly to her feet.
+
+"Don't listen outside the door. You must have been listening. Wait till
+you're rung for. Miss Cynthia will be all right with me. We're going for
+a walk. Take her upstairs and put her hat on her, and a thick coat; it's
+cold and going to rain, I think."
+
+"A walk, Mary?" Cynthia's sobs stopped, to make way for this protest. The
+description of the weather did not sound attractive.
+
+"Yes, yes. Now off with both of you! Here, take the chocolates, Jeanne,
+and try to remember that it might have been worse."
+
+Jeanne's brown eyes were eloquent of reproach.
+
+"Captain Cranster might have been found out too late--after the wedding,"
+Mary explained with a smile. "Try to look at it like that. Five minutes
+to get ready, Cynthia!" She was ready for the weather herself, in the
+stout coat and skirt and weather-proof hat in which she had driven the
+two-seater on her round that morning.
+
+The disconsolate pair drifted ruefully from the room, though Jeanne did
+recollect to take the chocolates. Doctor Mary stood looking down at the
+fire, her lips still shaped in that firm, wise, and philosophical smile
+with which doctors and nurses--and indeed, sometimes, anybody who happens
+to be feeling pretty well himself--console, or exasperate, suffering
+humanity. "A very good thing the poor silly child did come to me!" That
+was the form her thoughts took. For although Dr. Mary Arkroyd was, and
+knew herself to be, no dazzling genius at her profession--in moments of
+candor she would speak of having "scraped through" her qualifying
+examinations--she had a high opinion of her own common sense and her
+power of guiding weaker mortals.
+
+For all that Jeanne's cheek bulged with a chocolate, there was open
+resentment on her full, pouting lips, and a hint of the same feeling in
+Cynthia's still liquid eyes, when mistress and maid came downstairs
+again. Without heeding these signs, Mary drew on her gauntlets, took her
+walking-stick, and flung the hall door open. A rush of cold wind filled
+the little hall. Jeanne shivered ostentatiously; Cynthia sighed and
+muffled herself deeper in her fur collar. "A good walking day!" said Mary
+decisively.
+
+Up to now, Inkston had not impressed Cynthia Walford very favorably. It
+was indeed a mixed kind of a place. Like many villages which lie near to
+London and have been made, by modern developments, more accessible than
+once they were, it showed chronological strata in its buildings. Down by
+the station all was new, red, suburban. Mounting the tarred road, the
+wayfarer bore slightly to the right along the original village street;
+bating the aggressive "fronts" of one or two commercial innovators, this
+was old, calm, serene, gray in tone and restful, ornamented by three or
+four good class Georgian houses, one quite fine, with well wrought iron
+gates (this was Dr. Irechester's); turning to the right again, but more
+sharply, the wayfarer found himself once more in villadom, but a
+villadom more ornate, more costly, with gardens to be measured in
+acres--or nearly. This was Hinton Avenue (Hinton because it was the
+maiden name of the builder's wife; Avenue because avenue is genteel).
+Here Mary dwelt, but by good luck her predecessor, Dr. Christian Evans,
+had seized upon a surviving old cottage at the end of the avenue, and,
+indeed, of Inkston village itself. Beyond it stretched meadows, while
+the road, turning again, ran across an open heath, and pursued its way
+to Sprotsfield, four miles distant, a place of greater size where all
+amenities could be found.
+
+It was along this road that the friends now walked, Mary setting a brisk
+pace. "When once you've turned your back on the Avenue, it's heaps
+better," she said. "Might be real country, looking this way, mightn't it?
+Except the Naylors' place--Oh, and Tower Cottage--there are no houses
+between this and Sprotsfield."
+
+The wind blew shrewdly, with an occasional spatter of rain; the withered
+bracken lay like a vast carpet of dull copper-color under the cloudy sky;
+scattered fir-trees made fantastic shapes in the early gloom of a
+December day. A somber scene, yet wanting only sunshine to make it flash
+in a richness of color; even to-day its quiet and spaciousness, its
+melancholy and monotony, seemed to bid a sympathetic and soothing welcome
+to aching and fretted hearts.
+
+"It really is rather nice out here," Cynthia admitted.
+
+"I come almost every afternoon. Oh, I've plenty of time! My round in the
+morning generally sees me through--except for emergencies, births and
+deaths, and so on. You see, my predecessor, poor Christian Evans, never
+had more than the leavings, and that's all I've got. I believe the real
+doctor, the old-established one, Dr. Irechester, was angry at first with
+Dr. Evans for coming; he didn't want a rival. But Christian was such a
+meek, mild, simple little Welshman, not the least pushing or ambitious;
+and very soon Dr. Irechester, who's quite well off, was glad to leave him
+the dirty work, I mean (she explained, smiling) the cottages, and the
+panel work, National Insurance, you know, and so on. Well, as you know, I
+came down as _locum_ for Christian, he was a fellow-student of mine, and
+when the dear little man was killed in France, Dr. Irechester himself
+suggested that I should stay on. He was rather nice. He said, 'We all
+started to laugh at you, at first, but we don't laugh now, anyhow, only
+my wife does! So, if you stay on, I don't doubt we shall work very well
+together, my dear colleague,' Wasn't that rather nice of him, Cynthia?"
+
+"Yes, dear," said Cynthia, in a voice that sounded a good many
+miles away.
+
+Mary laughed. "I'm bound to be interested in you, but I suppose
+you're not bound to be interested in me," she observed resignedly.
+"All the same, I made a sensation at Inkston just at first. And they
+were even more astonished when it turned out that I could dance and
+play lawn tennis."
+
+"That's a funny little place," said Cynthia, pointing to the left side
+of the road.
+
+"Tower Cottage, that's called."
+
+"But what a funny place!" Cynthia insisted. "A round tower, like a
+Martello tower, only smaller, of course; and what looks just like an
+ordinary cottage or small farm-house joined on to it. What could the
+tower have been for?"
+
+"I'm sure I don't know. Origin lost in the mists of antiquity! An old
+gentleman named Saffron lives there now."
+
+"A patient of yours, Mary?"
+
+"Oh, no! He's well off, rich, I believe. So he belongs to Dr. Irechester.
+But I often meet him along the road. Lately there's always been a younger
+man with him, a companion, or secretary, or something of that sort, I
+hear he is."
+
+"There are two men coming along the road now."
+
+"Yes, that's them, the old man, and his friend. He's rather striking
+to look at."
+
+"Which of them?"
+
+"The old man, of course. I haven't looked at the secretary. Cynthia, I
+believe you're beginning to feel a little better!"
+
+"Oh, no, I'm not! I'm afraid I'm not, really!" But there had been a
+cheerfully roguish little smile on her face. It vanished very promptly
+when observed.
+
+The two men approached them, on their way, no doubt, to Tower Cottage.
+The old man was not above middle height, indeed, scarcely reached it; but
+he made the most of his inches carrying himself very upright, with an air
+of high dignity. Close-cut white hair showed under an old-fashioned
+peaked cap; he wore a plaid shawl swathed round him, his left arm being
+enveloped in its folds; his right rested in the arm of his companion, who
+was taller than he, lean and loose-built, clad in an almost white (and
+very unseasonable looking) suit of some homespun material. He wore no
+covering on his head, a thick crop of curly hair (of a color
+indistinguishable in the dim light) presumably affording such protection
+as he needed. His face was turned down towards the old man, who was
+looking up at him and apparently talking to him, though in so low a tone
+that no sound reached Mary and Cynthia as they passed by. Neither man
+gave any sign of noticing their presence.
+
+"Mr. Saffron, you said? Rather a queer name, but he looks a nice old man;
+patriarchal, you know. What's the name of the other one?"
+
+"I did hear; somebody mentioned him at the Naylors'--somebody who had
+heard something about him in France. What was the name? It was something
+queer too, I think."
+
+"They've got queer names, and they live in a queer house!" Cynthia
+actually gave a little laugh. "But are you going to walk all night,
+Mary dear?"
+
+"Oh, poor thing! I forgot you! You're tired? We'll turn back."
+
+They retraced their steps, again passing Tower Cottage, into which its
+occupants must have gone, for they were no longer to be seen.
+
+"That name's on the tip of my tongue," said Mary in amused vexation. "I
+shall get it in a moment!"
+
+Cynthia had relapsed into gloom. "It doesn't matter in the least,"
+she murmured.
+
+"It's Beaumaroy!" said Mary in triumph.
+
+"I don't wonder you couldn't remember that!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE GENERAL REMEMBERS
+
+
+Amongst other various, and no doubt useful, functions, Miss Delia Wall
+performed that of gossip and news agent-general to the village of
+Inkston. A hard-featured, swarthy spinster of forty, with a roving,
+inquisitive, yet not unkindly eye, she perambulated--or rather
+percycled--the district, taking stock of every incident. Not a cat could
+kitten or a dog have the mange without her privity; critics of her mental
+activity went near to insinuating connivance. Naturally, therefore, she
+was well acquainted with the new development at Tower Cottage, although
+the isolated position of that dwelling made thorough observation
+piquantly difficult. She laid her information before an attentive, if not
+very respectful, audience gathered round the tea-table at Old Place, the
+Naylors' handsome house on the outskirts of Sprotsfield and on the far
+side of the heath from Inkston. She was enjoying herself, although she
+was, as usual, a trifle distrustful of the quality of Mr. Naylor's smile;
+it smacked of the satiric. "He looks at you as if you were a specimen,"
+she had once been heard to complain; and, when she said "specimen," it
+was obviously beetles that she had in mind.
+
+"Everybody knows old Mr. Saffron--by sight, I mean--and the woman who
+does for him," she said. "There's never been anything remarkable about
+_them_. He took his walk as regular as clockwork every afternoon, and she
+bought just the same things every week; her books must have tallied
+almost to a penny every month, Mrs. Naylor! I know it! And it was a very
+rare thing indeed for Mr. Saffron to go to London--though I have known
+him to be away once or twice. But very, very rarely!" She paused and
+added dramatically, "Until the armistice!"
+
+"Full of ramifications, that event, Miss Wall. It affects even my
+business." Mr. Naylor, though now withdrawn from an active share in its
+conduct, was still interested in the large shipping firm from which he
+had drawn his comfortable fortune.
+
+She looked at him suspiciously, as he put the ends of the slender white
+fingers of his two hands together, and leant forward to listen with that
+smile of his and eyes faintly twinkling. But the problem was seething in
+her brain; she had to go on.
+
+"A week after the armistice Mr. Saffron went to London by the 9.50. He
+traveled first, Anna."
+
+"Did he, dear?" Mrs. Naylor, a stout and placid dame, was not yet stirred
+to excitement.
+
+"He came down by the 4.11, and those two men with him. And they've been
+there ever since!"
+
+"Two men, Delia! I've only seen one."
+
+"Oh yes, there's another! Sergeant Hooper they call him; a short thickset
+man with a black mustache. He buys two bottles of rum every week at the
+_Green Man_. And--one minute, please, Mr. Naylor--"
+
+"I was only going to say that it looks to me as if this man Hooper were,
+or had been, a soldier. What do you think?"
+
+"Never mind, Papa! Go on, Miss Wall. I'm interested." This encouragement
+came from Gertie Naylor, a pretty girl of seventeen who was consuming
+much tea, bread, and honey.
+
+"And since then the old gentleman and this Mr. Beaumaroy go to town
+regularly every week on Wednesdays! Now who are they, how did Mr. Saffron
+get hold of them, and what are they doing here? I'm at a loss, Anna."
+
+Apparently an _impasse_! And Mr. Naylor did not seem to assist matters by
+asking whether Miss Wall had kept a constant eye on the Agony Column.
+Mrs. Naylor took up her knitting and switched off to another topic.
+
+"Dr. Arkroyd's friend, Delia dear! What a charming girl she looks!"
+
+"Friend, Anna? I didn't know that! A patient, I understand, anyhow. She's
+taking Valentine's beef juice. Of course they _do_ give that in drink
+cases, but I should be sorry to think--"
+
+"Drugs, more likely," Mr. Naylor suavely interposed. Then he rose from
+his chair and began to pace slowly up and down the long room, looking at
+his beautiful pictures, his beautiful china, his beautiful chairs, all
+the beautiful things that were his. His family took no notice of this
+roving up and down; it was a habit, and was tacitly accepted as meaning
+that he had, for the moment, had enough of the company, and even of his
+own sallies at its expense.
+
+"I've asked Dr. Arkroyd to bring her over, Miss Walford, I mean, the
+first day it's fine enough for tennis," Mrs. Naylor pursued. There was a
+hard court at Old Place, so that winter did not stop the game entirely.
+
+"What a name, too!"
+
+"Walford? It's quite a good name, Delia."
+
+"No, no, Anna! Beaumaroy, of course." Miss Wall was back at the
+larger problem.
+
+"There's Alec's voice. He and the General are back from their golf. Ring
+for another teapot, Gertie dear!"
+
+The door opened, not Alec, but the General came in, and closed the door
+carefully behind him; it was obviously an act of precaution and not
+merely a normal exercise of good manners. Then he walked up to his
+hostess and said, "It's not my fault, Anna. Alec would do it, though I
+shook my head at him, behind the fellow's back."
+
+"What do you mean, General?" cried the hostess. Mr. Naylor, for his part,
+stopped roving.
+
+The door again! "Come in, Mr. Beaumaroy--here's tea."
+
+Mr. Beaumaroy obediently entered, in the wake of Captain Alec Naylor, who
+duly presented him to Mrs. Naylor, adding that Beaumaroy had been kind
+enough to make the fourth in a game with the General, the Rector of
+Sprotsfield, and himself. "And he and the parson were too tough a nut for
+us, weren't they, sir?" he added to the General.
+
+Besides being an excellent officer and a capital fellow, Alec Naylor was
+also reputed to be one of the handsomest men in the Service; six foot
+three, very straight, very fair, with features as regular as any romantic
+hero of them all, and eyes as blue. The honorable limp that at present
+marked his movements would, it was hoped, pass away. Even his own family
+were often surprised into a new admiration of his physical perfections,
+remarking, one to the other, how Alec took the shine out of every other
+man in the room.
+
+There was no shine, no external obvious shine, to take out of Mr.
+Beaumaroy, Miss Wall's puzzling, unaccounted-for Mr. Beaumaroy. The light
+showed him now more clearly than when Mary Arkroyd met him on the heath
+road, but perhaps thereby did him no service. His features, though
+irregular, were not ugly or insignificant, but he wore a rather battered
+aspect; there were deep lines running from the corners of his mouth, and
+crowsfeet had started under the gray eyes which, in their turn, looked
+more skeptical than ardent, rather mocking than eager. Yet when he
+smiled, his face became not merely pleasant, but confidentially pleasant;
+he seemed to smile especially to and for the person to whom he was
+talking; and his voice was notably agreeable, soft and clear--the voice
+of a high-bred man, but not exactly of a high-bred Englishman. There was
+no accent definite enough to be called foreign, certainly not to be
+assigned to any particular race, but there was an exotic touch about his
+manner of speech suggesting that, even if not that of a foreigner, it was
+shaped and colored by the inflexions of foreign tongues. The hue of his
+plentiful and curly hair, indistinguishable to Mary and Cynthia, now
+stood revealed as neither black, nor red, nor auburn, nor brown, nor
+golden, but just, and rather surprisingly, a plain yellow, the color of a
+cowslip or thereabouts. Altogether rather a rum-looking fellow! This had
+been Alec Naylor's first remark when the Rector of Sprotsfield pointed
+him out, as a possible fourth, at the golf club, and the rough justice of
+the description could not be denied. He, like Alec, bore his scars; the
+little finger of his right hand was amputated down to the knuckle.
+
+Yet, after all this description, in particularity if not otherwise worthy
+of a classic novelist, the thing yet remains that most struck observers.
+Mr. Hector Beaumaroy had an adorable candor of manner. He answered
+questions with innocent readiness and pellucid sincerity. It would be
+impossible to think him guilty of a lie; ungenerous to suspect so much as
+a suppression of the truth. Even Mr. Naylor, hardened by five-and-thirty
+years' experience of what sailors will blandly swear to in collision
+cases, was struck with the open candor of his bearing.
+
+"Yes," he said. "Yes, Miss Wall, that's right, we go to town every
+Wednesday. No particular reason why it should be Wednesday, but old
+gentlemen somehow do better--don't you think so?--with method and
+regular habits."
+
+"I'm sure you know what's best for Mr. Saffron," said Delia. "You've
+known him a long time, haven't you?"
+
+Mr. Naylor drew a little nearer and listened. The General had put
+himself into the corner, a remote corner of the room, and sat there with
+an uneasy and rather glowering aspect.
+
+"Oh no, no!" answered Beaumaroy. "A matter of weeks only. But the dear
+old fellow seemed to take to me--a friend put us in touch originally. I
+seem to be able to do just what he wants."
+
+"I hope your friend is not really ill, not seriously?" This time the
+question was Mrs. Naylor's, not Miss Delia's.
+
+"His health is really not so bad, but," he gave a glance round the
+company, as though inviting their understanding, "he insists that he's
+not the man he was."
+
+"Absurd!" smiled Naylor. "Not much older than I am, is he?"
+
+"Only just turned seventy, I believe. But the idea's very persistent."
+
+"Hypochondria!" snapped Miss Delia.
+
+"Not altogether. I'm afraid there is a little real heart trouble. Dr.
+Irechester--"
+
+"Oh, with Dr. Irechester, dear Mr. Beaumaroy, you're all right!"
+
+Again Beaumaroy's glance--that glance of innocent appeal--ranged over the
+company (except the General, out of its reach). He seemed troubled and
+embarrassed.
+
+"A most accomplished man, evidently, and a friend of yours, of course.
+But, well, there it is, a mere fancy, of course, but unhappily my old
+friend doesn't take to him. He, he thinks that he's rather inquisitorial.
+A doctor's duty, I suppose--"
+
+"Irechester's a sound man, a very sound man," said Mr. Naylor. "And,
+after all one can ask almost any question if one does it tactfully, can't
+one, Miss Wall?"
+
+"As a matter of fact, he's only seen Mr. Saffron twice--he had a little
+chill. But his manner, unfortunately, rather, er--alarmed--"
+
+Gertie Naylor, with the directness of youth, propounded a solution of the
+difficulty. "If you don't like Dr. Irechester--"
+
+"Oh, it's not I who--"
+
+"Why not have Mary?" Gertie made her suggestion eagerly. She was very
+fond of Mary, who, from the height of age, wisdom and professional
+dignity, had stooped to offer her an equal friendship.
+
+"She means Dr. Mary Arkroyd," Mrs. Naylor explained.
+
+"Yes, I know, Mrs. Naylor, I know about Dr. Arkroyd. In fact, I know her
+by sight. But--"
+
+"Perhaps you don't believe in women doctors?" Alec suggested.
+
+"It's not that. I've no prejudices. But the responsibility is on me, and
+I know very little of her; and, well to change one's doctor, it's rather
+invidious--"
+
+"Oh, as to that, Irechester's a sensible man; he's got as much work as he
+wants, and as much money too. He won't resent an old man's fancy."
+
+"Well, I'd never thought of a change, but if you all suggest it--"
+Somehow it did seem as if they all, and not merely youthful Gertie had
+suggested it. "But I should rather like to know Dr. Arkroyd first."
+
+"Come and meet her here; that's very simple. She often comes to tennis
+and tea. We'll let you know the first time she's coming."
+
+Beaumaroy most cordially accepted the idea and the invitation. "Any
+afternoon I shall be delighted, except Wednesdays. Wednesdays are sacred,
+aren't they, Miss Wall? London on Wednesdays for Mr. Saffron and me, and
+the old brown bag!" He laughed in a quiet merriment. "That old bag's been
+in a lot of places with me and has carried some queer cargoes. Now it
+just goes to and fro, between here and town, with Mudie books. Must have
+books, living so much alone as we do!" He had risen as he spoke, and
+approached Mrs. Naylor to take leave.
+
+She gave him her hand very cordially. "I don't suppose Mr. Saffron cares
+to meet people; but any spare time you have, Mr. Beaumaroy, we shall be
+delighted to see you."
+
+Beaumaroy bowed as he thanked her, adding, "And I'm promised a chance of
+meeting Dr. Arkroyd before long?"
+
+The promise was renewed and the visitor took his leave, declining Alec's
+offer to "run him home" in the car. "The car might startle my old
+friend," he pleaded. Alec saw him off, and returned to find the General,
+who had contrived to avoid more than a distant bow of farewell to
+Beaumaroy, standing on the hearthrug apparently in a state of some
+agitation.
+
+The envious years had refused to Major-General Punnit, C.B.--he was a
+distant cousin of Mrs. Naylor's--the privilege of serving his country in
+the Great War. His career had lain mainly in India and was mostly behind
+him even at the date of the South African War, in which, however, he had
+done valuable work in one of the supply services. He as short, stout,
+honest, brave, shrewd, obstinate, and as full of prejudices, religious,
+political and personal as an egg is of meat. And all this time he had
+been slowly and painfully recalling what his young friend Colonel Merman
+(the Colonel was young only relatively to the General) had told him
+about Hector Beaumaroy. The name had struck on his memory the moment the
+Rector pronounced it, but it had taken him a long while to "place it"
+accurately. However, now he had it pat; the conversation in the club came
+back. He retailed it now to the company at Old Place.
+
+A pleasant fellow, Beaumaroy; socially a very agreeable fellow. And as
+for courage, as brave as you like. Indeed he might have had letters after
+his name save for the fact that he--the Colonel--would never recommend a
+man unless his discipline was as good as his leading, and his conduct at
+the base as praiseworthy as at the front. (Alec Naylor nodded his
+handsome head in grave approval; his father looked a little discontented,
+as though he were swallowing unpalatable, though wholesome, food). His
+whole idea--Beaumaroy's, that is--was to shield offenders, to prevent
+the punishment fitting the crime, even to console and countenance the
+wrongdoer. No sense of discipline, no moral sense, the Colonel had gone
+as far as that. Impossible to promote or to recommend for reward, almost
+impossible to keep. Of course, if he had been caught young and put
+through the mill, it might have been different. "It _might_" the Colonel
+heavily underlined the possibility, but he came from Heaven knew where,
+after a life spent Heaven knew how. "And he seemed to know it himself,"
+the Colonel had said, thoughtfully rolling his port round in the glass.
+"Whenever I wigged him, he offered to go; said he'd chuck his commission
+and enlist; said he'd be happier in the ranks. But I was weak, I couldn't
+bear to do it." After thus quoting his friend, the General added: "He was
+weak, damned weak, and I told him so."
+
+"Of course he ought to have got rid of him," said Alec. "Still, sir,
+there's nothing, er, disgraceful."
+
+"It seems hardly to have come to that," the General admitted reluctantly.
+
+"It all rather makes me like him," Gertie affirmed courageously.
+
+"I think that, on the whole, we may venture to know him in times of
+peace," Mr. Naylor summed up.
+
+"That's your look out," remarked the General. "I've warned you. You can
+do as you like."
+
+Delia Wall had sat silent through the story. Now she spoke up, and got
+back to the real point:
+
+"There's nothing in all that to show how he comes to be at Mr.
+Saffron's."
+
+The General shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, Saffron be hanged! He's not the
+British Army," he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+MR. SAFFRON AT HOME
+
+
+To put it plainly, Sergeant Hooper--he had been a Sergeant for a brief
+and precarious three weeks, but he used the title in civil life whenever
+he safely could, and he could at Inkston--Sergeant Hooper was a
+villainous-looking dog. Beaumaroy, fresh from the comely presences of Old
+Place, unconscious of how the General had ripped up his character and
+record, pleasantly nursing a little project concerning Dr. Mary Arkroyd,
+had never been more forcibly struck with his protege's ill-favoredness
+than when he arrived home on this same evening, and the Sergeant met him
+at the door.
+
+"By gad, Sergeant," he observed pleasantly, "I don't think anybody could
+be such a rascal as you look. It's that faith that carries me through."
+
+The Sergeant helped him off with his coat. "It's some people's
+stock-in-trade," he remarked, "not to look a rascal like they really are,
+sir." The "sir" stuck out of pure habit; it carried no real implication
+of respect.
+
+"Meaning me!" laughed Beaumaroy. "How's the old man to-night?"
+
+"Quiet enough. He's in the Tower there--been there an hour or more."
+
+The cottage door opened on to a narrow passage, with a staircase on one
+side, and on the other a door leading to a small square parlor,
+cheerfully if cheaply furnished, and well lit by an oil lamp. A fire
+blazed on the hearth, and Beaumaroy sank into a "saddle-bag" armchair
+beside it, with a sigh of comfort. The Sergeant had jerked his head
+towards another door, on the right of the fireplace; it led to the Tower.
+Beaumaroy's eyes settled on it.
+
+"An hour or more, has he? Have you heard anything?"
+
+"He was making a speech a little while back, that's all."
+
+"No more complaints and palpitations, or anything of that sort?"
+
+"Not as I've heard. But he never says much to me. Mrs. Wiles gets the
+benefit of his symptoms mostly."
+
+"You're not sympathetic, perhaps."
+
+During the talk Hooper had been to a cupboard and mixed a glass of whisky
+and soda. He brought it to Beaumaroy and put it on a small table by him.
+Beaumaroy regarded his squat paunchy figure, red face, small eyes (a
+squint in one of them), and bulbous nose with a patient and benign
+toleration.
+
+"Since you can't expect, Sergeant, to prepossess the judge and jury in
+your favor, the instant you make your appearance in the box--"
+
+"Here, what are you on to, sir?"
+
+"It's the more important for you to have it clearly in your mind that we
+are laboring in the cause of humanity, freedom, and justice. Exactly like
+the Allies in the late war, you know, Sergeant. Keep that in your mind,
+clinch it! He hasn't wanted you to do anything particular to-night, or
+asked for me?"
+
+"No, sir. He's happy with--with what you call his playthings."
+
+"What are they but playthings?" asked Beaumaroy, tilting his glass to his
+lips with a smile perhaps a little wry.
+
+"Only I wish as you wouldn't talk about judges and juries," the Sergeant
+complained.
+
+"I really don't know whether it's a civil or a criminal matter, or both,
+or neither," Beaumaroy admitted candidly. "But what we do know, Sergeant,
+is that it provides us with excellent billets and rations. Moreover, a
+thing that you certainly will not appreciate, it gratifies my taste for
+the mysterious."
+
+"I hope there's a bit more coming from it than that," said the Sergeant.
+"That is, if we stick together faithful, sir."
+
+"Oh, we shall! One thing puzzles me about you, Sergeant. I don't think
+I've mentioned it before. Sometimes you speak almost like an educated
+man; at others your speech is, well, illiterate."
+
+"Well, sir, it's a sort of mixture of my mother; she was class, the
+blighter who come after my father, and the Board School--"
+
+"Of course! What they call the educational ladder! That explains it. By
+the way, I'm thinking of changing our doctor."
+
+"Good job, too. I 'ate that Irechester. Stares at you, that chap does."
+
+"Does he stare at your eyes?'" asked Beaumaroy thoughtfully.
+
+"I don't know that he does at my eyes particularly. Nothing wrong with
+'em, is there?" The Sergeant sounded rather truculent.
+
+"Never mind that; but I fancied he stared at Mr. Saffron's. And I've read
+somewhere, in some book or other, that doctors can tell, or guess, by the
+eyes. Well, that's only an idea. How does a lady doctor appeal to you,
+Sergeant?"
+
+"I should be shy," said the Sergeant, grinning.
+
+"Vulgar! vulgar!" Beaumaroy murmured.
+
+"That Dr. Mary Arkroyd?"
+
+"I had thought of her."
+
+"She ought to be fair easy to kid. You 'ave notions sometimes, sir."
+
+Beaumaroy stretched out his legs, debonnair, well-rounded legs, to the
+seducing blaze of oak logs.
+
+"I haven't really a care in the world," he said.
+
+The Sergeant's reply, or comment, had a disconcerting ring. "And you're
+sure of 'Eaven? That's what the bloke always says to the 'angman."
+
+"I've no intention of being a murderer, Sergeant." Beaumaroy's eyebrows
+were raised in gentle protest.
+
+"Once you're in with a job, you never know," his retainer observed
+darkly.
+
+Beaumaroy laughed. "Oh, go to the devil! and mix me another whisky." Yet
+a vague uneasiness showed itself on his face; he looked across the room
+at the evil-shaped man handling the bottles in the cupboard. He made one
+queer, restless movement of his arms, as though to free himself. Then,
+in a moment, he sprang from his chair, a glad kindly smile illuminating
+his face; he bowed in a very courtly fashion, exclaiming, "Ah! here you
+are, sir? And all well, I hope?"
+
+Mr. Saffron had entered from the door leading to the Tower, carefully
+closing it after him. Hooper's hand went up to his forehead in the ghost
+of a military salute, but a sneering smile persisted on his lips. The
+only notice Mr. Saffron took of him was a jerk of the head towards the
+passage, an abrupt and ungracious dismissal, which, however, the Sergeant
+silently accepted and stumped out. The greeting reserved for Beaumaroy
+was vastly different. Beaumaroy's own cordiality was more than
+reciprocated. It seemed impossible to doubt that a genuine affection
+existed between the elder and the younger man, though the latter had not
+thought fit to mention the fact to Sergeant Hooper.
+
+"A tiring day, my dear Hector, very tiring. I've transacted a lot of
+business. But never mind that, it will keep. What of your doings?"
+
+Having sat the old man in the big chair by the fire, Beaumaroy sauntered
+across to the door of the Tower, locked it, and put the key in his
+pocket. Then he returned to the fire and, standing in front of it, gave a
+lively and detailed account of his visit to Old Place.
+
+"They appear to be pleasant people, very pleasant. I should like to know
+them, if it was not desirable for me to live an entirely secluded life."
+Mr. Saffron's speech was very distinct and clean cut, rather rapid, high
+in tone but not disagreeable. "You make pure fun of this Miss Wall, as
+you do of so many things, Hector, but--" he smiled up at
+Beaumaroy--"inquisitiveness is not our favorite sin just now!"
+
+"She's so indiscriminately inquisitive that it's a thousand to one
+against her really finding out anything of importance, sir." Beaumaroy
+sometimes addressed his employer as "Mr. Saffron," but much more commonly
+he used the respectful "sir." "I think I'm equal to putting Miss Delia
+Wall off."
+
+"Still she noticed our weekly journeys!"
+
+"Half Inkston goes to town every day, sir, and the rest three times,
+twice, or once a week. I called her particular attention to the bag, and
+told her it was for books from Mudie's!"
+
+"Positive statements like that are a mistake." Mr. Saffron spoke with a
+sudden sharpness, in pointed rebuke. "If I form a right idea of that
+woman, she's quite capable of going to Mudie's to ask about us."
+
+"By Jove, you're right, sir, and I was wrong. We'd better go and take out
+a subscription tomorrow; she'll hardly go so far as to ask the date we
+started it."
+
+"Yes, let that be done. And, remember, no unnecessary talk." His tone
+grew milder, as though he were mollified by Beaumaroy's ready submission
+to his reproof. "We have some places to call at to-morrow, have we?"
+
+"They said they'd have some useful addresses ready for us, sir. I'm
+afraid, though, that we're exhausting the most obvious resources."
+
+"Still, I hope for a few more good consignments. I suppose you remain
+confident that the Sergeant has no suspicions as regards that particular
+aspect of the matter?"
+
+"I'm sure of it, up to the present. Of course there might be an accident,
+but with him and Mrs. Wiles both off the premises at night, it's hardly
+likely; and I never let the bag out of my sight while it's in the room
+with them, hardly out of my hand."
+
+"I should like to trust him, but it's hardly fair to put such a strain on
+his loyalty."
+
+"Much safer not, sir, as long as we're not driven to it. After all
+though, I believe the fellow is out to redeem his character, his isn't an
+unblemished record."
+
+"But the work, the physical labor, entailed on you, Hector!"
+
+"Make yourself easy about that, sir. I'm as strong as a horse. The work's
+good for me. Remember I've had four years' service."
+
+Mr. Saffron smiled pensively. "It would have been funny if we'd met over
+there! You and I!"
+
+"It would, sir," laughed Beaumaroy. "But that could hardly have happened
+without some very curious accident."
+
+The old man harked back. "Yes, a few more good consignments, and we can
+think in earnest of your start." He was warming his hands, thin yellowish
+hands, at the fire now, and his gaze was directed into it. Looking down
+on him, Beaumaroy allowed a smile to appear on his lips, a queer smile,
+which seemed to be compounded of affection, pity, and amusement.
+
+"The difficulties there remain considerable for the present," he
+remarked.
+
+"They must be overcome." Once again the old man's voice became sharp and
+even dictatorial.
+
+"They shall be, sir, depend on it." Beaumaroy's air was suddenly
+confident, almost braggart. Mr. Saffron nodded approvingly. "But, anyhow,
+I can't very well start till favorable news comes from--"
+
+"Hush!" There was a knock on the door.
+
+"Mrs. Wiles, to lay the table, I suppose."
+
+"Yes! Come in!" He added hastily to Beaumaroy, in an undertone. "Yes, we
+must wait for that."
+
+Mrs. Wiles entered as he spoke. She was a colorless, negative kind of a
+woman, fair, fat, flabby, and forty or thereabouts. She had been the
+ill-used slave of a local carpenter, now deceased by reason of
+over-drinking; her nature was to be the slave of the nearest male
+creature, not from affection (her affections were anemic) but rather, as
+it seemed, from an instinctive desire to shuffle off from herself any
+responsibility. But, at all events, she was entirely free from Miss Delia
+Wall's proclivity.
+
+Mr. Saffron rose. "I'll go and wash my hands. We'll dine just as we are,
+Hector." Beaumaroy opened the door for him; he acknowledged the attention
+with a little nod, and passed out to the staircase in the narrow passage.
+Beaumaroy appeared to consider himself absolved from any preparation, for
+he returned to the big chair and, sinking into it, lit another cigarette.
+Meanwhile Mrs. Wiles laid the table, and presently Sergeant Hooper
+appeared with a bottle of golden-tinted wine.
+
+"That, at least, is the real stuff," thought Beaumaroy as he eyed it in
+pleasurable anticipation. "Where the dear old man got it, I don't know;
+but in itself it's almost worth all the racket."
+
+And really, in its present stages, so far as its present developments
+went, the "racket" pleased him. It amused his active brain, besides (as
+he had said to Mr. Saffron) exercising his active body, though certainly
+in a rather grotesque and bizarre fashion. The attraction of it went
+deeper than that. It appealed to some of those tendencies and impulses of
+his character which had earned such heavy censure from Major-General
+Punnit and had produced so grave an expression on Captain Alec's handsome
+face without, however, being, even in that officer's exacting judgment,
+disgraceful. And, finally, there was the lure of unexplored
+possibilities, not only material and external, but psychological not only
+touching what others might do or what might happen to them, but raising
+also speculation as to what he might do, or what might happen to him at
+his own hands; for example, how far he would flout authority, defy the
+usual, and deny the accepted. The love of rebellion, of making foolish
+the wisdom of the wise, of hampering the orderly and inexorable treatment
+of people just as, according to the best modern lights, they ought to be
+treated, this lawless love was strong in Beaumaroy. Not as a principle;
+it was the stronger for being an instinct, a wayward instinct that might
+carry him, he scarce knew where.
+
+Mr. Saffron came back, greeted again by Beaumaroy's courtly bow and
+Hooper's vaguely reminiscent but slovenly military salute. The pair sat
+down to a homely beefsteak; but the golden tinted wine gurgled into their
+glasses. But, before they fell to, there was a little incident. A sudden,
+but fierce, anger seized old Mr. Saffron. In his harshest tones he rapped
+out at the Sergeant, "My knife! You careless scoundrel, you haven't given
+me my knife!"
+
+Beaumaroy sprang to his feet with a muttered exclamation: "It's all my
+fault, sir. I forgot to give it to Hooper. I always lock it up when I go
+out." He went to a little oak sideboard and unlocked a drawer, then came
+back to Mr. Saffron's side. "Here it is, and I humbly apologize."
+
+"Very good! very good!" said the old man testily, as he took the
+implement.
+
+"Ain't anybody going to apologize to me?" asked Hooper, scowling.
+
+"Oh, get out, Sergeant!" said Beaumaroy good-naturedly. "We can't bother
+about your finer feelings." He glanced anxiously at Mr. Saffron. "All
+right now, aren't you, sir?" he inquired.
+
+Mr. Saffron drank his glass of wine. "I am perhaps too sensitive to
+any kind of inattention; but it's not wholly unnatural in my
+position, Hector."
+
+"We both desire to be attentive and respectful, sir. Don't we, Hooper?"
+
+"Oh my, yes!" grinned the Sergeant, showing his very ugly teeth. "It's
+only owing that we 'aven't quite been brought up in royal palaces."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+PROFESSIONAL ETIQUETTE
+
+
+Dr. Irechester was a man of considerable attainments and an active,
+though not very persevering, intellect. He was widely read both in
+professional and general literature, but had shrunk from the arduous path
+of specialization. And he shrank even more from the drudgery of his
+calling. He had private means, inherited in middle life; his wife had a
+respectable portion; there was, then, nothing in his circumstances to
+thwart his tastes and tendencies. He had soon come to see in the late Dr.
+Evans a means of relief rather than a threat of rivalry; even more easily
+he slipped into the same way of regarding Mary Arkroyd, helped thereto by
+a lingering feeling that, after all and in spite of all, when it came to
+really serious cases, a woman could not, at best, play more than second
+fiddle. So, as has been seen, he patronized and encouraged Mary; he told
+himself that, when she had thoroughly proved her capacity--within the
+limits which he ascribed to it--to take her into partnership would not be
+a bad arrangement. True, he could pretty well choose his patients now;
+but as senior partner he would be able to do it completely. It was
+well-nigh inconceivable that, for example, the Naylors--great
+friends--should ever leave him; but he would like to be quite secure of
+the pick of new patients, some of whom might, through ignorance or whim,
+call in Mary. There was old Saffron, for instance. He was, in
+Irechester's private opinion, or, perhaps it should be said in his
+private suspicions, an interesting case; yet, just for that reason,
+unreliable, and evidently ready to take offense. It was because of cases
+of that kind that he contemplated offering partnership to Mary; he would
+both be sure of keeping them and able to devote himself to them.
+
+But his wife laughed at Mary, or at that development of the feminist
+movement which had produced her and so many other more startling
+phenomena. The Doctor was fond of his wife, a sprightly, would-be
+fashionable, still very pretty woman. But her laughter, and the opinion
+it represented, were to him the merest crackling of thorns under a pot.
+
+The fine afternoon had come, a few days before Christmas, and he sat,
+side by side with Mr. Naylor, both warmly wrapped in coats and rugs,
+watching the lawn tennis at Old Place. Doctor Mary and Beaumaroy were
+playing together, the latter accustoming himself to a finger short in
+gripping his racquet, against Cynthia and Captain Alec. The Captain could
+not yet cover the court in his old fashion, but his height and reach made
+him formidable at the net, and Cynthia was very active. Ten days of
+Inkston air had made a vast difference to Cynthia. And something else was
+helping. It required no common loyalty to lost causes and ruined
+ideals--it is surely not harsh to indicate Captain Cranster by these
+terms?--to resist Alec Naylor. In fact he had almost taken Cynthia's
+breath away at their first meeting; she thought that she had never seen
+anything quite so magnificent, or--all round and from all points of view,
+so romantic; his stature, handsomeness, limp, renown. Who can be
+surprised at it? Moreover, he was modest and simple, and no fool within
+the bounds of his experience.
+
+"She seems a nice little girl, that, and uncommon pretty," Naylor
+remarked.
+
+"Yes, but he's a queer fish, I fancy," the Doctor answered, also rather
+absently. Their minds were not running on parallel lines.
+
+"My boy a queer fish?" Naylor expostulated humorously.
+
+Irechester smiled; his lips shut close and tight, his smile was quick but
+narrow. "You're matchmaking. I was diagnosing," he said.
+
+Naylor apologized. "I've a desperate instinct to fit all these young
+fellows up with mates as soon as possible. Isn't it only fair?"
+
+"And also extremely expedient. But it's the sort of thing you can leave
+to them, can't you?"
+
+"As to Beaumaroy--I suppose you meant him, not Alec--I think you must
+have been talking to old Tom Punnit--or, rather, hearing him talk."
+
+"Punnit's general view is sound enough, I think, as to the man's
+characteristics; but he doesn't appreciate his cunning."
+
+"Cunning?" Naylor was openly astonished. "He doesn't strike me as a
+cunning man, not in the least."
+
+"Possibly, possibly, I say--not in his ends, but in his means and
+expedients. That's my view. I just put it on record, Naylor. I never like
+talking too much about my cases."
+
+"Beaumaroy's not your patient, is he?"
+
+"His employer, I suppose he's his employer, Saffron is. Well, I thought
+it advisable to see Saffron alone. I tried to. Saffron was reluctant,
+this man here openly against it. Next time I shall insist. Because I
+think, mind you, at present I no more than think, that there's more in
+Saffron's case than meets the eye."
+
+Naylor glanced at him, smiling. "You fellows are always starting
+hares," he said.
+
+"Game and set!" cried Captain Alec, and--to his partner--"Thank you very
+much for carrying a cripple."
+
+But Irechester's attention remained fixed on Beaumaroy, and consequently
+on Doctor Mary, for the partners did not separate at the end of their
+game, but, after putting on their coats, began to walk up and down
+together on the other side of the court, in animated conversation, though
+Beaumaroy did most of the talking, Mary listening in her usual grave and
+composed manner. Now and then a word or two reached Irechester's ears,
+old Naylor seemed to have fallen into a reverie over his cigar, and it
+must be confessed that he took no pains not to overhear. Once at least he
+plainly heard "Saffron" from Beaumaroy; he thought that the same lips
+spoke his own name, and he was sure that Doctor Mary's did. Beaumaroy was
+speaking rather urgently, and making gestures with his hands; it seemed
+as though he were appealing to his companion in some difficulty or
+perplexity. Irechester's mouth was severely compressed and his glance
+suspicious as he watched.
+
+The scene was ended by Gertie Naylor calling these laggards in to tea, to
+which meal the rest of the company had already betaken itself.
+
+At the tea table they found General Punnit discoursing on war, and giving
+"idealists" what idealists usually get. The General believed in war; he
+pressed the biological argument, did not flinch when Mr. Naylor dubbed
+him the "British Bernhardi," and invoked the support of "these medical
+gentleman" (this with a smile at Doctor Mary's expense) for his point of
+view. War tested, proved, braced, hardened; it was nature's crucible; it
+was the antidote to softness and sentimentality; it was the vindication
+of the strong, the elimination of the weak.
+
+"I suppose there's a lot in all that, sir," said Alec Naylor, "but I
+don't think the effect on one's character is always what you say. I think
+I've come out of this awful business a good deal softer than I went in."
+He laughed in an apologetic way. "More, more sentimental, if you like,
+with more feeling, don't you know, for human life, and suffering, and so
+on. I've seen a great many men killed, but the sight hasn't made me any
+more ready to kill men. In fact, quite the reverse." He smiled again.
+"Really sometimes, for a row of pins, I'd have turned conscientious
+objector."
+
+Mrs. Naylor looked apprehensively at the General: would he explode? No,
+he took it quite quietly. "You're a man who can afford to say it, Alec,"
+he remarked, with a nod that was almost approving.
+
+Naylor looked affectionately at his son and turned to Beaumaroy. "And
+what's the war done to you?" he asked. And this question did draw from
+the General, if not an explosion, at least a rather contemptuous smile:
+Beaumaroy had earned no right to express opinions!
+
+But express one he did, and with his habitual air of candor. "I believe
+it's destroyed every, scruple I ever had!"
+
+"Mr. Beaumaroy!" exclaimed his hostess, scandalized; while the two
+girls, Cynthia and Gertie, laughed.
+
+"I mean it. Can you see human life treated as dirt, absolutely as cheap
+as dirt, for three years, and come out thinking it worth anything? Can
+you fight for your own hand, right or wrong? Oh, yes, right or wrong, in
+the end, and it's no good blinking it. Can you do that for three years in
+war, and then hesitate to fight for your own hand, right or wrong, in
+peace? Who really cares for right or wrong, anyhow?"
+
+A pause ensued--rather an uncomfortable pause. There was a raw sincerity
+in Beaumaroy's utterance that made it a challenge.
+
+"I honestly think we did care about the rights and wrongs--we in
+England," said Naylor.
+
+"That was certainly so at the beginning," Irechester agreed.
+
+Beaumaroy took him up smartly. "Aye, at the beginning. But what about
+when our blood got up? What then? Would we, in our hearts, rather have
+been right and got a licking, or wrong and given one?"
+
+"A searching question!" mused old Naylor. "What say you, Tom Punnit?"
+
+"It never occurred to me to put the question," the General answered
+brusquely.
+
+"May I ask why not, sir?" said Beaumaroy respectfully.
+
+"Because I believed in God. I knew that we were right, and I knew that we
+should win."
+
+"Are we in theology now, or still in biology?" asked Irechester,
+rather acidly.
+
+"You're getting out of my 'depth anyhow," smiled Mrs. Naylor. "And I'm
+sure the girls must be bewildered."
+
+"Mamma, I've done biology!"
+
+"And many people think they've done theology!" chuckled Naylor. "Done it
+completely!"
+
+"I've raised a pretty argument!" said Beaumaroy, smiling. "I'm sorry! I
+only meant to answer your question about the effect the whole thing has
+had on myself."
+
+"Even your answer to that was pretty startling, Mr. Beaumaroy," said
+Doctor Mary, smiling too. "You gave us to understand that it had
+obliterated for you all distinctions of right and wrong, didn't you?"
+
+"Did I go as far as that?" he laughed. "Then I'm open to the remark that
+they can't have been very strong at first."
+
+"Now don't destroy the general interest of your thesis," Naylor implored.
+"It's quite likely that yours is a case as common as Alec's, or even
+commoner. 'A brutal and licentious soldiery,' isn't that a classic phrase
+in our histories? All the same, I fancy Mr. Beaumaroy does himself less
+than justice." He laughed. "We shall be able to judge of that when we
+know him better."
+
+"At all events, Miss Gertie, look out that I don't fake the score at
+tennis!" said Beaumaroy.
+
+"A man might be capable of murder, but not capable of that," said Alec.
+
+"A truly British sentiment!" cried his father. "Tom, we have got back to
+the national ideals."
+
+The discussion ended in laughter, and the talk turned to lighter matters;
+but, as Mary Arkroyd drove Cynthia home across the heath, her thoughts
+returned to it. The two men, the two soldiers, seemed to have given an
+authentic account of what their experience had done to them. Both, as she
+saw the case, had been moved to pity, horror, and indignation that such
+things should be done, or should have to be done, in the world. After
+that point came the divergence. The higher nature had been raised, the
+lower debased; Alec Naylor's sympathies had been sharpened and
+sensitized; Beaumaroy's blunted. Where the one had found ideals and
+incentives, the other found despair--a despair that issued in excuses and
+denied high standards. And the finer mind belonged to the finer soldier;
+that she knew, for Gertie had told her General Punnit's story, and,
+however much she might discount it as the tale of an elderly martinet,
+yet it stood for something, for something that could never be attributed
+to Alec Naylor.
+
+And yet, for her mind traveled back to her earlier talk by the tennis
+court, Beaumaroy had a conscience, had feelings. He was fond of old Mr.
+Saffron; he felt a responsibility for him, felt it, indeed, keenly. Or
+was he, under all that seeming openness, a consummate hypocrite? Did he
+value Mr. Saffron only as a milk cow, the doting giver of a large
+salary? Was his only desire to humor him, keep him in good health and
+temper, and use him to his own profit? A puzzling man, but, at all
+events, cutting a poor figure beside Alec Naylor, about whom there could
+circle no clouds of doubt. Doctor Mary's learning and gravity did not
+prevent her from drawing a very heroic and rather romantic figure of
+Captain Alec--notwithstanding that she sometimes found him rather hard
+to talk to.
+
+She felt Cynthia's arm steal around her waist, and Cynthia said softly,
+"I did enjoy my afternoon. Can we go again soon, Mary?"
+
+Mary glanced at her. Cynthia laughed and blushed. "Isn't he splendid?"
+Cynthia murmured. "But I don't like Mr. Beaumaroy, do you?"
+
+"I say yes to the first question, but I'm not quite ready to answer the
+second," said Mary with a laugh.
+
+Three days later, on Christmas Eve, one whom Jeanne, who caught sight of
+him in the hall, described as being all there was possible of ugliness,
+delivered (with a request for an immediate answer) the following note for
+Mary Arkroyd:
+
+DEAR DR. ARKROYD:
+
+Mr. Saffron is unwell, and I have insisted that he must see a doctor. So
+much he has yielded, after a fight! But nothing will induce him to see
+Dr. Irechester again. On this point I tried to reason with him, but in
+vain. He is obstinate and resolved. I am afraid that I am putting you in
+a difficult and disagreeable position, but it seems to me that I have no
+alternative but to ask you to call on him professionally. I hope that Dr.
+Irechester will not be hurt by a whim which is, no doubt, itself merely a
+symptom of disordered nerves, for Dr. Irechester has been most attentive
+and very successful hitherto in dealing with the dear old gentleman. But
+my first duty is to Mr. Saffron. If it will ease matters at all, pray
+hold yourself at liberty to show this note to Dr. Irechester. May I beg
+you to be kind enough to call at your earliest convenience, though it is,
+alas, a rough evening to ask you to come out?
+
+Yours very faithfully,
+
+HECTOR BEAUMAROY.
+
+"How very awkward!" exclaimed Mary. She had prided herself on a
+rigorous abstention from "poaching"; she fancied that men were very
+ready to accuse women of not "playing the game" and had been resolved
+to give no color to such an accusation. "Mr. Saffron has sent for
+me--professionally. He's ill, it seems," she said to Cynthia.
+
+"Why shouldn't he?"
+
+"Because he is a patient of Dr. Irechester, not a patient of mine."
+
+"But people often change their doctors, don't they? He thinks you're
+cleverer, I suppose, and I expect you are really."
+
+There was no use in expounding professional etiquette to Cynthia. Mary
+had to decide the point for herself, and quickly; the old man might be
+seriously ill. Beaumaroy had said at the Naylors' that his attacks were
+sometimes alarming.
+
+Suddenly she recollected that he had also seemed to hint that they were
+more alarming than Irechester appeared to appreciate; she had not taken
+much notice of that hint at the time, but now it recurred to her very
+distinctly. There was no suggestion of the sort in Beaumaroy's letter.
+Beaumaroy had written a letter that could be shown to Irechester! Was
+that dishonesty, or only a pardonable diplomacy?
+
+"I suppose I must go, and explain to Dr. Irechester afterwards." She rang
+the bell, to recall the maid, and gave her answer. "Say I will be round
+as soon as possible. Is the messenger walking?"
+
+"He's got a bicycle, Miss."
+
+"All right. I shall be there almost as soon as he is."
+
+She seemed to have no alternative, just as Beaumaroy had none. Yet while
+she put on her mackintosh, it was very wet and misty, got out her car,
+and lit her lamps, her face was still fretful and her mind disturbed. For
+now, as she looked back on it, Beaumaroy's conversation with her at Old
+Place seemed just a prelude to this summons, and meant to prepare her for
+it. Perhaps that too was pardonable diplomacy, and no reference to it
+could be expected in a letter which she was at liberty to show to Dr.
+Irechester. She wondered, uncomfortably, how Irechester would take it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A FAMILIAR IMPLEMENT
+
+
+As Mary brought her car to a stand at the gate of the little front garden
+of Tower Cottage, she saw, through the mist, Beaumaroy's corrugated face;
+he was standing in the doorway, and the light in the passage revealed it.
+It seemed to her to wear a triumphant impish look, but this vanished as
+he advanced to meet her, relieved her of the neat black handbag which she
+always carried with her on her visits, and suggested gravely that she
+should at once go upstairs and see her patient.
+
+"He's quieter now," he said. "The mere news that you were coming had a
+soothing effect. Let me show you the way." He led her upstairs and into a
+small room on the first floor, nakedly furnished with necessities, but
+with a cheery fire blazing in the grate.
+
+Old Mr. Saffron lay in bed, propped up by pillows. His silver hair
+strayed from under a nightcap; he wore a light blue bedroom jacket; its
+color matched that of his restless eyes; his arms were under the clothes
+from the elbows down. He was rather flushed, but did not look seriously
+ill, and greeted Doctor Mary with dignified composure.
+
+"I'll see Dr. Arkroyd alone, Hector." Beaumaroy gave the slightest little
+jerk of his head, and the old man added quickly, "I am sure of myself,
+quite sure."
+
+The phrase sounded rather an odd one to Mary, but Beaumaroy accepted the
+assurance with a nod: "All right, I'll wait downstairs, sir. I hope
+you'll bring me a good account of him, Doctor." So he left Mary to make
+her examination; going downstairs, he shook his head once, pursed up his
+lips, and then smiled doubtfully, as a man may do when he has made up his
+mind to take a chance.
+
+When Mary rejoined him, she asked for pen and paper, wrote a
+prescription, and requested that Beaumaroy's man should take it to the
+chemist's. He went out, to give it to the Sergeant, and, when he came
+back, found her seated in the big chair by the fire.
+
+"The present little attack is nothing, Mr. Beaumaroy," she said.
+"Stomachic--with a little fever; if he takes what I've prescribed, he
+ought to be all right in the morning. But I suppose you know that there
+is valvular disease--quite definite? Didn't Dr. Irechester tell you?"
+
+"Yes; but he said there was no particular--no immediate danger."
+
+"If he's kept quiet and free from worry. Didn't he advise that?"
+
+"Yes," Beaumaroy admitted, "he did. That's the only thing you find wrong
+with him, Doctor?"
+
+Beaumaroy was standing on the far side of the table, his finger-tips
+resting lightly on it. He looked across at Mary with eyes candidly
+inquiring.
+
+"I've found nothing else so far. I suppose he's got nothing to
+worry him?"
+
+"Not really, I think. He fusses a bit about his affairs." He smiled. "We
+go to London every week to fuss about his affairs; he's always changing
+his investments, taking his money out of one thing and putting it in
+another, you know. Old people get like that sometimes, don't they? I'm a
+novice at that kind of thing, never having had any money to play with;
+but I'm bound to say that he seems to know very well what he's about."
+
+"Do you know anything of his history or his people? Has he any
+relations?"
+
+"I know very little. I don't think he has any, any real relations, so to
+speak. There are, I believe, some cousins, distant cousins, whom he
+hates. In fact, a lonely old bachelor, Dr. Arkroyd."
+
+Mary gave a little laugh and became less professional. "He's rather an
+old dear! He uses funny stately phrases. He said I might speak quite
+openly to you, as you were closely attached to his person!"
+
+"Sounds rather like a newspaper, doesn't it? He does talk like that
+sometimes." Beaumaroy moved round the table, came close to the fire, and
+stood there, smiling down at Mary.
+
+"He's very fond of you, I think," she went on.
+
+"He reposes entire confidence in me," said Beaumaroy, with a touch of
+assumed pompousness.
+
+"Those were his very words!" cried Mary, laughing again. "And he said it
+just in that way! How clever of you to guess!"
+
+"Not so very. He says it to me six times a week."
+
+Mary had risen, about to take her leave, but to her surprise Beaumaroy
+went on quickly, with one of his confidential smiles, "And now I'm going
+to show you that I have the utmost confidence in you. Please sit down
+again, Dr. Arkroyd. The matter concerns your patient just as much as
+myself, or I wouldn't trouble you with it, at any rate I shouldn't
+venture to so early in our acquaintance. I want you to consider yourself
+as Mr. Saffron's medical adviser, and, also, to try to imagine yourself
+my friend."
+
+"I've every inclination to be your friend, but I hardly know you, Mr.
+Beaumaroy."
+
+"And feel a few doubts about me? From what you've heard from myself, and
+perhaps from others?"
+
+The wind swished outside; save for that, the little room seemed very
+still. The professional character of the interview did not save it, for
+Mary Arkroyd, from a sudden and rather unwelcome sense of intimacy, of an
+intimacy thrust upon her, though not so much by her companion as by
+circumstances. She answered rather stiffly, "Perhaps I have some doubts."
+
+"You detect, very acutely, that I have a great influence over Mr.
+Saffron. You ask, very properly, whether he has relations. I think you
+threw out a feeler about his money affairs, whether he had anything to
+worry about was your phrase, wasn't it? Am I misinterpreting what was in
+your mind?"
+
+As he spoke, he offered her a cigarette from a box on the mantelpiece.
+She took one and lit it at the top of the lamp-chimney; then she sat
+down again in the big chair; she had not accepted his earlier invitation
+to resume her seat.
+
+"It was proper for me to put those questions, Mr. Beaumaroy. Mr. Saffron
+is not a sound man, and he's old. In normal conditions his relations
+should at least be warned of the position."
+
+"Exactly," Beaumaroy assented with an appearance of eagerness. "But he
+hates them. Any suggestion that they have any sort of claim on him
+raises strong resentment in him. I've known old men, old moneyed men,
+like that before, and no doubt you have. Well now, you'll begin to see
+the difficulty of my position. I'll put the case to you quite bluntly.
+Suppose Mr. Saffron, having this liking for me, this confidence in me,
+living here with me alone, except for servants; being, as one might say,
+exposed to my influence; suppose he took it into his head to make a will
+in my favor, to leave me all his money. It's quite a considerable sum,
+so far as our Wednesday doings enable me to judge. Suppose that
+happened, how should I stand in your opinion, Dr. Arkroyd? But wait a
+moment still. Suppose that my career has not been very, well,
+resplendent; that my army record is only so-so; that I've devoted myself
+to him with remarkable assiduity, as in fact I have; that I might be
+called, quite plausibly, an adventurer. Well, propounding that will, how
+should I stand before the world and, if necessary (he shrugged his
+shoulders), the Court?"
+
+Mary sat silent for a moment or two. Beaumaroy knelt down by the fire,
+rearranged the logs of wood which were smouldering there, and put on a
+couple more. From that position, looking into the grate, he added,
+"And the change of doctors? It was he, of course, who insisted on it,
+but I can see a clever lawyer using that against me too. Can't you,
+Dr. Arkroyd?"
+
+"I'm sure I wish you hadn't had to make the change!" exclaimed Mary.
+
+"So do I; though, mind you, I'm not pretending that Irechester is a
+favorite of mine, any more than he is of my old friend's. Still, there it
+is. I've no right, perhaps, to press my question, but your opinion would
+be of real value to me."
+
+"I see no reason to think that he's not quite competent to make a will,"
+said Doctor Mary. "And no real reason why he shouldn't prefer you to
+distant relations whom he dislikes."
+
+"Ah, no real reason; that's what you say! You mean that people would
+impute--"
+
+Mary Arkroyd had her limitations--of experience, of knowledge, of
+intuition. But she did not lack courage.
+
+"I have given you my professional opinion. It is that, so far as I see,
+Mr. Saffron is of perfectly sound understanding, and capable of making a
+valid will. You did me the honor--"
+
+"No, no!" he interrupted in a low but rather strangely vehement protest.
+"I begged the favor--"
+
+"As you like! The favor then, of asking me to give you my opinion as your
+friend, as well as my view as Mr. Saffron's doctor."
+
+Beaumaroy did not rise from his knees, but turned his face towards her;
+the logs had blazed up, and his eyes looked curiously bright in the
+glare, themselves, as it were, afire.
+
+"In my opinion a man of sensitive honor would prefer that that will
+should not be made, Mr. Beaumaroy," said Mary steadily.
+
+Beaumaroy appeared to consider. "I'm a bit posed by that point of view,
+Dr. Arkroyd," he said at last, "Either the old man's sane--_compos
+mentis,_ don't you call it?--or he isn't. If he is--"
+
+"I know. But I feel that way about it."
+
+"You'd have to give evidence for me!" He raised his brows and
+smiled at her.
+
+"There can be undue influence without actual want of mental
+competence, I think."
+
+"I don't know whether my influence is undue. I believe I'm the only
+creature alive who cares twopence for the poor old gentleman."
+
+"I know! I know! Mr. Beaumaroy, your position is very difficult. I see
+that. It really is. But, would you take the money for yourself? Aren't
+you--well, rather in the position of a trustee?"
+
+"Who for? The hated cousins? What's the reason in that?"
+
+"They may be very good people really. Old men take fancies, as you said
+yourself. And they may have built on--"
+
+"Stepping into a dead man's shoes? I dare say. Why mayn't I build on it
+too? Why not my hand against the other fellow's?"
+
+"That's what you learnt from the war! You said so--at Old Place. Captain
+Naylor said something different."
+
+"Suppose Alec Naylor and I, a hero and a damaged article," he smiled at
+Mary, and she smiled back with a sudden enjoyment of the humorous yet
+bitter tang in his voice, "loved the same woman, and I had a chance of
+her. Am I to give it up?"
+
+"Really we're getting a long way from medicine, Mr. Beaumaroy!"
+
+"Oh, you're a general practitioner! Wise on all subjects under heaven!
+Conceive yourself hesitating between him and me--"
+
+Mary laughed frankly. "How absurd you are! If you must go on talking,
+talk seriously."
+
+"But why am I absurd?"
+
+"Because, if I were a marrying woman, which I'm not, I shouldn't hesitate
+between you and Captain Naylor, not for a minute."
+
+"You'd jump at me?"
+
+Laughing again, his eyes had now a schoolboy merriment in them, Mary rose
+from the big chair. "At him, if I'm not being impolite, Mr. Beaumaroy."
+
+They stood face to face. For the first time for several years--Mary's
+girlhood had not been altogether empty of sentimental episodes--she
+blushed under a man's glance, because it was a man's. At this event, of
+which she was acutely conscious and at which she was intensely irritated,
+she drew herself up, with an attempt to return to her strictly
+professional manner.
+
+"I don't find you the least impolite, Dr. Arkroyd," said Beaumaroy.
+
+It was impudent, yet gay, dexterous, and elusive enough to avoid reproof.
+With no more than a little shake of her head and a light yet embarrassed
+laugh, Mary moved toward the door, her way lying between the table and an
+old oak sideboard, which stood against the wall. Some plates, knives, and
+other articles of the table lay strewn, none too tidily, about it.
+Beaumaroy followed her, smiling complacently, his hands in his pockets.
+
+Suddenly Mary came to a stop and pointed with her finger at the
+sideboard, turning her face towards her companion. At the same instant
+Beaumaroy's right hand shot out from his pocket towards the sideboard, as
+though to snatch up something from it. Then he drew the hand as swiftly
+back again; but his eyes watched Mary's with an alert and suspicious
+gaze. That was for a second only; then his face resumed its amused and
+nonchalant expression. But the movement of the hand and the look of the
+eyes had not escaped Mary's attention; her voice betrayed some surprise
+as she said:
+
+"It's only that I just happened to notice that combination knife-and-fork
+lying there, and I wondered who--"
+
+The article in question lay among some half-dozen ordinary knives and
+forks. It was of a kind quite familiar to Doctor Mary from her hospital
+experience, a fork on one side, a knife-blade on the other; an implement
+made for people who could command the use of only one hand.
+
+"Surely you've noticed my hand?" He drew his right hand again from the
+pocket to which he had so quickly returned it. "I used to use that in
+hospital, when I was bandaged up. But that's a long while ago now, and I
+can't think why Hooper's left it lying there."
+
+The account was plausible, and entirely the same might now be said of his
+face and manner. But Mary had seen the dart of his hand and the sudden
+alertness in his eyes. Her own rested on him for a moment with inquiry,
+for the first time with a hint of distrust. "I see!" she murmured
+vaguely, and, turning away from him, pursued her way to the door.
+Beaumaroy followed her with a queer smile on his lips; he shrugged his
+shoulders once, very slightly.
+
+A constraint had fallen on Mary. She allowed herself to be escorted to
+the car and helped into it in silence. Beaumaroy made no effort to force
+the talk, possibly by reason of the presence of Sergeant Hooper, who had
+arrived back from the chemist's with the medicine for Mr. Saffron just as
+Mary and Beaumaroy came out of the hall door. He stood by his bicycle,
+drawing just a little aside to let them pass, but not far enough to
+prevent the light from the passage showing up his ill-favored
+countenance.
+
+"Well, good-bye, Dr. Arkroyd. I'll see how he is to-morrow, and ask
+you to be kind enough to call again, if it seems advisable. And a
+thousand thanks."
+
+"Good-night, Mr. Beaumaroy."
+
+She started the car. Beaumaroy walked back to the hall door. Mary glanced
+behind her once, and saw him standing by it, again framed by the light
+behind him, as she had seen him on her arrival. But, this time, within
+the four corners of the same frame was included the forbidding visage of
+Sergeant Hooper.
+
+Beaumaroy returned to the fire in the parlor; Hooper, leaving his bicycle
+in the passage, followed him into the room and put the medicine bottle
+on the table. Smiling at him, Beaumaroy pointed at the combination
+knife-and-fork.
+
+"Is it your fault or mine that that damned thing's lying there?" he
+asked.
+
+"Yours," answered the Sergeant without hesitation and with his habitual
+surliness. "I cleaned it and put it out for you to lock away, as usual.
+Suppose you went and forgot it, sir!"
+
+Beaumaroy shook his head in self-condemnation and a humorous dismay.
+"That's it! I went and forgot it, Sergeant. And I think, I rather think,
+that Doctor Mary smells a rat, though she is, at present, far from
+guessing the color of the animal!"
+
+The words sounded scornful; they were spoken for the Sergeant as well as
+for himself. He was looking amused and kindly, even rather tenderly
+amused; as though liking and pity were the emotions which most actively
+survived his first private conversation with Doctor Mary, in spite of
+that mishap of the combination knife-and-fork.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+ODD STORY OF CAPTAIN DUGGLE
+
+
+Christmas Day of 1918 was a merry feast, and nowhere merrier than at Old
+Place. There was a house-party and, for dinner on the day itself, a local
+contingent as well: Miss Wall, the Irechesters, Mr. Penrose, and Doctor
+Mary. Mr. Beaumaroy also had been invited by Mrs. Naylor; she considered
+him an interesting man and felt pity for the obvious _ennui_ of his
+situation; but he had not felt able to leave his old friend. Doctor
+Mary's Paying Guest was of the house-party, not merely a dinner guest.
+She was asked over to spend three days and went, accompanied by Jeanne,
+who by this time was crying much less; crying was no longer the cue; her
+mistress, and not merely stern Doctor Mary, had plainly shown her that.
+Gertie Naylor had invited Cynthia to help her in entertaining the
+subalterns, though Gertie was really quite equal to that task herself;
+there were only three of them, and if a pretty girl is not equal to three
+subalterns, well, what are we coming to in England? And, as it turned
+out, Miss Gertie had to deal with them all, sometimes collectively,
+sometimes one by one, practically unassisted. Cynthia was otherwise
+engaged. Gertie complained neither of the cause nor of its consequence.
+
+The drink, or drugs, hypothesis was exploded, and Miss Wall's
+speculations set at rest, with a quite comforting solatium of romantic
+and unhappy interest, "a nice tit-bit for the old cat," as Mr. Naylor
+unkindly put it. Cynthia had told her story; she wanted a richer sympathy
+than Doctor Mary's common-sense afforded; out of this need the revelation
+came to Gertie in innocent confidence, and, with the narrator's tacit
+approval, ran through the family and its intimate friends. If Cynthia had
+been as calculating as she was guileless, she could not have done better
+for herself. Mrs. Naylor's motherliness, old Naylor's courtliness,
+Gertie's breathless concern and avid appetite for the fullest detail,
+everybody's desire to console and cheer, all these were at her service,
+all enlisted in the effort to make her forget, and live and laugh again.
+Her heart responded; she found herself becoming happy at a rate which
+made her positively ashamed. No wonder tactful Jeanne discovered that the
+cue was changed!
+
+Fastidious old Naylor regarded his wife with the affection of habit and
+with a little disdain for the ordinariness of her virtues--not to say of
+the mind which they adorned. His daughter was to him a precious toy, on
+which he tried jokes, played tricks, and lavished gifts, for the joy of
+seeing the prettiness of her reactions to his treatment. It never
+occurred to him to think that his toy might be broken; fond as he was,
+his feeling for her lacked the apprehensiveness of the deepest love. But
+he idolized his son, and in this case neither without fear nor without
+understanding. For four years now he had feared for him bitterly: for
+his body, for his life. At every waking hour his inner cry had been
+even as David's, "Would God I had died for thee, my son, my son!" For at
+every moment of those four years it might be that his son was even then
+dead. That terror, endured under a cool and almost off-hand demeanor,
+was past; but he feared for his son still. Of all who went to the war as
+Crusaders, none had the temperament more ardently than Alec. As he went,
+so, obviously, he had come back, not disillusioned, nay, with all his
+illusions, or delusions, about this wicked world and its possibilities,
+about the people who dwell in it and their lamentable limitations,
+stronger in his mind than ever. How could he get through life without
+being too sorely hurt and wounded, without being cut to the very quick
+by his inevitable discoveries? Old Naylor did not see how it was to be
+done, or even hoped for; but the right kind of wife was unquestionably
+the best chance.
+
+He had cast a speculative eye on Cynthia Walford, Irechester had caught
+him at it, but, as he observed her more, she did not altogether satisfy
+him. Alec needed someone more stable, stronger, someone in a sense
+protective; somebody more like Mary Arkroyd; that idea passed through his
+thoughts; if only Mary would take the trouble to dress herself, remember
+that she was, or might be made, an attractive young woman; and, yes,
+throw her mortar and pestle out of the window without, however,
+discarding with them the sturdy, sane, balanced qualities of mind which
+enabled her to handle them with such admirable competence. But he soon
+had to put this idea from him. His son's own impulse was to give, not to
+seek, protection and support.
+
+Of Cynthia's woeful experience Alec had spoken to his father once
+only: "It makes me mad to think the fellow who did that wore a
+British uniform!"
+
+How unreasonable! Since by all the laws of average, when millions of men
+are wearing a uniform, there must be some rogues in it. But it was Alec's
+way to hold himself responsible for the whole of His Majesty's Forces.
+Their honor was his; for their misdeeds he must in his own person make
+reparation. "That fellow Beaumaroy may have lost his conscience, but my
+boy seems to have acquired five million," the old man grumbled to
+himself--a grumble full of pride.
+
+The father might analyze; with Alec it was all impulse, the impulse to
+soothe, to obliterate, to atone. The girl had been sorely hurt; with
+the acuteness of sympathy he divined that she felt herself in a way
+soiled and stained by contact with unworthiness and by a too easy
+acceptance of it. All that must be swept out of her heart, out of her
+memory, if it could be.
+
+Doctor Mary saw what was happening, and with a little pang to which she
+would not have liked to own. She had set love affairs, and all the
+notions connected therewith, behind her; but she had idealized Alec
+Naylor a little; and she thought Cynthia, in homely phrase, "hardly good
+enough." Was it not rather perverse that the very fact of having been a
+little goose should help her to win so rare a swan?
+
+"You're taking my patient out of my hands, Captain Alec!" she said to
+him jokingly. "And you're devoting great attention to the case."
+
+He flushed. "She seems to like to talk to me," he answered simply. "She
+seems to me to have rather a remarkable mind, Doctor Mary." (She was
+"Doctor Mary" to all the Old Place party now, in affection, with a touch
+of chaff.)
+
+_O sancta simplicitas_! Mary longed to say; that Cynthia was a very
+ordinary child. Like to talk to him, indeed! Of course she did; and to
+use her girl's weapons on him; and to wonder, in an almost awestruck
+delight, at their effect on this dazzling hero. Well, the guilelessness
+of heroes!
+
+So mused Mary, on the unprofessional side of her mind, as she watched,
+that Christmastide, Captain Alec's delicate, sensitively indirect, and
+delayed approach toward the ripe fruit that hung so ready to his hand.
+"Part of his chivalry to assume she can't think of him yet!" Mary was
+half-impatient, half-reluctantly admiring; not an uncommon mixture of
+feeling for the extreme forms of virtue to produce. In the net result,
+however, her marked image of Alec lost something of its heroic
+proportions.
+
+But professionally (the distinction must not be pushed too far, she was
+not built in watertight compartments) Tower Cottage remained obstinately
+in the center of her thoughts; and, connected with it, there arose a
+puzzle over Dr. Irechester's demeanor. She had taken advantage of
+Beaumaroy's permission, though rather doubtful whether she was doing
+right, for she was still inexperienced in niceties of etiquette, and sent
+on the letter, with a frank note explaining her own feelings and the
+reason which had caused her to pay her visit to Mr. Saffron. But though
+Irechester was quite friendly when they met at Old Place before dinner,
+and talked freely to her during a rather prolonged period of waiting
+(Captain Alec and Cynthia, Gertie and two subalterns were very late,
+having apparently forgotten dinner in more refined delights), he made no
+reference to the letters, nor to Tower Cottage or its inmates. Mary
+herself was too shy to break the ice, but wondered at his silence, and
+the more because the matter evidently had not gone out of his mind. For
+after dinner, when the port had gone round once and the proper healths
+been honored, he said across the table to Mr. Penrose:
+
+"We were talking the other day of the Tower, on the heath, you know, by
+old Saffron's cottage, and none of us knew its history. You know all
+about Inkston from time out o' mind. Have you got any story about it?"
+
+Mr. Penrose practiced as a solicitor in London, but lived in a little old
+house near the Irechesters' in the village street, and devoted his
+leisure to the antiquities and topography of the neighborhood; his lore
+was plentiful and curious, if not important. He was a small, neat old
+fellow, with white whiskers of the antique cut, a thin voice, and a dry
+cackling laugh.
+
+"There was a story about it, and one quite fit for Christmas evening, if
+you're in the mood to hear it."
+
+The thin voice was penetrating. At the promise of a story silence fell on
+the company, and Mr. Penrose told his tale, vouching as his authority an
+erstwhile "oldest inhabitant," now gathered to his fathers; for the tale
+dated back some eighty years, to the date of the ancient's early manhood.
+
+A seafaring man had suddenly appeared, out of space, as it were, at
+Inkston, and taken the cottage. He carried with him a strong smell of rum
+and tobacco, and gave it to be understood that his name was Captain
+Duggle. He was no beauty, and his behavior was worse than his looks. To
+that quiet village, in those quiet strait-laced times, he was a horror
+and a portent. He not only drank prodigiously--that, being in character
+and also a source of local profit, might have passed with mild
+censure--but he swore and blasphemed horribly, spurning the parson,
+mocking at Revelation, even at the Deity Himself. The Devil was his
+friend, he said. A most terrible fellow, this Captain Duggle. Inkston's
+hair stood on end, and no wonder!
+
+"No doubt they shivered with delight over it all," commented Mr. Naylor.
+
+Captain Duggle lived all by himself--well, what God-fearing Christian,
+male or female, would be found to live with him--came and went
+mysteriously and capriciously, always full of money, and at least equally
+full of drink! What he did with himself nobody knew, but evil legends
+gathered about him. Terrified wayfarers, passing the cottage by night,
+took oath that they had heard more than one voice!
+
+"This is proper Christmas!" a subaltern interjected into Gertie's ear.
+
+Mr. Penrose, with an air of gratification, continued his narrative.
+
+"The story goes on to tell," he said, "of a final interview with the
+village clergyman, in which that reverend man, as in duty bound, solemnly
+told Captain Duggle that however much he might curse, and blaspheme, and
+drink, and, er, do all the other things that the Captain did (obviously
+here Mr. Penrose felt hampered by the presence of ladies), yet Death,
+Judgment, and Churchyard wait for him at last. Whereupon the Captain,
+emitting an inconceivably terrific imprecation, which no one ever dared
+to repeat and which consequently is lost to tradition, declared that the
+first he'd never feared, the second was parson's gabble, and as to the
+third, never should his dead toes be nearer any church than for the last
+forty years his living feet had been! If so be as he wasn't drowned at
+sea, he'd make a grave for himself!"
+
+Mr. Penrose paused, sipped port wine, and resumed.
+
+"And so, no doubt, he did, building the Tower for that purpose. By bribes
+and threats he got two men to work for him. One was the uncle of my
+informant. But though he built that Tower, and inside it dug his grave,
+he never lay there, being, as things turned out, carried off by the
+Devil. Oh, yes, there was no doubt! He went home one night, a Saturday,
+very drunk, as usual. On the Sunday night a belated wayfarer, possibly
+also drunk, heard wild shrieks and saw a strange red glow through the
+window of the Tower, now, by the way, boarded up. And no doubt he'd have
+smelt brimstone if the wind hadn't set the wrong way! Anyhow Captain
+Duggle was never seen again by mortal eyes, at Inkston, at all events.
+After a time the landlord of the cottage screwed up his courage to resume
+possession; the Captain had only a lease of it, though he built the Tower
+at his own charges, and, I believe, without any permission, the landlord
+being much too frightened to interfere with him. He found everything in a
+sad mess in the house, while in the Tower itself every blessed stick had
+been burnt up. So the story looks pretty plausible."
+
+"And the grave?" This question came eagerly from at least three of
+the company.
+
+"In front of the fireplace there was a big oblong hole--six feet by
+three, by four--planks at the bottom, the sides roughly lined with brick.
+Captain Duggle's grave; but he wasn't in it!"
+
+"But what really became of him, Mr. Penrose?" cried Cynthia.
+
+"The Rising Generation is very skeptical," said old Naylor. "You, of
+course, Penrose, believe the story?"
+
+"I do," said Mr. Penrose composedly. "I believe that a devil carried him
+off, and that its name was _delirium tremens_. We can guess, can't we,
+Irechester, why he smashed or burnt everything, and fled in mad terror
+into the darkness? Where to? Was he drowned at sea, or did he take his
+life, or did he rot to death in some filthy hole? Nobody knows. But the
+grave he dug is there in the Tower, unless it's been filled up since old
+Saffron has lived there."
+
+"Why in the world wasn't it filled up before?" asked Alec Naylor with a
+laugh. "People lived in the cottage, didn't they?"
+
+"I've visited the cottage often," Irechester interposed, "when various
+people had it, but I never saw any signs of the Tower being used."
+
+"It never was, I'm sure; and as for the grave, well, Alec, in country
+parts, to this day, you'd be thought a bold man if you filled up a grave
+that your neighbor had dug for himself, and such a neighbor as Captain
+Duggle! He might take it into his head some night to visit it, and if he
+found it filled up there'd be trouble, nasty trouble!" His laugh cackled
+out rather uncomfortably. Gertie shivered, and one of the subalterns
+gulped down his port.
+
+"Old Saffron's a man of education, I believe. No doubt he pays no heed to
+such nonsense, and has had the thing covered up," said Naylor.
+
+"As to that I don't know. Perhaps you do, Irechester? He's your patient,
+isn't he?"
+
+Dr. Irechester sat four places from Mary. Before he replied to the
+question he cast a glance at her, smiling rather mockingly. "I've
+attended him on one or two occasions, but I've never seen the inside of
+the Tower. So I don't know either."
+
+"Oh, but I'm curious! I shall ask Mr. Beaumaroy," cried Cynthia.
+
+The ironical character of Irechester's smile grew more pronounced, and
+his voice was at its driest: "Certainly you can ask Beaumaroy, Miss
+Walford. As far as asking goes, there's no difficulty."
+
+A pause followed this pointed remark, on which nobody seemed disposed to
+comment. Mrs. Naylor ended the session by rising from her chair.
+
+But Mary Arkroyd was disquieted, worried as to how she stood with
+Irechester, vaguely but insistently worried over the whole Tower
+Cottage business. Well, the first point she could soon settle, or try
+to settle, anyhow.
+
+With the directness which marked her action when once her mind was made
+up, she waylaid Irechester as he came into the drawing-room; her resolute
+approach sufficed to detach Naylor from him; he found himself for the
+moment isolated from everybody except Mary.
+
+"You got my letter, Dr. Irechester? I--I rather expected an answer."
+
+"Your conduct was so obviously and punctiliously correct," he replied
+suavely, "that I thought my answer could wait till I met you here to-day,
+as I knew that I was to have the pleasure of doing." He looked her full
+in the eyes. "You were placed, my dear colleague, in a position in which
+you had no alternative."
+
+"I thought so, Dr. Irechester, but--"
+
+"Oh yes, clearly! I'm far from making any complaint." He gave her a
+courteous little bow, but it was one which plainly closed the subject.
+Indeed he passed by her and joined a group that had gathered on the
+hearthrug, leaving her alone.
+
+So she stood for a minute, oppressed by a growing uneasiness.
+Irechester said nothing, but surely meant something of import? He
+mocked her, but not idly or out of wantonness. He seemed almost to warn
+her. What could there be to warn her about? He had laid an odd emphasis
+on the word "placed"; he had repeated it. Who had "placed" her there?
+Mr. Saffron? Or--
+
+Alec Naylor broke in on her uneasy meditation. "It's a clinking night,
+Doctor Mary," he observed. "Do you mind if I walk Miss Walford home,
+instead of her going with you in your car, you know? It's only a couple
+of miles and--"
+
+"Do you think your leg can stand it?"
+
+He laughed. "I'll cut the thing off, if it dares to make any objection!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A GENTLEMANLY STRANGER
+
+
+On this same Christmas Day Sergeant Hooper was feeling morose and
+discontented; not because he was alone in the world (a situation
+comprising many advantages), nor on the score of his wages, which were
+extremely liberal; nor on account of the "old blighter's"--that is, Mr.
+Saffron's--occasional outbursts of temper, these being in the nature of
+the case and within the terms of the contract; nor, finally, by reason of
+Beaumaroy's airy insolence, since from his youth up the Sergeant was
+hardened to unfavorable comments on his personal appearance, trifling
+vulgarities which a man of sense could afford to ignore.
+
+No; the winter of his discontent--a bitter winter--was due to the
+conviction, which had been growing in his mind for some time, that he
+was only in half the secret, and that not the more profitable half. He
+knew that the old blighter had to be humored in certain small ways, as,
+for example, in regard to the combination knife-and-fork--and the reason
+for it. But, first, he did not know what happened inside the Tower; he
+had never seen the inside of it; the door was always locked; he was never
+invited to accompany his masters when they repaired thither by day, and
+he was not on the premises by night. And, secondly, he did not understand
+the Wednesday journeys to London, and he had never seen the inside of
+Beaumaroy's brown bag--that, like the Tower door, was always locked. He
+had handled it once, just before the pair set out for London one
+Wednesday. Beaumaroy, a careless man sometimes, in spite of the cunning
+which Dr. Irechester attributed to him, had left it on the parlor table
+while he helped Mr. Saffron on with his coat in the passage, and the
+Sergeant had swiftly and surreptitiously lifted it up. It was very light,
+obviously empty, or, at all events, holding only featherweight contents.
+He had never got near it when it came back from town; then it always went
+straight into the Tower and had the key turned on it forthwith.
+
+But the Sergeant, although slow-witted as well as ugly, had had his
+experiences; he had carried weights both in the army and in other
+institutions which are officially described as His Majesty's, and had
+seen other men carry them too. From the set of Beaumaroy's figure as he
+arrived home on at least two occasions with the brown bag, and from the
+way in which he handled it, the Sergeant confidently drew the conclusion
+that it was of a considerable, almost a grievous, weight. What was the
+heavy thing in it? What became of that thing after it was taken into the
+Tower? To whose use or profit did it, or was it, to inure? Certainly it
+was plain, even to the meanest capacity, that the contents of the bag had
+a value in the eyes of the two men who went to London for them and who
+shepherded them from London to the custody of the Tower.
+
+These thoughts filled and racked his brain as he sat drinking rum and
+water in the bar of the _Green Man_ on Christmas evening; a solitary man,
+mixing little with the people of the village, he sat apart at a small
+table in the corner, musing within himself, yet idly watching the
+company--villagers, a few friends from London and elsewhere, some
+soldiers and their ladies. Besides these, a tall slim man stood leaning
+against the bar, at the far end of it, talking to Bill Smithers, the
+landlord, and sipping whisky-and-soda between pulls at his cigar. He wore
+a neat dark overcoat, brown shoes, and a bowler hat rather on one side;
+his appearance was, in fact, genteel, though his air was a trifle
+raffish. In age he seemed about forty. The Sergeant had never seen him
+before, and therefore favored him with a glance of special attention.
+
+Oddly enough, the gentlemanly stranger seemed to reciprocate the
+Sergeant's interest; he gave him quite a long glance. Then he finished
+his whisky-and-soda, spoke a word to Bill Smithers, and lounged across
+the room to where the Sergeant sat.
+
+"It's poor work drinking alone on Christmas night," he observed. "May I
+join you? I've ordered a little something, and, well, we needn't bother
+about offering a gentleman a glass tonight."
+
+The Sergeant eyed him with apparent disfavor--as, indeed, he did
+everybody who approached him--but a nod of his head accorded the desired
+permission. Smithers came across with a bottle of brandy and glasses.
+"Good stuff!" said the stranger, as he sat down, filled the glasses, and
+drank his off. "The best thing to top up with, believe me!"
+
+The Sergeant, in turn, drained his glass, maintaining, however, his
+aloofness of demeanor. "What's up?" he growled.
+
+"What's in the brown bag?" asked the stranger lightly and urbanely.
+
+The Sergeant did not start; he was too old a hand for that; but his
+small gimlet eyes searched his new acquaintance's face very keenly.
+"You know a lot!"
+
+"More than you do in some directions, less in others, perhaps. Shall I
+begin? Because we've got to confide in one another, Sergeant. A little
+story of what two gentlemen do in London on Wednesdays, and of what they
+carry home in a brown leather bag? Would that interest you? Oh, that
+stuff in the brown leather bag! Hard to come by now, isn't it? But they
+know where there's still some, and so do I, to remark it incidentally.
+There were actually some people, Sergeant Hooper, who distrusted the
+righteousness of the British Cause, which is to say (the stranger smiled
+cynically) the certainty of our licking the Germans, and they hoarded it,
+the villains!"
+
+Sergeant Hooper stretched out his hand towards the bottle. "Allow me!"
+said the stranger politely. "I observe that your hand trembles a little."
+
+It did. The Sergeant was excited. The stranger seemed to be touching on a
+subject which always excited the Sergeant--to the point of hands
+trembling, twitching, and itching.
+
+"Have to pay for it, too! Thirty bob in curl-twisters for every ruddy
+disc; that's the figure now, or thereabouts. What do they want to do
+it for? What's your governor's game? Who, in short, is going to get
+off with it?"
+
+"What is it they does, the old blighter and Boomery (thus he pronounced
+the name Beaumaroy), in London?"
+
+"First to the stockbroker's, then to a bank or two, I've known it three
+even; then a taxi down East, and a call at certain addresses. The bag's
+with 'em, Sergeant, and at each call it gets heavier. I've seen it swell,
+so to speak."
+
+"Who in hell are you?" the Sergeant grunted huskily.
+
+"Names later--after the usual guarantees of good faith."
+
+The whole conversation, carried on in low tones, had passed under cover
+of noisy mirth, snatches of song, banter, and gigglings; nobody paid heed
+to the two men talking in a corner. Yet the stranger lowered his voice
+to a whisper, as he added:
+
+"From me to you fifty quid on account; from you to me just a sight of the
+place where they put it."
+
+Sergeant Hooper drank, smoked, and pondered. The stranger showed the edge
+of a roll of notes, protruding it from his breast-pocket. The Sergeant
+nodded, he understood that part. But there was much that he did not
+understand. "It fair beats me what the blazes they're doing it _for_," he
+broke out.
+
+"Whose money would it be?"
+
+"The old blighter's, o' course. Boomery's stony, except for his screw."
+He looked hard at the gentlemanly stranger, and a slow smile came on his
+lips, "That's your idea, is it, mister?"
+
+"Gentleman's old, looks frail, might go off suddenly. What then? Friends
+turn up, always do when you're dead, you know. Well, what of it? Less
+money in the funds than was reckoned; dear old gentleman doesn't cut up
+as well as they hoped! And meanwhile our friend B----! Does it dawn on
+you at all, from our friend B----'s point of view, Sergeant? I may be
+wrong, but that's my provisional conjecture. The question remains how
+he's got the old gent into the game, doesn't it?"
+
+Precisely the point to which the Sergeant's mind also had turned! The
+knowledge which he possessed--that half of the secret--and which his
+companion did not, might be very material to a solution of the problem;
+the Sergeant did not mean to share it prematurely, without necessity, or
+for nothing. But surely it had a bearing on the case? Dull-witted as he
+was, the Sergeant seemed to catch a glimmer of light, and mentally groped
+towards it.
+
+"Well, we can't sit here all night," said the stranger in good-humored
+impatience. "I've a train to catch."
+
+"There's no train up from here to-night."
+
+"There is from Sprotsfield. I shall walk over."
+
+The Sergeant smiled. "Oh, if you're walking to Sprotsfield, I'll put you
+on your way. If anybody was to see us, Boomery, for instance, he couldn't
+complain of my seeing an old pal on his way on Christmas night. No 'arm
+in that; no look of prowling, or spying, or such like! And you are an old
+pal, ain't you?"
+
+"Certainly; your old pal--let me see--your old pal Percy Bennett."
+
+"As it might he, or as it might not. What about the--" He pointed to
+Percy Bennett's breast-pocket.
+
+"I'll give it you outside. You don't want me to be seen handing it over
+in here, do you?"
+
+The Sergeant had one more question to ask. "About 'ow much d'ye reckon
+there might be by now?"
+
+"How often have they been to London? Because they don't come to see my
+friends every time, I fancy."
+
+"Must 'ave been six or seven times by now. The game began soon after
+Boomery and I came 'ere."
+
+"Then, quite roughly, quite a shot, from what I know of the deals we--my
+friends, I mean--did with them, and reasoning from that, there might be a
+matter of seven or eight thousand pounds."
+
+The Sergeant whistled softly, rose, and led the way to the door. The
+gentlemanly stranger paused at the bar to pay for the brandy, and after
+bidding the landlord a civil good-evening, with the compliments of the
+season, followed the Sergeant into the village street.
+
+Fifteen minutes' brisk walk brought them to Hinton Avenue. At the end of
+it they passed Doctor Mary's house; the drawing-room curtains were not
+drawn; on the blind they saw reflected the shadows of a man and a girl,
+standing side by side. "Mistletoe, eh?" remarked the stranger. The
+Sergeant spat on the road; they resumed their way, pursuing the road
+across the heath.
+
+It was fine, but overclouded and decidedly dark. Every now and then
+Bennett, to call the stranger by what was almost confessedly a
+_nom-de-guerre,_ flashed a powerful electric torch on the roadway.
+"Don't want to walk into a gorse-bush," he explained with a laugh.
+
+"Put it away, you darned fool! We're nearly there."
+
+The stranger obeyed. In another seven or eight minutes there loomed up,
+on the left hand, the dim outline of Mr. Saffron's abode--the square
+cottage with the odd round tower annexed.
+
+"There you are!" The Sergeant's voice instinctively kept to a whisper.
+"That's what you want to see."
+
+"But I can't see it--not so as to get any clear idea."
+
+No lights showed from the cottage, nor, of course, from the Tower; its
+only window had been, as Mr. Penrose said, boarded up. The wind--there
+was generally a wind on the heath--stirred the fir-trees and the bushes
+into a soft movement and a faint murmur of sound. A very acute and alert
+ear might perhaps have caught another sound--footfalls on the road, a
+good long way behind them. The two spies, or scouts, did not hear them;
+their attention was elsewhere.
+
+"Probably they're both in bed; it's quite safe to make our examination,"
+said the stranger.
+
+"Yes, I s'pose it is. But look to be ready to douse your glim. Boomery's
+a nailer at turning up unexpected." The Sergeant seemed rather nervous.
+
+Mr. Bennett was not. He took out his torch, and guided by its light
+(which, however, he took care not to throw towards the cottage windows)
+he advanced to the garden gate, the Sergeant following, and took a survey
+of the premises. It was remarkable that, as the light of the torch beamed
+out, the faint sound of footfalls on the road behind died away.
+
+"Keep an eye on the windows, and touch my elbow if any light shows. Don't
+speak." The stranger was at business--his business--now, and his voice
+became correspondingly businesslike. "We won't risk going inside the
+gate. I can see from here." Indeed he very well could; Tower Cottage
+stood back no more than twelve or fifteen feet from the road, and the
+torch was powerful.
+
+For four or five minutes the stranger made his examination. Then he
+turned off his torch. "Looks easy," he remarked, "but of course there's
+the garrison." Once more he turned on his light, to look at his watch.
+"Can't stop now, or I shall miss the train, and I don't want to have to
+get a bed at Sprotsfield. A strayed reveler on Christmas night might be
+too well remembered. Got an address?"
+
+"Care of Mrs. Willnough, Laundress, Inkston."
+
+"Right. Good-night." With a quick turn he was off along the road to
+Sprotsfield. The Sergeant saw the gleam of his torch once or twice,
+receding at quite a surprising pace into the distance. Feeling the wad of
+notes in his pocket--perhaps to make sure that the whole episode had not
+been a dream--the Sergeant turned back towards Inkston.
+
+After a couple of minutes, a tall figure emerged from the shelter of a
+high and thick gorse bush just opposite Tower Cottage, on the other side
+of the road. Captain Alec Naylor had seen the light of the stranger's
+torch, and, after four years in France, he was well skilled in the art of
+noiseless approach. But he felt that, for the moment at least, his brain
+was less agile than his feet. He had been suddenly wrenched out of one
+set of thoughts into another profoundly different. It was his shadow,
+together with Cynthia Walford's, that the Sergeant and the stranger had
+seen on Doctor Mary's blind. After "walking her home," he had--well, just
+not proposed to Cynthia, restrained more by those scruples of his than by
+any ungraciousness on the part of the lady. Even his modesty could not
+blind him to this fact. He was full of pity, of love, of a man's joyous
+sense of triumph, half wishing that he had made his proposal, half glad
+that he had not, just because it, and its radiant promise, could still be
+dangled in the bright vision of the future. He was in the seventh heaven
+of romance, and his heaven was higher than that which most men reach; it
+was built on loftier foundations.
+
+Then came the flash of the torch; the high spirits born of one experience
+sought an outlet in another. "By Jove, I'll track 'em--like old times!"
+he murmured, with a low light laugh. And, just for fun, he did it, taking
+to the heath beside the road, twisting his long body in and out amongst
+gorse, heather, and bracken, very noiselessly, with wonderful dexterity.
+The light of the lamp was continuous now; the stranger was making his
+examination. By it Captain Alec guided his steps; and he arrived behind
+the tall gorse bush opposite Tower Cottage just in time to hear the
+Sergeant say "Mrs. Willnough, Laundress, Inkston," and to witness the
+parting of the two companions.
+
+There was very little to go upon there. Why should not one friend give
+another an address? But the examination? Beaumaroy should surely know of
+that? It might be nothing, but, on the other hand, it might have a
+meaning. But the men had gone, had obviously parted for the night.
+Beaumaroy could be told to-morrow; now he himself could go back to his
+visions--and so homeward, in happiness, to his bed.
+
+Having reached this sensible conclusion, he was about to turn away from
+the garden gate which he now stood facing, when he heard the house door
+softly open and as softly shut. The practice of his profession had given
+him keen eyes in the dark; he discovered Beaumaroy's tall figure stealing
+very cautiously down the narrow, flagged path. The next instant the light
+of another torch flashed out, and this time not in the distance, but full
+in his own face.
+
+"By God, you, Naylor!" Beaumaroy exclaimed in a voice which was low but
+full of surprise. "I--I--well, it's rather late--"
+
+Alec Naylor was suddenly struck with the element of humor in the
+situation. He had been playing detective; apparently he was now the
+suspected!
+
+"Give me time and I'll explain all," he said, smiling under the dazzling
+rays of the torch.
+
+Beaumaroy glanced round at the house for a second, pursed up his lips
+into one of the odd little contortions which he sometimes allowed
+himself, and said: "Well, then, old chap, come in and have a drink, and
+do it. For I'm hanged if I see why you should stand staring into this
+garden in the middle of the night! With your opportunities I should be
+better employed on Christmas evening."
+
+"You really want me to come in?" It was now Captain Alec's voice which
+expressed surprise.
+
+"Why the devil not?" asked Beaumaroy in a tone of frank but friendly
+impatience.
+
+He turned and led the way into Tower Cottage. Somehow this invitation to
+enter was the last thing that Captain Alec had expected.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+CAPTAIN ALEC RAISES HIS VOICE
+
+
+Beaumaroy led the way into the parlor, Captain Alec following. "Well, I
+thought your old friend didn't care to see strangers," he said,
+continuing the conversation.
+
+"He was tired and fretful to-night, so I got him to bed, and gave him a
+soothing draught--one that our friend Dr. Arkroyd sent him. He went
+off like a lamb, poor old boy. If we don't talk too loud we sha'n't
+disturb him."
+
+"I can tell you what I have to tell in a few minutes."
+
+"Don't hurry." Beaumaroy was bringing the refreshment he had offered from
+the sideboard. "I'm feeling lonely to-night, so I--" he smiled--"yielded
+to the impulse to ask you to come in, Naylor. However, let's have the
+story by all means."
+
+The surprise--it might almost have been taken for alarm--which he had
+shown at the first sight of Alec seemed to have given place to a gentle
+and amiable weariness, which persisted through the recital of the
+Captain's experiences--how his errand of courtesy, or gallantry, had led
+to his being on the road across the heath so late at night, and of what
+he had seen there.
+
+"You copped them properly!" Beaumaroy remarked at the end, with a lazy
+smile. "One does learn a trick or two in France. You couldn't see their
+faces, I suppose?"
+
+"No; too dark. I didn't dare show a light, though I had one. Besides,
+their backs were towards me. One looked tall and thin, the other short
+and stumpy. But I should never be able to swear to either."
+
+"And they went off in different directions, you say?"
+
+"Yes, the tall one towards Sprotsfield, the short one back towards
+Inkston."
+
+"Oh, the short stumpy one it was who turned back to Inkston?" Beaumaroy
+had seated himself on a low three-legged stool, opposite to the big
+chair where Alec sat, and was smoking his pipe, his hands clasped round
+his knees. "It doesn't seem to me to come to much, though I'm much
+obliged to you all the same. The short one's probably a local, the other
+a stranger, and the local was probably seeing his friend part of the way
+home, and incidentally showing him one of the sights of the neighborhood.
+There are stories about this old den, you know--ancient traditions. It's
+said to be haunted, and what not."
+
+"Funnily enough, we had the story to-night at dinner, at our house."
+
+"Had you now?" Beaumaroy looked up quickly. "What, all about--"
+
+"Captain Duggle, and the Devil, and the grave, and all that."
+
+"Who told you the story?"
+
+"Old Mr. Penrose. Do you know him? Lives in High Street, near the
+Irechesters."
+
+"I think I know him by sight. So he entertained you with that old yarn,
+did he? And that same old yarn probably accounts for the nocturnal
+examination which you saw going on. It was a little excitement for you,
+to reward you for your politeness to Miss Walford!"
+
+Alec flushed, but answered frankly: "I needed no reward for that." His
+feelings got the better of him; he was very full of feelings that night,
+and wanted to be sympathized with. "Beaumaroy, do you know that girl's
+story?" Beaumaroy shook his head, and listened to it. Captain Alec ended
+on his old note: "To think of the scoundrel using the King's uniform
+like that!"
+
+"Rotten! But, er, don't raise your voice." He pointed to the ceiling,
+smiling, and went on without further comment on Cynthia's ill-usage. "I
+suppose you intend to stick to the army, Naylor?"
+
+"Yes, certainly I do."
+
+"I'm discharged. After I came out of hospital they gave me sick leave,
+and constantly renewed it; and when the armistice came they gave me my
+discharge. They put it down to my wound, of course, but--well, I gathered
+the impression that I was considered no great loss." He had finished his
+pipe, and was now smiling reflectively.
+
+Captain Alec did not smile. Indeed he looked rather pained; he was
+remembering General Punnit's story: military inefficiency, even military
+imperfection, was for him no smiling matter. Beaumaroy did not appear to
+notice his disapproving gravity.
+
+"So I was at a loose end. I had sold up my business in Spain; I was there
+six or seven years, just as Captain--Captain--? Oh, Cranster, yes!--was
+in Bogota--when I joined up, and had no particular reason for going back
+there--and, incidentally, no money to go back with. So I took on this
+job, which came to me quite accidentally. I went into a Piccadilly bar
+one evening, and found my old man there, rather excited and declaiming a
+good deal of rot; seemed to have the war a bit on his brain. They started
+in to guy him, and I think one or two meant to hustle him, and perhaps
+take his money off him. I took his part, and there was a bit of a
+shindy. In the end I saw him home to his lodgings--he had a room in
+London for the night--and, to cut a long story short, we palled up, and
+he asked me to come and live with him. So here I am, and with me my
+Sancho Panza, the worthy ex-Sergeant Hooper. Perhaps I may be forgiven
+for impliedly comparing myself to Don Quixote, since that gentleman,
+besides his other characteristics, is generally agreed to have been mad."
+
+"Your Sancho Panza's no beauty," remarked the Captain drily.
+
+"And no saint either. Kicked out of the Service, and done time. That
+between ourselves."
+
+"Then why the devil do you have the fellow about?"
+
+"Beggars mustn't be choosers. Besides, I've a _penchant_ for failures."
+
+That was what General Punnit had said! Alec Naylor grew impatient.
+"That's the very spirit we have to fight against!" he exclaimed,
+rather hotly.
+
+"Forgive me, but, please, don't raise your voice."
+
+Alec lowered his voice, for a moment anyhow, but the central article
+of his creed was assailed, and he grew vehement. "It's fatal; it's at
+the root of all our troubles. Allow for failures in individuals, and
+you produce failure all round. It's tenderness to defaulters that
+wrecks discipline. I would have strict justice, but no mercy, not a
+shadow of it!"
+
+"But you said that day at your place that the war had made you
+tender-hearted."
+
+"Yes, I did, and it's true. Is it hard-hearted to refuse to let a slacker
+cost good men their lives? Much better take his, if it's got to be one or
+the other."
+
+"A cogent argument. But, my dear Naylor, I wish you wouldn't raise
+your voice."
+
+"Damn my voice!" said Alec, most vexatiously interrupted just as he
+had got into his stride. "You say things that I can't and won't let
+pass, and--"
+
+"I really wouldn't have asked you in, if I'd thought you'd raise
+your voice."
+
+Alec recollected himself. "My dear fellow, a thousand pardons! I forgot!
+The old gentleman!"
+
+"Exactly. But I'm afraid the mischief's done. Listen!" Again he pointed
+to the ceiling, but his eyes set on Captain Alec with a queer, rueful,
+humorous expression. "I was an ass to ask you in. But I'm no good at it,
+that's the fact. I'm always giving the show away!" he grumbled, half to
+himself, but not inaudibly.
+
+Alec stared at him for a moment in puzzle, but the next instant his
+attention was diverted. Another voice besides his was raised; the sound
+of it came through the ceiling from the room above; the words were not
+audible; the volubility of the utterance in itself went far to prevent
+them from being distinguishable; but the high, vibrant, metallic tones
+rang through the house. It was a rush of noise, sharp grating noise,
+without a meaning. The effect was weird, very uncomfortable. Alec Naylor
+knit his brows, and once gave a little shiver, as he listened. Beaumaroy
+sat quite still, the expression in his eyes unaltered, or, if altered at
+all, it grew softer, as though with pity or affection.
+
+"Good God, Beaumaroy, are you keeping a lunatic in this house?" He might
+raise his voice as loud as he pleased now, it was drowned by that other.
+
+"I'm not keeping him, he's keeping me. And, anyhow, his medical adviser
+tells me there is no reason to suppose that my old friend is not
+_compos mentis_."
+
+"Irechester says that?"
+
+"Mr. Saffron's medical attendant is Dr. Arkroyd."
+
+As he spoke the noise from above suddenly ceased. Since neither of the
+men in the parlor spoke, there ensued a minute of what seemed intense
+silence; it was such a change.
+
+Then came a still small sound, a creaking of wood from overhead.
+
+"I think you'd better go, Naylor, if you don't mind. After a performance
+of that kind he generally comes and tells me about it. And he may be, I
+don't know at all for certain, annoyed to find you here."
+
+Alec Naylor got up from the big chair, but it was not to take his
+departure.
+
+"I want to see him, Beaumaroy," he said brusquely and rather
+authoritatively.
+
+Beaumaroy raised his brows. "I won't take you to his room, or let you go
+there if I can help it. But if he comes down, well, you can stay and see
+him. It may get me into a scrape, but that doesn't matter much."
+
+"My point of view is--"
+
+"My dear fellow, I know your point of view perfectly. It is that you are
+personally responsible for the universe, apparently just because you wear
+a uniform."
+
+No other sound had come from above or from the stairs, but the door now
+opened suddenly, and Mr. Saffron stood on the threshold. He wore
+slippers, a pair of checked trousers, and his bedroom jacket of pale
+blue; in addition, the gray shawl, which he wore on his walks, was again
+swathed closely round him. Only his right arm was free from it; in his
+hand was a silver bedroom candlestick. From his pale face and under his
+snowy hair his blue eyes gleamed brightly. As Alec first caught sight of
+him, he was smiling happily, and he called out triumphantly: "That was a
+good one! That went well, Hector!"
+
+Then he saw Alec's tall figure by the fire. He grew grave, closed the
+door carefully, and advanced to the table, on which he set down the
+candlestick. After a momentary look at Alec, he turned his gaze
+inquiringly towards Beaumaroy.
+
+"I'm afraid we're keeping it up rather late, sir," said the latter in a
+tone of respectful yet easy apology, "but I took an airing in the road
+after you went to bed, and there I found my friend here on his way home;
+and since it was Christmas--"
+
+Mr. Saffron bowed his head in acquiescence; he showed no sign of anger.
+"Present your friend to me, Hector," he requested, or ordered, gravely.
+
+"Captain Naylor, sir, Distinguished Service Order; Duffshire Fusiliers."
+
+The Captain was in uniform and, during his talk with Beaumaroy, had not
+thought of taking off his cap. Thus he came to the salute instinctively.
+The old man bowed with reserved dignity; in spite of his queer get-up he
+bore himself well; the tall handsome Captain did not seem to efface or
+outclass him.
+
+"Captain Naylor has distinguished himself highly in the war, sir,"
+Beaumaroy continued.
+
+"I am very glad to make the acquaintance of any officer who has
+distinguished himself in the service of his country." Then his tone
+became easier and more familiar. "Don't let me disturb you, gentlemen. My
+business with you, Hector, will wait. I have finished my work, and can
+rest with a clear conscience."
+
+"Couldn't we persuade you to stay a few minutes with us, and join us in a
+whisky-and-soda?"
+
+"Yes, by all means, Hector. But no whisky. Give me a glass of my own
+wine; I see a bottle on the sideboard."
+
+He came round the table and sat down in the big chair. "Pray seat
+yourself, Captain," he said, waving his hand towards the stool which
+Beaumaroy had lately occupied.
+
+The Captain obeyed the gesture, but his huge frame looked awkward on the
+low seat; he felt aware of it, then aware of the cap on his head; he
+snatched it off hastily, and twiddled it between his fingers. Mr.
+Saffron, high up in the great chair, sitting erect, seemed now actually
+to dominate the scene--Beaumaroy standing by, with an arm on the back of
+the chair, holding a tall glass full of the golden wine ready to Mr.
+Saffron's command; the old man reached up his thin right hand, took it,
+and sipped with evident pleasure.
+
+Alec Naylor was embarrassed; he sat in silence. But Beaumaroy seemed
+quite at his ease. He began with a statement which was, in its literal
+form, no falsehood; but that was about all that could be said for it on
+the score of veracity. "Before you came in, sir, we were just speaking of
+uniforms. Do you remember seeing our blue Air Force uniform when we were
+in town last week? I remember that you expressed approval of it."
+
+In any case the topic was very successful. Mr. Saffron embraced it with
+eagerness; with much animation he discussed the merits, whether practical
+or decorative, of various uniforms--field-gray, khaki, horizon blue, Air
+Force blue, and a dozen others worn by various armies, corps, and
+services. Alec was something of an enthusiast in this line too; he soon
+forgot his embarrassment, and joined in the conversation freely, though
+with a due respect to the obvious thoroughness of Mr. Saffron's
+information. Watching the pair with an amused smile, Beaumaroy contented
+himself with putting in, here and there, what may be called a conjunctive
+observation--just enough to give the topic a new start.
+
+After a quarter of an hour of this pleasant conversation, for such all
+three seemed to find it, Mr. Saffron finished his wine, handed the glass
+to Beaumaroy, and took a cordial leave of Alec Naylor. "It's time for me
+to be in bed, but don't hurry away, Captain. You won't disturb me, I'm a
+good sleeper. Good-bye. I sha'n't want you any more to-night, Hector."
+
+Beaumaroy handed him his candle again, and held the door open for him as
+he went out.
+
+Alec Naylor clapped his cap back on his head. "I'm off too," he
+said abruptly.
+
+"Well, you insisted on seeing him, and you've seen him. What about it
+now?" asked Beaumaroy.
+
+Alec eyed him with a puzzled baffled suspicion. "You switched him on to
+that subject on purpose, and by means of something uncommon like a lie."
+
+"A little artifice! I knew it would interest you, and it's quite one of
+his hobbies. I don't know much about his past life, but I think he must
+have had something to do with military tailoring. A designer at the War
+Office, perhaps." Beaumaroy gave a low laugh, rather mocking and
+malicious. "Still, that doesn't prove a man mad, does it? Perhaps it
+ought to, but in general opinion it doesn't, any more than reciting
+poetry in bed does."
+
+"Do you mean to tell me that he was reciting poetry when--"
+
+"Well, it couldn't have sounded worse if he had been, could it?"
+
+Now he was openly laughing at the Captain's angry bewilderment. He knew
+that Alec Naylor did not believe a word of what he was saying or
+suggesting; but yet Alec could not pass his guard, nor wing a shaft
+between the joints of his harness. If he got into difficulties through
+heedlessness, at least he made a good shot at getting out of them again
+by his dexterity. Only, of course, suspicion remains suspicion, even
+though it be, for the moment, baffled. And it could not be denied that
+suspicions were piling up--Captain Alec, Irechester, even, on one little
+point, Doctor Mary! And possibly those two fellows outside--one of them
+short and stumpy--had their suspicions too, though these might be
+directed to another point. He gave one of his little shrugs as he
+followed the silent Captain to the garden gate.
+
+"Good-night. Thanks again. And I hope we shall meet soon," he said
+cheerily.
+
+Alec gave him a brief "Good-night" and a particularly formal
+military salute.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+DOCTOR MARY'S ULTIMATUM
+
+
+Even Captain Alec was not superior to the foibles which beset humanity.
+If it had been his conception of duty which impelled him to take a high
+line with Beaumaroy, there was now in his feelings, although he did not
+realize the fact, an alloy of less precious metal. He had demanded an
+ordeal, a test--that he should see Mr. Saffron and judge for himself. The
+test had been accepted; he had been worsted in it. His suspicions were
+not laid to rest--far from it; but they were left unjustified and
+unconfirmed. He had nothing to go upon, nothing to show. He had been
+baffled, and, moreover, bantered and almost openly ridiculed. In fact,
+Beaumaroy had been too many for him, the subtle rogue!
+
+This conception of the case colored his looks and pointed his words when
+Tower Cottage and its occupants were referred to, and most markedly when
+he spoke of them to Cynthia Walford; for in talking to her he naturally
+allowed himself greater freedom than he did with others; talking to her
+had become like talking to himself, so completely did she give him back
+what he bestowed on her, and re-echo to his mind its own voice. Such
+perfect sympathy induces a free outpouring of inner thoughts, and
+reinforces the opinions of which it so unreservedly approves.
+
+Cynthia did more than elicit and reinforce Captain Alec's opinion; she
+also disseminated it--at Old Place, at the Irechesters', at Doctor
+Mary's, through all the little circle in which she was now a constant and
+a favorite figure. In the light of her experience of men, so limited and
+so sharply contrasted, she made a simple classification of them; they
+were Cransters or Alecs; and each class acted after its kind. Plainly
+Beaumaroy was not an Alec; therefore he was Cranster, and Cranster-like
+actions were to be expected from him, of such special description as his
+circumstances and temptations might dictate.
+
+She poured this simple philosophy into Doctor Mary's ears, vouching
+Alec's authority for its application to Beaumaroy. The theory was too
+simple for Mary, whose profession had shown her at all events something
+of the complexity of human nature; and she was no infallibilist; she
+would bow unquestioningly to no man's authority, not even to Alec's, much
+as she liked and admired him. There was even a streak of contrariness in
+her; what she might have said to herself she was prone to criticize or
+contradict, if it were too confidently or urgently pressed on her by
+another; perhaps, too, Cynthia's claim to be the Captain's mouthpiece
+stirred up in her a latent resentment; it was not to be called a
+jealousy; it was rather an amused irritation at both the divinity and his
+worshiper. His worshipers can sometimes make a divinity look foolish.
+
+Her own interview with Beaumaroy at the Cottage had left her puzzled,
+distrustful--and attracted. She suspected him vaguely of wanting to use
+her for some purpose of his own; in spite of the swift plausibility of
+his explanation, she was nearly certain that he had lied to her about the
+combination knife-and-fork. Yet his account of his own position in regard
+to Mr. Saffron had sounded remarkably candid, and the more so because he
+made no pretensions to an exalted attitude. It had been left to her to
+define the standard of sensitive honor; his had been rather that of
+safety or, at the best, that of what the world would think, or even of
+what the hated cousins might attempt to prove. But there again she was
+distrustful, both of him and of her own judgment. He might be--it seemed
+likely--one of those men who conceal the good as well as the bad in
+themselves, one of the morally shy men. Or again, perhaps, one of the
+morally diffident, who shrink from arrogating to themselves high
+standards because they fear for their own virtue if it be put to the
+test, and cling to the power of saying, later on, "Well, I told you not
+to expect too much from me!" Such various types of men exist, and they do
+not fall readily into either of Cynthia's two classes; they are neither
+Cransters nor Alecs; certainly not in thought, probably not in conduct.
+He had said at Old Place, the first time that she met him, that the war
+had destroyed all his scruples. That might be true; but it was hardly the
+remark of a man naturally unscrupulous.
+
+She met him one day at Old Place about a week after Christmas. The
+Captain was not there; he was at her own house, with Cynthia. With the
+rest of the family Beaumaroy was at his best; gaily respectful to Mrs.
+Naylor, merry with Gertie, exchanging cut and thrust with old Mr.
+Naylor, easy and cordial towards herself. Certainly an attractive human
+being and a charming companion, pre-eminently natural. "One talks of
+taking people as one finds them," old Naylor said to her when they were
+left alone together for a few minutes by the fire, while the others
+chatted by the window. "That fellow takes himself as he finds himself!
+Not as a pattern, a failure, or a problem, but just as a fact--a
+psychological fact."
+
+"That rather shuts out effort, doesn't it? Well, I mean--"
+
+"Strivings?" Mr. Naylor smiled. "Yes, it does. On the other hand, it
+gives such free play. That's what makes him interesting, makes you
+think about him." He laughed. "Oh, I dare say the surroundings help
+too--we're all rather children--old Saffron, and the Devil, and Captain
+Duggle, and the rest of it! The brain isn't overworked down here; we
+like to find an outlet."
+
+"That means you think there's nothing in it really?"
+
+"In what?" retorted old Naylor briskly.
+
+But Mary was equal to him. "My lips are sealed professionally," she
+smiled. "But hasn't your son said anything?"
+
+"Admirable woman! Yes, Alec has said a few things; and the young lady
+gives it us, too. For my part, I think Beaumaroy's just drifting. He'll
+take the gifts of fortune if they come, but I don't think there's much
+deliberate design about it. Ah, now you're smiling in a superior way,
+Doctor Mary! I charge you with secret knowledge. Or are you puffed up by
+having superseded Irechester?"
+
+"I was never so distressed and--well, embarrassed at anything in my
+life."
+
+"Well, that, if you ask me, does look a bit queer. Sort of fits in with
+Alec's theory."
+
+Mary's discretion gave way a little. "Or with Mr. Beaumaroy's? Which is
+that I'm a fool, I think."
+
+"And that Irechester isn't?" His eyes twinkled in good-humored malice.
+"Talking of what this and that person thinks of himself and of others,
+Irechester thinks himself something of an alienist."
+
+Her eyes grew suddenly alert. "He's never talked to me on that subject."
+
+"Perhaps he doesn't think it's one of yours. Perhaps your studies haven't
+lain that way? After all, no medical man can study everything!"
+
+"Don't be naughty, Mr. Naylor" said Doctor Mary.
+
+"He tells me that, in cases where the condition--the condition I think
+he called it--is in doubt, he fixes his attention on the eyes and the
+voice. He couldn't give me any very clear description of what he found in
+the eyes. I couldn't quite make out, anyhow, what he meant, unless it was
+a sort of meaninglessness, a want of what you might call intellectual
+focus. Do you follow me?"
+
+"Yes, I think I know what you mean."
+
+"But with regard to the voice I distinctly remember that he used the word
+'metallic.'"
+
+"Why, that's the word Cynthia used--"
+
+"I dare say it is. It's the word Alec used in describing the voice in
+which old Mr. Saffron recited his poem, or whatever it was, in bed."
+
+"But I've talked to Mr. Saffron; his voice isn't like that; it's a little
+high, but full and rather melodious."
+
+"Oh, well then--" He spread out his hands, as though acknowledging a
+check. "Still, the voice described as metallic seems to have been Mr.
+Saffron's; at a certain moment at least. As a merely medical question of
+some interest, I wonder if such a symptom or sign of--er--irritability
+could be intermittent, coming and going with the--er--fits! Irechester
+didn't say anything on that point. Have you any opinion?"
+
+"None. I don't know. I should like to ask Dr. Irechester." Then, with a
+sudden smile, she amended, "No, I shouldn't!"
+
+"And why not, pray? Professional etiquette?"
+
+"No, pride. Dr. Irechester laughed at me. I think I see why now; and
+perhaps why Mr. Beaumaroy--" She broke off abruptly, the slightest
+gesture of her hand warning Naylor also to be silent.
+
+Having said good-bye to his friends by the window, Beaumaroy was
+sauntering across the room to pay the like courtesy to herself and
+Naylor. Mary rose to her feet; there was an air of decision about her,
+and she addressed Beaumaroy almost before he was within speaking distance
+as it is generally reckoned in society.
+
+"If you're going home, Mr. Beaumaroy, shall we walk together? It's time I
+was off, too."
+
+Beaumaroy looked a little surprised, but undoubtedly pleased. "Well, now,
+what a delightful way of prolonging a delightful visit. I'm truly
+grateful, Dr. Arkroyd."
+
+"Oh, you needn't be!" said Mary with a little toss of her head.
+
+Naylor watched them with amusement. "He'll catch it on that walk!" he was
+thinking. "She's going to let him have it! I wish I could be there to
+hear." He spoke to them openly: "I'm sorry you must both go, but, since
+you must, go together. Your walk will be much pleasanter."
+
+Mary understood him well enough, and gave him a flash from her eyes. But
+Beaumaroy's face betrayed nothing, as he murmured politely: "To me, at
+all events, Mr. Naylor."
+
+Naylor was not wrong as to Mary's mood and purpose. But she did not find
+it easy to begin. Pretty quick at a retort herself, she could often
+foresee the retorts open to her interlocutor. Beaumaroy had provided
+himself with plenty: the old man's whim; the access to the old man so
+willingly allowed, not only to her but to Captain Alec; his own candor
+carried to the verge of self-betrayal. Oh, he would be full of retorts,
+supple and dexterous ones! As this hostile accusation passed through her
+mind, she awoke to the fact that she was, at the same moment, regarding
+his profile (he, too, was silent, no doubt lying in wait to trip up her
+opening!) with interest, even with some approval. He seemed to feel her
+glance, for he turned towards her quickly--so quickly that she had no
+time to turn her eyes away.
+
+"Doctor Mary"--the familiar mode of address habitually used at the house
+which they had just left seemed to slip out without his consciousness of
+it--"You've got something against me; I know you have! I'm sensitive that
+way, though not, perhaps, in another. Now, out with it!"
+
+"You'd silence me with a clever answer. I think that you sometimes make
+the mistake of supposing that to be silenced is the same thing as being
+convinced. You silenced Captain Naylor--oh, I don't mean you've prevented
+him from talking!--I mean you confuted him, you put him in the wrong, but
+you certainly didn't convince him."
+
+"Of what?" he asked in a tone of surprise.
+
+"You know that. Let us suppose his idea was all nonsense; yet your
+immediate object was to put it out of his head." She suddenly added, "I
+think your last question was a diplomatic blunder, Mr. Beaumaroy. You
+must have known what I meant. What was the good of pretending not to?"
+
+Beaumaroy stopped still in the road for a moment, looking at her with a
+rueful amusement. "You're not so easily silenced, after all!" he said,
+starting to walk on again.
+
+"You encourage me." To tell the truth, Mary was not only encouraged, she
+was pleased by the hit she had scored, and flattered by his
+acknowledgment of it. "Well, then, I'll put another point. You needn't
+answer if you don't like."
+
+"I shall answer if I can, depend on it!" He laughed, and Mary, for a
+brief instant, joined in his laugh. His sudden lapses into candor seemed
+somehow to put the serious hostile questioner ridiculously in the wrong.
+Could a man like that really have anything to conceal?
+
+But she held to her purpose. "You're a friendly sort of man, you offer
+and accept attentions and kindnesses, you're not stand-offish, or
+haughty, or sulky; you make friends easily, especially, perhaps, with
+women; they like you, and like to be pleasant and kind to you. There are
+men--patients, I mean--very hard to deal with; men who resent being ill,
+resent having to have things done to them and for them, who especially
+resent the services of women, even of nurses--I mean in quite indifferent
+things, not merely in things where a man may naturally shrink from their
+help. Well, you don't seem that sort of man in the least." She looked at
+him, as she ended this appreciation of him, as though she expected an
+answer or a comment. Beaumaroy made neither; he walked on, not even
+looking at her.
+
+"And you can't have been troubled long with that wound. It evidently
+healed up quickly and sweetly."
+
+Beaumaroy looked for an instant at his maimed hand with a critical air;
+but he was still silent.
+
+"So that I wonder you didn't do as most patients do--let the nurse, or,
+if you were still disabled after you came out, a friend or somebody, cut
+up your food for you without providing yourself with that implement." He
+turned his head quickly towards her. "And if you ask me what implement I
+mean, I shall answer--the one you tried to snatch from the sideboard at
+Tower Cottage before I could see it."
+
+It was a direct challenge; she charged him with a lie. Beaumaroy's face
+assumed a really troubled expression, a thing rare for it to do. Yet it
+was not an ashamed or abashed expression; it just seemed to recognize
+that a troublesome difficulty had arisen. He set a slower pace and
+prodded the road with his stick. Mary pushed her advantage. "Your--your
+improvization didn't satisfy me at the time, and the more I've thought
+over it, the less have I found it convincing."
+
+He stopped again, turning round to her. He slapped his left hand against
+the side of his leg. "Well, there it is, Doctor Mary! You must make what
+you can of it."
+
+It was complete surrender as to the combination knife-and-fork. He was
+beaten, on that point at least, and owned it. His lie was found out.
+"It's dashed difficult always to remember that you're a doctor," he broke
+out the next minute.
+
+Mary could not help laughing; but her eyes were still keen and
+challenging as she said, "Perhaps you'd better change your doctor again,
+Mr. Beaumaroy. You haven't found one stupid enough!"
+
+Again Beaumaroy had no defense; his nonplussed air confessed that
+maneuver, too. Mary dropped her rallying tone and went on gravely:
+"Unless I'm treated with confidence and sincerity, I can't continue to
+attend Mr. Saffron."
+
+"That's your ultimatum, is it, Doctor Mary?"
+
+She nodded sharply and decisively. Beaumaroy meditated for a few
+seconds. Then he shook his head regretfully. "It's no use. I daren't
+trust you," he said.
+
+Mary laughed again, this time in amazed resentment of his impudence. "You
+can't trust me! I think it's the other way round. It seems to me that the
+boot's on the other leg."
+
+"Not as I see it." Then he smiled slowly, as it were tentatively. "Or
+would you--I wonder if you could--possibly--well, stand in with me?"
+
+"Are you offering me a--a partnership?" she asked indignantly.
+
+He raised his hand in a seeming protest, and spoke now hastily and in
+some confusion. "Not as you understand it. I mean, as you probably
+understand it, from what I said to you that night at the Cottage. There
+are features in the--well, there are things that I admit have--have
+passed through my mind, without being what you'd call settled. Oh, yes,
+without being in the least settled. Well, for the sake of your help
+and--er--co-operation, those--those features could be dropped. And then
+perhaps--if only your--your rules and etiquette--"
+
+Mary scornfully cut short his embarrassed pleadings. "There's a good deal
+more than rules and etiquette involved. It seems to me that it's a matter
+of common honesty rather than of rules and etiquette--"
+
+"Yes, but you don't understand--"
+
+She cut him short again. "Mr. Beaumaroy, after this, after your
+suggestion and all the rest of it, there must be an end of all relations
+between us--professionally and, so far as possible, socially too, please.
+I don't want to be self-righteous, but I feel bound to say that you have
+misunderstood my character."
+
+Her voice quivered at the end, and almost broke. She was full of a
+grieved indignation.
+
+They had come opposite the cottage now. Beaumaroy stopped, and stood
+facing her. Though dusk had fallen, it was a clear evening; she could see
+his face plainly; obviously he was in deep distress. "I wouldn't have
+offended you for the world. I--I like you far too much, Doctor Mary."
+
+"You imputed your own standards to me. That's all there is about it, I
+suppose," she said in a scornful sadness. He looked very miserable.
+Compassion, and the old odd attraction which he had for her, stirred in
+her mind. Her voice grew soft, and she held out her hand. "I'm sorry too,
+very sorry, that it should have to be good-bye between us."
+
+Beaumaroy did not take her proffered hand, or even seem to notice it. He
+stood quite still.
+
+"I'm damned if I know what I'm to do now!"
+
+Close on the heels of his despairing confession of helplessness--for such
+it undoubtedly seemed to me--came the noise of an opening door, a light
+from the inside of the Cottage, a patter of quick-moving feet on the
+flagged path that led to the garden gate. The next moment Mary saw the
+figure of Mr. Saffron, in his old gray shawl, standing at the gate. He
+was waving his right arm in an excited way, and his hand held a large
+sheet of paper.
+
+"Hector! Hector, my dear, dear boy! The news has come at last. You can be
+off tomorrow!"
+
+Beaumaroy started violently, glanced at his old friend's strange figure,
+glanced once, too, at Mary; the expression of utter despair which his
+face had worn seemed modified into one of humorous bewilderment.
+
+"Yes, yes, you can start tomorrow for Morocco, my dear boy!" cried old
+Mr. Saffron.
+
+Beaumaroy lifted his hat to her, cried, "I'm coming, sir!" turned on his
+heel, and strode quickly up to Mr. Saffron. She watched him open the gate
+and take the old gentleman by the arm; she heard the murmur of his voice
+speaking soft accents as the pair walked up the path together. They
+passed into the house, and the door was shut.
+
+Mary stood where she was for a moment, then moved slowly, hesitatingly,
+yet as though under a lure which she could not resist. Just outside the
+gate lay something that gleamed white through the darkness. It was the
+sheet of paper. Mr. Saffron had dropped it in his excitement, and
+Beaumaroy had not noticed.
+
+Mary stole forward and picked it up stealthily; she was incapable of
+resisting her curiosity or even of stopping to think about her action.
+She held it up to what light there was, and strained her eyes to examine
+it. So far as she could see, it was covered with dots, dashes, lines,
+queerly drawn geometrical figures--a mass of meaningless hieroglyphics.
+She dropped it again where she had found it, and made off home with
+guilty swiftness.
+
+Yes, there had been, this time, a distinctly metallic ring in old Mr.
+Saffron's voice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE MAGICAL WORD MOROCCO!
+
+
+When Mary arrived home, she found Cynthia and Captain Alec still in
+possession of the drawing-room; their manner accused her legitimate entry
+into the room of being an outrageous intrusion. She took no heed of that,
+and indeed little heed of them. To tell the truth, she was ashamed to
+confess, but it was the truth, she felt rather tired of them that
+evening. Their affair deserved every laudatory epithet, except that of
+interesting; so she declared peevishly within herself as she tried to
+join in conversation with them. It was no use. They talked on, and in
+justice to them it may be urged that they were fully as bored with Mary
+as she was with them; so naturally their talents did not shine their
+brightest. But they had plenty to say to one another, and dutifully threw
+in a question or a reference to Mary every now and then. Sitting apart
+at the other end of the long low room--it ran through the whole depth of
+her old-fashioned dwelling--she barely heeded and barely answered. They
+smiled at one another and were glad.
+
+She was very tired; her feelings were wounded, her nerves on edge; she
+could not even attempt any cool train of reasoning. The outcome of her
+talk with Beaumaroy filled her mind rather than the matter of it; and,
+more even than that, the figure of the man seemed to be with her, almost
+to stand before her, with his queer alternations of despair and mirth, of
+defiance and pleading, of derision and alarm. One moment she was
+intensely irritated with him; in the next she half forgave the plaintive
+image which the fancy of her mind conjured up before her eyes.
+
+Her eyes closed--she was so very tired, the fight had taken it out of
+her! To have to do things like that was an odious necessity, which had
+never befallen her before. That man had done--well, Captain Alec was
+quite right about him! Yet still the shadowy image, though thus
+reproached, did not depart; it was smiling at her now with its old
+mockery--the kindly mockery which his face wore before they quarrelled,
+and before its light was quenched in that forlorn bewilderment. And it
+seemed as though the image began to say some words to her, disconnected
+words, not making a sentence, but yet having for the image a pregnant
+meaning, and seeming to her--though vaguely and very dimly--to be the key
+to what she had to understand. She was stupid not to understand words so
+full of meaning--just as stupid as Beaumaroy had thought.
+
+Then Doctor Mary fell asleep, sound asleep; she had been very near it for
+the last ten minutes.
+
+Captain Alec and Cynthia were in two chairs, close side by side, in front
+of the fire. Once Cynthia glanced over her shoulder; the Captain had
+glanced over his in the same direction already. One of his hands held one
+of Cynthia's. It was well to be sure that Mary was asleep, really asleep.
+
+She had gone to sleep on the name of Beaumaroy; on it she awoke. It came
+from Captain Alec's lips. He was standing on the hearthrug with his arm
+round Cynthia's waist, and his other hand raising one of hers to his
+lips. He looked admirably handsome--strong, protecting, devoted. And
+Cynthia, in her fragile appealing prettiness, was a delicious foil, a
+perfect complement to the picture. But now, under stress of
+emotion--small blame to a man who was making a vow of eternal
+fidelity!--under stress of emotion, as, on a previous occasion, under
+that of indignation, the Captain had raised his voice!
+
+"Yes, against all the scoundrels in the world, whether they're called
+Cranster or Beaumaroy!" he said.
+
+Mary's eyes opened. She sat up. "Cranster and Beaumaroy?" They were the
+words which her ears had caught. "What in the world has Mr. Beaumaroy to
+do with--" But she broke off, as she saw the couple by the fire. "But
+what are you two doing?"
+
+Cynthia broke away from her lover, and ran to her friend with
+joyous avowals.
+
+"I must have been sound asleep," cried Mary, kissing her. Alec had
+followed across the room and now stood close by her. She looked up at
+him. "Oh, I see! She's to be safe now from such people?" On this
+particular occasion Mary's look at the Captain was not admiring; it was a
+little scornful.
+
+"That's the idea," agreed the happy Alec. "Another idea is that I
+trot you both over in the car to Old Place--to break the news and
+have dinner."
+
+"Splendid!" cried Cynthia. "Do come, Mary!"
+
+Mary shook her head. "No; you go, you two," she said. "I'm tired, and I
+want to think." She passed her hand across her eyes. She seemed to wipe
+away the mists of sleep. Her face suddenly grew animated and exultant.
+"No, I don't want to think! I know!" she exclaimed emphatically.
+
+"Mary dear, are you still asleep? Are you talking in your sleep?"
+
+"The keyword! It came to me, somehow, in my sleep. The keyword--Morocco!"
+
+"What the deuce has Morocco--" Captain Alec began, with justifiable
+impatience.
+
+"Ah, you never heard that, and, dear Captain Alec, you wouldn't have
+understood it if you had. You thought he was reciting poems. What he was
+really doing--"
+
+"Look here, Doctor Mary, I've just been accepted by Cynthia, and I'm
+going to take her to my mother and father. Can you get your mind on to
+that?" He looked at her curiously, not at all understanding her
+excitement, perhaps resenting the obvious fact that his Cynthia's
+happiness was not foremost in her friend's mind.
+
+With a great effort Mary brought herself down to the earth--to the earth
+of romantic love from the heaven of professional triumph. True, the
+latter was hers, the former somebody else's. "I do beg your pardon. I do
+indeed. And do let me kiss you again, Cynthia darling--and you, dear
+Captain Alec, just once! And then you shall go off to dinner." She
+laughed excitedly. "Yes, I'm going to push you out."
+
+"Let's go, Alec," said Cynthia, not unkindly, yet just a little
+pettishly. The great moment of her life--surely as great a moment as
+there had ever been in anybody's life--had hardly earned adequate
+recognition from Mary. As usual, her feelings and Alec's were at one.
+Before they passed to other and more important matters, when they drove
+off in the car she said to Alec, "It seems to me that Mary's strangely
+interested in that Mr. Beaumaroy. Had she been dreaming of him, Alec?"
+
+"Looks like it! And why the devil Morocco?" His intellect baffled,
+Captain Alec took refuge in his affections.
+
+Left alone, and so thankful for it, Doctor Mary did not attempt to sit
+still. She walked up and down, she roved here and there, smoking any
+quantity of cigarettes; she would certainly have forbidden such excess to
+a patient. The keyword; its significance had seemed to come to her in
+her sleep. Something in that subconsciousness theory? The word explained,
+linked up, gave significance--that magical word Morocco!
+
+Yes, they fell into place now, the things that had been so puzzling, and
+that looked now so obviously suggestive. Even one thing which she had
+thought nothing about, which had not struck her as having any
+significance, now took on its meaning--the gray shawl which the old
+gentleman so constantly wore swathed round his body, enveloping the whole
+of it except his right arm. Did he wear the shawl while he took his
+meals? Doctor Mary could not tell as to that. Perhaps he did not; at his
+meals only Beaumaroy, and perhaps their servant, would be present. But he
+seemed to wear it whenever he went abroad, whenever he was exposed to the
+scrutiny of strangers. That indicated secretiveness, perhaps fear, the
+apprehension of something. The caution bred by that might give way under
+the influence of great cerebral excitement. Unquestionably Mr. Saffron
+had been very excited when he waved the sheet of hieroglyphics and
+shouted to Beaumaroy about Morocco. But whether he wore the shawl or not
+in the safe privacy of Tower Cottage, whatever might be the truth about
+that--perhaps he varied his practice according to his condition--on one
+thing Doctor Mary would stake her life; he used the combination
+knife-and-fork!
+
+For it was over that implement that Beaumaroy had tripped up. It ought to
+have been hidden before she was admitted to the cottage. Somebody had
+been careless, somebody had blundered--whether Beaumaroy himself or his
+servant was immaterial. Beaumaroy had lied, readily and ingeniously, but
+not quite readily enough. The dart of his hand had betrayed him; that,
+and a look in his eyes, a tell-tale mirth which had seemed to mock both
+her and himself, and had made his ingenious lie even at the moment
+unconvincing. Yes, whether Mr. Saffron wore the shawl or not, he
+certainly used the combination table implement!
+
+And the "poems?" The poems which Mr. Saffron recited to himself in bed,
+and which he had said, in Captain Alec's hearing, were good and "went
+well." It was Beaumaroy, of course, who had called them poems; the
+Captain had merely repeated the description. But with her newly found
+insight Doctor Mary knew better. What Mr. Saffron declaimed in that
+vibrating, metallic voice, were not poems, but--speeches!
+
+And "Morocco" itself! To anybody who remembered history for a few years
+back, even with the general memory of the man in the street, to anybody
+who had read the controversies about the war, Morocco brought not puzzle,
+but enlightenment. For had not Morocco been really the starting point of
+the Years of Crisis--those years intermittent in excitement, but constant
+in anxiety? Beaumaroy was to start tomorrow for Morocco--on the strength
+of the hieroglyphics! Perhaps he was to go on from Morocco to Libya;
+perhaps he was to raise the Senussi (Mary had followed the history of the
+war), to make his appearance at Cairo, Jerusalem, Bagdad! He was to be a
+forerunner, was Mr. Beaumaroy. Mr. Saffron, his august master, would
+follow in due course! With a sardonic smile she wondered how the
+ingenious man would get out of starting for Morocco; perhaps he would not
+succeed in obtaining a passport, or, that excuse failing, in eluding the
+vigilance of the British authorities. Or some more hieroglyphics might
+come, carrying another message, postponing his start, saying that the
+propitious moment had not yet arrived after all. There were several
+devices open to ingenuity; many ways in which Beaumaroy might protract a
+situation not so bad for him even as it stood, and quite rich in
+possibilities. Her acid smile was turned against herself when she
+remembered that she had been fool enough to talk to Beaumaroy about
+sensitive honor!
+
+Well, never mind Mr. Beaumaroy! The case as to Mr. Saffron stood pretty
+plain. It was queer and pitiful, but by no means unprecedented. She might
+be not much of an alienist, as Dr. Irechester had been kind enough to
+suggest to Mr. Naylor, but she had seen such cases herself--even
+stranger ones, where even higher Powers suffered impersonation, with
+effects still more tragically absurd to onlookers. And she remembered
+reading somewhere--was it in Maudslay--that in the days of Napoleon, when
+princes and kings were as ninepins to be set up and knocked down at the
+tyrant's pleasure, the asylums of France were full of such great folk?
+Potentates there galore! If she had Mr. Saffron's "record" before her,
+she would expect to read of a vain ostentatious man, ambitious in his own
+small way; the little plant of these qualities would, given a morbid
+physical condition, develop into the fantastic growth of delusion which
+she had now diagnosed in the case of Mr. Saffron--diagnosed with the
+assistance of some lucky accidents!
+
+But what was her duty now--the duty of Dr. Mary Arkroyd, a duly
+qualified, accredited, responsible medical practitioner? With a slight
+shock to her self-esteem she was obliged to confess that she had only
+the haziest idea. Had not people who kept a lunatic to be licensed or
+something? Or did that apply only to lunatics in the plural? And did
+Beaumaroy keep Mr. Saffron within the meaning of whatever the law
+might be? But at any rate she must do something; the state of things
+at Tower Cottage could not go on as it was. The law of the
+land--whatever it was--must be observed, Beaumaroy must be foiled, and
+poor old Mr. Saffron taken proper care of. The course of her
+meditations was hardly interrupted by the episode of her light evening
+meal; she was back in her drawing-room by half past eight, her mind
+engrossed with the matter still.
+
+It was a little after nine when there was a ring at the hall door. Not
+the lovers back so early? She heard a man's voice in the hall. The next
+moment Beaumaroy was shown in, and the door shut behind him. He stood
+still by it, making no motion to advance towards her. He was breathing
+quickly, and she noticed beads of perspiration on his forehead. She had
+sprung to her feet at the sight of him and faced him with indignation.
+
+"You have no right to come here, Mr. Beaumaroy, after what passed
+between us this afternoon."
+
+"Besides being, as you saw yourself, very excited, my poor old friend
+isn't at all well tonight."
+
+"I'm very sorry; but I'm no longer Mr. Saffron's medical attendant. If I
+declined to be this afternoon, I decline ten times more tonight."
+
+"For all I know, he's very ill indeed, Dr. Arkroyd." Beaumaroy's manner
+was very quiet, restrained, and formal.
+
+"I have come to a clear conclusion about Mr. Saffron's case since I
+left you."
+
+"I thought you might. I suppose 'Morocco' put you on the scent? And I
+suppose, too, that you looked at that wretched bit of paper?"
+
+"I--I thought of it--" Here Mary was slightly embarrassed.
+
+"You'd have been more than human if you hadn't. I was out again after it
+in five minutes--as soon as I missed it; you'd gone, but I concluded
+you'd seen it. He scribbles dozens like that."
+
+"You seem to admit my conclusion about his mental condition," she
+observed stiffly.
+
+"I always admit when I cease to be able to deny. But don't let's stand
+here talking. Really, for all I know, he may be dying. His heart seems to
+me very bad."
+
+"Go and ask Dr. Irechester."
+
+"He dreads Irechester. I believe the sight of Irechester might finish
+him. You must come."
+
+"I can't--for the reasons I've told you."
+
+"Why? My misdeeds? Or your rules and regulations? My God, how I hate
+rules and regulations! Which of them is it that is perhaps to cost the
+old man his life?"
+
+Mary could not resist the appeal; that could hardly be her duty, and
+certainly was not her inclination. Her grievance was not against poor old
+Mr. Saffron, with his pitiful delusion of greatness, of a greatness, too,
+which now had suffered an eclipse almost as tragical as that which had
+befallen his own reason. What an irony in his mad aping of it now!
+
+"I will come, Mr. Beaumaroy, on condition that you give me candidly and
+truthfully all the information which, as Mr. Saffron's medical attendant,
+I am entitled to ask."
+
+"I'll tell you all I know about him, and about myself, too."
+
+"Your affairs and--er--position matter to me only so far as they bear on
+Mr. Saffron."
+
+"So be it. Only come quickly; and bring some of your things that may help
+a man with a bad heart."
+
+Mary left him, went to her surgery, and was quickly back with her bag.
+"I'll get out the car."
+
+"It'll take a little longer, I know, but do you mind if we walk? Cars
+always alarm him. He thinks that they come to take him away. Every car
+that passes vexes him; he looks to see if it will stop. And when yours
+does--" He ended with a shrug.
+
+For the first time Mary's feelings took on a keen edge of pity. Poor old
+gentleman! Fancy his living like that! And cars, military cars, too, had
+been so common on the road across the heath.
+
+"I understand. Let us go at once. You walked yourself, I suppose?"
+
+"Ran," said Beaumaroy, and, with the first sign of a smile, wiped the
+sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.
+
+"I'm ready, Mr. Beaumaroy," said Doctor Mary.
+
+They walked along together in silence for fully half the way. Then
+Beaumaroy spoke. "He was extremely excited--at his worst--when he and I
+went into the cottage. I had to humor him in every way; it was the only
+thing to do. That was followed by great fatigue, a sort of collapse. I
+persuaded him to go to bed. I hope we shall find him there, but I don't
+know. He would let me go only on condition that I left the door of the
+Tower unlocked, so that he could go in there if he wanted to. If he has,
+I'm afraid that you may see something--well, something rather bizarre,
+Dr. Arkroyd."
+
+"That's all in the course of my profession."
+
+Silence fell on them again, till the outline of cottage and Tower came
+into view through the darkness. Beaumaroy spoke only once again before
+they reached the garden gate.
+
+"If he should happen to be calmer now, I hope you will not consider it
+necessary to tell him that you suspect anything unusual."
+
+"He is secretive?"
+
+"He lives in terror."
+
+"Of what?"
+
+"Of being shut up. May I lead the way in, Dr. Arkroyd?"
+
+They entered the cottage, and Beaumaroy shut the door. A lamp was burning
+dimly in the passage. He turned it up. "Would you kindly wait here one
+minute?" Receiving her nod of acquiescence, he stepped softly up the
+stairs, and she heard him open a door above; she knew it was that of Mr.
+Saffron's bedroom, where she had visited the old man. She waited, now
+with a sudden sense of suspense. It was very quiet in the cottage.
+
+Beaumaroy was down again in a minute.
+
+"It is as I feared," he said quietly. "He has got up again, and gone into
+the Tower. Shall I try and get him out, or will you--"
+
+"I will go in with you, of course, Mr. Beaumaroy."
+
+His old mirthful, yet rueful, smile came on his lips--just for a moment.
+Then he was grave and formal again. "This way, then, if you please, Dr.
+Arkroyd," he said deferentially.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE CAR BEHIND THE TREES
+
+
+Mr. Percy Bennett, that gentlemanly stranger, was an enemy to delay; both
+constitutionally and owing to experience, averse from dallying with
+fortune; to him a bird in his hand was worth a whole aviary on his
+neighbor's unrifled premises. He thought that Beaumaroy might levant with
+the treasure; at any moment that unwelcome, though not unfamiliar, tap on
+the shoulder, with the words (gratifying under quite other circumstances
+and from quite different lips) "I want you," might incapacitate him from
+prosecuting his enterprise (he expressed this idea in more homely
+idiom--less Latinized was his language, metaphorical indeed, yet terse);
+finally he had that healthy distrust of his accomplices which is
+essential to success in a career of crime; he thought that Sergeant
+Hooper might not deliver the goods!
+
+Sergeant Hooper demurred; he deprecated inconsiderate haste? let the
+opportunity be chosen. He had served under Mr. Beaumaroy in France, and
+(whatever faults Major-General Punnit might find with that officer)
+preferred that he should be off the premises at the moment when Mr.
+Bennett and he himself made unauthorized entry thereon. "He's a hot 'un
+in a scrap," said the Sergeant, sitting in a public house at Sprotsfield
+on Boxing Day evening, Mr. Bennett and sundry other excursionists from
+London being present.
+
+"My chauffeur will settle him," said Mr. Bennett. It may seem odd that
+Mr. Bennett should have a chauffeur; but he had--or proposed to
+have--_pro hac vice_--or _ad hoc_; for this particular job, in fact.
+Without a car that stuff at Tower Cottage--somewhere at Tower
+Cottage--would be difficult to shift.
+
+The Sergeant demurred still, by no means for the sake of saving
+Beaumaroy's skin, but still purely for the reason already given; yet he
+admitted that he could not name any date on which he could guarantee
+Beaumaroy's absence from Tower Cottage. "He never leaves the old blighter
+alone later than eleven o'clock or so, and rarely as late as that."
+
+"Then any night's about the same," said gentleman Bennett; "and now for
+the scheme, dear N.C.O.!"
+
+Sergeant Hooper despaired of the doors. The house-door might possibly be
+negotiated, though at the probable cost of arousing the notice of
+Beaumaroy--and of the old blighter himself. But the door from the parlor
+into the Tower offered insuperable difficulties. It was always locked;
+the lock was intricate; he had never so much as seen the key at close
+quarters and, even had opportunity offered, was quite unpractised in the
+art of taking impressions of locks--a thing not done with accuracy quite
+so easily as seems sometimes to be assumed.
+
+"For my own part," said Mr. Bennett with a nod, "I've always inclined to
+the window. We can negotiate that without any noise to speak of, and it
+oughtn't to take us more than a few minutes. Just deal boards, I expect!
+Perhaps the old gentleman and your pal Beaumaroy--the Sergeant spat--will
+sleep right through it!"
+
+"If they ain't in the Tower itself," suggested the Sergeant gloomily.
+
+"Wherever they may be," said gentleman Bennett, with a touch of
+irritability--he was himself a sanguine man and disliked a mind fertile
+in objections--"I suppose the stuff's in the Tower, isn't it?"
+
+"It goes in there, and I've never seen it come out, Mr. Bennett." Here at
+least a tone of confidence rang in the Sergeant's voice.
+
+"But where in the Tower, Sergeant?"
+
+"'Ow should I know? I've never been in the blooming place."
+
+"It's really rather a queer business," observed Mr. Bennett,
+allowing himself for a moment, an outside and critical consideration
+of the matter.
+
+"Damned," said the Sergeant briefly.
+
+"But, once inside, we're bound to find it! Then--with the car--it's in
+London in forty minutes, and in ten more it's--where it's going to be;
+where that is needn't worry you, my dear Sergeant."
+
+"What if we're seen from the road?" urged the pessimistic Sergeant.
+
+"There's never a job about which you can't put those questions. What if
+Ludendorff had known just what Foch was going to do, Sergeant? At any
+rate anybody who sees us is two miles either way from a police
+station--and may be a lot farther if he tries to interfere with us!
+It's a hundred to one against anybody being on the road at that time of
+night; we'll pray for a dark night and dirty weather--which, so far as
+I've observed, you generally get in this beastly neighborhood." He
+leant forward and tapped the Sergeant on the shoulder. "Barring
+accidents, let's say this day week; meanwhile, Neddy"--he smiled as he
+interjected. "Neddy is our chauffeur--Neddy and I will make our little
+plan of attack."
+
+"Don't be too generous! Don't leave all the V.C. chances to me," the
+Sergeant implored.
+
+"Neddy's fair glutton for 'em! Difficulty is to keep him from murder!
+And he stands six foot four, and weighs seventeen stone."
+
+"Ill back him up--from be'ind--company in support," grinned the Sergeant,
+considerably comforted by this description of his coadjutor.
+
+"You'll occupy the station assigned to you, my man," said Mr. Bennett,
+with an admirable burlesque of the military manner. "The front is
+wherever a soldier is ordered to be--a fine saying of Lord Kitchener's!
+Remember it, Sergeant!"
+
+"Yes, sir," said the Sergeant, grinning still.
+
+He found Mr. Bennett on the whole amusing company, though occasionally
+rather alarming; for instance, there seemed to him to be no particular
+reason for dragging in Neddy's predilection for murder; though, of
+course, a man of his inches and weight might commit murder through some
+trifling and pardonable miscalculation of force. "Same as if that Captain
+Naylor hit you!" the Sergeant reflected, as he finished the ample portion
+of rum with which the conversation had been lightened. He felt pleasantly
+muzzy, and saw Mr. Bennett's cleancut features rather blurred in
+outline. However, the sandy wig and red mustache which that gentleman
+wore--in his character as a Boxing Day excursionist--were still salient
+features even to his eyes. Anybody in the room would have been able to
+swear to them.
+
+Thus the date of the attack was settled and, if only it had been adhered
+to, things might have fallen out differently between Doctor Mary and Mr.
+Beaumaroy. Events would probably have relieved Mary from the necessity of
+presenting her ultimatum, and she might never have heard that
+illuminating word "Morocco." But big Neddy the Shover--as his intimate
+friends were wont to call him--was a man of pleasure as well as of
+business; he was not a bloke in an office; he liked an ample Christmas
+vacation and was now taking one with a party of friends at Brighton--all
+tip-toppers who did the thing in style and spent their money (which was
+not their money) lavishly. From the attraction of this company--not
+composed of gentlemen only--Neddy refused to be separated. Mr. Bennett,
+who was on thorns at the delay, could take it or leave it at that; in
+any case the job was, in Neddy's opinion (which he expressed with that
+massive but good-humored scorn which is an appanage of very large men), a
+leap in the dark, a pig in a poke, blind hookey; for who really knew how
+much of the stuff the old blighter and his pal had contrived to shift
+down to the Cottage in the old brown bag. Sometimes it looked light,
+sometimes it looked heavy; sometimes perhaps it was full of bricks!
+
+In this mood Neddy had to be humored, even though gentlemanly Mr. Bennett
+sat on thorns. The Sergeant repined less at the delay; he liked the
+pickings which the job brought him much better than the job itself,
+standing in wholesome dread of Beaumaroy. It was rather with resignation
+than with joy that he received from Mr. Bennett the news that Neddy had
+at last named the day that would suit his High Mightiness--Tuesday the
+7th of January it was, and, as it chanced, the very day before Beaumaroy
+was to start for Morocco! More accurately, the attack would be delivered
+on the actual day of his departure--if he went. For it was timed for one
+o'clock in the morning, an hour at which the road across the heath might
+reasonably be expected to be clear of traffic. This was an especially
+important point, in view of the fact that the window of the Tower faced
+towards the road and was but four or five yards distant from it.
+
+After a jovial dinner--rather too jovial in Mr. Bennett's opinion, but
+that was Neddy's only fault, he would mix pleasure with business--the two
+set out in an Overland car. Mr. Bennett--whom, by the way, his big friend
+Neddy called "Mike," and not "Percy," as might have been
+expected--assumed his sandy wig and red mustache as soon as they were
+well started; Neddy scorned disguise for the moment, but he had a mask in
+his pocket. He also had a very nasty little club in the same pocket,
+whereas Mr. Bennett carried no weapon of offense--merely the tools of his
+trade, at which he was singularly expert. The friends had worked together
+before; though Neddy reviled Mike for a coward, and Mike averred
+with curses, that Neddy would bring them both to the gallows some day,
+yet they worked well together and had a respect for one another, each
+allowing for the other's idiosyncrasies. The true spirit of partnership!
+On it alone can lasting and honorable success be built.
+
+"Just match-boarding, the Sergeant says it is, does he?" asked Neddy,
+breaking a long silence, which indeed had lasted until they were across
+Putney Bridge and climbing the Hill.
+
+"Yes, and rotten at that. It oughtn't to take two minutes; then there'll
+be only the window. Of course we must have a look round first. Then, if
+the coast's clear, I'll nip in and shove something up against the door of
+the place while you're following. The Sergeant's to stay on guard at the
+door of the house, so that we can't be taken in the rear. See?"
+
+"Righto!"
+
+"Then--well, we've got to find the stuff, and when we've found it, you've
+got to carry it, Neddy. Don't mind if it's a bit heavy, do you?"
+
+"I don't want to overstrain myself," said Neddy jocularly, "but I'll do
+my best with it, only hope it's there!"
+
+"It must be there. Hasn't got wings, has it? At any rate not till you put
+it in your pocket, and go out for an evening with the ladies!"
+
+Neddy paid this pleasantry the tribute of a laugh, but he had one more
+business question to ask:
+
+"Where are we to stow the car? How far off?"
+
+"The Sergeant has picked out a big clump of trees, a hundred yards from
+the cottage on the Sprotsfield side, and about thirty yards from the
+road. Pretty clear going to it, bar the bracken--she'll do it easily.
+There she'll lie, snug as you like. As we go by Sprotsfield, the car
+won't have to pass the Cottage at all--that's an advantage--and yet it's
+not over far to carry the stuff."
+
+"Sounds all right," said Neddy placidly, and with a yawn. "Have a drop?"
+
+"No, I won't--and I wish you wouldn't, Neddy. It makes you bad-tempered,
+and a man doesn't want to be bad-tempered on these jobs."
+
+"Take the wheel a second while I have a drop," said Neddy, just for all
+the world as if his friend had not spoken. He unscrewed the top of a
+large flask and took a very considerable "drop." It was only after he had
+done this with great deliberation that he observed good-naturedly, "And
+you go to hell, Mike! It's dark, ain't it? That's a bit of all right."
+
+He did not speak again till they were near Sprotsfield. "This
+Beaumaroy--queer name, ain't it?--he's a big chap, ain't he, Mike?"
+
+"Pretty fair, but, Lord love you, a baby beside yourself."
+
+"Well, now, you told me something the Sergeant said about a man as
+was (Neddy, unlike his friend, occasionally tripped in his English)
+really big."
+
+"Oh, that's Naylor--Captain Naylor. But he's not at the cottage; we're
+not likely to meet him, praise be!"
+
+"Rather wish we were! I want a little bit of exercise," said Neddy.
+
+"Well, I don't know but what Beaumaroy might give you that. The
+Sergeant's got tales about him at the war."
+
+"Oh, blast these soldiers--they ain't no good." In what he himself
+regarded as his spare hours, that is to say, the daytime hours wherein
+the ordinary man labors, Neddy was a highly skilled craftsman, whose only
+failing was a tendency to be late in the morning and to fall ill about
+the festive seasons of the year. He made lenses, and, in spite of the
+failing, his work had been deemed to be of national importance, as indeed
+it was. But that did not excuse his prejudice against soldiers.
+
+They passed through the outskirts of Sprotsfield; Mike--to use his more
+familiar name--had made a thorough exploration of the place, and his
+directions enabled his chauffeur to avoid the central and populous parts
+of the town. Then they came out on to the open heath, passed Old Place,
+and presently--about half a mile from Tower Cottage--found Sergeant
+Hooper waiting for them by the roadside. It was then hard on midnight--a
+dark cloudy night, very apt for their purpose. With a nod, but without a
+word, the Sergeant got into the car, and in cautious whispers directed
+its course to the shelter of the clump of trees; they reached it after a
+few hundred yards of smooth road and some thirty of bumping over the
+heath. It afforded a perfect screen from the road, and on the other side
+there was only untrodden heath, no path or track being visible near it.
+
+Neddy got out of the car, but he did not forget his faithful flask. He
+offered it to the Sergeant in token of approval. "Good place, Sergeant,"
+he said; "does credit to you, as a beginner. Here, mate, hold on, though.
+It's evident you ain't accustomed to liquor glasses!"
+
+"When I sits up so late, I gets a kind of a sinking," the Sergeant
+explained apologetically.
+
+Mike flashed a torch on him for a minute; there was a very uncomfortable
+look in his little squinty eyes. "Sergeant," he said suavely but
+gravely, "my friend here relies on you. He's not a safe man to
+disappoint." He shifted the light suddenly on to Neddy, whose
+proportions seemed to loom out prodigious from the surrounding darkness.
+"Are you, Neddy?"
+
+"No, I'm a sensitive chap, I am," said Neddy, smiling. "Don't you go and
+hurt my pride in you by any sign of weakness, Sergeant."
+
+The Sergeant shivered a little. "I'm game. I'll stick it," he protested
+valorously.
+
+"You'd better!" Neddy advised.
+
+"All quiet at the Cottage as you came by?" asked Mike.
+
+"Quiet as the grave, for what I see," the Sergeant answered.
+
+"All right. Mike, where are them sandwiches? I feel like a bite. One for
+the Sergeant too! But no more flask--no, you don't Sergeant! When'll we
+start, Mike!"
+
+"In about half-an-hour."
+
+"Just nice time for a snack--oysters and stout for you, my darling?"
+said jovial Neddy. Then--with a change of voice--"Just as well that
+didn't pass us!"
+
+For the sound of a car came from the road they had just left. It was
+going in the direction of the Cottage and of Inkston. Captain Alec
+was taking his betrothed home after a joyful evening of
+congratulation and welcome.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE SECRET OF THE TOWER
+
+
+The scene presented by the interior of the Tower, when Beaumaroy softly
+opened the door and signed to Doctor Mary to step forward and look, was
+indeed a strange one, a ridiculous yet pathetic mockery of grandeur.
+
+The building was a circular one, rising to a height of some thirty-five
+feet and having a diameter of about ten. Up to about twelve feet from the
+floor its walls were draped with red and purple stuffs of coarse
+material; above them the bare bricks and the rafters of the roof showed
+naked. In the middle of the floor, with their backs to the door at which
+Mary and her companion stood, were set two small armchairs of plain and
+cheap make. Facing them, on a rough dais about three feet high and with
+two steps leading up to it, stood a large and deep carved oaken
+armchair. It too was upholstered in purple, and above and around it were
+a canopy and curtains of the same color. This strange erection was set
+with its back to the one window--that which Mr. Saffron had caused to be
+boarded up soon after he entered into occupation. The place was lighted
+by candles--two tall standards of an ecclesiastical pattern, one on
+either side of the great chair or throne, and each holding six large
+candles, all of which were now alight and about half-consumed. On the
+throne, his spare wasted figure set far back in the recesses of its deep
+cushioned seat and his feet resting on a high hassock, sat old Mr.
+Saffron; in his right hand he grasped a scepter, obviously a theatrical
+"property," but a handsome one, of black wood with gilt ornamentation;
+his left arm he held close against his side. His eyes were turned up
+towards the room; his lips were moving as though he were talking, but no
+sound came.
+
+Such was Doctor Mary's first impression of the scene; but the next moment
+she took in another feature of it, not less remarkable. To the left of
+the throne, to her right as she stood in the doorway facing it, there was
+a fireplace; an empty grate, though the night was cold. Immediately in
+front of it was, unmistakably, the excavation in the floor which Mr.
+Penrose had described at the Christmas dinner-party at Old Place--six
+feet in length by three in breadth, and about four feet deep. Against the
+wall, close by, stood a sheet of cast iron, which evidently served to
+cover and conceal the aperture; by it was thrown down, in careless
+disorder, a strip of the same dull red baize as covered the rest of the
+floor of the Tower. By the side of the sheet and the piece of carpet
+there was an old brown leather bag.
+
+Tradition, and Mr. Penrose, had told the truth. Here without doubt was
+Captain Duggle's grave, the grave he had caused to be dug for himself,
+but which--be the reason what it might---his body had never occupied. Yet
+the tomb was not entirely empty. The floor of it was strewn with gold, to
+what depth Mary could not tell, but it was covered with golden
+sovereigns; there must be thousands of them. They gleamed under the light
+of the candles.
+
+Mary turned, startled, inquiring, apprehensive eyes on Beaumaroy. He
+pressed her arm gently, and whispered:
+
+"I'll tell you presently. Come in. He'll notice us, I expect, in a
+minute. Mind you curtsey when he sees you!" He led her in, pulling the
+door to after him, and placed her and himself in front of the two small
+armchairs opposite Mr. Saffron's throne.
+
+Beaumaroy removed his hand from her arm, but she caught his wrist in one
+of hers and stood there, holding on to him, breathing quickly, her eyes
+now set on the figure on the throne.
+
+The old man's lips had ceased to move; his eyes had closed; he lay back
+in the deep seat, inert, looking half-dead, very pale and waxen in the
+face. For what seemed a long time he sat thus, motionless and almost
+without signs of life, while the two stood side by side before him. Mary
+glanced once at Beaumaroy; his lips were apart in that half humorous,
+half compassionate smile; there was no hint of impatience in his bearing.
+
+At last Mr. Saffron opened his eyes, and saw them; there was intelligence
+in his look, though his body did not move. Mary was conscious of a low
+bow from Beaumaroy; she remembered the caution he had given her, and
+herself made a deep curtsey; the old man made a slight inclination of his
+handsome white head. Then, after another long pause, a movement passed
+over his body--excepting his left arm. She saw that he was trying to rise
+from his seat, but that he had barely the strength to achieve his
+purpose. But he persisted in his effort, and in the end rose slowly and
+tremulously to his feet.
+
+Then, utterly without warning, in a sudden and shocking burst of that
+high, voluble, metallic speech which Captain Alec had heard through the
+ceiling of the parlor, he began to address them, if indeed it were they
+whom he addressed, and not some phantom audience of Princes, Marshals,
+Admirals, or trembling sheep-like re emits. It was difficult to hear the
+words, hopeless to make out the sense. It was a farrago of nonsense, part
+of his own inventing, part (as it seemed) wild and confused reminiscences
+of the published speeches of the man he aped, all strung together on some
+invisible thread of insane reasoning, delivered with a mad vehemence and
+intensity that shook and seemed to rend his feeble frame.
+
+"We must stop him, we must stop him," Mary suddenly whispered. "He'll
+kill himself if he goes on like this!"
+
+"I've never been able to stop him," Beaumaroy whispered back. "Hush! If
+he hears us speaking he'll be furious, and carry on worse."
+
+The old man's blue eyes fixed themselves on Beaumaroy--of Mary he took no
+heed. He pointed at Beaumaroy with his scepter, and from him to the
+gleaming gold in Captain Duggle's grave. A streak of coherency, a strand
+of mad logic, now ran through his hurtling words; the money was there,
+Beaumaroy was to take it--to-day, to-day!--to take it to Morocco, to
+raise the tribes, to set Africa aflame. He was to scatter it--broadcast,
+broadcast! There was no end to it--don't spare it! "There's millions,
+millions of it!" he shouted, and achieved a weird wild majesty in a final
+cry, "God with us!"
+
+Then he fell--tumbled back in utter collapse into the recesses of the
+great chair. His scepter fell from his nerveless hand and rolled down the
+steps of the dais; the impetus it gathered carried it, rolling still,
+across the floor to the edge of the open pit; for an instant it lay
+poised on the edge, and then fell with a jangle of sound on the carpet of
+golden coins that lined Captain Duggle's grave.
+
+"Quick! Get my bag--I left it in the passage," whispered Mary, as she
+started forward, up the dais, to the old man's side. "And brandy, if
+you've got it," she called after Beaumaroy, as he turned to the door to
+do her bidding.
+
+Beaumaroy was gone no more than a minute. When he came back, with the bag
+hitched under his arm, a decanter of brandy in one band and a glass in
+the other, Mary was leaning over the throne, with her arm round the old
+man. His eyes were open, but he was inert and motionless. Beaumaroy
+poured out some brandy, and gave it into Mary's free hand. But when Mr.
+Saffron saw Beaumaroy by his side, he gave a sudden twist of his body,
+wrenched himself away from Mary's arm, and flung himself on his trusted
+friend. "Hector, I'm in danger! They're after me! They'll shut me up!"
+
+Beaumaroy put his strong arms about the frail old body. "Oh no, sir, oh,
+no!" he said in low, comforting, half-bantering tones. "That's the old
+foolishness, sir, if I may so say. You're perfectly safe with me. You
+ought to trust me by now, sir, really you ought."
+
+"You swear, you swear it's all right, Hector?"
+
+"Right as rain, sir," Beaumaroy assured him cheerfully.
+
+Very feebly the old man moved his right hand towards the open grave.
+"Plenty--plenty! All yours, Hector! For--for the Cause--God's with us!"
+His head fell forward on Beaumaroy's breast; for an instant again he
+raised it, and looked in the face of his friend. A smile came on his
+lips. "I know I can trust you. I'm safe with you, Hector." His head fell
+forward again; his whole body was relaxed; he gave a sigh of peace.
+Beaumaroy lifted him in his arms and very gently set him back in his
+great chair, placing his feet again on the high footstool.
+
+"I think it's all over," he said, and Mary saw tears in his eyes.
+
+Then Mary herself collapsed; she sank down on the dais and broke into
+weeping. It had all been so pitiful, and somehow so terrible. Her quick
+tumultuous sobbing sounded through the place which the vibrations of the
+old man's voice had lately filled.
+
+She felt Beaumaroy's hand on her shoulder. "You must make sure," he said,
+in a low voice. "You must make your examination."
+
+With trembling hands she did it--she forced herself to it, Beaumaroy
+aiding her. There was no doubt. Life had left the body which reason had
+left long before. His weakened heart had not endured the last strain of
+mad excitement. The old man was dead.
+
+Her face showed Beaumaroy the result of her examination, if he had ever
+doubted of it. She looked at him, then made a motion of her hand towards
+the body. "We must--we must--" she stammered, the tears still rolling
+down her cheeks.
+
+"Presently," he said. "There's plenty of time. You're not fit to do that
+now--and no more am I, to tell the truth. We'll rest for half an hour,
+and then get him upstairs, and--and do the rest. Come with me!" He put
+his hand lightly within her arm. "He will rest quietly on his throne for
+a little while. He's not afraid any more. He's at rest."
+
+Still with his arm in Mary's, he bent forward and kissed the old man on
+the forehead. "I shall miss you, old friend," he said. Then, with gentle
+insistence, he led Mary away. They left the old man, propped up by the
+high stool on which his feet rested, seated far back in the great chair,
+hard by Captain Duggle's grave, where the scepter lay on a carpet of
+gold. The tall candles burnt on either side of his throne, imparting a
+far-off semblance of ceremonial state.
+
+Thus died, unmarried, in the seventy-first year of his age, Aloysius
+William Saffron, formerly of Exeter, Surveyor and Auctioneer. He had run,
+on the whole, a creditable course; starting from small beginnings, and
+belonging to a family more remarkable for eccentricity than for any solid
+merit, he had built up a good practice; he had made money and put it by;
+he enjoyed a good name for financial probity. But he was held to be a
+vain, fussy, self-important, peacocky fellow; very self-centered also and
+(as Beaumaroy had indicated) impatient of the family and social
+obligations which most men recognize, even though often unwillingly. As
+the years gathered upon his head, these characteristics were intensified.
+On the occasion of some trifling set-back in business--a rival cut him
+out in a certain negotiation--He threw up everything and disappeared from
+his native town. Thenceforward nothing was heard of him there, save that
+he wrote occasionally to his cousin, Sophia Radbolt, and her husband,
+both of whom he most cordially hated, whose claims to his notice, regard,
+or assistance he had, of late years at least, hotly resented. Yet he
+wrote to them--wrote them vaunting and magniloquent letters, hinting
+darkly of great doings and great riches. In spite of their opinion of
+him, the Radbolts came to believe perhaps half of what he said; he was
+old and without other ties; their thirst for his money was greedy.
+Undoubtedly the Radbolts would dearly have loved to get hold of him
+and--somehow--hold him fast.
+
+When he came to Tower Cottage--it was in the first year of the war--he
+was precariously sane; it was only gradually that his fundamental and
+constitutional vices and foibles turned to a morbid growth. First came
+intensified hatred and suspicion of the Radbolts--they were after him and
+his money! Then, through hidden processes of mental distortion, there
+grew the conviction that he was of high importance, a great man, the
+object of great conspiracies, in which the odious Radbolts were but
+instruments. It was, no doubt, the course of public events, culminating
+in the Great War, which gave to his mania its special turn, to his
+delusion its monstrous (but, as Doctor Mary was aware, by no means
+unprecedented) character. By the time of his meeting with Beaumaroy the
+delusion was complete; through all the second half of 1918 he
+followed--so far as his mind could now follow anything rationally--in his
+own person and fortunes the fate of the man whom he believed himself to
+be, appropriating the hopes, the fears, the imagined ambitions, the
+physical infirmity, of that self-created other self.
+
+But he wrapped it all in deep secrecy, for, as the conviction of his true
+identity grew complete, his fears were multiplied. Radbolts indeed! The
+whole of Christendom--Principalities and Powers--were on his track. They
+would shut him up, kill him perhaps! Cunningly he hid his secret--save
+what could not be entirely hidden, the physical deformity. But he hid it
+with his shawl; he never ate out of his own house; the combination
+knife-and-fork was kept sedulously hidden. Only to Beaumaroy did he
+reveal the hidden thing; and, later, on Beaumaroy's persuasion, he let
+into the portentous secret one faithful servant--Beaumaroy's unsavory
+retainer, Sergeant Hooper.
+
+He never accepted Hooper as more than a distasteful necessity--somebody
+must wait on him and do him menial service; he was not feared, indeed,
+for surely such a dog would not dare to be false, but cordially disliked.
+Beaumaroy won him from the beginning. Whom he conceived him to be
+Beaumaroy himself never knew, but he opened his heart to him
+unreservedly. Of him he had no suspicion; to him he looked for safety and
+for the realization of his cherished dreams. Beaumaroy soothed his
+terrors and humored him in all things--what was the good of doing
+anything else, asked Beaumaroy's philosophy. He loved Beaumaroy far more
+than he had loved anybody except himself in all his life. At the end,
+through the wild tangle of mad imaginings, there ran this golden thread
+of human affection; it gave the old man hours of peace, sometimes almost
+of sanity.
+
+So he came to his death, directly indeed of a long-standing organic
+disease, yet veritably self-destroyed. And so he sat now, dead amidst his
+shabby parody of splendor. He had done with thrones; he had even done
+with Tower Cottage--unless indeed his pale shade were to hold nocturnal
+converse with the robust and flamboyant ghost of Captain Duggle; the one
+vaunting his unreal vanished greatness, mouthing orations and mimicking
+pomp; the other telling, in language garnished with strange and horrible
+oaths, of those dark and lurid terrors which once had driven him from
+this very place, leaving it ablaze behind. A strange couple they would
+make, and strange would be their conversation!
+
+Yet the tenement which had housed the old man's deranged spirit, empty as
+now it was--aye, emptier than Duggle's tomb--was still to be witness of
+one more earthly scene and unwittingly bear part in it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+RIGHT OF CONQUEST
+
+
+What has been related of Mr. Saffron's life before he ascended the throne
+on which he still sat in the Tower represented all that Beaumaroy knew of
+his old friend before they met--indeed he knew scarcely as much. He told
+the brief story to Doctor Mary in the parlor. She heard him listlessly;
+all that was not much to the point on which her thoughts were set, and
+did not answer the riddle which the scene in the Tower put to her. She
+was calm now--and ashamed that she had ever lost her calmness.
+
+"Well, there was the situation as I understood it when I took on the
+job--or quite soon afterwards. He thought that he was being pursued; in a
+sense he was. If these Radbolts found out the truth, they certainly would
+pursue him, try to shut him up, and prevent him from making away with
+his money or leaving it to anybody else. I didn't at all know at first
+what a tidy lot he had. He hated the Radbolts; even after he ceased to
+know them as cousins, he remained very conscious of them always; they
+were enemies, spies, secret service people on his track--poor old boy!
+Well, why should they have him and his money? I didn't see it. I don't
+see it to this day."
+
+Mary was in Mr. Saffron's armchair. Beaumaroy stood before the fire. She
+looked up at him.
+
+"They seem to have more right than anybody else. And you know--you
+knew--that he was mad."
+
+"His being mad gives them no right! Oh, well, it's no use arguing. In the
+end I suppose they had rights--of a kind; a right by law, I
+suppose--though I never knew the law and don't want to--to shut the old
+man up, and make him damned miserable, and get the money for themselves.
+That sounds just the sort of right the law does give people over other
+people--because Aunt Betsy married Uncle John fifty years ago, and was
+probably infernally sorry for it!"
+
+Mary smiled. "A matter of principle with you, was it, Mr. Beaumaroy?"
+
+"No--instinct, I think. It's my instinct to be against the proper thing,
+the regular thing, the thing that deals hardly with an individual in the
+name of some highly nebulous general principle."
+
+"Like discipline?" she put in, with a reminiscence of
+Major-General Punnit.
+
+He nodded. "Yes, that's one case of it. And then, the situation amused
+me. I think that had more to do with it than anything else at first. It
+amused me to play up to his delusions. I suggested the shawl as useful on
+our walks--and thereby got him to take wholesome exercise; that ought to
+appeal to you, Doctor! I got him the combination knife-and-fork; that
+made him enjoy his meals--also good for him, Doctor! But I didn't do
+these things because they were good for him, but because they amused me.
+They never amused Hooper, he's a dull, surly, and--I'm inclined to
+believe--treacherous dog."
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"Sacked from the Army--sent to quod. Just a jail-bird whom I've kept
+loose. But the things did amuse me, and it was that at first. But
+then--" he paused.
+
+Looking at him again, Mary saw a whimsical tenderness expressed in his
+eyes and smile. "The poor chap was so overwhelmingly grateful. He thought
+me the one indubitably faithful adherent that he had. And so I was
+too--though not in the way he thought. And he trusted me absolutely.
+Well, was I to give him up--to the law, and the Radbolts, and the jailers
+of an asylum--a man who trusted me like that?"
+
+"But he was mad," objected Doctor Mary obstinately.
+
+"A man has his feelings, or may have, even when he's mad. He trusted me
+and he loved me, Doctor Mary. Won't you allow that I've my case--so far?"
+She made no sign of assent. "Well then, I loved him--does that go any
+better with you? If it doesn't, I'm in a bad way; be cause what I'm
+giving you now is the strong part of my case."
+
+"I don't see why you should put what you call your case to me at all, Mr.
+Beaumaroy."
+
+He looked at her in a reproachful astonishment. "But you seemed touched
+by--by what we saw in the Tower. I thought the old man's death and
+faith had appealed to you. It seems to me that people can't go through
+a thing like that together without feeling--well, some sort of
+comradeship. But if you've no sort of feeling of that kind--well, I
+don't want to put my case."
+
+"Go on with your case," said Doctor Mary, after a moment's silence.
+
+"Though it isn't really that I want to put a case for myself at all. But
+I don't mind owning that I'd like you to understand about it--before I
+clear out."
+
+She looked at him questioningly, but put no spoken question. Beaumaroy
+sat down on the stool opposite to her, and poked the fire.
+
+"I can't get away from it, can I? There was something else you saw in
+the Tower, wasn't there, and I dare say that you connect it with a
+conversation that we had together a little while ago? Well, I'll tell you
+about that. Oh, well, of course I must, mustn't I?"
+
+"I should like to hear." Her bitterness was gone; he had come now to
+the riddle.
+
+"He was a King to himself," Beaumaroy resumed thoughtfully, "but in fact
+I was king over him. I could do anything I liked with him. I had him. I
+possessed him--by right of conquest. The right of conquest seemed a big
+thing to me; it was about the only sort of right that I'd seen anything
+of for three years and more. Yes, it was--and is--a big thing, a real
+thing--the one right in the whole world that there's no doubt about.
+Other rights are theories, views, preachments! Right of conquest is a
+fact. I had it. I could make him do what I liked, say what I liked, sign
+what I liked. Do you begin to see where I found myself? I say found
+myself, because really it was a surprise to me. At first I thought he was
+in a pretty small way--he only gave me a hundred a year besides my keep.
+True, he always talked of his money, but I set that down mainly to his
+delusion. But it was true that he had a lot--really a lot. A good bit
+besides what you saw in there; he must have speculated cleverly, I think,
+he couldn't have made it all in his business. Doctor Mary, how much gold
+do you think there is in the grave in there?"
+
+"I haven't the least idea. Thousands? Where did you get it?"
+
+"Oh yes, thousands--and thousands. We got it mostly from the aliens in
+the East End; they'd hoarded it, you know; but they were willing to sell
+at a premium. The premium rose up to last month; then it dropped a
+little--not much, though, because we'd exhausted some of the most obvious
+sources. I carried every sovereign of that money in the grave down from
+London in my brown bag." He smiled reflectively. "Do you know how much a
+thousand sovereigns weigh, Doctor Mary?"
+
+"I haven't the least idea," said Mary again. She was leaning forward
+now, listening intently, and watching Beaumaroy's face with
+absorbed interest.
+
+"Seventeen and three-quarter pounds avoirdupois--that's the correct
+weight. The first time or two we didn't get much--they were still shy of
+us. But after that we made some heavy; hauls. Twice we brought down close
+on two thousand. Once there was three thousand, almost to a sovereign.
+Even men trained to the work--bullion porters, as they call them at the
+Bank of England--reckon five bags of a thousand, canvas bags not much
+short of a foot long and six inches across, you know--they reckon five of
+them a full load--and wouldn't care to go far with them either. The
+equivalent of three of them was quite enough for me to carry from Inkston
+station up to the Cottage--trying to look as if I were carrying nothing
+of any account! One hasn't got to pretend to be carrying nothing in full
+marching kit--nor to carry it all in one hand. And he'd never trust
+himself in a cab--might be kidnapped, you see! I don't know exactly, but
+from what he said I reckon we've brought down, on our Wednesday trips,
+about two-thirds of all he had. Now you've probably gathered what his
+idea was. He knew he was disguised as Saffron--and very proud of the way
+he lived up to the character. As Saffron, he realized the money by
+driblets--turned his securities into notes, his notes into gold. But he'd
+lost all knowledge that the money was his own--made by himself--himself
+Saffron. He thought it was saved out of the wreck of his Imperial
+fortune. It was to be dedicated to restoring the Imperial cause. He
+himself could not attempt, at present, to get out of England, least of
+all carrying pots of gold coin. But he believed that I could. I was to go
+to Morocco and so on, and raise the country for him, taking as much as I
+could, and coming back for more! He had no doubt at all of my coming
+back! In fact it wouldn't have been much easier for me to get out of the
+country with the money than it would have been for the authentic Kaiser
+himself. But, Doctor Mary, what would have been possible was for me to go
+somewhere else, or even back to the places we knew of, for no questions
+were asked there--put that money back into notes, or securities in my own
+name, and tell him I had carried out the Morocco programme. He had no
+sense of time, he would have suspected nothing."
+
+"That would have been mere and sheer robbery," said Mary.
+
+"Oh yes, it would," Beaumaroy agreed. "And, if I'd done it, and deserted
+him, I should have deserved to be hanged. That was hardly my question. As
+long as he lived, I meant to stick by him; but he was turned seventy,
+frail, with heart-disease, and, as I understand, quite likely to sink
+into general paralysis. Well, if I was to exercise my right of conquest
+and get the fruits of conquest, two ways seemed open. There could be a
+will; you'll remember my consulting you on that point and your reply?"
+
+"Did he make a will?" asked Mary quickly.
+
+"No. A will was open to serious objections. Even supposing your
+evidence--which, of course, I wanted in case of need--had been
+satisfactory, a fight with the Radbolts would have been unpleasant.
+Worse than that--as long as I lived I should have been blackmailed by
+Sergeant Hooper, who knew Mr. Saffron's condition, though he didn't know
+about the money here. Even before you found out about my poor old
+friend, I had decided against a will--though, perhaps, I might have
+squared the Radbolts by just taking this little place--and its
+contents--and letting them take the rest. That too became impossible
+after your discovery. There remained then, the money in the Tower. I
+could make quite sure of that, wait for his death, and then enjoy it.
+And, upon my word, why shouldn't I? He'd have been much gratified by my
+going to Morocco; and he'd certainly much sooner that I had the
+money--if it couldn't go to Morocco--than that the Radbolts should get
+it. That was the way the question presented itself to me; and I'm a poor
+man, with no obvious career before me. The right of conquest appealed to
+me strongly, Doctor Mary."
+
+"I can see that you may have been greatly tempted," said Mary in a grave
+and troubled voice. "And the circumstances did enable you to make excuses
+for what you thought of doing."
+
+"Excuses? You won't even go so far as to call it a doubtful case? One
+that a casuist could argue either way?" Beaumaroy was smiling again now.
+
+"Even if I did, men of--"
+
+"Yes, Doctor Mary--of sensitive honor!"
+
+"Decide doubtful cases against themselves in money matters."
+
+"Oh, I say, is that doctrine current in business circles? I've been in
+business myself, and I doubt it."
+
+"They do--men of real honor," Mary persisted.
+
+"So that's how great fortunes are made? That's how individuals--to say
+nothing of nations--rise to wealth and power! And I never knew it,"
+Beaumaroy reflected in a gentle voice. His eye caught Mary's, and she
+gave a little laugh. "By deciding doubtful cases against themselves!
+Dear me, yes!"
+
+"I didn't say they rose to greatness and power."
+
+"Then the people who do rise to greatness and power--and the
+nations--don't they go by right of conquest, Doctor Mary? Don't they
+decide cases in their own favor?"
+
+"Did you really mean to--to take the money?"
+
+"I'll tell you as near as I can. I meant to do my best for my old man. I
+meant him to live as long as he could, and to live free, unpersecuted, as
+happy as he could be made. I meant that, because I loved him, and he
+loved me. Well, I've lost him; I'm alone in the world." The last words
+were no appeal to Mary; for the moment he seemed to have forgotten her;
+he was speaking out of his own heart to himself. Yet the words thereby
+touched her to a livelier pity; you are very lonely when there is nobody
+to whom you have affection's right to complain of loneliness.
+
+"But after that, if I saw him to his end in peace, if I brought that off,
+well, then I rather think that I should have stuck to the money. Yes, I
+rather think so."
+
+"You've managed to mix things up so!" Mary complained. "Your devotion to
+Mr. Saffron--for that I could forgive you keeping his secret, and fooling
+me, and all of us. But then you mix that up with the money!"
+
+"It was mixed up with it. I didn't do the mixing."
+
+"What are you going to do now?" she asked with a sudden curiosity.
+
+"Oh, now? Now the thing's all different. You've seen, you know, and even
+I can't offer you a partnership in the cash, can I? If I weren't an
+infernally poor conspirator, I should have covered up the Captain's
+grave, and made everything neat and tidy before I came to fetch you,
+because I knew he might go back to the Tower. On his bad nights he always
+made me open the grave, and spread out the money, make a show of it, you
+know. Then it had to be put back in bags--the money bags lived in the
+brown leather bag--and the grave had to be fastened down. Altogether it
+was a good bit of work. I'd just got it open, and the money spread out,
+when he turned bad--a sort of collapse like the one you saw; and I was so
+busy getting him to bed that I forgot the cursed grave and the
+money--just as I forgot to put away the knife-and-fork before you called
+the first time, and you saw through me!"
+
+"If you're not a good conspirator, it's another reason for not
+conspiring, Mr. Beaumaroy. I know you conspired for him first of
+all, but--"
+
+"Well, he's safe, he's at peace. It can all come out now, and it must.
+You know, and you must tell the truth. I don't know whether they can put
+me in prison. I should hardly think they'd bother, if they get the money
+all right. In any case I don't care much. Lord, what a lot of people'll
+say 'I told you so--bad egg, that Beaumaroy!' No, I don't care. My old
+man's safe; I've won my big game after all, Doctor Mary!"
+
+"I don't believe you cared about the money really!" she cried. "That
+really was a game to you, I think, a trick you liked to play on us
+respectables!"
+
+He smiled at her confidentially. "I do like beating the respectables," he
+admitted. Then he looked at his watch. "I must do what has to be done for
+the old man. But it's late--hard on one o'clock. You must be tired--and
+it's a sad job."
+
+"No, I'll help you. I--I've been in hospitals, you know. Only do go
+first, and cover up that horrible place, and hide that wretched money
+before I go into the Tower. Will you?" She gave a shiver, as her
+imagination renewed the scene which the Tower held.
+
+"You needn't come into the Tower at all. He's as light as a feather--I've
+lifted him into bed often. I can lift him now. If you really wish to
+help, will you go up to his room, and get things ready?" As he spoke, he
+crossed to the sideboard, took up a bedroom candlestick, and lighted it
+from one that stood on the table. "And you'll see about the body being
+taken to the mortuary, won't you? I shall communicate with the
+Radbolts--fully; they'll take charge of the funeral, I suppose. Well, he
+won't know anything about that now, thank God!" There was the slightest
+tremor in his voice as he spoke.
+
+Mary did not take the candle. "I've said some hard things to you, Mr.
+Beaumaroy. I dare say I've sounded very self-righteous." He raised his
+hand in protest, but she went on: "So I should like to say one different
+thing to you, since we're to part after to-night. You've shown yourself a
+good friend, good and true as a man could have."
+
+"I loved my old man," said Beaumaroy.
+
+It was his only plea. To Mary it seemed a good one. He had loved his poor
+old madman; and he had served him faithfully. "Yes, the old man found a
+good friend in you; I hope you will find good friends too. Oh, I do hope
+it! Because that's what you want."
+
+"I should be very glad if I could think that, in spite of everything, I
+had found one here in this place--even although she can be a friend only
+in memory."
+
+Mary paused for a moment, then gave him her hand. "I know you much
+better after tonight. My memory of you will be a kind one. Now to
+our work!"
+
+"Yes--and thank you. I thank you more deeply than you imagine."
+
+He gave her the candle and followed her to the passage.
+
+"You know where the room is. I shall put the--the place--straight, and
+then bring him up. I sha'n't be many minutes--ten, perhaps. The cover's
+rather hard to fit."
+
+Mary nodded from the top of the stairs. Strained by the events of the
+night, and by the talk to Beaumaroy, she was again near tears; her eyes
+were bright in the light of the candle, and told of nervous excitement.
+Beaumaroy went back into the parlor, on his way to the Tower. Suddenly he
+stopped and stood dead still, listening intently.
+
+Mary busied herself upstairs, making her preparations with practiced
+skill and readiness. Her agitation did not interfere with her work
+--there her training told--but of her inner mind it had full possession.
+She was afraid to be alone--there in that cottage. She longed for another
+clasp of that friendly hand. Well, he would come soon; but he must bring
+his burden with him. When she had finished what she had to do, she sat
+down, and waited.
+
+Beaumaroy waited too, outside the door leading to the Tower.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE SCEPTER IN THE GRAVE
+
+
+Sergeant Hooper took up his appointed position on the flagged path
+that led up to the cottage door. His primary task was to give warning
+if anybody should come out of the door; a secondary one was to give
+the alarm in case of interruption by passers-by on the road--an
+unlikely peril this latter, in view of the hour, the darkness of the
+night, and the practiced noiselessness with which Mike might be relied
+upon to do his work. Here then the Sergeant was left, after being
+accorded another nip from the flask--which, however, Neddy kept in his
+own hands this time--and a whispered but vigorously worded exhortation
+to keep up his courage.
+
+Neddy, the Shover, and gentlemanly Mike tiptoed off to the window, on the
+right hand side of the door as one approached the house from the road.
+The bottom of the window was about seven feet from the ground. Neddy bent
+down and offered his broad back as a platform to his companion. Mike
+mounted thereon and began his work. That, in itself, was child's play to
+him; the matchboarding was but lightly nailed on; the fastenings came
+away in a moment under the skillful application of his instrument; the
+window sash behind was not even bolted, for the bolt had perished with
+time and had not been replaced. So far, very good! But at this early
+point Mike received his first surprise. He could not see much of the
+interior; a tall curtain stretched across the entire breadth of the
+window, distant about two feet from it; but he could see that the room
+was lighted up.
+
+Very cautiously he completed his work on the matchboarding, handing down
+each plank to Neddy when he had detached it. Then he cut out a pane of
+glass--it was all A.B.C. to him--put his hand in and raised the sash a
+little; then it was simple to push it up from below. But the sash had
+not been raised for years; it stuck; when it yielded to his efforts, it
+gave a loud creak. He flung one leg over the window-sill and sat poised
+there, listening. The room was lighted up; but if there were anyone in
+it, he must be asleep, or very hard of hearing, or that creak would have
+aroused his attention.
+
+Released from his office as a support, Neddy rose, and hauled himself
+up by his arms till he could see in the window. "Lights!" he whispered.
+Mike nodded and got in--on the dais, behind the curtain. Neddy
+scrambled up after him, finding some help from a stunted but sturdy old
+apple tree that grew against the wall. Now they were both inside,
+behind the tall curtain.
+
+"Come on," Mike whispered. "We must see if there's anybody here, and,
+if there isn't, put out the light." For on either side of the curtain
+there was room for a streak of light which might by chance be seen
+from the road.
+
+Mike advanced round the left-side edge of the curtain; he had perceived
+by now that it formed the back of some structure, though he could not
+yet see of what nature the structure was; nor was he now examining. For
+as he stepped out on the dais at the side of the canopy, his eyes were
+engrossed by another feature of this strange apartment. He stretched back
+his hand and caught hold of Neddy's brawny arm, pulling him forward. "See
+that--that hole, Neddy?"
+
+For the moment they forgot the lights; they forgot the possibility of an
+occupant of the room--which indeed was, save for their own whispers,
+absolutely still; they stood looking at the strange hole, and then into
+one another's faces, for a few seconds. Then they stole softly nearer to
+it. "That's a blasted funny 'ole!" breathed Neddy. "Look's like a
+bloke's--"
+
+Mike's fingers squeezed his arm tighter, evidently again claiming his
+attention. "My hat, we needn't look far for the stuff!" he whispered. An
+uneasy whisper it was; the whole place looked queer, and that hole was
+uncanny--it had its contents.
+
+Yet they approached nearer; they came to the edge and stood looking in.
+As though he could not believe the mere sight of his eyes, big Neddy
+crouched down, reached out his hand, and took up Mr. Saffron's scepter.
+With a look of half-scared amazement he held it up for his companion's
+inspection. Mike eyed it uneasily, but his thoughts were getting back to
+business. He stole softly off to the door, with intent to see whether it
+was locked; he stooped down to examine it and perceived that it was not.
+It would be well, then, to barricade it, and he turned round to look for
+some heavy bit of furniture suitable for his purpose, something that
+would delay the entrance of an intruder and give them notice of the
+interruption.
+
+As he turned, his body suddenly stiffened; only his trained instinct
+prevented him from crying out. There was an occupant of the room--there,
+in the great chair between the tall candlesticks on the dais. An old man
+sat--half lay--there; asleep, it seemed; his eyes were shut. The color of
+his face struck Gentleman Mike as being peculiar. But everything in that
+place was peculiar; like a great tomb--a blooming mausoleum--the whole
+place was. Though he had the reputation of being an _esprit fort_, Mike
+felt uncomfortable. Cold and clammy too, the beastly place was!
+
+Still--business is business. Letting the matter of the unlocked door wait
+for the moment, he began to steal catlike across the floor towards the
+dais. He had to investigate; also he really ought to put out those
+candles; it was utterly unprofessional to leave them alight. But he could
+not conquer a feeling that the place would seem still more peculiar when
+they were put out.
+
+Big Neddy's eyes had not followed his comrade to the door; they had been
+held by the queer hole and its queer contents--by the gleaming gold that
+strewed its floor, by the mock symbol of majesty which he had lifted from
+it and still held in his hand, by the oddly suggestive shape and
+dimensions of the hole itself. But now he raised his eyes from these
+things and looked across at Mike, mutely asking what he thought of
+matters. He saw Mike stealing across the floor, looking very, very hard
+at--something.
+
+Mute as Neddy's inquiry was, Mike seemed somehow aware of it. He raised
+his hand, as though to enjoin silence, and then pointed it in front of
+him, raised to the level of his head. Neddy turned round to look in the
+direction indicated. He saw the throne and its silent occupant--the
+waxen-faced old man who sat there, seeming to preside over the scene,
+whose head was turned towards him, whose closed eyes would open directly
+on his face if their lids were lifted.
+
+Neddy feared no living man; so he was accustomed to boast, and with good
+warrant. But was that man living? How came he up there? And what had he
+to do with the queer-shaped hole that had all that gold in it? And the
+thing he held in his own hand? Did that belong to the old man up there?
+Had he flung it into the hole? Or (odd fancies began to assail big Neddy)
+had he left it behind him when he got out? And would he, by chance, come
+down to look for it?
+
+Mike's hand, stretched out from his body towards his friend, now again
+enjoined silence. He was at the foot of the dais; he was going up its
+steps. He was no good in a scrap, but he had a nerve in some things! He
+was up the steps now, and leaning forward; he was looking hard in the old
+man's face; his own was close to it. He laid hold of one of the old man's
+arms, it happened to be that left arm of Mr. Saffron's, lifted it, and
+let it fall again; it fell back just in the position from which he had
+lifted it. Then he straightened himself up, looking a trifle green
+perhaps, but reassured, and called out to Mike, in a penetrating whisper,
+"He's a stiff un all right!"
+
+Yes! But then, what of the grave? Because it was a grave and nothing
+else; there was no getting away from it. What of the grave, and what
+about the scepter?
+
+And what was Mike going to do now? He was tiptoeing to the edge of the
+dais. He was moving towards one of the high candlesticks, the top of
+which was a little below the level of his head, as he stood raised on the
+dais beside the throne. He leant forward towards the candles; his intent
+was obvious.
+
+But big Neddy was not minded that he should carry it out, could not
+suffer him to do it. With the light of the candles--well, at all events
+you could see what was happening; you could see where you were, and where
+anybody else was. But in the dark--left to torches which illuminated only
+bits of the place, and which perhaps you mightn't switch on in time or
+turn in the right direction; if you were left like that, anybody might be
+anywhere, and on to you before you knew it!
+
+"Let them lights alone, Mike!" he whispered hoarsely. "I'll smash your
+'ead in if you put them lights out!"
+
+Mike had conquered his own fit of nerves, not without some exercise of
+will, and had not given any notice to his companion's, which was
+considerably more acute; perhaps the constant use of that roomy flask
+had contributed to that, though lack of a liberal education (such as Mike
+had enjoyed and misused) must also bear its share of responsibility. He
+was amazed at this violent and threatening interruption. He gave a funny
+little skip backwards on the dais; his heel came thereby in contact with
+the high hassock on which Mr. Saffron's feet rested. The hassock was
+shifted; one foot fell from it on to the dais, and Mr. Saffron's body
+fell a little forward from out of the deep recess of his great chair. To
+big Neddy's perturbed imagination it looked as if Mr. Saffron had set one
+foot upon the floor of the dais and was going to rise from his seat,
+perhaps to come down from the dais, to come nearer to his grave--to ask
+for his scepter.
+
+It was too much for Neddy. He shuddered, he could not help it; and the
+scepter dropped from his hand. It fell from his hand back into the grave
+again; under its impact the gold coins in the grave again jangled.
+
+Beaumaroy had, by this time, been standing close outside the door for
+about two minutes; he had lighted a cigarette from the candle on the
+parlor table. The sounds that he thought he heard were not conclusive;
+creaks and cracks did sometimes come from the boarded-up window and the
+rafters of the roof. But the sound of the jangling gold was conclusive;
+it must be due in some way to human agency; and in the circumstances
+human agency must mean a thief.
+
+Beaumaroy's mind leapt to the Sergeant. Ten to one it was the Sergeant!
+He had long been after the secret; he had at last sniffed it out, and was
+helping himself! It seemed to Beaumaroy a disgusting thing to do, with
+the dead man sitting there. But that was sentiment. Sentiment was not to
+be expected of the Sergeant, and disgusting things were.
+
+Then he suddenly recalled Alec Naylor's story of the two men, one tall
+and slight, one short and stumpy, who had reconnoitered Tower Cottage.
+The Sergeant had an accomplice, no doubt. He listened again. He heard the
+scrape of metal on metal, as when a man gathers up coins in his hand out
+of a heap. Yet he stood where he was, smoking still. Thoughts were
+passing rapidly through his brain, and they brought a smile to his lips.
+
+Let them take it! Why not? It was no care to him now! Doctor Mary had to
+tell the truth about it, and so, consequently, had he himself. It
+belonged to the Radbolts. Oh, damn the Radbolts! He would have risked his
+life for it if the old man had lived, but he wasn't going to risk his
+life for the Radbolts. Let the rascals get off with the stuff, or as much
+as they could carry! He was all right. Doctor Mary could testify that he
+hadn't taken it. Let them carry off the infernal stuff! Incidentally he
+would be well rid of the Sergeant, and free from any of his
+importunities, from whines and threats alike; it was not an unimportant,
+if a minor, consideration.
+
+Yet it was a disgusting thing to do--it certainly was; and the Sergeant
+would think that he had scored a triumph. Over his benefactor too, his
+protector, Beaumaroy reflected with a satiric smile. The Sergeant
+certainly deserved a fright--and, if possible, a licking. These
+administered, he could be kicked out; perhaps--oh, yes, poor brute!--with
+a handful of the Radbolts' money. They would never miss it, as they did
+not know how much there was, and such a diversion of their legal property
+in no way troubled Beaumaroy's conscience.
+
+And the accomplice? He shrugged his shoulders. The Sergeant was, as he
+well knew from his military experience of that worthy man, an arrant
+coward. He would show no fight. If the accomplice did, Beaumaroy was
+quite in the mood to oblige him. But while he tackled one fellow, the
+other might get off with the money--with as much as he could carry. For
+all that it was merely Radbolt money now; in the end Beaumaroy could not
+stomach the idea of that--the idea that either of the dirty rogues in
+there should get off with the money. And it was foolish to attack them on
+the front on which they expected to be attacked. Quickly his mind formed
+another plan. He turned, stole softly out of the parlor, and along the
+passage towards the front door of the cottage.
+
+After Neddy had dropped Mr. Saffron's scepter into Captain Duggle's grave
+(had he known that it was Captain Duggle's, and not been a prey to the
+ridiculous but haunting fancy that it had been destined for, or even--oh,
+these errant fancies--already occupied by, Mr. Saffron himself, Neddy
+would have been less agitated) Mike dealt with him roundly. In bitter
+hissing whispers, and in language suited thereto, he pointed out the
+folly of vain superstitions, of childish fears and sick imaginings which
+interfered with business and threatened its success. His eloquent
+reasoning, combined with a lively desire to get out of the place as soon
+as possible, so far wrought on Neddy that he produced the sack which he
+had brought with him, and held its mouth open, though with trembling
+hands, while Mike scraped up handful after handful of gold coins and
+poured them into it. They were busily engaged on their joint task as
+Beaumaroy stole along the passage and, reaching the front door, again
+stood listening.
+
+The Sergeant was still keeping his vigil before the door. He had no doubt
+that it was locked; did not Beaumaroy see Mrs. Wiles and himself out of
+it every evening--the back door to the little house led only on to the
+heath behind and gave no direct access to the road--and lock it after
+them with a squeaking key? He would have warning enough if anyone turned
+the key now. He was looking towards the road; a surprise was more
+possible from that quarter; his back was towards the door and only a very
+little way from it.
+
+But when Beaumaroy had entered with Doctor Mary, he had not re-locked the
+door; he opened it now very gently and cautiously, and saw the Sergeant's
+back--there was no mistaking it. Without letting his surprise--for he had
+confidently supposed the Sergeant to be in the Tower--interfere with the
+instant action called for by the circumstances, he flung out his long
+right arm, caught the Sergeant round the neck with a throttling grip, and
+dragged him backwards into the house. The man was incapable of crying
+out; no sound escaped from him which could reach the Tower. Beaumaroy set
+him softly on the floor of the passage. "If you stir or speak, I'll
+strangle you!" he whispered. There was enough light from the passage lamp
+to enable the Sergeant to judge, by the expression of his face, that he
+spoke sincerely. The Sergeant did not dare even to rub his throat, though
+it was feeling very sore and uncomfortable.
+
+There was a row of pegs on the passage wall, just inside the door. On
+them, among hats, caps, and coats--and also Mr. Saffron's gray
+shawl--hung two long neck-scarves, comforters that the keen heath winds
+made very acceptable on a walk. Beaumaroy took them, and tied his
+prisoner hand and foot. He had just completed this operation, in the
+workmanlike fashion which he had learnt on service, when he heard a
+footstep on the stairs. Looking up, he saw Doctor Mary standing there.
+
+Her waiting in the room above had seemed long to her. Her ears had been
+expecting the sound of Beaumaroy's tread as he mounted the stairs, laden
+with his burden. That sound had not come; instead, there had been the
+soft, just audible, plop of the Sergeant's body as it dropped on the
+floor of the passage. It occurred to her that Beaumaroy had perhaps had
+some mishap with his burden, or found difficulty with it. She was coming
+downstairs to offer her help. Seeing what she saw now, she stood still
+in surprise.
+
+Beaumaroy looked up at her and smiled. "No cause for alarm," he said,
+"but I've got to go out for a minute. Keep an eye on this rascal, will
+you? Oh, and, Doctor Mary, if he tries to move or untie himself, just
+take the parlor poker and hit him over the head! Thanks. You don't mind,
+de you? And you, Sergeant, remember what I said!"
+
+With these words Beaumaroy slipped out of the door, and softly closed it
+behind him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+A NORMAL CASE
+
+
+When Captain Alec brought his _fiancée_ home after the dinner of welcome
+and congratulation at Old Place, it was nearly twelve o'clock. Jeanne,
+however--in these days a radiant Jeanne, very different from the mournful
+creature who had accompanied Captain Cranster's victim to Inkston a few
+weeks before--was sitting up for her mistress and, since she had to
+perform this duty--which was sweetened by the hope of receiving exciting
+confidences, for surely that affair was "marching?"--it had been agreed
+between her and the other maids that she should sit up for the Doctor
+also. She told the lovers that Doctor Mary had been called for by Mr.
+Beaumaroy, and had gone out with him, presumably to visit his friend Mr.
+Saffron. It did not occur to either of them to ask when Mary had set
+out; they contented themselves with exchanging a glance of disapproval.
+What a pity that Mary should have anything more to do with this Mr.
+Saffron and his Beaumaroy!
+
+However there was a bright side to it this time. It would be kind of
+Cynthia to sit up for Mary, and minister to her a cup of tea which
+Jeanne should prepare; and it would be pleasant--and quite
+permissible--for Captain Alec to bear her company. Mary could not be
+long, surely; it grew late.
+
+So for a while they thought no more of Mary--as was natural enough. They
+had so much to talk about, the whole of a new and very wonderful life to
+speculate about and to plan, the whole of their past acquaintance to
+review; old doubts had to be confessed and laughed at; the inevitability
+of the whole thing from the first beginnings had to be recognized,
+proved, and exhibited. In this sweet discourse the minutes flew by
+unmarked, and would have gone on flying, had not Jeanne reappeared of her
+own accord, to remark that it really was very late now; did mademoiselle
+think that possibly anything could have happened to Doctor Arkroyd?
+
+"By Jove, it is late!" cried the Captain, looking at his watch. "It's
+past one!"
+
+Cynthia was amazed to hear that.
+
+"He must be very ill, that old gentleman," Jeanne opined. "And poor
+Doctor Arkroyd will be very tired. She will find the walk across the
+heath very fatiguing."
+
+"Walk, Jeanne? Didn't she take the car?" cried Cynthia, surprised.
+
+No, the Doctor had not taken the car; she had started to walk with Mr.
+Beaumaroy; the parlormaid had certainly told Jeanne that.
+
+"I tell you what," said the Captain. "I'll just tool along to Tower
+Cottage. I'll look out for Doctor Mary on the road, and give her a lift
+back if I meet her. If I don't, I can stop at the cottage and get
+Beaumaroy to tell her that I'm there, and can wait to bring her home as
+soon as she's ready. You'd better go to bed, Cynthia."
+
+Jeanne tactfully disappeared, and the lovers said good-night. After
+Alec's departure, Jeanne received the anticipated confidence.
+
+That departure almost synchronized with two events at Tower Cottage. The
+first was Beaumaroy's exit from the front door, leaving Mary in charge
+of his prisoner who, consequently, was unable to keep any watch on the
+road or to warn his principals of approaching danger. The second was big
+Neddy's declaration that, in his opinion, the sack now held about as
+much as he could carry. He raised it from the floor in his two hands.
+"Must weight a 'undred pound or more!" he reckoned. That meant a lot of
+money, a fat lot of money. His terrors had begun to wear off, since
+nothing of a supernatural or even creepy order had actually happened. He
+had, at last, even agreed to the candles being put out. Still he would
+be glad to be off. "Enough's as good as a feast, as the sayin' goes,
+Mike," he chuckled.
+
+Mike had fitted a new battery into his torch. It shone brightly on Neddy
+and on the sack, whose mouth Neddy was now tying up, "I might fill my
+pockets too," he suggested, eyeing the very respectable amount of
+sovereigns which still remained in Captain Duggle's tomb.
+
+"Don't do it, old lad," Neddy advised. "If we 'ave to get out, or
+anything of that kind, you don't want to jingle as if you was a glass
+chandelier, do you?"
+
+Mike admitted the cogency of the objection, and they agreed to be off.
+Mike started for the window. "I'll just pick up the Sergeant," he said,
+"and signal you 'All clear.' Then you follow out."
+
+"No, Mike," said Neddy slowly, but very decisively. "If you don't mind,
+it's going to be me as gets out of that window first. I ain't a man of
+your eddication, and--well, blast me if I'm going to be left in this
+place alone with--that there!" He motioned with his head, back over his
+shoulder, towards where silent Mr. Saffron sat.
+
+"You're a blooming ass, Neddy, but have it your own way. Only let me see
+the coast's clear first."
+
+He stole to the window and looked around. He assumed that the Sergeant
+was at his post, but all the same he wanted to have a look at the road
+himself. So he had, and the result was satisfactory. It was hardly to be
+expected that he should scrutinize the ground immediately under the
+window; at any rate he did not think of that. It was, as Beaumaroy had
+conjectured, from another direction, from the parlor, that he anticipated
+a possible attack. There all was quiet. He came back and reported to
+Neddy that the moment was favorable. "I'll switch off the torch, though,
+just in case. You can feel your way; keep to the edge of the steps; don't
+knock up against--"
+
+"I'll take damned good care not to!" muttered Neddy, with a little
+shiver.
+
+He made his way to the window, through the darkness, having slung his
+sack over his shoulder and holding it with his right hand, while with the
+left he guided himself up the dais and along its outside edge, giving as
+wide a berth as possible to the great chair and its encircling canopy.
+With a sigh of relief he found the window, moved the sack from his
+shoulder, and set it on the ledge for a moment. But it was awkward to get
+down from the window, holding that heavy sack. He lowered it towards the
+ground, so that it might land gently, and, just as he let it go, he
+turned his head back and whispered to Mike, "All serene. Get a move on!"
+
+"Half a minute!" answered Mike, as he in his turn set out to grope his
+way to the window.
+
+But he was not so cautious as his friend had been. In his progress he
+kicked the tall footstool sharply with one of his feet. Neddy leant back
+from the window, asking quickly, and again very nervously, "What the
+devil's that?"
+
+Beaumaroy could not resist the opportunity thus offered to him. He was
+crouching on the ground, not exactly under the window, but just to the
+right of it. Neddy's face was turned away; he threw himself on to the
+bag, rose to his feet, raised it cautiously, and holding it in front of
+him with both his hands--its weight was fully as much as he could
+manage--was round the curve of the Tower and out of sight with it in
+an instant.
+
+At the back of the house there was a space of ground where Mrs. Wiles
+grew a few vegetables for the household's use. It was a clearing made
+from the heath, but it was not enclosed. Beaumaroy was able to reach the
+back entrance, by which this patch of ground could be entered from the
+kitchen. Just by the kitchen door stood that useful thing, a butt for
+rainwater. It stood some three, or three-and-a-half, feet high; and it
+was full to the brim almost. With a fresh effort Beaumaroy raised the
+sack to the level of his breast. Then he lowered it into the water, not
+dropping it, for fear of a splash, but immersing both his arms above the
+elbow. Only when he felt the weight off them, as the sack touched
+bottom, did he release his hold. Then with cautious steps he continued
+his progress round the house and, coming to the other side, crouched
+close by the wall again and waited. Where he was now, he could see the
+fence that separated the front garden from the road, and he was not
+more than ten or twelve feet from the front door on his left. As he
+huddled down there, he could not repress a smile of amusement, even of
+self-congratulation. However, he turned to the practical job of
+squeezing the water out of his sleeves.
+
+In thus congratulating himself, he was premature. His action had been
+based on a miscalculation. He had heard only Neddy's last exclamation,
+not the cautious whispers previously exchanged between him and Mike; he
+thought that the man astride the window-sill himself had kicked something
+and instinctively exclaimed, "What the devil's that?" He thought that the
+sack was lowered from the window in order to be committed to the
+temporary guardianship of the Sergeant, who was doubtless looking out for
+it and, if he had his ears open, would hear its gentle thud. Perhaps the
+man in the Tower was collecting a second instalment of booty; heavy as
+the sack was, it did not contain all that he knew to be in Captain
+Duggle's grave. Be that as it might, the man would climb out of the
+window soon; and he would fail to find his sack.
+
+What would he do then? He would signal or call to the Sergeant; or, if
+they had a preconcerted rendezvous, he would betake himself there,
+expecting to find his accomplice. He would neither get an answer from him
+nor find him, of course. Equally, of course, he would look for him. But
+the last place where he would expect to find him--the last place he would
+search--would be where the Sergeant in fact was, the house itself. If, in
+his search for Hooper, he found Beaumaroy, it would be man to man, and,
+now again, Beaumaroy had no objection.
+
+But, in fact, there were two men in the Tower--one of them big Neddy; and
+the function, which Beaumaroy supposed to have been intrusted to the
+Sergeant, had never been assigned to him at all; to guard the door and
+the road had been his only tasks. When they found the bag gone, and the
+Sergeant too, they might well think that the Sergeant had betrayed them;
+that he had gone off on his own account, or that he had, at the last
+moment, under an impulse of fear or a calculation of interest, changed
+sides and joined the garrison in the house. If he had gone off with the
+sack, he could not have gone fast or far with it. Failing to overtake
+him, they might turn back to the cottage; for they knew themselves to be
+in superior force. Beaumaroy was in greater danger than he knew--and so
+was Doctor Mary in the house.
+
+Big Neddy let himself down from the window, and put down his hand to lift
+up the sack; he groped about for it for some seconds, during which time
+Mike also climbed over the window-sill and dropped on to the ground
+below. Neddy emitted a low but strenuous oath.
+
+"The sack's gone, Mike!" he added in a whisper.
+
+"Gone? Rot! Can't be! What do you mean, Neddy?"
+
+"I dropped it straight 'ere. It's gone," Neddy persisted. "The Sergeant
+must 'ave took it."
+
+"No business of his! Where is the fool?" Mike's voice was already uneasy;
+thieves themselves seldom believe in there being honor among them. "You
+stay here. I'll go to the door and see if he's there."
+
+He was just about to put this purpose into execution--in which event it
+was quite likely that Beaumaroy, hearing his approach or his call to the
+Sergeant, would have sprung out upon him, only to find himself assailed
+the next instant by another and far more formidable antagonist in the
+person of big Neddy, and thus in sore peril of his life--when the hum of
+Captain Alec's engine became audible in the distance. The next moment,
+the lights of his car became visible to all the men in the little front
+garden of the cottage.
+
+"Hist! Wait till that's gone by!" whispered Neddy.
+
+"Yes, and get round to the back. Get out of sight round here." He drew
+Neddy round the curve of the Tower wall till his big frame was hidden by
+it; then he himself crouched down under the wall, with his head
+cautiously protruded. The night had grown clearer; it was possible to
+see figures at a distance of some yards now.
+
+Beaumaroy also perceived the car. Whose it was and the explanation of its
+appearance even occurred to his mind. But he kept still. He did not want
+visitors; he conceived his hand to be a better one than it really was,
+and preferred to play it by himself. If the car passed by, well and good.
+Only if it stopped at the gate would he have to take action.
+
+It did stop at the gate. Mike saw it stop. Then its engine was shut off,
+and a man got out of it, and came up to the garden gate. Though the
+watching Mike had never seen him before, he had little difficulty in
+guessing who he was, and he remembered something that the Sergeant had
+said about him. Of a certainty it was the redoubtable Captain Naylor.
+Through the darkness he loomed enormous, as tall as big Neddy himself and
+no whit less broad. A powerful reinforcement for the garrison!
+
+And what would the Sergeant do, if he were still at his post by the
+door--with or without that missing, that all-important, sack?
+
+Another tall figure came into Mike's view--from where he could not
+distinctly see; it hardly seemed to be from the door of the cottage, for
+no light showed, and there was no sound of an opening door. But it
+appeared from somewhere near there; it was on the path, and it moved
+along to the gate in a leisurely unhurried approach. A man with his hands
+in his pockets--that was what it looked like. This must be the garrison;
+this must be the Sergeant's friend, master, protector, and _bête noire_,
+his "Boomery."
+
+But the Sergeant himself? Where was he? He could hardly be at his post;
+or Beaumaroy and he must have seen one another, must have taken some heed
+of one another; something must have passed between them, either friendly
+or hostile. Mike turned round and whispered hastily, close into Neddy's
+ear. Neddy crawled a little forward, and put his own bullet head far
+enough round the curve of the wall to see the meeting between the
+garrison and its unexpected reinforcement.
+
+Beaumaroy, hands in pockets, lounged nonchalantly down to the gate. He
+opened it; the Captain entered. The two shook hands and stood there,
+apparently in conversation. The words did not reach the ears of the
+listeners, but the sound of voices did--voices hushed in tone. Once
+Beaumaroy pointed to the house; both Mike and Neddy marked the
+outstretched hand. Was Beaumaroy telling his companion about something
+that had been happening at the house? Were they concocting a plan of
+defense--or of attack? With the disappearance, perhaps the treachery, of
+the Sergeant, and the appearance of this new ally for the garrison, the
+prospects of a fight took on a very different look. Neddy might tackle
+the big stranger with an equal chance. How would Mike fare in an
+encounter with Beaumaroy? He did not relish the idea of it.
+
+And, while they fought, the traitor Sergeant might be on their backs!
+Or--on the other hypothesis--he might be getting off with the swag!
+Neither alternative was satisfactory.
+
+"P'r'aps he's gone off to the car with the sack--in a fright, like,
+thinking we'll guess that!" whispered Neddy.
+
+Mike did not much think so, though he would much have liked to. But
+he received the suggestion kindly. "We might as well have a look; we
+can come back afterwards if--if we like. Perhaps that big brute'll
+have gone."
+
+"The thing as I want to do most is to wring that Sergeant's neck!"
+
+Their whispers were checked by a new development. The cottage door opened
+for a moment and then closed again; they could tell that, both by the
+sound and by the momentary ray of light. Yet a light persisted after the
+door was shut. It came from a candle, which burnt steadily in the
+stillness of the night. It was carried by a woman, who came down the path
+towards where Beaumaroy and the Captain stood in conversation. Both
+turned towards her with eager attention.
+
+"Now's our time, then! They aren't looking our way now. We can get
+across the heath to where the car is."
+
+They moved off very softly, keeping the Tower between them and the group
+on the path. They gained the back of the house, and so the open heath,
+and made off to their destination. They moved so softly that they escaped
+unheard--unless Beaumaroy were right in the notion that his ear caught a
+little rustle of the bracken. He took no heed of it, unless a passing
+smile might be reckoned as such.
+
+Doctor Mary joined him and the Captain on the path. Beaumaroy's smile
+gave way to a look of expectant interest. He wondered what she was going
+to say to Captain Alec. There was so much that she might say, or--just
+conceivably--leave unsaid.
+
+She spoke calmly and quietly. "It's you, Captain Alec! I thought so!
+Cynthia got anxious? I'm all right. I suppose Mr. Beaumaroy has told you?
+Poor Mr. Saffron is dead."
+
+"I've told him," said Beaumaroy.
+
+"Of heart disease," Mary added. "Quite painlessly, I think--and quite a
+normal case, though, of course, it's distressing."
+
+"I--I'm sorry," stammered Captain Alec.
+
+Beaumaroy's eyes met Mary's in the candle's light with a swift glance of
+surprise and inquiry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+DEAD MAJESTY
+
+
+Mary did not appear to answer Beaumaroy's glance; she continued to look
+at, and to address herself to, Captain Alec. "I am tired, and I should
+love a ride home. But I've still a little to do, and--I know it's awfully
+late, but would you mind waiting just a little while? I'm afraid I might
+be as much as half-an-hour."
+
+"Right you are, Doctor Mary--as long as you like. I'll walk up and down,
+and smoke a cigar; I want one badly." Mary made an extremely faint motion
+of her hand towards the house. "Oh, thanks, but really I--well, I shall
+feel more comfortable here, I think."
+
+Mary smiled; it was always safe to rely on Captain Alec's fine feelings;
+under the circumstances he would--she had felt pretty sure--prefer to
+smoke his cigar outside the house. "I'll be as quick as I can. Come, Mr.
+Beaumaroy!"
+
+Beaumaroy followed her up the path and into the house. The Sergeant was
+still on the floor of the passage; he rolled apprehensive resentful eyes
+at them; Mary took no heed of him, but preceded Beaumaroy into the parlor
+and shut the door.
+
+"I don't know what your game is," remarked Beaumaroy in a low voice, "but
+you couldn't have played mine better. I don't want him inside the house;
+but I'm mighty glad to have him extremely visible outside it."
+
+"It was very quiet inside there"--she pointed to the door of the
+Tower--"just before I came out. Before that, I'd heard odd sounds. Was
+there somebody there--and the Sergeant in league with him?"
+
+"Exactly," smiled Beaumaroy. "It is all quiet. I think I'll have a look."
+
+The candle on the table had burnt out. He took another from the sideboard
+and lit it from the one which Mary still held.
+
+"Like the poker?" she asked, with a flicker of a smile on her face.
+
+"No you come and help, if I cry out!" He could not repress a chuckle;
+Doctor Mary was interesting him extremely.
+
+Lighted by his candle, he went into the Tower. She heard him moving about
+there, as she stood thoughtfully by the extinct fire, still with her
+candle in her hand.
+
+Beaumaroy returned. "He's gone--or they've gone." He exhibited to her
+gaze two objects--a checked pocket-handkerchief and a tobacco pouch.
+"Number one found on the edge of the grave--Number two on the floor of
+the dais, just behind the canopy. If the same man had drawn them both out
+of the same pocket at the same time--wanting to blow the same nose,
+Doctor Mary--they'd have fallen at the same place, wouldn't they?"
+
+"Wonderful, Holmes!" said Mary. "And now, shall we attend to Mr.
+Saffron?"
+
+They carried out that office, the course of which they had originally
+prepared. Beaumaroy passed with his burden hard by the Sergeant, and Mary
+followed. In a quarter of an hour they came downstairs again, and Mary
+again led the way into the parlor. She went to the window, and drew the
+curtains aside a little way. The lights of the car were burning; the
+Captain's tall figure fell within their rays and was plainly visible,
+strolling up and down; the ambit of the rays did not, however, embrace
+the Tower window. The Captain paced and smoked, patient, content, gone
+back to his own happy memories and anticipations. Mary returned to the
+table and set her candle down on it.
+
+"All right. I think we can keep him a little longer."
+
+"I vote we do," said Beaumaroy. "I reckon he's scared the fellows away,
+and they won't come back so long as they see his lights."
+
+Rash at conclusions sometimes--as has been seen--Beaumaroy was right in
+his opinion of the Captain's value as a sentry, or a scarecrow to keep
+away hungry birds. The confederates had stolen back to their base of
+operations--to where their car lay behind the trees. There, too, no
+Sergeant and no sack! Neddy reached for his roomy flask, drank of it,
+and with hoarse curses consigned the entire course of events, his
+accomplices, even himself, to nethermost perdition. "That place
+ain't--natural!" he ended in a gloomy conviction. "'Oo pinched that sack?
+The Sergeant? Well--maybe it was, and maybe it wasn't." He finished the
+flask to cure a recurrence of the shudders.
+
+Mike prevailed with him so far that he consented--reluctantly--to be left
+alone on the blasted heath, while his friend went back to reconnoiter.
+Mike went, and presently returned; the car was still there, the tall
+figure was still pacing up and down.
+
+"And perhaps the other one's gone for the police!" Mike suggested
+uneasily. "Guess we've lost the hand, Neddy! Best be moving, eh? It's no
+go for to-night."
+
+"Catch me trying the bloomin' place any other night!" grumbled Neddy.
+"It's given me the 'orrors, and no mistake."
+
+Mike--Mr. Percy Bennett, that erstwhile gentlemanly stranger--recognized
+one of his failures. Such things are incidental to all professions.
+"Our best game is to go back; if the Sergeant's on the square, we'll
+hear from him." But he spoke without much hope; rationalist as he
+professed himself, still he was affected by the atmosphere of the Tower.
+With what difficulty do we entirely throw off atavistic notions! They
+both of them had, at the bottom of their minds, the idea that the dead
+man on the high seat had defeated them, and that no luck lay in meddling
+with his treasure.
+
+"I 'ave my doubts whether that ugly Sergeant's 'uman himself," growled
+Neddy, as he hoisted his bulk into the car.
+
+So they went back to whence they came; and the impression that the
+night's adventure left upon them was heightened as the days went by. For,
+strange to say, though they watched all the usual channels of
+information, as Ministers say; in Parliament, and also tried to open up
+some unusual ones, they never heard anything again of the Sergeant, of
+the sack of gold, of the yawning tomb with its golden lining, of its
+silent waxen-faced enthroned guardian who had defeated them. It all--the
+whole bizarre scene--vanished from their ken, as though it had been one
+of those alluring, thwarting dreams which afflict men in sleep. It was an
+experience to which they were shy of alluding among their confidential
+friends, even of talking about between themselves. In a
+word--uncomfortable!
+
+Meanwhile the Sergeant's association with Tower Cottage had also drawn to
+its close. After his search and his discovery in the Tower, Beaumaroy
+came out into the passage where the prisoner lay, and proceeded to
+unfasten his bonds.
+
+"Stand up and listen to me, Sergeant," he said. "Your pals have run away;
+they can't help you, and they wouldn't if they could, because, owing to
+you, they haven't got away with any plunder, and so they'll be in a very
+bad temper with you. In the road, in front of the house, is Captain
+Naylor--you know that officer and his dimensions? He's in a very temper
+with you too. (Here Beaumaroy was embroidering the situation; the
+Sergeant was not really in Captain Alec's thoughts.) Finally, I'm in a
+very bad temper with you myself. If I see your ugly phiz much longer, I
+may break out. Don't you think you'd better depart--by the back door--and
+go home? And if you're not out of Inkston for good and all by ten o'clock
+in the morning, and if you ever show yourself there again, look out for
+squalls. What you've got out of this business I don't know. You can keep
+it--and I'll give you a parting present myself as well."
+
+"I knows a thing or two--" the Sergeant began, but he saw a look that
+he had seen only once or twice before on Beaumaroy's face; on each
+occasion it had been followed by the death of the enemy whose act had
+elicited it.
+
+"Oh, try that game, just try it!" Beaumaroy muttered. "Just give me that
+excuse!" He advanced to the Sergeant, who fell suddenly on his knees.
+"Don't make a noise, you hound, or I'll silence you for good and all--I'd
+do it for twopence!" He took hold of the Sergeant's coat-collar, jerked
+him on to his legs, and propelled him to the kitchen and through it to
+the back door. Opening it, he dispatched the Sergeant through the doorway
+with an accurate and vigorous kick. He fell, and lay sprawling on the
+ground for a second, then gathered himself up and ran hastily over the
+heath, soon disappearing in the darkness. The memory of Beaumaroy's look
+was even keener than the sensation caused by Beaumaroy's boot. It sent
+him in flight back to Inkston, thence to London, thence into the unknown,
+to some spot chosen for its remoteness from Beaumaroy, from Captain
+Naylor, from Mike and from Neddy. He recognized his unpopularity, thereby
+achieving a triumph in a difficult little branch of wisdom.
+
+Beaumaroy returned to the parlor hastily; not so much to avoid keeping
+Captain Alec waiting--it was quite a useful precaution to have that
+sentry on duty a little longer--as because his curiosity and interest had
+been excited by the description which Doctor Mary had given of Mr.
+Saffron's death. It was true, probably the precise truth, but it seemed
+to have been volunteered in a rather remarkable way and worded with
+careful purpose. Also it was the bare truth, the truth denuded of all its
+attendant circumstances--which had not been normal.
+
+When he rejoined her, Mary was sitting in the armchair by the fire; she
+heard his account of the state of affairs up-to-date with a thoughtful
+smile, smoking a cigarette; her smile broadened over the tale of the
+water-butt. She had put on the fur cloak in which she had walked to the
+cottage--the fire was out and the room cold; framed in the furs, the
+outline of her face looked softer.
+
+"So we stand more or less as we did before the burglars appeared on the
+scene," she commented.
+
+"Except that our personal exertions have saved that money."
+
+"I suppose you would prefer that all the circumstances shouldn't come
+out? There have been irregularities."
+
+"I should prefer that, not so much on my own account--I don't know and
+don't care what they could do to me--as for the old man's sake."
+
+"If I know you, I think you would rather enjoy being able to keep your
+secret. You like having the laugh of people. I know that myself, Mr.
+Beaumaroy." She exchanged a smile with him. "You want a death certificate
+from me," she added.
+
+"I suppose I do," Beaumaroy agreed.
+
+"In the sort of terms in which I described Mr. Saffron's death to Captain
+Alec? If I gave such a certificate, there would remain nothing--well,
+nothing peculiar--except the--the appearance of things in the Tower."
+
+Her eyes were now fixed on his face; he nodded his head with a smile of
+understanding. There was something new in the tone of Doctor Mary's
+voice; not only friendliness, though that was there, but a note of
+excitement, of enjoyment, as though she also were not superior to the
+pleasure of having the laugh of people. "But it's rather straining a
+point to say that--and nothing more. I could do it only if you made me
+feel that I could trust you absolutely."
+
+Beaumaroy made a little grimace, and waited for her to develop
+her subject.
+
+"Your morality is different from most people's, and from mine. Mine is
+conventional."
+
+"Conventual!" Beaumaroy murmured.
+
+"Yours isn't. It's all personal with you. You recognize no rights in
+people whom you don't like, or who you think aren't deserving, or haven't
+earned rights. And you don't judge your own rights by what the law gives
+you, either. The right of conquest you called it; you hold yourself free
+to exercise that against everybody, except your friends, and against
+everybody in the interest of your friends--like poor Mr. Saffron. I
+believe you'd do the same for me if I asked you to."
+
+"I'm glad you believe that, Doctor Mary."
+
+"But I can't deal with you on that basis. It's even difficult to be
+friends on that basis--and certainly impossible to be partners."
+
+"I never suggested that we should be partners over the money," Beaumaroy
+put in quickly.
+
+"No. But I'm suggesting now--as you did before--that we should be
+partners--in a secret, in Mr. Saffron's secret." She smiled again as she
+added, "You can manage it all, I know, if you like. I've unlimited
+confidence in your ingenuity--quite unlimited."
+
+"But none at all in my honesty?"
+
+"You've got an honesty; but I don't call it a really honest honesty."
+
+"All this leads up to--the Radbolts!" declared Beaumaroy with & gesture
+of disgust.
+
+"It does. I want your word of honor--given to a friend--that all that
+money--all of it--goes to the Radbolts, if it legally belongs to them. I
+want that in exchange for the certificate."
+
+"A hard bargain! It isn't so much that I want the money--though I must
+remark that in my judgment I have a strong claim to it; I would say a
+moral claim but for my deference to your views, Doctor Mary. But it isn't
+mainly that. I hate the Radbolts getting it, just as much as the old man
+would have hated it."
+
+"I have given you my--my terms," said Mary.
+
+Beaumaroy stood looking down at her, his hands in his pockets. His face
+was twisted in a humorous disgust. Mary laughed gently. "It is possible
+to--to keep the rules without being a prig, you know, though I believe
+you think it isn't."
+
+"Including the sack in the water-butt? My sack, the sack I rescued?"
+
+"Including the sack in the water-butt. Yes, every single sovereign!"
+Though Mary was pursuing the high moral line, there was now more mischief
+than gravity in her demeanor.
+
+"Well, I'll do it!" He evidently spoke with a great effort. "I'll do it!
+But, look here, Doctor Mary, you'll live to be sorry you made me do it.
+Oh, I don't mean that that conscience of yours will be sorry. That'll
+approve, no doubt, being the extremely conventionalized thing it is. But
+you yourself, you'll be sorry, or I'm much mistaken in the Radbolts."
+
+"It isn't a question of the Radbolts," she insisted, laughing.
+
+"Oh yes, it is, and you'll come to feel it so." Beaumaroy was equally
+obstinate.
+
+Mary rose. "Then that's settled, and we needn't keep Captain Alec waiting
+any longer."
+
+"How do you know that I sha'n't cheat you?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know how I know that," Mary admitted. "But I do know it. And I
+want to tell you--"
+
+She suddenly felt embarrassed under his gaze; her cheeks flushed, but she
+went on resolutely:
+
+"To tell you how glad, how happy, I am that it all ends like this; that
+the poor old man is free of his fancies and his fears, beyond both our
+pity and our laughter."
+
+"Aye, he's earned rest, if there is to be rest for any of us!"
+
+"And you can rest, too. And you can laugh with us, and not at us. Isn't
+that, after all, a more human sort of laughter?"
+
+She was smiling still as she gave him her hand, but he saw that tears
+stood in her eyes. The next instant she gave a little sob.
+
+"Doctor Mary!" he exclaimed in rueful expostulation.
+
+"No, no, how stupid you are!" She laughed through her sob. "It's not
+unhappiness!" She pressed his hand tightly for an instant and then walked
+quickly out of the house, calling back to him, "Don't come, please don't
+come. I'd rather go to Captain Alec by myself."
+
+Left alone in the cottage, now so quiet and so peaceful, Beaumaroy mused
+a while as he smoked his pipe. Then he turned to his labors--his final
+night of work in the Tower. There was much to do, very much to do; he
+achieved his task towards morning. When day dawned, there was nothing but
+water in the water-butt, and in the Tower no furnishings were visible
+save three chairs--a high carved one by the fireplace, and two much
+smaller on the little platform under the window. The faded old red carpet
+on the floor was the only attempt at decoration. And in still one thing
+more the Tower was different from what it had been, Beaumaroy contented
+himself with pasting brown paper over the pane on which Mike had
+operated. He did not replace the matchboarding over the window, but
+stowed it away in the coal-shed. The place was horribly in need of
+sunshine and fresh air--and the old gentleman was no longer alive to fear
+the draught!
+
+When the undertaker came up to the cottage that afternoon, he glanced
+from the parlor, through the open door, into the Tower.
+
+"Driving past on business, sir," he remarked to Beaumaroy, "I've often
+wondered what the old gentleman did with that there Tower. But it looks
+as if he didn't make no use of it."
+
+"We sometimes stored things in it," said Beaumaroy. "But, as you see,
+there's nothing much there now."
+
+But then the undertaker, worthy man, could not see through the carpet, or
+through the lid of Captain Duggle's grave. That was full--fuller than it
+had been at any period of its history. In it lay the wealth, the scepter,
+and the trappings of dead Majesty. For wherein did Mr. Saffron's dead
+Majesty differ from the dead Majesty of other Kings?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE CHIEF MOURNERS
+
+
+The attendance was small at Mr. Saffron's funeral. Besides meek and
+depressed Mrs. Wiles, and Beaumaroy himself, Doctor Mary found herself,
+rather to her surprise, in company with old Mr. Naylor. On comparing
+notes she discovered that, like herself, he had come on Beaumaroy's
+urgent invitation and, moreover, that he was engaged also to come on
+afterwards to Tower Cottage, where Beaumaroy was to entertain the chief
+mourners at a mid-day repast. "Glad enough to show my respect to a
+neighbor," said old Naylor. "And I always liked the old man's looks. But
+really I don't see why I should go to lunch. However, Beaumaroy--"
+
+Mary did not see why he should go to lunch--nor, for that matter, why
+she should either, but curiosity about the chief mourners made her
+glad that she was going. The chief mourners did not look, at first
+sight, attractive. Mr. Radbolt was a short plump man, with a weaselly
+face and cunning eyes; his wife's eyes, of a greeny color, stared
+stolidly out from her broad red face; she was taller than her mate, and
+her figure contrived to be at once stout and angular. All through the
+service, Beaumaroy's gaze was set on the pair as they sat or stood in
+front of him, wandering from the one to the other in an apparently
+fascinated study.
+
+At the Cottage he entertained his party in the parlor with a generous
+hospitality, and treated the Radbolts with most courteous deference. The
+man responded with the best manners that he had--who can do more? The
+woman was much less cordial; she was curt, and treated Beaumaroy rather
+as the servant than the friend of her dead cousin; there was a clear
+suggestion of suspicion in her bearing towards him. After a broad stare
+of astonishment on her introduction to "Dr. Arkroyd," she took very
+little notice of Mary; only to Mr. Naylor was she clumsily civil and
+even rather cringing; it was clear that in him she acknowledged the
+gentleman. He sat by her, and she tried to insinuate herself into a
+private conversation with him, apart from the others, probing him as to
+his knowledge of the dead man and his mode of living. Her questions
+hovered persistently round the point of Mr. Saffron's expenditure.
+
+"Mr. Saffron was not a friend of mine," Naylor found it necessary to
+explain. "I had few opportunities of observing his way of life, even if I
+had felt any wish to do so."
+
+"I suppose Beaumaroy knew all about his affairs," she suggested.
+
+"As to that, I think you must ask Mr. Beaumaroy himself."
+
+"From what the lawyers say, the old man seems to have been getting rid of
+his money, somehow or to somebody," she grumbled, in a positive whisper.
+
+To Mr. Naylor's intense relief, Beaumaroy interrupted this conversation.
+"Well, how do you like this little place, Mrs. Radbolt?" he asked
+cheerfully. "Not a bad little crib, is it? Don't you think so too, Dr.
+Arkroyd?" Throughout this gathering Beaumaroy was very punctilious with
+his "Dr. Arkroyd." One would have thought that Mary and he were almost
+strangers.
+
+"Yes, I like it," said Mary. "The Tower makes it rather unusual and
+picturesque." This was not really her sincere opinion; she was playing up
+to Beaumaroy, convinced that he had opened some conversational maneuver.
+
+"Don't like it at all," answered Mrs. Radbolt. "We'll get rid of it as
+soon as we can, won't we, Radbolt?" She always addressed her husband as
+"Radbolt."
+
+"Don't be in a hurry, don't throw it away," Beaumaroy advised. "It's not
+everybody's choice, of course, but there are quarters--yes, more than one
+quarter--in which you might get a very good offer for this place." His
+eye caught Mary's for a moment. "Indeed I wish I was in a position to
+make you one myself. I should like to take it as it stands--lock, stock
+and barrel. But I've sunk all I had in another venture--hope it turns
+out a satisfactory one! So I'm not in a position to do it. If Mrs.
+Radbolt wants to sell, what would you think of it, Dr. Arkroyd, as a
+speculation?"
+
+Mary shook her head, smiling, glad to be able to smile with plausible
+reason. "I'm not as fond of rash speculations as you are, Mr. Beaumaroy."
+
+"It may be worth more than it looks," he pursued. "Good neighborhood,
+healthy air, fruitful soil, very rich soil hereabouts."
+
+"My dear Beaumaroy, the land about here is abominable," Naylor
+expostulated.
+
+"Perhaps generally, but some rich pockets--one may call pockets,"
+corrected Beaumaroy.
+
+"I'm not an agriculturist," remarked weaselly Mr. Radbolt, in his
+oily tones.
+
+"And then there's a picturesque old yarn told about it--oh, whether it's
+true or not, of course I don't know. It's about a certain Captain
+Duggle--not the Army--the Mercantile Marine, Mrs. Radbolt. You know the
+story Dr. Arkroyd? And you too, Mr. Naylor? You're the oldest inhabitant
+of Inkston present, sir. Suppose you tell it to Mr. and Mrs. Radbolt? I'm
+sure it will make them attach a new value to this really very attractive
+cottage--with, as Dr. Arkroyd says, the additional feature of the Tower."
+
+"I know the story only as a friend of mine--Mr. Penrose--who takes great
+interest in local records and traditions, told it to me. If our host
+desires, I shall be happy to tell it to Mrs. Radbolt." Mr. Naylor
+accompanied his words with a courtly little bow to that lady, and
+launched upon the legend of Captain Duggle.
+
+Mr. Radbolt was a religious man. At the end of the story he observed
+gravely, "The belief in diabolical personalities is not to be lightly
+dismissed, Mr. Beaumaroy."
+
+"I'm entirely of your opinion, Mr. Radbolt." This time Mary felt that her
+smile was not so plausible.
+
+"There seems to have been nothing in the grave," mused Mrs. Radbolt.
+
+"Apparently not when Captain Duggle left it--if he was ever in
+it--at all events not when he left the house, in whatever way and by
+whatever agency."
+
+"As to the latter point, I myself incline to Penrose's theory," said Mr.
+Naylor. "_Delirium tremens_, you know!"
+
+Beaumaroy puffed at his cigar. "Still, I've often thought that, though it
+was empty then, it would have made--supposing it really exists--an
+excellent hiding-place for anybody who wanted such a thing. Say, for a
+miser, or a man who had his reasons for concealing what he was worth! I
+once suggested the idea to Mr. Saffron, and he was a good deal amused. He
+patted me on the shoulder and laughed heartily. He wasn't often so much
+amused as that."
+
+A new look came into Mrs. Radbolt's green eyes. Up to now, distrust of
+Beaumaroy had predominated. His frank bearing, his obvious candor and
+simplicity, had weakened her suspicions. But his words suggested
+something else; he might be a fool, not a knave; Mr. Saffron had been
+amused, had laughed beyond his wont. That might have seemed the best way
+of putting Beaumaroy off the scent. The green eyes were now alert, eager,
+immensely acquisitive.
+
+"The grave's in the Tower, if it's anywhere. Would you like to see the
+Tower, Mrs. Radbolt?"
+
+"Yes, I should," she answered tartly. "Being part of our property
+as it is."
+
+Mary exchanged a glance with Mr. Naylor, as they followed the others into
+the Tower. "What an abominable woman!" her glance said. Naylor smiled a
+despairing acquiescence.
+
+The strangers--chief mourners, heirs-at-law, owners now of the place
+wherein they stood--looked round the bare brick walls of the little
+rotunda. Naylor examined it with interest too--the old story was a quaint
+one. Mary stood at the back of the group, smiling triumphantly. How had
+he disposed of--everything? She had not been wrong in her unlimited
+confidence in his ingenuity. She did not falter in her faith in his word
+pledged to her.
+
+"Safe from burglars, that grave of the Captain's, if you kept it
+properly concealed!" Beaumaroy pursued in a sort of humorous meditation.
+"And in these days some people like to have their money in their own
+hands. Confiscatory legislation possible, isn't it, Mr. Naylor? You know
+about those things better than I do. And then the taxes--shocking, Mr.
+Radbolt! By Jove, I knew a chap the other day who came in for what
+sounded like a pretty little inheritance. But by the time he'd paid all
+the duties and so on, most of the gilt was off the gingerbread! It's
+there--in front of the hearth--that the story says the grave is. Doesn't
+it, Mr. Naylor?" A sudden thought seemed to strike him, "I say, Mrs.
+Radbolt, would you like us to have a look whether we can find any
+indications of it?" His eyes traveled beyond the lady whom he addressed.
+They met Mary's. She knew their message; he was taking her into his
+confidence about his experiment with the chief mourners.
+
+The stout angular woman had leapt to her conclusion. Much less money than
+had been expected--no signs of money having been spent and here, not the
+cunning knave whom she had expected, but a garrulous open fool, giving
+away what was perhaps a golden secret! Mammon, the greed of
+acquisitiveness, the voracious appetite for getting more, gleamed in her
+green eyes.
+
+"There? Do you say it's--it's supposed to be there?" she asked eagerly,
+with a shake in her voice.
+
+Her husband interposed in a suave and sanctimonious voice: "My dear, if
+Mr. Beaumaroy and the other gentleman won't mind my saying so, I've been
+feeling that these are rather light and frivolous topics for the day, and
+the occasion which brings us here. The whole thing is probably an
+unfounded story, although there is a sound moral to it. Later on, just as
+a matter of curiosity, if you like, my dear. But to-day, Cousin
+Aloysius's day of burial, is it quite seemly?"
+
+The big woman looked at her smaller mate for just a moment, a
+scrutinizing look. Then she said with most unexpected meekness, "I was
+wrong. You always have the proper feelings, Radbolt."
+
+"The fault was mine, entirely mine," Beaumaroy hastily interposed. "I
+dragged in the old yarn, I led Mr. Naylor into telling it, I told you
+about what I said to Mr. Saffron and how he took it. All my fault! I
+acknowledge the justice of your rebuke. I apologize, Mr. Radbolt! And I
+think that we've exhausted the interest of the Tower." He looked at his
+watch. "Er, how do you stand for time? Shall Mrs. Wiles make us a cup of
+tea, or have you a train to catch?"
+
+"That's the woman in charge of the house, isn't it?" asked Mrs. Radbolt.
+
+"Comes in for the day. She doesn't sleep here." He smiled pleasantly on
+Mrs. Radbolt. "To tell you the truth, I don't think that she would
+consent to sleep here by herself. Silly! But--the old story, you know!"
+
+"Don't you sleep here?" the woman persisted, though her husband was
+looking at her rather uneasily.
+
+"Up to now I have," said Beaumaroy. "But there's nothing to keep me
+here now, and Mr. Naylor has kindly offered to put me up as long as I
+stay at Inkston."
+
+"Going to leave the place with nobody in it?"
+
+Beaumaroy's manner indicated surprise. "Oh, yes! There's nothing to tempt
+thieves, is there? Just lock the door and put the key in my pocket!"
+
+The woman looked very surly, but flummoxed. Her husband, with his suave
+oiliness, came to her rescue. "My wife is always nervous, perhaps
+foolishly nervous, about fire, Mr. Beaumaroy. Well, with an old house
+like this, there is always the risk."
+
+"Upon my soul, I hadn't thought of it! And I've packed up all my things,
+and your car's come and fetched them, Mr. Naylor. Still, of course I
+could--"
+
+"Oh, we've no right, no claim, to trouble you, Mr. Beaumaroy. Only my
+wife is--"
+
+"Fire's an obsession with me, I'm afraid," said the stout woman, with
+a rumbling giggle. The sound of her mirth was intolerably
+disagreeable to Mary.
+
+"I really think, my dear, that you'll feel easier if I stay myself,
+won't you? You can send me what I want to-morrow, and rejoin me when
+we arrange--because we shall have to settle what's to be done with
+the place."
+
+"As you please, Mr. Radbolt." Beaumaroy's tone was, for the first time, a
+little curt. It hinted some slight offense--as though he felt himself
+charged with carelessness, and considered Mrs. Radbolt's obsession mere
+fussiness. "No doubt, if you stay, Mrs. Wiles will agree to stay too, and
+do her best to make you comfortable."
+
+"I shall feel easier that way, Radbolt," Mrs. Radbolt admitted, with
+another rumble of apologetic mirth.
+
+Beaumaroy motioned his guests back to the parlor. His manner retained its
+shade of distance and offense. "Then it really only remains for me to
+wish you good-bye--and all happiness in your new property. Any
+information in my possession as to Mr. Saffron's affairs I shall, of
+course, be happy to give you. Is the car coming for you, Mr. Naylor?"
+
+"I thought it would be pleasant to walk back; and I hope Doctor Mary
+will come with us and have some tea. I'll send you home afterwards,
+Doctor Mary."
+
+Farewells were exchanged, but now without even a show of cordiality.
+Naylor and Doctor Mary felt too much distaste for the chief mourners to
+attain more than a cold civility. Beaumaroy did not relax into his
+earlier friendliness. His apparent dislike to her husband's plan of
+staying at the Cottage roused Mrs. Radbolt's suspicions again; was he a
+rogue after all, but a very plausible, a very deep one? Only Mr.
+Radbolt's unctuousness--surely it would have smoothed the stormiest
+waves--saved the social situation.
+
+"Intelligent people, I thought," Beaumaroy observed, as the three
+friends pursued their way across the heath towards Old Place. "Didn't
+you, Mr. Naylor?"
+
+Old Naylor grunted. With a twinkle in his eyes, Beaumaroy tried Doctor
+Mary. "What was your impression of them?"
+
+"Oh!" moaned Mary, with a deep and expressive note. "But how did you know
+they'd be like that?"
+
+"Letters, and the old man's description, he had a considerable command of
+language, and very violent likes and dislikes. I made a picture of
+them--and it's turned out pretty accurate."
+
+"And those were the nearest kith and kin your poor old man had?" Naylor
+shook his head sadly. "The woman obviously cared not a straw about
+anything but handling his money--and couldn't even hide it! A gross and
+horrible female, Beaumaroy!"
+
+"Were you really hurt about their insisting on staying?" asked Mary.
+
+"Oh, come, you're sharper than that, Doctor Mary! Still, I think I did it
+pretty well. I set the old girl thinking again, didn't I?" He broke into
+laughter, and Mary joined in heartily. Old Naylor glanced from one to the
+other with an air of curiosity.
+
+"You two people look to me--somehow--as if you'd got a secret
+between you."
+
+"Perhaps we have! Mr. Naylor's a man of honor, Doctor Mary; a man who
+appreciates a situation, a man you can trust." Beaumaroy seemed very gay
+and happy now, disembarrassed of a load, and buoyant alike in walk and in
+spirit. "What do you say to letting Mr. Naylor--just him--nobody
+else--into our secret?"
+
+Mary put her arms through old Mr. Naylor's. "I don't mind, if you don't.
+But nobody else!"
+
+"Then you shall tell him--the entire story--at your leisure. Meanwhile
+I'll begin at the wrong end. I told you I'd made a picture of the hated
+cousins, of the heirs-at-law, those sorrowing chief mourners. Well,
+having made a picture of them that's proved true, I'll make a prophecy
+about them, and I'll bet you it proves just as true."
+
+"Go on," said Mary. "Listen, Mr. Naylor," she added with a squeeze of the
+old man's arm.
+
+"You're like a couple of naughty children!" he said, with an affectionate
+look and laugh.
+
+"Well, my prophecy is that they'll swear the poor dear old man's estate
+at under five thousand."
+
+"Well, why shouldn't--" old Naylor began; but he stopped as he saw
+Mary's eyes meet Beaumaroy's in a rapture of quick and delighted
+understanding.
+
+"And then perhaps you'll own to being sorry, Doctor Mary!"
+
+"So that's what you were up to, was it?" said Mary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE GOLD AND THE TREASURE
+
+
+Old Mr. Naylor called on Mary two or three days later--at an hour when,
+as he well knew, Cynthia was at his own house--in order to hear the
+story. There were parts of it which she could not describe fully for
+lack of knowledge--the enterprise of Mike and Big Neddy, for example;
+but all that she knew she told frankly, and did not scruple to invoke
+her imagination to paint Beaumaroy's position, with its difficulties,
+demands, obligations--and temptations. He heard her with close
+attention, evidently amused, and watching her animated face with a keen
+and watchful pleasure.
+
+"Surprising!" he said at the end, rubbing his hands together. "That's to
+say, not in itself particularly surprising. Just a queer little
+happening; one would think nothing of it if one read it in the newspaper!
+Things are always so much more surprising when they happen down one's
+own street, or within a few minutes' walk of one's garden wall--and when
+one actually knows the people involved in them. Still I was always
+inclined to agree with Dr. Irechester that there was something out of the
+common about old Saffron and our friend Beaumaroy."
+
+"Dr. Irechester never found out what it was, though!" exclaimed Mary
+triumphantly.
+
+"No, he didn't; for reasons pretty clearly indicated in your narrative."
+He sat back in his chair, his elbows on the arms and his hands clasped
+before him. "If I may say so, the really curious thing is to find you in
+the thick of it, Doctor Mary."
+
+"That wasn't my fault. I couldn't refuse to attend Mr. Saffron. Dr.
+Irechester himself said so."
+
+He paid no heed to her protest. "In the thick of it--and enjoying it so
+tremendously!"
+
+Mary looked thoughtful. "I didn't at first. I was angry, indignant,
+suspicious. I thought I was being made a fool of."
+
+"So you were--a fool and a tool, my dear!"
+
+"But that night--because it all really happened in just one night--the
+chief mourners, as Mr. Beaumaroy always calls them, were more than--"
+
+"Just a rather amusing epilogue--yes, that's all."
+
+"That night, it did get hold of me." She laughed a little nervously, a
+little uneasily.
+
+"And now you tell it to me--I must say that your telling made it twice
+the story that it really is--now you tell it as if it were the greatest
+thing that ever happened to you!"
+
+For a moment Mary fenced. "Well, nothing interesting ever has happened in
+my humdrum life before." But old Naylor pursed up his lips in contempt of
+her fencing. "It did seem to me a great--a great experience. Not the
+burglars and all that--though some of the things, like the water-butt,
+did amuse me very much--but our being apart from all the world, there by
+ourselves, against the whole world in a way, Mr. Naylor."
+
+"The law on one side, the robbers on the other, and you two alone
+together!"
+
+"Yes, you understand. That was the way I felt it. But we weren't
+together, not in every way. I mean, we were fighting between ourselves
+too, right up to the very end." She gave another low laugh. "I suppose
+we're fighting still; he means to face me with some Radbolt villainy, and
+make me sorry for what he calls my legalism--with an epithet!"
+
+"That's his idea, and my own too, I confess. Those chief mourners will
+find the money--and some other things that'll make 'em stare. But they'll
+lie low; they'll sit on the cash till the time comes when it's safe to
+dispose of it; and they'll bilk the Inland Revenue out of the duties. The
+remarkable thing is that Beaumaroy seems to want them to do it."
+
+"That's to make me sorry; that's to prove me wrong, Mr. Naylor."
+
+"It may make you sorry, it makes me sorry, for that matter; but it
+doesn't prove you wrong. You were right. My boy Alec would have taken
+the same line as you did. Now you needn't laugh at me, Mary. I own up at
+once; that's my highest praise."
+
+"I know it is; and it implies a contrast?"
+
+Old Naylor unclasped his hands and spread them in a deprecatory gesture.
+"It must do that," he acknowledged.
+
+Mary gave a rebellious little toss of her head. "I don't care if it does,
+Mr. Naylor! Mr. Beaumaroy is my friend now."
+
+"And mine. Moreover I have such confidence in his honor and fidelity that
+I have offered him a rather important and confidential position in my
+business--to represent us at one of the foreign ports where we have
+considerable interests." He smiled. "It's the sort of place where he will
+perhaps find himself less trammelled by--er--legalism, and with more
+opportunities for his undoubted gift of initiative."
+
+"Will he accept your offer? Will he go?" she asked rather excitedly.
+
+"Without doubt, I think. It's really quite a good offer. And what
+prospects has he now, or here?"
+
+Mary stretched her hands towards the fire and gazed into it in silence.
+
+"I think you'll have an offer soon too, and a good one, Doctor Mary.
+Irechester was over at our place yesterday. He's still of opinion that
+there was something queer at Tower Cottage. Indeed he thinks that Mr.
+Saffron was queer himself, in his head, and that a clever doctor would
+have found it out."
+
+"That he himself would, if he'd gone on attending--"
+
+"Precisely. But he's not surprised that you didn't; you lacked the
+experience. Still he thinks none the worse of you for that, and he told
+me that he has made up his mind to offer you partnership. Irechester's a
+bit stiff, but a very straight fellow. You could rely on being fairly
+treated, and it's a good practice. Besides he's well off, and quite
+likely to retire as soon as he sees you fairly in the saddle."
+
+"It's a great compliment." Here Mary's voice sounded quite
+straightforward and sincere. An odd little note of contempt crept into it
+as she added, "And it sounds--ideal!"
+
+"Yes, it does," old Naylor agreed, with a private smile all to himself,
+whilst Mary still gazed into the fire. "Quite ideal. You're a lucky young
+woman, Mary." He rose to take his leave. "So, with our young folk happily
+married, and you installed, and friend Beaumaroy suited to his
+liking--why, upon my word, we may ring the curtain down on a happy
+ending--of Act I, at all events!"
+
+She seemed to pay no heed to his words. He stood for a moment, admiring
+her; not as a beauty, but a healthy comely young woman, stout-hearted,
+and with humanity and a sense of fun in her. And, as he looked, his true
+feeling about the situation suddenly burst through all restraint and
+leapt from his lips. "Though, for my part, under the circumstances, if I
+were you, I'd see old Irechester damned before I accepted the
+partnership!"
+
+She turned to him--startled, yet suddenly smiling. He took her hand and
+raised it to his lips.
+
+"Hush! Not another word! Good-bye, my dear Mary!"
+
+The next day, as Mary, her morning round finished, sat at lunch with
+Cynthia, listening, or not listening, to her friend's excusably,
+eager chatter about her approaching wedding, a note was delivered
+into her hands:
+
+The C.M.'s are in a hurry! She's back! The window is boarded up again!
+Come and see! About 4 o'clock this afternoon. B.
+
+Mary kept the appointment. She found Beaumaroy strolling up and down on
+the road in front of the cottage. The Tower window was boarded up again,
+but with new strong planks, in a much more solid and workmanlike fashion.
+If he were to try again, Mike would not find it so easy to negotiate,
+without making a dangerous noise over the job.
+
+"Such impatience--such undisguised rapacity--is indecent and revolting,"
+Beaumaroy remarked. He seemed to be in the highest spirits. "I wonder if
+they've opened it yet!"
+
+"They'll see you prowling about outside, won't they?"
+
+"I hope so. Indeed I've no doubt of it. Mrs. Greeneyes is probably
+peering through the parlor window at this minute, and cursing me. I like
+it! To those people I represent law and order. If they can rise to the
+conception of such a thing at all, I probably embody conscience. When you
+come to think of it, it's a pleasant turn of events that I should come to
+represent law and order and conscience to anybody, even to the Radbolts."
+
+"It is rather a change," she agreed. "But let's walk on. I don't really
+much want to think of them."
+
+"That's because you feel that you're losing the bet. I can't stop them
+getting the money in the end, that's your doing! I can't stop them
+cheating the Revenue, which is what they certainly mean to do, without
+exposing myself to more inconvenience than I am disposed to undergo in
+the cause of the Revenue. Whereas if I had left the bag in the
+water-butt--all your doing! Aren't you a little sorry?"
+
+"Of course there is an aspect of the case--" she admitted smiling.
+
+"That's enough for me! You've lost the bet. Let's see--what were the
+stakes, Mary?"
+
+"Come, let's walk on." She put her arm through his. "What about this
+berth that Mr. Naylor's offering you? At Bogota, isn't it?"
+
+He looked puzzled for a moment; then his mind worked quickly back to
+Cynthia's almost forgotten tragedy. He laughed in enjoyment of her
+thrust. "My place isn't Bogota--though I fancy that it's rather in the
+same moral latitude. You're confusing me with Captain Cranster!"
+
+"So I was--for a moment," said Doctor Mary demurely. "But what about the
+appointment, anyhow?"
+
+"What about your partnership with Dr. Irechester, if you come to that?"
+
+Mary pressed his arm gently, and they walked on in silence for a little
+while. They were clear of the neighborhood of Tower Cottage now, but
+still a considerable distance from Old Place; very much alone together on
+the heath, as they had seemed to be that night--that night of nights--at
+the cottage.
+
+"I haven't so much as received the offer yet; only Mr. Naylor has
+mentioned it to me."
+
+"Still, you'd like to be ready with your answer when the offer is made,
+wouldn't you?" He drew suddenly away from her, and stood still on the
+road, opposite to her. His face lost its playfulness; as it set into
+gravity, the lines upon it deepened, and his eyes looked rather sad.
+"This is wrong of me, perhaps, but I can't help it. I'm not going to talk
+to you about myself. Confessions and apologies and excuses, and so on,
+aren't in my line. I should probably tell lies if I attempted anything of
+the sort. You must take me or leave me on your own judgment, on your own
+feelings about me, as you've seen and known me--not long, but pretty
+intimately, Mary." He suddenly reached his hand into his pocket and
+pulled out the combination knife-and-fork. "That's all I've brought away
+of his from Tower Cottage. And I brought it away as much for your sake as
+for his. It was during our encounter over this instrument that I first
+thought of you as a woman, Mary. And, by Jove, I believe you knew it!"
+
+"Yes, I believe I did," she answered, her eyes set very steadily on his.
+
+He slipped the thing back into his pocket. "And now I love you, and I
+want you, Mary."
+
+She fell into a sudden agitation. "Oh, but this doesn't seem for me! I'd
+put all that behind me! I--" She could scarcely find words. "I, I'm just
+Doctor Mary!"
+
+"Lots of people to practice on--bodies and souls too, in the moral
+latitude I'm going to!"
+
+Her body seemed to shiver a little, as though before a plunge into deep
+water. "I'm very safe here," she whispered.
+
+"Yes, you're safe here," he acknowledged gravely, and stood silent,
+waiting for her choice.
+
+"What a decision to have to make!" she cried suddenly. "It's all my life
+in a moment! Because I don't want you to go away from me!" She drew near
+to him, and put her hands on his shoulders. "I'm not a child, like
+Cynthia. I can't dream dreams and make idols any more. I think I see you
+as you are, and I don't know whether your love is a good thing." She
+paused, searching his eyes with hers very earnestly. Then she went on,
+"But if it isn't, I think there's no good thing left for me at all."
+
+"Mary, isn't that your answer to me?" "Yes." Her arms fell from his
+shoulders, and she stood opposite to him, in silence again for a moment.
+Then her troubled face cleared to a calm serenity. "And now I set doubts
+and fears behind me. I come to you in faith, and loyalty, and love. I'm
+not a missionary to you, or a reformer, God forbid! I'm just the woman
+who loves you, Hector."
+
+"I should have mocked at the missionary, and tricked the reformer." He
+bared his head before her. "But by the woman who loves me and whom I
+love, I will deal faithfully." He bent and kissed her forehead.
+
+"And now, let's walk on. No, not to old Place--back home, past
+Tower Cottage."
+
+She put her arm through his again, and they set out through the soft dusk
+that had begun to hover about them. So they came to the cottage, and
+here, for a while, instinctively stayed their steps. A light shone in the
+parlor window; the Tower was dark and still. Mary turned her face to
+Beaumaroy's with a sudden smile of scornful gladness.
+
+"Aye, aye, you're right!" His smile answered hers. "Poor devils! I'm
+sorry; for them, upon my soul I am!"
+
+"That really is just like you!" she exclaimed in mirthful exasperation.
+"Sorry for the Radbolts now, are you?"
+
+"Well, after all, they've only got the gold. We've got the
+treasure, Mary!"
+
+
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Secret of the Tower, by Hope, Anthony
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