Part 12

“You’ll have to put me up, old man,” he said, “I simply will not go to an hotel while you’ve an available bed in the flat, and besides I want to tell you something about my plans for the future.”

“Before we start dreaming,” said Tab, “listen to a little bit of sordid reality. You have been burgled, my lad!”

“Burgled?” said Rex incredulously. “How do you mean, Tab? I left nothing to be burgled.”

“You left a couple of trunks which have been thoroughly and scientifically examined by somebody who has got a grudge against you.”

“Good God!” said Rex. “Did they find the key? I only saw the story of the second murder when I landed.”

“You did leave the key in the trunk?”

Rex nodded.

“I left it in a box, a small wooden box with a sliding lid. There were two of these boxes, I remember, one in each trunk, they were compass boxes.”

“Then they were the object of the visit. Why he should mutilate poor me I find it difficult to explain.”

He told Rex Lander what happened on the night of the second burglary and Rex listened fascinated.

“I’ve lost all the fun being away,” he grumbled. “So poor old Brown was the victim, eh? And we thought he was the murderer. And Carver--what has he got to say about it?”

“Carver is rattled, but mysterious,” said Tab.

Rex was deep in thought.

“I am going to have that strong-room bricked up,” he said, “I made up my mind while I was on the ship. Anyway, I don’t suppose anybody will want to buy the beastly place, and I shall have it on my hands for years. But I’ll take pretty good care that tragedy number two doesn’t become tragedy number three.”

“Why not remove the door?” suggested Tab, but Rex shook his head.

“I won’t have the vault turned into a show place,” he said quietly. “Besides, it will likely enough stop a good sale. My own inclinations are to pull the house down and have it rebuilt; dig it out from foundation to roof and start fresh. But I don’t think that even that would induce me to go and live there,” he said. “Poor old Jesse’s blood would rise up from the ground and find us wherever we were. There is a curse upon the house,” he went on solemnly. “Some evil spirit seems to brood over it and inspire innocent men to these hideous crimes.”

Tab stared at him in amazement.

“Babe,” he said, “you’ve got poetical. I guess it is the air of Italy.”

Rex went red, as he always did when he was embarrassed.

“I feel very strongly about the house,” he said curtly and Tab saw that he had hurt his feelings, but Rex’s huff did not last long. He spoke of his voyage, the interesting places he had seen, and then: “You got my ring?”

“Yes, Rex, thank you, it is a beauty,” said Tab. “It seems to me to be worth a terrible lot of money.”

“It didn’t cost so much,” said the other carelessly. “I’ve got a rich way of thinking nowadays, Tab. I shudder at myself sometimes.”

They fell to discussing Rex’s immediate movements and Tab succeeded in persuading him to go to the hotel. He had a reason for this; knowing the lazy nature of his former companion, he guessed that if Rex once got himself settled down in the flat, he would never leave it.

Rex questioned him closely about the second tragedy, plying him with innumerable questions.

“Yes, I shall certainly have that place bricked up. I will put it in the hands of the builders right away,” he said. “And as you decided to chuck me out, perhaps you will come and dine pretty frequently.”

He sent for his trunks the following day and made a call upon Carver. Tab heard later that under the personal direction of Rex, all the deed boxes and other movables in the vault had been removed by a gang of workmen and that immediate preparations were being made to wall up this sinister chamber.

It was like Rex to take up with enthusiasm some unexpected hobby. Carver told him, when next they met, that Rex haunted the builders’ yard, was having elaborate plans drawn for a new house and was himself entering with enthusiasm into the mysteries of mortar-making and brick-laying.

“In fact,” said Tab, “poor Rex is making himself an infernal nuisance. He has these spasms. About three years ago, he decided, in defiance of his Uncle’s intentions, to become a great crime reporter, and spent so much time in the ‘Megaphone’ library, that the news editor kicked. Whenever he wanted a book, Rex had it; whenever he wanted to look up some old and forgotten crime, there was Rex, in the midst of a chaos of cuttings. The present fit will last exactly three weeks; after that, Rex will buy a large hammock and a large bed and spend his time alternately in one or the other!”

Tab did not see Ursula Ardfern for a week. He wrote to her once, for he was a little worried, remembering her fainting fit on her last night at the theatre, but he received a reassuring, indeed a flippant message from Stone Cottage.

“I have come back here and am entrenched against all mysterious Men in Black with an aged but active butler, who has served in the army and is acquainted with the use of lethal weapons. The late roses are out--won’t you come and see them? They are glorious. And Yeh Ling’s Temple of Peace is roofed with shining red tiles, and the villagers are breathing freely again at the prospect of his queer little labourers leaving the neighborhood.

“I drove over there yesterday and found Yeh Ling very sombre and quiet, watching the final touches being put on what looked to be a huge barrel but which I found was the mould in which the second of his great pillars is to be cast. It is the Pillar of Grateful Recollection, or something of the sort, and it is to be dedicated to--me. I feel thrilled. It is hard to believe that all these years Yeh Ling has remembered the trifling services I gave to his son, and isn’t it curious that in all those years, although I have met him many times, for I used to dine regularly at his restaurant (I dined there this week) he has never made one reference to the old days. It is a little eerie, isn’t it?

“I am learning to shoot. Forgive this inconsequence, but my butler (how grand that sounds!) is very insistent, and I practice every day in the meadows behind the house. I had no idea that a revolver was so very heavy or jumped so when you pressed the trigger, and the noise is appalling! I was scared almost to death the first day of the practice, but I am getting quite used to it now and Turner says I shall make a crack shot.

“If you come you will not lack for excitement. Personally I should have preferred that Turner would have given me lessons in archery; it is much more graceful and ladylike. Every time the pistol fires (it is an automatic) it blackens my hands horribly--and it stings!”

Tab read the letter through very many times before he took the Hertford Road. He stopped en route to admire the monument which Yeh Ling had erected to his prosperity. He could admire in all sincerity, for the house presented not only a striking, but a beautiful appearance. Its unusual lines, the quaint setting in which it stood, for the garden had now taken shape, the one lusty pillar that flanked the broad yellow path, made a striking picture.

The workmen had not gone and presently he spied Yeh Ling himself coming down the broad short flight of steps from the upper terrace.

If he did not distinguish him at first, it was excusable, for he wore the blue blouse and baggy trousers of his workmen, but Yeh Ling had seen him and came straight to where he was standing.

“You’ve nearly finished,” said Tab with a smile of greeting. “I congratulate you, Yeh Ling.”

“You think it is pretty,” said Yeh Ling, in his grave, cultured voice. “I have had the best builder I could get from China and I have not stinted him. Some day perhaps you will come and see the interior.”

“What are they doing now?” asked Tab.

“In a few days we shall cast a second pillar,” said Yeh Ling, “and then the work is finished. You think I am at heart a barbarian?” Yeh Ling seldom smiled, but now his pale lips curled momentarily, “and you will take these pillars as proof?”

“I wouldn’t say that--” began Tab.

“Because you are so polite, Mr. Holland,” said Yeh Ling, “but then you see, we look at things from a different angle. I think your church steeples are ridiculous! Why is it necessary to stick a great stone spike on to a building to emphasise your reverence?”

He searched in his blouse and brought out a gold cigarette case, and offered it to Tab. Then he lit a cigarette himself, inhaled deeply before he sent a blue cloud into the still air.

“My Pillar of Grateful Memories will have a greater significance than all your steeples,” he said, “than all your stained glass windows. It is to me what your War Memorial Crosses are to you, a concrete symbol (literally concrete) of an intangible sentiment.”

“You are a Taoist?” asked Tab interested.

Yeh Ling shrugged his shoulders.

“I am a believer in God,” he said, “in ‘_x_’ in something beyond definition. Churches and sects, religions of all kinds are monopolies. God is like the water that flows down the mountain-side and fills the brooks and the rivers. There come certain men who bottle the waters, some in ugly bottles, some in beautiful bottles, and these bottles they sell, saying that ‘only this water will quench your thirst.’ That it does quench thirst we will not deny, but the water is often a little stale and flat, and the sparkle has gone out of it. You can drink better from the hollow of your hands kneeling by a brook. In China we bottle it with mystic writings and flavour it with cinnamon and spices. Here it is bottled without any regard to the water, but with punctilious care as to the shape of the bottle! I go always to the brook.”

“You are a queer devil,” said Tab surveying the other curiously.

Yeh Ling did not answer for a while, and then he asked:

“Is there any news about the murder of Brown?”

“No,” said Tab, “where was he, Yeh Ling?”

“He was in a smoke house,” said Yeh Ling without hesitation. “I took him there at the request of my patron, Mr. Trasmere. The man had come over to give him trouble and Trasmere wanted me to look after him and see that he didn’t make himself a nuisance. Apparently Brown had these bouts and then recovered, as opium smokers sometimes do, with a distaste for the drug. He must have recovered very suddenly and was gone before I could stop him and before the man who owned the house could let me know. I searched for him, but he disappeared and I heard no more about him until I read in the newspapers that he was dead.”

Tab was thoughtful.

“Had he any friends? You knew him in China?”

Yeh Ling nodded.

“Was there anybody who had a particular grudge against him--or against Trasmere?”

“Many,” said the other, “I, for example, did not like Brown.”

“But apart from you?”

Yeh Ling shook his head.

“Then you have not the slightest idea who was the murderer?”

Again the inscrutable gaze of Yeh Ling met his.

“I have an idea,” he said deliberately, “I know the murderer. I could lay my hands upon him without the slightest difficulty.”

XXVI

Tab gasped.

“You’re not joking?”

“I am not joking,” said Yeh Ling quietly. “I repeat I know the murderer. He has been within reach of me many times.”

“Is he a Chinaman?”

“I repeat he has been within reach of me many times,” said Yeh Ling, “but there are reasons why I should not betray him. There are many reasons why I should kill him,” he added reflectively. “You are going to see Miss Ardfern?” He changed the subject abruptly. “Do not go there in the afternoons, or if you do, approach from the front of the house. Miss Ardfern is taking lessons in revolver shooting and one of my men, who has been watching the house from the lower meadows, has had several narrow escapes.”

Tab laughed and offered his hand.

“You are a strange man, Yeh Ling,” he said, “and I don’t know what to make of you.”

“That is my oriental mystery,” said the Chinaman calmly. “One reads about such things. ‘For ways that are dark and for ways that are strange--’ you know the stanza?”

Tab went away with an amused feeling that Yeh Ling had been laughing at him, but he had been serious enough when he had been talking about the murder; of that Tab was sure.

Long before he reached the house he saw Ursula Ardfern. She was standing in the middle of the road opposite her gate, waving her hand to him, a dainty figure in grey, her flushed face shaded by a large garden hat.

“I’m such an expert shot, now,” she said gaily as he jumped off, “that I thought of putting a few long range ones in your direction to see how you looked when you were scared.”

“I’m glad you didn’t, if Yeh Ling’s uncomplimentary reference to your shooting is justified,” he said as he tucked her hand under his arm.

“Have you seen Yeh Ling? And was he very rude about my marksmanship?”

“He said you are a danger to life and property,” said Tab gravely, and she laughed.

“You would manage your bicycle better if you used both hands,” she said, releasing her own. “I want you to see my heliotrope. I have to keep it in a garden by itself; it is a cannibal plant, it kills all the other flowers. How could you spare time to come down?” she asked, her voice changing, “aren’t you very busy?”

Tab shook his head.

“I have been instructed to get very busy indeed,” he said grimly.

“Over this last case?”

“I can do no more than the police are doing,” he said, “and Carver seems to have lost hope, though he is a deceptive bird.”

“No clue of any kind has been discovered?”

Tab hesitated here. He had promised Carver that he would not speak of the new pins, but perhaps the restriction was confined only to the printed word.

“The only clues we have,” he said as he sat down by her side under the big maple, “are two very bright and very new pins which we found, one in the passage after the first murder, and one just inside the vault after the second. Both were slightly bent.”

She looked at him thoughtfully.

“Two pins?” she repeated slowly. “How strange--have you any idea of the use that was made of them?”

Tab had no idea, neither had Carver.

“The murderer was, of course, the Man in Black,” she said. “I read an account of the case, particularly Mr. Stott’s statement--he is the scared little man who ran away when Yeh Ling and I went to search the house for our papers. Yes, I say ‘our’ advisedly.”

“By-the-way, did Yeh Ling really find what he wanted?”

She nodded.

“And what you wanted?”

She bit her lips.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Sometimes I think he did and is keeping it from me. He swears that there was nothing of interest to me, but I believe he is being--kindly reticent. Some day I am going to have it out with him.”

The hand that was nearest to him was playing with a twig on the seat, and summoning his courage, he took it in his own and she did not resist.

“Ursula, it isn’t easy--you’d think that a man with my enormous nerve could take the hand of a woman--that he loved--without his heart going like an æroplane propeller, wouldn’t you?”

She did not answer.

“Wouldn’t you?” he repeated desperately. He could think of nothing else to say.

“I suppose so,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “And you’d think that an actress who had been made love to eight days a week, counting matinees, for years on end, could carry through a scene like this without having an insane desire to burst into tears. If you kiss me, Turner will see you.”

Tab could never remember that moment very clearly. He had a ridiculous recollection that her nose was cold against his cheek, and that in some miraculous fashion a whisp of hair came between their lips.

“Lunch is served, madam,” said Turner awfully.

He was an elderly, grim-looking man, and apparently he did not trust himself to look at Tab.

“Very well, Turner,” said Ursula with extraordinary courage and coolness. And when he had gone: “Tab, you have realised poor Turner’s worst fears; he told me that I was the first actress he had ever taken service with, and I gather he looks upon the experiment as a dangerous one.”

Tab was a little breathless, but he had his line to say.

“The only thing that can save your character, Ursula, is an immediate marriage,” he said boldly, and she laughed and pinched his ear.

The confusion of Tab’s recollections of that day, extended to the golden hours which followed. He came back to town in a desperate hurry--he was aching to write to her! He wrote and he wrote, and an expectant night editor peeped in at him and crept softly away to warn the printer that a big story of the murder was coming along (the night editor had distinctly counted a dozen folios to the left of Tab’s elbow) and it was only at almost the eleventh hour that he found he was mistaken.

“I thought you were doing the Mayfield murder. Where’s your story?” asked the indignant man.

“It is coming along,” said Tab guiltily. He stuffed the unfinished letter into his inside pocket, set his teeth and tried to fix his mind upon the crime. He would stop at the most incongruous moments to conjure up a rosy vision of that day, only to turn with a groan to....

“... the position of the body removes any doubt there may have been as to the manner in which the man met his death. The features of the two crimes are almost identical....”

So he wrote at feverish haste for half-an-hour, and the night editor, cutting out the superfluous “darlings” that appeared mysteriously in the copy, formed a pretty clear idea as to what Tab had been writing when he was interrupted.

Tab posted the letter, went home, and began another, this being the way of youth.

It was all a dream, he told himself when the morning came. It could not be true. And yet there was a fat envelope containing the letter he had written overnight, awaiting the post.

Tab opened the letter and added seven pages of postscript.

Later in the morning he asked Jacques, the news editor, if he believed in long engagements. He asked this casually as one who was seeking information for business purposes.

“No,” said Jacques decisively, “I don’t. I believe after a man has been two or three years on a newspaper he gets stale, and ought to be fired.”

Tab had not the moral courage to explain the kind of engagement he meant.

That day the weather broke. The rain shot down from low-hanging clouds, the temperature fell twelve degrees. Nevertheless, he thought longingly of the garden of Stone Cottage. It would be snug under the trees, snugger still in that long, low-ceilinged sitting-room of hers. Tab heaved a deep sigh and strolled off to fulfil his promise to Rex.

Rex was full of his new scheme, and dragged his visitor into the bedroom where blue prints and maps and plans seemed to cover every available surface.

“I’m going to build a veritable mansion of the skies,” he said, “I have chosen the site. It is just this side of where Ursula Ardfern has her cottage. The only rising ground in the country.”

“I know the only hill in that part of the world,” said Tab with sudden interest, “but unfortunately you have been forestalled, Rex.”

“You mean by Yeh Ling,” said the other carelessly, “I’ll buy him off. After all, it is only a freak on his part to put up a house there.”

Tab shook his head.

“You will have some difficulty in persuading him to sell,” he said quietly, “I happen to know that he is almost as keen on his house as you are on yours.”

“Stuff,” laughed Rex. “You seem to forget that I am made of money!”

Tab shook his head.

“I didn’t forget that,” he said, “but I repeat I know Yeh Ling.”

Rex scratched his head irritably.

“It will be a shame if I can’t get it,” he said. “Could you persuade him--I’ve rather set my heart on that site. I saw it once in the old days, long before I ever knew that Ursula Ardfern lived near by and I said to myself: ‘One of these days I’ll build a house on that hill.’ How is my adored one, by-the-way?”

The opportunity which Tab had wanted.

“Your adored one is my adored one,” he said quietly. “I am going to marry Ursula Ardfern.”

Rex fell into the nearest chair, looking at him with eyes and mouth wide open.

“You lucky dog!” he said at last, and then he came to his feet with his hand outflung. “I go away on a holiday and you steal my beloved,” he said, wringing Tab’s hand. “No, I am not feeling at all bad about it--you are a lucky man. We must have a bottle on this.”

Tab was relieved, to an extent greater than he had anticipated. He had rather dreaded telling the love-sick youth that the object of his passion had agreed to bestow herself upon the best friend of the man who was responsible for their meeting.

“You are going to tell me all about this,” said Rex, busy with the wire-cutters, “and of course, I’ll be your best man and take in hand the arrangements for the swellest wedding this little village has seen in years,” he babbled on and Tab was glad to let him talk.

Presently they came back to the subject of the house. Rex made no attempt to hide his disappointment that the ideal site was taken.

“I should have given it to you, old man,” he said impulsively, “what a wedding gift for a pal! But you shall have a house that is worthy of you, if I have to build the darned thing myself! As an architect I am a failure,” he went on, “my views are too eccentric. Poor old Stott swooned at the sight of some of my designs,” he chuckled to himself. “I’m not going to give up the attempt to carry my great idea into effect,” he told Tab at parting, “I shall see Yeh Ling at the earliest opportunity. I may be able to persuade him to sell.”

Tab went down to Hertford the next afternoon and never had his bicycle moved more leisurely.

“I told Rex,” he blurted out and he saw her face fall.

“He wasn’t hurt,” said Tab, anxious to relieve her mind, “in fact, he behaved like a brick! Do you mind very much? My telling him, I mean?”

“No,” she said quietly. “He wasn’t hurt?”

Tab laughed.

“It may sound uncomplimentary to you but I am sure that Rex was only temporarily infatuated.”

He saw a smile dawning and took her face between his hands.

“If I were Rex,” he said, “I should hate Tab Holland.”

“Rex is stronger minded,” she said. “Let us go into the garden. I have been thinking things out, and I feel that there is something that you ought to know, and the longer I put it off, the harder it will be to tell.”

He followed her, carrying an armful of cushions, arranged her chair, and sat upon its arm; and then, in the most unconcerned voice, holding no hint of the tremendous statement she was to make, she said:

“I killed Jesse Trasmere.”

XXVII

He leapt to his feet.

“What?” he gasped.

“I killed Jesse Trasmere,” she repeated, “not directly, with my own hands, but I am responsible for his death, almost as assuredly as if I had shot him.” She caught his hand and held it. “How white you are! I was a brute to put it that way. In our profession we love these dramatic--no I don’t mean that, Tab.”

“Will you tell me what you do mean?”

She signalled him to sit on the foot-rest of the chair.

“I’ll tell you something, but I don’t think I’ll tell you any more about the murder,” she said, “and this is the something which you ought to know, and which I intended you should know. I had not the slightest intention of saying what I did. The spirit of tragedy seems to haunt me,” she said, staring straight ahead, “I was cradled in that atmosphere of violence and wickedness. I once told you, Tab, that I had been in service as a tweeny maid and I think you were startled. I went there from a public orphan’s home, an institution where little children are taught to be born old. Tab--my mother was murdered, my father was hanged for her murder!”

There was no pain in her eyes, just a little hardness. He took both her hands in his and held them.