Part 7

Beedel looked at his friend and then at Dr Ellerslie. With unconscious habit he even noticed the proportions of the room, the position of the door and window, and the chief articles of furniture. His mind moved rather slowly, but always logically, and in cases where “sound intelligence” sufficed he was rarely unsuccessful. He had brought Mrs Severe to identify Marie, whom he had never seen, and his men remained outside within whistle-call in case of any emergency. He now saw that he might have to shift his ground and he at once proceeded cautiously.

“Well, sir,” he admitted, “I did not expect to see you here.”

“Nor did I anticipate coming. Mrs Severe”--he bowed to her--“I think that we have already met informally. Your friend, Miss Julp, unless I am mistaken? It is a good thing that we are all here.”

“That is my name, sir,” struck in the recalcitrant Cornelia, “but I am not aware----”

“At the gate early--very early--this morning, Miss Julp. I recognise your step. But accept my assurance, my dear lady”--for Miss Julp had given a start of maidenly confusion at the recollection--“that although I heard, I did _not_ see you. Well, Inspector, I have since found that I misled you. The mistake was mine--a fundamental error. You were right. Mrs Severe was right. Dr Ellerslie is unassailably right. I speak for him because it was I who fastened an unsupportable motive on his actions. Marie Severe is in this house, but she was received here by Dr Ellerslie in his professional capacity and strictly in the relation of doctor and patient.... Mr Severe has at length admitted that he alone is to blame. You see, you were right after all.”

“Arthur! Oh!” exclaimed Mrs Severe, deeply moved.

“But why,” demanded the other lady hostilely, “why should the man want her here?”

“Mr Severe was apprehensive on account of his daughter’s health,” replied Carrados gravely. “His story is that, fearing something serious, he submitted her to this eminent specialist, who found a dangerous--a critical--condition that could only be removed by immediate operation. Dr Ellerslie has saved your daughter’s life, Mrs Severe.”

“Fiddlesticks!” shouted Miss Julp excitedly. “It’s an outrage--a criminal outrage. An operation! There was no danger--there couldn’t be with _me_ at hand. You’ve done it this time, _Doctor_ Ellerslie. My gosh, but this will be a case!”

Mrs Severe sank into a chair, pale and trembling.

“I can scarcely believe it,” she managed to say. “It is a crime. Dr Ellerslie--no doctor had the right. Mr Severe has no authority whatever. The court gave me sole control of Marie.”

“Excuse me,” put in Carrados with the blandness of perfect self-control and cognisance of his point, “excuse me, but have you ever informed Dr Ellerslie of that ruling?”

“No,” admitted Mrs Severe with faint surprise. “No. Why should I?”

“Quite so. Why should you? But have you any knowledge that Dr Ellerslie is acquainted with the details of your unhappy domestic differences?”

“I do not know at all. What do these things matter?”

“Only this: Why should Dr Ellerslie question the authority of a parent who brings his child? It shows at least that he is the one who is concerned about her welfare. For all Dr Ellerslie knew, you might be the unauthorised one, Mrs Severe. A doctor can scarcely be expected to withhold a critical operation while he investigates the family affairs of his patients.”

“But all this time--this dreadful suspense. He must have known.”

Carrados shrugged his shoulders and seemed to glance across the room to where their host had so far stood immovable.

“I did know, Mrs Severe. I could not help knowing. But I knew something else, and to a doctor the interests of his patient must overrule every ordinary consideration. Should the occasion arise, I shall be prepared at any time to justify my silence.”

“Oh, the occasion will arise and pretty sharp, don’t you fear,” chimed in the irrepressible Miss Julp. “There’s a sight more in this business, Ida, than we’ve got at yet. A mighty cute idea putting up Severe now. I never did believe that he was in it. He’s a piece too mean-spirited to have the nerve. And where is Arthur Severe now? Gone, of course; quit the country and at someone else’s expense.”

“Not at all,” said Carrados very obligingly. “Since you ask, Miss Julp”--he raised his voice--“Mr Severe!”

The door opened and Severe strolled into the room with great sang-froid. He bowed distantly to his wife and nodded familiarly to the police official.

“Well, Inspector,” he remarked, “you’ve cornered me at last, you see.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” retorted Beedel shortly.

“Oh, come now; you are too modest. My unconvincing alibi that you broke down. The printed letter so conclusively from my hand. And Grigson--your irrefutable, steadfast witness from the station here, Inspector. There’s no getting round Grigson now, you know.”

Beedel rubbed his chin helpfully but made no answer. Things seemed to have reached a momentary impasse.

“Perhaps we may at least all sit down,” suggested Ellerslie, to break the silence. “There are rather a lot of us, but I think the chairs will go round.”

“If I wasn’t just dead tired I would sooner drop than sit down in the house of a man calling himself a doctor,” declared Miss Julp. Then she sat down rather heavily. Sharp on the action came a piercing yell, a deep-wrung “Yag!” of pain and alarm, and the lady was seen bounding to her feet, to turn and look suspiciously at the place she had just vacated.

“It was a needle, Cornelia,” said Mrs Severe, who sat next to her. “See, here it is.”

“Dear me, how unfortunate,” exclaimed Ellerslie, following the action; “one of my surgical needles. I do hope that it has been properly sterilised since the last operation.”

“What’s that?” demanded Miss Julp sharply.

“Well,” explained the doctor slowly, “I mean that there is such a thing as blood-poisoning. At least,” he amended, “for me there is such a thing as blood-poisoning. For you, fortunately, it does not exist. Any more than pain does,” he added thoughtfully.

“Do you mean,” demanded Miss Julp with slow precision, “that through your carelessness, your criminal carelessness, I run any risk of blood-poisoning?”

“Cornelia!” exclaimed Mrs Severe in pale incredulity.

“Of course not,” retorted the surgeon. “How can you if such a thing does not exist?”

“I don’t care whether it exists or not----”

“Cornelia!” repeated her faithful disciple in horror.

“Be quiet, Ida. This is my business. It isn’t like an ordinary illness. I’ve always had a horror of blood-poisoning. I have nightmare about it. My father died of it. He had to have glass tubes put in his veins, and the night he died----Oh, I tell you I can’t stand the thought of it. There’s nothing else I believe in, but blood-poisoning----” She shuddered. “I tell you, doctor,” she declared with a sudden descent to the practical, “if I get laid up from this you’ll have to stand the racket, and pretty considerable damages as well.”

“But at the worst this is a very simple matter,” protested Ellerslie. “If you will let me dress the place----”

Miss Julp went as red as a swarthy-complexioned lady of forty-five could be expected to go.

“How can I let you dress the place?” she snapped. “It is----”

“Oh, Cornelia, Cornelia!” exclaimed Mrs Severe reproachfully, through her disillusioned tears, “would you really be so false to the great principles which you have taught me?”

“I have a trained nurse here,” suggested the doctor. “She would do it as well as I could.”

“Are you really going?” demanded Mrs Severe, for there was no doubt that Miss Julp was going and going with alacrity.

“I don’t abate one iota of my principles, Ida,” she remarked. “But one has to discriminate. There are natural illnesses and there are unnatural illnesses. We say with truth that there can be no death, but no one will deny that Christian Scientists do, as a matter of fact, in the ordinary sense, die. Perhaps this is rather beyond you yet, dear, but I hope that some day you will see it in the light of its deeper mystery.”

“Do you?” replied Mrs Severe with cold disdain. “At present I only see that there is one law of indulgence for yourself and another for your dupes.”

“After all,” interposed Ellerslie, “this embarrassing discussion need never have arisen. I now see that the offending implement is only one of Mrs Glass’s darning needles. How careless of her! You need have no fear, Miss Julp.”

“Oh, you coward!” exclaimed Miss Julp breathlessly. “You coward! I won’t stay here a moment longer. I will go home.”

“I won’t detain you,” said Mrs Severe as Cornelia passed her. “Your home is in Chicago, I believe? Ann will help you to pack.”

Carrados rose and touched Beedel on the arm.

“You and I are not wanted here, Inspector,” he whispered. “The bottom’s dropped out of the case,” and they slipped away together.

Mrs Severe looked across the room towards her late husband, hesitated and then slowly walked up to him.

“There is a great deal here that I do not understand,” she said, “but is not this so, that you were willing to go to prison to shield this man who has been good to Marie?”

Severe flushed a little. Then he dropped his deliberate reply.

“I am willing to go to hell for this man for his goodness to Marie,” he said curtly.

“Oh!” exclaimed Mrs Severe with a little cry. “I wish----You never said that you would go to hell for me!”

The outcast stared. Then a curious look, a twisted smile of tenderness and half-mocking humour crossed his features.

“My dear,” he responded gravely, “perhaps not. But I often thought it!”

Dr Ellerslie, who had followed out the last two of his departing guests, looked in at the door.

“Marie is awake, I hear,” he said. “Will you go up now, Mrs Severe?”

With a shy smile the lady held out her hand towards the shabby man.

“You must go with me, Arthur,” she stipulated.

III

The Secret of Dunstan’s Tower

It was a peculiarity of Mr Carrados that he could drop the most absorbing occupation of his daily life at a moment’s notice if need be, apply himself exclusively to the solution of some criminological problem, possibly a matter of several days, and at the end of the time return and take up the thread of his private business exactly where he had left it.

On the morning of the 3rd of September he was dictating to his secretary a monograph to which he had given the attractive title, “The Portrait of Alexander the Great, as Jupiter Ammon, on an unedited octadrachm of Macedonia,” when a telegram was brought in. Greatorex, the secretary, dealt with such communications as a matter of course, and, taking the envelope from Parkinson’s salver, he cut it open in the pause between a couple of sentences.

“This is a private matter of yours, sir,” he remarked, after glancing at the message. “Handed in at Netherhempsfield, 10.48 A.M. Repeated. One step higher. Quite baffled. Tulloch.”

“Oh yes; that’s all right,” said Carrados. “No reply, Parkinson. Have you got down ‘the Roman supremacy’?”

“‘... the type of workmanship that still enshrined the memory of Spartan influence down to the era of Roman supremacy,’” read the secretary.

“That will do. How are the trains for Netherhempsfield?”

Greatorex put down the notebook and took up an “ABC.”

“Waterloo departure 11----” He cocked an eye towards the desk clock. “Oh, that’s no good. 12.17, 2.11, 5.9, 7.25.”

“The 5.9 should do,” interposed Carrados. “Arrival?”

“6.48.”

“Now what has the gazeteer to say about the place?”

The yellow railway guide gave place to a weightier volume, and the secretary read out the following details:

“Netherhempsfield, parish and village, pop. 732, South Downshire. 2728 acres land and 27 water; soil rich loam, occupied as arable, pasture, orchard and woodland; subsoil various. The church of St Dunstan (restored 1740) is Saxon and Early English. It possesses an oak roof with curious grotesque bosses, and contains brasses and other memorials (earliest 13th century) of the Aynosforde family. In the ‘Swinefield,’ 1½ miles south-west of the village, are 15 large stones, known locally as the Judge and Jury, which constitute the remains of a Druidical circle and temple. Dunstan’s Tower, a moated residence built in the baronial style, and probably dating from the 14th century, is the seat of the Aynosfordes.”

“I can give three days easily,” mused Carrados. “Yes, I’ll go down by the 5.9.”

“Do I accompany you, sir?” inquired Greatorex.

“Not this time, I think. Have three days off yourself. Just pick up the correspondence and take things easy. Send on anything to me, care of Dr Tulloch. If I don’t write, expect me back on Friday.”

“Very well, Mr Carrados. What books shall I put out for Parkinson to pack?”

“Say ... Gessner’s _Thesaurus_ and--yes, you may as well add Hilarion’s _Celtic Mythology_.”

Six hours later Carrados was on his way to Netherhempsfield. In his pocket was the following letter, which may be taken as offering the only explanation why he should suddenly decide to visit a place of which he had never even heard until that morning:--

“DEAR MR CARRADOS (‘old Wynn,’ it used to be),--Do you remember a fellow at St Michael’s who used to own insects and the name of Tulloch--‘Earwigs,’ they called him? Well, you will find it at the end of this epistle, if you have the patience to get there. I ran across Jarvis about six months ago on Euston platform--you’ll recall him by his red hair and great feet--and we had a rapid and comprehensive pow-wow. He told me who you were, having heard of you from Lessing, who seems to be editing a high-class review. He always was a trifle eccentric, Lessing.

“As for yours t., well, at the moment I’m local demon in a G-f-s little place that you’d hardly find on anything less than a 4-inch ordnance. But I won’t altogether say it mightn’t be worse, for there’s trout in the stream, and after half-a-decade of Cinder Moor, in the Black Country, a great and holy peace broods on the smiling land.

“But you will guess that I wouldn’t be taking up the time of a busy man of importance unless I had something to say, and you’d be right. It may interest you, or it may not, but here it is.

“Living about two miles out of the village, at a sort of mediæval stronghold known as Dunstan’s Tower, there is an ancient county family called Aynosforde. And, for the matter of that, they are about all there is here, for the whole place seems to belong to them, and their authority runs from the power to charge you twopence if you sell a pig between Friday night and Monday morning to the right to demand an exchange of scabbards with the reigning sovereign whenever he comes within seven bowshot flights of the highest battlement of Dunstan’s Tower. (I don’t gather that any reigning sovereign ever has come, but that isn’t the Aynosfordes’ fault.) But, levity apart, these Aynosfordes, without being particularly rich, or having any title, are accorded an extraordinary position. I am told that scarcely a living duchess could hold out against the moral influence old dame Aynosforde could bring to bear on social matters, and yet she scarcely ever goes beyond Netherhempsfield now.

“My connection with these high-and-mighties ought to be purely professional, and so, in a manner, it is, but on the top of it I find myself drawn into a full-blooded, old haunted house mystery that takes me clean out of my depth.

“Darrish, the man whose place I’m taking for three months, had a sort of arrangement that once a week he should go up to the Tower and amuse old Mrs Aynosforde for a couple of hours under the pretence of feeling her pulse. I found that I was let in for continuing this. Fortunately the old dame was quite amiable at close quarters. I have no social qualifications whatever, and we got on very well together on those terms. I have heard that she considers me ‘thoroughly responsible.’

“For five or six weeks everything went on swimmingly. I had just enough to do to keep me from doing nothing. People have a delightful habit of not being taken ill in the night, and there is a comfortable cob to trot round on.

“Tuesday is my Dunstan’s Tower day. Last Tuesday I went as usual. I recall now that the servants about the place seemed rather wild and the old lady did not keep me quite as long as usual, but these things were not sufficiently noticeable to make any impression on me at the time. On Friday a groom rode over with a note from Swarbrick, the butler. Would I go up that afternoon and see Mrs Aynosforde? He had taken the liberty of asking me on his own responsibility as he thought that she ought to be seen. Deuced queer it struck me, but of course I went.

“Swarbrick was evidently on the look-out. He is a regular family retainer, taciturn and morose rather than bland. I saw at once that the old fellow had something on his mind, and I told him that I should like a word with him. We went into the morning-room.

“‘Now, Swarbrick,’ I said, ‘you sent for me. What is the matter with your mistress since Tuesday?’

“He looked at me dourly, as though he was still in two minds about opening his mouth. Then he said slowly:

“‘It isn’t since Tuesday, sir. It was on that morning.’

“‘What was?’ I asked.

“‘The beginning of it, Dr Tulloch. Mrs Aynosforde slipped at the foot of the stairs on coming down to breakfast.’

“‘She did?’ I said. ‘Well, it couldn’t have been very serious at the time. She never mentioned it to me.’

“‘No, sir,’ the old monument assented, with an appalling surface of sublime pride, ‘she would not.’

“‘Why wouldn’t she if she was hurt?’ I demanded. ‘People do mention these things to their medical men, in strict confidence.’

“‘The circumstances are unusual, sir,’ he replied, without a ruffle of his imperturbable respect. ‘Mrs Aynosforde was not hurt, sir. She did not actually fall, but she slipped--on a pool of blood.’

“‘That’s unpleasant,’ I admitted, looking at him sharply, for an owl could have seen that there was something behind all this. ‘How did it come there? Whose was it?’

“‘Sir Philip Bellmont’s, sir.’

“I did not know the name. ‘Is he a visitor here?’ I asked.

“‘Not at present, sir. He stayed with us in 1662. He died here, sir, under rather unpleasant circumstances.’

“There you have it, Wynn. That is the keystone of the whole business. But if I keep to my conversation with the still reluctant Swarbrick I shall run out of foolscap and into midnight. Briefly, then, the ‘unpleasant circumstances’ were as follows:--Just about two and a half centuries ago, when Charles II. was back, and things in England were rather gay, a certain Sir Philip Bellmont was a guest at Dunstan’s Tower. There were dice, and there was a lady--probably a dozen, but the particular one was the Aynosforde’s young wife. One night there was a flare-up. Bellmont was run through with a rapier, and an ugly doubt turned on whether the point came out under the shoulder blade, or went in there. Dripping on to every stair, the unfortunate man was carried up to his room. He died within a few hours, convinced, from the circumstances, of treachery all round, and with his last breath he left an anathema on every male and female Aynosforde as the day of their death approached. There are fourteen steps in the flight that Bellmont was carried up, and when the pool appears in the hall some Aynosforde has just two weeks to live. Each succeeding morning the stain may be found one stair higher. When it reaches the top there is a death in the family.

“This was the gist of the story. As far as you and I are concerned, it is, of course, merely a matter as to what form our scepticism takes, but my attitude is complicated by the fact that my nominal patient has become a real one. She is seventy-two and built to be a nonagenarian, but she has gone to bed with the intention of dying on Tuesday week. And I firmly believe she will.

“‘How does she know that she is the one?’ I asked. There aren’t many Aynosfordes, but I knew that there were some others.

“To this Swarbrick maintained a discreet ambiguity. It was not for him to say, he replied, but I can see that he, like most of the natives round here, is obsessed with Aynosfordism.

“‘And for that matter,’ I objected, ‘your mistress is scarcely entitled to the distinction. She will not really be an Aynosforde at all--only one by marriage.’

“‘No, sir,’ he replied readily, ‘Mrs Aynosforde was also a Miss Aynosforde, sir--one of the Dorset Aynosfordes. Mr Aynosforde married his cousin.’

“‘Oh,’ I said, ‘do the Aynosfordes often marry cousins?’

“‘Very frequently, sir. You see, it is difficult otherwise for them to find eligible partners.’

“Well, I saw the lady, explaining that I had not been altogether satisfied with her condition on Tuesday. It passed, but I was not able to allude to the real business. Swarbrick, in his respectful, cast-iron way, had impressed on me that Sir Philip Bellmont must not be mentioned, assuring me that even Darrish would not venture to do so. Mrs Aynosforde was certainly a little feverish, but there was nothing the matter with her. I left, arranging to call again on the Sunday.

“When I came to think it over, the first form it took was: Now who is playing a silly practical joke, or working a deliberate piece of mischief? But I could not get any further on those lines, because I do not know enough of the circumstances. Darrish might know, but Darrish is cruising off Spitzbergen, suffering from a nervous breakdown. The people here are amiable enough superficially, but they plainly regard me as an outsider.

“It was then that I thought of you. From what Jarvis had told me I gathered that you were keen on a mystery for its own sake. Furthermore, though I understand that you are now something of a dook, you might not be averse to a quiet week in the country, jogging along the lanes, smoking a peaceful pipe of an evening and yarning over old times. But I was not going to lure you down and then have the thing turn out to be a ridiculous and transparent hoax, no matter how serious its consequences. I owed it to you to make some reasonable investigation myself. This I have now done.

“On Sunday when I went there Swarbrick, with a very long face, reported that on each morning he had found the stain one step higher. The patient, needless to say, was appreciably worse. When I came down I had made up my mind.

“‘Look here, Swarbrick,’ I said, ‘there is only one thing for it. I must sit up here to-night and see what happens.’

“He was very dubious at first, but I believe the fellow is genuine in his attachment to the house. His final scruple melted when he learned that I should not require him to sit up with me. I enjoined absolute secrecy, and this, in a large rambling place like the Tower, is not difficult to maintain. All the maid-servants had fled. The only people sleeping within the walls now, beyond those I have mentioned, are two of Mrs Aynosforde’s grandchildren (a girl and a young man whom I merely know by sight), the housekeeper and a footman. All these had retired long before the butler admitted me by an obscure little door, about half-an-hour after midnight.