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Title: The Secret of the Tower

Author: Hope, Anthony

Release Date: November 17, 2003 [EBook #10057]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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                        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 c