The House 'Round the Corner
"You'd better have this, sir, and see if it's right," he said, giving Armathwaite a note. A glance showed that it dealt with terms for the hire of the car.
"Tell your people it is quite satisfactory," said Armathwaite, and, after a farewell pressure of Meg's hand, and a look from the brown eyes which remained with him like a blessing, the car started. He watched until it had vanished over a long undulation of the road, and saw the last flutter of Meg's handkerchief ere she crossed the sky-line. Then he mounted the bicycle, and rode swiftly back to the tiny hamlet in which, during two short days, he had passed through so many and so much varied experiences.
Looking down from the crest of the hill at the sunlit panorama of farm and field, woodland and furze-grown common, with Elmdale's cluster of homesteads nestling close beneath the moor, and the spire of Bellerby Church (near which lay the mortal remains of "Stephen Garth") rising above a cluster of elms in the middle distance, it seemed to be a fantastic and unreal notion that so many of life's evils, so much of its beauty and happiness, could have found full scope for their expression in that tiny and remote place.
As the hill was too dangerous in parts to ride, he dismounted twice. He was about to coast down the last straight slope to the house when a thought struck him with such blinding force that he nearly lost control of the bicycle. Fool that he was, his first care should have been to tell Marguérite that his name was not Armathwaite; that he had adopted an incognito simply to avoid the prying eyes and inquisitive tongues of those with whom he might be brought in contact; that, in marrying him, she was stepping forth from the seclusion of a student's retreat into the full glare of public life. Oh, the deuce take all complications and worries! He had won Marguérite by extraordinary means – he must do his wooing in more orthodox manner, and in his true colors.
He was traveling at a rate which kept pace with the tornado in his mind, but the second nature brought into being by an adventurous career bent a watchful eye on the inequalities of the road, so that he was actually slowing up somewhat short of the gate leading to the Grange garden when he became aware of an unusual concourse of people gathered in the roadway. A motor-car and two dog-carts were halted near the gable of Mrs. Jackson's cottage, and a number of men – among them two in police uniform – who seemed to have collected into a chatting group, dissolved into units when he approached.
He recognized a groom at a horse's head as Dr. Scaife's man; all the others were total strangers.
But not for long.
Sir Berkeley Hutton, brought to Elmdale by a neighborly curiosity strengthened by the call of the East, appeared to be overwhelmed with surprise at sight of Armathwaite. But the worthy baronet did not lose the faculty of speech. No conceivable catastrophe, short of instant death, could deprive him of that.
"God bless my soul!" he cried, advancing with outstretched hand. "Baluchi Bob! The last man breathing I ever expected to see in Elmdale! Did the monsoon break earlier than usual this year, or what wind of heaven blew you here?"
"Hullo, Barker!" cried Armathwaite, hailing him with manifest pleasure. "I didn't know you had pitched your tent in these parts!"
"Yes, but, dash it all, Bob, what's the game? They told me someone name of Armathwaite, in the Politicals, had taken the Grange."
"Quite true. But you know I came a cropper in India, and I was a bit tired of the sturm und drang of existence, so I hied me to cover under my mother's maiden name. I suppose I have a sort of right to it, though it doesn't seem to have proved altogether successful as a cloak."
"By gad! I can hardly agree with you there. I felt as though I'd come a purler over wire when I saw Baluchi Bob dropping off that bicycle. Great Scott! You on a bike! How have the mighty fallen! But I'll lend you a hack till you collect a few useful screws, unless you're bitten by this new craze for rushing about the country in a gastank. And won't Mollie be glad to see you! It was only the other day she was talkin' about the Pup, and sayin' that if it hadn't been for you – "
"Oh, tell Mollie to forget that old tale, or she'll make me nervous!"
Each word exchanged between the two was heard distinctly by the others, and, such is the queer way in which the affairs of life sometimes take an unexpected twist, there was a marked and instant change of attitude on the part of three men, at least, who had come to Elmdale that day prepared to treat the Grange's new tenant as a potential criminal. Banks, mouthpiece of the Nuttonby Gazette, who had bicycled thither in the hope of securing another batch of readable copy for a special Saturday edition, suddenly found himself reviewing, with a sinking heart, one or two rather ticklish paragraphs in the screed already published anent "The Elmdale mystery." As for the superintendent and inspector of police from Nuttonby, they forthwith recanted certain opinions formed after hearing Banks's story and reading the current issue of his newspaper.
For Sir Berkeley Hutton was a county magnate, chairman of the Nuttonby bench, an alderman of the County Council, a Deputy Lieutenant, and goodness knows what else of a power in civic and social circles, and here was he hailing this stranger as an intimate friend, being himself greeted by the nickname earned by a loud and strident utterance which never failed, speaking of Lady Hutton as "Mollie," of his eldest son as "the Pup." County police and country editors must be chary of accepting the evidence of James Walkers and Tom Blands against the guarantee of such a man, or they may get their corns trodden on most painfully!
All at once, Sir Berkeley Hutton seemed to recollect the talk which had been going on outside the locked and barred gate, for Begonia Smith and his henchmen had refused to pass anyone but the doctor and nurse, who were with their patient at that moment.
"I say, Bob," he went on, in a thunderous whisper quite as audible as his ordinary voice, "I'm devilish glad it's you – I am, 'pon my soul! – because some of these chaps have been spinnin' the queerest sort of yarn, in which a murder, a suicide, a ghost, and a pretty girl are mixed up in fine style. Just tell 'em all to go to blazes, will you? – except Dobb. Dobb's a decent fellow, and he acted for the people who used to live here – Hi! Dobb. This is – " Then it dawned on him that his friend might wish still to preserve his anonymity save in the sacred circle of the elect, so he broke off into "Come along, Dobb! I want you to meet one of the best fellows who ever wore shoe-leather!"
Dobb advanced. With him came a gentleman who was as unknown to Nuttonby as Armathwaite himself. Before the solicitor could speak, his companion said quietly:
"Sir Robert Dalrymple, I believe?"
"Yes," and Marguérite's "chosen mate" looked him very searchingly and squarely in the eyes.
"My name is Morand," said the other. "I am sent here by the India Office to tell you – " he glanced around in momentary hesitation.
"Pray, go on," said Dalrymple, as Armathwaite must be described henceforth. "There is nothing that the India Office has to communicate which I am not willing that all the world should hear."
"Happily, Sir Robert, this is a communication which all the world ought to hear. The Maharajah of Barapur is dead. He was assassinated last Monday while driving through the bazaar. His prime minister, Chalwar Singh, was with him, and was mortally wounded at the same time."
"Then India is well rid of two pestilent scoundrels," said Dalrymple unconcernedly.
"That is the view now held by the Government," was the grave answer.
"A death-bed conversion, of a sort," commented his hearer dryly.
"A death-bed confession, too," said Morand. "It was a fortunate thing that both men lived long enough to reveal that they had concocted the whole story of the Maharani's pearls in order to get you shelved. Your administration was too honest. They played on your well-known carelessness in trivial matters of detail, and bribed your native secretary, Muncherji, to include in your correspondence the letters which seemed to prove your complicity in a serious breach of trust. Muncherji, by rare good chance, was not in Barapur when the Maharajah and Chalwar Singh were riddled with bullets, so he was arrested before he knew of the affair. He, too, has confessed. In fact, I can convey everything in a sentence. The Government of India has reinstated you in the High Commissionership, and you are gazetted as absent on leave. I am the bearer of ample apologies from the India Office, which will be tendered to you in person by my chief when he meets you in London. Meanwhile, I am to request you to allow the announcement to be made public that you will return to India on a named date, while the appointment of your deputy is left open for your recommendation."
Dalrymple paled slightly, which was the only evidence he gave of the effect such a statement was bound to produce on a proud and ambitious nature, but Sir Berkeley Hutton was irrepressible.
"By gad!" he roared, "somebody's gold lace has been rolled in the dust of Calcutta before the India Department climbed down like that. I never heard anything like it – never! 'Pon me soul! Won't Mollie be pleased?"
Yet the man to whom the path of empire was again thrown open spoke no word. It was good to have his honor cleared of the stain put on it by a scheming Indian prince and his henchmen. It was good to find himself standing once more in the high place he had won by self-sacrificing work and unflinching adherence to an ideal of efficient government. But his thoughts were with a sorrow-stricken girl speeding to a sad tryst with a mother who might bring tidings that would blight her life for many a year.
Morand grew anxious. He shared Dalrymple's knowledge of the tremendous issues bound up with an affair of State of real magnitude, and he did not want to fail in this, his first confidential mission.
"If there is anything else I can say, Sir Robert – " he began, and his voice disrupted a dream.
"It's all right, Morand," said the other, letting a hand rest on the shoulder of the younger man in that characteristic way of his. "I'm not such a cur as to snarl when I have been proved right, and my traducers are ready to admit their blunder. I didn't yelp when the blow fell. I'm not going to kick up a bobbery now when I'm given back my spurs. Tell your chief that I'll come to him soon, within a week, if possible. I have business on my hands here that calls imperatively for settlement. I'll deal first with that; then I'll come. Are you returning to town at once?"
"By the first available train. More than that, I am to telegraph your decision to Whitehall. Between you and me, some people are in a howling funk lest a question should be put in the House."
"That isn't the frontier method. Men who appeal to Parliament when things go wrong are of no value to India. But I don't want to preach."
"Won't you come in?"
"If you'll pardon me, I'll hurry back to Nuttonby. That telegram is called for urgently. What about your deputy?"
"Collins was transferred to Oudh because he supported me. Send him to Barapur. The natives will understand that better than a dozen gazettes."
"Thanks. That clinches it, Sir Robert. Mr. Dobb, do you mind if we start immediately?"
Mr. Dobb did mind. For one thing, he had not spoken a word to Sir Robert Dalrymple yet. For another, Nuttonby loomed larger in his mind than some wrangle in far-away Hindustan, and Nuttonby was seething with rumors anent present and past inhabitants of the Grange.
"We, like the State of Barapur, have our little troubles," he said guardedly. "Sir Robert has shown already that he appreciates their gravity. My car will take you to Nuttonby, Mr. Morand, and come back for me."
The representative of the India Office was only too pleased to get away on any terms. He knew that a reassuring message was wanted in Whitehall. There were wheels within wheels. A question was put in the House that night, and an Under-Secretary scoffed at the notion that Sir Robert Dalrymple, "a trusted servant of his country, whose splendid work on the Indus was most thoroughly appreciated by the Government of India," had been requested to resign. As a matter of public interest, he was pleased to inform the honorable questioner that Sir Robert Dalrymple, only that day, had put forward the name of Mr. Mortimer Collins, I.C.S., to act as his deputy in Barapur until he returned from short leave granted on "urgent private affairs."
The motor was already trumpeting its way through a mob of Elmdale urchins, who seldom saw a car, and had never before seen two in one day, when Dalrymple found himself regretting he had not inquired how Morand contrived to get on his track so easily. Some weeks elapsed before he learned that the only friend in London who knew his whereabouts thought it a duty to speak when the hue and cry went forth from the India Office.
Dalrymple was with his friend, a retired general, in his club when the vexed administrator announced his intention to retire from the arena and take a well-earned rest.
"I'll assume my mother's name, Armathwaite," he had said, "and rusticate in some place where Barapur is unknown and India never mentioned. Let's have a look at the map!"
He glanced at a motoring road-book lying on the club table.
"Here we are!" he laughed. "Judging by the condition of the highways, there are backwoods near Nuttonby, in Yorkshire. My postal address will be Armathwaite, near Nuttonby, for some months. But I'll write."
So that was how it happened that Sir Robert Dalrymple came to the Grange, and met Marguérite Ogilvey. Some part of the outcome of that meeting was foreshadowed while Smith of the Begonias was unlocking the gate, because a procession of three appeared in the porch.
Dr. Scaife and a nurse were carrying Percy Whittaker between them. The doctor's distress was almost comical when he caught sight of Dalrymple. He shouted brokenly, being rather breathless:
"For goodness' sake – Mr. Armathwaite – come and persuade this young man – to remain here. He insists – on being taken away – at once!"
CHAPTER XV
THE LAYING OF THE GHOST
It has been seen that Dalrymple had a short way with the Percy Whittakers of this world. He strode up the garden path and confronted Whittaker, who was standing on one foot and clinging in pain and terror to Dr. Scaife and the nurse.
"You had better remain here," he said sternly. "Miss Ogilvey has only gone to meet her mother at York. Both ladies will probably arrive this evening. Why are you making yourself a nuisance when everyone is doing all that is possible to serve you?"
Whittaker clutched the doctor even more tightly.
"He says that before witnesses," he quavered, "yet less than an hour ago he tried to strangle me."
"Stuff and nonsense! I don't believe it!" protested Scaife emphatically.
"I frightened him, undoubtedly," said Dalrymple. "It was necessary. Sometimes a threatened spanking is as effectual as the real thing, and Mr. Whittaker's nervous system has led him to take an exaggerated view of my intentions. The fact is that he himself was responsible for a show of violence on my part. Meanwhile, Marguérite Ogilvey, whom you have always known as Meg Garth, Dr. Scaife, has promised to become my wife, so Mr. Whittaker and I have no further cause for quarrel. Indeed, by the time he is able to walk downstairs unassisted, his own good sense will come to the rescue, and blot out any unpleasant memories as between him and me… Now, Percy, my boy, let me use my muscles to better purpose than choking the life out of you. I'm going to carry you back to bed again."
His air of quiet domination, no less than the news which sounded the knell of Whittaker's hopes, seemed to mesmerize the neurotic youth into silence and submission. Dalrymple took him in his arms, lifted him off the ground with gentle care, and carried him to the bedroom he had insisted on leaving. The nurse followed, and he left the invalid in her care.
Hastening to the porch, he found Dr. Scaife mopping his forehead; the worthy doctor was more upset by the frenzied statements made by Percy than by the physical effort involved by carrying him downstairs.
"Wait one moment," he said. "I'm bringing in some men whom you know. Then I shall explain everything."
He passed on to the gate.
"I want you, Hutton, and you, Mr. Dobb, to come into the house. Those police officers also had better join us. Who is the other man?"
"Mr. Banks, of the Nuttonby Gazette," said the baronet.
"Very well. Let him come, too. Better tell him what he must not say rather than correct his blunders subsequently in a court of law."
Mr. Dobb, being a lawyer, doubted the wisdom of admitting a representative of the press to their conclave, but Dalrymple's air of authority kept him dumb. During the drive from Nuttonby the delegate of the India Office had discoursed on the important position this stranger occupied in India, and it was not for a country solicitor, who hardly guessed what was coming, to question his decision before he knew its scope.
And therein Dalrymple showed his genius. Banks, already in a flutter because of certain indiscretions in his printed references to the inquest, was at once soothed and gratified by the great man's tact. The police superintendent found the ground cut away from beneath his feet by the full and complete version of recent events which Dalrymple supplied. Sir Berkeley and the doctor listened to the recital with ill-suppressed amazement, but, at the end, they agreed, each and all, with Dalrymple's suggestion that judgment should be suspended until Mrs. Ogilvey was in Elmdale.
He did not attempt to argue that the law should not take its course.
"During the past ten years," he said, "I have held the lives and liberties of two millions of people in my keeping, so I need hardly say that I am a most unlikely person to fly in the face of authority. But there are circumstances connected with this inquiry which call for careful treatment. Some man died here, and was buried, and the law must be satisfied that Mr. Stephen Ogilvey was either ignorant of the occurrence, or had no guilty knowledge of it – which is not quite the same thing – before he can be exonerated from the grave suspicion at present attached to his actions of two years ago. Now, I have not the honor of knowing either Mr. Ogilvey or his wife, but I do hold that they could not have won the respect of their neighbors during twenty years of residence in this house and yet be capable of planning and committing an atrocious murder. I would point out that Mrs. Ogilvey shares some of the blame, or the guilt, of her husband. If he is a criminal, she knows it. The law looks with lenient eyes on a woman who shields a man in such conditions, but that element in human affairs only goes to strengthen my contention that Mrs. Ogilvey can, if she chooses, throw a flood of light on this strange problem. She is now on her way North. Her daughter has gone to York to meet her. In all likelihood, one or both ladies will be in Elmdale to-night. Is it not reasonable to ask that investigation by the police into a singular occurrence now two years old should be postponed till to-morrow? Gentlemen, I promise you this. Come here to-morrow, say, about two o'clock, and you will be placed in possession of every fact then known to me. It is obvious, in my opinion, that the police can hardly adopt any other course, but I am bound to point out to Mr. Banks that the man who writes, and the newspaper which publishes, theories or speculations with regard to this matter before it is fully cleared up through the proper channel, will incur a most serious responsibility."
Sir Berkeley Hutton, of course, had a word to say.
"Mr. Garth, or Mr. Ogilvey as you now call him, is an old and valued friend of mine," he declared, "and it is my fixed and definite belief that if he was stung by a wasp he would find some excuse for a poor insect which was only trying to protect itself from imaginary danger. Stephen Garth kill anybody! Stuff and nonsense!"
Mr. Dobb, too, was incredulous in so far as his friend's criminality was concerned.
"Mr. Garth certainly wrote the letter to the coroner," he said. "I saw it, and recognized his handwriting. Therefore, he knew that a death had taken place, and used a remarkably ingenious method of hoodwinking the authorities. That, in itself, is a legal offense – the magnitude of which alone can be estimated when we know the truth. I agree with Sir Robert Dalrymple. We must await Mrs. Garth's, or, I suppose I must learn to say, Mrs. Ogilvey's, arrival before any other steps are taken. Meanwhile, it is of the utmost importance that no word of this discussion shall travel beyond these four walls."
"Will Sir Robert Dalrymple undertake to notify me of Mrs. Ogilvey's presence?" was the very pertinent inquiry made by the police superintendent.
Dalrymple undertook readily to send a messenger into Nuttonby early next morning, and his diplomacy was rewarded by seeing the conclave break up on that understanding. Nevertheless, he passed a miserable and restless day. He had not stemmed the torrent, but diverted it. If his faith was not justified, if Marguérite's mother either refused to give any explanation of her husband's extraordinary ruse, or denied all knowledge of it, there was no getting away from the fact that the elderly recluse might soon be lodged in a felon's cell.
Marguérite herself would strain every nerve to save her father, if only by flight, but her lover realized how futile that would prove. He had secured a respite – and no more. If Mrs. Ogilvey's admissions led her daughter to journey on through the night to Warleggan, the girl might contrive to hurry her father out of England before the bolt fell. But to what avail? They would be traced with ease. Their flight, the pursuit, the arrest, would only add fuel to the flame lighted by inquisitive newspapers. Better, far better, that the man should face an inquiry at once rather than be put on trial after a vain attempt to escape.
It was almost a relief to visit Percy Whittaker during the afternoon, and endeavor to convert him from active enmity into a sulky acquiescence in things as they were, and not as he hoped they would be. Luckily, Dalrymple had estimated a curious temperament with singular accuracy. After a long conversation, in which the older man cajoled and flattered Percy by turns, the latter declared that he never meant to put his threat into force.
"I'm not such an ass as to want to marry a girl who loathed the sight of me," he said ruefully. "I tried to frighten Meg. I guessed she'd run off to Warleggan. My motive was to separate the pair of you. Then I'd follow, as soon as this confounded ankle of mine would permit, and tell her candidly that I was frantically jealous of you. Dash it all, and not without good cause! All's fair in love an' war, Mr. Armathwaite. I've a notion now that my splutter simply drove her into your arms."
"My name is not Armathwaite – " began Dalrymple, whereupon Whittaker glared at him in a new frenzy.
"I never thought it was!" he vociferated. "Let me tell you you're the biggest puzzle of the lot. I shan't be a bit surprised if you say you are the fellow who hanged somebody here, and persuaded old Garth to stand the racket."
So, to pass the time while the nurse was eating a meal, Dalrymple told him the story of Barapur, and Percy heard, and was subdued, since he knew now that, come what might, Marguérite Ogilvey was lost to him forever.
Then, while Dalrymple was surveying the day's work of Smith and his men, and declaring it was good, there came a messenger from Bellerby on a borrowed bicycle, bearing a telegram. It was from Marguérite, and Dalrymple's heart danced with joy when he read:
"All is well. Father leaves for York to-night. He will join mother and me early to-morrow. Expect us about ten o'clock. Am detaining car. Love, MEG."
All is well! What was well? It was a woman's message, which assumed everything and told nothing, except the one amazing fact that Stephen Ogilvey's wife had evidently decided that the period of concealment was ended, and that her husband should now vindicate himself in the eyes of his world.
At any rate, a youth returned to Bellerby with two bicycles and the richer by two sovereigns, so it is tolerably certain that Dalrymple's few words of congratulation were not delayed on the way.
