The House 'Round the Corner

In a few minutes Scaife had reached the same conclusion as Armathwaite. Indeed, he gave the latter a look which was easily understandable. If it were not for the moral effect of his presence on the sufferer, he need not have been summoned from Bellerby that night. He applied the soothing lotion, however, and substituted a thin, india-rubber strip for the linen bandage. Then he and Armathwaite assisted Whittaker to undress, and placed him in bed as comfortably as possible.

"Now, I want to assure you that the prompt attention you received prevented a very awkward swelling," said the doctor, before taking his departure. "You've sprained that ankle rather badly. If it had been allowed to swell it would have given you a very nasty time. As it is, if you're careful, you'll be able to hobble about in a fortnight."

"A fortnight!" Whittaker almost shrieked. "I can't lie here a fortnight!"

"Whether you remain here or not, you'll be lucky if you can put that foot on the ground within that time. You may be moved, if you're carried, though I don't advise it."

"But it's perfect rot to talk about being stewed up in this room all that time," protested the other, his eyes gleaming yellow, and his fingers plucking nervously at the bed-clothes. "This isn't my house. I'm a stranger here. Besides, there are things I must do. I have to be up and about to-morrow, without fail."

Dr. Scaife nodded. He was far too wise a person to argue with an excited patient.

"Well, wait till I examine you in the morning," he said. "Sometimes, injuries of the sprain order yield very rapidly to treatment. Take this, and you'll have a night's rest, at any rate."

He shook some crystals out of a small bottle into a little water, and watched Whittaker drinking the decoction.

"Lie quiet now," he went on soothingly. "You'll soon be asleep. If that bandage hurts when you wake, you must grin and bear it. I'll be here about ten o'clock."

Downstairs, he told Armathwaite that he had given Whittaker a stiff dose of bromide.

"Here's the bottle," he said. "If he's awake in half an hour's time, let him have a similar lot. Don't be afraid. He can stand any amount of it."

Armathwaite smiled, and Scaife smiled back at him. They understood, without further speech, that a youngster of pronounced neurotic temperament could withstand a quantity of the drug that would prove dangerous to the average man.

"Who is he?" continued the doctor. "I haven't seen him here before. Is there any difficulty about his remaining in the Grange?"

"He is a friend of Meg's," explained Armathwaite. "She was staying with his sister at Chester, and we all reached Elmdale within a few hours of one another."

Thus was another pitfall safely skirted. By the time Dr. Scaife was in the dining-room and talking to Meg, he had arrived at conclusions which were perfectly reasonable and thoroughly erroneous.

In response to Armathwaite, he promised to bring a nurse in the morning, as he was confident that the sprain would keep Whittaker bed-ridden at least a couple of weeks. Then he took his leave.

"I'll go and sit with Percy a little while now," said Marguérite. "Poor fellow! What a shame he should have met with this mishap after his gallant walk to-day. Perhaps that is why he fell. His muscles may have relaxed owing to over-exertion. Will you ever forgive me, Bob, for all the worry I have caused you?"

"No," he said. "I want you to remind me of it so often that we shall lose count of the number of times. But, before you go upstairs, let me warn you that Dr. Scaife gave our young friend about twenty grains of bromide in one gulp. He may be dozing. If he is, don't wake him."

In a couple of minutes she was back in the library, where Armathwaite was seated with a book and a pipe.

"He's asleep," she whispered.

"I'm glad to hear it. Now, come and sit down. Are you too tired to answer questions?"

"Try me."

"Concerning your change of name – can you explain more definitely how it came about?"

"I told you. It was on account of a legacy."

"But from whom? Who was the Ogilvey who left the money? A relative on your father's side, or your mother's?"

"Dad's, I understood."

"Did you ever hear of anyone named Faulkner?"

"Yes. Some people of that name lived here years ago. We were distantly related. In fact, that is how the property came into dad's possession. But he never really went into details. One day he said he had made a will, leaving me everything, subject to a life interest for mother, and that when he was dead a lawyer would tell me all that I ought to know. Then I cried at the horrid thought that he would have to die at all, and he laughed at me, and that was the last I ever heard of it. Why do you ask?"

"You remember that we promised not to hide anything from one another?"

"Of course I remember."

"Well, then, I think I have hit on a sort of a clew to the Ogilvey part of the mystery, at any rate. By the merest chance, while awaiting the return of Mr. Burt's man from the village, our talk turned on the history of this house. He spoke of the Faulkners, and mentioned the fact that the eldest son of a daughter of the family, a Mrs. Ogilvey, was born here. That would be some fifty odd years ago. How old is your father?"

"Fifty-four."

"The dates tally, at all events."

Meg knitted her brows over this cryptic remark.

"But," she said, "if you imply that my father may be the son of a Mrs. Ogilvey, that would mean that his name never was Garth."

"Exactly."

"Isn't such a guess rather improbable? I am twenty-two, and I was born in this very house, and I lived here twenty years except during school terms at Brighton and in Brussels, and we were known as Garths during all that long time."

Armathwaite blew a big ring of smoke into the air, and darted a number of smaller rings through it. The pattern, beautifully distinct at first, was soon caught in a current from an open window, and eddied into shapelessness. He was thinking hard, and had acted unconsciously, so it was with a sense of surprise that he heard the girl laugh half-heartedly.

"I've been forming mad and outrageous theories until my poor head aches," she said, answering the unspoken question in his eyes. "Some of them begin by being just as perfectly proportioned as your smoke-rings, but they fade away in the next breath."

"My present theory is nebulous enough," he admitted, "but it is not altogether demolished yet. Can you endure a brief analysis of my thoughts? You won't be afraid, and lie awake for hours?"

"No. I mean that I want to hear everything you wish to tell me."

"The man who died here two years ago must have resembled your father in no common degree. Dr. Scaife is not the sort of person who makes a mistake in such a vital matter as the identification of a dead body, especially when the subject is an old and valued friend of his. By the way, you called him uncle, but that, I take it, was merely an affectionate mode of address dating from your childhood?"

"Yes. It's a Yorkshire custom among intimates."

"Have you ever heard of a real uncle – your father's brother – or of a first cousin who was very like him?"

"No. I have asked my people about relatives but we seemed to have none. Even the Ogilvey of the legacy was never mentioned by either of them until mother read me a letter from dad received while we were in Paris."

"Exactly. This testamentary Ogilvey appeared on the scene soon after Stephen Garth died and was buried. Your father was well aware of that occurrence, because he contrived it. He knew that the man who died was coming here, so he sent your mother and you to Paris to get you safely out of the way. Now, don't begin to tremble, and frighten yourself into the belief that I am proving your father's guilt of some dreadful crime. You yourself are convinced that he is incapable of any such act. May I not share your good opinion of him, yet try to reach some sort of firm ground in a quagmire where a false step may prove disastrous? Suppose, Mr. Garth, as he was called at that time, merely got rid of his wife and daughter until an unwelcome guest had been received and sent on his way again, and that fate, with the crassness it can display at times, contrived that the visitor died, or was killed, or committed suicide, at the most awkward moment it is possible to conceive, can you not imagine a hapless, middle-aged scholar availing himself of the most unlikely kind of expedient in order to escape a scandal? Your father is a student, a writer, almost a recluse, yet such a man, driven suddenly into panic-stricken use of his wits, oft-times devises ways and means of humbugging the authorities which an ordinarily clever criminal would neither think of nor dare. I am insisting on this phase of the matter so that you and I may concentrate our intelligence on the line of inquiry most likely to yield results. Let me tabulate my contentions in chronological sequence:

A.– Mr. Garth received some news which led him to disturb the peaceful conditions of life which had obtained during twenty years. His first care was to send his wife and daughter to a place far removed from Elmdale.

B.– Mrs. Garth shared her husband's uneasiness, and agreed to fall in with the plan he had devised.

C.– In order to secure complete secrecy, the whole staff of servants was dismissed, practically at a moment's notice, and probably paid liberal compensation.

D.– After a week of this gradual obliteration of himself in Elmdale, Mr. Garth is missed, with the inevitable outcome that his dead body is found hanging in the hall, and, lest there should be any doubt as to his identity, a letter is left for the coroner, in which he asserts a thing, which his friend, Dr. Scaife, knew to be untrue, namely, that he was suffering from incurable disease. The statement, conveyed otherwise than in a letter, would have been received with skepticism; it was made with the definite object of giving a reason for an apparent suicide, and leaving testimony, in his own handwriting, that the disfigured body could be that of no other person than Stephen Garth. If a general resemblance of the dead to the living did not suffice – if the wearing of certain clothes, and the finding of certain documents and trinkets, such as a watch and chain, for instance – "

Marguérite, who had been listening intently, could no longer restrain her excitement.

"Yes," she cried, "that is so correct that it is quite wonderful. My father had a half-hunter gold watch and a chain of twisted leather which he wore as long as I can remember. Both had gone when he came to us in Paris; when I missed them, and asked what had become of them, he said they were lost, much to his annoyance, and he had been obliged to buy a new watch in London."

"There is nothing wonderful in treating a watch and chain as the first objects which would lead to a man's identification," said Armathwaite. "Now, don't let your admiration for the excessive wisdom of the court tempt you to interrupt again, because the court has not fully made up its own mind and is marshaling its views aloud in order to hear how they sound. Where were we? Still in Section D, I think. Well, granted that an obtuse policeman or a perplexed doctor refused to admit that Stephen Garth was dead, the letter would clinch the matter. Indeed, from the report of the inquest, we see that it did achieve its purpose. The remaining heads of the argument may be set forth briefly:

E.– Stephen Garth is buried at Bellerby, and Stephen Ogilvey steps into new life in Paris, wearing a literary cloak already prepared by many years of patient industry, though no one in Elmdale knew that its well-known resident was a famous writer on folk-lore.

F.– After some months of foreign travel, it was deemed safe to return to England, and Cornwall was chosen as a place of residence. The connection between rural Cornwall and rural Yorkshire is almost as remote as the influence of Mars on the earth. Both belong to the same system, and there would be trouble if they became detached, but, otherwise, they move in different orbits; they have plenty of interests in common, but no active cohesion. In a word, Stephen Ogilvey ran little risk in Cornwall of being recognized as Stephen Garth.

G.– Mrs. Ogilvey, a most estimable lady, and quite as unlikely as her scholar-husband to be associated with a crime, was a party to all these mysterious proceedings, and the combined object of husband and wife was to keep their daughter in ignorance of the facts for a time, at least, if not forever.

"I don't think I need carry the demonstration any further to-night. You are not to retire to your room and sob yourself into a state of hysteria because your coming to Elmdale has threatened with destruction an edifice of deceit built with such care and skill. I am beginning to recognize now a fatalistic element in the events of the past twenty-four hours that suggests the steady march of a Greek tragedy to its predestined end. But the dramatic art has undergone many changes since the days of Euripides. Let's see if we cannot avail ourselves of modern methods, and keep the tragic dénouement in the place where it has been put already, namely, in Bellerby churchyard."

The girl stood up, and gave him her hand.

"I'm almost certain, Bob, that if you and dad had five minutes' talk, there would be an end of the mystery," she said.

"And a commencement of a long friendship, I hope," he said.

Their eyes met, and Meg's steady gaze faltered for the first time. She almost ran out of the room, and Armathwaite sat many minutes in utter stillness, looking through the window at the dark crest of the moor silhouetted against a star-lit sky. Then he refilled his pipe, and picked up the book he had taken haphazard from the well-stored shelves of that curiously constituted person, Stephen Ogilvey.

It was a solid tome, entitled: "Scottish Criminal Trials," and lay side by side with "The Golden Bough," which Marguérite had spoken of, and a German work, "Geschichte des Teufels." Turning over the leaves, he found that someone had marked a passage with ink. The reference had been noted many years ago, because the marks were faded and brown, but the paragraph thus singled out had an extraordinary vivid bearing on the day's occurrences.

It read:

"A statute of James I., still in force, enacts that all persons invoking an evil spirit, or consulting, covenanting with, entertaining, employing, feeding or rewarding any evil spirit, shall be guilty of felony and suffer death."

Instantly there flitted before Armathwaite's vision a picture of the besotted Faulkner offering libations of wine to the black figure scowling from the stained-glass window. Perhaps the old toper had been lifting his head in a final bumper when he fell backward down the stairs and broke his neck.

Armathwaite shut the book with a bang. When he went out, he found that Betty had forgotten to leave a candle in the hall, and he must either go upstairs in the dark or carry with him the lamp still burning on its bracket.

He glared steadily at the dull outline of the effigy in armor.

"I'm not superstitious," he muttered, "but if I could have my own way with you, my beauty, I'd smash you into little bits!"

Then, to show his contempt for all ghouls and demons, he extinguished the lamp, and felt his way by holding the banisters. It was creepy work. Once, he was aware of a curious contraction of the skin at the nape of his neck. He turned in a fury, and eyed the window. Now that no light came from the hall, some of its color was restored, and certain blue and orange tints in the border were so perfect in tone that he was moved from resentment to admiration.

"Not for the first time in the history of art, the frame is better than the picture," he thought. "Very well, you imp of darkness, some day, and soon, I hope, we'll dislodge you and keep your setting."

He did not ask himself whom he included in that pronoun "we." There was no need. The mighty had fallen at last. He loved Marguérite Ogilvey, and would marry her if she would accept him though her parents had committed all the crimes in the calendar, and her ancestors were wizards and necromancers without exception.

CHAPTER XI

PREPARATIONS FOR BATTLE

James Walker, the younger, took thought while his cob paced the eight miles between Elmdale and Nuttonby. In the result, he changed his plans if not his intent. Pulling up outside the office of Holloway & Dobb, he signaled a clerk who peered out at him through a dust-laden window. It is a singular fact that more dust gathers on the windows of offices occupied by respectable country solicitors than on the windows of all other professional men collectively.

"Would you mind asking Mr. Dobb to come and see me for a minute on important business?" he said when the clerk came out.

After befitting delay, Mr. Dobb appeared. He was portly and bespectacled, and not inclined to hurry. Moreover, he did not make a practice of holding consultations with clients in the street. It needed a man of county rank to prefer such a request, and Mr. Dobb, Commissioner for Oaths, and leading solicitor in Nuttonby, was very much astonished when he heard that "young Walker, the auctioneer," had invited him to step outside.

"Well, what is it?" he inquired stiffly, standing in the doorway, and clearly resolved not to budge another inch.

"Sorry to trouble you, sir," said Walker humbly, "but I can't leave this pony when so near his stable. He'd take off on his own account."

Dobb, though slightly mollified by an eminently reasonable explanation, did not offer to cross the pavement, so Walker, after glancing up and down the street to make sure that no passer-by could overhear, continued in a low tone:

"I've just come from the Grange, Elmdale, and saw Miss Meg Garth there. She passed a remark which seemed to imply that her father is still living, and got very angry when I told her that he was dead and buried two years ago."

Mr. Dobb descended from the doorway quickly enough then. Resting a fat hand on the rail of the dash-board, he looked up into Walker's red face. The scrutiny was not friendly. He was sure that the junior member of the firm of Walker & Son had been drinking.

"Do you know what you are talking about?" he said, sternly.

Walker leaned down, until his ferret eyes peered closely into those of the angry solicitor.

"That's why I'm here, sir," he said, with the utmost deference of manner. "Of course, I'm aware that you represent the family – at any rate, with regard to the Elmdale property – and when Miss Meg herself said that her father was alive, and flew into a rage when I ventured to correct her, what was I to think? I admit I was knocked all of a heap, and may have put things rather bluntly, but there cannot be the slightest doubt as to what she meant. More than that, her cousin, Mr. Robert Armathwaite, bore out her statement, and got so mad with me for stickin' to it that Mr. Garth had committed suicide, that we almost came to blows."

Walker was quite sober – the solicitor had no doubt on that score now. Perhaps vague memories stirred in the shrewd, legal mind, and recalled certain curious discrepancies he had noted in events already passing into the limbo of forgetfulness. He, too, looked to right and left, lest some keen-eared citizen should have crept up unobserved.

"Can't you take your trap to the stable and come back here?" he asked, thereby admitting that Walker's breach of decorum was condoned.

"That's really what I had in mind, sir. I was afraid you might have left the office before I was at liberty, as I have a few matters to attend to when I reach our own place, and I didn't want to intrude by callin' at your house."

Dobb was watching him critically, and was evidently becoming more puzzled each moment.

"I need hardly tell you that you are bringing a very serious charge against someone," he said at last.

"No, that I'm not!" cried Walker emphatically. "I'm just telling you the plain facts. It's not my business to bring charges. I thought, in reality, that I was doing someone a good turn by comin' straight to you; but, if you don't agree, Mr. Dobb – "

"No, no, I didn't mean my remark in that sense," explained the solicitor hastily, not without a disagreeable feeling that this perky young auctioneer seemed to know exactly what he was about. "I only wanted you to understand that grave issues may be bound up with an extraordinary story of this nature. Look here! I'm busy now. Will you be free at six o'clock?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, come to my house, and we'll discuss matters fully. You say you saw and spoke to Miss Meg herself?"

"Oh, yes, sir! No mistake. I've known her all my life."

"Very well, then. Don't be later than six. I have some people coming to dinner at seven."

Walker saluted with the switch he carried instead of a whip, clicked his tongue at the cob, and rattled away down the High Street. Dobb looked after him dubiously. He had been friendly with the Garths, and James Walker, junior, was almost the last person in Nuttonby he would have entrusted with any scandal or secret which affected them. However, in another hour, he would endeavor to gauge the true value of Walker's information. It might be a cock and bull yarn, in which case it would be a pleasure to sit on Walker heavily. Meanwhile, he would avail himself of the opportunity to go through certain papers in his possession, and come to the forthcoming interview primed with the facts.

Every Thursday evening, at half-past five, the proprietor, editor, and manager of the Nuttonby Gazette– a journalistic trinity comprised in one fussy little man named Banks – looked in at Walker and Son's office for the "copy" of the week's advertisements, Mr. Banks being then on his way back to the printing-works after tea. Thus, he killed two birds with one stone, since the Walkers not only controlled a good deal of miscellaneous advertising, but, moving about the countryside as they did in the course of their business, often gave him news paragraphs not otherwise available.

Young Walker, of course, was prepared for this visit. Indeed, it loomed large in the scheme he had embarked on. Hurrying home, he changed into a suit of clothes calculated to impress Gwendoline Dobb, the solicitor's only unmarried daughter, if he met her, and then strolled to the High Street sanctum of the firm. Not a word did he say to his father as to happenings at Elmdale. The old man was altogether too cautious, he thought, and would assuredly tell him to shut his mouth, which was the last thing he meant to do where Meg Garth and her "bounder of a cousin" were concerned.

Thus, when Banks hurried in, and asked the usual question: "Anything fresh, gentlemen?" Walker, senior, was by no means prepared for the thunderbolt which his son was about to launch.

The older man told the journalist that Lady Hutton was giving a special prize for honey at the next agricultural show; that hay had been a bumper crop in the district; and that mangel wurzel was distinctly falling out of favor, items of an interest to Nuttonby readers that far transcended the clash of empires in the Balkans. Banks was going, when the son said quietly:

"By the way, you might like to mention that a Mr. Robert Armathwaite, a relative of the former occupants, has rented the Grange, Elmdale, probably for a period of twelve months."

"A relative of the Garths, Jim – I didn't know that!" exclaimed his father.

"It's right enough. Meg Garth herself told me."

"Meg Garth! Is she here?"

"She's at the Grange. Tom Bland told me she was there, so, after calling about those cattle at Bellerby to-day, I drove on to Elmdale and saw her."

"Well, of all the surprising things! Then, Mr. Armathwaite must have known about the house when he came in yesterday?"

Yesterday! While the three men were gazing at each other in the Walkers' office, Armathwaite and Marguérite Ogilvey were escorting Percy Whittaker down the moor road, and even wily James Walker, junior, little guessed what a whirlwind had enwrapped the new tenant of the Grange since, as the older Walker had put it, "he came in yesterday."

"No, I'm jiggered if he did!" cried the younger man viciously. "Armathwaite had never heard the name of the place before we mentioned it. I'll swear that in any court of law in the land."