The Brightener

"Yes! What about his nephews?" broke in a rough voice.

I started (only a statue could have resisted that start!) and turning my head I saw a tall young man close behind me, in the doorway by which I'd entered. Whether or not Mrs. Barlow had seen him, I don't know. She did not venture to speak, but a glance showed me a gleam of malicious relief in the eyes I had once thought limpid as a brook. If she'd ever felt any fondness for me, it was gone. She hated and feared me with a deadly fear. The thought shot through my brain that she would willingly sit still and see me murdered, if she and her husband could be saved from open shame by my disappearance.

The man in the doorway was sunburned to a lobster-red, and had features like those of some gargoyle. He must have been eavesdropping long enough to gather a good deal of information, for there was fury in his eyes, and deadly decision in the set of his big jaw.

Where was Roger Fane? I wondered. Without Roger I was lost, and my fate might never be known. Suddenly I was icily afraid – for something might have happened to Roger. But at that same frozen instant a very strange thing happened to me. My thoughts flew to Sir James Courtenaye! I had always disliked him – or fancied so. But he was so strong – such a giant of a man! What a wonderful champion he would be now! What hash he would make of the Barlow twins! Quickly I controlled myself. This was the moment when the game of Bluff (which had served me well so far) might be my one weapon of defence.

"As for Barlow's nephews," I echoed, with false calmness, "theirs is the principal guilt, and theirs ought to be the heaviest punishment."

The Crimson Gargoyle shut the door, deliberately, with a horrid, purposeful kind of deliberation, and with a stride or two came close to me. I stepped back, but he followed, towering above me with the air of a big bullying boy out to scare the life from a little one. To give him stare for stare I had to look straight up, my chin raised, and the threatening eyes, the great red face, seemed to fill the world – as a cat's face and eyes must seem to a hypnotized mouse.

I shook myself free from the hypnotic grip. Yet I would not let my gaze waver. Grandmother wouldn't, and no Courtenaye should!

"Who is going to punish us?" barked the Gargoyle.

"The police," I barked back. And almost I could have laughed at the difference in size and voice. I was so like a slim young Borzoi yapping at the nose of a bloodhound.

"Rot!" snorted the big fellow. "Damn rot!" (and I thought I heard a faint chuckle from the chair). "If the police were on to us, you wouldn't be here. This is a try-on."

"You'll soon see whether it's a try-on or not," I defied him. "As a matter of fact, out of pity for your two poor old dupes, we haven't told the police yet of what we've found out. I say 'we,' for I'm far from being alone or unprotected. I came to speak with Mrs. Barlow because she and her husband once served my family, and were honest till you tempted them. But if I'm kept here more than the fifteen minutes I specified, there is a man who – "

"There isn't," snapped the Gargoyle. "There was, but there isn't now. My brother Bob and me was out in our boat. I don't mind tellin' you, as you know so much, that we've spent quite a lot of time beatin' and prowlin' around these shores since the big storm." (The thought flashed through my brain: "Then they haven't read about the Naiad! Or else they didn't guess that the coffin was the same. That's one good thing! They can never blackmail Roger, whatever happens to me!") But I didn't speak. I let him pause for a second, and go on without interruption. "Comin' home we seen that car o' yourn outside our gate. Thought it was queer! Bob says to me, 'Hank, go on up to the house, and make me a sign from behind the big tree if there's anythin' wrong.' The feller in the car hadn't seen or heard us. We took care o' that! I slid off my shoes before I got to the door here, and listened a bit to your words o' wisdom. Then I slipped out as fur as the tree, and I made the sign. Bob didn't tell me what he meant to do. But I'm some on mind readin'. I guess that gentleman friend of yourn has gone to sleep in his automobile, as any one might in this quiet neighbourhood, where folks don't pass once in four or five hours. Bob can drive most makes of cars. Shouldn't wonder if he can manage this one. If you hear the engine tune up, you'll know it's him takin' the chauffeur down to the sea."

My bones felt like icicles; but I thought of Grandmother, and wouldn't give in. Also, with far less reason, I thought of Sir James. Strange, unaccountable creature that I was, my soul cried aloud for the championship of his strength! "The sea hasn't brought you much luck yet," I brazened. "I shouldn't advise you to try it again."

"I ain't askin' your advice," retorted the man who had indirectly introduced himself as "Hank Barlow." "All I ask is, where's the stuff?"

"What stuff?" I played for time, though I knew very well the "stuff" he meant.

"The goods from the Abbey. I won't say you wasn't smart to get on to the cache, and nab the box out o' the cave. Only you wasn't quite smart enough – savez? The fellers laugh best who laugh last. And we're those fellers!"

"You spring to conclusions," I said. But my voice sounded small in my own ears – small and thin as the voice of a child. (Oh, to know if this brute spoke truth about his brother and Roger Fane and the car, or if he were fighting me with my own weapon – Bluff!)

Henry Barlow laughed aloud – though he mightn't laugh last! "Do you call yourself a 'conclusion'? I'll give you just two minutes, my handsome lady, to make up your mind. If you don't tell me then where to lay me 'and on you know what, I'll spring at you."

By the wolf-glare in his eyes and the boldness of his tone I feared that his game wasn't wholly bluff. By irony of Fate, he had turned the tables on me. Thinking the power was all on my side and Roger's, I'd walked into a trap. And if, indeed, Roger had been struck down from behind, I did not see any way of escape for him or me. I had let out that I knew too much.

Even if I turned coward, and told Hank Barlow that the late contents of his uncle's coffin were on board the Naiad, he could not safely allow Roger or me to go free. But I wouldn't turn coward! To save the secret of the Abbey treasures meant saving the secret of what that coffin now held. My sick fear turned to hot rage. "Spring!" I cried. "Kill me if you choose. My coffin will keep a secret, which yours couldn't do!"

He glared, nonplussed by my violence.

"Devil take you, you cat!" he grunted.

"And you, you hound!" I cried.

His eyes flamed. I think fury would have conquered prudence, and he would have sprung then, to choke my life out, perhaps. But he hadn't locked the door. At that instant it swung open, and a whirlwind burst in. The whirlwind was a man. And the man was James Courtenaye.

I did not tell Sir Jim that my spirit had forgotten itself so utterly as to call him. It was quite unnecessary, as matters turned out, to "give myself away" to this extent. For, you see, it was not my call that brought him. It was Roger's.

As Shelagh Leigh was my best friend, so was, and is, Jim Courtenaye Roger Fane's. All the first part of Roger's life tragedy was known to my "forty-fourth cousin four times removed." For years Roger had given him all his confidence. The ex-cowboy had even advised him in his love affair with Shelagh, to "go on full steam ahead, and never mind breakers" – (alias Pollens). This being the case, it had seemed to Roger unfair not to trust his chum to the uttermost end. He had not intended to mention me as his accomplice; but evidently cowboys' wits are as quick as their lassoes. Jim guessed at my part in the business, thinking, maybe – that only the sly sex could hit upon such a Way Out. Anyhow, he was far from shocked; in fact, deigned to approve of me for the first time, and hearing how I had planned to restore the stolen heirlooms, roared with laughter.

Roger, conscience-stricken because my secret had leaked out with his, wished to atone by telling me that his friend had scented the whole truth. Jim Courtenaye, however, urged him against this course. He reckoned the Barlow twins more formidable than Roger and I had thought them, and insisted that he should be a partner in our game of Bluff. Only, he wished to be a silent partner till the right time came to speak. Or that was the way he put it. His real reason, as he boldly confessed afterward, was that, if I knew he was "in it," I'd be sure to make a "silly fuss"!

It was arranged between him and Roger that he should motor from Courtenaye Coombe to Dudworth Cove, put up his car at the small hotel, and inconspicuously approach the Barlows' farm on foot. In some quiet spot which he would guarantee to find, he was to "lurk" and await developments. If help were wanted, he would be there to give it. If not, he would peacefully remove himself, and I need never know that he had been near the place.

All the details of this minor plot were well mapped out, and the only one that failed (not being mapped out) was a tyre of his Rolls-Royce which stepped on a nail as long as Jael's. Wishing to do the trick alone, Jim had taken no chauffeur; and he wasn't as expert at pumping up tyres as at breaking in bronchos. He was twenty minutes past scheduled time, in consequence, and arrived at the spot appointed just as Bob Barlow had bashed Roger Fane smartly on the head from behind.

Naturally this incident kept his attention engaged for some moments. He had to overpower the Barlow twin, who was on the alert, and not to be taken by surprise. The Australian was still in good fighting trim, and gave Sir James some trouble before he was reduced to powerlessness. Then a glance had to be given Roger, to make sure he had not got a knock-out blow. Altogether, Hank Barlow had five minutes' grace indoors with me, before – the whirlwind. If it had been six minutes – But then, it wasn't! So why waste thrills upon a horror which had not time to materialize? And oh, how I did enjoy seeing those twins trussed up like a pair of monstrous fowls on the kitchen floor! It had been clever of Sir Jim to place a coil of rope in Roger's car in case of emergencies. But when I said this, to show my appreciation, he replied drily that a cattleman's first thought is rope! "That's what you are accustomed to call me, I believe," he added. "A cattleman."

"I shall never call you it again," I quite meekly assured him.

"You won't? What will you call me, then?"

"Cousin – if you like," I said.

"That'll do – for the present," he granted.

"Or 'friend,' if it pleases you better?" I suggested.

"Both are pretty good to go on with."

So between us there was a truce – and no more Pembertons or even Smiths: which is why "Smith" never revealed what he thought about what Sir Jim thought of me. And I would not try to guess – would you? But it was only to screen Roger, and not to content me, that Sir James Courtenaye allowed my original plan to be carried out: the heirlooms to be mysteriously returned by night to the Abbey, and the Barlow tribe to vanish into space, otherwise Australia. He admitted this bluntly. And I retorted that, if he hadn't saved my life, I should say that such friendship wasn't worth much. But there it was! He had saved it. And things being as they were, Shelagh told Roger that I couldn't reasonably object if Jim were asked to be best man at the wedding, though I was to be "best woman."

She was right. I couldn't. And it was a lovely wedding. I lightened my mourning for it to white and lavender – just for the day. Mrs. Carstairs said I owed this to the bride and bridegroom – also to myself, as Brightener, to say nothing of Sir Jim.

BOOK II

THE HOUSE WITH THE TWISTED CHIMNEY

CHAPTER I

THE SHELL-SHOCK MAN

"Do you want to be a Life Preserver as well as a Brightener, Elizabeth, my child?" asked Mrs. Carstairs.

"Depends on whose life," I replied, making a lovely blue smoke ring before I spoke and another when I'd finished.

I hoped to shock Mrs. Carstairs, in order to see what the nicest old lady on earth would look like when scandalized. But I was disappointed. She was not scandalized. She asked for a cigarette, and took it; my last.

"The latest style in my country is to make your smoke ring loop the loop, and do it through the nose," she informed me, calmly. "I can't do it myself – yet. But Terry Burns can."

"Who's Terry Burns?" I asked.

"The man whose life ought to be preserved."

"It certainly ought," said I, "if he can make smoke rings loop the loop through his nose. Oh, you know what I mean!"

"He hardly takes enough interest in things to do even that, nowadays," sighed Mrs. Carstairs.

"Good heavens! what's the matter with the man – senile decay?" I flung at her. "Terry isn't at all a decayed name."

"And Terry isn't a decayed man. He's about twenty-six, if you choose to call that senile. He's almost too good-looking. He's not physically ill. And he's got plenty of money. All the same, he's likely to die quite soon, I should say."

"Can't anything be done?" I inquired, really moved.

"I don't know. It's a legacy from shell shock. You know what that is. He's come to stay with us at Haslemere, poor boy, because my husband was once in love with his mother – at the same time I was worshipping his father. Terry was with us before – here in London in 1915 – on leave soon after he volunteered. Afterward, when America came in, he transferred. But even in 1915 he wasn't exactly radiating happiness (disappointment in love or something), but he was just boyishly cynical then, nothing worse; and the most splendid specimen of a young man! – his father over again; Henry says, his mother! Either way, I was looking forward to nursing him at Haslemere and seeing him improve every day. But, my dear, I can do nothing! He has got so on my nerves that I had to make an excuse to run up to town or I should simply have —slumped. The sight of me slumping would have been terribly bad for the poor child's health. It might have finished him."

"So you want to exchange my nerves for yours," I said. "You want me to nurse your protégé till I slump. Is that it?"

"It wouldn't come to that with you," argued the ancient darling. "You could bring back his interest in life; I know you could. You'd think of something. Remember what you did for Roger Fane!"

As a matter of fact, I had done a good deal more for Roger Fane than dear old Caroline knew or would ever know. But if Roger owed anything to me, I owed him, and all he had paid me in gratitude and banknotes, to Mrs. Carstairs.

"I shall never forget Roger Fane, and I hope he won't me," I said. "Shelagh won't let him! But he hadn't lost interest in life. He just wanted life to give him Shelagh Leigh. She happened to be my best pal; and her people were snobs, so I could help him. But this Terry Burns of yours – what can I do for him?"

"Take him on and see," pleaded the old lady.

"Do you wish him to fall in love with me?" I suggested.

"He wouldn't if I did. He told me the other day that he'd loved only one woman in his life, and he should never care for another. Besides, I mustn't conceal from you, this would be an unsalaried job."

"Oh, indeed!" said I, slightly piqued. "I don't want his old love! Or his old money, either! But – well – I might just go and have a look at him, if you'd care to take me to Haslemere with you. No harm in seeing what can be done – if anything. I suppose, as you and Mr. Carstairs between you were in love with all his ancestors, and he resembles them, he must be worth saving – apart from the loops. Is he English or American or what?"

"American on one side and What on the other," replied the old lady. "That is, his father, whom I was in love with, was American. The mother, whom Henry adored, was French. All that's quite a romance. But it's ancient history. And it's the present we're interested in. Of course I'd care to take you to Haslemere. But I have a better plan. I've persuaded Terry to consult the nerve specialist, Sir Humphrey Hale. He's comparatively easy to persuade, because he'd rather yield a point than bother to argue. That's how I got my excuse to run up to town: to explain the case to Sir Humphrey, and have my flat made ready for Terence to live in, while he's being treated."

"Oh, that's it," I said, and thought for a minute.

My flat is in the same house as the Carstairs', a charming old house in which I couldn't afford to live if Dame Caroline (title given by me, not His Gracious Majesty) hadn't taught me the gentle, well-paid Art of Brightening.

You might imagine that a Brightener was some sort of patent polisher for stoves, metal, or even boots. But you would be mistaken. I am the one and only Brightener!

But this isn't what I was thinking about when I said, "Oh, that's it?" I was attempting to track that benevolent female fox, Caroline Carstairs, to the fastness of her mental lair. When I flattered myself that I'd succeeded, I spoke again.

"I see what you'd be at, Madame Machiavelli," I warned her. "You and your husband are so fed up with the son of your ancient loves, that he's spoiling your holiday in your country house. You've been wondering how on earth to shed him, anyhow for a breathing space, without being unkind. So you thought, if you could lure him to London, and lend him your flat – "

"Dearest, you are an ungrateful young Beastess! Besides, you're only half right. It's true, poor Henry and I are worn out from sympathy. Our hearts are squeezed sponges, and have completely collapsed. Not that Terry complains. He doesn't. Only he is so horribly bored with life and himself and us that it's killing all three. I had to think of something to save him. So I thought of you."

"But you thought of Sir Humphrey Hale. Surely, if there's any cure for Mr. – "

"Captain – "

"Burns. Sir Humphrey can – "

"He can't. But I had to use him with Terry. I couldn't say: 'Go live in our flat and meet the Princess di Miramare. He would believe the obvious thing, and be put off. You are to be thrown in as an extra: a charming neighbour who, as a favour to me, will see that he's all right. When you've got him interested – not in yourself, but in life – I shall explain – or confess, whichever you choose to call it. He will then realize that the fee for his cure ought to be yours, not Sir Humphrey's, though naturally you couldn't accept one. Sir Humphrey has already told me that, judging from the symptoms I've described, it seems a case beyond doctor's skill. You know, Sir H – has made his pile, and doesn't have to tout for patients. But he's a good friend of Henry's and mine."

"You have very strong faith in me!" I laughed.

"Not too strong," said she.

The Carstairs' servants had gone with them to the house near Haslemere; but if Dame Caroline wanted a first-rate cook at a moment's notice, she would wangle one even if there were only two in existence, and both engaged. The shell-shock man had his own valet – an ex-soldier – so with the pair of them, and a char-creature of some sort, he would do very well for a few weeks. Nevertheless, I hardly thought that, in the end, he would be braced up to the effort of coming, and I should not have been surprised to receive a wire:

Rather than move, Terry has cut his throat in the Japanese garden.

Which shows that despite all past experiences, I little knew my Caroline!

Captain Burns – late of the American Flying Corps – did come; and what is more, he called at my flat before he had been fifteen minutes in his own. This he did because Mrs. Carstairs had begged him to bring a small parcel which he must deliver by hand to me personally. She had telegraphed, asking me to stop at home – quite a favour in this wonderful summer, even though it was July, the season proper had passed; but I couldn't refuse, as I'd tacitly promised to brighten the man. So there I sat, in my favourite frock, when he was ushered into the drawing room.

Dame Caroline had told me that "Terry" was good-looking, but her description had left me cold, and somehow or other I was completely unprepared for the real Terry Burns.

Yes, real is the word for him! He was so real that it seemed odd I had gone on all my life without having known there was this Terence Burns. Not that I fell in love with him. Just at the moment I was much occupied in trying to keep alight an old fire of resentment against a man who had saved my life; a "forty-fourth cousin four times removed" (as he called himself), Sir James Courtenaye. But when I say "real," I mean he was one of those few people who would seem important to you if you passed him in a crowd. You would tell yourself regretfully that there was a friend you'd missed making: and you would have had to resist a strong impulse to rush back and speak to him at any price.

If, at the first instant of meeting, I felt this strong personal magnetism, or charm, or whatever it was, though the man was down physically at lowest ebb, what would the sensation have been with him at his best?

He was tall and very thin, with a loose-boned look, as if he ought to be lithe and muscular, but he came into the room listlessly, his shoulders drooping, as though it were an almost unbearable bore to put one foot before another. His pallor was of the pathetic kind that gives an odd transparence to deeply tanned skin, almost like a light shining through. His hair was a bronzy brown, so immaculately brushed back from his square forehead as to remind you of a helmet, except that it rippled all over. And he had the most appealing eyes I ever saw.

They were not dark, tragic ones like Roger Fane's. I thought that when he was well and happy, they must have been full of light and joy. They were slate-gray with thick black lashes, true Celtic eyes: but they were dull and tired now, not sad, only devoid of interest in anything.

It wasn't flattering that they should be devoid of interest in me. I am used to having men's eyes light up with a gleam of surprise when they see me for the first time. This man's eyes didn't. I seemed to read in them: "Yes, I suppose you're very pretty. But that's nothing to me, and I hope you don't want me to flirt with you, because I haven't the energy or even the wish."

I'm sure that, vaguely, this was about what was in his mind, and that he intended getting away from me as soon as would be decently polite after finishing his errand. Still, I wasn't in the least annoyed. I was sorry for him – not because he didn't want to be bothered with me, but because he didn't want to be bothered with anything. Millionaire or pauper, I didn't care. I was determined to brighten him, in spite of himself. He was too dear and delightful a fellow not to be happy with somebody, some day. I couldn't sit still and let him sink down and down into the depths. But I should have to go carefully, or do him more harm than good. I could see that. If I attempted to be amusing he would crawl away, a battered wreck.

What I did was to show no particular interest in him. I took the tiny parcel Mrs. Carstairs had ordered him to bring, and asked casually if he'd care to stop in my flat till his man had finished unpacking.

"I don't know how you feel," I said, "but I always hate the first hour in a new place, with a servant fussing about, opening and shutting drawers and wardrobes. I loathe things that squeak."

"So do I," he answered, dreamily. "Any sort of noise."

"I shall be having tea in a few minutes," I mentioned. "If you don't mind looking at magazines or something while I open Mrs. Carstairs' parcel, and write to her, stay if you care to. I should be pleased. But don't feel you'll be rude to say 'no.' Do as you like."

He stayed, probably because he was in a nice easy chair, and it was simpler to sit still than get up, so long as he needn't make conversation. I left him there, while I went to the far end of the room, where my desk was. The wonderful packet, which must be given into my hand by his, contained three beautiful new potatoes, the size of marbles, out of the Carstairs' kitchen garden! I bit back a giggle, hid the rare jewels in a drawer, and scribbled any nonsense I could think of to Dame Caroline, till I heard tea coming. Then I went back to my guest. I gave him tea, and other things. There were late strawberries, and some Devonshire cream, which had arrived by post that morning, anonymously. Sir James Courtenaye, that red-haired cowboy to whom I'd let the ancestral Abbey, was in Devonshire. But there was no reason why he should send me cream, or anything else. Still, there it was. Captain Burns, it appeared, had never happened to taste the Devonshire variety. He liked it. And when he had disposed of a certain amount (during which time we hardly spoke), I offered him my cigarette case.