The Black Abbot
over in his hand and frowned. Then, walking to the door, he locked it;
and Dick did not usually sleep behind a locked door. But he realized
that the twenty-four hours through which he was passing were pregnant
with unpleasant possibilities.
XXIII
The office of Gwyn & Gwyn was thrown into some disorder the next
morning by a most unexpected occurrence. Mr. Fabrian Gilder, for the
first time in his twenty-five years’ association with the business,
did not put in an appearance. Instead, came a note to the senior
clerk, asking that a certain drawer in his desk should be opened and
the contents thereof sent by special messenger to Mr. Gilder’s house
in Regent’s Park. There was a postscript to the note.
It is unlikely that I shall return to the business. I have handed my
resignation to Mr. Gwyn, and intend to devote my time to the
development of my private affairs.
A wire from Arthur Gwyn appointed the senior clerk to take the place
of the retired Gilder: an arrangement not altogether to the
satisfaction of the senior clerk, for there were unpleasant
whisperings about Gwyn & Gwyn, hints of dire developments to come that
made the older members of the staff quake in their shoes.
Arthur did not appear that day, nor the next, and the mystery of
Gilder’s resignation remained unsolved, for the confidential messenger
who carried his papers to his flat, and who expected to hear from him
the reason for his sudden departure, was not admitted. Mr. Gilder was
in bed; he had come up from the country early in the morning and had
met with a slight accident whilst getting out of his car. Apparently
he had remained awake long enough to write his letter to the office,
but was now sleeping, so the servant said. And she spoke the truth,
though he did not sleep as soundly as he might have done had his lips
not been cut and his shoulder slightly strained. You cannot indulge in
fisticuffs in the uncertain light of dawn without incurring a certain
amount of damage.
Curiosity was not the besetting vice of Dick Alford; even if it had
been, he would not have spared the time to make a call at Gwyn &
Gwyn’s to discover the extent of Mr. Gilder’s damage. He had his bath
and shaved just before lunch, and came downstairs to find that the
noon train had brought him a visitor.
Sergeant Puttler he recognized, though he had never seen him before,
from the description that his friend had sent him. He was a tall,
gaunt man of forty. The tired-looking brown eyes that gazed with
gentle melancholy from their deep sockets reminded him of a sick and
sorrowful chimpanzee he had once seen. His forehead was low, his upper
lip long, and his arms reached almost to his knees. These features,
added to a constitutional stoop, contributed to his unprepossessing
appearance. Poor Mr. Puttler was not unaware of the simian mould in
which his frame was cast, and it was, apparently, a matter which
alternately depressed and pleased him.
“Well, sir, how do you like me?” he said without a smile, though there
was a twinkle of malicious joy in his brown eyes. “I’ve known people
to faint the first time they’ve seen me, especially romantical
people.”
“I sha’n’t faint,” smiled Dick, “possibly because I’m not romantical.”
The footman came in at that moment, and evidently romance tinged his
soul, for at the sight of the strange, long-armed man he visibly
staggered and blinked.
“Take Mr. Puttler up to his room. Afterward, Puttler, come and dine
and I have something to tell you.”
The dazed Thomas led the way up the stairs to a room next door to that
occupied by Dick. The housekeeper had been warned of his coming and
the room was ready. He deposited his suitcase and took stock of his
rather handsome surroundings.
“Is there anything further I can do, sir?” asked Thomas.
Sergeant Puttler blinked at him.
“Nothing, thank you.” And, as Thomas was going: “What do you call
yourself now?”
“Me, sir--my name is Thomas Luck.”
Puttler shook his head sadly.
“Thomas Bad Luck,” he said: “William Hard Lines or Henry Too Bad. Does
your master know that your name is Sleisser and that you’ve done a
stretch in Dartmoor?”
“No,” said the man sullenly.
“He will, Thomas--he will,” said the detective gently, and with murder
in his eyes the footman slunk out of the room.
Mr. Puttler came downstairs purring with satisfaction.
“Are you sure that is my room, Mr. Alford?” he asked. “Not expecting
the Prince of Wales, are you? I’ve always been ambitious to sleep in a
four-poster bed.… Now, Mr. Alford.”
“First of all, I must introduce you to my brother. By the way, he is
rather of a nervous disposition, and I’ve told him that you’re a
member of an accountancy firm who has come down to help me with my
books.”
Mr. Puttler expressed his agreement with this mild form of deception.
He was taken to the big library and formally introduced. Harry
Chelford was so used to the advent of Dick’s extraordinary guests that
he saw nothing unusual in the appearance of the simian Puttler.
Happily, he was near-sighted, and though it was a startling experience
to find himself shaking hands across a very broad desk, which an
ordinary man could not have spanned, he did not realize the cause of
the phenomenon.
Dick entertained accountants, land agents, an occasional bailiff or
two, so that there was no novelty in the invitation. Learned-looking
strangers came to his table from time to time and were introduced and
passed out of his mind.
“He will be staying six weeks,” Dick had told him, “and you mustn’t
object to his prowling round the place, because I want to get a true
valuation of the estate, and he has his own peculiar methods.”
“You might get him to price the Black Abbot,” said Harry, half dourly,
half amused. “What we want, Dick, is not so much a valuer as a good
policeman.”
Dick Alford thought that the coming guest might fulfil both functions,
but he did not say so.
He ushered his visitor back to his own little office, carefully closed
the door and sat down at his desk.
“Now, make yourself comfortable. Do you smoke?”
Mr. Puttler fumbled in his pocket and produced a black pipe.
“It’s not very aristocratic,” he apologized, “but I prefer ’bacca to
cigars and cigarettes.”
“I’ll join you,” said Dick.
His study had two doors: one that opened into the hall and one into a
side corridor running back to the housekeeper’s room. The two men had
been talking for ten minutes, though, as far as Mr. Puttler was
concerned, his contribution to the discourse was limited to an
occasional question, when Thomas came noiselessly down the side
corridor, peeped into the hall, and walked back to the study door.
There was a look of apprehension upon his lean and shapeless face
which was not without cause. Stooping, he put his eye to the keyhole.
He could just see the end of the settee and the head and shoulders of
the strange visitor. He was holding something in his hand--a
white-handled knife, and was examining it with curiosity. Thomas bent
his head and pressed his ear against the hole.
Dick’s back was to the door and he was speaking in a lower tone than
usual, and this reacted to the disadvantage of the eavesdropper, for
only a few distinct and intelligible sentences came to him.
“… might have been somebody admitted to the house by one of the
servants,” was the first thing he heard. A few minutes later, Mr.
Puttler, whose voice was distinct, asked: “Was the window in the
library open?” And he heard Dick say, “Yes,” and add something which
he could not catch.
The soles and heels of Thomas’s boots were of rubber. He passed into
the hall and made another reconnaissance, then returned to his
listening post, in time to hear Dick say:
“My brother hasn’t an enemy in the world.… I am afraid I can’t say the
same.…”
Once the listener caught the word “treasure” and once he heard the
name of “Arthur Gwyn,” but in what association he could not learn.
Again Thomas visited the hall. He could not take the risk of being
seen listening at the door. He was free from observation so far as he
knew. The old Chelford butler was in the servants’ hall. Dick and his
brother did not lunch till two, an unholy hour from the point of view
of servants, but very suitable for Dick and his peculiar occupation.
He squinted through the keyhole again. The detective still had the
knife in his hand and was looking at it intently. He heard him say,
“This is new,” and then Dick entered upon a long and apparently
explanatory statement, not a word of which came to the disgusted man
who was listening. He was most anxious to hear some reference to
himself, but, if it was made, he did not overhear his name.
Soon after, however, a familiar phrase caught his ear. Dick Alford was
talking about the Black Abbot, and he heard rather a sketchy
description of that spook. Then his voice dropped again, and
coincident with this Thomas heard the stately footsteps of the butler,
slipped back to the housekeeper’s room, and was busy in the pantry
when the stout Mr. Glover found him.
XXIV
The luncheon was not a genial meal. Harry had acquired the
disgraceful habit of bringing a book to his meals, and he was utterly
absorbed in the volume and left Dick and his visitor to carry on a
conversation as though he were not present.
Mr. Puttler, who was a man of wide experience, was neither embarrassed
by his magnificent surroundings--for Lord Chelford lived in a princely
style, three footmen and a butler waiting upon them--nor did he feel
it necessary to live up to the state in which he found himself. He was
altogether unaffected, had a fund of anecdotes, and could tell funny
stories without apparently enjoying them himself, which is the art of
amusement. Only once did Dick interrupt his brother’s reading.
“Leslie is coming to tea,” he said. “She ’phoned over just before
lunch.”
Harry Chelford looked up and his face fell.
“That is very unfortunate,” he said. “I had promised myself an
uninterrupted afternoon with Fra Hickler. I’ve just had a facsimile
edition sent to me from Leipzig. Hickler, you remember, Dick, was a
cloistered monk in the days of Elizabeth, our abbey being one of the
few that was not interfered with by Henry the Eighth or by Elizabeth
either; partly, I think, because our particular order of monks were
antagonistic to the Jesuits.…”
Dick listened patiently, and when his brother had exhausted the
history of the Black Fathers of Chelfordbury--
“You’ll have to be civil and come to tea, and after that I’ve no doubt
Leslie will not object to your going back to Fra Hickler, who was a
German, I presume?”
“He was a German,” said Harry gravely. “And the circumstances which
brought him to Chelfordbury were rather peculiar.”
“The best German I ever read about”--it was Mr. Puttler who
interrupted--“was Robinson Crusoe.”
Dick thought it was a crude jest on the part of his guest, but, if it
was so, Mr. Puttler was unconscious of his humour. Harry stared at the
“accountant.” He took such statements as these very seriously indeed.
“I am not well acquainted with Robinson Crusoe,” he said, “but surely
you are wrong in saying that he was a German? I have always regarded
such characters as typically English.”
“He was a German,” said Mr. Puttler firmly, “though few people are
aware of the fact. If you look at the first page of the story you’ll
see these words: ‘My father was a merchant of Bremen,’ and Bremen’s in
Germany, or I’m a Dutchman. And if his father was a German, he was a
German, because there was no such thing as naturalization in those
days.”
Having dropped his literary thunderbolt, Puttler was prepared to take
up the subject which Dick had interrupted by his question.
“The trouble with church music, Mr. Alford, is that it’s a little too