The Red House Mystery
Hands in pockets, he got up and wandered across the room, humming
vaguely to himself, the picture of a man waiting for another man (as it
might be his friend Gillingham) to come in and take him away for a walk
or something. He wandered across to the books at the back of Cayley,
and began to tap absent-mindedly on the shelves, as he looked at the
titles. Umpty-iddy-umpty-iddy. Not that it was much like that at first;
he couldn’t get the rhythm of it....
_Umpt_-y-iddy-_umpt_-y-iddy. That was better. He was back at Samuel
Taylor Coleridge now. Antony would begin to hear him soon.
_Umpt_-y-iddy-_umpt_-y-iddy; just the aimless tapping of a man who is
wondering what book he will take out with him to read on the lawn.
Would Antony hear? One always heard the man in the next flat knocking
out his pipe. Would Antony understand? _Umpt_-y-iddy-_umpt_-y-iddy. C.
for Cayley, Antony. Cayley’s here. For God’s sake, wait.
“Good Lord! Sermons!” said Bill, with a loud laugh.
(_Umpt_-y-iddy-_umpt_-y-iddy) “Ever read ’em, Cayley?”
“What?” Cayley looked up suddenly. Bill’s back moved slowly along, his
fingers beating a tattoo on the shelves as he walked.
“Er—no,” said Cayley, with a little laugh. An awkward, uncomfortable
little laugh, it seemed to Bill.
“Nor do I.” He was past the sermons now—past the secret door—but still
tapping in the same aimless way.
“Oh, for God’s sake sit down,” burst out Cayley. “Or go outside if you
want to walk about.”
Bill turned round in astonishment.
“Hallo, what’s the matter?”
Cayley was slightly ashamed of his outburst.
“Sorry, Bill,” he apologized. “My nerves are on edge. Your constant
tapping and fidgeting about—”
“Tapping?” said Bill with an air of complete surprise.
“Tapping on the shelves, and humming. Sorry. It got on my nerves.”
“My dear old chap, I’m awfully sorry. I’ll go out in the hall.”
“It’s all right,” said Cayley, and went on with his letter. Bill sat
down in his chair again. Had Antony understood? Well, anyhow, there was
nothing to do now but wait for Cayley to go. “And if you ask me,” said
Bill to himself, much pleased, “I ought to be on the stage. That’s
where I ought to be. The complete actor.”
A minute, two minutes, three minutes.... five minutes. It was safe now.
Antony had guessed.
“Is the car there?” asked Cayley, as he sealed up his letter.
Bill strolled into the hall, called back “Yes,” and went out to talk to
the chauffeur. Cayley joined him, and they stood there for a moment.
“Hallo,” said a pleasant voice behind them. They turned round and saw
Antony.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Bill.”
With a tremendous effort Bill restrained his feelings, and said
casually enough that it was all right.
“Well, I must be off,” said Cayley. “You’re going down to the village?”
“That’s the idea.”
“I wonder if you’d take this letter to Jallands for me?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks very much. Well, I shall see you later.”
He nodded and got into the car.
As soon as they were alone Bill turned eagerly to his friend.
“Well?” he said excitedly.
“Come into the library.”
They went in, and Tony sank down into a chair.
“You must give me a moment,” he panted. “I’ve been running.”
“Running?”
“Well, of course. How do you think I got back here?”
“You don’t mean you went out at the other end?”
Antony nodded.
“I say, did you hear me tapping?”
“I did, indeed. Bill, you’re a genius.”
Bill blushed.
“I knew you’d understand,” he said. “You guessed that I meant Cayley?”
“I did. It was the least I could do after you had been so brilliant.
You must have had rather an exciting time.”
“Exciting? Good Lord, I should think it was.”
“Tell me about it.”
As modestly as possible, Mr. Beverley explained his qualifications for
a life on the stage.
“Good man,” said Antony at the end of it. “You are the most perfect
Watson that ever lived. Bill, my lad,” he went on dramatically, rising
and taking Bill’s hand in both of his, “There is nothing that you and I
could not accomplish together, if we gave our minds to it.”
“Silly old ass.”
“That’s what you always say when I’m being serious. Well, anyway,
thanks awfully. You really saved us this time.”
“Were you coming back?”
“Yes. At least I think I was. I was just wondering when I heard you
tapping. The fact of the door being shut was rather surprising. Of
course the whole idea was to see if it could be opened easily from the
other side, but I felt somehow that you wouldn’t shut it until the last
possible moment—until you saw me coming back. Well, then I heard the
taps, and I knew it must mean something, so I sat tight. Then when C
began to come along I said, ‘Cayley, b’Jove’—bright, aren’t I?—and I
simply hared to the other end of the passage for all I was worth. And
hared back again. Because I thought you might be getting rather
involved in explanations—about where I was, and so on.”
“You didn’t see Mark, then?”
“No. Nor his—No, I didn’t see anything.”
“Nor what?”
Antony was silent for a moment.
“I didn’t see anything, Bill. Or rather, I did see something; I saw a
door in the wall, a cupboard. And it’s locked. So if there’s anything
we want to find, that’s where it is.”
“Could Mark be hiding there?”
“I called through the keyhole—in a whisper—‘Mark, are you there?’—he
would have thought it was Cayley. There was no answer.
“Well, let’s go down and try again. We might be able to get the door
open.”
Antony shook his head.
“Aren’t I going at all?” said Bill in great disappointment.
When Antony spoke, it was to ask another question:
“Can Cayley drive a car?”
“Yes, of course. Why?”
“Then he might easily drop the chauffeur at his lodge and go off to
Stanton, or wherever he wanted to, on his own?”
“I suppose so—if he wanted to.”
“Yes.” Antony got up. “Well, look here, as we said we were going into
the village, and as we promised to leave that letter, I almost think
we’d better do it.”
“Oh!.... Oh, very well.”
“Jallands. What were you telling me about that? Oh, yes; the Widow
Norbury.”
“That’s right. Cayley used to be rather keen on the daughter. The
letter’s for her.”
“Yes; well, let’s take it. Just to be on the safe side.”
“Am I going to be done out of that secret passage altogether?” asked
Bill fretfully.
“There’s nothing to see, really, I promise you.”
“You’re very mysterious. What’s upset you? You did see something down
there, I’m certain of it.”
“I did and I’ve told you about it.”
“No, you haven’t. You only told me about the door in the wall.”
“That’s it, Bill. And it’s locked. And I’m frightened of what’s behind
it.”
“But then we shall never know what’s there if we aren’t going to look.”
“We shall know to-night,” said Antony, taking Bill’s arm and leading
him to the hall, “when we watch our dear friend Cayley dropping it into
the pond.”
CHAPTER XV.
Mrs. Norbury Confides in Dear Mr. Gillingham
They left the road, and took the path across the fields which sloped
gently downwards towards Jallands. Antony was silent, and since it is
difficult to keep up a conversation with a silent man for any length of
time, Bill had dropped into silence too. Or rather, he hummed to
himself, hit at thistles in the grass with his stick and made
uncomfortable noises with his pipe. But he noticed that his companion
kept looking back over his shoulder, almost as if he wanted to remember
for a future occasion the way by which they were coming. Yet there was
no difficulty about it, for they remained all the time in view of the
road, and the belt of trees above the long park wall which bordered its
further side stood out clearly against the sky.
Antony, who had just looked round again, turned back with a smile.
“What’s the joke?” said Bill, glad of the more social atmosphere.
“Cayley. Didn’t you see?”
“See what?”
“The car. Going past on the road there.”
“So _that’s_ what you were looking for. You’ve got jolly good eyes, my
boy, if you recognize the car at this distance after only seeing it
twice.”
“Well, I _have_ got jolly good eyes.”
“I thought he was going to Stanton.”
“He hoped you’d think so—obviously.”
“Then where is he going?”
“The library, probably. To consult our friend Ussher. After making
quite sure that his friends Beverley and Gillingham really _were_ going
to Jallands, as they said.”
Bill stopped suddenly in the middle of the path.
“I say, do you think so?”
Antony shrugged his shoulders.
“I shouldn’t be surprised. We must be devilishly inconvenient for him,
hanging about the house. Any moment he can get, when we’re definitely
somewhere else, must be very useful to him.”
“Useful for what?”
“Well, useful for his nerves, if for nothing else. We know he’s mixed
up in this business; we know he’s hiding a secret or two. Even if he
doesn’t suspect that we’re on his tracks, he must feel that at any
moment we might stumble on something.”
Bill gave a grunt of assent, and they went slowly on again.
“What about to-night?” he said, after a lengthy blow at his pipe.
“Try a piece of grass,” said Antony, offering it to him. Bill pushed it
through the mouthpiece, blew again, said, “That’s better,” and returned
the pipe to his pocket.
“How are we going to get out without Cayley knowing?”
“Well, that wants thinking over. It’s going to be difficult. I wish we
were sleeping at the inn.... Is this Miss Norbury, by any chance?”
Bill looked up quickly. They were close to Jallands now, an old
thatched farmhouse which, after centuries of sleep, had woken up to a
new world, and had forthwith sprouted wings; wings, however, of so
discreet a growth that they had not brought with them any obvious
change of character, and Jallands even with a bathroom was still
Jallands. To the outward view, at any rate. Inside, it was more clearly
Mrs. Norbury’s.
“Yes—Angela Norbury,” murmured Bill. “Not bad-looking, is she?”
The girl who stood by the little white gate of Jallands was something
more than “not bad-looking,” but in this matter Bill was keeping his
superlatives for another. In Bill’s eyes she must be judged, and
condemned, by all that distinguished her from Betty Calladine. To
Antony, unhampered by these standards of comparison, she seemed, quite
simply, beautiful.
“Cayley asked us to bring a letter along,” explained Bill, when the
necessary handshakings and introductions were over. “Here you are.”
“You will tell him, won’t you, how dreadfully sorry I am about—about
what has happened? It seems so hopeless to say anything; so hopeless
even to believe it. If it is true what we’ve heard.”
Bill repeated the outline of events of yesterday.
“Yes.... And Mr. Ablett hasn’t been found yet?” She shook her head in
distress. “It still seems to have happened to somebody else; somebody
we didn’t know at all.” Then, with a sudden grave smile which included
both of them, “But you must come and have some tea.”
“It’s awfully decent of you,” said Bill awkwardly, “but we—er—”
“You will, won’t you?” she said to Antony.
“Thank you very much.”
Mrs. Norbury was delighted to see them, as she always was to see any
man in her house who came up to the necessary standard of eligibility.
When her life-work was completed, and summed up in those beautiful
words: “A marriage has been arranged, and will shortly take place,
between Angela, daughter of the late John Norbury....” then she would
utter a grateful _Nunc dimittis_ and depart in peace—to a better world,
if Heaven insisted, but preferably to her new son-in-law’s more
dignified establishment. For there was no doubt that eligibility meant
not only eligibility as a husband.
But it was not as “eligibles” that the visitors from the Red House were
received with such eagerness to-day, and even if her special smile for