The Bradmoor Murder (11 page)

And he turned suddenly on me, the sweat trickling in the lines of his hard-pressed, dreadful face.

“Hurry, man.” He very nearly spat on me in his extremity.

I stood outside, with my head uncovered, until the roar of the car racing south was a faint echo. Then I went in. Marjorie was standing by the library table. She had got the lid of the box unfastened, and within were row upon row of emeralds, big, gleaming, priceless.

But I was not happy. I felt a little man beside the big one who was gone. God, only, in His heaven knew the mortal struggle of this damned creature, or the dreadful thing he had considered and been held back from by the thin line of something noble that never wholly dies in us.

I spoke to the girl, looking strangely at me, from her place beyond the box of jewels.

“You will never love me?”

“Never!” she said. “… never, but for what has happened on this night.”

“The finding of the emeralds?”

She made a gesture as of one who tosses away a bauble.

“The finding of a man … out there on the terrace … when I was poor.”

I looked carefully at the girl as I went up the stairway.

I must have delayed my companion, behind me, for I went slowly and with the wish to retain every detail of this picture. It was so conspicuously in life what I had heard of these Americans; this idle, decadent breed of women; soft, steeped in luxury and useless.

The girl sat in the hotel drawing-room, visible through the open door.

It was early in the afternoon. The place was nearly deserted. The hunting folk assembled here in Sommerset, were all at a distant meet of the hounds at Haddon; in the saddle from dawn and until the night should fall. But this soft creature sat in a great chair piled up with cushions; and an immense American motor, more luxurious than the state carriage of a Louis, awaited her outside.

She had every aspect of luxury.

The fur coat thrown open among the cushions
of the chair must have cost a fortune; the smart gown was from a Paris shop on the Rue de la Paix; the very Pekinese dog in the hollow of her arm was worth the price of a polo pony at Tatterhalls.

It wasn't so much these evidences of luxury that impressed me. One may have the best, if one is able. It was the conspicuous effect of these things on their possessor. The girl was quite young, about twenty, I imagine; a blonde, slender and dainty with big blue eyes and an exquisite mouth. For a doll she was perfect, but for any mortal use as a human woman she was an absurdity. She sat with a cocktail before her on the table and a Turkish cigarette idly in her fingers.

I broke out with what I thought when we were in my sitting room on the floor above.

“Did you see that girl, Barclay?”

The big man turned about and looked at me with a rather strange expression; I thought he was going to make some comment. But he evidently decided to reserve it.

“Yes, Sir James … do you know who she is?”

“I know what she is,” I replied. “She is a
hot-house orchid and about as useful in the world as the Pekinese dog in her lap.”

Barclay squinted at me. He is a big man with a face wrinkled by the tropics.

“Don't be deceived about the Pekinese dog, Sir James,” he said. “The Pekinese dog's all right. He's kept in every shop in China to warn against thieves.… You can't slip in on a Pekinese dog.”

“Dash the dog!” I replied. “It's the girl, I mean, of what earthly use could such a soft creature be to anybody!”

Barclay looked down at me. He's an immense bulk of a man. I thought the strange expression on his face was even more peculiar.

“You'd take me to be pretty tough, Sir James … pretty hard to fag out!”

“Surely,” I said, “or Marquis wouldn't have taken you into Africa with him. Marquis is no fool, if he is Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard. And I wouldn't take you on for this expedition.”

Barclay passed his hand slowly over his big square jaw; his fingers look like the coupling pins of a cart.

“You might be mistaken, Sir James!”

He made a sort of vague gesture, as though he included everything I'd said, and it annoyed me.

“I'm pretty good stuff for such a job, Sir James,” he went on, “but I'm not the best stuff for it.”

I suppose I looked a bit puzzled, and Barclay saw it.

“I mean,” he went on, “a silk rope looks soft, and it is soft, but it's the strongest rope there is.”

“I don't know what bally rubbish you're talking,” I replied. “But I know you're all right or Marquis wouldn't have taken you into Central Africa, and he wouldn't write me now to take you.”

Barclay turned at that and went over beyond our big table that was covered with maps. It was an immense table, quite bare except for the maps. I think we had assembled every map in existence on Central Africa. I meant to have a year's big game hunting in the heart of that continent. When I wrote Marquis for a man he indicated Barclay; and I had him down here at this hotel in Sommerset to plan out the route.

“He's the best man left since Stanley,” Marquis said, “better get him!”

Barclay sat down in a chair beyond the table. But he wasn't thinking of the maps.

“Do you know,” he said, “why Sir Henry Marquis went into Central Africa?”

“After young Winton, wasn't he?” I replied. “He'd taken a shot at his uncle, old Brexford, and got out of the country, as I remember. I suppose Marquis thought the reputation of Scotland Yard was at stake. Had to find Winton, you know … did find him?”

Barclay got up, spread out one of the maps and put his finger on a point on it.

“We found him right here, on the old elephant trail. But if we'd been a little late we'd never found him. If he'd got into that immense forest to the south, he'd been out of Marquis's reach. Our expedition was fagged, I had a touch of the sun. We couldn't have gone on.”

The man's voice grew firm.

“Nobody has any conception of that hell forest to the south. It's three thousand miles across it. We couldn't have found Winton in
it. Marquis knew that. It was a piece of God's luck to have found his camp there on the plateau! … I was all in and Marquis was groggy.”

He paused.

“You have got to keep the sun out of your face; a helmet and a spine pad aren't enough—the open road to the brain, for a sun's ray is through the eye and the sponge bones of the face.”

He made a sort of bob of the head down-ward toward the drawing-room.

“Ever see this girl before, Sir James?”

“Used to see her at polo at Hurlingham,” I replied, “on the days Rugby played. This young Winton was on the team … wanted to marry her, didn't he? Wasn't that the row with old Brexford?”

Barclay continued as though I had not made an answer.

“Yes,” he said. “It all started from that. Brexford hated Americans; wouldn't hear of it; went into a devil's fury; stopped at nothing!”

“So young Winton took a pot shot at him, and cleared, eh?”

Barclay didn't seem to regard my comment. He went on in a sort of reflection.

“But there was one thing I couldn't understand. Why didn't he take the girl with him … that is I couldn't understand it at the time.”

I laughed.

“I can understand it. She couldn't leave the cushions … she was too soft!”

Barclay was looking at me, his mouth open; a sort of vague wonder on his big sun-seamed face.

The pose and the expression of the man annoyed me.

“What's wrong with you?” I said. “What are you gaping at?”

He was silent for some moments. He kept looking at me, in that sort of vague wonder, from the floor up. Finally, he spoke.

“How long have you been out of England, Sir James?”

“Two years,” I replied. “In the Andes.”

“Then you don't know what's happened.”

“About young Winton? No; Marquis had got some rumor of him in Central Africa and was just starting out when I left. The grand
jury in Hants had found an indictment against young Winton for assault with intent to murder; and the country had begun to howl—rich man's privilege—letting off the ‘toft' and so forth. I suppose Marquis thought he had to get him.… Marquis went down to Hants, himself, to see old Brexford, didn't he, and then the public clamor drove him on.”

Barclay replied in a rather strange voice.

“Public clamor didn't drive Sir Henry Marquis. It was a sense of duty, a tremendous compelling sense of duty … nothing less would have sent Sir Henry on that awful journey into the heart of Africa.”

“Call it what you like,” I said, “Marquis had no notion of going out of England, until after he went to see old Brexford in Hants. That stirred up the hornets. The penny press said the uncle would smooth him down. Marquis had to go after that.”

“But the uncle was the hottest hornet in the swarm. It was war to the death with him.”

“He did die, didn't he?” I said. “I saw some notice of it in the ship's bulletin on the way south.”

“Yes,” replied Barclay, “he took to his bed
the day after Sir Henry Marquis visited him in Hants, and he never got up.”

“Like an old man,” I said, “adamant against an offending member of his family until it comes to the jail door, and then he goes soft.”

Barclay looked again at me, with that strange expression. But he did not speak. He moved the maps about on the table, until he found the one outlining Marquis's expedition. It had been enlarged and traced from Sir Henry Marquis's notes. It was not a printed map. Sir Henry had not made a published report of the expedition, because the Government had not borne the cost of it. I suppose Marquis financed it, he was rich, and his reputation was at stake. It was his boast that Scotland Yard, while he was at the head of its Criminal Investigation Department, would not tire out on the track of any man.

Barclay gathered up all the other maps on the table, folded them carefully, tied them with thin pieces of tape and laid them neatly to one side, then he spread the long tracing out over the whole length of the table. He went about it slowly like a man in some deep reflection.
Then he put the query that I had been turning in my mind.

“Do you know who put up the money for this expedition?”

I told him what I have written here, Marquis, of course.

“No,” he said, “Sir Henry did not put up the money.”

“Then who did?”

“The uncle,” he replied, “old Brexford put it up.”

I was astonished.

“Then he didn't go soft … he wanted young Winton brought out!”

Barclay replied in the same even voice.

“No,” he said, “Brexford didn't want him brought out.”

He was smoothing the tracing with his hands, stooping over the table. He did not seem to notice my surprise. He would put the tip of his big finger on a crease of the map and slowly extend it.

“We went in too far north,” he said, as in a vague comment. “We should have started in on the East Coast farther down about Mombasa. But the report Sir Henry had, indicated
Winton somewhere south of Omdurman, and we went in through Egypt. But he wasn't in Omdurman. The rumor always put him on south … you know about desert rumors; strangely accurate as a rule, and traveling over an immense distance, one can't understand how. But the rumor was correct, he was on south; he had followed the White Nile, along Baker Pasha's route, a little to the west. Sir Henry always hoped to pick him up somewhere along the White Nile. But Sir Henry was going on a wrong hypothesis, he was thinking about the movements of a man who must consider how he will get back, and Winton did not intend to get back.”

He paused—a sort of hesitation in the narrative.

“We didn't realize that for a long time … then we had to go on or give up … Sir Henry, went on.”

That, of course, abridged Marquis's whole character.

Barclay sat down close against the table where he could still stoop over the map. He went on.

“It was an awful march south. Winton was
always just a little ahead. The desert rumors were pretty clear about him until we passed the big bend of the White Nile—you know it goes off west nearly at a right angle about four hundred miles south of Khartum—then the rumors began to get confused, sometimes they put Winton on in our front and sometimes, inexplicably to the rear of us … we couldn't understand it!”

He drummed a moment, with his thick square fingers, on the table.

I sat down. Anything this man had to say about an expedition was of interest to me. He didn't talk much. He went on.

“We thought at first that Winton had doubled back; or that we had passed him. But there was his trail going on ahead! We were profoundly puzzled. It was like a mirage of the mind. We were all feeling the sun … damned queer about the sun! We wore spine pads and helmets with an inch of cork, and the accursed desert bedouins marched nearly naked and with their heads shaven.

“I got uneasy. Sir Henry made no comment, but I knew what he thought; our scouts were beginning to see double—the sun will do
anything to you! … But they weren't seeing double; we were being followed … The explanation that occurred to us was that Winton had divided his force and put a part of it in behind us. But the native trackers were positive that the size of the force on in front had not diminished by a man. And they were right. They pointed out a hundred evidences, in Winton's trail, to show that the same number of persons were on ahead.”

Barclay paused, and sat a moment looking down at the map.

“We were being followed.… I myself heard, faintly, shots in the rear; and the desert rumors began to get definite. There was a white man and a small native force behind and a little to the west of us, paralleling our route.… There seemed to be some strange report about this man, current in our camp, that we could not find out. Finally, it seeped through to us …
the man had no face
!”