The Open House (13 page)

It was decidedly disconcerting thus to come suddenly upon scores of ruffians – and the more so because all of them appeared to be in violent movement. Only, as if through some benevolent interposition of Providence, there were now scores of Applebys as well. The Applebys were all standing stock still, and plainly engaged in thinking something out. This process didn’t take long. Nothing miraculous, or even magical, had occurred. It was simply that some deceased Snodgrass had taken it into his head to construct a many-sided room, probably an octagon, and to line it with enormous looking-glasses.

The poet speaks of multiplying variety in a wilderness of mirrors – no doubt with some implication of arcane erotic satisfactions. Perhaps the departed Snodgrass had engaged here in high jinks with what Dr Absolon would call Paphian girls. Perhaps he had merely used the place’s optical profusion to come to nice decisions on the bow of a tie-wig, the snug fit of a pair of breeches, or the cut of a broad-skirted coat. Or perhaps the chamber had been conceived for practicing fencing, or for drill which should bring to near perfection the elegant evolutions of the minuet or the gavotte. None of these pleasures, whether censurable or innocent, was in question now. What the single person in the room, other than Appleby himself, was trying to do was simply to find a way out. The door through which Appleby had come, and which he now closed rapidly behind him, was itself a seemingly unframed mirror. Presumably there was another such, leading to the farther corridor. But the fellow was quite failing to find it. He was pretty well in the bag. There was, indeed, a certain element of visual confusion in the situation, and some concentration would be required if a successful dive were to be made at substance rather than shadow. But Appleby was perfectly capable of this. His only doubt was as to whether he should address any remark to his victim before falling upon him. He decided to accomplish all in a grim silence. His last audible address to the miscreants against whom he was pitted had not produced any very satisfactory result.

Appleby tensed his muscles and marked his man.

Unfortunately this empty room (for it was totally devoid of furniture: a circumstance curiously enhancing, through the absence of any immobile object, its kaleidoscopic effect) had not lately received any great attention from those members of Professor Beddoes Snodgrass’ domestic staff whose additional task it was to devote a certain amount of spit-and-polish to Ledward Park. The mirrors, indeed, were unclouded, and the lighting was undimmed. But there was a good deal of dust.

This might have meant no more than the prospect of a rather grubby rough-and-tumble on the floor. As it happened, however, some sudden movement on the part of Appleby’s adversary – a swift side-step, perhaps, to avoid being pounced upon – had the consequence of kicking a spurt of dust into Appleby’s face. And not only dust. There was an element of what could only be called grit involved. Otherwise, Appleby would not have found himself, at least for certain vital moments, virtually blinded in one eye. He was thus reduced, during a most critical posture of the affair, to reliance upon monocular vision only. In other words, he abruptly lost his sense of the 3D world. He had been transported, as it were, to Flatland, where an image in a mirror is indistinguishable from the solid object which occasions it.

This state of affairs ought to have redounded to the immediate advantage of the adversary. That it did not, in fact, appear to do so was a circumstance that would have puzzled an observing psychologist. Such a one (if he may be imagined as having contrived our spectacle by way of an experimental situation) would have been astounded to perceive both Appleby and his enemy simultaneously reduced to the condition of two sadly over-bewildered Pavlovian dogs. Both men dived hither and thither as if in a kind of maniacal ballet: the one seeking to grasp what eluded him except as a slippery surface of silvered glass; the other dodging arms which were in fact powerless to extend themselves beyond the profoundly mysterious dimension which a mirror constitutes. It was evident that the intruder had become, for the nonce, as one-eyed as Appleby.

But this situation was insusceptible of indefinite continuance – if only because of the frangible quality of what encapsulated the contestants. As they banged about and threshed around, the glass began to give up. It cracked, it shivered, it fell out first in small bits and then in large ones. Mingled with this treacherous debris, this razor-sharp detritus, there was presently a certain amount of blood. The eventual consequence might have been lethal, since in all this shattered looking-glass there was sufficient weaponry to sliver and shred whole platoons of cops and robbers. As it happened, however, Appleby, who was reduced to hitting out somewhat wildly at anything which seemed to suggest the quality of hittability, presently landed a blow to such effect that his enemy was sent hurtling backwards – and actually with the force of a projectile through the very door he had been seeking in vain when Appleby came upon him. Appleby was left staring at the shattered door; and at his elusive quarry, thus lucklessly liberated, picking himself up and once more bolting down the corridor.

With all the pertinacity of a Hound of the Baskervilles (or of Heaven, although the comparison is a profane one), Appleby took one deep breath, and followed. He thought poorly of the local police. Even if Mrs Gathercoal had somehow failed of her mission, the rumpus created by the breaking up of this beastly room must surely have carried to the farthest limits even of this enormous house. But perhaps the acoustics of the affair had been confusing, and the forces of the law had gone pounding off to the other side of the mansion. In any case, Appleby himself wasn’t going to let go now. He didn’t believe the fugitive was in any better shape than he himself was. Another good swipe at him, and it would only remain to lock him up.

In this belligerent mood, he pounded on. His quarry was still in view, and now the end of the corridor was really in sight. The pursuit had been down the whole depth of the house. If, at the end of the immediate vista, the fellow turned left, it would be down another and much shorter corridor, or through a small suite of rooms, which would end in the blank wall supporting the dome of the saloon. What else could he do? In each of the four angles of the main building, Appleby guessed, there would be a small staircase. This would go up to another bedroom floor (it was only the main building that had three storeys), and down to the quadrant corridor curving away to one of the four wings, or pavilions, of the edifice. If there
were
four wings. For he was certain of the existence of only two: the kitchen wing, and the wing which included the library. Quite often one found that these great houses had never been quite completed on the plan proposed, and that their remorselessly projected double-axis symmetry had thus never fully realized itself. In any case, such a staircase would certainly continue down to the basement – which would probably be a maze of low vaulted chambers in which hide-and-seek could be played till the cows came home. Whether the chap went up or down, Appleby’s best chance of grabbing him would be before he got clear of the staircase itself.

Meanwhile, what had happened to the other members of this gang? There had certainly been one other man in Adrian Snodgrass’ authentic bedroom when he and Mrs Gathercoal had arrived there; and he was still inclined to the opinion that there had actually been three. So one man – or two men – had presumably doubled back on his tracks, and succeeded in getting away. But was getting away really, as yet, in these people’s plans? Here, as everywhere else, there was a conflict of evidence. The state of the drawing-room window seemed to attest one precipitate withdrawal when surprised; there had been a similar retreat from the bedroom downstairs – as later from the other one. But Adrian Snodgrass had been murdered; whereas in these subsequent episodes there had been flight without violence – except, of course, that this present fleeing man had resisted when Appleby had actually made to apprehend him. How far would these people (with their odd interest in female portraiture) again go in an extremity? Appleby had a feeling that the man now ahead of him was not armed. But what about the other, or the others? Might accomplices of this fellow actually be shadowing him now, prepared for desperate measures if they were required? That one would answer itself, he told himself grimly, if and when he really did make a capture.

And now Appleby was gaining ground. If the man turned right, and if the expected staircase was in fact there, he would be close enough on his heels to know for certain whether he had gone up or down. There was a big armoire against the right-hand wall almost at the end of the corridor, and suddenly the man had dodged behind it. But then for a second he was visible again. Or rather, his head and shoulders were. A staircase there certainly was, and the fellow was plunging down it.

Appleby put on speed. He had a notion that his years were best accommodated to the flat, and that if he didn’t want to break his neck he had better resign himself to falling back a bit on the stairs. But when he got to them he changed his mind. Prudence, after all, was a poor sort of notion in a situation like this. It was a spiral staircase, and fairly easy. At least it wouldn’t be like the mediaeval variety of the same thing, with here and there a cunningly contrived irregular tread to stumble anybody unfamiliar with it. Thus encouraged, he arrived at its foot – or rather at the point where it reached the ground-floor – before the fugitive was half-way along the corridor.

For there
was
a corridor: another of those curving affairs reaching out to a more or less independent wing. This wing, he guessed, must be diagonal to the private wing. He wondered what on earth the most expansive Snodgrasses had found to do with yet another structure which would have made a very tolerable gentleman’s residence in itself. Perhaps he’d find a picture gallery, or a music gallery, or both. Or perhaps just emptiness.

The man had wheeled right and vanished. It was now or never, Appleby told himself, and wheeled right too. There was only a faint light in this unexplored quarter of Ledward. But there was a very strong smell. He passed an arched doorway giving upon some apparently vaulted chamber of indistinguishable character; and then the light had grown yet dimmer and the smell had increased. He was in a greenhouse. But it was a greenhouse of gigantic proportions. As his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, he saw that it sheltered whole trees. And they were tropical trees: writhing, with unnaturally large and waxen foliage, dropping thick tendrils like hangman’s ropes from their upper branches, showing here and there enormous red blossoms, like gouts of blood on wounded dinosaurs. Appleby found that he didn’t like them, or the rank warm odour of rotting vegetation upon which they seemed to batten, at all. Nor did he much fancy the place as terrain in which to continue to hunt a desperate man. Whether the fellow had knowingly sought this particular sanctuary or not, he had found a quite wonderful lurking place. For in addition to the displeasing trees there was any amount of jungle-like undergrowth. Some of it looked, indeed, discouragingly prickly. But there were thickets of fern and bamboo and luxuriant grasses within which one could have hidden a whole phalanx of fugitives.

It was uncommonly hot and sticky. From somewhere came an alarming hissing sound, so that Appleby for a moment expected the appearance of fauna among the flora in the form of snakes and serpents hastening forward to enfold him in their mortal coils. Then he realized that what he was hearing was nothing more noxious than a gentle escape of steam through some defective joint or valve. Keeping up Ledward Park for a returning Adrian must include the weird extravagance of maintaining this enormous conservatory at a tropical heat. The absurdity of this, when perceived, at once conditioned Appleby’s expectation of what might turn up in the place. Instead of veritable pythons, boa constrictors, and rattlesnakes (supplied, conceivably, by the South American connections of the Snodgrasses), he found himself thinking of those comical wild beasts – amiable tigers, beaming lions, and anatomically improbable elephants – to be encountered in mediaeval bestiaries, or later in the agreeable jungle canvases of the
douanier
Rousseau. This sort of reflection (not at all pertinent to the matter on hand) perhaps hinted that he was growing tired, or even sleepy – which, at four o’clock in the morning, would have been reasonable enough. But in fact his senses were still very sufficiently alert, and they abruptly apprised him of something now. Apart from the escaping steam (which now suggested itself as coming from a prehistoric monster so vast that its last breath, after being worsted in mortal combat, could be relied upon to last for something over an hour), there wasn’t a sound. The vegetation, if at deadly grips with itself in the manner that exotic writers of equatorial romance would approve, was getting on with the job of self-strangulation quite silently. There wasn’t so much as the sound of a prickly pear quietly puncturing a custard apple. But there
was
a sound from the single other chamber into which this particular wing appeared to be divided. It was the sound of a sharp involuntary cough.

Not for the first time that night, Appleby didn’t waste a moment. It was probable that the ruffian would realize he had betrayed himself, and that he would now make a dash for some door or window through which he could gain the final freedom of the park. But there was a possibility of intercepting him still. So Appleby doubled out of the hothouse (not without the perception that there was sweat in his eyes and that his shirt was wringing wet) and made for what had been no more than the hastily glimpsed chamber next door. He wondered why he had dashed past it as he had done. It could only be because he had received the impression that the fleeing man had done so before him. The trouble was the very low lighting in this part of Ledward. Here, indeed, through the arched portal which he had now gained, was what the poet Milton might call a dim religious light.