The Red House Mystery (13 page)

"Yes, I see. But why were you so certain of the particular place?"

"Well, he had to mark the particular place by some book. I thought
that the joke of putting 'The Narrow Way' just over the entrance to the
passage might appeal to him. Apparently it did."

Bill nodded to himself thoughtfully several times. "Yes, that's very
neat," he said. "You're a clever devil, Tony."

Tony laughed.

"You encourage me to think so, which is bad for me, but very
delightful."

"Well, come on, then," said Bill, and he got up, and held out a hand.

"Come on where?"

"To explore the passage, of course."

Antony shook his head.

"Why ever not?"

"Well, what do you expect to find there?"

"I don't know. But you seemed to think that we might find something that
would help."

"Suppose we find Mark?" said Antony quietly.

"I say, do you really think he's there?"

"Suppose he is?"

"Well, then, there we are."

Antony walked over to the fireplace, knocked out the ashes of his pipe,
and turned back to Bill. He looked at him gravely without speaking.

"What are you going to say to him?" he said at last.

"How do you mean?"

"Are you going to arrest him, or help him to escape?"

"I—I—well, of course, I—" began Bill, stammering, and then ended
lamely, "Well, I don't know."

"Exactly. We've got to make up our minds, haven't we?"

Bill didn't answer. Very much disturbed in his mind, he walked
restlessly about the room, frowning to himself, stopping now and then
at the newly discovered door and looking at it as if he were trying to
learn what lay behind it. Which side was he on, if it came to choosing
sides—Mark's or the Law's?

"You know, you can't just say, 'Oh er hallo!' to him," said Antony,
breaking rather appropriately into his thoughts.

Bill looked up at him with a start.

"Nor," went on Antony, "can you say, 'This is my friend Mr. Gillingham,
who is staying with you. We were just going to have a game of bowls.'"

"Yes, it's dashed difficult. I don't know what to say. I've been rather
forgetting about Mark." He wandered over to the window and looked out on
to the lawns. There was a gardener clipping the grass edges. No reason
why the lawn should be untidy just because the master of the house had
disappeared. It was going to be a hot day again. Dash it, of course he
had forgotten Mark. How could he think of him as an escaped murderer,
a fugitive from justice, when everything was going on just as it did
yesterday, and the sun was shining just as it did when they all drove
off to their golf, only twenty-four hours ago? How could he help feeling
that this was not real tragedy, but merely a jolly kind of detective
game that he and Antony were playing?

He turned back to his friend.

"All the same," he said, "you wanted to find the passage, and now you've
found it. Aren't you going into it at all?"

Antony took his arm.

"Let's go outside again," he said. "We can't go into it now, anyhow.
It's too risky, with Cayley about. Bill, I feel like you—just a little
bit frightened. But what I'm frightened of I don't quite know. Anyway,
you want to go on with it, don't you?"

"Yes," said Bill firmly. "We must."

"Then we'll explore the passage this afternoon, if we get the chance.
And if we don't get the chance, then we'll try it to-night."

They walked across the hall and out into the sunlight again.

"Do you really think we might find Mark hiding there?" asked Bill.

"It's possible," said Antony. "Either Mark or—" He pulled himself up
quickly. "No," he murmured to himself, "I won't let myself think that
not yet, anyway. It's too horrible."

In the twenty hours or so at his disposal Inspector Birch had been busy.
He had telegraphed to London a complete description of Mark in the brown
flannel suit which he had last been seen wearing; he had made inquiries
at Stanton as to whether anybody answering to this description had
been seen leaving by the 4.20; and though the evidence which had been
volunteered to him had been inconclusive, it made it possible that
Mark had indeed caught that train, and had arrived in London before the
police at the other end had been ready to receive him. But the fact that
it was market-day at Stanton, and that the little town would be more
full than usual of visitors, made it less likely that either the
departure of Mark by the 4.20, or the arrival of Robert by the 2.10
earlier in the afternoon, would have been particularly noticed. As
Antony had said to Cayley, there would always be somebody ready to hand
the police a circumstantial story of the movements of any man in whom
the police were interested.

That Robert had come by the 2.10 seemed fairly certain. To find out more
about him in time for the inquest would be difficult. All that was known
about him in the village where he and Mark had lived as boys bore out
the evidence of Cayley. He was an unsatisfactory son, and he had been
hurried off to Australia; nor had he been seen since in the village.
Whether there were any more substantial grounds of quarrel between the
two brothers than that the younger one was at home and well-to-do,
while the elder was poor and an exile, was not known, nor, as far as the
inspector could see, was it likely to be known until Mark was captured.

The discovery of Mark was all that mattered immediately. Dragging
the pond might not help towards this, but it would certainly give the
impression in court to-morrow that Inspector Birch was handling the case
with zeal. And if only the revolver with which the deed was done was
brought to the surface, his trouble would be well repaid. "Inspector
Birch produces the weapon" would make an excellent headline in the local
paper.

He was feeling well-satisfied with himself, therefore, as he walked to
the pond, where his men were waiting for him, and quite in the mood for
a little pleasant talk with Mr. Gillingham and his friend, Mr. Beverley.
He gave them a cheerful "Good afternoon," and added with a smile,
"Coming to help us?"

"You don't really want us," said Antony, smiling back at him.

"You can come if you like."

Antony gave a little shudder.

"You can tell me afterwards what you find," he said. "By the way," he
added, "I hope the landlord at 'the George' gave me a good character?"

The Inspector looked at him quickly.

"Now how on earth do you know anything about that?"

Antony bowed to him gravely.

"Because I guessed that you were a very efficient member of the Force."

The inspector laughed.

"Well, you came out all right, Mr. Gillingham. You got a clean bill. But
I had to make certain about you.

"Of course you did. Well, I wish you luck. But I don't think you'll
find much at the pond. It's rather out of the way, isn't it, for anybody
running away?"

"That's just what I told Mr. Cayley, when he called my attention to the
pond. However, we shan't do any harm by looking. It's the unexpected
that's the most likely in this sort of case."

"You're quite right, Inspector. Well, we mustn't keep you. Good
afternoon," and Antony smiled pleasantly at him.

"Good afternoon, sir."

"Good afternoon," said Bill.

Antony stood looking after the Inspector as he strode off, silent for
so long that Bill shook him by the arm at last, and asked him rather
crossly what was the matter.

Antony shook his head slowly from side to side.

"I don't know; really I don't know. It's too devilish what I keep
thinking. He can't be as cold-blooded as that."

"Who?"

Without answering, Antony led the way back to the garden-seat on which
they had been sitting. He sat there with his head in his hands.

"Oh, I hope they find something," he murmured. "Oh, I hope they do."

"In the pond?"

"Yes."

"But what?"

"Anything, Bill; anything."

Bill was annoyed. "I say, Tony, this won't do. You really mustn't be so
damn mysterious. What's happened to you suddenly?"

Antony looked up at him in surprise.

"Didn't you hear what he said?"

"What, particularly?"

"That it was Cayley's idea to drag the pond."

"Oh! Oh, I say!" Bill was rather excited again. "You mean that he's
hidden something there? Some false clue which he wants the police to
find?"

"I hope so," said Antony earnestly, "but I'm afraid—" He stopped short.

"Afraid of what?"

"Afraid that he hasn't hidden anything there. Afraid that—"

"Well?"

"What's the safest place in which to hide anything very important?"

"Somewhere where nobody will look."

"There's a better place than that."

"What?"

"Somewhere where everybody has already looked."

"By Jove! You mean that as soon as the pond has been dragged, Cayley
will hide something there?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so."

"But why afraid?"

"Because I think that it must be something very important, something
which couldn't easily be hidden anywhere else."

"What?" asked Bill eagerly.

Antony shook his head.

"No, I'm not going to talk about it yet. We can wait and see what the
Inspector finds. He may find something—I don't know what—something
that Cayley has put there for him to find. But if he doesn't, then it
will be because Cayley is going to hide something there to-night."

"What?" asked Bill again.

"You will see what, Bill," said Antony; "because we shall be there."

"Are we going to watch him?"

"Yes, if the Inspector finds nothing."

"That's good," said Bill.

If it were a question of Cayley or the Law, he was quite decided as to
which side he was taking. Previous to the tragedy of yesterday he had
got on well enough with both of the cousins, without being in the least
intimate with either. Indeed, of the two he preferred, perhaps, the
silent, solid Cayley to the more volatile Mark. Cayley's qualities, as
they appeared to Bill, may have been chiefly negative; but even if this
merit lay in the fact that he never exposed whatever weaknesses he may
have had, this is an excellent quality in a fellow-guest (or, if you
like, fellow-host) in a house where one is continually visiting. Mark's
weaknesses, on the other hand, were very plain to the eye, and Bill had
seen a good deal of them.

Yet, though he had hesitated to define his position that morning in
regard to Mark, he did not hesitate to place himself on the side of the
Law against Cayley. Mark, after all, had done him no harm, but Cayley
had committed an unforgivable offence. Cayley had listened secretly to
a private conversation between himself and Tony. Let Cayley hang, if the
Law demanded it.

Antony looked at his watch and stood up.

"Come along," he said. "It's time for that job I spoke about."

"The passage?" said Bill eagerly.

"No; the thing which I said that I had to do this afternoon."

"Oh, of course. What is it?"

Without saying anything, Antony led the way indoors to the office.

It was three o'clock, and at three o'clock yesterday Antony and Cayley
had found the body. At a few minutes after three, he had been looking
out of the window of the adjoining room, and had been surprised suddenly
to find the door open and Cayley behind him. He had vaguely wondered at
the time why he had expected the door to be shut, but he had had no time
then to worry the thing out, and he had promised himself to look into
it at his leisure afterwards. Possibly it meant nothing; possibly, if
it meant anything, he could have found out its meaning by a visit to
the office that morning. But he had felt that he would be more likely
to recapture the impressions of yesterday if he chose as far as possible
the same conditions for his experiment. So he had decided that three
o'clock that afternoon should find him once more in the office.

As he went into the room, followed by Bill, he felt it almost as a shock
that there was now no body of Robert lying there between the two doors.
But there was a dark stain which showed where the dead man's head had
been, and Antony knelt down over it, as he had knelt twenty-four hours
before.

"I want to go through it again," he said. "You must be Cayley. Cayley
said he would get some water. I remember thinking that water wasn't
much good to a dead man, and that probably he was only too glad to
do anything rather than nothing. He came back with a wet sponge and
a handkerchief. I suppose he got the handkerchief from the chest of
drawers. Wait a bit."

He got up and went into the adjoining room; looked round it, pulled open
a drawer or two, and, after shutting all the doors, came back to the
office.

"The sponge is there, and there are handkerchiefs in the top right-hand
drawer. Now then, Bill, just pretend you're Cayley. You've just said
something about water, and you get up."

Feeling that it was all a little uncanny, Bill, who had been kneeling
beside his friend, got up and walked out. Antony, as he had done on the
previous day, looked up after him as he went. Bill turned into the room
on the right, opened the drawer and got the handkerchief, damped the
sponge and came back.

"Well?" he said wonderingly.

Antony shook his head.

"It's all different," he said. "For one thing, you made a devil of a
noise and Cayley didn't."

"Perhaps you weren't listening when Cayley went in?"

"I wasn't. But I should have heard him if I could have heard him, and I
should have remembered afterwards."

"Perhaps Cayley shut the door after him."

"Wait!"

He pressed his hand over his eyes and thought. It wasn't anything which
he had heard, but something which he had seen. He tried desperately hard
to see it again.... He saw Cayley getting up, opening the door from the
office, leaving it open and walking into the passage, turning to the
door on the right, opening it, going in, and then—What did his eyes see
after that? If they would only tell him again!