THE YELLOW STREAK
BY VALENTINE WILLIAMS
CONTENTS
I. THE MASTER OF HARKINGS
II. AT TWILIGHT
III. A DISCOVERY
IV. BETWEEN THE DESK AND THE WINDOW
V. IN WHICH BUDE LOOKS AT ROBIN GREVE
VI. THE LETTER
VII. VOICES IN THE LIBRARY
VIII. ROBIN GOES TO MARY
IX. MR. MANDERTON
X. A SMOKING CHIMNEY
XI. "... SPEED THE PARTING GUEST!"
XII. MR. MANDERTON is NONPLUSSED
XIII. JEEKES
XIV. A SHEET OF BLUE PAPER
XV. SHADOWS
XVI. THE INTRUDER
XVII. A FRESH CLUE
XVIII. THE SILENT SHOT
XIX. MR. MANDERTON LAYS HIS CARDS ON THE TABLE
XX. THE CODE KING
XXI. A WORD WITH MR. JEEKES
XXII. THE MAN WITH THE YELLOW FACE
XXIII. TWO'S COMPANY
XXIV. THE METAMORPHOSIS OF MR. SCHULZ
XXV. THE READING OF THE RIDDLE
XXVI. THE FIGURE IN THE DOORWAY
XXVII. AN INTERRUPTION FROM BEYOND
XXVIII. THE DEATH OF HARTLEY PARRISH
THE YELLOW STREAK
CHAPTER I
THE MASTER OF HARKINGS
Of all the luxuries of which Hartley Parrish's sudden rise to wealth
gave him possession, Bude, his butler, was the acquisition in which he
took the greatest delight and pride. Bude was a large and comfortable-
looking person, triple-chinned like an archdeacon, bald-headed except for
a respectable and saving edging of dark down, clean-shaven, benign of
countenance, with a bold nose which to the psychologist bespoke both
ambition and inborn cleverness. He had a thin, tight mouth which in
itself alone was a symbol of discreet reticence, the hall-mark of the
trusted family retainer.
Bude had spent his life in the service of the English aristocracy. The
Earl of Tipperary, Major-General Lord Bannister, the Dowager Marchioness
of Wiltshire, and Sir Herbert Marcobrunner, Bart., had in turn watched
his gradual progress from pantry-boy to butler. Bude was a man whose
maxim had been the French saying, "_Je prends mon bien ou je le
trouve_."
In his thirty years' service he had always sought to discover and draw
from those sources of knowledge which were at his disposal. From
MacTavish, who had supervised Lord Tipperary's world-famous gardens, he
had learnt a great deal about flowers, so that the arrangement of the
floral decorations was always one of the features at Hartley Parrish's
_soigne_ dinner-parties. From Brun, the unsurpassed _chef_, whom Lord
Bannister had picked up when serving with the Guards in Egypt, he had
gathered sufficient knowledge of the higher branches of the cuisine to
enable Hartley Parrish to leave the arrangement of the menu in his
butler's hands.
Bude would have been the first to admit that, socially speaking, his
present situation was not the equal of the positions he had held. There
was none of the staid dignity about his present employer which was
inborn in men like Lord Tipperary or Lord Bannister, and which Sir
Herbert Marcobrunner, with the easy assimilative faculty of his race,
had very successfully acquired. Below middle height, thick-set and
powerfully built, with a big head, narrow eyes, and a massive chin,
Hartley Parrish, in his absorbed concentration on his business, had no
time for the acquisition or practice of the Eton manner.
It was characteristic of Parrish that, seeing Bude at a dinner-party at
Marcobruaner's, he should have engaged him on the spot. It took Bude a
week to get over his shock at the manner in which the offer was made.
Parrish had approached him as he was supervising the departure of the
guests. Waving aside the footman who offered to help him into his
overcoat, Parrish had asked Bude point-blank what wages he was getting.
Bude mentioned the generous remuneration he was receiving from Sir
Herbert Marcobrunner, whereupon Parrish had remarked:
"Come to me and I'll double it. I'll give you a week to think it over.
Let my secretary know!"
After a few discreet enquiries, Bude, faithful to his maxim, had
accepted Parrish's offer. Marcobrunner was furiously angry, but, being
anxious to interest Parrish in a deal, sagely kept his feelings to
himself. And Bude had never regretted the change. He found Parrish an
exacting, but withal a just and a generous master, and he was not long
in realizing that, as long as he kept Harkings, Parrish's country place
where he spent the greater part of his time, running smoothly according
to Parrish's schedule, he could count on a life situation.
The polish of manner, the sober dignity of dress, acquired from years of
acute observation in the service of the nobility, were to be seen as, at
the hour of five, in the twilight of this bleak autumn afternoon, Bude
moved majestically into the lounge-hall of Harkings and leisurely
pounded the gong for tea.
The muffled notes of the gong swelled out brazenly through the silent
house. They echoed down the softly carpeted corridors to the library
where the master of the house sat at his desk. For days he had been
immersed in the figures of the new issue which Hornaway's, the vast
engineering business of his creation, was about to put on the market.
They reverberated up the fine old oak staircase to the luxurious Louis
XV bedroom, where Lady Margaret Trevert lay on her bed idly smiling
through an amusing novel. They crashed through the thickly padded baize
doors leading to the servants' hall, where, at sixpence a hundred,
Parrish's man, Jay, was partnering Lady Margaret's maid against Mrs.
Heever, the housekeeper, and Robert, the chauffeur, at a friendly game
of bridge. And they even boomed distantly into the far-away
billiard-room and broke into the talk which Robin Greve was having with
Mary Trevert.
"Damn!" exclaimed Greve savagely, as the distant gonging came to his
ears.
"It's the gong for tea," said Mary demurely.
She was sitting on one of the big leather sofas lining the long room.
Robin, as he gazed down at her from where he stood with his back against
the edge of the billiard-table, thought what an attractive picture she
made in the half-light.
The lamps over the table were lit, but the rest of the room was almost
dark. In that lighting the thickly waving dark hair brought out the fine
whiteness of the girl's skin. There was love, and a great desire for
love, in her large dark eyes, but the clear-cut features, the
well-shaped chin, and the firm mouth, the lips a little full, spoke of
ambition and the love of power.
"I've been here three whole days," said Robin, "and I've not had two
words with you alone, Mary. And hardly have I got you to myself for a
quiet game of pills when that rotten gong goes ..."
"I'm sorry you're disappointed at missing your game," the girl replied
mischievously, "but I expect you will be able to get a game with Horace
or one of the others after tea ..."
Robin kicked the carpet savagely.
"You know perfectly well I don't want to play billiards ..."
He looked up and caught the girl's eye. For a fraction of a second he
saw in it the expression which every man at least once in his life looks
to see in the eyes of one particular woman. In the girl's dark-blue eyes
fringed with long black lashes he saw the dumb appeal, the mute
surrender, which, as surely as the white flag on the battlements in war,
is the signal of capitulation in woman.
But the expression was gone on the instant. It passed so swiftly that,
for a second, Robin, seeing the gently mocking glance that succeeded it,
wondered whether he had been mistaken.
But he was a man of action - a glance at his long, well-moulded head, his
quick, wide-open eye, and his square jaw would have told you that - and
he spoke.
"It's no use beating about the bush," he said. "Mary, I've got so fond
of you that I'm just miserable when you're away from me ..."
"Oh, Robin, please ..."
Mary Trevert stood up and remained standing, her head turned a little
away from him, a charming silhouette in her heather-blue shooting-suit.
The young man took her listless hand.
"My dear," he said, "you and I have been pals all our lives. It was
only at the front that I began to realize just how much you meant to me.
And now I know I can't do without you. I've never met any one who has
been to me just what you are. And, Mary, I must have you as my wife ..."
The girl remained motionless. She kept her face averted. The room seemed
very still.
"Oh, Robin, please ..." she murmured again.
Resolutely the young man put an arm about her and drew her to him.
Slowly, reluctantly, she let him have his way. But she would not look at
him.
"Oh, my dear," he whispered, kissing her hair, "don't you care a
little?"
She remained silent.
"Won't you look at me, Mary?"
There was a hint of huskiness in his voice. He raised her face to his.
"I saw in your eyes just now that you cared for me," he whispered; "oh,
my Mary, say that you do!"
Then he bent down and kissed her. For a brief instant their lips met and
he felt the caress of the girl's arm about his neck.
"Oh, Robin!" she said.
That was all.
But then she drew away.
Reluctantly the man let her go. The colour had faded from his cheeks
when she looked at him again as he stood facing her in the twilight of
the billiard-room.
"Robin, dear," she said, "I'm going to hurt you."
The young man seemed to have had a premonition of what was coming, for
he betrayed no sign of surprise, but remained motionless, very erect,
very pale.
"Dear," said the girl with a little despairing shrug, "it's hopeless! We
can't afford to marry!"
"Not yet, I know," said Robin, "but I'm getting on well, Mary, and in
another year or two ..."
The girl looked down at the point of her little brogue shoe.
"I don't know what you will think of me," she said, "but I can't
accept ... I can't face ... I ..."
"You can't face the idea of being the wife of a man who has his way to
make. Is that it?"
The voice was rather stern.
The girl looked up impulsively.
"I can't, Robin. I should never make you happy. Mother and I are as poor
as church-mice. All the money in the family goes to keep Horace in the
Army and pay for my clothes."
She looked disdainfully at her pretty suit.
"All this," she went on with a little hopeless gesture indicating her
tailor-made, "is Mother's investment. No, no, it's true ... I can tell
you as a friend, Robin, dear, we are living on our capital until I have
caught a rich husband ..."
"Oh, my dear," said Robin softly, "don't say things like that ..."
The girl laughed a little defiantly.
"But it's true," she answered. "The war has halved Mother's income and
there's nothing between us and bankruptcy but a year or so ... unless I
get married!"
Her voice trembled a little and she turned away.
"Mary," said the young man hoarsely, "for God's sake, don't do that!"
He moved a step towards her, but she drew back.
"It's all right," she said with the tears glistening wet on her face,
and dabbed at her eyes with her tiny handkerchief, "but, oh, Robin boy,
why couldn't you have held your tongue?"
"I suppose I had no right to speak ..." the young man began.
The girl sighed.
"I oughtn't to say it ... now," she said slowly, and looked across at
Robin with shining eyes, "but, Robin dear, I'm ... I'm glad you did!"
She paused a moment as though turning something over in her mind.
"I've ... I've got something to tell you, Robin," she began. "No, stay
where you are! We must be sensible now."
She paused and looked at him.
"Robin," she said slowly, "I've promised to marry somebody else ..."
There was a moment's silence.
"Who is it?" Robin asked in a hard voice.
The girl made no answer.
"Who is it? Do I know him?"
Still the girl was silent, but she gave a hardly perceptible nod.
"Not ...? No, no, Mary, it isn't true? It can't be true?"
The girl nodded, her eyes to the ground.
"It's a secret still," she said. "No one knows but Mother. Hartley
doesn't want it announced yet!"
The sound of the Christian name suddenly seemed to infuriate Greve.
"By God!" he cried, "it shan't be! You must be mad, Mary, to think of
marrying a man like Hartley Parrish. A fellow who's years older than
you, who thinks of nothing but money, who stood out of the war and made
a fortune while men of his own age were doing the fighting for him! It's
unthinkable ... it's ... it's damnable to think of a gross, ill-bred
creature like Parrish ..."
"Robin!" the girl cried, "you seem to forget that we're staying in his
house. In spite of all you say he seems to be good enough for you to
come and stay with ..."
"I only came because you were to be here. You know that perfectly well.
I admit one oughtn't to blackguard one's host, but, Mary, you must see
that this marriage is absolutely out of the question!"
The girl began to bridle up,
"Why?" she asked loftily.
"Because ... because Parrish is not the sort of man who will make you
happy ..."
"And why not, may I ask? He's very kind and very generous, and I believe
he likes me ..."
Robin Greve made a gesture of despair.
"My dear girl," he said, trying to control himself to speak quietly,
"what do you know about this man? Nothing. But there are beastly stories
circulating about his life ..."
Mary Trevert laughed cynically.
"My dear old Robin," she said, "they tell stories about every bachelor.
And I hardly think you are an unbiassed judge ..."
Robin Greve was pacing up and down the floor.
"You're crazy, Mary," he said, stopping in front of her, "to dream you
can ever be happy with a man like Hartley Parrish. The man's a ruthless
egoist. He thinks of nothing but money and he's out to buy you just
exactly as you ..."
"As I am ready to sell myself!" the girl echoed. "And I _am_ ready,
Robin. It's all very well for you to stand there and preach ideals at
me, but I'm sick and disgusted at the life we've been leading for the
past three years, hovering on the verge of ruin all the time, dunned by
tradesmen and having to borrow even from servants ... yes, from old
servants of the family ... to pay Mother's bridge debts. Mother's a good
sort. Father spent all her money for her and she was brought up in
exactly the same helpless way as she brought up me. I can do absolutely
nothing except the sort of elementary nursing which we all learnt in the
war, and if I don't marry well Mother will have to keep a boarding-house
or do something ghastly like that. I'm not going to pretend that I'm
thinking only of her, because I'm not. I can't face a long engagement
with no prospects except castles in Spain. I don't mean to be callous,
Robin, but I expect I am naturally hard. Hartley Parrish is a good sort.
He's very fond of me, and he will see that Mother lives comfortably for
the rest of her life. I've promised to marry him because I like him and
he's a suitable match. And I don't see by what right you try and run him
down to me behind his back! If it's jealousy, then it shows a very petty
spirit!"
Robin Greve stepped close up to Mary Trevert. His eyes were very angry
and his jaw was set very square.
"If you are determined to sell yourself to the highest bidder," he said,
"I suppose there's no stopping you. But you're making a mistake. If
Parrish were all you claim for him, you might not repent of his marriage
so long as you did not care for somebody else. But I know you love me,
and it breaks my heart to see you blundering into everlasting
unhappiness ..."
"At least Hartley will be able to keep me," the girl flashed out.
Directly she had spoken she regretted her words.
A red flush spread slowly over Robin Greve's face.
Then he laughed drily.
"You won't be the first woman he's kept!" be retorted, and stamped out
of the billiard-room.
The girl gave a little gasp. Then she reddened with anger.
"How dare he?" she cried, stamping her foot; "how dare he?"
She sank on the lounge and, burying her face in her hands, burst into
tears.
"Oh, Robin, Robin, dear!" she sobbed - incomprehensibly, for she was a
woman.
CHAPTER II
AT TWILIGHT
There is a delicious snugness, a charming lack of formality, about the
ceremony of afternoon tea in an English country-house - it is much too
indefinite a rite to dignify it by the name of meal - which makes it the
most pleasant reunion of the day. For English country-house parties
consist, for the most part, of a succession of meals to which the guests
flock the more congenially as, in the interval, they have contrived to
avoid one another's companionship.
And so, scarcely had the last reverberation of Bude's measured gonging
died away than the French window leading from the lounge-hall on to the
terrace was pushed open and two of Hartley Parrish's guests emerged from
the falling darkness without into the pleasant comfort of the firelit
room.
They were an oddly matched pair. The one was a tubby little man with
short bristly grey hair and a short bristly grey moustache to match. His
stumpy legs looked ridiculous in his baggy golf knickers of rough tweed,
which he wore with gaiters extending half-way up his short, stout
calves. As he came in, he slung off the heavy tweed shooting-cloak he
had been wearing and placed it with his Homburg hat on a chair.
This was Dr. Romain, whose name thus written seems indecently naked
without the string of complementary initials indicative of the honours
and degrees which years of bacteriological research had heaped upon him.
His companion was a tall, slim, fair-haired young man, about as good a
specimen of the young Englishman turned out by the English public school
as one could find. He was extremely good-looking with a proud eye and
finely chiselled features, but the suggestion of youth in his face and
figure was countered by a certain poise, a kind of latent seriousness
which contrasted strangely with the general cheery _insouciance_ of his
type.
A soldier would have spotted the symptoms at once, "Five years of war!"
would have been his verdict - that long and strange entry into life of so
many thousands of England's manhood which impressed the stamp of
premature seriousness on all those who came through. And Captain Sir
Horace Trevert, Bart., D.S.O., had gone from his famous school straight
into a famous regiment, had won his decoration before he was twenty-one,
and been twice wounded into the bargain.
"Where's everybody?" queried the doctor, rubbing his hands at the
blazing log-fire.
"Robin and Mary went off to play billiards," said the young man, "and I
left old Parrish after lunch settling down for an afternoon's work in
the library ..."
He crossed the room to the fire and stood with his back to the flame.
"What a worker that man is!" ejaculated the doctor. "He had one of his
secretaries down this morning with a car full of portfolios,
blue-prints, specifications, and God knows what else. Parrish polished
the whole lot off and packed the fellow back to London before mid-day.
Some of Hornaway's people who were waiting went in next, and he was
through with them by lunch-time!"
Trevert wagged his head in admiration.
"And he told me he wanted to have a quiet week-end!" he said. "That's
why he has no secretary living in the house."
"A quiet week-end!" repeated Romain drily. "Ye gods!"
"He's a marvel for work," said the young man.
"He certainly is," replied the doctor. "He's done wonders with
Hornaway's. When he took the place over at the beginning of the war,
they were telling me, it was a little potty concern making toy air guns
or lead soldiers or something of the sort. And they never stop coining
money now, it seems. Parrish must be worth millions ..."
"Lucky devil!" said Trevert genially.
"Ah!" observed the doctor sententiously, "but he's had to work for it,
mark you! He's had the most extraordinary life, they tell me. He was at
one period of his career a bartender on the Rand, a man was saying at
the club the other day. But most of his life he's lived in Canada, I
gather. He was telling us the other evening, before you and Mary came
down, that he was once a brakeman on the Canadian Pacific Railway. He
said he invested all his savings in books on engineering and read them
in his brakeman's van on his trips across the Dominion. Ah! he's a fine
fellow!"
He lowered his voice discreetly.
"And a devilish good match, eh, Horace?"
The young man flushed slightly.
"Yes," he said unwillingly.
"A dam' good match for somebody," urged the doctor with a malicious
twinkle in his eye.
"Here, Doc," said Horace, suddenly turning on him, "you stick to your
bugs and germs. What do you know about matchmaking, anyway?"
Dr. Romain chuckled.
"We bacteriologists are trained observers. One learns a lot watching the
life and habits of the bacillus, Horace, my boy. And between ourselves,
Parrish would be a lucky fellow if ..."
Trevert turned to him. His face was quite serious, and there was a
little touch of hauteur in his voice. He was the 17th Baronet.
"My dear Doc," he said, "aren't you going a bit fast? Parrish is a very
good chap, but one knows nothing about him ..."
Sagely the doctor nodded his grizzled head.
"That's true," he agreed. "He appears to have no relatives and nobody
over here seems to have heard of him before the war. A man was saying at
the Athenaeum the other day ..."
Trevert touched his elbow. Bude had appeared, portly, imperturbable,
bearing a silver tray set out with the appliances for tea.
"Bude," cried Trevert, "don't tell me there are no tea-cakes again!"
"On the contrairey, sir," answered the butler in the richly sonorous
voice pitched a little below the normal register which he employed
abovestairs, "the cook has had her attention drawn to it. There are
tea-cakes, sir!"
With a certain dramatic effect - for Bude was a trifle theatrical in
everything he did - he whipped the cover off a dish and displayed a
smoking pile of deliciously browned scones.
"Bude," said Trevert, "when I'm a Field Marshal, I'll see you get the
O.B.E. for this!"
The butler smiled a nicely regulated three-by-one smile, a little
deprecatory as was his wont. Then, like a tank taking a corner, he
wheeled majestically and turned to cross the lounge. To reach the green
baize door leading to the servants' quarters he had to cross the outer
hall from which led corridors on the right and left. That on the right
led to the billiard-room; that on the left to the big drawing-room with
the library beyond.
As Bude reached the great screen of tooled Spanish leather which
separated a corner of the lounge from the outer hall, Robin Greve came
hastily through the glass door of the corridor leading from the
billiard-room. The butler with a pleasant smile drew back a little to
allow the young man to pass, thinking he was going into the lounge for
tea.
"Tea is ..." he began, but abruptly ended the sentence on catching sight
of the young man's face. For Robin, habitually so self-possessed, looked
positively haggard. His face was set and there was a weary look in his
eyes. The young man appeared so utterly different from his wonted self
that Bude fairly stared at him.
But Robin, without paying the least attention either to the butler or to
the sound of voices in the lounge, strode across the outer hall and
disappeared through the glass door of the corridor leading to the great
drawing-room and the library.
Bude stood an instant gazing after him in perplexity, then moved across
the hall to the servants' quarters.
In the meantime in the lounge the little doctor snapped the case of his
watch and opined that he wanted his tea.
"Where on earth has everybody got to? What's become of Lady Margaret? I
haven't seen her since lunch...."
That lady answered his question by appearing in person.
Lady Margaret was tall and hard and glittering. Like so many
Englishwomen of good family, she was so saturated with the traditions of
her class that her manner was almost indistinguishable from that of a
man. Well-mannered, broadminded, wholly cynical, and absolutely
fearless, she went through life exactly as though she were following a
path carefully taped out for her by a suitably instructed Providence.
Somewhere beneath the mask of smiling indifference she presented so
bravely to a difficult world, she had a heart, but so carefully did she
hide it that Horace had only discovered it on a certain grey November
morning when he had started out for the first time on active service.
For ever afterwards a certain weighing-machine at Waterloo Station, by
which he had had a startling vision of his mother standing with heaving
bosom and tear-stained face, possessed in his mind the attributes of
some secret and sacred shrine.
But now she was cool and well-gowned and self-contained as ever.
"What a perfectly dreadful day!" she exclaimed in her pleasant,
well-bred voice. "Horace, you must positively go and see Henry
What's-his-name in the Foreign Office and get me a passport for Cannes.
The weather in England in the winter is incredibly exaggerated!"
"At least," said the doctor, rubbing his back as he warmed himself at
the fire, "we have fuel in England. Give me England, climate and all,
but don't take away my fire. The sun doesn't shine on the Riviera at
night, you know!"
Lady Margaret busied herself at the tea-table with its fine Queen Anne
silver and dainty yellow cups. It was the custom at Harkings to serve
tea in the winter without other illumination than the light of the
great log-fire that spat and leaped in the open hearth. Beyond the
semi-circle of ruddy light the great lounge was all in darkness, and
beyond that again was the absolute stillness of the English country on a
winter's evening.
And so with a gentle clatter of teacups and the accompaniment of
pleasantly modulated voices they sat and chatted - Lady Margaret, who was
always surprising in what she said, the doctor who was incredibly
opinionated, and young Trevert, who like all of the younger generation
was daringly flippant. He was airing his views on what he called "Boche
music" when he broke off and cried:
"Hullo, here's Mary! Mary, you owe me half a crown. Bude has come up to
scratch and there are tea-cakes after ... but, I say, what on earth's
the matter?"
The girl had come into the room and was standing in the centre of the
lounge in the ruddy glow of the fire. Her face was deathly pale and she
was shuddering violently. She held her little cambric handkerchief
crushed up into a ball to her lips. Her eyes were fixed, almost glazed,
like one who walks in a trance.
She stood like that for an instant surveying the group - Lady Margaret, a
silver tea-pot in one hand, looking at her with uplifted brows. Horace,
who in his amazement had taken a step forward, and the doctor at his
side scrutinizing her beneath his shaggy eyebrows.
"My dear Mary " - it was Lady Margaret's smooth and pleasant voice which
broke the silence - "whatever is the matter? Have you seen a ghost!"
The girl swayed a little and opened her lips as if to speak. A log,
crashing from the fire into the grate, fell upon the silence of the
darkening room. It seemed to break the spell.
"Hartley!"
The name came hoarsely from the girl. Everybody, except Lady Margaret,
sprang to his feet It was the doctor who spoke first.
"Miss Mary," he said, "you seem frightened, what ..."
His voice was very soothing.
Mary Trevert made a vague gesture towards the shadows about the
staircase.
"There ... in the library ... he's got the door locked ... there was a
shot ..."
Then she suddenly screamed aloud.
In a stride both the doctor and her brother were by her side. But she
motioned them away.
"I'm frightened about Hartley," she said in a low voice, "please go at
once and see what ... that shot ... and he doesn't answer!"
"Come on, Doctor!"
Horace Trevert was halfway to the big screen separating the lounge from
the outer hall. As he passed the bell, he pressed it.
"Send Bude to us, Mother, when he comes, please!" he called as he and
the doctor hurried away.
Lady Margaret had risen and stood, one arm about her daughter, on the
Persian rug spread out before the cheerful fire. So the women stood in
the firelight in Hartley Parrish's house, surrounded by all the
treasures which his wealth had bought, and listened to the footsteps
clattering away through the silence.
CHAPTER III
A DISCOVERY
Harkings was not a large house. Some three hundred years ago it had been
a farm, but in the intervening years successive owners had so altered it
by pulling down and building on, that, when it passed into the
possession of Hartley Parrish, little else than the open fireplace in
the lounge remained to tell of the original farm. It was a queer,
rambling house of only two stories whose elongated shape was accentuated
by the additional wing which Hartley Parrish had built on.
For the decoration of his country-house, Parrish had placed himself
unreservedly in the hands of the firm entrusted with the work. Their
architect was given _carte blanche_ to produce a house of character out
of the rather dingy, out-of-date country villa which Harkings was when
Hartley Parrish, attracted by the view from the gardens, first
discovered it.
The architect had gone to his work with a zest. He had ripped up walls
and ceilings and torn down irrational matchwood partitions, discovering
some fine old oak wainscot and the blackened roof-beams of the original
farmstead. In the upshot he transformed Harkings into a very fair
semblance of a late Jacobean house, fitted with every modern convenience
and extremely comfortable. Furnished throughout with genuine "period"
furniture, with fine dark oak panelling and parquet floors, it was
altogether picturesque. Neither within nor without, it is true, would a
connoisseur have been able to give it a date.
But that did not worry Hartley Parrish. He loved a bargain and he had
bought the house cheap. It was situated in beautiful country and was
within easy reach by car of his town-house in St. James's Square where
he lived for the greater part of the week. Last but not least Harkings
was the casket enshrining a treasure, the realization of a lifelong
wish. This was the library, Parrish's own room, designed by himself and
furnished to his own individual taste.
It stood apart from the rest of the house at the end of the wing which
Parrish had constructed. The wing consisted of a single ground floor and
contained the drawing-room - which was scarcely ever used, as both
Parrish and his guests preferred the more congenial surroundings of the
lounge - and the library. A long corridor panelled in oak led off the
hall to the new wing. On to this corridor both the drawing-room and the
library gave. Halfway down the corridor a small passage ran off. It
separated the drawing-room from the library and ended in a door leading
into the gardens at the back of the house.
It was to the new wing that Horace Trevert and Dr. Komain now hastened.
They hurried across the hall, where the big lamp of dulled glass threw a
soft yellow light, and entered the corridor through the heavy oak door
which shut it off from the hall. The corridor was wrapt in silence.
Halfway down, where the small passage ran to the garden door, the
electric light was burning.
Horace Trevert ran down the corridor ahead of the doctor and was the
first to reach the library door. He knocked sharply, then turned the
handle. The door was locked.
"Hartley!" he cried and rapped again. "Ha-a-artley! Open the door! It's
me, Horace!"
Again he knocked and rattled the handle. Not a sound came from the
locked room. There was an instant's silence. Horace and the doctor
exchanged an interrogatory look.
From behind the closed door came the steady ticking of a clock. The
silence was so absolute that both men heard it.
Then the door at the end of the corridor was flung open and Bude
appeared. He was running at a quick ambling trot, his heavy tread
shaking the passage,
"Oh? sir," he cried, "whatever is it? What has happened?"
Horace spoke quickly, incisively.
"Something's happened to Mr. Parrish, Bude," he said. "The door's locked
and he doesn't answer. We'll have to break the door down."
Bude shook his head.
"It's solid oak, sir," he began.
Then he raised his hand.
"Pardon me, gentlemen," he said, as though an idea had struck him. "If
we were to go out by the garden door here, we might get in through the
window. We could break the glass if needs be!"
"That's it!" exclaimed Horace. "Come on, Doctor!"
He dashed down the corridor towards the little passage. The doctor laid
a hand on Bude's arm.
"One of us had better stay here," he said with a meaning glance at the
closed door.
The butler raised an affrighted face to his.
"Go with Sir Horace, Bude," said the doctor. "I'll stay!"
Outside in the gardens of Harkings it was a raw, damp evening,
pitch-black now, with little gusts of wind which shook the naked bushes
of the rosery. The garden door led by a couple of shallow steps on to a
gravel path which ran all along the back of the house. The path extended
right up to the wall of the house. On the other side it flanked the
rosery.
The glass door was banging to and fro in the night wind as Bude, his
coat-collar turned up, hurried out into the darkness. The library, which
formed the corner of the new wing, had two windows, the one immediately
above the gravel path looking out over the rosery, the other round the
corner of the house giving on the same path, beyond which ran a high
hedge of clipped box surrounding the so-called Pleasure Ground, a plot
of smooth grass with a sundial in the centre.
A glow of light came from the library window, and in its radiance Bude
saw silhouetted the tall, well-knit figure of young Trevert. As the
butler came up, the boy raised something in his hand and there was a
crash of broken glass.
The curtains were drawn, but with the breaking of the window they began
to flap about. With the iron grating he had picked up from the drain
below the window young Trevert smashed the rest of the glass away, then
thrust an arm through the empty window-frame, fumbling for the
window-catch.
"The catch is not fastened," he whispered, and with a resolute thrust he
pushed the window up. The curtains leapt up wildly, revealing a glimpse
of the pleasant, book-lined room. Both men from the darkness without saw
Parrish's desk littered with his papers and his habitual chair beyond
it, pushed back empty.
Trevert turned an instant, a hand on the window-sill.
"Bude," he said, "there's no one there!"
"Best look and see, sir," replied the butler, his coat-tails flapping in
the wind.
Trevert hoisted himself easily on to the window-sill, knelt there for an
instant, then thrust his legs over the sill and dropped into the room.
As he did so he stumbled, cried aloud.
Then the heavy grey curtains were flung back and the butler saw the
boy's face, rather white, at the open window.
"My God," he said slowly, "he's dead!"
A moment later Dr. Romain, waiting in the corridor, heard the key turn
in the lock of the library door. The door was flung open. Horace Trevert
stood there, silhouetted in a dull glow of light from the room. He was
pointing to the open window, beneath which Hartley Parrish lay on his
back motionless.
CHAPTER IV
BETWEEN THE DESK AND THE WINDOW
Hartley Parrish's library was a splendid room, square in shape, lofty
and well proportioned. It was lined with books arranged in shelves of
dark brown oak running round the four walls, but sunk level with them
and reaching up to a broad band of perfectly plain white plasterwork.
It was a cheerful, comfortable, eminently modern room, half library,
half office. The oak was solid, but uncompromisingly new. The great
leather armchairs were designed on modern lines - for comfort rather
than for appearance. There were no pictures; but vases of chrysanthemums
stood here and there about the room. A dictaphone in a case was in a
corner, but beside it was a little table on which were set out some rare
bits of old Chelsea. There was also a gramophone, but it was enclosed in
a superb case of genuine old black-and-gold lacquer. The very books in
their shelves carried on this contrast of business with recreation. For
while one set of shelves contained row upon row of technical works,
company reports, and all manner of business reference books bound in
leather, on another were to be found the vellum-bound volumes of the
Kelmscott Press.
A sober note of grey or mole colour was the colour scheme of the room.
The heavy pile carpet which stretched right up to the walls was of this
quiet neutral shade: so were the easy-chairs, and the colour of the
heavy curtains, which hung in front of the two high windows, was in
harmony with the restful decorative scheme of the room.
The massive oaken door stood opposite the window overlooking the
rosery - the window through which Horace Trevert had entered. Parrish's
desk was in front of this window, between it and the door in
consequence. By the other window, which, as has been stated, looked out
on the clipped hedge surrounding the Pleasure Ground, was the little
table with the Chelsea china, the dictaphone, and one of the
easy-chairs. The centre of the room was clear so that nothing lay
between the door and the carved mahogany chair at the desk. Here, as
they all knew, Parrish was accustomed to sit when working, his back to
the door, his face to the window overlooking the rosery.
The desk stood about ten feet from the window. On it was a large brass
lamp which cast a brilliant circle of light upon the broad flat top of
the desk with its orderly array of letter-trays, its handsome
silver-edged blotter and silver and tortoise-shell writing
appurtenances. By the light of this lamp Dr. Romain, looking from the
doorway, saw that Hartley Parrish's chair was vacant, pushed back a
little way from the desk. The rest of the room was wrapt in unrevealing
half-light.
"He's there by the window!"
Horace was whispering to the doctor. Romain strode over to the desk and
picked up the lamp. As he did so, his eyes fell upon the pale face of
Hartley Parrish. He lay on his back in the space between the desk and
the window. His head was flung back, his eyes, bluish-grey, - the narrow,
rather expressionless eyes of the successful business man, - were wide
open and fixed in a sightless stare, his rather full mouth, with its
clean-shaven lips, was rigid and stern. With the broad forehead, the
prominent brows, the bold, aggressive nose, and the square bony jaw, it
was a fighter's face, a fine face save for the evil promise of that
sensuous mouth. So thought the doctor with the swift psychological
process of his trade.
From the face his gaze travelled to the body. And then Romain could not
repress an involuntary start, albeit he saw what he had half expected to
see. The fleshy right hand of Hartley Parrish grasped convulsively an
automatic pistol. His clutching index finger was crooked about the
trigger and the barrel was pressed into the yielding pile of the carpet.
His other hand with clawing fingers was flung out away from the body on
the other side. One leg was stretched out to its fullest extent and the
foot just touched the hem of the grey window curtains. The other leg was
slightly drawn up.
The doctor raised the lamp from the desk and, dropping on one knee,
placed it on the ground beside the body. With gentle fingers he