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"Splendid!" cried Cynthia. "Do come, Mary!"
Mary shook her head. "No; you go – you two," she said. "I'm tired – and I want to think." She passed her hand across her eyes. She seemed to wipe away the mists of sleep. Her face suddenly grew animated and exultant. "No, I don't want to think! I know!" she exclaimed emphatically.
"Mary dear, are you still asleep? Are you talking in your sleep?"
"The keyword! It came to me, somehow, in my sleep. The keyword – Morocco!"
"What the deuce has Morocco – ?" Captain Alec began, with justifiable impatience.
"Ah, you never heard that, and, dear Captain Alec, you wouldn't have understood it if you had. You thought he was reciting poems. What he was really doing – "
"Look here, Doctor Mary, I've just been accepted by Cynthia, and I'm going to take her to my mother and father. Can you get your mind on to that?" He looked at her curiously, not at all understanding her excitement, perhaps resenting the obvious fact that his Cynthia's happiness was not foremost in her friend's mind.
With a great effort Mary brought herself down to the earth – to the earth of romantic love from the heaven of professional triumph. True, the latter was hers, the former somebody else's. "I do beg your pardon, I do indeed. And do let me kiss you again, Cynthia darling – and you, dear Captain Alec, just once! And then you shall go off to dinner." She laughed excitedly. "Yes, I'm going to push you out."
"Let's go, Alec," said Cynthia, not unkindly, yet just a little pettishly. The great moment of her life – surely as great a moment as there had ever been in anybody's life? – had hardly earned adequate recognition from Mary. As usual, her feelings and Alec's were as one. Before they passed to other and more important matters, when they drove off in the car, she said to Alec, "It seems to me that Mary's strangely interested in that Mr. Beaumaroy. Had she been dreaming of him, Alec?"
"Looks like it! And why the devil Morocco?" His intellect baffled, Captain Alec took refuge in his affections.
Left alone – and so thankful for it! – Doctor Mary did not attempt to sit still. She walked up and down, she roved here and there, smoking any quantity of cigarettes; she would certainly have forbidden such excess to a patient. The keyword – its significance had seemed to come to her in her sleep. Something in that subconsciousness theory? The word explained, linked up, gave significance – that magical word Morocco!
Yes, they fell into place now, the things that had been so puzzling, and that looked now so obviously suggestive. Even one thing which she had thought nothing about, which had not struck her as having any significance, now took on its meaning – the grey shawl which the old gentleman so constantly wore swathed round his body, enveloping the whole of it except his right arm. Did he wear the shawl while he took his meals? Doctor Mary could not tell as to that. Perhaps he did not; at his meals only Beaumaroy, and perhaps their servant, would be present. But he seemed to wear it whenever he went abroad, whenever he was exposed to the scrutiny of strangers. That indicated secretiveness – perhaps fear – the apprehension of something. The caution bred by that might give way under the influence of great cerebral excitement. Unquestionably Mr. Saffron had been very excited when he waved the sheet of hieroglyphics and shouted to Beaumaroy about Morocco. But whether he wore the shawl or not in the safe privacy of Tower Cottage, whatever might be the truth about that – perhaps he varied his practice according to his condition – on one thing Doctor Mary would stake her life – he used the combination knife-and-fork!
For it was over that implement that Beaumaroy had tripped up. It ought to have been hidden before she was admitted to the cottage. Somebody had been careless, somebody had blundered – whether Beaumaroy himself or his servant was immaterial. Beaumaroy had lied, readily and ingeniously, but not quite readily enough. The dart of his hand had betrayed him; that, and a look in his eyes, a tell-tale mirth which had seemed to mock both her and himself, and had made his ingenious lie even at the moment unconvincing. Yes, whether Mr. Saffron wore the shawl or not, he certainly used the combination table implement!
And the "poems"? The poems which Mr. Saffron recited to himself in bed, and which he had said, in Captain Alec's hearing, were good and "went well." It was Beaumaroy, of course, who had called them poems; the Captain had merely repeated the description. But with her newly found insight Doctor Mary knew better. What Mr. Saffron declaimed, in that vibrating metallic voice, were not poems, but – speeches!
And "Morocco" itself! To anybody who remembered history for a few years back, even with the general memory of the man in the street, to anybody who had read the controversies about the war, Morocco brought not puzzle, but enlightenment. For had not Morocco been really the starting-point of the years of crisis – those years intermittent in excitement but constant in anxiety? Beaumaroy was to start to-morrow for Morocco – on the strength of the hieroglyphics! Perhaps he was to go on from Morocco to Libya; perhaps he was to raise the Senussi (Mary had followed the history of the war), to make his appearance at Cairo, Jerusalem, Baghdad! He was to be a forerunner, was Mr. Beaumaroy. Mr. Saffron, his august master, would follow in due course! With a sardonic smile she wondered how the ingenious man would get out of starting for Morocco; perhaps he would not succeed in obtaining a passport, or, that excuse failing, in eluding the vigilance of the British authorities. Or some more hieroglyphics might come, carrying another message, postponing his start, saying that the propitious moment had not yet arrived after all. There were several devices open to ingenuity; many ways in which Beaumaroy might protract a situation not so bad for him even as it stood, and quite rich in possibilities. Her acid smile was turned against herself when she remembered that she had been fool enough to talk to Beaumaroy about sensitive honour!
Well, never mind Mr. Beaumaroy! The case as to Mr. Saffron stood pretty plain. It was queer and pitiful, but by no means unprecedented. She might be not much of an alienist, as Dr. Irechester had been kind enough to suggest to Mr. Naylor, but she had seen such cases herself – even stranger ones, where even higher Powers suffered impersonation, with effects still more tragically absurd to onlookers. And she remembered reading somewhere – was it in Maudslay? – that in the days of Napoleon, when princes and kings were as ninepins to be set up and knocked down at the tyrant's pleasure, the asylums of France were full of such great folk. Potentates there galore! If she had Mr. Saffron's "record" before her, she would expect to read of a vain ostentatious man, ambitious in his own small way; the little plant of these qualities would, given a morbid physical condition, develop into the fantastic growth of delusion which she had now diagnosed in the case of Mr. Saffron – diagnosed with the assistance of some lucky accidents!
But what was her duty now – the duty of Dr. Mary Arkroyd, a duly qualified, accredited, responsible medical practitioner? With a slight shock to her self-esteem she was obliged to confess that she had only the haziest idea. Had not people who kept a lunatic to be licensed or something? Or did that apply only to lunatics in the plural? And did Beaumaroy keep Mr. Saffron within the meaning of whatever the law might be? But at any rate she must do something; the state of things at Tower Cottage could not go on as it was. The law of the land – whatever it was – must be observed, Beaumaroy must be foiled, and poor old Mr. Saffron taken proper care of. The course of her meditations was hardly interrupted by the episode of her light evening meal; she was back in her drawing-room by half-past eight, her mind engrossed with the matter still.
It was a little after nine when there was a ring at the hall door. Not the lovers back so early? She heard a man's voice in the hall. The next moment Beaumaroy was shown in, and the door shut behind him. He stood still by it, making no motion to advance towards her. He was breathing quickly, and she noticed beads of perspiration on his forehead. She had sprung to her feet at the sight of him, and faced him with indignation.
"You have no right to come here, Mr. Beaumaroy, after what passed between us this afternoon."
"Besides being, as you saw yourself, very excited, my poor old friend isn't at all well to-night."
"I'm very sorry; but I'm no longer Mr. Saffron's medical attendant. If I declined to be this afternoon, I decline ten times more to-night."
"For all I know, he's very ill indeed, Dr. Arkroyd." Beaumaroy's manner was very quiet, restrained, and formal.
"I have come to a clear conclusion about Mr. Saffron's case since I left you."
"I thought you might. I suppose 'Morocco' put you on the scent? And I suppose, too, that you looked at that wretched bit of paper?"
"I – I thought it – " Here Mary was slightly embarrassed.
"You'd have been more than human if you hadn't. I was out again after it in five minutes – as soon as I missed it; you'd gone, but I concluded you'd seen it. He scribbles dozens like that."
"You seem to admit my conclusion about his mental condition," she observed stiffly.
"I always admit when I cease to be able to deny. But don't let's stand here talking. Really, for all I know, he may be dying. His heart seems to me very bad."
"Go and ask Dr. Irechester."
"He dreads Irechester. I believe the sight of Irechester might finish him. You must come."
"I can't – for the reasons I've told you."
"Why? My misdeeds? Or your rules and regulations? My God, how I hate rules and regulations! Which of them is it that is perhaps to cost the old man his life?"
Mary could not resist the appeal; that could hardly be her duty, and certainly was not her inclination. Her grievance was not against poor old Mr. Saffron, with his pitiful delusion of greatness, of a greatness too which now had suffered an eclipse almost as tragical as that which had befallen his own reason. What an irony in his mad aping of it now!
"I will come, Mr. Beaumaroy, on condition that you give me candidly and truthfully all the information which, as Mr. Saffron's medical attendant, I am entitled to ask."
"I'll tell you all I know about him – and about myself too."
"Your affairs and – er – position matter to me only so far as they bear on Mr. Saffron."
"So be it. Only come quickly; and bring some of your things that may help a man with a bad heart."
Mary left him, went to her surgery, and was quickly back with her bag. "I'll get out the car."
"It'll take a little longer, I know, but do you mind if we walk? Cars always alarm him. He thinks that they come to take him away. Every car that passes vexes him; he looks to see if it will stop. And when yours does – " He ended with a shrug.
For the first time Mary's feelings took on a keen edge of pity. Poor old gentleman! Fancy his living like that! And cars – military cars too – had been so common on the road across the heath.
"I understand. Let us go at once. You walked yourself, I suppose?"
"Ran," said Beaumaroy, and, with the first sign of a smile, wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.
"I'm ready, Mr. Beaumaroy," said Doctor Mary.
They walked along together in silence for full half the way. Then Beaumaroy spoke. "He was extremely excited – at his worst – when he and I went into the cottage. I had to humour him in every way; it was the only thing to do. That was followed by great fatigue – a sort of collapse. I persuaded him to go to bed. I hope we shall find him there, but I don't know. He would let me go only on condition that I left the door of the Tower unlocked, so that he could go in there if he wanted to. If he has, I'm afraid that you may see something – well, something rather bizarre, Dr. Arkroyd."
"That's all in the course of my profession."
Silence fell on them again, till the outline of cottage and tower came into view through the darkness. Beaumaroy spoke only once again before they reached the garden gate.
"If he should happen to be calmer now, I hope you will not consider it necessary to tell him that you suspect anything unusual."
"He is secretive?"
"He lives in terror."
"Of what?"
"Of being shut up. May I lead the way in, Dr. Arkroyd?"
They entered the cottage, and Beaumaroy shut the door. A lamp was burning dimly in the passage. He turned it up. "Would you kindly wait here one minute?" Receiving her nod of acquiescence, he stepped softly up the stairs, and she heard him open a door above; she knew it was that of Mr. Saffron's bedroom, where she had visited the old man. She waited – now with a sudden sense of suspense. It was very quiet in the cottage.
Beaumaroy was down again in a minute.
"It is as I feared," he said quietly. "He has got up again, and gone into the Tower. Shall I try and get him out, or will you – ?"
"I will go in with you, of course, Mr. Beaumaroy."
His old mirthful, yet rueful, smile came on his lips – just for a moment. Then he was grave and formal again. "This way, then, if you please, Dr. Arkroyd," he said deferentially.
CHAPTER XI
THE CAR BEHIND THE TREES
Mr. Percy Bennett, that gentlemanly stranger, was an enemy to delay; both constitutionally and owing to experience, averse from dallying with fortune; to him a bird in his hand was worth a whole aviary on his neighbour's unrifled premises. He thought that Beaumaroy might levant with the treasure; at any moment that unwelcome, though not unfamiliar, tap on the shoulder, with the words (gratifying under quite other circumstances and from quite different lips) "I want you," might incapacitate him from prosecuting his enterprise (he expressed this idea in more homely idiom – less Latinized was his language, metaphorical indeed, yet terse); finally he had that healthy distrust of his accomplices which is essential to success in a career of crime; he thought that Sergeant Hooper might not deliver the goods!
Sergeant Hooper demurred; he deprecated inconsiderate haste; let the opportunity be chosen. He had served under Mr. Beaumaroy in France, and (whatever faults Major-General Punnit might find with that officer) preferred that he should be off the premises at the moment when Mr. Bennett and he himself made unauthorized entry thereon. "He's a hot 'un in a scrap," said the Sergeant, sitting in a public-house at Sprotsfield on Boxing Day evening, Mr. Bennett and sundry other excursionists from London being present.
"My chauffeur will settle him," said Mr. Bennett. It may seem odd that Mr. Bennett should have a chauffeur; but he had – or proposed to have —pro hac vice– or ad hoc; for this particular job in fact. Without a car that stuff at Tower Cottage – somewhere at Tower Cottage – would be difficult to shift.
The Sergeant demurred still, by no means for the sake of saving Beaumaroy's skin, but still purely for the reason already given; yet he admitted that he could not name any date on which he could guarantee Beaumaroy's absence from Tower Cottage. "He never leaves the old blighter alone later than eleven o'clock or so, and rarely as late as that."
"Then any night's about the same," said gentleman Bennett; "and now for the scheme dear N.C.O.!"
Sergeant Hooper despaired of the doors. The house-door might possibly be negotiated, though at the probable cost of arousing the notice of Beaumaroy – and the old blighter himself. But the door from the parlour into the Tower offered insuperable difficulties. It was always locked; the lock was intricate; he had never so much as seen the key at close quarters and, even had opportunity offered, was quite unpractised in the art of taking impressions of locks – a thing not done with accuracy quite so easily as seems sometimes to be assumed.
"For my own part," said Mr. Bennett with a nod, "I've always inclined to the window. We can negotiate that without any noise to speak of, and it oughtn't to take us more than a few minutes. Just deal boards, I expect! Perhaps the old gentleman and your pal Beaumaroy" (the Sergeant spat) "will sleep right through it!"
"If they ain't in the Tower itself," suggested the Sergeant gloomily.
"Wherever they may be," said gentleman Bennett, with a touch of irritability – he was himself a sanguine man and disliked a mind fertile in objections – "I suppose the stuff's in the Tower, isn't it?"
"It goes in there, and I've never seen it come out, Mr. Bennett." Here at least a tone of confidence rang in the Sergeant's voice.
"But where in the Tower, Sergeant?"
"'Ow should I know? I've never been in the blooming place."
"It's really rather a queer business," observed Mr. Bennett, allowing himself, for a moment, an outside and critical consideration of the matter.
"Damned," said the Sergeant briefly.
"But, once inside, we're bound to find it! Then – with the car – it's in London in forty minutes, and in ten more it's – where it's going to be; where that is needn't worry you, my dear Sergeant."
"What if we're seen from the road?" urged the pessimistic Sergeant.
"There's never a job about which you can't put those questions. What if Ludendorff had known just what Foch was going to do, Sergeant? At any rate anybody who sees us is two miles either way from a police station – and may be a lot farther if he tries to interfere with us! It's a hundred to one against anybody being on the road at that time of night; we'll pray for a dark night and dirty weather – which, so far as I've observed, you generally get in this beastly neighbourhood." He leant forward and tapped the Sergeant on the shoulder. "Barring accidents, let's say this day week; meanwhile, Neddy" – he smiled as he interjected "Neddy is our chauffeur" – "Neddy and I will make our little plan of attack."
"Don't be too generous! Don't leave all the V.C. chances to me," the Sergeant implored.
"Neddy's a fair glutton for 'em! Difficulty is to keep him from murder! And he stands six foot four and weighs seventeen stone."
"I'll back him up – from be'ind – company in support," grinned the Sergeant, considerably comforted by this description of his coadjutor.
"You'll occupy the station assigned to you, my man," said Mr. Bennett, with an admirable burlesque of the military manner. "The front is wherever a soldier is ordered to be – a fine saying of Lord Kitchener's! Remember it, Sergeant!"
"Yes, sir," said the Sergeant, grinning still.
He found Mr. Bennett on the whole amusing company, though occasionally rather alarming; for instance, there seemed to him to be no particular reason for dragging in Neddy's predilection for murder; though, of course, a man of his inches and weight might commit murder through some trifling and pardonable miscalculation of force. "Same as if that Captain Naylor hit you!" the Sergeant reflected, as he finished the ample portion of rum with which the conversation had been lightened. He felt pleasantly muzzy, and saw Mr. Bennett's clean-cut features rather blurred in outline. However the sandy wig and red moustache which that gentleman wore – in his character as a Boxing Day excursionist – were still salient features even to his eyes. Anybody in the room would have been able to swear to them.
Thus the date of the attack was settled and, if only it had been adhered to, things might have fallen out differently between Doctor Mary and Mr. Beaumaroy. Events would probably have relieved Mary from the necessity of presenting her ultimatum, and she might never have heard that illuminating word "Morocco." But big Neddy the Shover – as his intimate friends were wont to call him – was a man of pleasure as well as of business; he was not a bloke in an office; he liked an ample Christmas vacation and was now taking one with a party of friends at Brighton – all tip-toppers, who did the thing in style and spent their money (which was not their money) lavishly. From the attractions of this company – not composed of gentlemen only – Neddy refused to be separated. Mr. Bennett, who was on thorns at the delay, could take it or leave it at that; in any case the job was, in Neddy's opinion (which he expressed with that massive but good-humoured scorn which is an appanage of very large men), a leap in the dark, a pig in a poke, blind hookey; for who really knew how much of the stuff the old blighter and his pal had contrived to shift down to the cottage in the old brown bag? Sometimes it looked light, sometimes it looked heavy; sometimes perhaps it was full of bricks!
In this mood Neddy had to be humoured, even though gentlemanly Mr. Bennett sat on thorns. The Sergeant repined less at the delay; he liked the pickings which the job brought him much better than the job itself, standing in wholesome dread of Beaumaroy. It was rather with resignation than with joy that he received from Mr. Bennett the news that Neddy had at last named the day that would suit his High Mightiness – Tuesday the 7th of January it was, and, as it chanced, the very day before Beaumaroy was to start for Morocco! More accurately, the attack would be delivered on the actual day of his departure – if he went. For it was timed for one o'clock in the morning, an hour at which the road across the heath might reasonably be expected to be clear of traffic. This was an especially important point, in view of the fact that the window of the Tower faced towards the road and was but four or five yards distant from it.
After a jovial dinner – rather too jovial in Mr. Bennett's opinion, but that was Neddy's only fault, he would mix pleasure with business – the two set out in an Overland car. Mr. Bennett – whom, by the way, his big friend Neddy called "Mike," and not "Percy," as might have been expected – assumed his sandy wig and red moustache as soon as they were well started; Neddy scorned disguise for the moment, but he had a mask in his pocket. He also had a very nasty little club in the same pocket, whereas Mr. Bennett carried no weapon of offence – merely the tools of his trade, at which he was singularly expert. The friends had worked together before; though Neddy reviled Mike for a coward, and Mike averred, with curses, that Neddy would bring them both to the gallows some day, yet they worked well together and had a respect for one another, each allowing for the other's idiosyncrasies. The true spirit of partnership! On it alone can lasting and honourable success be built.
"Just match-boarding, the Sergeant says it is, does he?" asked Neddy, breaking a long silence, which indeed had lasted until they were across Putney Bridge and climbing the hill.
"Yes, and rotten at that. It oughtn't to take two minutes; then there'll be only the window. Of course we must have a look round first. Then, if the coast's clear, I'll nip in and shove something up against the door of the place while you're following. The Sergeant's to stay on guard at the door of the house, so that we can't be taken in the rear. See?"
"Righto!"
"Then – well, we've got to find the stuff, and when we've found it, you've got to carry it, Neddy. Don't mind if it's a bit heavy, do you?"
"I don't want to overstrain myself," said Neddy jocularly, "but I'll do my best with it – only hope it's there!"
"It must be there. Hasn't got wings, has it? At any rate, not till you put it in your pocket, and go out for an evening with the ladies!"
Neddy paid this pleasantry the tribute of a laugh, but he had one more business question to ask:
"Where are we to stow the car? How far off?"
"The Sergeant has picked out a big clump of trees, a hundred yards from the cottage on the Sprotsfield side, and about thirty yards from the road. Pretty clear going to it, bar the bracken – she'll do it easily. There she'll lie, snug as you like. As we go by Sprotsfield, the car won't have to pass the cottage at all – that's an advantage – and yet it's not over far to carry the stuff."
"Sounds all right," said Neddy placidly, and with a yawn. "Have a drop?"
"No, I won't – and I wish you wouldn't, Neddy. It makes you bad-tempered, and a man doesn't want to be bad-tempered on these jobs."
"Take the wheel a second while I have a drop," said Neddy, just for all the world as if his friend had not spoken. He unscrewed the top of a large flask and took a very considerable "drop." It was only after he had done this with great deliberation that he observed good-naturedly, "And you go to hell, Mike! It's dark, ain't it? That's a bit of all right."