A little sound came to him in the darkness. The Skirme was chuckling again.
9 KNOCK-OUT DROPS
I
John woke late next day, and in the moment between sleeping and waking was dimly conscious of a feeling of extraordinary happiness. For some reason, which he could not immediately analyse, the world seemed suddenly to have become the best of all possible worlds. Then he remembered, and sprang out of bed with a shout.
Emily, lying curled up in her basket, her whole appearance that of a dog who has come home with the milk, raised a drowsy head. Usually it was her custom to bustle about and lend a hand while John bathed and dressed, but this morning she did not feel equal to it. Deciding that it was too much trouble even to tell him about the man she had seen in the grounds last night, she breathed heavily twice and returned to her slumbers.
Having dressed and come out into the open, John found that he had missed some hours of what appeared to be the most perfect morning in the world's history. The stable-yard was a well of sunshine: light breezes whispered in the branches of the cedars: fleecy clouds swam in a sea of blue: and from the direction of the home farm there came the soothing crooning of fowls. His happiness swelled into a feeling of universal benevolence towards all created things. He looked upon the birds and found them all that birds should be: the insects which hummed in the sunshine were, he perceived, a quite superior brand of insect: he even felt fraternal towards a wasp which came flying about his face. And when the Dex-Mayo rolled across the bridge of the moat and Bolt, applying the brakes, drew up at his side, he thought he had never seen a nicer-looking chauffeur.
'Good morning, Bolt,' said John, effusively.
'Good morning, sir.'
'Where have you been off to so early?'
'Mr Carmody sent me to Worcester, sir, to leave a bag for him at Shrub Hill station. If you're going into the house, Mr John, perhaps you wouldn't mind giving him the ticket?'
John was delighted. It was a small kindness that the chauffeur was asking, and he wished it had been in his power to do something for him on a bigger scale. However, the chance of doing even small kindnesses was something to be grateful for on a morning like this. He took the ticket and put it in his pocket.
'How are you, Bolt?'
'All right, thank you, sir.'
'How's Mrs Bolt?'
'She's all right, Mr John.'
'How's the baby?'
'The baby's all right.'
'And the dog?'
'The dog's all right, sir.'
'That's splendid,' said John. 'That's great. That's fine. That's capital. I'm delighted.'
He smiled a radiant smile of cheeriness and goodwill, and turned towards the house. However much the heart may be uplifted, the animal in a man insists on demanding breakfast, and though John was practically pure spirit this morning, he was not blind to the fact that a couple of eggs and a cup of coffee would be no bad thing. As he reached the door, he remembered that Mrs Bolt had a canary and that he had not inquired after that, but decided that the moment had gone by. Later on, perhaps. He opened the back door and made his way to the morning-room, where eggs abounded and coffee could be had for the asking. Pausing only to tickle a passing cat under the ear and make chirruping noises to it, he went in.
The morning-room was empty, and there were signs that the rest of the party had already breakfasted. John was glad of it. Genially disposed though he felt towards his species today, he relished the prospect of solitude. A man who is about to picnic on Wenlock Edge in perfect weather with the only girl in the world wants to meditate, not to make conversation.
So thoroughly had his predecessors breakfasted that he found, on inspecting the coffee-pot, that it was empty. He rang the bell.
'Good morning, Sturgis,' he said affably,as the butler appeared. 'You might give me some more coffee, will you?'
The butler of Rudge Hall was a little man with snowy hair who had been placidly withering in Mr Carmody's service for the last twenty years. John had known him ever since he could remember, and he had always been just the same – frail and venerable and kindly and dried-up. He looked exactly like the Good Old Man in a touring melodrama company.
'Why, Mr John! I thought you were in London.'
'I got back late last night. And very glad,' said John heartily, 'to be back. How's the rheumatism, Sturgis?'
'Rather troublesome, Mr John.'
John was horrified. Could these things be on such a day as this?
'You don't say so?'
'Yes, Mr John. I was awake the greater portion of the night.'
'You must rub yourself with something and then go and lie down and have a good rest. Where do you feel it mostly?'
'In the limbs, Mr John. It comes on in sharp twinges.'
'That's bad. By Jove, yes, that's bad. Perhaps this fine weather will make it better.'
'I hope so, Mr John.'
'So do I, so do I,' said John earnestly. 'Tell me, where is everybody?'
'Mr Hugo and the young gentleman went up to London.'
'Of course, yes. I was forgetting.'
'Mr Molloy and Miss Molloy finished their breakfast some little time ago, and are now out in the garden.'
'Ah, yes. And my uncle?'
'He is up in the picture-gallery with the policeman, Mr John.'
John stared.
'With the what?'
'With the policeman, Mr John, who's come about the burglary.'
'Burglary?'
'Didn't you hear, Mr John, we had a burglary last night?'
The world being constituted as it is, with Fate waiting round almost every corner with its sand-bag, it is not often that we are permitted to remain for long undisturbed in our moods of exaltation. John came down to earth swiftly.
'Good heavens!'
'Yes, Mr John. And if you could spare the time to allow me . . .'
Remorse gripped John. He felt like a sentinel who, falling asleep at his post, has allowed the enemy to creep past him in the night.
'I must go up and see about this.'
'Very good, Mr John. But if I might have a word . . .'
'Some other time, Sturgis.'
He ran up the stairs to the picture-gallery. Mr Carmody and Rudge's one policeman were examining something by the window, and John, in the brief interval which elapsed before they became aware of his presence, was enabled to see the evidence of the disaster. Several picture-frames, robbed of their contents, gaped at him like blank windows. A glass case containing miniatures had been broken and rifled. The Elizabethan salt-cellar presented to Amyas Carmody by the Virgin Queen herself was no longer in its place.
'Gosh!' said John.
Mr Carmody and his companion turned.
'John! I thought you were in London.'
'I came back last night.'
'Did you see or observe or hear anything of this business?' asked the policeman.
Constable Mould was one of the slowest-witted men in Rudge and he had eyes like two brown puddles filmed over with scum, but he was doing his best to look at John keenly.
'No.'
'Why not?'
'I wasn't here.'
'You said you were, sir,' Constable Mould pointed out cleverly.
'I mean, I wasn't anywhere near the house,' replied John impatiently. 'Immediately I arrived I went out for a row on the moat.'
'Then you did not see or observe anything?'
'No.'
Constable Mould, who had been licking the tip of his pencil and holding a note-book in readiness, subsided disappointedly.
'When did this happen?' asked John.
'It is impossible to say,' replied Mr Carmody. 'By a most unfortunate combination of circumstances the house was virtually empty from almost directly after dinner. Hugo and his friend, as you know, left for London yesterday morning. Mr Molloy and his daughter took the car to Birmingham to see a play. And I myself retired to bed early with a headache. The man could have effected an entrance without being observed almo
st any time after eight o'clock. No doubt he actually did break in shortly before midnight.'
'How did he get in?'
'Undoubtedly through this window by means of a ladder.'
John perceived that the glass of the window had been cut out.
'Another most unfortunate thing,' proceeded Mr Carmody, 'is that the objects stolen, though so extremely valuable, are small in actual size. The man could have carried them off without any inconvenience. No doubt they are miles away by this time, possibly even in London.'
'Was this here stuff insured?' asked Constable Mould.
'Yes. Curiously enough, the reason my nephew here went to London yesterday was to increase the insurance. You saw to that matter, John?'
'Oh, yes.' John spoke absently. Like everybody else who has ever found himself on the scene of a recently committed burglary, he was looking about for clues. 'Hullo!'
'What is the matter?'
'Did you see this?'
'Certainly I saw it,' said Mr Carmody.
'I saw it first,' said Constable Mould.
'The man must have cut his finger getting in.'
'That's what I thought,' said Constable Mould.
The combined Mould-Carmody-John discovery was a bloodstained finger-print on the woodwork of the window-sill: and, like so many things in this world, it had at first sight the air of being much more important than it really was. John said he considered it valuable evidence, and felt damped when Mr Carmody pointed out that its value was decreased by the fact that it was not easy to search through the whole of England for a man with a cut finger.
'I see,' said John.
Constable Mould said he had seen it right away.
'The only thing to be done, I suppose,' said Mr Carmody resignedly, 'is to telephone to the police in Worcester. Not that they will be likely to effect anything, but it is as well to observe the formalities. Come downstairs with me, Mould.'
They left the room, the constable, it seemed to John, taking none too kindly to the idea that there were higher powers in the world of detection than himself. His uncle, he considered, had shown a good deal of dignity in his acceptance of the disaster. Many men would have fussed and lost their heads, but Lester Carmody remained calm. John thought it showed a good spirit.
He wandered about the room, hoping for more and better clues. But the difficulty confronting the novice on these occasions is that it is so hard to tell what is a clue and what is not. Probably, if he only knew, there were clues lying about all over the place, shouting to him to pick them up. But how to recognize them? Sherlock Holmes can extract a clue from a wisp of straw or a flake of cigar-ash. Doctor Watson has to have it taken out for him and dusted and exhibited clearly with a label attached. John was forced reluctantly to the conclusion that he was essentially a Doctor Watson. He did not rise even to the modest level of a Scotland Yard Bungler.
He awoke from a reverie to find Sturgis at his side.
II
'Ah, Sturgis,' said John absently.
He was not particularly pleased to see the butler. The man looked as if he were about to dodder, and in moments of intense thought one does not wish to have doddering butlers around one.
'Might I have a word, Mr John?'
John supposed he might, though he was not frightfully keen about it. He respected Sturgis's white hairs, but the poor old ruin had horned in at an unfortunate moment.
'My rheumatism was very bad last night, Mr John.'
John recognized the blunder he had made in being so sympathetic just now. At the time, feeling, as he had done, that all mankind were his little brothers, to inquire after and display a keen interest in Sturgis's rheumatism had been a natural and, one might say, unavoidable act. But now he regretted it. He required every cell in his brain for this very delicate business of clue-hunting, and it was maddening to be compelled to call a number of them off duty to attend to gossip about a butler's swollen joints. A little coldly he asked Sturgis if he had ever tried Christian Science.
'It kept me awake a very long time, Mr John.'
'I read in a paper the other day that bee-stings sometimes have a good effect.'
'Bee-stings, sir?'
'So they say. You get yourself stung by bees, and the acid or whatever it is in the sting draws out the acid or whatever it is in you.'
Sturgis was silent for awhile, and John supposed he was about to ask if he could direct him to a good bee. Such, however, was not the butler's intention. It was Sturgis the old retainer with the welfare of Rudge Hall nearest his heart – not Sturgis the sufferer from twinges in the limbs – who was present now in the picture-gallery.
'It is very kind of you, Mr John,' he said, 'to interest yourself, but what I wished to have a word with you about was this burglary of ours last night.'
This was more the stuff. John became heartier.
'A most mysterious affair, Sturgis. The man apparently climbed in through this window, and no doubt escaped the same way.'
'No, Mr John. That's what I wished to have a word with you about. He went away down the front stairs.'
'What! How do you know?'
'I saw him, Mr John.'
'You saw him?'
'Yes, Mr John. Owing to being kept awake by my rheumatism.'
The remorse which had come upon John at the moment when he had first heard the news of the burglary was as nothing to the remorse which racked him now. Just because this fine old man had one of those mild, goofy faces and bleated like a sheep when he talked, he had dismissed him without further thought as a dodderer. And all the time the splendid old fellow, who could not help his face and was surely not to be blamed if age had affected his vocal cords, had been the God from the Machine, sent from heaven to assist him in getting to the bottom of this outrage. There is no known case on record of a man patting a butler on the head, but John at this moment came very near to providing one.
'You saw him!'
'Yes, Mr John.'
'What did he look like?'
'I couldn't say, Mr John, not really definite.'
'Why couldn't you?'
'Because I did not really see him.'
'But you said you did.'
'Yes, Mr John, but only in a manner of speaking.'
John's new-born cordiality waned a little. His first estimate, he felt, had been right. This was doddering, pure and simple.
'How do you mean, only in a manner of speaking?'
'Well, it was like this, Mr John . . .'
'Look here,' said John. 'Tell me the whole thing right from the start.'
Sturgis glanced cautiously at the door. When he spoke, it was in a lowered voice, which gave his delivery the effect of a sheep bleating with cotton-wool in its mouth.
'I was awake with my rheumatism last night, Mr John, and at last it come on so bad I felt I really couldn't hardly bear it no longer. I lay in bed, thinking, and after I had thought for quite some time, Mr John, it suddenly crossed my mind that Mr Hugo had once remarked, while kindly interesting himself in my little trouble, that a glassful of whisky, drunk without water, frequently alleviated the pain.'
John nodded. So far, the story bore the stamp of truth. A glassful of neat whisky was just what Hugo would have recommended for any complaint, from rheumatism to a broken heart.
'So I thought in the circumstances that Mr Carmody would not object if I tried a little. So I got out of bed and put on my overcoat, and I had just reached the head of the stairs, it being my intention to go to the cellarette in the dining-room, when what should I hear but a noise.'
'What sort of noise?'
'A sort of sneezing noise, Mr John. As it might be somebody sneezing.'
'Yes? Well?'
'I was stottled.'
'Stottled? Oh, yes, I see. Well?'
'I remained at the head of the stairs. For quite a while I remained at the head of the stairs. Then I crope . . .'
'You what?'
'I crope to the door of the picture-gallery.'
'Oh, I se
e. Yes?'
'Because the sneezing seemed to have come from there. And then I heard another sneeze. Two or three sneezes, Mr John. As if whoever was in there had got a nasty cold in the head. And then I heard footsteps coming towards the door.'
'What did you do?'
'I went back to the head of the stairs again, sir. If anybody had told me half an hour before that I could have moved so quick I wouldn't have believed him. And then out of the door came a man carrying a bag. He had one of those electric torches. He went down the stairs, but it was only when he was at the bottom that I caught even a glimpse of his face.'
'But you did then?'
'Yes, Mr John, for just a moment. And I was stottled.'
'Why? You mean he was somebody you knew?'
The butler lowered his voice again.
'I could have sworn, Mr John, it was that Doctor Twist who came over here the other day from Healthward Ho.'
'Doctor Twist!'
'Yes, Mr John. I didn't tell the policeman just now, and I wouldn't tell anybody but you, because after all it was only a glimpse, as you might say, and I couldn't swear to it, and there's defamation of character to be considered. So I didn't mention it to Mr Mould when he was inquiring of me. I said I'd heard nothing, being in my bed at the time. Because, apart from defamation of character and me not being prepared to swear on oath, I wasn't sure how Mr Carmody would like the idea of my going to the dining-room cellarette even though in agonies of pain. So I'd be much obliged if you would not mention it to him, Mr John.'
'I won't.'
'Thank you, sir.'
'You'd better leave me to think this over, Sturgis.'
'Very good, Mr John.'
'You were quite right to tell me.'
'Thank you, Mr John. Are you coming downstairs to finish your breakfast, sir?'
John waved away the material suggestion.
'No. I want to think.'
'Very good, Mr John.'
Left alone, John walked to the window and frowned meditatively out. His brain was now working with a rapidity and clearness which the most professional of detectives might have envied. For the first time since his cousin Hugo had come to him to have his head repaired he began to realize that there might have been something, after all, in that young man's rambling story. Taken in conjunction with what Sturgis had just told him, Hugo's weird tale of finding Doctor Twist burgling the house became significant.