The Skeleton Key/Chapter 18
CHAPTER XVIII
THE BARON RETURNS
(From the Bickerdike MS.)
I had a long and interesting interview with Sir Calvin's lawyers, when I used the occasion to unburden my mind of some of the misgivings which had been disturbing it. I spoke theoretically, of course, and without prejudice, and no doubt considerably impressed my hearers, who were very earnest with me to keep my own counsel in the matter until one of the partners could run down—which he would do in the course of a few days—to examine into all the circumstances of the case on the spot; and, above all, not to let the Baron guess that he was in any way an object of my suspicion. They had, of course, heard of the murder and its sequel, and had been expecting their client's instructions for the defence. They were very sympathetic, but naturally cautious about advancing any opinion one way or the other at this stage of the affair, and the gist of the matter was relegated for discussion in diem. I do not, however, describe the interview at greater length for the simple reason that, as things came to turn out, it bore no eventual fruit. But that will appear.
I stayed three nights in town, and returned to Wildshott on the fourth day from my leaving it. Going to Sir Calvin's study straightway, and being bidden to enter, what was my chagrin and astonishment to find the Baron already in the room before me, having anticipated my own return by some twelve hours or so. He was seated talking with his host—on some matter of grave import, I at once assumed, from the serious expression on the faces of the two. Even Le Sage's habitual levity appeared subdued, while as to the General, I thought he looked like a man in process of rallying from some great shock or recent illness. He sat with his head hunched into his shoulders, all the starch gone from him, and with a fixed white stare in his eyes, as if he were battling with some inward torment. What had the man been saying or doing to him? My gorge rose; I was seized with a fierce anger and foreboding. Was I witnessing the effects of that very villain blow so apprehended by me as in course of preparing when that significant journey to London was first announced? My eyes, instinctively hawking for evidence, pounced on the embrasure which contained the safe. The curtain was drawn aside, the door open; and on the table near Sir Calvin stood a packet of papers, the tape which had bound them fallen to the carpet. Had he by chance been learning for the first time of his loss—and too late? I was tired, and my temper, perhaps, was short. In my infinite disgust at discovering how this man had stolen a march on me, I made little attempt to control it. 'What, you back!' I exclaimed, for my only greeting.
'And you!' he responded placidly. 'This is a happy coincidence, Mr Bickerdike.'
I passed him, and went to shake Sir Calvin by the hand. The look of my poor friend as he gave me formal welcome inflamed my anger to that degree that I could contain myself no longer. I felt, too, that the moment had come; that it would be criminal in myself to postpone it longer; that I must give this fellow to understand that his villainy had not passed wholly undetected and unrecorded. Forgetting, I confess, in my exasperation, my promise to the lawyers, I turned on him in an irresistible impulse of passion.
'How, sir,' I said, 'have you succeeded in reducing my friend the General to this state?'
There followed a moment's startled silence, and then Sir Calvin stiffened, and sat up, and cleared his throat.
'Bickerdike,' he said, 'don't be a damned ass!'
'That's as it may be, sir,' I said, now in a towering rage. 'You shall judge of the extent of my folly when you have heard what I insist upon making known to you.'
He sat looking at me in a frowning, wondering sort of way; then shrugged his shoulders.
'Very well—if you insist,' he said.
'I have no alternative,' I answered. 'If I am to do my duty, as I consider it, at this crucial pass, when the life of a dear friend hangs in the balance, all stuff of punctilio must be let go to the winds. If I hold the opinion that an evil influence is at work in this house, operating somehow to sinister but mysterious ends, it would be wickedness on my part to withhold the evidence on which that opinion is founded. I do think such an influence is at work, and I claim the condition in which I now find you as some justification for my belief.'
'You are quite mistaken,' said my host, 'utterly mistaken.'
I bowed. 'Very well, sir; and I only wish I were as mistaken about the character of this gentleman whom you have admitted to your acquaintance and your hospitality.'
Sir Calvin looked at Le Sage, who sat still all this time with a perfectly unruffled countenance. He laughed now good humouredly, and bent forward to take a pinch of snuff.
'Come, come, Mr Bickerdike,' he expostulated, brushing the dust from his waistcoat; 'of what do you accuse me?'
'That is soon said,' I answered, 'and said more easily than one can explain the general impression of underhandedness one receives from you. I intend to be explicit, and I accuse you to your face of having secretly left your room one midnight, when the house was asleep' (I gave the date) 'and stolen a paper from Sir Calvin's desk here.'
He looked at me oddly.
'To be sure,' he said. 'Do you know, Mr Bickerdike, your half-face looking round the post that night reminded me so ludicrously of those divided portraits one sees in picture-restorers' shops that I was near bursting into laughter.'
'You may have eyes in your ears,' I cried, rallying from the shock; 'but that is not an answer to my charge.'
He turned to Sir Calvin: 'The sixty-four Knight move problem: you remember: I told you that, not being able to sleep, I had come down to borrow it from your desk, and work it out in the small hours.'
The General nodded, and looked at me.
'Upon my word, Bickerdike,' he said, 'you mustn't bring these unfounded charges. I don't know what's put this stuff about the Baron into your head; but you must understand that he's my very good friend, and much better known to me than he seems to be to you. Come, if I were you, I'd just apologize and say no more about it.'
It was the collapse of my life. I will own to it fairly, and save my credit at least for a sense of humour. To think that all this time I had been building such a structure on such a foundation! I was bitterly mortified, bitterly humbled; but I trust that I did the gentlemanly thing in at once accepting Sir Calvin's advice. I went straight up to the Baron and apologized.
'It seems I've been making a fool of myself,' I said.
'And I know how that must distress you,' he answered heartily. 'Think no more about it. Your motive has been all through an excellent one—to help your friend at somebody else's expense; and if I've failed you at a pinch, it's not for want of a real good try on your part. And as to my underhand ways'
'O, they necessarily disappear with the rest,' I interrupted him. 'When one's moon-stricken one sees a bogey in every bush.'
'Well, well,' said Sir Calvin impatiently. 'That's enough said. We hadn't quite done our talk when you came in, Bickerdike. Shut the door when you go out, there's a good fellow.'
The hint was plain to starkness. I slunk away, feeling my tail between my legs. In the hall, to add to my discomfiture, I came upon Audrey. Her face fell on seeing me.
'O, have you come back?' she said in a discharmed voice, fairly paying me with my own bad coin.
'Yes,' I said: 'and now I have, everybody seems to love me.'
She looked at me queerly.
'The Baron has returned too: isn't that delightful?' She laughed and moved away, then came again, on a mischievous thought: 'O, by the by! There was another thing I might have told you about him the other day. All the half-crowns he wins at chess he puts into a benevolent fund for poor chess-players. He says a half-crown on a game is like a Benedictine—neither too much nor too little. It is just enough to bring out the brilliancy in a player without intoxicating him.'
I said meekly, 'Yes, Audrey. I expect he is very right; and it is a good thought of his for the poor Professors.'
She stood staring at me a moment, said 'What is the matter with you?' then turned away, moving much more slowly than before.
All the wind seemed knocked out of me by this blow, and I remained in a very depressed mood. It was my greatest mortification to realize on what vain and empty illusions I had been building a case for my friend. I will do myself so much justice. But whatever I planned seemed to go wrong. I had better retire, I thought, and leave it to better heads than mine to grapple with the problem. Nor did my amour-propre achieve any particular reinstatement for itself from my interview with Sir Calvin on the subject of my journey, made entirely on his behalf. I found him, when at length he called me to it, very distrait, and I thought not particularly interested in what I had to tell him. He seemed to listen attentively, but in fact his answers proved that he had done nothing of the sort. Everything since my return appeared somehow wrong and peculiar. It might have struck one almost as if a cloud had passed away, and a threatened tempest been forgotten. And yet Hugo was in his prison, and nothing new that I could see had happened. I told his father, as he had asked me to do, about the circumstances of his wrong-doing, and even in that failed greatly to interest the General. He did not appear to be particularly shocked. No doubt his principles in such respects were old-fashioned, and took for their text that licentious proverb which, in the name of love and war, exempts a gentleman from those bonds of truth and honour which alone make him one. He was in a strange state altogether, distraught, nervous, excited by turns, and yet always with a look about him which I should have described as exultant pride at high tension. What was the meaning of everything?
During the following day or two I kept myself studiously in the background, proffering no opinions on anything, and only pleading mutely to be put to any use I could reasonably serve. My attitude commended itself to Audrey at last. 'Frank and the Baron,' she once said to me, 'have been meeting and having a long talk together. I wonder if you will disapprove, Mr Bickerdike?'
'Two heads are better than one,' I answered, 'and as good as three when the Baron's is counted in. I'm not sure you weren't right, Audrey, and that I'm not a worse judge of character than I supposed.'
She looked at me in that queer way of hers.
'That's jolly decent of you,' she said; 'and so I'll say the same to you. It's something to be a gentleman, after all.'
Cryptic, but meant to be propitiatory. I forgave her. She had recovered her spirits wonderfully. She knew, or felt, I think, that something was in the air, though she could not tell what, and it made her confident and happy. I fancy it was her dear friend the Baron who kept her on that prick of expectancy, without quite letting her into the secret. Sometimes now she would even condescend to speak with me.
'Do you know,' she said one day, 'that Sergeant Ridgway is coming down again from Scotland Yard to see us?'
'No!' I exclaimed. 'He can't have the atrocious bad taste.'
'O, but he is!' she said. 'The First Commissioner, or the Public Prosecutor, or the Lord High Executioner, or somebody, isn't satisfied with Henstridge's evidence, and he's got to come down and go through all that part of it again. He's to be here to-morrow to see my father at two o'clock.'
'Well,' I said, 'I hope we shan't run across one another, that's all.'
'No,' she answered, in a rather funny way: 'I don't suppose you exactly love him.'
I will say no more, since I have reached the threshold of that extraordinary event which was to falsify at a blow every theory which I, in common with hundreds of others, had built up and elaborated about the Wildshott Murder Case.