The Secret of the Tower/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI
DEAD MAJESTY
Mary did not appear to answer Beaumaroy’s glance; she continued to look at, and to address herself to, Captain Alec. “I am tired, and I should love a ride home. But I’ve still a little to do, and—I know it’s awfully late, but would you mind waiting just a little while? I’m afraid I might be as much as half-an-hour.”
“Right you are, Doctor Mary—as long as you like. I’ll walk up and down, and smoke a cigar; I want one badly.” Mary made an extremely faint motion of her hand towards the house. “Oh, thanks, but really I—well, I shall feel more comfortable here, I think.”
Mary smiled; it was always safe to rely on Captain Alec’s fine feelings; under the circumstances he would—she had felt pretty sure—prefer to smoke his cigar outside the house. “I’ll be as quick as I can. Come, Mr. Beaumaroy!”
Beaumaroy followed her up the path and into the house. The Sergeant was still on the floor of the passage; he rolled apprehensive resentful eyes at them; Mary took no heed of him, but preceded Beaumaroy into the parlor and shut the door.
“I don’t know what your game is,” remarked Beaumaroy in a low voice, “but you couldn’t have played mine better. I don’t want him inside the house; but I’m mighty glad to have him extremely visible outside it.”
“It was very quiet inside there”—she pointed to the door of the Tower—“just before I came out. Before that, I’d heard odd sounds. Was there somebody there—and the Sergeant in league with him?”
“Exactly,” smiled Beaumaroy. “It is all quiet. I think I’ll have a look.”
The candle on the table had burnt out. He took another from the sideboard and lit it from the one which Mary still held.
“Like the poker?” she asked, with a flicker of a smile on her face.
“No you come and help, if I cry out!” He could not repress a chuckle; Doctor Mary was interesting him extremely.
Lighted by his candle, he went into the Tower. She heard him moving about there, as she stood thoughtfully by the extinct fire, still with her candle in her hand.
Beaumaroy returned. “He’s gone—or they’ve gone.” He exhibited to her gaze two objects—a checked pocket-handkerchief and a tobacco pouch. “Number one found on the edge of the grave—Number two on the floor of the dais, just behind the canopy. If the same man had drawn them both out of the same pocket at the same time—wanting to blow the same nose, Doctor Mary—they’d have fallen at the same place, wouldn’t they?”
“Wonderful, Holmes!” said Mary. “And now, shall we attend to Mr. Saffron?”
They carried out that office, the course of which they had originally prepared. Beaumaroy passed with his burden hard by the Sergeant, and Mary followed. In a quarter of an hour they came downstairs again, and Mary again led the way into the parlor. She went to the window, and drew the curtains aside a little way. The lights of the car were burning; the Captain’s tall figure fell within their rays and was plainly visible, strolling up and down; the ambit of the rays did not, however, embrace the Tower window. The Captain paced and smoked, patient, content, gone back to his own happy memories and anticipations. Mary returned to the table and set her candle down on it.
“All right. I think we can keep him a little longer.”
“I vote we do,” said Beaumaroy. “I reckon he’s scared the fellows away, and they won’t come back so long as they see his lights.”
Rash at conclusions sometimes—as has been seen—Beaumaroy was right in his opinion of the Captain’s value as a sentry, or a scarecrow to keep away hungry birds. The confederates had stolen back to their base of operations—to where their car lay behind the trees. There, too, no Sergeant and no sack! Neddy reached for his roomy flask, drank of it, and with hoarse curses consigned the entire course of events, his accomplices, even himself, to nethermost perdition. “That place ain’t—natural!” he ended in a gloomy conviction. “’Oo pinched that sack? The Sergeant? Well—maybe it was, and maybe it wasn’t.” He finished the flask to cure a recurrence of the shudders.
Mike prevailed with him so far that he consented—reluctantly—to be left alone on the blasted heath, while his friend went back to reconnoiter. Mike went, and presently returned; the car was still there, the tall figure was still pacing up and down.
“And perhaps the other one’s gone for the police!” Mike suggested uneasily. “Guess we’ve lost the hand, Neddy! Best be moving, eh? It’s no go for to-night.”
“Catch me trying the bloomin’ place any other night!” grumbled Neddy. “It’s given me the ’orrors, and no mistake.”
Mike—Mr. Percy Bennett, that erstwhile gentlemanly stranger—recognized one of his failures. Such things are incidental to all professions. “Our best game is to go back; if the Sergeant’s on the square, we’ll hear from him.” But he spoke without much hope; rationalist as he professed himself, still he was affected by the atmosphere of the Tower. With what difficulty do we entirely throw off atavistic notions! They both of them had, at the bottom of their minds, the idea that the dead man on the high seat had defeated them, and that no luck lay in meddling with his treasure.
“I ’ave my doubts whether that ugly Sergeant’s ’uman himself,” growled Neddy, as he hoisted his bulk into the car.
So they went back to whence they came; and the impression that the night’s adventure left upon them was heightened as the days went by. For, strange to say, though they watched all the usual channels of information, as Ministers say; in Parliament, and also tried to open up some unusual ones, they never heard anything again of the Sergeant, of the sack of gold, of the yawning tomb with its golden lining, of its silent waxen-faced enthroned guardian who had defeated them. It all—the whole bizarre scene—vanished from their ken, as though it had been one of those alluring, thwarting dreams which afflict men in sleep. It was an experience to which they were shy of alluding among their confidential friends, even of talking about between themselves. In a word—uncomfortable!
Meanwhile the Sergeant’s association with Tower Cottage had also drawn to its close. After his search and his discovery in the Tower, Beaumaroy came out into the passage where the prisoner lay, and proceeded to unfasten his bonds.
“Stand up and listen to me, Sergeant,” he said. “Your pals have run away; they can’t help you, and they wouldn’t if they could, because, owing to you, they haven’t got away with any plunder, and so they’ll be in a very bad temper with you. In the road, in front of the house, is Captain Naylor—you know that officer and his dimensions? He’s in a very temper with you too. (Here Beaumaroy was embroidering the situation; the Sergeant was not really in Captain Alec’s thoughts.) Finally, I’m in a very bad temper with you myself. If I see your ugly phiz much longer, I may break out. Don’t you think you’d better depart—by the back door—and go home? And if you’re not out of Inkston for good and all by ten o’clock in the morning, and if you ever show yourself there again, look out for squalls. What you’ve got out of this business I don’t know. You can keep it—and I’ll give you a parting present myself as well.”
“I knows a thing or two” the Sergeant began, but he saw a look that he had seen only once or twice before on Beaumaroy’s face; on each occasion it had been followed by the death of the enemy whose act had elicited it.
“Oh, try that game, just try it!” Beaumaroy muttered. “Just give me that excuse!” He advanced to the Sergeant, who fell suddenly on his knees. “Don’t make a noise, you hound, or I’ll silence you for good and all—I’d do it for twopence!” He took hold of the Sergeant’s coat-collar, jerked him on to his legs, and propelled him to the kitchen and through it to the back door. Opening it, he dispatched the Sergeant through the doorway with an accurate and vigorous kick. He fell, and lay sprawling on the ground for a second, then gathered himself up and ran hastily over the heath, soon disappearing in the darkness. The memory of Beaumaroy’s look was even keener than the sensation caused by Beaumaroy’s boot. It sent him in flight back to Inkston, thence to London, thence into the unknown, to some spot chosen for its remoteness from Beaumaroy, from Captain Naylor, from Mike and from Neddy. He recognized his unpopularity, thereby achieving a triumph in a difficult little branch of wisdom.
Beaumaroy returned to the parlor hastily; not so much to avoid keeping Captain Alec waiting—it was quite a useful precaution to have that sentry on duty a little longer—as because his curiosity and interest had been excited by the description which Doctor Mary had given of Mr. Saffron’s death. It was true, probably the precise truth, but it seemed to have been volunteered in a rather remarkable way and worded with careful purpose. Also it was the bare truth, the truth denuded of all its attendant circumstances—which had not been normal.
When he rejoined her, Mary was sitting in the armchair by the fire; she heard his account of the state of affairs up-to-date with a thoughtful smile, smoking a cigarette; her smile broadened over the tale of the water-butt. She had put on the fur cloak in which she had walked to the cottage—the fire was out and the room cold; framed in the furs, the outline of her face looked softer.
“So we stand more or less as we did before the burglars appeared on the scene,” she commented.
“Except that our personal exertions have saved that money.”
“I suppose you would prefer that all the circumstances shouldn’t come out? There have been irregularities.”
“I should prefer that, not so much on my own account—I don’t know and don’t care what they could do to me—as for the old man’s sake.”
“If I know you, I think you would rather enjoy being able to keep your secret. You like having the laugh of people. I know that myself, Mr. Beaumaroy.” She exchanged a smile with him. “You want a death certificate from me,” she added.
“I suppose I do,” Beaumaroy agreed.
“In the sort of terms in which I described Mr. Saffron’s death to Captain Alec? If I gave such a certificate, there would remain nothing—well, nothing peculiar—except the—the appearance of things in the Tower.”
Her eyes were now fixed on his face; he nodded his head with a smile of understanding. There was something new in the tone of Doctor Mary’s voice; not only friendliness, though that was there, but a note of excitement, of enjoyment, as though she also were not superior to the pleasure of having the laugh of people. “But it’s rather straining a point to say that—and nothing more. I could do it only if you made me feel that I could trust you absolutely.”
Beaumaroy made a little grimace, and waited for her to develop her subject.
“Your morality is different from most people’s, and from mine. Mine is conventional.”
“Conventual!” Beaumaroy murmured.
“Yours isn’t. It’s all personal with you. You recognize no rights in people whom you don’t like, or who you think aren’t deserving, or haven’t earned rights. And you don’t judge your own rights by what the law gives you, either. The right of conquest you called it; you hold yourself free to exercise that against everybody, except your friends, and against everybody in the interest of your friends—like poor Mr. Saffron. I believe you’d do the same for me if I asked you to.”
“I’m glad you believe that, Doctor Mary.”
“But I can’t deal with you on that basis. It’s even difficult to be friends on that basis—and certainly impossible to be partners.”
“I never suggested that we should be partners over the money,” Beaumaroy put in quickly.
“No. But I’m suggesting now—as you did before—that we should be partners—in a secret, in Mr. Saffron’s secret.” She smiled again as she added, “You can manage it all, I know, if you like. I’ve unlimited confidence in your ingenuity—quite unlimited.”
“But none at all in my honesty?”
“You’ve got an honesty; but I don’t call it a really honest honesty.”
“All this leads up to—the Radbolts!” declared Beaumaroy with & gesture of disgust.
“It does. I want your word of honor—given to a friend—that all that money—all of it—goes to the Radbolts, if it legally belongs to them. I want that in exchange for the certificate.”
“A hard bargain! It isn’t so much that I want the money—though I must remark that in my judgment I have a strong claim to it; I would say a moral claim but for my deference to your views, Doctor Mary. But it isn’t mainly that. I hate the Radbolts getting it, just as much as the old man would have hated it.”
“I have given you my—my terms,” said Mary.
Beaumaroy stood looking down at her, his hands in his pockets. His face was twisted in a humorous disgust. Mary laughed gently. “It is possible to—to keep the rules without being a prig, you know, though I believe you think it isn’t.”
“Including the sack in the water-butt? My sack, the sack I rescued?”
“Including the sack in the water-butt. Yes, every single sovereign!” Though Mary was pursuing the high moral line, there was now more mischief than gravity in her demeanor.
“Well, I’ll do it!” He evidently spoke with a great effort. “I’ll do it! But, look here, Doctor Mary, you’ll live to be sorry you made me do it. Oh, I don’t mean that that conscience of yours will be sorry. That’ll approve, no doubt, being the extremely conventionalized thing it is. But you yourself, you’ll be sorry, or I’m much mistaken in the Radbolts.”
“It isn’t a question of the Radbolts,” she insisted, laughing.
“Oh yes, it is, and you’ll come to feel it so.” Beaumaroy was equally obstinate.
Mary rose. “Then that’s settled, and we needn’t keep Captain Alec waiting any longer.”
“How do you know that I sha’n’t cheat you?” he asked.
“I don’t know how I know that,” Mary admitted. “But I do know it. And I want to tell you”
She suddenly felt embarrassed under his gaze; her cheeks flushed, but she went on resolutely:
“To tell you how glad, how happy, I am that it all ends like this; that the poor old man is free of his fancies and his fears, beyond both our pity and our laughter.”
“Aye, he’s earned rest, if there is to be rest for any of us!”
“And you can rest, too. And you can laugh with us, and not at us. Isn’t that, after all, a more human sort of laughter?”
She was smiling still as she gave him her hand, but he saw that tears stood in her eyes. The next instant she gave a little sob.
“Doctor Mary!” he exclaimed in rueful expostulation.
“No, no, how stupid you are!” She laughed through her sob. “It’s not unhappiness!” She pressed his hand tightly for an instant and then walked quickly out of the house, calling back to him, “Don’t come, please don’t come. I’d rather go to Captain Alec by myself.”
Left alone in the cottage, now so quiet and so peaceful, Beaumaroy mused a while as he smoked his pipe. Then he turned to his labors—his final night of work in the Tower. There was much to do, very much to do; he achieved his task towards morning. When day dawned, there was nothing but water in the water-butt, and in the Tower no furnishings were visible save three chairs—a high carved one by the fireplace, and two much smaller on the little platform under the window. The faded old red carpet on the floor was the only attempt at decoration. And in still one thing more the Tower was different from what it had been, Beaumaroy contented himself with pasting brown paper over the pane on which Mike had operated. He did not replace the matchboarding over the window, but stowed it away in the coal-shed. The place was horribly in need of sunshine and fresh air—and the old gentleman was no longer alive to fear the draught!
When the undertaker came up to the cottage that afternoon, he glanced from the parlor, through the open door, into the Tower.
“Driving past on business, sir,” he remarked to Beaumaroy, “I’ve often wondered what the old gentleman did with that there Tower. But it looks as if he didn’t make no use of it.”
“We sometimes stored things in it,” said Beaumaroy. “But, as you see, there’s nothing much there now.”
But then the undertaker, worthy man, could not see through the carpet, or through the lid of Captain Duggle’s grave. That was full—fuller than it had been at any period of its history. In it lay the wealth, the scepter, and the trappings of dead Majesty. For wherein did Mr. Saffron’s dead Majesty differ from the dead Majesty of other Kings?