Kitabı oku: «The Camera Fiend», sayfa 9
A LIKELY STORY
At that moment help was as far away as it had been near the day before, when Eugene Thrush was closeted in the doctor's dining-room; for not only had Mr. Upton decamped for Leicestershire, without a word of warning to anybody, on the Saturday afternoon, but Thrush himself had followed by the only Sunday train.
A bell was ringing for evening service when he landed in a market town which reversed the natural order by dozing all summer and waking up for the hunting season. And now the famous grass country was lying in its beauty-sleep, under a gay counterpane of buttercups and daisies, and leafy coverts, with but one blot in the sky-line, in the shape of a permanent plume of sluggish smoke. But the works lay hidden, and the hall came first; and Thrush, having ascertained that this was it, abandoned the decrepit vessel he had boarded at the station, and entered the grounds on foot.
A tall girl, pacing the walks with a terribly anxious face, was encountered and accosted before he reached the house.
“I believe Mr. Upton lives here. Can you tell me if he's at home? I want to see him about something.”
Lettice flushed and shrank.
“I know who you are! Have you found my brother?”
“No; not yet,” said Thrush, after a pause. “But you take my breath away, my dear young lady! How could you be so sure of me? Is it no longer to be kept a secret, and is that why your father bolted out of town without a word?”
“It's still a secret,” whispered Lettice, as though the shrubs had ears, “only I'm in it. Nobody else is – nobody fresh – but I guessed, and my mother was beginning to suspect. My father never stays away a Sunday unless he's out of England altogether; she couldn't understand it, and was worrying so about him that I wired begging him to come back if only for the night. So it's all my fault, Mr. Thrush; and I know everything but what you've come down to tell us!”
“That's next to nothing,” he shrugged. “It's neither good nor bad. But if you can find your father I'll tell you both exactly what I have found out.”
In common with all his sex, he liked and trusted Lettice at sight, without bestowing on her a passing thought as a person capable of provoking any warmer feeling. She was the perfect sister – that he felt as instinctively as everybody else – and a woman to trust into the bargain. It would be cruel and quite unnecessary to hide anything from that fine and unselfish face. So he let her lead him to a little artificial cave, lined and pungent with pitch-pine, over against the rhododendrons, while she went to fetch her father quietly from the house.
The ironmaster amplified the excuses already made for him; he had rushed for the first train after getting his daughter's telegram, leaving but a line for Thrush with his telephone number, in the hopes that he would use it whether he had anything to report or not.
“As you didn't,” added Mr. Upton, in a still aggrieved voice, “I've been trying again and again to ring you up instead; but of course you were never there, nor your man Mullins either. I was coming back by the last train, however, and should have been with you late to-night.”
“Did you leave the motor behind?”
“Yes; it'll be there to meet me at St. Pancras.”
“It may have to do more than that,” said Thrush, spreading his full breadth on the pitch-pine seat. “I've found out something; how much or how little it's too soon to tell; but I wasn't going to discuss it through a dozen country exchanges as long as you wanted the thing a dead secret, Mr. Upton, and that's why I didn't ring you up. As for your last train, I'd have waited to meet it in town, only that wouldn't have given me time to say what I've got to say before one or other of us may have to rush off somewhere else by another last train.”
“Do for God's sake say what you've got to say!” cried Mr. Upton.
“Well, I've seen a man who thinks he may have seen the boy!”
“Alive?”
“And perfectly well – but for his asthma – on Thursday.”
The ironmaster thanked God in a dreadful voice; it was Lettice who calmed him, not he her. Her eyes only shone a little, but his were blinded by the first ray of light.
“Where was it?” he asked, when he could ask anything.
“I'll tell you in a minute. I want first to be convinced that it really was your son. Did the boy take any special interest in Australia?”
“Rather!” cried Lettice, the sister of three boys.
“What kind of interest?”
“He wanted to go out there. It had just been talked about.” She looked at her father. “I wouldn't let him go,” he said. “Why?”
“I want to know just how it came to be talked about.”
“A fool of a doctor in town recommended it.”
Lettice winced, but Thrush nodded as though that tallied.
“Did he recommend any particular vessel?”
“Yes, a sailing ship – the Seringapatam — an old East Indiaman they've turned into a kind of floating hospital. I wouldn't hear of the beastly tub.”
“Do you know when she was to sail?”
“I did know,” said Lettice. “I believe it was just about now.”
“She sailed yesterday,” said Thrush, impressively; “and your brother, if it was your brother, talked a good deal about her to this man. He told him all about your having always been in favour of it, Miss Upton, and his father not. I'm bound to say it sounds as though it may have been the boy.”
Thrush seemed to be keeping something back; but the prime and absorbing question of identity prevented the others from noticing this.
“It must have been!” cried Mr. Upton. “Who was the man, and where exactly did he see him?”
“First on Thursday morning, and last on Thursday night. But perhaps I'd better tell you about my informant, since we've only his word for Thursday, and only his suspicions as to what has happened since. In the first place he's a semi-public man, though I don't suppose you know his name. It's Baumgartner – Dr. Otto Baumgartner – a German scientist of some distinction.”
The ironmaster made a remark which did him little credit, and Thrush continued with some pride: “There was some luck in it, of course, for he was the very first man I struck who'd bought d'Auvergne Cigarettes since Wednesday; but I was on his doorstep well within twenty-four hours of hearing that your son was missing; and you may chalk that up to A. V. M.! I might have been with him some hours sooner still, but I preferred to spend them getting to know something about my man. I tried his nearest shops; perfect mines! One was a chemist, who didn't know him by sight, and had never heard of the cigarettes, but remembered being asked for them by an elderly gentleman last Thursday morning! That absolutely confirmed my first suspicion that Baumgartner himself was not the asthmatic; if he had been, the nearest chemist would have known all about him. Yet he had gone to the nearest chemist first!”
“The nearest butcher was next door; but he was so short about Baumgartner that I scented a true-green vegetarian. It was a false scent, Mr. Upton; not to mention the baker and the candlestick-maker, there's a little restaurant in the same row, which was about the fifth place where I began by asking if they knew where a Dr. Baumgartner lived in that neighbourhood. The little Italian boss was all over me on the spot! The worthy doctor proved to be his most regular customer, having all his meals sent in hot from the restaurant in quite the Italian manner. I don't suppose you see how very valuable this was to me. Germans love Italy, the little man explained; but I said that was the one point on which I should never yield to Germany – and I thought I was going to be kissed across the counter! It seems the good doctor lives alone with his niece (not always even her), and keeps no servants and never entertains. Yet on Friday, for the first time since the arrangement was made, the old chap went to the restaurant himself to complain of short commons; there had not been enough for them to eat on the Thursday night!”
“Had they been alone?” asked Mr. Upton, with a puzzled face.
“That's the whole point! My little Florentine understood they were, but I deduced one extra, and then conceived a course that may astonish you. It was the bold course; but it nearly always pays. I lunched at my leisure (an excellent Chianti my little friend keeps) and afterwards went round and saw the doctor himself. The niece opened the door – I wish I'd seen more of her – but she fetched her uncle at once and I begged for an interview on an urgent matter. He consented in a way that, I must say, impressed me very favourably; and the moment we were alone I said, ‘I want to know, Doctor, who you bought those asthma cigarettes for last Thursday!’ ”
“That took him aback, but not unduly; so then I added, ‘I'm an inquiry agent with a very delicate case in hand, and if you'll tell me it may solve at heart-breaking a mystery as I've ever handled.’ Is was treating him like a gentleman, but I believe in that; there's no shorter cut to whether a man is one or not.”
“Well, his face had lit up, and a very fine face it is; it hadn't blackened for the fifth of a second; but I had a disappointment in store. ‘I'd tell you his name with all my heart,’ he said, ‘only I don't really know it myself. He said it was John Green – but his handkerchiefs were marked “A. A. U.” ’ ”
“Tony's initials!” cried Tony's father.
“But it never was Tony under a false name,” his sister vowed. “That settles it for me, Mr. Thrush.”
“Not even if he'd got into some scrape or adventure, Miss Upton?”
“He would never give a name that wasn't his.”
“Suppose he felt he had disgraced his name?”
“My brother Tony wouldn't do it!”
“He might feel he had?”
“He might,” the father agreed, “even if he'd done no such thing; in fact, he's just the kind of boy who would take an exaggerated view of some things.” His mind went back to his last talk with Horace on the subject.
“Or he might feel he was about to do something, shall we say, unworthy of you all?” Thrush made the suggestion with much delicacy.
“Then I don't think he'd do it,” declared loyal Lettice.
“Let us hear what you think he did,” said Mr. Upton.
“It's not what I think; it's what this man Baumgartner thinks, and his story that you ought to hear.”
And that which they now heard at second-hand was in fact a wonderfully true version – up to a point – of poor Pocket's condition and adventures – with the sleep-walking and the shooting left out – from the early morning of his meeting with Baumgartner until the late afternoon of that day.
Baumgartner had actually described the boy's long sleep in his chair; it was with the conversation when he awoke that the creative work began in earnest.
“That's a good man!” said Mr. Upton, with unimaginable irony. “I'd like to take him by the hand – and those infernal Knaggses by the scruff of their dirty necks – and that old hag Harbottle by the hair!”
“I think of dear darling Tony,” said Lettice, in acute distress; “lying out all night with asthma – it was enough to kill him – or to send him out of his mind.”
“I wonder if it could have done that,” remarked Thrush, in a tone of serious speculation which he was instantly called upon to explain.
“What are you keeping back?” cried Lettice, the first to see that he had been keeping something all this time.
“Only something he'd kept back from them,” replied Thrush, with just a little less than his usual aplomb. “It was a surprise he sprang on them after waking; it will probably surprise you still more, Mr. Upton. You may not believe it. I'm not certain that I do myself. In the morning he had spoken of the Australian voyage as though you'd opposed it, but withdrawn your opposition – one moment, if you don't mind! In the evening he suddenly explained that he was actually sailing in the Seringapatam, that his baggage was already on board, and he must get aboard himself that night!”
“I don't believe it, Thrush.”
“No more do I, father, for a single instant. Tony, of all people!”
Thrush looked from one to the other with a somewhat disingenuous eye. “I don't say I altogether accept it myself; that's why I kept it to the end,” he explained. “But we must balance the possibilities against the improbabilities, never losing sight of the one incontestable fact that the boy has undoubtedly disappeared. And here's a man, a well-known man, who makes no secret of the fact that he found him wandering in the Park, in the early morning, breathless and dazed, and drove him home to his own house, where the boy spent the day; they took a hansom, the doctor tells me, than which no statement is more quickly and easily checked. Are we to believe this apparently unimpeachable and disinterested witness, or are we not? He was most explicit about everything, offering to show me exactly where he found the boy, and never the least bit vague or unsatisfactory in any way. If you are prepared to believe him, if only for the sake of argument, you may care to hear Dr. Baumgartner's theory as to what has happened.”
Lettice shook her head in scorn, but Mr. Upton observed, “Well, we may as well hear what the fellow had to say to you; we must be grateful to him for taking pity on our boy, and he was the last who saw him; he may have seen something that we shouldn't guess.”
“Exactly!” exclaimed Eugene Thrush; “he saw, or at any rate he now thinks he saw, enough to build up a pretty definite theory on the foundation of fact supplied by me. He didn't know the boy had come up to see a doctor and been refused a lodging for the night; he understood he had come up to join his ship, and suspected he had been on a sort of mild spree – if Miss Upton will forgive me!” And he turned deferential lenses on the indignant girl.
“I don't forgive the suggestion,” said she; “but it isn't yours, Mr. Thrush, so please go on.”
“It's an idea that Dr. Baumgartner continues to hold in spite of all I was able to tell him, and we mustn't forget, as Mr. Upton says, that he was the last to see your brother. Briefly, he believes the boy did meet with some misadventure that night in town; that he had been ill-treated or intimidated by some unscrupulous person or persons; perhaps threatened with blackmail; at any rate imbued with the conviction that he is not more sinned against than sinning. That, I think, is only what one expects of these very conscientious characters, particularly in youth; he was taking something or somebody a thousandfold more seriously than a grown man would have done. Afraid to go back to school for fear of expulsion, ashamed to show his face at home! What's to be done? He thinks of the ship about to sail, the ship he hoped to sail in, and in his desperation he determines to sail in her still – even if he has to stow away!”
“My God!” cried Mr. Upton, “he's just the one to think of it. His head was full of those trashy adventure stories!”
But Lettice shook hers quietly.
“To think of it, but not to do it,” said she, with a quiet conviction that rather nettled Mr. Thrush.
“But really, Miss Upton, he must have done something, you know! And he actually talked to Dr. Baumgartner about this; not of doing it himself, but of stowaways in general, à propos of his voyage; and how many pounds of biscuit and how many ounces of water would carry one alive into blue water. There's another thing, by the way! He told Baumgartner the ship touched nowhere between the East India Docks and Melbourne; he would be out of the world for three whole months.”
“And she only sailed yesterday?” cried Mr. Upton, coming furiously to his feet. “And you let her get through the Straits of Dover and out to sea while you came down here to tell me this by inches?”
Thrush blinked blandly through his port-hole glasses.
“I'm letting her go as far as Plymouth,” said he, “where one or both of us will board her tomorrow if she's up to time!”
“You said she didn't touch anywhere between the docks and Melbourne?”
“No; your son said that, Mr. Upton, and it was his one mistake. They don't usually touch, but a son of one of the owners happens to have gone round in the ship to Plymouth for the trip. I got it first from an old boatswain of the line who's caretaker at the office, and the only man there, of course, yesterday afternoon; but I've since bearded one of the partners at his place down the river, and had the statement confirmed and amplified. One or two pasengers are only going aboard at Plymouth, so she certainly won't sail again before to-morrow noon, even if she's there by then. You will be in ample time to board her – and I've got a sort of search-warrant from the partner I saw – if you go down by the 12.15 from Paddington to-night.”
The ironmaster asked no more questions; that was good enough for him, he said, and went off to tell a last lie to his wife, with the increasing confidence of one gradually mastering the difficulties of an uncongenial game. He felt also that a happy issue was in sight, and after that he could tell the truth and liberate his soul. He was pathetically sanguine of the solution vicariously propounded by Eugene Thrush, and prepared to rejoice in a discovery which would have filled him with dismay and chagrin if he had not been subconsciously prepared for something worse. It never occurred to Mr. Upton to question the man's own belief in the theory he had advanced; but Lettice did so the moment she had the visitor to herself in the smoking-room, where it fell to her to do certain honours vice Horace, luckily engaged at the works. “And do you believe this astounding theory, Mr. Thrush?”
Thrush eyed her over his tumbler's rim, but completed his draught before replying.
“It's not my province to believe or to disbelieve, Miss Upton; my job is to prove things one way or the other.”
“Then I'll tell you just one thing for your guidance: my brother is absolutely incapable of the conduct you ascribe to him between you.”
Thrush did not look as though he were being guided by anybody or anything, beyond the dictates of his own appetites, as he sat by the window of the restaurant car, guzzling new potatoes and such Burgundy as could be had in a train. But he was noticeably less garrulous than usual, and his companion also had very little to say until the train was held up inexplicably outside Willesden, when he began to fume.
“I never knew such a thing on this line before,” he complained; “it's all the harder luck, for I never was on such an errand before, and it'll just make the difference to me.”
“You'll have time,” said Thrush, consulting his watch as the train showed signs of life at last.
“Not for what I want to do,” said Mr. Upton firmly. “I want to shake that man's hand, and to hear from his own lips about my boy!”
“I'm not sure that you'll find him at home,” Thrush said, after a contemplative pause.
“I'll take my chance of that.”
“He said something about their both going out of town to-day – meaning niece and self. I heard her playing just before I left, and that seemed to remind him of it.”
“Well, Thrush, I mean to risk it.”
“And losing the train?”
“I can motor down to Plymouth; there's plenty of time. I might take him with me, as well as you?”
“Better,” said Thrush, after another slight pause. “I'd rather you didn't count on me for that trip, Mr. Upton.”
“Not count on you”?
“One of us will be quite enough.”
“Have you some other case to shove in front of mine, then?” cried the ironmaster, touched on the old raw spot.
“I shouldn't put it like that, Mr. Upton.”
“All right! I'll take your man Mullins instead; but I'll try my luck at that German doctor's first,” he growled, determined to have his own way in something.
“I'm afraid you can't have Mullins,” said Thrush, gently.
“Want him yourself do you?”
“I do; but I'm afraid neither of us can have him just now, Mr. Upton.”
“Why not? Where is he.”
Thrush leant across as they swam into the lighted terminus.
“In prison.”
“In prison! Your man Mullins?”
“Yes, Mr. Upton, he's the man they arrested yesterday on suspicion of complicity in this Hyde Park affair!”
MALINGERING
Pocket had put the fragments of his poor letter together again, and was still poring over those few detached and mutilated words, which were the very ones his tears had blotted, when there came a warning chink of tea-things on the stairs. He was just able to thrust the pieces back into his pocket, and to fling himself at full length on the bed, before Dr. Baumgartner entered with a tray.
“There, my young fellow! This will make a man of you! Then we shall see you yourself again by supper-time.”
“I'm not coming down again,” said Pocket. “Don't force me, please”
“Force you?” Baumgartner cocked a keen eye at the open window. “What a tyrant you would make me out! On the contrary, I think you show your wisdom in remaining quiet. Perhaps you would be quieter still with the window shut – so – and fastened to prevent it rattling. I will open it when I come up again. There shall not be a sound in the house to disturb you.”
And he took to tiptoes there and then, gliding about with a smiling stealth that set Pocket shivering on the bed; he shivered the more when an admirable doctor's hand, cool and smooth as steel, was laid upon his forehead.
“A little fever, I'm afraid! I should get right into bed, if I were you. It's nothing to be alarmed about, much less astonished; you have been through so much, my poor young fellow.”
“I have indeed!” cried Pocket, with unguarded bitterness.
And Baumgartner paused between the foot of the bed and the door.
“But there's one consolation for you,” he said at length, in a sibilant whisper. “They've had that letter of yours at home quite a long time now – ever since yesterday morning, haven't they?”
The bed shook under Pocket when the door was shut – he only hoped it was not before. Up to the last minute, he felt quite sure that Dr. Baumgartner, suspicious as he was, had suspected nothing of the discovery downstairs behind his back. If he himself had betrayed anything it was in the last few seconds, when it had been all that he could do to keep from screaming out his knowledge of the other's trickery. To play such a trick upon a broken-hearted boy! To have the heart to play it! No wonder he felt feverish to that wicked hand; the wonder was that he had actually lain there listening to the smooth impostor gratuitously revelling in his imposition!
Rage and disappointment seized him by turns, and both together; at first they bit deeper even than the fear of Baumgartner – a fear felt from the beginning, and naturally redoubled now. Disappointment had the sharper tooth: his letter had ever gone, not one of his people knew a thing about him yet, his tears had not drawn theirs, they had not hung in anxious conclave on his words! Not that he had recognised any such subtle consolations as factors in his temporary and comparative peace of mind; now that they were gone, he could not have said what it was he missed; he only knew that he could least forgive Baumgartner for this sudden sense of cruel and crushing disappointment.
The phase passed, for the boy had the temperament that sees the other side eventually, and of course there was something to be said for the doctor's stratagem. He could understand it, after all; the motive was not malevolent; it was to relieve his mind and keep him quiet. The plan had succeeded perfectly, and nobody was really any the worse off. His people would have known he was alive and well on the Friday; but that was all, and they had no reason yet to assume his death. No; even Pocket came to see that his letter had been more of a relief to write than it could have been to read; that, indeed, it could only have aggravated the anxiety and suspense at home. Yet there was in him some fibre which the deliberate deception had fretted and frayed beyond reason or forgiveness. He saw all there was to be said about it; he could imagine Baumgartner himself putting the case with irresistible logic, with characteristic plausibility, and all the mesmeric wisdom of a benevolent serpent; but for once, the boy felt, he would not be taken in. It was not coming to that, however, for he had quite decided not to betray his knowledge of the fraud – if only he had not already done so!
His fears on that score were largely allayed by Baumgartner's manner when at length he returned with another tray; for nothing could have been more considerate and sympathetic, and even fatherly, than the doctor's behaviour then. Pocket had never touched his tea; he was very gently chidden for that. Obstinately he declared he did not want any supper either: it was true he did not want to want any, or another bite of that man's bread, but he was sorry as soon as the words were out. It was against his reasoned policy to show temper, and he was beginning to feel very hungry besides. The doctor said, “You'll think better of that, my young fellow,” which turned a mere remark into more than half an absolute resolution. The second tray was set with a lighted candle on a chair by the bedside. The boy eyed it wistfully with set teeth, and Baumgartner eyed the boy.
“Is there anything you could fancy, my young fellow?”
“Nothing to eat.”
“Is there any book?”
“Yes,” said Pocket, without a moment's premeditation. “There's the book I was reading yesterday.”
“What was that?”
“Some Frenchman on hallucinations.”
“So you were reading that book!” remarked the doctor, with detestable aplomb. “I wondered who had taken it down. It is a poor book. I have destroyed it.”
“I'm sorry,” said Pocket, and tried to look it rather than revolted.
“I am not,” rejoined Baumgartner. “Even if it were a good book, it is no book for you at the present time. It is morbid to dwell on what is done and over.”
“If it is over,” murmured the boy.
“It is over!” said Baumgartner, fiercely.
“Well,” said Pocket, “I'm glad I read what he'd got to say about somnambulism.”
“Why?”
Pocket did not say it was a satisfaction to have done anything in spite of such a despot as his questioner. But he did say it was a comfort to know that others besides himself had committed terrible deeds in their sleep.
“But,” he added, “they always seem to have dreamt the dreadful thing as well. Now, the funny thing is that I remember nothing until the shot woke me and I found myself where you saw me.”
“I'm glad you find it funny!”
The sneer seemed strangely unworthy of a keen intelligence; the increased asperity of Baumgartner's manner, and his whole conduct about a harmless book, altogether inexplicable.
“You know what I mean,” replied the boy, with spirit.
“Yes, I know what you mean! You mean to go out of your mind, and to do your best to drive me out of mine, for the sake of a technically human life less precious than the average dog's!”
And, much as it puzzled him, there was certainly something more human about this sudden outburst than in anything Dr. Baumgartner had said since the scene between them in the bedroom below. He even slammed the door behind him when he went. But Pocket preferred that novel exhibition, for its very heat and violence, to the sleek and calculated solicitude of the doctor's final visit, with pipe and candle, when the one by the bedside had burnt down almost to the socket.
“My young fellow!” he exclaimed in unctuous distress. “Not a bite eaten in all these hours! Do you know that it's nearly midnight?”
“I'm not hungry,” replied Pocket, lying gloriously for once. “I told you I wasn't well.”
“You'll be worse if you don't force yourself to eat.”
“I can't help that.”
“Well, well!” said the doctor, instead of the objurgation that seemed to tremble for an instant on his lips. He replaced between them the oval hook of clear amber enclosing the thin round one of black nicotine, and he puffed until the cruel carved face was hotter and more infuriate than ever, under the swirling smoke of mimic battle. To the boy it was all but a living face, and a vile one, capable of nameless atrocities; and the hard-frozen face of Baumgartner was capable of looking on.
“Well, well! If I am to have you ill on my hands it's my own fault. I take the responsibility for everything that has happened since the very first moment we met. Remember that, my young fellow! I took the law into my own hands, and you I took into my own house for better or worse. You were worse then, remember, and yet I took you in! Is it not strange that your asthma has entirely left you under my roof? Does it not lead you to believe in me, my young fellow – to trust me perhaps more than you have done?”
It did not. Pocket was not going to lie about that; he held his tongue stubbornly instead. He still believed in his own explanation, derived from one of his many doctors, and moreover already mentioned to this one, of the sudden cessation of his chronic complaint. He hated Baumgartner for forgetting that, and pretending for a moment to take any credit to himself. That again was not worthy of so cool and keen a brain, much less of the candid character with which Pocket had supposed himself to be dealing. The very young are pathetically apt to see their own virtues in those whom they trust at all; but the schoolboy's faith in Dr. Baumgartner had been shattered to its base; and now (as sure a symptom of his youth) he could see no virtue at all.
“You must trust me again,” said Baumgartner, as though he knew what he had forfeited. “I know what will do you good.”
“What?” asked Pocket, out of mere incredulous curiosity.
“Fresh air; some exercise; a glimpse of the beautiful town we live in, before another soul is about, before the sun itself is up!”
Pocket hardly knew what made him shudder at the proposition. It might have been the poignant picture of that other early morning, which came before him in a scorching flash. But there was something also in the way the doctor was bending over him in bed, holding his pipe nearer still, so that the two dreadful faces seemed of equal size. And Baumgartner's had become a dreadful face in the boy's eyes now; there was none among those cruel waxworks to match it in cold intellectual cruelty; and its smile – its new and strange smile it must have been that made him shudder and shake his head.
