A kindly looking old man with white whiskers was watering them.
Brown looked sharply back at the road behind him; the man with the barrow had suddenly vanished. Then he looked again at the lawn with its incredible inscription. Another man might have thought he had gone mad, but Brown did not. When romantic ladies gushed over his V. C. and his military exploits, he sometimes felt himself to be a painfully prosaic person, but by the same token he knew he was incurably sane. Another man, again, might have thought himself a victim of a passing practical joke, but Brown could not easily believe this. He knew from his own quaint learning that the garden arrangement was an elaborate and expensive one; he thought it extravagantly improbable that any one would pour out money like water for a joke against him. Having no explanation whatever to offer, he admitted the fact to himself, like a clear-headed man, and waited as he would have done in the presence of a man with six legs.
At this moment the stout old man with white whiskers looked up, and the watering-can fell from his hand, shooting a swirl of water down the gravel path.
“Who on earth are you?” he gasped, trembling violently.
“I am Major Brown,” said that individual, who was always cool in the hour of action.
The old man gaped helplessly like some monstrous fish. At last he stammered wildly, “Come down — come down here!”
“At your service,” said the major, and alighted at a bound on the grass beside him, without disarranging his silk hat.
The old man turned his broad back and set off at a sort of waddling run towards the house, followed with swift steps by the major. His guide led him through the back passages of a gloomy but gorgeously appointed house, until they reached the door of the front room. Then the old man turned with a face of apoplectic terror dimly showing in the twilight.
“For Heaven’s sake,” he said, “don’t mention jackals.”
Then he threw open the door, releasing a burst of red lamplight, and ran downstairs with a clatter.
The major stepped into a rich, glowing room, full of red-copper and peacock and purple hangings, hat in hand. He had the finest manners in the world, and, though mystified, was not in the least embarrassed to see that the only occupant was a lady, sitting by the window, looking out.
“Madam,” he said, bowing simply, “I am Major Brown.”
“Sit down,” said the lady; but she did not turn her head.
She was a graceful, green-clad figure, with fiery red hair and a flavor of Bedford Park. “You have come, I suppose,” she said, mournfully, “to tax me about the hateful title-deeds.”
“I have come, madam,” he said, “to know what is the matter — to know why my name is written across your garden. Not amicably, either.”
He spoke grimly, for the thing had hit him. It is impossible to describe the effect produced on the mind by that quiet and sunny garden scene, the frame for a stunning and brutal personality. The evening air was still, and the grass was golden in the place where the little flowers he studied cried to Heaven for his blood.
“You know I must not turn round,” said the lady; “every afternoon till the stroke of six I must keep my face turned to the street.”
Some queer and unusual inspiration made the prosaic soldier resolute to accept these outrageous riddles without surprise.
“It is almost six,” he said; and even as he spoke the barbaric copper clock upon the wall clanged the first stroke of the hour. At the sixth the lady sprang up and turned on the major one of the queerest and yet most attractive faces he had ever seen in his life — open and yet tantalizing, the face of an elf.
“That makes the third year I have waited,” she cried. “This is an anniversary. The waiting almost makes one wish the frightful thing would happen once and for all.”
And even as she spoke a sudden rending cry broke the stillness. From low down on the pavement of the dim street (it was already twilight) a voice cried out with a raucous and merciless distinctness:
“Major Brown, Major Brown, where does the jackal dwell?”
Brown was decisive and silent in action. He strode to the front door and looked out. There was no sign of life in the blue gloaming of the street, where one or two street lamps were beginning to light their lemon sparks. On returning he found the lady in green trembling.
“It is the end,” she cried, with shaking lips; “it may be death for both of us. Whenever—”
But even as she spoke her speech was cloven by another hoarse proclamation from the dark street, again horribly articulate.
“Major Brown, Major Brown, how did the jackal die?”
Brown dashed out of the door and down the steps, but again he was frustrated; there was no figure in sight, and the street was far too long and empty for the shouter to have run away. Even the rational major was a little shaken as he returned at a certain time to the drawing-room. Scarcely had he done so than the terrific voice came:
“Major Brown, Major Brown, where did—”
Brown was in the street almost at a bound, and he was in time — in time to see something which at first glance froze the blood. The cries appeared to come from a decapitated head resting on the pavement.
The next moment the pale major understood. It was the head of a man thrust through the coal-hole in the street. The next moment, again, it had vanished, and Major Brown turned to the lady. “Where’s your coal-cellar?” he said, and stepped out into the passage.
She looked at him with wild, gray eyes. “You will not go down,” she cried, “alone, into the dark hole with that beast?”
“Is this the way?” replied Brown, and descended the kitchen stairs three at a time. He flung open the door of a black cavity and stepped in, feeling in his pocket for matches. As his right hand was thus occupied, a pair of great, slimy hands came out of the darkness, hands clearly belonging to a man of gigantic stature, and seized him by the back of the head. They forced him down, down in the suffocating darkness, a brutal image of destiny. But the major’s head, though upside-down, was perfectly clear and intellectual. He gave quietly under the pressure until he had slid down almost to his hands and knees. Then, finding the knees of the invisible monster within a foot of him, he simply put out one of his long, bony, and skilful hands, and, gripping the leg by a muscle, pulled it off the ground, and laid the huge, living man with a crash along the floor. He strove to rise, but Brown was on top like a cat. They rolled over and over. Big as the man was, he had evidently now no desire but to escape; he made sprawls hither and thither to get past the major to the door, but that tenacious person had him hard by the coat-collar, and hung with the other hand to a beam. At length there came a strain in holding back this human bull, a strain under which Brown expected his hand to rend and part from the arm. But something else rent and parted — and the dim, fat figure of the giant vanished out of the cellar, leaving the torn coat in the major’s hand, the only fruit of his adventure and the only clew to the mystery. For when he went up and out at the front door the lady, the rich hangings, and the whole equipment of the house had disappeared. It had only bare boards and whitewashed walls.
“The lady was in the conspiracy, of course,” said Rupert, nodding.
Major Brown turned brick-red. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I think not.”
Rupert raised his eyebrows and looked at him for a moment, but said nothing. When next he spoke he asked:
“Was there anything in the pockets of the coat?”
“There was sevenpence halfpenny in coppers and a threepenny-bit,” said the major, carefully; “there was a cigarette-holder, a piece of string, and this letter,” and he laid it on the table. It ran as follows:
“DEAR MR. PLOVER, — I am annoyed to hear that some delay has occurred in the arrangements re Major Brown. Please see that he is attacked as per arrangement to-morrow. The coal-cellar, of course.