“You needn’t worry,” interposed Crook smiling. “I never run away from my memories, but like to have them before me. They keep me human, which is a quality one is apt to lose too quickly in my work. Can you put me up for the night, Sir Arthur?”
“Why, of course,” responded the baronet cordially. “And for as many more nights as you want. Alice, my dear,” he called, as a girl came out of a room. “This is Mr. Crook. Will you have a room got ready for him? He’s spending the night with us. Mr. Crook — my niece, Miss Hone.”
II
The detective did not remain for lunch. He wished to get away and think, and there were also several things he wanted to do.
The first of these was to note the exact position of Sir Arthur’s bedroom, to examine the ground beneath the window, and then to walk across the park to the boundary of Mr. George Tappan’s property. Then, inquiring the way to the police station, he had a chat with the local inspector.
After that, he thought of lunch; and, when tire meal was over, he bought a local guide and spent quite a considerable time studying it on a seat. Next he called on a house agent.
It was just on four o’clock before he returned to Trentby Hall.
Doanes, the butler, met him as he entered, and announced that tea was being served in the drawing-room. Crook removed the traces of his wanderings, and then sought the welcome refreshment. He found Miss Hone alone. This did not displease him.
She looked up as he entered, and apologized for her uncle’s absence.
“He’s got a headache,” she said. “He often gets them.”
“A war legacy?” asked Crook as he sat down.
“Yes, I’m afraid so. Isn’t it a shame? Uncle’s not fifty yet, but sometimes he seems just like an old man — trying hard not to be old.”
“Yes, when we try hard not to be old, that’s an ominous sign,” replied Crook. “No sugar, please. I’ve learned to do without.”
“Another war legacy?” she smiled, passing him his cup.
“No — a prison one,” said Crook.
She stared at him, but he was smiling so gently that, in some strange way, both the oppression and the awkwardness which should have followed such a statement evaporated.
“That’s not really — true?” she asked.
“Oh, yes. Quite true. And prison is so unpleasant an experience that—” he paused, and she nodded, understandingly.
“I know,” she murmured. “Uncle’s told me why he’s sent for you.”
“Good! I’m glad! That eases matters immensely,” replied the detective. “Then I can ask you questions — and I can also finish my unfinished sentence. I was about to say, Miss Hone, that prison is so unpleasant an experience that we must see your uncle does not endure it.”
“Oh, yes!” she exclaimed. “Poor uncle! Isn’t it a rotten — affliction?”
“It’s embarrassing,” agreed Crook, watching her. “Tell me, has Sir Arthur got better or worse since you came to look after him?”
“Worse — at least, lately,” she returned. “When I first came, it was just — general unwellness, you know, and headaches—”
“But not kleptomania?” interposed Crook rather eagerly.
“No-o, not then,” she said slowly. “At least, he’d had the trouble a bit during the war and just after it — he was invalided out — and he used to explain it, half humorously, by saying that soldiers lost all their respect for property!
“Poor old uncle! But then he got better,” continued the girl. “It seemed as though the kleptomania had left him, and only the headaches and general nervousness remained — I wonder—”
She paused.
“What do you wonder?” asked the detective.
“I wonder if coming to live in this queer old place has had anything to do with it?”
“What is ‘it’?”
“The return of the kleptomania, I mean,” she explained. “I love it here, but it’s a bit — well, gloomy, in a way. Half the house shut up, you know.”
“Yet you stick it?” he remarked.
“Oh, I’m all right,” she laughed. “A poor sad orphan, and all that, is only too glad to find an ailing uncle to look after! It seemed ridiculous, when he was so ill, and I was all alone, not to come to him.”
“He asked you to then?”
“Broad hints,” she answered smiling. “Very broad ones. The war took most of his money as well as most of his health, and when he inherited this place, he thought he’d be glad to bury himself here, and there was just enough money to keep one end of it going! But he got horribly lonely — some of his letters were really quite tragic — so, naturally, I came along.” She shot a sudden, half challenging glance at him.
“Are you wondering whether I’m mercenary? Because I’m not! Uncle and I have only each other, and we’re jolly good pals. Besides, though he did tell me before I came that he was going to leave me all he had, I don’t believe it will be much more than debts!”
“I’m quite sure you’re not mercenary,” Crook assured her. “I believe you’d even help your uncle to pay some of those debts, if it were necessary, and if you could.”
“Good guess,” she nodded, and he liked her for her frankness.
“Then we’ll take each other’s good faith for granted,” responded Crook, “which I think we’ve really done from the start. Some detectives love fencing, but I hate it, unless I’ve got to do it. I can nearly always tell whether I’ve got to fence with a person or not — by his eyes.”
“That’s suspiciously like a compliment!” she exclaimed with a sudden smile. “Thanks awfully!”
For just a moment, an odd sensation shot through the detective — a sensation he had not experienced for many a day. It was a sensation of youth and gayety, gloriously and richly irresponsible, hovering in the confused borderland between creation and destruction. Something he had once been — countless years ago — rose and gripped him. But the moment passed, and his grave expression gave no clew to its passage. So often will a girl unconsciously speak to a man, and unconsciously receive his reply.
III
“Can you recall,” said the detective prosaically, “the first time your uncle’s kleptomania returned?”
“Oh, yes — quite distinctly,” answered the girl. “It wasn’t so long ago. We’d been in the town, and when we got back, uncle found a brand-new leather letter case in his coat pocket. He didn’t know how it had got there, till he suddenly remembered his old habit. We guessed the shop he’d taken it from, and returned it next day.”
“And, after that—”
“Yes, then it began again. He didn’t believe it would, but it did. He’s taken things three times, now — but, luckily, the last two from Mr. Tappan’s. We’re simply dreading when he’ll take something from somewhere else.”
Crook frowned, and was silent for a few seconds. Then he asked:
“When does he take them? Does he know?”
“No.”
“Do you?”
“How could I? But I believe it’s been in the night lately. That’s what makes it so awful. It looks like real stealing.”
“You mean he walks in his sleep?”
“Oh, I don’t know! It’s merely guessing.”
“You’ve never found him walking in his sleep, then?”
“Not lately. But he used to. So he might easily have begun again, mightn’t he?”
“But how would he get into Mr. Tappan’s house?”
“That beats me. Anyway, even if he doesn’t go there in the night, he often pays visits, and dines there. Mr. Tappan’s frightfully decent about it.”