If the questioning had strained her nerves, she did not show it. She was only thoughtful, like a sombre child. She said in a low voice:
"That paper I showed you the verses — we know now, don't we?"
"Yes. Directions of some kind. The heir was supposed to figure them out…:.
"But what for?" she asked, rather fiercely. "What for?"
One statement, made rather carelessly by the lawyer, had been at the back of Rampole's mind for some time. Something he had been groping for; it showed itself now, and asked a question.
"There were four keys―" he began, and glanced at her. "Yes."
"To the door of the Governor's Room. That's reasonable. To the vault, and to the box inside it; those three are natural enough. But — why a key to the iron door going out on the balcony? What would anybody need that one for? Unless those directions, rightly interpreted, would lead the person out on the balcony..:."
Back again crept the formless surmises in which Sir Benjamin had been indulging. Every indication pointed to that balcony. He was thinking of the ivy, and the stone balustrade, and the two depressions in the stone which Dr. Fell had discovered. A deathtrap….
Startled, he discovered that he had spoken aloud. He was aware of it by the quick look she turned on him, and he cursed himself for letting the words slip out. What he had said was:
"Herbert, they all say, was an inventor." "You believe that he-?"
"No! I don't know what I meant!"
She turned a pale face in the dimness of the hall. "Whoever did this killed father too. You all think so. And, listen! There was a reason. I know there was a reason now. And it's ghastly-and awful-and all that, but, O my God! I hope it's true!… Don't. stare at me like that. I'm not mad. Really."
Her low voice was growing a trifle thick, and she spoke as one who begins to see shapes in a mist. The dark blue eyes were eerie now.
"Listen. That paper-it gives directions for something. What? If father was killed, murdered by somebody — no curse, but deliberately murdered — what then?"
"I don't know."
"But I think I do. If father was murdered, he wasn't murdered for following out directions in those verses. But maybe somebody else had fathomed the verses. Maybe there's something hidden — something those verses have a clue to-and the murderer killed father because father had surprised him at work…!"
Rampole stared at her tense face, and her hand groping before her as though she touched a secret, lightly. He said':
"You're — you're not talking about anything so wild as buried treasure?"
She nodded. "I don't care about that… What I mean is, if that is true, don't you see, there isn't any curse — there isn't any madness-I'm not tainted, nor any of us. That's what 1 care about." In an even lower voice: "You've only got to wonder whether there's any horrible seed in your blood, and brood about it, to go through the worst hell”
He touched her hand. There was a pent-up silence, a sense of fears pattering in a dark room, and windows that needed to be opened to daylight.
"— that's why I say I hope to God it's true. My father is dead, and so is my brother, and that can't be helped now. But at least it was something clean; it was something you could understand, like an auto wreck. Do you see?"
"Yes. And we've got to find the secret of that cryptogram, if there is a secret. Will you let me have a copy?"
"Come back and copy it now, before the rest of them get away. I mustn't see you for a while…."
"But you can't — I mean, you've got to! We've got to see each other, if only for a few minutes-!"
She looked up slowly. "We can't. People would talk." Then, as he nodded blankly, she put out the palms of her hands as though she would put them against his breast, and went on in a strained voice: "Oh, do you think I don't want to as much as you? I do. More! But we can't. They'd talk. They'd say all sorts of horrible things, and that I was an unnatural sister, and maybe I am." She shivered.
"They always said I was a strange one, and I'm beginning to think it's true. I shouldn't be talking like this, with my 'brother just dead, but I'm human — I — Never mind! Please go and copy out that paper. I'll get it for you."
They said no more as they went down to the little office, where Rampole scribbled down the verses on the back of an envelope. When they returned to the hall everybody had disappeared except a shocked and open-eyed Budge, who passed them with an air of not having seen them at all.
"You see?" she enquired, lifting her eyebrows.
"I know. I'll go, and I won't try to see you until you give the word. But — do you mind if I show this thing to Dr. Fell? He'll keep it a secret. And you know from today how good he is at this sort of thing."
"Yes, show it to Dr. Fell. Do! I hadn't thought of that. But not to anybody else — please. And now you must hurry along… "
When she opened the great door for him, it seemed surprising to find the placid sunlight on the lawns as though this were only an English Sunday and no dead man lay upstairs. We are not touched so deeply by tragedy as we think. As he went down the drive to join his companions, he glanced back once over his shoulder. She was standing in the doorway, motionless, the breeze stirring her hair. He could hear doves in the tall elms, and sparrows bickering among the vines. Up on its white cupola, the gilt weather-vane had turned fiery against the noonday.
Chapter 12
"We find," said the inquest, "that the deceased met his death as the result of―" The formal words had a habit of singing through Rampole's mind with thoughtless and irritating refrain. What they meant was that Herbert Starberth had killed his cousin Martin by throwing him from the balcony of the Governor's Room. Since the autopsy revealed blood in the nostrils and mouth, and a contusion at the base of the brain not explicable by the position in which he had fallen, it was pointed out by Dr. Markley that the deceased had in all likelihood been rendered insensible by a heavy blow before the actual murder took place. Martin's neck and right hip had been broken, and there were other pleasant details which had hung with cold ugliness in the stolid air of the inquest room.
It was over now. In the London press Chatterham's wonder had not even lasted nine days; it blossomed into pictures, speculations, and hectic news stories, and then sank back among the advertisements. There remained only a man-hunt, baying after Herbert, and Herbert had not been found. That enigmatic figure on the green bicycle slid through England as through a mist. He was seen, of course, in a dozen places, but it never turned out to be Herbert Starberth. Assuming that he had ridden in the direction of Lincoln to take a train, it had been so far found impossible to trace his movements, nor was there any trace of the green motor-bike. Scotland Yard moved so quietly that it was as invisible as the fugitive, but there was no word of capture from the grim building above Westminster Pier.
A week after the inquest, and Chatterham slept again. All day the rain fell, sheeting these lowlands, droning on the eaves, and sputtering in chimneys where fires had been lighted against the damp. The ancient rain of England, which brought out old odours like ghosts, so that blackletter books, and engravings on the wall, seemed more alive than real people. Rampole sat before a coal fire in the grate of Dr. Fell's study. But for its creakings, Yew Cottage was quiet. Dr. and Mrs. Fell had gone to Chatterham for the afternoon; their guest, alone in an easy chair by firelight, wanted no lamps. He could see the rain thickening beyond grey windows, and he could see things in the fire.