The doctor gave him another drink of brandy, and they moved on heavy legs towards the Hag's Nook. Herbert Starberth's body lay where Rampole had deposited it beside the well. As they looked down at it under the doctor's light, Rampole kept wiping his hands fiercely up and down the sides of his trousers. Small and doubled, the body had its head twisted on one side, and seemed to be gaping at something it saw along the grass. The cold and damp of the underground niche had acted like an ice-house; though it must have been a week since the bullet had entered his brain, there was no sign of decomposition.
Rampole, feeling as though his brain were full of dull bells, pointed.
"Murder?" he asked.
"Undoubtedly. No weapon, and — you know."
The American spoke words which sounded idiotic even to him in the way he felt. "This has got to stop!" he said, desperately, and clenched his hands. But there was nothing else to say. It expressed everything. He repeated: "This has got to stop, I tell you! Yes, that poor devil of a butler.. or do you suppose he was in on it? I never thought of that."
Dr. Fell shook his head.
"No. No, there is only one man concerned in this. I know who he is."
Leaning against the coping of the well, Rampole groped in his pocket after cigarettes. He lit one with a muddy hand on the match, and even the cigarette smelt of the depths down there. He said:
"Then we're near the end-?"
"We're near the end," said Dr. Fell. "It will come tomorrow, because of a certain telegram." He was silent, meditating, with his light directed away from the body. "It took me a long time to realize it," he added, abruptly.
"There is one man, and only one man, who could have committed these murders. He has killed three men already, and tonight he may have killed a fourth Tomorrow there is an afternoon train arriving from London. We will meet that train. And there will be an end to the murderer."
"Then — the murderer doesn't live here?"
Dr. Fell raised his head. "Don't think about it now, young fellow. Go down to Yew Cottage and get a bath and a change of clothes; you need it. I can watch."
An owl had begun to cry over the Hag's Nook. Rampole moved through the brush, back along the trampled trail where they had carried Budge. He glanced back only once. Dr. Fell had switched off his flashlamp. Against the blue and silver of the moonlight, Dr. Fell was standing motionless, a massive black silhouette with a leonine head, staring down into the well.
Budge was conscious only of dreams and pain. He knew that he was lying on a bed somewhere, with deep pillows under his head. Once he thought he saw a white-lace curtain blowing at a window; he thought that a lamp was reflected in the window-glass, and that somebody was sitting near him, watching.
But he could not be sure. He kept dozing off to sleep, without seeming to be able to move. There were noises like the shiver of beaten gongs. Somebody was arranging a prickly blanket about his neck, though.he felt too hot already. At the touch of the hands he felt terrified, and again he tried to lift his arms without success; the gong-noises and the swing of phantom rooms dissolved in a jerk of pain which ran through him as though it were flowing along his veins. He smelt medicine. He was a boy on a football field, under a dinning of shouts; he was winding clocks and measuring port from a decanter; and then the portrait of old Anthony, from its frame in the gallery at the Hall, leapt out at him. Old Anthony wore a white gardener's glove….
Even as he retreated, he knew that it was not old Anthony. Who was it? Somebody he had seen on the motion picture screen, associated with fighting and gunplay; and a whole genie-bottle of shadowy faces floated past. Nor yet was it any of these, but some person he had known a long time. A familiar face — .
It was bending over him now, in his bed. His scream became a croak.
Impossible that it should be there. He was unhurt, and this was a fancy coloured with the smell of iodoform. The linen of the pillow felt cool and faintly rough to his cheek. A clock struck. Something was shaken and flashing, thin glass in lamplight, and there were tiptoeing footfalls. Distinctly he heard a voice say:
"He'll live."
Budge slept. It was as though some subconscious nerve had been waiting for those words, so that afterwards sleep descended, and wound him rigid as in a soft dark ball of yarn.
When at length he awoke, he did not know at first how weak he was, nor had the morphine quite worn off. But he did know that a low sun was streaming in at the window. Bewildered and a little frightened, he tried to make a move; he knew with ghastly certainty that he had slept into the afternoon, a thing unheard-of at the Hall…. Then he saw that Sir Benjamin Arnold, a smile on his long face, was bending over the bed. Behind him was a person whom he did not at first recognize, a young man….
"Feeling better?" asked Sir Benjamin.
Budge tried to speak, and only croaked. He felt humiliated. A bit of remembrance swirled down into his consciousness, like a rope….
Yes. He remembered now. It swept in such vivid colours that he closed his eyes. The young Yankee, the white gloves, the pistol. What had he done? — it rushed over him that he had been a coward, as he had always felt, and the taste of that thought was like nauseous medicine.
"Don't try to say anything," Sir Benjamin said. "You're at Dr. Markley's; he said you couldn't be moved. So lie still. You got a nasty bullet wound, but you'll pull through. We'll clear out now." Sir Benjamin seemed embarrassed. He fingered the iron post at the foot of the bed. "As to what you did, Budge," he added, "well, I don't mind telling you-well, it was damned sporting, you know."
Moistening his lips, Budge at last achieved speech.
"Yes, sir," he said. "Thank you, sir."
His half-closed eyes opened in wonder and some anger when he saw that the young American had almost laughed….
"No offense, Budge," Rampole hastily put in. "It was just that you rushed his gun like an Irish cop, and now you act as if somebody had just offered you a glass of beer… I don't suppose you recognized him, did you?"
(Some struggle in the brain; a half-face, cut into whorls like water over sand. Budge felt dizzy, and there was something hurting inside his chest. The water washed out the face.)
"Yes, sir," he said, with an effort. "I shall remember it — soon. Just now I can't think…"Of course," Rampole interposed, hurriedly. somebody in white beckoning them from the doorway. "Well, good luck, Budge. You've got plenty of nerve."
At the smiles of the others, Budge felt a responsive smile drawing at his own lips like a nervous twitch. He felt drowsy again, and his head sang, but he was floating pleasantly away now. He was not sure what had happened; but I warm satisfaction lulled him for the first time in his life — What a story! If only those housemaids wouldn't leave windows open….
His eyes closed.
"Thank you, sir," said Budge. "Please tell Miss Dorothy that I shall be back at the Hall tomorrow."
Rampole closed the door of the bedroom behind them, and turned to face Sir Benjamin in the dim upper hallway of Dr. Markley's house. He could see the white skirt of a nurse descending the stairs ahead.
"He saw whoever it was," the chief constable said, grimly. "Yes, and he'll remember. What the devil, though, was he doing up there, to begin with?
"Just curiosity, I suppose. And now what?"
Sir Benjamin opened the case of a big gold watch, glanced at it rather nervously, and shut it up again.
"It's Fell's show. I'm dashed if I know." His voice grew querulous. "He's gone over my head completely-mine! I mean to say, he has quite a stand-in with Sir William Rossiter, the High Commissioner at the Yard; he seems to be on intimate terms with everybody in England. And he's been pulling wires…. All I know is that we're to meet the five-four train from London, and nab somebody who gets off it. Well, I hope everybody's waiting. Come along."