“Oh.”
“... a young neurotic name Harry Brooke. Afterwards there was a row of some kind.” Inwardly Miles choked over the words. He couldn't, physically couldn't, tell Marion about Howard Brooke's determination to buy of this girl.
“What kind of a row, Miles?”
“Nobody knows; or at least I don't. One afternoon the father climbed up to the top of a tower that's a landmark in the district, and ...” Miles broke off. “By the way, you won't mention any of this to Miss Seton? You won't gibe her any intimation you know?”
“Do you think I could be so tactless, Miles?”
“It was a wild, rainy, thundery day over the tower, like a scene in a German ghost-story. Mr. Brooke was found stabbed through the back with his own sword-stick. But that's the amazing part of the whole business, Marion. The evidence showed he must have been alone when he died. Nobody cam near him or could have come near him. It almost seemed that the murder, it it was murder, must have been committed by someone who could rise up unsupported in the air....”
Again he paused. For Marion was contemplating him in a strange, wide-eyed, searching way, bursting and balanced on the edge of laughter.
“Miles Hammond!” she cried. “Who's been stuffing you full of this awful rubbish?”
“I am simply,” he said through his teeth, “stating the facts of the official police investigation.”
“All right, dear. But who told you?”
“Professor Rigaud of Edinburgh University. A distinguished man in the academic world. You must have come across his Life of Cagliostro?”
“No. Who's Cagliostro?”
(Why is it―Miles had often pondered the question―that in debates with you own family you are inclined to lose your temper over questions which from an outsider would be greeted with mildness, even amusement?)
“Count Cagliostro, Marion, was a famous wizard and charlatan o the eighteenth century. Professor Rigaud takes the line that Cagliostro, though he was a thundering fraud in most respects, really did possess certain psychic powers which ...”
For the third time he checked himself. Marion was whooping. And, hearing what his own voice must sound like, Miles had enough sense of proportion left to agree that possibly he might have made a better choice of words.
“Yes,” he admitted. “It does sound a bit funny, doesn't it?”
“It certainly does, Miles. I'll believe that sort of thing when I see it. But never mind Count Cagliostro. Stop pulling my leg and tell me about this girl! Who is she? What's she like? What sort of influence does she have?”
“You can find out for yourself, Marion.”
Still gazing down out of the window, Miles rose to his feet. He was looking at one of the green-painted signs opposite the platform gates, the sign where travellers already drifted by ones and twos in readiness for the five-thirty train to Winchester, Southampton Central, and Bournemouth. And with great deliberation Miles nodded towards it.
“There she is now.”
Chapter VII
Grey twilight hung over Greywood in the New Forest, that evening which afterwards was to be so well remembered.
Off the main motor-road from Southampton branches another motor-road. Follow this into tall green depths where forest ponies browse at the edges. Presently turn left at a broad wooden gate, down the curve of a gravel path dusky even at noonday, cross a rustic bridge over the stream which winds through the estate, and just ahead is Greywood―set against a green law, encircled by the might of beeches and oaks.
Long and narrow-built, not large, its narrow side faces you as you cross the rustic bridge. You must climb up a few stone-flagged steps, and go round a flagged terrace to what seems the side of the house, in order to reach the front door. Built of wood and of brick plastered over,it stands out brown and white against the sun-dusted forest. It has friendliness and it is touched with magic.
One or two lights gleamed in the windows tonight. They wee paraffin lamps, since the electric power-plant of Sir Charles Hammond's day had not yet been put in order.
Their light grew stronger, yellow and tremulous, as the cool dusk deepened. Perceptible now, almost unnoticed by day, was the silky splash of water over the miniature dam. Dusk blurred the outlines of the bright-canopied garden swing, with wicker chairs and a table for serving tea, which stood on the open lawn westwards towards the curve of the stream.
And in a long room at the rear of the house―a room after his own heart―stood Miles Hammond, holding a lamp above his head.
“It's all right,” he was saying to himself. “I didn't make a mistake in bringing her here. It's all right.”
But he knew in his heart that it wasn't all right.
The flame of the little lamp, in ts tiny cylindrical glass shade, partly drew the shadows from a mummified world of books. It was strong, of course, to call this place a library. It was a stack-room, a repository, an immensely long dust-heap for the two or three thousand volumes accumulated like dust by his late uncle. Books old and broken, books newish and shiny, books in quarto and octavo and folio, books in fine bindings and books withered black: breathing their exhilarating mustiness, a treasure-house hardly yet touched.
Their shelves reached to the ceiling, built even round the door to the dining-room and enclosing the row of little-paned windows that faced east. Books piled the floor in ranks, mounds, and top-heavy towers of unequal height, a maze of which the lanes between were so narrow that you could hardly move without knocking books over in a fluttering puff of dust.
“It's all right!” he fiercely said aloud.
And the door opened, and Fay Seton came in.
“Did you call me, Mr. Hammond?”
“Call you, Miss Seton? No.”
“I beg your pardon. I thought I heard you call.”
“I must have been talking to myself. But it might interest you to have a look at this confusion.”
Fay Seton stood there framed in the doorway, with the many-hued books on either side of her. Rather tall and soft and slender, her head a little on one side. She herself was carrying a paraffin lamp; and, as she lifted the lamp so that it illuminated her face, Miles was conscious of a sense of shock.
In daylight, at the Berkeley and later on the train journey, sh had seemed … not older, though in fact she was older; not less attractive … but subtly and disquietingly different from the image in his mind.
Now, by artificial light, under the softened radiance of the lamp, it was as though for the first time the photographic image of last night had sprung to life. It was only a brief glimpse, of eye and cheek and mouth, as she raised the lamp to glance round her. Bu the very passiveness of those aloof features, with their polite smile, flowed out and troubled the judgment.
Miles held up his own lamp, so that the light of the two clashed in an unsteady shadow-play, slow and yet wild, across the walls of books.
“The place is a mess, isn't it?”
“It's not nearly as bad as I'd expected,” answered Fay. She spoke in a low voice and seldom raised her eyes.
“I'm afraid I haven't dusted or cleaned up for you.”
“That doesn't matter, Mr. Hammond.”
“My uncle,if I remember correctly, bought a card-index cabinet and an incredible number of reference cards. But he never did any cataloguing. The things are somewhere in this jumble.”
“I can find them, Mr. Hammond.”
“Is my sister―er―making you comfortable?”
“Oh, yes!” She gave him a quick smile. “Miss Hammond wanted to move out of her bedroom up there”―she nodded towards the ceiling of the library―and move me in there. But I couldn't have her do that. Anyway, there are reasons why I much, much prefer to be on the ground floor. You don't mind?”