As much, Bobby felt he knew now of the strange old man, as he knew of most of those whom he met day by day. But little to show whether he were murderer or victim or gone upon a journey.
Rousing himself from these speculations, Bobby suggested that it was time they had a good look at the Homburg hat brought in by another of the boy scout troop. The sergeant produced it and showed the initials “M.H.” on the lining.
“Not much to go on,” he said. “‘M.H.’ might be anyone.”
But Bobby remembered at once that these were the initials of Mr Montague Hart, the Rawdon family solicitor, of whose record he knew more than Mr Hart suspected. He wondered if this meant that Mr Hart, too, had been there or thereabouts at the time of the old hermit’s disappearance. If so, how had he come to lose his hat and why had he been content to leave it behind?
“Did you say,” Bobby asked the sergeant, “the old man didn’t like lawyers either?”
“Hated ’em,” the sergeant answered. “Doctors he called licensed murderers. Journalists were a pack of Paul Prys. And lawyers just scum, that ought to be killed at sight.”
“Killed at sight, eh?” muttered Bobby. “You know, I don’t much think the old gentleman was very safe left at large. The killer in thought might provoke killing in fact.”
“Yes, sir,” said the sergeant, trying to think this out.
“Ever say what he thought of police?” Bobby asked curiously.
“Tools he called us, sir. Just tools. I took no notice though spoken offensive like.”
“Oh, well,” Bobby said, “it might be worse. Perhaps we are all tools and can be nothing else.”
With the sergeant’s help he packed the hat, too, for dispatch to Wakefield, there to receive that expert examination whereby, as the sergeant had remarked, almost anything might be discovered. Then Bobby returned to town and put in hand certain inquiries whereof the result was: first, the identification of the hat as resembling those supplied by a leading Midwych hatter to Mr Montague Hart; secondly, the fact that Mr Hart had purchased the previous Monday another he had been careful to ask should resemble as closely as possible the one last bought; and, finally, that he had on the Saturday before bought in Tombes yet another and a cheaper one. He had entered the shop without a hat, explained that he had lost his own while motoring, and he had left wearing the one just bought.
CHAPTER XXXI
BIRDS AFRAID
DAWN NEXT MORNING, or soon after; and Bobby, walking briskly through a forest glade where the dew still lay, where on the bushes spiders’ webs sparkled more than did ever precious stones. With him were Sergeant Turner, very sleepy, and little Joe Marriott, very wide awake, for to him it was a great adventure, but to the sergeant just another spot of routine.
These two Bobby had picked up and brought here in his car, now left behind at the nearest spot it had been possible to reach on wheels.
The glade they had just entered, long and narrow in shape, was traversed by that little stream which presently ran at the foot of the slope whereon stood the hermit’s hut. At the end where they had entered towered an enormous oak, still magnificent in age, and well-known as a forest landmark under the name of the ‘Druid’s Oak’, though whether that name represented ancient tradition or merely stood for a guess that from its age and its position in an open glade apart from other trees, it might well have been the scene of our ancestors’ worship, was an undecided question over which local antiquarians still loved to quarrel.
A magnificent picture it presented now in the slanting rays of the risen sun that framed it as in a glory of the dawn. Not even the urgency of the errand they were on could prevent Bobby from stopping to admire its aged splendour and he even told the sergeant he wished he had brought drawing materials with him. He would have liked to try to make a sketch of it, he said, and the sergeant said, very respectfully, ‘Yes, sir’, and thought that was the absolute limit and the rummiest remark he had ever heard a policeman make on duty.
“Queer,” said Bobby aloud, and the sergeant gave a guilty start, for the moment thinking that here was a case of mind reading and he was being asked to justify his mental disapproval. “Very queer indeed,” repeated Bobby, staring upwards and thus happily relieving the sergeant’s apprehensions.
“Yes, sir, very queer, sir,” he said, looking carefully above and around and wondering greatly what there was in any way curious or ‘queer’.
“Those birds, sir?” asked little Joe Marriott. “I saw them do just the same yesterday.”
“Did you, though?” asked Bobby. “Queerer still. Let’s see if they come back.” Seeing how puzzled the sergeant looked, Bobby added: “Did you notice?”
“Well, sir,” the sergeant admitted, “I can’t just rightly say as I did particularly.”
“Birds,” Bobby explained, “flying straight for that oak. Looked as if they were going to settle. Then all at once, when they were quite near, they wheeled and flew off.”
“Did they, though?” said the sergeant, still puzzled, and much inclined to ask, had he dared, if they were there to do a bird-watching act.
The birds showed no sign of returning. Bobby went towards the oak. When he was quite near, he heard an angry chattering from trees growing at the side of the glade. He turned from the oak towards the spot whence this chattering came. It ceased immediately, but he heard, he thought, a movement, a rustling. He was not sure. In any case trees were growing here far too closely, too thickly, for any chance of successful pursuit or search. Joe was close behind. He said:
“That was a squirrel.”
“Yes, I think it was,” Bobby agreed.
“It was here yesterday,” Joe told him. “Tommy Miles and Matt Train tried to catch it but they couldn’t. Matt says he saw a little girl, but we all looked and there wasn’t one.”
“Did Matt say what she looked like?”
“He said it was a kid girl, that’s all. Mr Young, that’s our scout master, said it was only Matt imagining things. Mr Young said it wasn’t likely there would be a little girl there, and if there was, she couldn’t have got away without our seeing her, not with all of us on the look out. Mr Young said Matt must have been dreaming, but I expect it was just a suck.”
“Might be,” agreed Bobby, but thought that if by any chance it was little Loo Floyd who had been there she would have been fully able to slip away unseen—or, for that matter, to lie snug in safe concealment, had she so pleased.
He was well convinced she knew more of the forest, its life and its ways, than Mr Young and all his troop of boy scouts put together and many times multiplied.
He walked back towards the oak. He wondered what things it had seen in all its long thousand years of life. Perhaps few or none. Perhaps all through the long procession of the centuries this tiny hidden glade had remained in sunshine and rain, in winter and summer, as peaceful and quiet as it showed itself to-day.
Presently they came to the foot of the slope whereon stood the lost hermit’s hut, its entrance now boarded up as Bobby had ordered should be done. Following the stream they came to where an arrangement of stones Joe had placed in position indicated the bramble bush they sought. With interest Bobby recognized that this spot was precisely the one where he and Olive, on the occasion of their visit here, had seen, bending over the stream, in the act apparently of washing his hands, that stranger who had departed with such haste on becoming aware of their approach. Odd that so near stood the bramble bush where the hatchet had been found, and Joe showed how it had lodged in the middle of the bush. It had been thrown there, he said, because the twigs and leaves and branches around were neither broken nor bruised, while those above did show such signs.
Joe was given another half-crown, praised for his careful observations, and sent home, pleased with the half-crown and the praise, but disappointed at missing the ride back in the inspector’s car to which he had been looking forward. The sergeant waited hopefully for his own dismissal, and then coughed respectfully to remind his superior off
icer that he was waiting. Bobby roused himself from his thoughts and said:
“I’ll get you to wait here for the time, Turner. I am going to have another look at that oak we passed and I think I had better be alone.”
The sergeant looked all the dismay and doubt he felt.
“You don’t mean you are going to make a picture of it, do you, sir?” he asked anxiously.
“Oh, no,” Bobby answered. “Not on duty. Can’t go sketching trees on duty. It’s those birds. I want to know why they flew away again just as they were going to settle.”
“Something frightened them, sir,” suggested Turner. “Perhaps it was us.”
“Might have been,” agreed Bobby. “I would like a look round, though. I may be some time—an hour or so perhaps. I’ll get you to wait here.”
“Yes, sir,” said the sergeant, pale with dismay, for he had come out before breakfast, and now he could almost smell, he could almost hear, the happy frizzling of the contents of the frying-pan wherewith, even at this moment, his wife would be getting busy.
Sadly, moodily, he watched Bobby go striding back the way they had come. Bitterly he asked himself what evil star had presided over his birth that had fated him to become a policeman. How right, how strangely right, had been the astrologer in his favourite Sunday paper in foretelling that this day would be a day of disaster for those born when he had been born.
CHAPTER XXXII
DISCOVERY
WHEN BOBBY REACHED again the glade they had passed through before, it seemed as peaceful, the ancient oak as untroubled and quiet in the still morning air, as on his previous visit. The dew had gone and the jewelled drops that had sparkled on the spiders’ webs; and now, with the sun higher in the sky, the oak had lost a little of that glory in which before it had been bathed. Under it, old gnarled roots rose above the ground, forming in one place a kind of rough seat. Bobby seated himself there, rested his elbows on his knees, his chin in his cupped hands, fixed his gaze on the ground, and waited. Lost he seemed in profound and melancholy meditation, but in reality attentive and watchful in every nerve and fibre of his body.
Half an hour passed. Another, and so an hour had gone. Bobby hardly moved all the time, scarcely as much indeed as did the branches and the leaves above when now and then a soft breath of wind blew down the glade. A detective learns patience, needs patience more almost than any other quality. Not even when Bobby became aware of faint movement in some bushes on his right did he stir. A squirrel came scrambling out and then ran back again, exactly like a scout reconnoitring. It was the first sign of life that he had seen since his return, the first movement that had broken the almost unearthly quietude and stillness reigning here. Even the birds that flew by seemed to avoid the direct passage overhead, or, if they found themselves there, to increase the speed of their flight away. All grew still again and Bobby himself had hardly so much as moved a muscle. Even when he heard what seemed a suggestion of soft footsteps behind, he was careful not to look round. He had a feeling that if he did so he would see nothing or at any rate no more than trodden grass re-straightening itself or leaves and branches quivering back into their previous position. Even when presently a low and careful, hesitating voice said softly from the other side of the oak, “Why are you sitting there?” he took no notice, made no attempt to reply.
“Why are you sitting there?” the same small voice repeated.
This time he lifted his head momentarily, gave a casual, indifferent glance backwards, and then resumed his former attitude, his chin cupped in his hands, his gaze on the ground. A trifle more loudly, the small voice repeated once again:
“What are you sitting there for? Why don’t you speak when you are spoken to?”
This last phrase, Bobby guessed, was a repetition of a reproach the speaker had often heard addressed to herself. He looked round. Loo had ventured forward now but remained poised on her toes, ready to vanish at speed. On her shoulder sat a squirrel. Henry George, Bobby supposed, though he certainly could not tell one squirrel from another. It was watching him intently from its small, sharp, beady eyes, and Bobby could not help feeling that it knew and understood all that was passing. Absurd, of course. When he still did not speak, Loo remarked, not so much to him but as if dropping the observation at random for the benefit of any it might interest:
“Mary says it’s very rude not to answer when you’re spoken to, and it doesn’t matter if you are thinking thinks to yourself.”
“Oh, is that, you, Loo?” Bobby said, as if suddenly noticing her. “How is Henry George?”
“Very well, thank you,” Loo answered; and Henry George himself chattered excitedly as if he heard and understood the reference and thought it rather a liberty. Loo said once more: “What are you sitting there for?”
“I am waiting for Peter,” Bobby answered. “Perhaps if I wait here long enough he will come.”
Loo shook her head doubtfully.
“When I call him he won’t answer,” she said.
“Is that what makes you afraid?” Bobby asked.
The child nodded.
“So it does Henry George,” she said, and once more the squirrel chattered, as if in confirmation.
“Is that why you haven’t been home?” Bobby asked again.
Once more she nodded.
“When he wakes up,” she said, “he might like me and Henry George to be there.”
“Is he asleep?” Bobby asked, but she only answered:
“He won’t speak to me when I call him.”
“Will you take me to where he is so that I can call him, too?” Bobby asked.
But at that she shook her head vigorously.
“I promised I never would, never,” she said, “and it’s ever so important, not just an ordinary promise, but a big promise.”
“Did Peter tell you why it was such a big promise?”
“He just said you must never break a promise, never. He said he learnt that when he was small like me. He said it was the only thing he was ever told that was truly true.”
“It’s a funny thing, Loo,” Bobby observed thoughtfully, “but very often when you have forgotten everything else there’s just one thing you remember. Why is that, do you think?”
Loo, whose confidence had now been completely won, sat down to consider this. Henry George alighted from her shoulder and scampered off. A few yards away he sat up and made a queer little calling noise as if wanting Loo to follow him. She shook her head, but he went on calling. Evidently he was uneasy and restless. Loo remained in deep thought. Bobby said:
“Suppose something happened and you had to go right away. I don’t mean because you were made to but because of something right deep down inside that made you.”
“Is that what happened to Peter?” she asked.
“I think so,” he answered.
“Like when you’ve gone to bed and the leaves rustle and the branches and everything out there in the forest whispers and whispers till you know you must get up and go,” Loo said. “I told Peter once and he said it was like that with him, but how did you know?”
“I think I guessed,” he said.
“Don’t you ever feel like it, too?” she asked.
“I mustn’t,” he explained gravely. “You see, I’m a policeman and policemen aren’t allowed.”
“It must be funny being a policeman,” she remarked.
“Oh, it is,” he assured her. “But suppose it was like that and you had to go and live somewhere, in the moon perhaps?”
“I should like that,” she told him thoughtfully. “I like to dance in the moonlight and all the rabbits and the fairies and everyone all come out to watch. Peter came, too, sometimes.”
“Are there fairies?” Bobby asked.
“Oh, yes,” she answered confidently. “Lots and lots and lots. You can see them ever so plainly, but they won’t let you touch them, not like rabbits and birds and squirrels. Peter says they are touchable but fairies aren’t, because they are imaginable. Peter says that�
��s because they are more real than being real, but I don’t see how they can be, do you?”
“I think I can guess what he meant,” Bobby answered. “Did he see fairies, too?”
“He said he was too old; he said when you are old you can’t, not even with spectacles. He said when I was old I wouldn’t either. It’s different when you are old, he said.”
“That’s quite true,” Bobby said, “and nothing we can do about it, either. Loo, when Peter said you weren’t to tell where he was, are you sure he meant always?”
“Always and always,” she answered promptly. “He said it again after the man came, that I wasn’t ever, ever, ever to tell anyone.”
“Oh, yes, well,” Bobby said. “What man?” he asked lazily.
“Peter said it was the man who sends Mary money for her chocolates.”
“Oh, yes,” Bobby said again, careful to show no sign of excitement that might startle the child into withdrawing the confidence he hoped he was beginning to establish.
But here was apparent confirmation that Crayfoot had in fact been at the hermit’s hut as the finding of his card there had suggested.
Diabolic Candelabra Page 18