The accidents of their conflict had brought them nearer that side of the cave where the two great candelabra, one now upon the ground, had burned on each side of that macabre pattern of human bones. Near by, too, lay Coop, very quiet and still save for long shuddering sighs that at intervals shook his supine body. It was chiefly to gain time that Bobby said:
“Dr Maskell, isn’t it?”
But Maskell took no notice, did not pause in his slow, wary, deadly advance, his right hand with the knife held in it drawn back ready for the thrust he meant to be the end. Bobby said:
“Notice that lettering on the wall? If the old man were really on the track of a cure for cancer, how many more do you think you murdered when you murdered him?”
This time the question had some effect, for Maskell at least paused, though he never took his eyes off Bobby, though his hand still hung ready for the thrust. It was the urge to justify himself all feel that made him speak. He said:
“Muck. Filthy brews. Poison. That’s all.” He said: “It was the old fool’s own fault. I told him I meant to stop him. He tried to kill me. I had to defend myself. That’s all. Now I’ve got to kill you, too, and the child as well because she says she saw.”
“Won’t do you any good,” Bobby remarked, still watching and hoping for some sign of inattention that would give him an opportunity to run in and attack. “I’ve left my notes to show it was you. You told me that yourself, you know, the very first time I saw you.”
Dr Maskell came a little nearer, cautious and prepared and confident, for though he had knowledge now that Bobby was a dangerous fighter, yet he knew the advantage his poised knife gave him, and scarcely regretted the loss of the revolver.
“Or how could you have known,” Bobby went on, “that it was human blood on the exhibit I took from the floor of the hermit’s hut unless you had spilt it yourself? Because when you said that, you hadn’t even broken the seal I put on that exhibit.”
“I wondered if you noticed,” Maskell said then, pausing for a brief moment in his careful approach, “when I saw the way you looked at me. Just as well I have you where you’ll never get the chance to tell.”
He drew another step nearer, grim and purposeful. His every movement proclaiming his intention to run no risks now, to ‘mak siccar’ as the Bruce’s friend said so long ago. As he advanced, so Bobby drew back step for step, movement for movement, still hoping for his opportunity, ready the moment he saw it, or without it if it did not offer, to make his last spring and final effort. After it was all over he was able to say he had had no sense of fear, even though he knew well that in this struggle his chance of survival was small, with the odds so heavily against him as they must be when the unarmed man faces armed. All he knew was the tense energy of conflict as he waited, for now he had his back to the cave wall and could retreat no farther. Then came that opportunity for which he had so long waited, so desperately hoped. Shattering the silence that had fallen on Maskell’s last dark threat there thundered once again the reverberating echoing roar of a pistol shot, so hugely loud in that small closed space.
In that instant Maskell’s attention wavered as momentarily he glanced over his shoulder. In that moment Bobby leaped, hurling his fists, right and left with swift following blows, in them all the fury of his heart, all the fierce power of his knowledge that it was for his life he struck. Beneath those tremendous blows, perfectly timed, behind them every atom of Bobby’s leaping body and the full tension of his nervous energy, Maskell’s face seemed, as it were, to disintegrate, to change from human features to an unrecognizable and bloody mask. Yet another blow came, aimed with the same savage intensity. Maskell fell; and where he fell, he lay motionless, for his senses had left him.
It had happened so quickly at the last, the victory had been so swift and instantaneous, that the echoes of the pistol shot still rumbled in the corners of the cave above. Yet it seemed to Bobby that he was still alone, and who it was had fired he could not at first imagine. He stooped and made sure that Maskell was in no condition to resume. For safety’s sake, for he had had enough of over-confidence, he took possession of Maskell’s knife and thought that it was an ugly weapon and was glad he had not experienced the thrust of that sharp, gleaming point. He went across to where Coop lay and bent over him. Coop tried to speak. There was a great, an awful terror in his eyes. It was still there as with a long shuddering sigh, with a sudden straightening and stiffening of his limbs, his spirit fled away to render its account.
No help now that Bobby or any other could give. Bobby went back towards the centre of the cave, remembering Crayfoot and wondering if it had been Crayfoot who had fired that opportune shot which had given him his chance. He could see no sign of him. He supposed he must have made his escape some time during the fight with Maskell. But then he saw a foot protruding from beneath the wooden bench so freely strewn with the utensils used by the old hermit in his researches. Bending down Bobby saw the foot belonged to Crayfoot who, not much of a hero and with the excuse that his nerve and stamina had been exhausted by his time of solitary imprisonment, had sought refuge there and there quietly fainted away. Just for a moment Bobby feared that he, too, was dead, but soon assured himself that it was only a case of fainting. Leaving him there Bobby went across to the alcove.
“Hullo, Loo,” he called cheerfully. “You still there? All over now, but, I say, wasn’t it a noise?”
There was a pause and then Loo’s small white face appeared.
“I’ve been sick,” she said.
“Have you though?” said Bobby. “Better now?”
“It was because of my stomach going all small and tight,” Loo explained.
“I know,” said Bobby. “So did mine. Tummies are like that. I don’t know why.”
“Were you sick, too?” Loo inquired with sympathy, understanding and interest.
“Felt like it,” Bobby told her. “But you see I was jumping and running about all the time and that rather stops it.”
“Does it?” said Loo doubtfully.
“All right now?” Bobby asked.
Loo came a little farther from her refuge.
“I saw stepfather tumble down,” she said, “when the doctor made that big bang. So I picked it up to make it go bang, too, and it did and I got under the clothes again. Did the doctor tumble down when it went bang?”
“He did,” said Bobby grimly, “and now I want you to shut your eyes just as tight as ever you can and then I am going to pick you up to carry you to the cave’s mouth where you came in. You know? And then I want you to climb up to the top again and run as fast as you can home and tell mother what’s happened and ask her to tell all the neighbours and send them here. Because I must stop to look after stepfather and the others.”
But Loo only shook her head and clung tightly to him, her face pressed hard against his shoulder. He guessed the child was still so terrified that now even her familiar forest seemed to her full of dangers and fears that she could not face alone. He was wondering what to do when he became aware of a noise of scrambling, approaching footsteps. Someone evidently had found and climbed down whatever means of descent—rope or ladder—Maskell had made use of, and, presumably, left in position. A moment later he heard a voice he knew for that of Dick Rawdon.
“Hullo, hullo there,” Dick was calling, “who’s that? What’s been going on here?”
“Oh, quite a lot,” Bobby answered. “Quite a lot.”
CHAPTER XLVI
CONCLUSION
AS SOON AS he felt he could leave the rest of what had to be done for his assistants to attend to, Bobby motored back home so as to prove to Olive by ocular demonstration that he was still alive. He had already informed her of this fact by ’phone, but then, as Olive had remarked, ’phone messages are easily misunderstood and she would like to see for herself.
She had, however, put sufficient faith in the ’phone to have a good dinner waiting; and when he had paid it the full attention it deserved—‘full’ is here the ope
rative word—Olive induced him by dint of coaxing, cunning and cajolery, mingled with more than a touch of stern wifely authority, to indulge in a few minutes’ repose.
So he consented to lie down for five minutes, closed his eyes, and when he re-opened them again was bewildered to find that apparently blackout time had arrived, since the curtains were drawn. Only by the dim illumination provided by a night-light could he distinguish Olive dozing in an arm-chair near.
“I say,” he exclaimed, much alarmed, “what’s the time? I must get a move on.”
“What for?” asked Olive.
“What for?” he repeated, “Why, there’s a million things—”
“At this hour of the morning?” Olive asked, and indicated the clock as Bobby switched on the light.
He looked and looked again, stared, gasped, collapsed.
“Twenty to three,” he almost wailed. “It isn’t, it can’t be.”
“Time,” Olive reminded him primly, “waits for no man.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?” he demanded heatedly.
“My good man,” she assured him, “we did. Several times. Only we could never get both eyes open at once—one open, t’other shut; t’other open, number one shut again. Very trying.”
Bobby groaned.
“There’s a million things—” he began again, and then he groaned once more for a fresh and different and even more poignant reason. “What’s the matter with my back?” he demanded.
“Probably broken,” Olive remarked carelessly. “Lie down again and I’ll explain.”
Bobby was now feeling his head.
“What’s this I’ve got on?” he asked more bewilderedly than ever.
“A bandage,” Olive explained. “Now shut your eyes and listen and I’ll tell you all about it.”
Still too confused to resist, Bobby obeyed, closed his eyes, heard a far-off voice murmuring faintly in a soothing whisper, and when he opened his eyes again it was to find the room flooded with daylight and Olive tickling him softly under the chin, about the only place, she explained, where he wasn’t one vast, continuous bruise.
“I thought you would like me to wake you,” she said virtuously, “though it does seem a shame. I’ve put your arnica and a fresh bottle of iodine in the bathroom. The doctor says there are no bones broken except one in the left hand, and he expects that will mend all right, and he’s sewn up your ear—he says it’ll be practically as good as new—and he’s going to write an article for the Lancet about your jaw because it ought to be broken and he can’t think why it isn’t. Oh, and he doesn’t think you’ll be lame for more than a week.”
“Dear me,” said Bobby, rather overcome by this long recital which greatly surprised him but at the same time helped to explain much.
“And why,” said Olive moodily, “I didn’t marry a pair of boxing gloves and be done with it, I don’t know.”
She went away then to see about breakfast, and in spite of his many bruises and bandages, these last making him feel that he and an Egyptian mummy were brothers over the skin, Bobby managed to devote himself seriously to the meal and to prove that at any rate his jaws were still fully capable of functioning.
Over the ’phone he had already learnt that Maskell was to be brought before the magistrates at noon, and that the inquest on the unfortunate Coop was to take place at three in the afternoon. Crayfoot, he learnt, was in hospital.
“Have you heard how he is?” Bobby asked Olive as he began his breakfast.
“The doctor says he is suffering from shock but will be all right with rest and care,” Olive answered. “I rang up Mrs. Crayfoot to ask. She says he’ll have to sell the business and retire and they will go to live in the country somewhere.”
“I expect it’ll take him some time to get over it,” Bobby agreed. “He had a pretty tough experience, shut up in that cave. Not that he had any business to go rooting round after those pictures by himself, even though I daresay he had no idea of what had happened. Lucky for him Stone saw him near the quarry and told me. Just the lead I wanted. Mrs Crayfoot told me he had been fond of rock climbing when he was younger. Maskell took the hint, too. I suppose he guessed the old hermit must have somewhere where he kept his El Grecos and did his stuff with his herbs and roots and plants. I wonder how Crayfoot knew where to look?”
“Mrs Crayfoot seems to think her husband had guessed there was some connection between the hermit and his footman grandfather. She thinks it was because of the talk going on about the El Greco pictures. He told her once he had met the hermit in the forest somewhere and had a word or two with him. She never thought of it again, she says, until now.”
“That might mean,” Bobby said slowly, “if he introduced himself as a grandson of the old man’s former footman pal, that he got a more friendly reception than most people. Very likely he even got a hint about the cave in the quarry. Looks as if when he went to the hut that time when Weston followed him into the forest, and Stone followed Weston and he found what we found—signs of a fight having taken place—he went on at once to Boggart’s Hole to see if anything had happened to the old man and so got caught in the trap laid for unauthorized visitors.”
“And burnt the El Grecos even though he knew how valuable they were?” Olive remarked.
“Their value, either in money or as works of art, wouldn’t make much appeal to a man trapped as he was,” Bobby answered. “‘Skin for skin, aye, all that he hath will a man give for his life’, and very certainly he’ll give the finest painting artist ever produced. The cancer cure, too. Every bottle smashed and nothing more left, not even a drop, only a faint hint of a smell.”
“I wonder if it was really any good,” Olive said. “If it was—”
“Yes, if it was . . .” Bobby repeated. “We shall never know. It does make you a bit dizzy though when you think of what may have been lost through Maskell’s folly and jealousy—and Crayfoot’s panic. Not that you can blame the poor devil I expect anyone would have done anything to get out of the fix he was in.”
Thoughtfully Bobby helped himself to the rest of the bacon while Olive looked on, reckoned how long it would be before the next bacon ration was due, and wondered what there would be for breakfast next day. Salt cod very likely, she told herself grimly.
“Do you think Coop really believed Crayfoot was guilty?” she asked.
“I expect so,” Bobby answered. “He would think it obvious. I expect he had been watching Loo and that’s how he knew about the cave, and Loo was watching him, and that’s why she was so quick in taking away the rope he let himself down by. It must have been Coop I saw that morning. At the time I thought it was Maskell walking into the trap—the one I hadn’t laid for him but he found for himself.”
“I was wondering,” Olive remarked, “whether it was he or you walked into that trap—both of you I suppose.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” Bobby said defensively. “When I told him Crayfoot had last been seen near Boggart’s Hole I could see he was interested and when he wanted to know if the place had been properly searched, it was pretty plain he meant to have a look himself. That was when I remembered the marks on the tree at the quarry edge I noticed the first time we were there.”
“You always thought it was Maskell, didn’t you?” Olive asked.
“Suspected,” Bobby corrected her. “The first time I saw him he told me it was human blood on the earth I had taken from the floor of the hut, though my signature on the paper it was packed in hadn’t been broken and therefore he couldn’t have made his analysis. So he couldn’t have known unless—well, unless he did know. Another time I noticed how when he was speaking of the old man he always said ‘was’—again as if he knew. The way the body was disposed of suggested someone of exceptional physical strength unless two people were concerned, which didn’t seem likely. And Maskell was a strong man all right,” and Bobby paused to grin ruefully and feel himself tenderly in various of the more painful places. “I think he knew I suspected something and tr
ied to put me off by making a parade of his dislike of the old man. It was as if he were saying: ‘It’s a jolly good thing the old scamp’s been murdered, but if I had had anything to do with it, is it likely I should say so?’ In fact, I’ve never heard of any other murderer shouting how much he disliked his victim and what a good thing it was he was dead. Then he gave me a most vivid, dramatic story of the hermit’s death. I expect it was all quite true, too. He expected me to feel he would never have talked like that if it had been himself he had been talking about. A good bluff and I’m not sure it didn’t work to some extent. I’ve never before heard either of a murderer calmly telling a policeman exactly what had happened and how and why. I think it did put me off a bit, and started me thinking about all the others all over again.”
“What will happen to the confession poor Mr Crayfoot had to sign?” Olive asked.
“Filed with the rest of the papers in the case,” Bobby answered. “Nobody is going to pay it any attention. You can tell Mrs Crayfoot so if it’s worrying her—or him.”
“What do you think would have happened,” Olive asked, “if you hadn’t been in the cave when Dr Maskell got there?”
“I think he meant murder,” Bobby answered gravely. “He brought a pistol, remember. I feel sure he expected to find Crayfoot there, and no doubt the El Grecos and the Diabolic Candelabra as well. He was undoubtedly very hard up and he could have got enough money from their sale to get away somewhere where he could have felt safe. If Crayfoot had never been found, then Crayfoot might well have been held guilty of the murder. I expect that’s how it seemed to Maskell.”
“What will happen to him now?”
“He’ll have to stand his trial for the killing of Coop,” Bobby answered. “Plain case and certain verdict. If he had had the sense to tell the truth at first, the killing of the hermit might very well have passed as manslaughter and quite possibly he would have got off with a comparatively light sentence. I suppose he couldn’t face it. Remembered their feud and the interpretation that might be put on it. Remembered the story of the El Grecos, too, and was tempted by the chance of getting hold of them.” Bobby paused and added thoughtfully: “It’s possible he was more impressed by the cancer cure claim than he admitted. He may have thought there might be something in it and have wanted to find out. It may be that was what started the quarrel and why Maskell went to the hut. From what you hear of the hermit he would be very likely to lose his temper if Maskell started questioning him. If Maskell made any suggestion about co-operation, he would certainly have refused it—most likely with every insult he could think of. I’m not sure Maskell wouldn’t have thought it better that a possible cancer cure should be lost rather than that it should be discovered by an unqualified man. Blow to the profession, he would have thought. But if he could get hold of it and get the credit or most of it for himself, as a medical man, all the better. Personal motive and professional motive as well. Anyhow, I think there was every ground for a fierce quarrel between them and I think, too, that theory explains all Maskell’s conduct.”
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