Fool Errant

by Patricia Wentworth

  He was half-way to Meade Halt before he really recovered his spirits. He might not have recovered them then if he had known that at that very moment the elderly man was commenting on the incident over the telephone:

  “Yes, I followed him. He pawned some old trash—field-glasses, an aneroid, and a clock. Got three ten for them. He went back to his room and paid the landlady. He only owed a week. Is that all? All right.” The elderly man rang off.

  Hugo left his luggage till the only porter at Meade Halt came off duty and could borrow a barrow. He walked up to Meade House. He had thirty-five shillings left. He had a job. He had a sense of adventure. Life was pretty good in spite of the pawnbroker.

  The front door of the house stood open, and he walked in. The day was not cold for December, but the bare comfortless hall was as cold as draughts could make it. He went past the stairs to the study, and just short of the door he began to wonder whether he ought to have rung the bell.

  There was a sound of voices in the room. The unlatched door moved in the draught, and he heard Minstrel’s rasping voice raised angrily:

  “I’ll do things my own way or not at all. I tell you the young fool hasn’t the brains. He’s easy—easy—easy.”

  Hugo turned on his heel and walked back to the front door. Standing on the dirty doorstep, he rang the bell. It clanged; the sound echoed and died. No one came.

  The violent disturbance in his mind settled. Minstrel’s words might, or might not, refer to him. If they did, they meant no more than that Minstrel had a bee in his bonnet—probably thought everyone wanted to steal his ideas. It wasn’t very flattering to get a job on the strength of being considered too great a fool to be dangerous; but there couldn’t be any more to it than that.

  He rang the bell again. Hacker looked round the study door and shouted, “All right—come in!”

  CHAPTER IV

  Minstrel certainly had a bee in his bonnet. He set Hugo to work, disappeared into his laboratory, and then, ten minutes later, emerged abruptly.

  Hugo heard the noise of the opening door, and Minstrel’s voice from behind him:

  “What am I working at in there—eh?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Get up! I like to look at a man when I talk to him. Get up and turn round! Let’s see your face. You don’t know what I’m working at?”

  Hugo hesitated.

  Minstrel dragged at his beard with a stained lean hand.

  “Come! You could tell me what was in Who’s Who. I’m a bit of print in a dictionary of biography? I’m a back number, am I? Is that what you think?”

  “Of course not, sir.”

  “Then what do you think? What am I working at now? What’s my brain thinking, and my will shaping, and my hand contriving—now—now?”

  “That’s not for me to say.”

  Minstrel broke into a laugh.

  “What a discreet secretary I’ve got! You don’t read the papers? They’re not so discreet as you. Last week the Daily Sensation had a headline an inch high—‘MINSTREL AGAIN—THE SUBMARINE OUTSUBMARINED.’ You didn’t see that?”

  “Yes, I saw it.”

  “But you don’t know what I’m working at?”

  “Is it my business to know things you haven’t told me, sir?”

  Hacker had come into the room from the hall. Minstrel turned on him with a gust of laughter.

  “D’you hear that? Who says I’m not a picker? Isn’t it a treat to hear him? A paragon of secretaries! And I picked him—I! You can hold your tongue henceforward and forever, Hacker my friend.” He came over to Hugo, put a hand on his arm, and spoke confidentially: “What’s wrong with Hacker is that he fancies himself. You mayn’t have noticed it; but he does. There—carry on. I’m busy.”

  He went back into his laboratory and banged the door.

  Hugo wrote half a letter, and then found Hacker looking over his shoulder.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing. Don’t let him rattle you.”

  “He doesn’t.”

  Hacker laughed.

  “He’s always jumpy when he’s starting something new. The submarine’s finished, you know—off the stocks. The Admiralty are taking it over. And if they don’t give him a title this time, they ought to be ashamed of themselves.”

  “I shouldn’t have thought he’d care for a title.”

  “He wouldn’t. At the moment he only cares about the new idea, and he’ll be like a cat on hot bricks till he’s got it roughed out.”

  He strolled over to the other table and sat down.

  Hugo went on with what he was writing; but before he reached the end of the letter the laboratory door was flung open with violence.

  “Here you—Ross, d’you know a tune from a toasting fork? I want music—something loud—Wagner—yes, Wagner—he’s full of ideas—he stimulates—better stick to Wagner. And mind you change the needle every time. Play ’em loud and keep ’em going. And you’re not to leave the records about on the floor like Hacker does.”

  He swung round and disappeared, leaving the door ajar.

  Hugo approached the gramophone and began to pick up the records which lay tumbled pell-mell on the floor beside it. The third one was The Flying Dutchman Overture, and he hastily put it on. Through the half-open door he caught a glimpse of Minstrel going to and fro with great plunging strides. He went on picking up the records, and chose Siegfried’s Funeral March to follow The Dutchman.

  Hacker came over and looked down at him with just the suspicion of a sneer on his heavy face.

  “Tidy soul! He’ll love you if you coddle his records. Oh, Lord! What a noise! It beats me how he can stick it. He always shouts for Wagner when he gets stuck. Loathsome stuff, I call it. If you want noise, why not a jazz band? But he can’t bear jazz. Funny—isn’t it?”

  Hugo continued to feed the gramophone. In the middle of the Fire Music he was aware of Minstrel beside him; he had come in as soft-footed as a cat. He was smiling complacently and stroking his beard.

  “Beautiful!” he said. “Beautiful! D’you like it?”

  Hugo nodded. This was a new Minstrel. The restless eyes were restless no more; they dreamed.

  “Beautiful!” he repeated: “Beautiful!” The words were just a whisper.

  He stood there till the last note died away; then he said,

  “That’ll do. Finish your letters.” He sighed and turned away. “Come on, Hacker! I want you.”

  They went away together.

  Hugo went back to his letters. He thought he had come into an odd world. He thought it odder still as the days went on.

  Minstrel and Hacker lived alone in the big neglected house. The woman who had slopped water on the doorstep came daily. She left pails on the stairs, brooms and mops all over the place, and called it “doing for the gentlemen.” Another woman from the village came in to cook. She served up charred joints and smoked milk puddings, which Hacker supplemented with pâté-de-foie-gras, tinned asparagus, caviare, and salmon. Minstrel drank a particularly noxious brand of thick greasy cocoa with every meal, varied by an occasional outbreak of champagne. A third woman appeared at intervals, to perform a feat which she called “turning out.” It seemed to Hugo to consist of taking all the furniture out of a room, stirring the dust into a thick cloud, and then bringing the furniture back again.

  In the rather remote garage lived the chauffeur, Leonard. He took as much pains with the old Napier as if she had been a brand new car, and was, besides, kept busy on odd jobs for Minstrel. When the car went out, Hacker drove it. Mrs. Leonard was a dressy person who held herself very high and did no work outside her own two rooms.

  Hugo had a large room looking to the front. It was next to Hacker’s, and he had at once decided that it was Hacker’s lighted window which he had seen from the lane. He slept in an old-fashioned four-post bed with a crooked tester and musty green hangings. The mattress and pillows smelt of mould, and the paper on the walls was peeling off with age and damp. There were no curt
ains at the two high windows, and the yellowed blinds were falling to bits.

  Hugo dreamt strange dreams in the musty bed. He had never dreamed so much in his life before. The dreams were the most fantastic that could be imagined. He was in a sinking ship, and it blew up in a burst of scarlet flame. He was in a diving-bell, sinking down, down, down into blackening water that changed suddenly to boiling pitch. He was on an iceberg that broke into a million stars and whirled him into farthest space. The one thing common to these strange dreams was the element of danger; he was always on the brink of something terrible. Once he dreamt about the girl. She was walking just ahead of him in a black tunnel; he could not see her, but he knew very well that it was she. They walked on quite silently and as they walked, Hugo felt fear come close, and closer, until it touched him. He tried to cry out, and the girl turned and put her lips to his ear and whispered on a sobbing breath, “You mustn’t! Oh, you mustn’t!”

  He woke. He knew that he was awake, because the girl was gone. The room was dark, but not as dark as it ought to have been; there was a little patch of light low down on the wall, a little shifting patch of light; it lit the stained edges of the paper, the rim of dust on the wainscot, and slipped lower to the floor. Hugo stared at it.

  The light came from an electric torch. Someone was standing in the corner of the room, holding a torch so that the light shone downwards. It travelled to the lid of Hugo’s trunk. He saw a hand come out of the darkness, and he saw the lid raised up. Then he called out.

  The lid dropped, the light went out. There was no sound. He shouted, “Who’s there?” sprang out of bed, and made for the corner where the box stood. He had the pleasure of barking his shins against it. There was no one there. He stood still and listened. No one moved or breathed.

  By the time he got the candle lighted, he was beginning to wonder where his dream had left off. There was no one in the room.

  CHAPTER V

  It was next day at lunch that Minstrel told Hugo curtly that he had no use for him till half-past four.

  He took himself out of the house with a good deal of pleasure. The day was fine. The mist that would rise presently was only an inch deep in the low meadows; the pale arch of the sky was cloudless, and the sun, large and golden, had not yet touched the bank of purplish haze which would presently swallow it up.

  Hugo left the lane cut across the fields, and climbed a little wooded hill. He did flute exercises for half an hour, and then ran to warm himself. There was going to be a frost, and the air had an edge already. The sun was gone; an orange glow suffused the haze; the mist was rising. He ran a mile along the road, timing himself, and then, turning, came back in a series of short sprints.

  Just short of Meade House he fell into a walk, and almost as he did so, a man came round the corner, hesitated, half stopped, passed him, and then came quickly back.

  “I beg your pardon, is that Meade House?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  The man hesitated again.

  “Excuse me—the light is bad—but are you Mr. Ross? Ah! I thought so.”

  Hugo was very much surprised. There was something just a little familiar about the man, but he didn’t know him—a middle-aged person with clothes that looked odd in the country.

  “Now, Mr. Ross, I would very much like to have a word with you if I may. I have a little matter of business which I would like to discuss—in fact, I may as well say that I came down here on purpose to see you. We have—well, not exactly met before, but—you don’t recognize me?”

  All of a sudden Hugo did recognize him. This was the middle-aged man who had witnessed his doing down at the hands of the pawnbroker. He went on feeling surprised, and the middle-aged man said,

  “I’m here on a little matter of business. I believe you pawned a pair of field-glasses a week ago—no, please don’t take offence—there’s no need—I assure you there’s no need. But the fact is, I have a client who collects such things. Curious hobby—isn’t it? But there—we all have our hobbies, and this client of mine—well, he collects field-glasses.”

  “F-f-field-glasses?” said Hugo.

  The man repeated the word with emphasis.

  “Why does he c-collect them?”

  “We all have our hobbies,” said the middle-aged man in a deprecating voice.

  “They are a p-p-perfectly ordinary p-p-p-pair of glasses.”

  “They belonged to your uncle, Mr. Trevelyan, I believe?” (What was the fellow driving at? What on earth was he driving at?) He went on speaking persuasively, “My client is very anxious to buy them. He would give a good price.”

  “What sort of p-p-price?”

  “Well—what would you take for them?”

  Hugo laughed.

  “I d-d-don’t want to sell them.”

  “Come, Mr. Ross! You wouldn’t refuse a really good offer, I take it.”

  “Why does he want them?” said Hugo to himself. “What does it all mean? What’s it all about?” Aloud he said, “Why does your man want them?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say. Some association perhaps—a sentiment—I can’t say more than that.”

  “Oh!” said Hugo with a sudden eagerness in his voice; he let his stammer go to a really reckless extent. “A s-s-s-sentiment! You d-don’t mean—he’s not—I s-say he’s not one of the s-s-survivors of the Trethewy, is he?—not one of the people who s-s-subscribed for the glasses and presented them to m-m-m-y uncle for his s-services at the time of the wreck?”

  The man hesitated.

  “I’m really not at liberty—”

  “A s-s-survivor might want to have the glasses of course,” said Hugo. “I can’t think why anyone else should. You m-might just tell me whether your man m-mentioned the Trethewy.”

  “Well, Mr. Ross, perhaps I might go so far as to say that he did.”

  “And my uncle’s s-s-saving them? He r-risked his life a dozen times. He was a w-wonderful s-swimmer. Did he t-tell you how he s-swam—I mean my uncle swam—out to them with a r-rope after the b-b-boat foundered?”

  “He mentioned it,” said the middle-aged man guardedly.

  Hugo subdued his stammer to a slight hesitation.

  “Well—I didn’t want to—sell them. But of course—”

  “Under the circumstances, Mr. Ross—under the circumstances—”

  “If he is one of the survivors—”

  “Exactly—exactly. I may say, from what I know of him, that he will greatly appreciate the—er—feeling which you have—shall I say, evinced?”

  Hugo had no objection to his saying evinced. He repressed the desire to take the middle-aged man’s hand and wring it, whilst in a voice broken with emotion and stammering, he begged him to say evinced as often as he wanted to. Instead, he murmured something quite unintelligible and waited.

  “As to terms now, Mr. Ross—”

  Mr. Ross said nothing.

  “Five pounds?” inquired the middle-aged man in a voice charged with feeling.

  “Oh, n-no,” said Hugo.

  “Well, six.”

  “I’m afraid not—”

  “Ten, then—and I don’t mind telling you that ten’s my limit.”

  “But I don’t really want to s-sell.”

  “Would twelve be any good? Of course if you were to name your price, I could put the matter before my client.”

  Someone passed them, coming from the direction of Meade House—Leonard the chauffeur by his build; the light was too far gone to distinguish features.

  “Look here,” said Hugo, “I don’t want to s-sell. It’s g-getting late. I’m s-s-s-sorry you’ve had the trouble of coming down, and I’m s-s-sorry I can’t ask you in.”

  “That’s all right,” said the man. “But see, Mr. Ross! You name a price, and I’ll put it to my client.”

  Hugo had begun to walk away. He turned and looked over his shoulder.

  “What about f-f-f-fifty pounds?” he said, and without waiting for an answer broke into a run.

  In anoth
er moment laughter would have overcome him. He ran, and laughed as he ran. Of all the absurd affairs! How much more would the fellow have swallowed? And then, all of a sudden, halfway up the drive, the laughter went clean out of him and left him cold and empty, with a prickle of fear somewhere in the dark corners of his mind. What did it mean? There had never been any Trethewy; there had never been any wreck that he knew of. The field-glasses had been bought by Richard Trevelyan in a shop in Exeter not ten years ago; there was no story attached to them, and three or four pounds was the outside price that anyone would pay for them. What on earth did it mean?

  Hugo went soberly back to the house.

  CHAPTER VI

  An hour later there was a knock on the study door. Minstrel and Hacker were in the laboratory. Hugo said, “Come in!” and looking over his shoulder, saw the door open a scant six inches; the woman who left brushes and pails about peered through the crack with an aggravated air of embarrassment. When it became obvious that she would not come in, Hugo got up. She backed away from him into the hall, and at a safe distance from the door said in a piercing whisper,

  “There’s a young person as wants to see you.”

  “Wants to see me?”

  The woman sniffed.

  “She says as she wants to see Mr. Hugo, and seeing as the name was on the letter I give you this morning—”

  Hugo looked past her. Everyone in the house invariably left the front door open; it was open now. The young person was standing on the doorstep. The hall lamp flaring in the draught disclosed a plump rustic girl who shifted from one foot to another. He came forward. She had unbelievably round red cheeks and incredibly round blue eyes. She wore a brick-red coat, a felt hat of the brightest shade of periwinkle mauve, and her hands were encased in sky-blue knitted gloves.

  Hugo was quite sure that he had never set eyes on her before. He said “Good-evening,” and waited, conscious that Mrs. Parford was dusting the banisters with unaccustomed zeal.