‘There’s not much to tell. He’s flourishing at the moment, as you may guess from the amount of money you’re given to play with in the sale-rooms. You see, he doesn’t have to play the old dangerous game of arming rebels. He arms rightful governments.’
‘Rightful governments?’
‘The people who would be governing if other people hadn’t been wrongfully elected to the job. On the strength of that he can buy any number of Egyptian papyri and Attic pots.’
‘I think this conference has been most depressing all round. Still, you ought to enjoy meeting the villain, to say nothing of seeing the Abbey.’ Belinda got cautiously up. ‘Look here, let’s get out. We haven’t been found and the game must be over long ago.’
‘Yes’, said Appleby. ‘Nothing seems to have happened since–’ He stopped abruptly. ‘Belinda, didn’t you say that for this game the corridor lights remained on?’
‘They all remain on. Only lights in rooms aren’t allowed.’
‘There was a gleam of light from the corridor here through a crack. I’ve just noticed it’s gone.’ He laid a hand on Belinda’s arm. ‘Listen.’
Directly above their heads – in their confined darkness at once as immediate and as bafflingly remote as the signal of a diver to men trapped in a submarine – passed the melodramatic, the absurd, the sinister sound of the blind secretary’s stick.
9
Within and without, Rust Hall lay in darkness. And this time John Appleby had no electric torch to hand. Nobody had a torch; the score or so which had flitted about the house shortly before had been stowed neatly away in a bag by Sir Rupert Eliot. Rust was peculiarly ill-equipped to deal with a second invasion of night.
Appleby and Belinda tugged back the secret panel between them; as they did so a confused murmuring reached them from above, about, below. It rose, as they stumbled out, to shouts and cries. Once more, Mr Eliot’s party was having a bad time.
‘This,’ said Belinda, ‘is monotonous.’ She spoke quickly, as if making a timely grab at her own reactions. ‘I can even hear Miss Cavey taking up her role of leading the pack.’ Miss Cavey’s yell, though somewhat muted by distance, was indeed unmistakable.
Appleby took Belinda’s arm and they groped along the corridor. ‘I hope’, he said, ‘that the eyes of those four puppies are squinnying at her in the dark… It’s the deplorable truth that I have a match-box with only one match; we’ll save it for emergencies. You’re guide. I suppose you didn’t contrive this yourself with a master-switch hidden in our cubby-hole and a gramophone for the tap-tap?… Lord, what a row.’
They had come to the head of the main staircase; a petty chaos echoed up the well. Here and there a match spurted and went out – extinguished by a chill night wind which had begun to blow inexplicably about the house. ‘Try that very persuasive voice,’ said Belinda.
Even as he filled his lungs to obey, Appleby was forestalled. From a central position below somebody called out, ‘Stop it!’ The voice was not persuasive; it was, however, so formidably angry that nearly everybody stopped.
‘Timmy’s Toplady,’ said Belinda. ‘Another little diplomat. And a creature not without surprises.’
‘And now’, said the voice of Toplady, ‘the windows. A lot are open. Will some people – just two or three – try to find them and shut them?’ The voice paused, waiting for evidences of obedience; when it continued it had abandoned its emergency staccato. ‘It will be reasonable to suppose’, it pursued in tones which were a soothing epitome of reasonableness, ‘that the candles, of which there were a great many, may have been left on the dinner-table till morning. It is often done.’ Toplady’s anxiety, echoing out of the darkness, to avoid any suggestion of inadequacy in the domestic economy of Rust was eminently impressive and the party was rendered quite dumb. ‘I’m going to find them. And then perhaps the gentleman who helped us before – I’m afraid I must confess to having forgotten his name – will make another inspection of the fuses.’
Leaning over the top of the staircase Appleby chuckled anew. ‘I’m whacked,’ he murmured. ‘Toplady, did you say? The ruling caste, I suppose. Just so do Topladys take charge beneath palm and pine. Down we go and I’ll try to perform my little mechanic task.’ His voice grew serious and his hand tightened momentarily on Belinda’s before letting it go. ‘It is my opinion’ – the words came with an authority of their own – ‘that nothing very alarming has happened.’
‘Good,’ said Belinda – and asked no questions. They hurried down.
‘Because’ – Appleby was briskly communicative – ‘something is being worked up to. A bastard artistic process. And we haven’t reached the climax yet.’
Like celebrants at a smartly-costumed witches’ sabbath a semi-circle of Mr Eliot’s guests held up silver candlesticks. Windows had been closed and the draught substantially controlled, but eddying gusts still caught the candles so that they smoked and flared uncertainly, giving the appearance of a lively sequence of emotion to faces now resolved to be as cool and impassive as might be. Only Wedge, who had secured a branching candelabra and was standing in a pose most consciously hieratic, and Peter Holme, who was irresistibly impelled to gestures suitable to the taper scene in Julius Caesar, were without an apparent anxiety to be eminently correct. Toplady and Chown were standing one on each side of Mr Eliot, who was responding with conscientious courtesy to two conflicting sedative techniques.
‘It’s not’, said Appleby, deciding after a moment’s reflection on a general dissemination of intelligence, ‘the fuses this time. It’s the main switch – the little lever affair one throws out or presses home. Somebody has wrenched it away bodily, with a good deal of strength and at some risk. At the moment I’m afraid I see no substitute.’ There was a pause, the harassed party standing woefully round. ‘Wait a minute, though. I want a large india-rubber and every available packet or tin of cigarettes. Not cigarette-cases: tins or packets.’ The party stirred, chattered; there was a little fuss of coming and going; the required articles were handed up as to an illusionist on a stage. ‘Motorists in particular’, Appleby said instructively, ‘should carry abundant tinfoil. It works’ – abruptly Rust was deluged in light – ‘wonders.’ He slid to the floor.
For the second time in a brief space Hugo Toplady rose to an occasion. ‘How cheering’, he said commandingly, ‘that we can all see to go to bed.’
Rather like the chorus of a musical comedy, being huddled off stage so that the principals can get on with the romantic business of the piece, the majority of the party went hastily through the business of breaking up for the night. Only Miss Cavey was chary of departing. Perhaps her spirits were more volatile than those of the rest; perhaps she was reluctant to be left alone in bed in the dark, meditating her pendent puppies and listening for the uncanny musical meditations of the Spider. The former appeared to be the truth, for she enquired with some anxiety whether it was Friday or Saturday which had just elapsed, and on being assured that it was Friday remarked that it was Saturday night, after all, that was the grand night of the party. Mr Eliot was left surrounded by his relations and a sort of inner-circle of semi-confidants. But no one seemed very certain of what course the play ought now to follow, or just what part he or she might judiciously take. Somebody had fetched drinks from the library – to which several of the departed guests had made a detour to fortify themselves against the night – and the little group sat about the hall, some on the staircase and some on scattered chairs, giving every evidence of contemplating a thoroughly uncertain situation. Hugo Toplady, having dispersed the herd, seemed to feel that his job was done. It was Appleby who broke silence, taking the horns of the first bull that came to hand. ‘There is no doubt of its being deliberate this time. And I shall be surprised if nothing is involved beyond a second cutting off of the lights. What interests me is the curious moment chosen for the joke.’
‘I should have thought’ – Gerald Winter spoke from a perch on the staircase above the others – ‘that it was capital, if obvious, moment
: everybody hidden away for what was going to be – I have no doubt – a very amusing game.’ Winter contrived to look at once bored and perturbed.
‘The curious point’, said Appleby – and he might have been charged with insinuating a faintly irritating patience into his voice – ‘is not that we were all hiding, but that we were all hiding in pairs.’ Everybody – except Mr Eliot, who was sitting quite still on the lowest tread of the staircase – stirred uneasily and Appleby felt that, for good or ill, he had established himself as an investigator. He pressed on. ‘It would be interesting to know who was hiding with whom, and who, it may be, wasn’t hiding at all.’
‘A tally of who was hiding with whom?’ Timmy, sipping whisky distastefully in a corner, broke in. ‘You know, that might be a bit embarrassing.’ His tone was appreciative, as if he thought this possibility all to the good. ‘The Cavey wanted Appleby. But whom did she get?’
Mr Eliot looked up. ‘Miss Cavey and I’, he said, ‘hid ourselves in a linen-cupboard on the first floor.’ He spoke with effort, as if roused only by the conventional need of stopping Timmy making fun of an absent guest. ‘When I come to think of it, we seemed to be there an uncommonly long time. Miss Cavey told me a great deal about her new book, only’ – Mr Eliot frowned in perplexity – ‘it’s a very odd thing’ – the frown vanished and he lit up in appreciation of a humorous aspect of what he was going to say – ‘I can remember nothing at all about it.’ He smiled in momentary happiness at Timmy, drawn into the fun he had proposed to check. And then again he frowned. ‘There is something very odd about my memory tonight.’
Everyone was embarrassed. ‘It was’, said Belinda suddenly, ‘a very long game. And I don’t believe anybody was found at all. There’s always a racket when people break cover, and John and I didn’t hear a sound.’
‘Anyway’ – Timmy spoke impulsively – ‘there’s one person who wasn’t paired. That’s Archie. He was the hunter. And he’ll know if he caught anybody.’
All eyes turned to Sir Archibald Eliot. This too was embarrassing, because Sir Archibald was evidently drunk. Appleby remembered that it was on this round little man that he had been deprived of information when Mrs Moule had been led from the dining-room. Once more Appleby took a moment to place him. He was the unsuccessful engineer; more curiously he was in some obscure way the victim of the sadistic trend in Mr Eliot which had been under discussion some hours before. If persecuted, he seemed to bear up well. He exuded comfortableness, and a placidity which was only emphasized by liquor. From under heavily drooping eyelids he looked amiably at Timmy now. But it was Mr Eliot who spoke. ‘The pontiff,’ he said sharply; ‘what can he tell us?’
So there it was. For one whose bridge had behaved so badly the nickname was scarcely kind. But it was sanctioned, perhaps, by affectionate family usage; certainly the glance which Archie transferred to Mr Eliot was as amiable as ever. ‘Do I,’ asked Archie in a voice thick and yet not displeasing, ‘carry the moon in my pocket?’
Appleby sighed. The engineer too was literary.
‘These blackouts’, said Archie, as if gently complaining; ‘they keep on happening. A case of put out the light, and then put out the light.’ His eyes opened fully for a moment, as if he were astonished at his own felicity in quotation. ‘A game’s a game, my dear Richard. But even for the sake of a game was I to go stumbling about your rat-ridden stairs?’ He reflected. ‘Not’, he amended seriously, ‘that there really are rats at Rust. But in all that darkness could I really wander about catching people? Be reasonable, my dear chap.’ Quite inoffensive, Archie hiccuped.
Mr Eliot appeared to be momentarily at a loss and it was Timmy who replied. ‘So you didn’t catch anybody? But the lights didn’t go out, I’m quite sure, till a long time after you ought to have begun.’
It was so obvious that Archie could scarcely have been in a condition for effective hunting that the majority of the group turned upon Timmy eyes of mild reproof. Archie, however, was again reflecting. ‘Drowsy syrups,’ he said. ‘That was it: drowsy syrups.’ He looked vaguely about him, apparently expecting to find poppy and mandragora bestrewing the floor. Timmy, with the ghost of an unkind significance, splashed a little more soda into his glass. It was all very unedifying and nearly everybody was unhappy.
‘You mean, Sir Archibald’ – a new voice had broken in – ‘that you have been drugged?’ This was Dr Chown.
Once more Mr Eliot roused himself, seemingly anxious to put an end to his kinsman’s improbable plea. ‘No, no, Chown. Because of the party Archie has been celebrating a little. I really think we ought – ’
But Chown, paying no attention to his host, had briskly crossed the hall and thrust up one of Archie’s eyelids with no more ceremony than if he had been a hospital outpatient or an inanimate object. ‘He is drugged,’ he said shortly. ‘There can be no possible doubt of it.’
It was worse and worse. Patricia, who had lingered to companion Belinda, found herself reflecting that it would be far, far better if there were – as there presumably was not – a corpse in the library. A corpse justifies any amount of uncomfortableness; in the interest of a blood-hunt social decencies can cheerfully be abandoned. But the nearest thing to blood that had turned up at Rust so far was red water-colour paint. And the closest approximation to blood-lust that had come under observation was in Hugo Toplady when he had found that paint on his shaving-brush. There had been no crime – or no crime nearer than the grotesquerie of the Birdwire burglary. A burlesque burglary, a hazardous advertisement that Rust was Folly Hall, a bogus confession by Timmy, an absurd statement by this Archie Eliot which yet turned out to be true, sundry fragments of funny-business, a certain wild apprehension of her own: they all abundantly deserved Belinda’s strongest epithet of condemnation; they were tiresome, every one. Patricia, having got thus far, glanced across at her brother. And she saw that here at least was someone oblivious of either tiresomeness or awkwardness; at the moment oblivious of everything at Rust except its owner.
Openly or covertly, everybody was looking at Mr Eliot. Suddenly he had taken – undemonstratively but with deliberation – the centre of the stage; had taken it physically, standing in the middle of his hall with the little gathering grouped about him. ‘I am sorry’, he said, ‘that so many people have gone to bed. Those of you who remain will believe me when I say that I really do feel extremely the need of apologizing. It has been uncomfortable – most uncomfortable – but it has at least shown me what I must do. I have been in great doubt; at least the thing is now clear.’
Mr Eliot paused. He was a man defeated; at the same time he was a man conscious that there had been lifted from him some burden of uncertainty. His attitude was that of one who has finally arrived at facts crushing in themselves, but facts in the light of which it is at long last possible to act.
‘I am, as I say, ever so sorry. I am myself, of course, entirely responsible.’
The company stared at him, bewildered.
‘Of course one has to beware of coincidence: I have been keenly aware of that all along.’ Mr Eliot glanced about him for support, seemingly quite unconscious that his remarks were mysterious. ‘But now I think that there can be no doubt of it. And this is the Birthday Party.’
Belinda spoke in a low, strained voice. The birthday party, daddy?’
‘Yes, my dear but with capital letters. The Birthday Party. As we all know, it is a birthday party – his birthday party.’ Mr Eliot paused again and the company instinctively drew a little closer, as if this cautious turn of phrase had made a little more real the fantastic supposition that the Spider was at large at Rust. ‘It is a birthday party: that is point one. The lights went out: that is point two. So far there might be nothing but coincidence. But now Archie has been drugged. And that is conclusive. It is staggering; there was a period at which I was very much upset. But once faced – though I don’t think it ought to be faced for long – the thing is intensely interesting.’ Once more Mr Eliot looked round the circle of trouble
d faces. ‘I see that you are all naturally curious. There are, then, these points which assure me that this is the Birthday Party. And now let me tell you the fourth; let me’ – Mr Eliot was for the moment almost gay – ‘prophesy!’ His brow clouded suddenly. ‘Only my memory is really not good. I forget the details. Perhaps there never were any details. But of the fourth point I am convinced. It will be something about a picture.’
There was a baffled silence. It was broken by Appleby. ‘Was there not’, he asked quietly, ‘a fifth point: Folly Hall?’
Mr Eliot shook his head decisively. ‘No,’ he said, ‘no.’ His tone was oddly matter-of-fact. ‘You are thinking of something quite different. The Birthday Party you see, is ancient history, and – what is so very remarkable – history which never achieved itself. I am sure you will agree with me about the interest of the whole matter. There is nothing in it repugnant to the speculative intelligence, and yet it is more uncanny to an unreflective mind than anything that could be imagined’ – he looked cautiously round – ‘by our excellent friend Mrs Moule.’
The minds congregated round Mr Eliot were presumably of the unreflective kind; the features which they governed were growing increasingly blank. But Mr Eliot seemed to have no suspicion that he was being other than lucid and convincing.
‘I must confess myself to a pretty thorough-going rationalism. The vulgar supernatural has never held any attraction for me; I shall never believe in anything of the kind. But, as Winter and I agreed on the train this morning, this is a purely metaphysical matter.’
Mr Eliot paused and looked hopefully at Timmy’s tutor; Timmy’s tutor looked awkwardly back and appeared to feel that some utterance was necessary. ‘Mr Eliot’, he said, ‘is inclined to believe that imaginative writing is, strictly, creative; that there grows out of it an autonomous world, as real as our own. It is not quite our reality, but a reality nevertheless. The idea’ – he hesitated – ‘is one of very respectable ancestry and antiquity. But Mr Eliot further believes that these realities, normally discrete, sometimes get muddled up – like telephone conversations when the wires get crossed in a storm.’
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