by Gerald Biss
“It’s top-hole of you,” answered Wellingham, “if we may. We’ve got no glad-rags with us, though—not even a tooth-brush.”
“Never mind that,” said Burgess cheerfully. “We’ll fix you up with pyjamas between us: and I always regard spare tooth-brushes in any house as much a necessity as spare parts in a good garage.”
And so it was fixed: and I “wirelessed” across to Blenkinsopp to put off his explanation till the evening, as I could see that the boy was a bit overwrought.
VII
We heard voices on the terrace, those of Ann and Dorothy, to whom we introduced the two youngsters, while Ann assured us that Bullingdon was all right. He had appeared exhausted, but the nurse on duty—herself I found out afterwards—had given him a little brandy; and he had fallen asleep almost at once.
Dorothy struck me as appearing pale and overdone, with great black circles under her blue eyes, but looking more beautiful than ever, if possible, with her lips startlingly bright and vivid.
“You don’t look very fit,” I said in a low voice, which could only be heard by Burgess, whom I caught eyeing her anxiously.
“I have been sleeping so badly the last few nights and having such queer dreams,” she answered in a low voice. “My father won’t let me have the blinds down—it’s his latest fad—— and the moon is so bright, streaming right across my bed. It makes me so restless; and I am quite growing to hate the moon. It seems to have such a strange influence over me.”
Burgess and I shot a quick glance across at each other.
“My father is in one of his ecstatic moods—almost ferocious, and wandering about the house like a caged animal,” the girl went on: “and at times I am quite afraid of him. I know it’s very silly: but somehow I can’t help it.”
I could see that Burgess was keeping a strong grip upon himself: and I laid a warning hand on his arm.
“And your old Anna?” I asked with assumed carelessness. “How does she take these things? “Oh, she is much the same as usual, only a bit more surly and unapproachable, if possible,” replied Dorothy, with a little shiver, which showed that her nerves were overwrought and out of order. “You see, she is thoroughly accustomed to my father’s queer ways, as he is to hers. I felt as though I should scream or have hysterics or do something silly, if I didn’t get away from it all; so I came up to have tea with Ann.”
“Why, you’re shivering, poor child,” said Burgess with unusual emotion. “Come indoors: we’ll have tea at once. I can’t have you catching cold.”
In the warmth of the hall amidst the more cheerful surroundings Dorothy soon began to recover tone and become her natural self again: and Burgess was most attentive to her in a big protective way, which made her look up at him with big, pathetic, grateful eyes.
“It’s so nice to be made a fuss of,” she said, laughing for the first time—a little queerly, I thought, that laughter which is on the borderland of tears. “I shall go home much better and happier; and then I shall be able to sleep to-night.”
“Of course you will,” I said soothingly; and then the conversation became general, with the usual chaff and laughter, until she became taken out of herself and grew quite natural again, youth responding to youth and the glow of cheerful surroundings.
“I wish you could stop on with us and help Ann with all these men?” ventured Burgess, when she got up to leave, as the old grandfather clock in the corner of the hall chimed a quarter to six. “I will go down and get your things, if you will give me a note to the Professor.”
A look of eagerness came over her face; but it died out instantly.
“I daren’t—really,” she answered gratefully, “much as I would love to. My father made me promise to be not later than six; and he will be angry as it is. If I suggested stopping the night he would make a very angry scene, and come up himself and take me home: and I would not like you to see him in one of his strange, fierce moods. He can’t help them at times,” she added loyally. “I suppose it is the penalty of genius.”
Burgess offered no comment, simply bowing to her decision.
“You shall not be late,” he said encouragingly. “I am going to drive you down myself and will see to that.”
“You are too good,” she murmured in a low voice—for him alone.
VIII
That night, after Ann had gone to bed, again warned off early much to her disgust, though she realized that there was a serious reason behind it, as both Burgess and I had explained to her— and I must say she took it in a very sporting fashion—Blenkinsopp and Manders invited Wellingham and Verjoyce into the library, while Burgess and I adjourned to his own room to go over my plan before presenting it to the others.
“We can manage quite well without you,” said Blenkinsopp considerately. “These lads won’t be very hard to convince when they know that we all four firmly believe in what we say, and that it is even unofficially recognized at the Yard, especially as the hot-blooded sympathy of youth is already aroused; and you must be dead sick of repeating the facts again and again, my dear Osgood, while to Clymping it must be personally specially distasteful. You and he can be getting on with the practical side of the job. I’ll give you a call, probably within an hour: and you can add anything that may appeal to you or appear necessary or advisable.”
In his sanctum poor old Burgess showed more emotion than in all the years of our long friendship I had ever seen him exhibit.
“By God, Linc, old man, think of that poor girl in that hell-house amidst such ghastly, unnatural surroundings. I felt to-night as though I could not leave her; but she wouldn’t let me even come up the drive. Her father is so wild and queer, she says, poor child, without ever dreaming of the inner horror of the whole accursed thing. What was I to do?” he concluded, throwing out his hands dramatically in a way utterly foreign to him, which brought home to me how deeply the iron of circumstances had entered into his soul.
“Nothing, old friend, nothing,” I said as gently as I could—“the hardest thing of all to do in times of stress; but we would assuredly spoil everything by anything premature. Remember, the ground under our feet is still very insecure from the outsider’s point of view; and we must wait for proof positive before we dare act without fear of the reaction of ridicule and a horrible bungling of everything. We could never then hope to rescue Dorothy. This old Père Garou, as Manders always calls him, would simply laugh in our faces and remove her without trace, transhipping to some spot off the map, and leaving us high and dry, hoist on the petard of our own precipitancy.”
I paused: and he nodded gloomily.
“Smoke, old man,” I said, to break the tenseness of things, “and you might give me a drink before I go on to two other important things in my mind. You would be the better for one yourself. I noticed that you took practically nothing at dinner; and, if you go on like this, you won’t sleep again to-night, just when your nerve and your hand must be at their steadiest—for Dorothy’s sake.”
He did as I suggested; and, when he had lit his cigar, I went on.
“It is no good beating about the bush, Burge. I am morally certain that those devils in human shape, evil spirits in human cases, have impregnated Dorothy”—I saw him clench his hands and bite his lip—“and, therefore, it is up to us all the more to save her. I frankly anticipate that under their foul tutelage, against her own knowledge and against her will, she will metamorphose for the first time on Tuesday. That is why I am glad that of your own accord you chose the small wolf as your mark: for thus it will be your own hand that will maim or lame to save or wound to cure. You can leave the rest to me. Her soul I will save as surely as those elemental fiends have plotted to damn it now and for all eternity. Poor Dorothy will, alas, have to pass through the fire in more senses than one; but she will, by God’s good grace, in the end come out purified of all taint. You trust me?”
Burgess gripped my hand till I thought the blood would jump from beneath my nails: and I was truly thankful when he relaxed pressure.
“God bless you, Linc, and help you, my friend in direst need.”
“And now, Burge, there is yet one thing more I have to break to you—a thing which, outside the human side, will hit you as deeply as anything else, or would have done a day or two ago.”
I paused. I could hardly get my own lips to phrase such ghastly vandalism: but we were dealing with things more ghastly and more vital than mere bricks and mortar.
“We shall have to burn the Dower House with all its contents to the ground—reduce it to a heap of ashes.”
Again Burgess started, but almost as promptly subsided, shrugging his shoulders. His most treasured possession on earth, his lifelong idol, cherished and nurtured by a great sense of atavism, had faded into the immaterial beside the greater things of the moment and the one supreme absorbing necessity of saving Dorothy, who was now the whole world to him. In comparison all things else had lost all sense of counting and had assumed negligible proportion.
“The only way of extirpating a werewolf absolutely, of getting finally quit of the spirit of the elemental after having slain the mere case,” I went on, trying to talk as though it were an everyday affair, “is to burn the body itself and reduce it to ashes. Burial is a ghastly error. A single bone of itself may attract and retain the elemental; and the superphysical will live on for centuries. Further, the only way to be assured that no kindred elemental spirits survive in the old surroundings and haunt them unseen, is to burn to the ground any dwelling once inhabited by them. So we shall thus kill two birds with one stone, so to speak: and, not only that, to the world it will merely be made known that the wonderful old Clymping Dower House, a gem of Tudor architecture built upon the site of the old castle, was on the night of Tuesday, April 30, burnt to the ground, and in it perished the famous German professor, Herr Lycurgus Wolff, and his old servant, Anna Brunnolf. His daughter, Dorothy, was luckily got out of the house, and rescued just in time by the house-party at the Manor, who happened to be out on the terrace just before turning in to bed and were attracted to the spot by the flames—including Major Blenkinsopp of Scotland Yard, who will give the story his cachet. You grasp the importance of this?”
Burgess had his head buried in his hands, but looked up as I concluded.
“What must be, must be,” he said with Æschylean simplicity, grasping the sense of inevitability that is the keynote of real tragedy. “If it will save Dorothy and her soul, it is dirt cheap at the price.”
I nodded. The man was great in the greatness of his simplicity and his love—never a thought of himself, and accepting the great price without whine or whimper or even a cavil: and I, of all people, knew how much it meant to him.
Then I showed him my plan of the position of the guns, detailed suggestions for arranging with Hedges for a supply of dry wood to be on the spot, together with plenty of petrol, and suggested that his chauffeur, Wilson, should be sent up to town on Tuesday to buy new tyres, or anything else that might be wanted, and be given the night off. Hedges and Jevons he must see personally and trust with the whole story the next afternoon, while Manders and Blenkinsopp took the two youngsters for a walk through the woods, and, as though casually, showed them the Dower House and its surroundings, possibly passing the time of day with Dorothy and even the Professor, if necessary.
Burgess agreed, and approved my plan of the guns, thoroughly himself again now that we were on the fringe of action: and we were all ready when Manders tapped lightly at the door and called us through to the library.
“The lads are splendid,” he said with real appreciation—“never jibbed once, and took it like an assault-party receiving their orders. They made some quaint comments, the dear boys, but it never occurred to them to doubt a single word spoken by a man like Blenkinsopp. By gad, they’re as game as young fighting-cocks.”
We rose and followed him into the library with the plans in our hands.
“Major Blenkinsopp has told you everything connected with this ghastly business?” I said, noting their two faces, strangely serious for once. “Is there anything I can add?”
“Nothing at all, thank you,” answered Wellingham, as usual acting as spokesman for the pair. “He has made it all too horribly plain and convincing; and you can count on both of us—to death, if need be, though I hate talking that kind of cheap melodramatic tosh, you know. It’s up to us not only to help to save Miss Wolff, but to avenge poor old Wuffles and old Tony’s narrow escape. These”—he paused for a word—“these filthy unclean things must be wiped out once and for all time.”
Harry Verjoyce nodded.
Old Bill’s right, as usual,” he said solemnly and then he lit a cigarette, as though be had forgotten something important.
“We knew we could count upon you two chaps,” I said appreciatively: and then without further to-do I produced my plans and explained the positions, and told them moreover about the climax of the holocaust, necessary not only to cover our tracks and account for the disappearance of Professor Wolff and Anna Brunnolf, but to eradicate all taint finally and for ever.
Blenkinsopp agreed.
“Having got me to countenance shooting in my official capacity, you now ask me to assent to the second greatest crime in our modern decalogue at the Yard,” he said—“arson, I mean: but I must admit that it seems to be most apt and necessary in this case, if Clymping will make the sacrifice—”
“With all my heart,” broke in Burgess without reservation—a man of one fixed purpose.
“And,” went on Blenkinsopp, “it will certainly do away with much subsequent awkwardness and things difficult to account for satisfactorily. The fire of itself will occasion publicity enough, both on account of the Professor’s name in scientific circles and on account of its proximity to the Brighton Road mysteries: but my presence and that of Inspector Boodle will avert any suspicion. But it seems a woeful thing to have to do,” he added regretfully.
“A small thing in comparison,” said Burgess with cold decision. Since Dorothy had been brought into the matter so directly and acutely nothing else seemed to matter in his eyes.
And so we sat round the table, completing our plans and working out positions till bedtime.
“I will take the front of the house, Osgood,” said Blenkinsopp, “with Clymping, yourself, and the keeper, and put Boodle at the back with Manders, Wellingham, and Verjoyce. I fancy, with you, that the exit is more likely to be from the front than the back; but, of course, we can’t be sure. I will arrange for two more C.I.D. men I can trust absolutely to be on the spot, one at the entrance to the drive, and the other handy with the van with the wood and the petrol. Mutton I shall get rid of by sending him some miles down the road to divert the traffic, giving him specious enough reasons of my own; and the local inspector I’ll put on a similar job somewhere up the road. That will not only get them out of harm’s way, but will make them feel highly important, while it will prevent their spotting the fire and coming to the rescue prematurely before it has time to get such a hold that no one will ever be able to put it out.”
“Excellent,” I agreed cordially. “It doesn’t seem to leave a loophole for trouble or the premature good offices of the well-intentioned police; and we can’t afford one in this instance.
And so, satisfied that things were as far ahead as possible, and shaping themselves as well as could be for the climax of the hideous drama, we all went to bed with the sense of a good day’s work accomplished.
That night, as had become my habit during the last fortnight, I pulled up my blind and watched the cold face of the moon all but come to maturity, and thought, with a heavy heart full of sympathy, of the poor lonely girl lying full in its baleful light in her bed in that horrible house, once so dear to me and now so loathsome: and I knew that Burgess’s thoughts were there, too.
IX
The next day, Sunday, was again perfect; and in the glorious spring sunshine it did not seem possible that there could be such evil so close at hand on the very doorstep, so to speak, only goi
ng to prove our daily proximity to the door of the apparently unreal, which is, perhaps, often very real, if beyond our immediate understanding and intelligence. We all spent it in a delightful desultory fashion, talking of everything except the subject uppermost in our minds, and making up to Ann for the neglect of the previous two evenings. That is, all except Blenkinsopp, who thought it high time to take Boodle into his full confidence and explain everything to him in detail: and they were closeted together most of the morning, preparing a private report for Sir Thomas Brayton and putting everything down in black and white.
At noon Wellingham was again allowed to see Tony Bullingdon for a short time, and reported him much better and more cheerful. He seemed easier in his mind and worrying less: and he did not once refer to Miss Yvette St. Chair. His only reference to the accident was obviously dictated by the physical and mental lethargy of extreme weakness.
“Can’t remember anything about any accident, Bill, old boy,” he said almost pathetically. “One day—when I’m better—you must tell me all about it—and…”
And then he faltered and stopped, his mental energy petering out.
“I told him not to try,” said Wellingham, who all along had struck me as a very sound, sensible chap under his happy-go-lucky, dare-devil exterior, “and talked to him about odds and ends that didn’t matter a tuppenny cuss: and he seemed quite sorry when Nurse Clymping”—with a cheeky grin at Ann, which restored the balance of things—“ordered me off the course.”
“You shan’t be allowed in again, if you are impudent, Mr. Wellingham,” said Ann severely, trying to look very dignified. “Anyhow, it’s Sir Harry’s turn at half-past two—that is, if you haven’t already over-tired Lord Bullingdon too much with your silly talk or thrown him back again,” she concluded viciously.