‘He goes and comes very suddenly,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘That is one of his characteristics. One doesn’t always see him come and go.’
‘Like Harlequin,’ said Frank Bristow, ‘he is invisible,’ and laughed heartily at his own joke.
Chapter 10
The Bird with the Broken Wing
I
Mr Satterthwaite looked out of the window. It was raining steadily. He shivered. Very few country houses, he reflected, were really properly heated. It cheered him to think that in a few hours’ time he would be speeding towards London. Once one had passed sixty years of age, London was really much the best place.
He was feeling a little old and pathetic. Most of the members of the house party were so young. Four of them had just gone off into the library to do table turning. They had invited him to accompany them, but he had declined. He failed to derive any amusement from the monotonous counting of the letters of the alphabet and the usual meaningless jumble of letters that resulted.
Yes, London was the best place for him. He was glad that he had declined Madge Keeley’s invitation when she had rung up to invite him over to Laidell half an hour ago. An adorable young person, certainly, but London was best.
Mr Satterthwaite shivered again and remembered that the fire in the library was usually a good one. He opened the door and adventured cautiously into the darkened room.
‘If I’m not in the way–’
‘Was that N or M? We shall have to count again. No, of course not, Mr Satterthwaite. Do you know, the most exciting things have been happening. The spirit says her name is Ada Spiers, and John here is going to marry someone called Gladys Bun almost immediately.’
Mr Satterthwaite sat down in a big easy chair in front of the fire. His eyelids drooped over his eyes and he dozed. From time to time he returned to consciousness, hearing fragments of speech.
‘It can’t be P A B Z L–not unless he’s a Russian. John, you’re shoving. I saw you. I believe it’s a new spirit come.’
Another interval of dozing. Then a name jerked him wide awake.
‘Q-U-I-N. Is that right?’ ‘Yes, it’s rapped once for “Yes.” Quin. Have you a message for someone here? Yes. For me? For John? For Sarah? For Evelyn? No–but there’s no one else. Oh! it’s for Mr Satterthwaite, perhaps? It says “Yes.” Mr Satterthwaite, it’s a message for you.’
‘What does it say?’
Mr Satterthwaite was broad awake now, sitting taut and erect in his chair, his eyes shining.
The table rocked and one of the girls counted.
‘LAI–it can’t be–that doesn’t make sense. No word begins LAI.’
‘Go on,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, and the command in his voice was so sharp that he was obeyed without question.
‘LAIDEL? and another L–Oh! that seems to be all.’
‘Go on.’
‘Tell us some more, please.’
A pause.
‘There doesn’t seem to be any more. The table’s gone quite dead. How silly.’
‘No,’ said Mr Satterthwaite thoughtfully. ‘I don’t think it’s silly.’
He rose and left the room. He went straight to the telephone. Presently he was through.
‘Can I speak to Miss Keeley? Is that you, Madge, my dear? I want to change my mind, if I may, and accept your kind invitation. It is not so urgent as I thought that I should get back to town. Yes–yes–I will arrive in time for dinner.’
He hung up the receiver, a strange flush on his withered cheeks. Mr Quin–the mysterious Mr Harley Quin. Mr Satterthwaite counted over on his fingers the times he had been brought into contact with that man of mystery. Where Mr Quin was concerned–things happened! What had happened or was going to happen–at Laidell?
Whatever it was, there was work for him, Mr Satterthwaite, to do. In some way or other, he would have an active part to play. He was sure of that.
Laidell was a large house. Its owner, David Keeley, was one of those quiet men with indeterminate personalities who seem to count as part of the furniture. Their inconspicuousness has nothing to do with brain power–David Keeley was a most brilliant mathematician, and had written a book totally incomprehensible to ninety-nine hundreds of humanity. But like so many men of brilliant intellect, he radiated no bodily vigour or magnetism. It was a standing joke that David Keeley was a real ‘invisible man’. Footmen passed him by with the vegetables, and guests forgot to say how do you do or goodbye.
His daughter Madge was very different. A fine upstanding young woman, bursting with energy and life. Thorough, healthy and normal, and extremely pretty.
It was she who received Mr Satterthwaite when he arrived.
‘How nice of you to come–after all.’
‘Very delightful of you to let me change my mind. Madge, my dear, you’re looking very well.’
‘Oh! I’m always well.’
‘Yes, I know. But it’s more than that. You look–well, blooming is the word I have in mind. Has anything happened my dear? Anything–well–special?’
She laughed–blushed a little.
‘It’s too bad, Mr Satterthwaite. You always guess things.’
He took her hand.
‘So it’s that, is it? Mr Right has come along?’
It was an old-fashioned term, but Madge did not object to it. She rather liked Mr Satterthwaite’s old-fashioned ways.
‘I suppose so–yes. But nobody’s supposed to know. It’s a secret. But I don’t really mind your knowing, Mr Satterthwaite. You’re always so nice and sympathetic.’
Mr Satterthwaite thoroughly enjoyed romance at second hand. He was sentimental and Victorian.
‘I mustn’t ask who the lucky man is? Well, then all I can say is that I hope he is worthy of the honour you are conferring on him.’
Rather a duck, old Mr Satterthwaite, thought Madge.
‘Oh! we shall get on awfully well together, I think,’ she said. ‘You see, we like doing the same things, and that’s so awfully important, isn’t it? We’ve really got a lot in common–and we know all about each other and all that. It’s really been coming on for a long time. That gives one such a nice safe feeling, doesn’t it?’
‘Undoubtedly,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘But in my experience one can never really know all about anyone else. That is part of the interest and charm of life.’
‘Oh! I’ll risk it,’ said Madge, laughing, and they went up to dress for dinner.
Mr Satterthwaite was late. He had not brought a valet, and having his things unpacked for him by a stranger always flurried him a little. He came down to find everyone assembled, and in the modern style Madge merely said: ‘Oh! here’s Mr Satterthwaite. I’m starving. Let’s go in.’
She led the way with a tall grey-haired woman–a woman of striking personality. She had a very clear rather incisive voice, and her face was clear cut and rather beautiful.
‘How d’you do, Satterthwaite,’ said Mr Keeley.
Mr Satterthwaite jumped.
‘How do you do,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t see you.’
‘Nobody does,’ said Mr Keeley sadly.
They went in. The table was a low oval of mahogany. Mr Satterthwaite was placed between his young hostess and a short dark girl–a very hearty girl with a loud voice and a ringing determined laugh that expressed more the determination to be cheerful at all costs than any real mirth. Her name seemed to be Doris, and she was the type of young woman Mr Satterthwaite most disliked. She had, he considered, no artistic justification for existence.
On Madge’s other side was a man of about thirty, whose likeness to the grey-haired woman proclaimed them mother and son.
Next to him–
Mr Satterthwaite caught his breath.
He didn’t know what it was exactly. It was not beauty. It was something else–something much more elusive and intangible than beauty.
She was listening to Mr Keeley’s rather ponderous dinner-table conversation, her head bent a little sideways. She was there, it se
emed to Mr Satterthwaite–and yet she was not there! She was somehow a great deal less substantial than anyone else seated round the oval table. Something in the droop of her body sideways was beautiful–was more than beautiful. She looked up–her eyes met Mr Satterthwaite’s for a moment across the table–and the word he wanted leapt to his mind.
Enchantment–that was it. She had the quality of enchantment. She might have been one of those creatures who are only half-human–one of the Hidden People from the Hollow Hills. She made everyone else look rather too real…
But at the same time, in a queer way, she stirred his pity. It was as though semi-humanity handicapped her. He sought for a phrase and found it.
‘A bird with a broken wing,’ said Mr Satterthwaite.
Satisfied, he turned his mind back to the subject of Girl Guides and hoped that the girl Doris had not noticed his abstraction. When she turned to the man on the other side of her–a man Mr Satterthwaite had hardly noticed, he himself turned to Madge.
‘Who is the lady sitting next to your father?’ he asked in a low voice.
‘Mrs Graham? Oh, no! you mean Mabelle. Don’t you know her? Mabelle Annesley. She was a Clydesley–one of the illfated Clydesleys.’
He started. The ill-fated Clydesleys. He remembered. A brother had shot himself, a sister had been drowned, another had perished in an earthquake. A queer doomed family. This girl must be the youngest of them.
His thoughts were recalled suddenly. Madge’s hand touched his under the table. Everyone else was talking. She gave a faint inclination of her head to her left.
‘That’s him,’ she murmured ungrammatically.
Mr Satterthwaite nodded quickly in comprehension. So this young Graham was the man of Madge’s choice. Well, she could hardly have done better as far as appearances went–and Mr Satterthwaite was a shrewd observer. A pleasant, likeable, rather matter-of-fact young fellow. They’d make a nice pair–no nonsense about either of them–good healthy sociable young folk.
Laidell was run on old-fashioned lines. The ladies left the dining-room first. Mr Satterthwaite moved up to Graham and began to talk to him. His estimate of the young man was confirmed, yet there was something that struck him as being not quite true to type. Roger Graham was distrait, his mind seemed far away, his hand shook as he replaced the glass on the table.
‘He’s got something on his mind,’ thought Mr Satterthwaite acutely. ‘Not nearly as important as he thinks it is, I dare say. All the same, I wonder what it is.’
Mr Satterthwaite was in the habit of swallowing a couple of digestive pastilles after meals. Having neglected to bring them down with him, he went up to his room to fetch them.
On his way down to the drawing-room, he passed along the long corridor on the ground floor. About half-way along it was a room known as the terrace room. As Mr Satterthwaite looked through the open doorway in passing, he stopped short.
Moonlight was streaming into the room. The latticed panes gave it a queer rhythmic pattern. A figure was sitting on the low window sill, drooping a little sideways and softly twanging the string of a ukelele–not in a jazz rhythm, but in a far older rhythm, the beat of fairy horses riding on fairy hills.
Mr Satterthwaite stood fascinated. She wore a dress of dull dark blue chiffon, ruched and pleated so that it looked like the feathers of a bird. She bent over the instrument crooning to it.
He came into the room–slowly, step by step. He was close to her when she looked up and saw him. She didn’t start, he noticed, or seem surprised.
‘I hope I’m not intruding,’ he began.
‘Please–sit down.’
He sat near her on a polished oak chair. She hummed softly under her breath.
‘There’s a lot of magic about tonight,’ she said. ‘Don’t you think so?’
‘Yes, there was a lot of magic about.’
‘They wanted me to fetch my uke,’ she explained. ‘And as I passed here, I thought it would be so lovely to be alone here–in the dark and the moon.’
‘Then I–’ Mr Satterthwaite half rose, but she stopped him.
‘Don’t go. You–you fit in, somehow. It’s queer, but you do.’
He sat down again.
‘It’s been a queer sort of evening,’ she said. ‘I was out in the woods late this afternoon, and I met a man –such a strange sort of man–tall and dark, like a lost soul. The sun was setting, and the light of it through the trees made him look like a kind of Harlequin.’
‘Ah!’ Mr Satterthwaite leant forward–his interest quickened.
‘I wanted to speak to him–he–he looked so like somebody I know. But I lost him in the trees.’
‘I think I know him,’ said Mr Satterthwaite.
‘Do you? He is–interesting, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, he is interesting.’
There was a pause. Mr Satterthwaite was perplexed. There was something, he felt, that he ought to do–and he didn’t know what it was. But surely–surely, it had to do with this girl. He said rather clumsily:
‘Sometimes–when one is unhappy–one wants to get away–’
‘Yes. That’s true.’ She broke off suddenly. ‘Oh! I see what you mean. But you’re wrong. It’s just the other way round. I wanted to be alone because I’m happy.’
‘Happy?’
‘Terribly happy.’
She spoke quite quietly, but Mr Satterthwaite had a sudden sense of shock. What this strange girl meant by being happy wasn’t the same as Madge Keeley would have meant by the same words. Happiness, for Mabelle Annesley, meant some kind of intense and vivid ecstasy…something that was not only human, but more than human. He shrank back a little.
‘I–didn’t know,’ he said clumsily.
‘Of course you couldn’t. And it’s not–the actual thing–I’m not happy yet–but I’m going to be.’ She leaned forward. ‘Do you know what it’s like to stand in a wood–a big wood with dark shadows and trees very close all round you–a wood you might never get out of–and then, suddenly–just in front of you, you see the country of your dreams–shining and beautiful–you’ve only got to step out from the trees and the darkness and you’ve found it…’
‘So many things look beautiful,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, ‘before we’ve reached them. Some of the ugliest things in the world look the most beautiful…’
There was a step on the floor. Mr Satterthwaite turned his head. A fair man with a stupid, rather wooden face, stood there. He was the man Mr Satterthwaite had hardly noticed at the dinner-table.
‘They’re waiting for you, Mabelle,’ he said.
She got up, the expression had gone out of her face, her voice was flat and calm.
‘I’m coming, Gerard,’ she said. ‘I’ve been talking to Mr Satterthwaite.’
She went out of the room, Mr Satterthwaite following. He turned his head over his shoulder as he went and caught the expression on her husband’s face. A hungry, despairing look.
‘Enchantment,’ thought Mr Satterthwaite. ‘He feels it right enough. Poor fellow–poor fellow.’
The drawing-room was well lighted. Madge and Doris Coles were vociferous in reproaches.
‘Mabelle, you little beast–you’ve been ages.’
She sat on a low stool, tuned the ukelele and sang. They all joined in.
‘Is it possible,’ thought Mr Satterthwaite, ‘that so many idiotic songs could have been written about My Baby.’
But he had to admit that the syncopated wailing tunes were stirring. Though, of course, they weren’t a patch on the old-fashioned waltz.
The air got very smoky. The syncopated rhythm went on.
‘No conversation,’ thought Mr Satterthwaite. ‘No good music. No peace.’ He wished the world had not become definitely so noisy.
Suddenly Mabelle Annesley broke off, smiled across the room at him, and began to sing a song of Grieg’s.
‘My swan–my fair one…’
It was a favourite of Mr Satterthwaite’s. He liked the note of ingenuous surprise at t
he end.
‘Wert only a swan then? A swan then? ’
After that, the party broke up. Madge offered drinks whilst her father picked up the discarded ukelele and began twanging it absent-mindedly. The party exchanged goodnights, drifted nearer and nearer to the door. Everyone talked at once. Gerard Annesley slipped away unostentatiously, leaving the others.
Outside the drawing-room door, Mr Satterthwaite bade Mrs Graham a ceremonious goodnight. There were two staircases, one close at hand, the other at the end of a long corridor. It was by the latter that Mr Satterthwaite reached his room. Mrs Graham and her son passed by the stairs near at hand whence the quiet Gerard Annesley had already preceded them.
‘You’d better get your ukelele, Mabelle,’ said Madge. ‘You’ll forget it in the morning if you don’t. You’ve got to make such an early start.’
‘Come on, Mr Satterthwaite,’ said Doris Coles, seizing him boisterously by one arm. ‘Early to bed–etcetera.’
Madge took him by the other arm and all three ran down the corridor to peals of Doris’s laughter. They paused at the end to wait for David Keeley, who was following at a much more sedate pace, turning out electric lights as he came. The four of them went upstairs together.
II
Mr Satterthwaite was just preparing to descend to the dining-room for breakfast on the following morning, when there was a light tap on the door and Madge Keeley entered. Her face was dead white, and she was shivering all over.
‘Oh, Mr Satterthwaite.’
‘My dear child, what’s happened?’ He took her hand.
‘Mabelle–Mabelle Annesley…’
‘Yes?’
What had happened? What? Something terrible–he knew that. Madge could hardly get the words out.
‘She–she hanged herself last night…On the back of her door. Oh! it’s too horrible.’ She broke down–sobbing.
Hanged herself. Impossible. Incomprehensible!
He said a few soothing old-fashioned words to Madge, and hurried downstairs. He found David Keeley looking perplexed and incompetent.
‘I’ve telephoned to the police, Satterthwaite. Apparently that’s got to be done. So the doctor said. He’s just finished examining the–the–good lord, it’s a beastly business. She must have been desperately unhappy–to do it that way–Queer that song last night. Swan song, eh? She looked rather like a swan–a black swan.’
The Mysterious Mr Quin Page 20