“There is nothing much wrong physically with the Admiral, I hope?” he said, calling him by the name they still always gave him. “I saw him at the window as I came round. By the bye, what is that extraordinary looking affair like a sentry-box doing there?”
The Countess sighed.
“That is part of what I have to tell you,” she said. “A sentry-box is exactly what it is, and if you had looked inside you would have seen Dunn or Heggs there keeping guard. In health your father seems as well as ever; mentally, I am afraid that he is worse. I fear that he is getting very bad indeed. That is why I have sent for you, Wolf!”
Wolfenden was seriously and genuinely concerned. Surely his mother had had enough to bear.
“I am very sorry,” he said. “Your letter prepared me a little for this; you must tell me all about it.”
“He has suddenly become the victim,” the Countess said, “of a new and most extraordinary delusion. How it came to pass I cannot exactly tell, but this is what happened. He has a bed, you know, made up in an ante-room, leading from the library, and he sleeps there generally. Early this morning the whole house was awakened by the sound of two revolver shots. I hurried down in my dressing-gown, and found some of the servants already outside the library door, which was locked and barred on the inside. When he heard my voice he let me in. The room was in partial darkness and some disorder. He had a smoking revolver in his hand, and he was muttering to himself so fast that I could not understand a word he said. The chest which holds all his maps and papers had been dragged into the middle of the room, and the iron staple had been twisted, as though with a heavy blow. I saw that the lamp was flickering and a current of air was in the room, and when I looked towards the window I found that the shutters were open and one of the sashes had been lifted. All at once he became coherent.
“‘Send for Morton and Philip Dunn!’ he cried. ‘Let the shrubbery and all the Home Park be searched. Let no one pass out of either of the gates. There have been thieves here!’
“I gave his orders to Morton. ‘Where is Richardson?’ I asked. Richardson was supposed to have been watching outside. Before he could answer Richardson came in through the window. His forehead was bleeding, as though from a blow.
“‘What has happened, Richardson?’ I asked. The man hesitated and looked at your father. Your father answered instead.
“‘I woke up five minutes ago,’ he cried, ‘and found two men here. How they got past Richardson I don’t know, but they were in the room, and they had dragged my chest out there, and had forced a crowbar through the lock! I was just in time; I hit one man in the arm and he fired back. Then they bolted right past Richardson. They must have nearly knocked you down. You must have been asleep, you idiot,’ he cried, ‘or you could have stopped them!’
“I turned to Richardson; he did not say a word, but he looked at me meaningly. The Admiral was examining his chest, so I drew Richardson on one side.
“‘Is this true, Richardson?’ I asked. The man shook his head.
“‘No, your ladyship,’ he said bluntly, ‘it ain’t; there’s no two men been here at all! The master dragged the chest out himself; I heard him doing it, and I saw the light, so I left my box and stepped into the room to see what was wrong. Directly he saw me he yelled out and let fly at me with his revolver! It’s a wonder I’m alive, for one of the bullets grazed my temple!’
“Then he went on to say that he would like to leave, that no wages were good enough to be shot at, and plainly hinted that he thought your father ought to be locked up. I talked him over, and then got the Admiral to go back to bed. We had the place searched as a matter of form, but of course there was no sign of anybody. He had imagined the whole thing! It is a mercy that he did not kill Richardson!”
“This is very serious,” Wolfenden said gravely. “What about his revolver?”
“I managed to secure that,” the Countess said. “It is locked up in my drawer, but I am afraid that he may ask for it at any moment.”
“We can make that all right,” Wolfenden said; “I know where there are some blank cartridges in the gun-room, and I will reload the revolver with them. By the bye, what does Blatherwick say about all this?”
“He is almost as worried as I am, poor little man,” Lady Deringham said. “I am afraid every day that he will give it up and leave. We are paying him five hundred a year, but it must be miserable work for him. It is really almost amusing, though, to see how terrified he is at your father. He positively shakes when he speaks to him.”
“What does he have to do?” Wolfenden asked.
“Oh, draw maps and make calculations and copy all sorts of things. You see it is wasted and purposeless work, that is what makes it so hard for the poor man.”
“You are quite sure, I suppose,” Wolfenden asked, after a moment’s hesitation, “that it is all wasted work?”
“Absolutely,” the Countess declared. “Mr. Blatherwick brings me, sometimes in despair, sheets upon which he has been engaged for days. They are all just a hopeless tangle of figures and wild calculations! Nobody could possibly make anything coherent out of them.”
“I wonder,” Wolfenden suggested thoughtfully, “whether it would be a good idea to get Denvers, the secretary, to write and ask him not to go on with the work for the present. He could easily make some excuse—say that it was attracting attention which they desired to avoid, or something of that sort! Denvers is a good fellow, and he and the Admiral were great friends once, weren’t they?”
The Countess shook her head.
“I am afraid that would not do at all,” she said. “Besides, out of pure good nature, of course, Denvers has already encouraged him. Only last week he wrote him a friendly letter hoping that he was getting on, and telling him how interested every one in the War Office was to hear about his work. He has known about it all the time, you see. Then, too, if the occupation were taken from your father, I am afraid he would break down altogether.”
“Of course there is that to be feared,” Wolfenden admitted. “I wonder what put this new delusion into his head? Does he suspect any one in particular?”
The Countess shook her head.
“I do not think so; of course it was Miss Merton who started it. He quite believes that she took copies of all the work she did here, but he was so pleased with himself at the idea of having found her out, that he has troubled very little about it. He seems to think that she had not reached the most important part of his work, and he is copying that himself now by hand.”
“But outside the house has he no suspicions at all?”
“Not that I know of; not any definite suspicion. He was talking last night of Duchesne, the great spy and adventurer, in a rambling sort of way. ‘Duchesne would be the man to get hold of my work if he knew of it,’ he kept on saying. ‘But none must know of it! The newspapers must be quiet! It is a terrible danger!’ He talked like that for some time. No, I do not think that he suspects anybody. It is more a general uneasiness.”
“Poor old chap!” Wolfenden said softly. “What does Dr. Whitlett think of him? Has he seen him lately? I wonder if there is any chance of his getting over it?”
“None at all,” she answered. “Dr. Whitlett is quite frank; he will never recover what he has lost—he will probably lose more. But come, there is the dressing bell. You will see him for yourself at dinner. Whatever you do don’t be late—he hates any one to be a minute behind time.”
CHAPTER XIV
THE TEMPTING OF MR. BLATHERWICK
Table of Contents
Wolfenden was careful to reach the hall before the dinner gong had sounded. His father greeted him warmly, and Wolfenden was surprised to see so little outward change in him. He was carefully dressed, well groomed in every respect, and he wore a delicate orchid in his button-hole.
During dinner he discussed the little round of London life and its various social events with perfect sanity, and permitted himself his usual good-natured grumble at Wolfenden for his dilatoriness
in the choice of a profession.
He did not once refer to the subject of his own weakness until dessert had been served, when he passed the claret to Wolfenden without filling his own glass.
“You will excuse my not joining you,” he said to his son, “but I have still three or four hours’ writing to do, and such work as mine requires a very clear head—you can understand that, I daresay.”
Wolfenden assented in silence. For the first time, perhaps, he fully realised the ethical pity of seeing a man so distinguished the victim of a hopeless and incurable mania. He watched him sitting at the head of his table, courteous, gentle, dignified; noted too the air of intellectual abstraction which followed upon his last speech, and in which he seemed to dwell for the rest of the time during which they sat together. Instinctively he knew what disillusionment must mean for him. Sooner anything than that. It must never be. Never! he repeated firmly to himself as he smoked a solitary cigar later on in the empty smoking-room. Whatever happens he must be saved from that. There was a knock at the door, and in response to his invitation to enter, Mr. Blatherwick came in. Wolfenden, who was in the humour to prefer any one’s society to his own, greeted him pleasantly, and wheeled up an easy chair opposite to his own.
“Come to have a smoke, Blatherwick?” he said. “That’s right. Try one of these cigars; the governor’s are all right, but they are in such shocking condition.”
Mr. Blatherwick accepted one with some hesitation, and puffed slowly at it with an air of great deliberation. He was a young man of mild demeanour and deportment, and clerical aspirations. He wore thick spectacles, and suffered from chronic biliousness.
“I am much obliged to you, Lord Wolfenden,” he said. “I seldom smoke cigars—it is not good for my sight. An occasional cigarette is all I permit myself.”
Wolfenden groaned inwardly, for his regalias were priceless and not to be replaced; but he said nothing.
“I have taken the liberty, Lord Wolfenden,” Mr. Blatherwick continued, “of bringing for your inspection a letter I received this morning. It is, I presume, intended for a practical joke, and I need not say that I intend to treat it as such. At the same time as you were in the house, I imagined that no—er—harm would ensue if I ventured to ask for your opinion.”
He handed an open letter to Wolfenden, who took it and read it through. It was dated “—— London,” and bore the postmark of the previous day.
“Mr. Arnold Blatherwick.
“Dear Sir,—The writer of this letter is prepared to offer you one thousand pounds in return for a certain service which you are in a position to perform. The details of that service can only be explained to you in a personal interview, but broadly speaking it is as follows:—
“You are engaged as private secretary to the Earl of Deringham, lately an admiral in the British Navy. Your duties, it is presumed, are to copy and revise papers and calculations having reference to the coast defences and navy of Great Britain. The writer is himself engaged upon a somewhat similar task, but not having had the facilities accorded to Lord Deringham, is without one or two important particulars. The service required of you is the supplying of these, and for this you are offered one thousand pounds.
“As a man of honour you may possibly hesitate to at once embrace this offer. You need not! Lord Deringham’s work is practically useless, for it is the work of a lunatic. You yourself, from your intimate association with him, must know that this statement is true. He will never be able to give coherent form to the mass of statistics and information which he has collected. Therefore you do him no harm in supplying these few particulars to one who will be able to make use of them. The sum you are offered is out of all proportion to their value—a few months’ delay and they could easily be acquired by the writer without the expenditure of a single halfpenny. That, however, is not the point.
“I am rich and I have no time to spare. Hence this offer. I take it that you are a man of common sense, and I take it for granted, therefore, that you will not hesitate to accept this offer. Your acquiescence will be assumed if you lunch at the Grand Hotel, Cromer, between one and two, on Thursday following the receipt of this letter. You will then be put in full possession of all the information necessary to the carrying out of the proposals made to you. You are well known to the writer, who will take the liberty of joining you at your table.”
The letter ended thus somewhat abruptly. Wolfenden, who had only glanced it through at first, now re-read it carefully. Then he handed it back to Blatherwick.
“It is a very curious communication,” he said thoughtfully, “a very curious communication indeed. I do not know what to think of it.”
Mr. Blatherwick laid down his cigar with an air of great relief. He would have liked to have thrown it away, but dared not.
“It must surely be intended for a practical joke, Lord Wolfenden,” he said. “Either that, or my correspondent has been ludicrously misinformed.”
“You do not consider, then, that my father’s work is of any value at all?” Wolfenden asked.
Mr. Blatherwick coughed apologetically, and watched the extinction of the cigar by his side with obvious satisfaction.
“You would, I am sure, prefer,” he said, “that I gave you a perfectly straightforward answer to that question. I—er—cannot conceive that the work upon which his lordship and I are engaged can be of the slightest interest or use to anybody. I can assure you, Lord Wolfenden, that my brain at times reels—positively reels—from the extraordinary nature of the manuscripts which your father has passed on to me to copy. It is not that they are merely technical, they are absolutely and entirely meaningless. You ask me for my opinion, Lord Wolfenden, and I conceive it to be my duty to answer you honestly. I am quite sure that his lordship is not in a fit state of mind to undertake any serious work.”
“The person who wrote that letter,” Wolfenden remarked, “thought otherwise.”
“The person who wrote that letter,” Mr. Blatherwick retorted quickly, “if indeed it was written in good faith, is scarcely likely to know so much about his lordship’s condition of mind as I, who have spent the greater portion of every day for three months with him.”
“Do you consider that my father is getting worse, Mr. Blatherwick?” Wolfenden asked.
“A week ago,” Mr. Blatherwick said, “I should have replied that his lordship’s state of mind was exactly the same as when I first came here. But there has been a change for the worse during the last week. It commenced with his sudden, and I am bound to say, unfounded suspicions of Miss Merton, whom I believe to be a most estimable and worthy young lady.”
Mr. Blatherwick paused, and appeared to be troubled with a slight cough. The smile, which Wolfenden was not altogether able to conceal, seemed somewhat to increase his embarrassment.
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