by Sax Rohmer
8. Vengeance at the Lily Pool
BIMBASHI BARUK had an insatiable curiosity concerning his fellow men. This was not prompted by any spirit of interference; in fact, he possessed a delicacy in approaching others which sometimes made an appointed task, already hard, harder yet. It was that kind of curiosity which is inseparable from an interest in mankind as a problem.
In consequence of this, Tom Eldon, host of the Bull, at Opley, came to look upon the bimbashi as a regular, rarely absent from the corner armchair whenever the bar was open. He had returned to his old quarters at the Bull after an interval of more than a year, and seemed to have nothing in particular to do, except that he often went out sketching, so that the cleanly chiseled, vaguely Oriental face, old Harris tweed suit and the stubby briar pipe had become familiar to all Tom's customers. The fact was that Bimbashi Baruk had formed one of a party of officers recalled home to make personal reports after the fall of Tobruk, and he was now awaiting return transport to Egypt.
It was here, in the Bull, just before closing time on a hot summer's afternoon, that he first set eyes upon the resentful Home Guard. Except for the bimbashi and Tom Eldon, the bar was empty when the Home Guard came in, a fact of which he seemed to assure himself in a quick glance around, before closing the door.
Crossing to the counter, “Double Scotch,” he ordered peremptorily.
He wore battle dress and he rested a rifle against the bar while getting out his wallet. A tall, well-knit figure gave an impression of youth, but the lined, dark face and somber eyes belonged to a man middle-aged, to a man who had suffered much or to one who had drunk too deeply of the cup of life. His hands were those of a manual worker, so that his “public school” accent attracted the bimbashi's attention; furthermore, he had formulated a theory regarding the Home Guard's genealogy based upon subtle indications. As Tom Eldon set a glass before his customer:
“I see,” came Baruk's pleasant voice, “that they still serve you out with Lee-Enfields down here.”
The Home Guard tossed a note onto the counter, splashed some water into the whisky, and turned. His expression was lowering, his glance at once mocking and intolerant.
“They do. Does that fact interest you?”
He took a long drink without removing his gaze from the bimbashi's face. His manner was so provocatively rude that Baruk felt affronted, and when he replied he spoke sharply.
“I appear to have offended you, sir. But as a professional soldier I am naturally interested in the arms of all the Services.”
“Oh, I see. You are a regular officer.” The man's tone was less offensive, but his glance no less mocking. Its quality was not due to any movement of his features; it danced, elfin, in his fine, restless eyes. “Yours is a sorry trade, sir. In me you see a most unwilling warrior. Two generations of fools have plunged us into this mess. Under a government of sane men there would be no need for armies. The mere existence of an army is an anachronism—if we are to claim to be civilized.”
Bimbashi Baruk's expression grew dreamy. He was interested.
“How should you propose that these sane men dispense with armed forces?” he inquired.
The Home Guard drained his glass. “If you have ever studied boxing, you will agree that the boxer does not waste his blows on bone and muscle; he seeks to paralyze heart and nerve. Armies are the bone and muscle of nations. Those who direct them are the heart and nerve. A sane government would ignore the armies and strike at those who directed them.”
“I take your meaning to be that you would endeavor to assassinate, shall we say, Hitler and Mussolini?”
“A representative committee would be charged with maintaining the world's peace. Amply financed, they would command suitable facilities. Such characters as those you have named would be warned. If they ignored these warnings, they would be removed.” He took up his change and swung his rifle over his shoulder. “Having publicly proclaimed these views during the past twenty years, I naturally resent being compelled to form part of the bone and muscle.”
He went out. Bimbashi Baruk smiled at Tom Eldon.
“Agreeable fellow,” he murmured. “Who is he?”
“That's Mr. Peter Gillam, sir,” the landlord replied, glancing at the clock and then going across to bar his door. “I reckon he hates everybody, does Mr. Gillam. Queer, he is, and mad as they're made. He's what they call a mining engineer and he's in charge of those excavations under the Hill. It's no tittle-tattle to talk to you, sir, and there's two hundred men under him up yonder, opening of the old stone quarries.”
Bimbashi Baruk nodded. “He's not a native, then?”
“Not he. Come from foreign parts, I hear. Don't know just where. But he lives in what they call Quarry Cottage, on the hillside. Lonely it is; and he's got the prettiest little woman locked up there as I ever set eyes on.”
“Locked up?”
“Well, in a manner o' speaking. No society, like. Seems to be frightened of everybody. Nervous as a squirrel, she is; and like a squirrel, too—soft and light and quick. Aye, they're a queer couple.”
Somewhat less than an hour later, Bimbashi Barak found himself in a narrow winding path, all but indiscernible because of encroaching nettles, a path which traced an aimless way through a wood of firs. This wood possessed one peculiar and unpleasant feature: it contained a number of dead birds, chiefly blackbirds, in various stages of decay and overrun by wasps. The bimbashi carried water-color equipment, and was bound for a spot which he had long determined to try to paint—a pool opening out from a tiny stream, where there were water lilies and where baby moorhens might be seen running across floating leaves.
He was aware that this was private property, but, except by rooks, thrushes, squirrels and a rare rabbit, his trespass had never been challenged. The house, Court Oaks, stood at no great distance from the pool, but he knew that most of it was locked up, that the grounds were neglected. Dr. Manoel, its wealthy and eccentric occupier, camped out in two rooms where he resided alone, except for a colored manservant.
Presently, through an opening in the trees which he remembered, the lily pool burst into view, its sudden beauty, with overhanging foliage mirrored in still water, almost violent. He stood still, gazing down at this fairy prospect. His abrupt halt had not been occasioned by the loveliness of the pool, however, but by the fact that a man was seated beside it.
He was sitting bolt upright in a split-cane chair set beneath a magnificent lime tree. On the grass beside him lay a book. Bimbashi Baruk, who instinctively moved through cover with the silence of a stoat, had not disturbed this solitary reader, and now he stood quite still watching him; for the man's behavior was so strange as to be arresting. He was perhaps sixty years of age, but possessed a slim figure and saturnine good looks. As he wore no hat, the sun quickened his thick, wavy hair to silver, accentuating the yellowness of his skin. Heavy eyebrows, mustache and a small pointed beard remained dark, and he wore a white linen suit; so that, recalling spoken descriptions, the bimbashi concluded that he was looking at Dr. Manoel, owner of Court Oaks.
And Dr. Manoel, without relaxing that rigid pose, sat holding a gold watch extended before him, his eyes fixed upon it and his expression one of such extreme horror that Bimbashi Baruk became physically chilled. Although Dr. Manoel's hand was steady, immovable as the rest of his body, perspiration shone upon his high forehead and he presented a perfect study of one facing imminent, and inescapable destruction!
That Dr. Manoel suffered from serious ill health was common gossip in the neighborhood, but the bimbashi's first idea—that he was about to witness some sort of seizure—he immediately dismissed. If Dr. Manoel (assuming his degree to be a medical one) had recognized symptoms of such an attack, it was reasonable to suppose that he would have remained within reach of assistance.
But speculation was abruptly, and melodramatically, ended. Bimbashi Baruk heard a dull, familiar thud. The gold watch fell to the grass; Dr. Manoel came to his feet like a puppet jerked upright on a wire; a spec
k of blood gleamed, a living ruby, on his wet forehead—and he pitched forward and lay, arms outstretched. The crack of a rifle shot echoed around the valley, and rooks rose, filling the air with their alarm calls.
The first shock of this dreadful killing being conquered—for the fact that he had witnessed an assassination was unmistakable—Bimbashi Baruk gained the victim's side in a period computable in seconds. Barbed wire intervened, but the bimbashi had learned all that one may know about barbed wire, in Libya. Breathing rapidly, he stood for a moment looking down. Then, twisting about, he stared up the slope.
From this point of view, owing to close-growing timber, no more than a corner of the east wing of Court Oaks was visible. Otherwise, a stone cottage on the hillside beyond seemed to be the only building in sight. There was, however, ample natural cover. Nothing stirred but the rooks above; their cries and the shriek of a hidden jay alone disturbed a hot silence.
Dr. Manoel had been killed by a first-class marksman. The bullet had passed clean through his brain, back to front. Death must have been swift and painless as that inflicted by a guillotine. His watch lay, dial upward, near his clenched hand: it recorded that the hour was 3.02 p.m. (Summer Time). The book on the grass beside the chair was a lavishly bound copy of Cardinal Newman'sDream of Gerontius.
ALTHOUGH THE BIMBASHI wasted no time in running up to Court Oaks—an ugly, rambling stone mansion of mid-Victorian design—he met with infuriating delay in gaining admittance. The house presented every evidence of desertion. Many of the windows were shuttered and others clearly belonged to unoccupied rooms. The drive was liberally decorated with thistles, and the main entrance, its rusty bell-pull reluctant to function, had long forgotten the smell of paint. A sepulchral note, deep within the house, responded to his ringing.
At last came footsteps. A man, whom he judged to be a mulatto, opened the door. He was dressed in a sort of livery, with black trousers and a striped linen jacket; and his face, yellow like his master's, bore an habitual expression of hopeless despair.
“Are you Dr. Manoel's servant?” the bimbashi asked sharply.
“Yes. I am Jose. What do you wish? The doctor is out.” Jose had a slight accent and spoke almost tonelessly; the effect was that of a very old gramophone record.
“Did you hear a shot a few minutes ago?”
“Yes. The doctor is shooting rabbits, I suppose.”
“Does he often shoot rabbits?”
“Often. We eat many rabbits.”
Bimbashi Baruk fixed an analytical regard upon the man's dull, dark eyes; but he could read nothing in them.
“Dr. Manoel has been attacked. Where is the telephone?”
“Attacked?” Jose's intonation neither rose nor fell. “I don't understand. Who are you, if you please?”
“I am Major Baruk. Show me the telephone.”
Jose inclined his head and led the way along a gloomy and shuttered passage to an even darker alcove which had the fusty smell of a place where daylight is unknown. Here stood a telephone.
And so in this way the outer world was notified of the death of Dr. Manoel, and on that sunny afternoon the neglected grounds of Court Oaks became peopled by unfamiliar figures: Inspector Horley and Dr. Whittington, both of whom the bimbashi had met before, and several others who were strangers. Police on motorcycles were soon weaving in and out of that maze of narrow lanes which embraced the grounds of Court Oaks. There was a sharp brush when the inspector suggested that Bimbashi Baruk had taken no steps to apprehend this mysterious assassin.
“Might I inquire,” said the bimbashi smoothly, “short of throwing a cordon around the neighborhood, what I could have done? Being but one, and indivisible, this maneuver presented certain difficulties.”
In fact, Inspector Horley was in a bad humor. It rankled in his memory that the bimbashi had once succeeded in unraveling a local mystery where he himself had failed; so that at the earliest opportunity which he could decently accept, the bimbashi withdrew.
He had gathered certain information, however, which dictated his course when he left Court Oaks. He did not set out downhill for the Bull at Opley; he went uphill toward that stone cottage which he had seen as he stood beside the dead man on the edge of the pool. It proved to be reached by a bridle path which branched off from a lane winding around the hill crest; and here he passed a constable standing beside a bicycle. A board at the corner bore the words:
Private
To Quarry Cottage only
The place, on close inspection, looked well cared for. The door was newly painted and its brasswork shone in the sunlight. Masses of pink roses rambled over its porch. Bimbashi Baruk rang the bell. A sound of movement followed, there were heavy footsteps, and the resentful Home Guard opened the door. He had discarded his uniform and wore blue overalls. At sight of the bimbashi, his large, deep-set eyes lighted up with that look of mockery.
“Hullo,” he remarked;“you here again!”
Bimbashi Baruk nodded, smiling. “And I must warn you, Mr. Gillam, that the police are close behind me.”
“The police?” Gillam's expression was one of authentic misunderstanding. “Why the police?” His expression altered; a dreadful possibility seemed to have presented itself. “You don't mean that something has happened to my wife?”
Bimbashi Baruk shook his head: his smile grew broader and became a happy smile.
“Have no fear on that score.”
Gillam's eloquent eyes registered another change of mind. “Then what the devil do you want?”
“I want to come in for a chat. I am called Major Baruk, and I believe we shall have all our work cut out to save you from arrest.”
At that, Gillam's habitual expression of intolerant mockery returned. “You amuse me, Major. Come in, by all means.”
He led the way into a sort of workshop-study at the right of the porch. There were laden bookshelves, a desk littered with papers and blueprints, and on a side table the bimbashi noted a drawing board to which a partially completed plan was pinned. Under one window he saw a bench where a model of a complicated piece of mechanism seemed to be in process of evolution. Peter Gillam, whose hands were oily, picked up a rifle and peered into the barrel.
“Sit down,” he said casually. “I have a job to finish.”
“Cleaning the Lee-Enfield.”
“Cleaning the damned thing, as you correctly observe. I was ticked off today by a certain sergeant, on the pretext that my rifle was dirty. The fact is that I happen to be the best shot in the platoon, and my arrival has put this gentleman's nose out of joint. I am now assuring myself that the rifle isclean.”
The bimbashi took out his pipe and pouch. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
“Not at all.”
As he began to fill his briar, watching this unusual man whom Fate had thrown across his path, Bimbashi Baruk observed an odd thing. A bee had flown in at an open window and was blindly endeavoring to fly out again through a pane of glass. Peter Gillam laid his rifle on the bench, captured the bee and wafted it on its way into the sunshine.
“A fellow worker, Major. We must help one another.” He sat down. “And now—what's it all about?”
“May I ask if we are alone?”
“Quite. My wife has cycled into Moreton Harbor to buy our weekly rations. Why?”
Bimbashi Baruk replaced his pouch and struck a match.
“I am glad. You see, a charge of murder is hanging over your head.”
“Murder?” Gillam's mocking voice robbed the word of its significance.
“Exactly. Did you hear a shot recently?”
“Yes—that is, within the last half-hour. Probably that swine Manoel shooting blackbirds.”
“Shooting blackbirds? What for?”
The match burned down to the bimbashi's fingers, and he dropped it.
“Just wanton destruction. Sits at an open window picking them off. Remind him of Negroes, perhaps. Slaughters them for fun.”
“Slaughtered, Mr. Gillam, not slaughters.�
��
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that Dr. Manoel was murdered in his own grounds at almost exactly two minutes past three.”
Peter Gillam crossed the room and locked the door. “I begin to understand,” he said, returning to his chair. “Please give me the facts.”
Bimbashi Baruk lighted his pipe. “They are simple enough. Dr. Manoel was shot through the head as he sat by the lily pool. Several windows of this cottage command the spot, at a range of little more than two hundred yards. I gather that you have never troubled to disguise your dislike of Dr. Manoel, and it seems that he distrusted you to the extent of asking for police protection—”
“What!” Gillam stood up. “He asked for police protection againstme?”
The bimbashi, using the end of a pencil, pressed down burning tobacco in his pipe bowl. “He does not seem to havenamed you; but the police apparently had no doubt respecting the person implied.”
“Good God!” Gillam resumed his seat, watching his visitor. “Good God! And you found me with a rifle actually in my hands!”
Bimbashi Baruk nodded, fixing a steady regard upon the dark, somber face.
“As time is by no means on our side, perhaps you would like to make your position in the matter more clear.”
“Do I understand, Major, that you are acting for the police?”
“Certainly not. My presence on the spot was accidental—perhaps providential.”
“You mean—you saw the crime committed?”
“I was less than twenty paces from Dr. Manoel when he fell. May I take it, Mr. Gillam, in the first place, that you did not regard the doctor as you regard Hitler and Mussolini?”
Peter Gillam smiled grimly. “You may take it that I hated him more than I hate either Hitler or Mussolini. Nevertheless, I didn't shoot him. But I recognize the fact that I have no alibi, of course. His having asked for police protection practically pins the thing to me.”
“Why did you hate him?”
Gillam hesitated; the old mocking expression flitted across those dark features, so that Bimbashi Baruk almost expected him to demand, “What the devil is that to you?” But if such a retort had been in his mind, Gillam thought better of it.