‘Tell me exactly what I have to do.’ At a sign the prisoner was led away again and the door of the ante-room closed on his humiliation. George Larch alone remained to lend Joolby whatever support the developments might entail and the moment was almost reached towards which so much preparation had been directed.
‘When Carrados comes up you must receive him naturally and convince him that it’s all been an unfortunate misunderstanding about us here,’ said the cripple, in reply to Nora’s admission of surrender. ‘Don’t try any half-and-half shilly-shallying. Make no error about it, girl: you’ve got to succeed and to do it thoroughly.’
‘It isn’t an easy thing to deceive Max Carrados. No matter what I say he may not—’
‘Agggh!’ he snarled impatiently, ‘it won’t be an easy thing to watch your young man being put through a course or to find yourself strapped down, will it? You’re clever enough in your way, I’ll be bound, and the fellow’s blind anyhow. You came to spy on us here, didn’t you? You’ve—let us say—been in every corner of the house and gone through all the papers. Well, it’s—what?—“a bloomer”. You have found simply an old fellow who has made a little something by years of hard work in his second-hand shop and is now retiring into private life and doesn’t want to be troubled. Eh? Eh?’
‘I must succeed,’ she whispered, more to herself than in assent. ‘God help me!’
CHAPTER XIII
NORA TELLS THE TALE AND CARRADOS SUPPLIES THE MUSIC
‘HERE you are, sir,’ announced Mrs Larch, piloting Mr Carrados solicitously into the room and then standing off to survey, as it were, her achievement in getting him safely there with some pride, ‘No more nasty stairs to climb up. And there is Hilda.’
‘Uncle Max!’ exclaimed Nora, in her very brightest manner. ‘So you really have come then?’
Like many blind men of ingenious mind Mr Carrados prided himself on his ability to get about by himself and to tell the truth he was occasionally a little unceremonious in his rejection of sympathetic assistance.
‘Let me find my own way; I’ll manage to do it somehow,’ he would remark as he put these well-intentioned people aside. ‘If I do knock my shins it will teach me to remember the position of something for ever,’ and though none of his closest friends could recall the occasion when Mr Carrados had knocked his shins they all might have instanced rather odd little touches of clumsiness or unaccountable lapses in his form which had at the time seemed surprising. Inspector Beedel, whose Yard record was not unaffected by their acquaintanceship in the past, had his own views of these failings.
‘When Mr Carrados makes a break,’ he had been known to say, ‘it’s about time for some blighter to hop it.’
On this occasion, however, there was nothing drastic to deplore. Smiling away Mrs Larch’s proffered arm the blind man stretched out his hands right and left and—more than anything from a matter of habit one would judge—touched the door and wall here and there as though to learn thereby the points of his location. Certainly he narrowly escaped a minor disaster at the telephone table which lay in his path but with an exclamation of annoyance at the contact—a mere brush—he neatly verified its position and nature. And if this was a wily snare on the visitor’s part to surprise a betraying sound from anyone who lurked, it failed signally in its object. Mrs Larch could not restrain a little gasp of dismay when she saw what nearly happened but Mr Joolby and George from their well-retired positions—the former seated, the more active man standing—were both too wide-awake to betray their presence.
‘Well, my dear,’ admitted Mr Carrados in answer to his niece’s greeting, ‘I gathered that you might not be altogether sorry to see me. So’—with a reassuring laugh—‘here I am.’ A mild amusement at the possible humours of the situation characterised his manner.
‘Now I’ll leave you two quite alone, if you’ll excuse me, Mr Carrados,’ tactfully remarked Mrs Larch, with an admonitory glance at the two figures in the background. ‘Being a gentleman, I can hardly expect you to understand, perhaps, but as it happens I’m rather busy.’
‘Oh, but I do understand,’ he gallantly assured her. ‘I get rather busy myself sometimes. You mustn’t judge me merely from an idle visit.’
All very pleasant, no doubt, but every one of the five people in the room had, in the vulgar phrase, ‘other fish to fry’. and Mrs Larch’s cue was to get out of the way without delay and give them the opportunity to be at it. This she accordingly now did closing the door with perhaps a little unnecessarily elaborate evidence of her departure, and uncle and niece were left ‘alone’ together.
‘What a very agreeable sort of person, Nora,’ he blandly observed, discovering for himself a suitably placed chair and occupying it. ‘Made me feel that I was giving no trouble at all in calling.’
‘Oh yes, she is,’ eagerly confirmed Nora. ‘And it’s all the more because I feel so dreadfully ashamed of the trick I’ve played on them here. Uncle Max, you know we really have done it!’
‘Ah?’ he endorsed vaguely. ‘I guessed that there had been something of a fiasco from your hasty note, but—I could see that you wrote rather in a flurry—you know you left it all rather ambiguous. Indeed, from one thing or other you said I half thought that you might be in some sort of’—discreetly lowering his voice—‘danger!’
‘Danger!’ she laughed, in great high spirits; ‘what a perfectly priceless notion! No, indeed, old dear; the only danger about here was the danger of making a great goose of myself, and so my first thoughts flew to you as the readiest means of getting me out of an awkward situation.’
‘Why of course,’ he agreed. ‘Always fall back on Uncle Max—if you remember I particularly put you up to that whenever you get yourself in any mischief. And in the present case I feel more or less responsible for I have half an idea that it’s partly my fault your being here. Now as we are quite alone suppose you tell me exactly how you are situated?’
‘Well, Uncle, it’s really been a ghastly mistake from the very beginning. Of course I can’t pretend to say what may have been going on anywhere else and certainly from one thing and another there seemed to be enough to make you suspicious. But these people at all events are as innocent of crime—it really makes me want to laugh—as district visitors, and I feel that we ought to do—well, to do anything we can to make up for perhaps getting them suspected.’
‘Um, yes; perhaps we ought, now that you’ve settled it,’ he admitted, with just a shade of lingering reluctance. ‘By the way, who are the people, Nora?’
‘Well, there’s Mr Joolby, of course. It’s his house I believe and he is more or less—an invalid. He has a shop, an antique shop, somewhere else in London, I understand, but I think he’s retiring now and that’s why things are rather upset and haphazard yet as he isn’t really settled. Then there’s Mrs Larch, the housekeeper—you’ve seen her already.’
‘The agreeable lady?’
‘Ye-es. Oh, but they are all quite pleasant and agreeable people really.’
‘All? There are others then?’
‘I mean those who happen to call—visitors. They’re quite ordinary, respectable people, you know. I think that they mostly have to do with Mr Joolby’s business—I mean his shop of course.’
‘Not the sort of people who’d commit burglaries or plan elaborate forgeries?’
‘The very idea! One or two of them may be rather foreign-looking perhaps but I suppose a good many people are what one would consider eccentric characters who have to do with the antique business.’
‘Yes, I imagine so: Bohemian and all that. And the providential gentleman whose name doesn’t seem to figure on the medical register—Dr Olivant. He came here if you remember.’
It was unfortunate that Mr Carrados should have recalled this. So far it had been quite plain sailing among airy generalities but Dr Olivant was a specific case and had to be dealt with concretely. For a moment Nora had to think; luckily the inspiration accorded her was on lines that admitted a certain amount of
hesitancy when explaining the facts to an old-fashioned uncle.
‘Why yes, to be sure he did, didn’t he?’ she admitted, with careful deliberation. ‘Well it’s—it’s rather mysterious about him until you know the circumstances. He really has been a doctor and a specialist and he is quite qualified to give advice, only Olivant isn’t his proper name. He’s—been—been struck off the register. He’s a little queer they say, and at times forgets about what has happened.’
‘Tshk, tshk; sad, sad,’ commented Mr Carrados sympathetically. ‘And such an imposing presence.’
‘Yes, it does seem a pity, doesn’t it? Illegal operations, you know. So of course it’s rather a delicate subject with him.’
‘Naturally; naturally. How little we know after all, Nora, of the tragedy that may be going on about us under the quiet prosaic surface! And as he came here, I suppose that the doctor has turned his hand to the antique business also, has he?’
‘Well, he had to do something for a living I imagine. Of course he can’t be a doctor any longer, can he? I think he helps Mr Joolby with the shop in some way.’
‘Operates on the damaged articles of virtu doubtless. Well, Nora, you seem to have made pretty good use of your time here.’
‘Oh I have; I have. Of course no one suspected me of anything and I have watched them and listened at key-holes and looked at everything that I wasn’t supposed to see in the most shameless manner. That’s why I can be so positive that there’s nothing at all wrong going on here.’
‘Then the only thing we can do would seem to be to get out of it as gracefully as possible. There’s no point in your staying on any longer. After all, as a domestic help I have no doubt that—without being in any way critical of your abilities, my dear—Mr Joolby can replace you without much trouble.’
Mr Carrados smiled a good-humoured tolerance of the imbroglio in which they had both landed, leaned back in his chair and dropped a careless right into his coat pocket.
‘Look here, Nora,’ he suggested mischievously, ‘I have rather a bright idea. We shall cut pretty foolish figures when it comes to explaining, shan’t we? What do you say to slipping quietly out and writing our apologies?’
For perhaps a couple of seconds the girl’s mind poised, while her slanting eyes took in at a flash the essentials of the situation: the unguarded door, so near, George Larch away across the room and Joolby quite literally and negligibly ‘out of the running’. So much had happened emotionally in the past short half-hour that, as the phrase goes, she scarcely knew which way up she was standing and for the time at least she had entirely lost touch with the vital crux of the situation. It remained for a rather uncanny happening to decide her. Apparently of its own accord the door of the ante-room noiselessly fell open and in the now well-lit space beyond her startled eyes took in the tableau of Geoffrey in his attitude of hopeless terror with the two custodians who had charge standing above him. Almost at once the door was closed again but the reminder had been sufficient.
‘No, no; I really couldn’t do that—not as things are,’ she protested rather wildly. ‘Don’t ask me to, Uncle Max, because—well, I shouldn’t like you to think that I can’t stay and face it. And you do understand that everything’s all right here, don’t you?’
‘Oh, bless you, yes,’ he replied. ‘All the same I think we could carry it off. It might be the simplest in the end. I’m almost inclined—’
‘No, no!’ she insisted. ‘I mustn’t think of it. Don’t, Uncle; please don’t. We could never—I mean it wouldn’t be right in the circumstances; it really wouldn’t. Don’t you see, I’ve bribed and persuaded their servant to let me take her place and if I run away like that they’ll be left quite in the lurch—it isn’t so easy to get anyone at a moment’s notice as you may think and they’d perhaps have to go on for days and days servant-less. That’s the only reason I have for staying; it really is. They’re quite all right here in every way I do assure you.’
‘Oh yes; it isn’t that. The boot’s on the other foot in fact; I should like to think that we’d been clever enough to be on the right tack from the start but you’ve quite burst that bubble. Only I wish it had gone the other way for it’s devilish awkward for me as it happens. Inspector Beedel of Scotland Yard is relying on my inquiries in this quarter and now I shall have to call it off and admit that I was mistaken … You seem rather pleased, my dear’—for Nora had given a sigh that unmistakably conveyed relief and satisfaction.
‘Well, it is something of an event to find Max Carrados wrong for once,’ she retorted, turning it off into an assumption of skittishness. ‘You know, Uncle Max, it was dreadful to live up to your terrible omniscience.’
‘I’m afraid, young lady, you won’t be the only one to enjoy a chuckle when I report to my professional friends,’ he confessed. ‘That’s the worst of a reputation; but it has to be done. We haven’t got a leg to stand on.’
‘And you will do that,’ she insisted, anxious to clinch the advantage; ‘you will stop Scotland Yard doing anything about them here for the next three days, won’t you? I mean,’ she hastened to amend as she recognised the curious significance of a time limit, ‘it mightn’t seem reasonable to ask anyone not to do anything, no matter what happened, for ever.’
Possibly Mr Carrados was considering it from his own way round for he did not appear to notice anything in her stumble.
‘Naturally I will,’ he replied. ‘I must, or I may land myself in rather serious trouble. You see, I’m not an official in any sense so I can’t plead privilege and invoke the powers to back me. In the eyes of a jury I should be merely an interfering amateur—and there’s such a thing as defamation. Well, as you won’t be persuaded to come now, when may we expect to see you back from this haunt of ancient peace?’
‘Oh, by about Saturday I should think.’
‘Ah, Saturday?’ he considered. ‘That will be three days from now, won’t it?’
‘Will it? I hadn’t thought. It will be the end of the week, you see, and Mrs Larch fancied that by then she could find someone to take my place most likely.’
‘We must consider that as arranged then.’ He ‘looked’ round the room in his usual deliberate way, turning his sightless eyes (as it might seem odd to say his nose and ears) to every point of the compass. ‘At any rate I’m glad to have seen you in an unusual setting, Nora. I hope your cap’s becoming.’
Nora had played her part—there could be no doubt of its success—but now she was uncertain of what next would be required of her. Her instructions had not gone beyond convincing Carrados—was she to let him go at this point on his assurance of putting things right with Scotland Yard or was some further guarantee required? She shot an inquiring glance in the direction of the two silent witnesses of the curious scene and Mr Joolby evidently decided that the moment had arrived for his own intervention. At a sign from him George Larch noisily threw open the door of the smaller room (they never fell into the mistake of making it too hard for the blind man to follow what was supposed to be going on) and to the accompaniment of a great business with his sticks Joolby ‘entered’.
‘Hilda, I want you to—’ he began, failing for the moment to notice the visitor who was merely standing up in the middle of the room, ‘Eh, who have we here?’
‘Oh, this is my uncle, Mr Carrados, sir,’ explained Nora. ‘He just called to see me for a few minutes. Now he’s going.’
‘Ah, good evening, Mr Carrados,’ said the master of the house, his manner, so far, distant without being actually hostile. ‘I’m glad I happened to come up in time to see you. You doubtless know who I am, since I think you boast that you never forget a voice and we have met once already.’
‘What! Mr Joolby, the eminent authority on Greek numismatics? To be sure we’ve met. Let me see; the more primitive methods of disposing of one’s enemies by obscure venoms, wasn’t it?’
‘Never mind that now,’ retorted Mr Joolby. ‘This isn’t my shop. I am simply a private gentleman here. Let me tell you th
at I am not pleased with what has been going on, Mr Carrados. It seems that you have been making unfounded charges against my character and reputation. People are talking—I see them look after me and whisper as I go along. I don’t know what isn’t being said about me—what slanders aren’t being spread. My intention in coming here was to give up my business altogether and lead a quiet but useful life. I might have put up for something—the Borough Council or what not—in time. Now that’s all done for thanks to you and a lot of money wasted.’
‘Mr Carrados sees that he has been mistaken in what he thought,’ ventured Nora, anxious to keep this to the front. ‘He is willing—’
‘Then there’s another thing,’ went on Mr Joolby, impervious to soothing. ‘This young person who was got into my house on false pretences. There’s no doubt that you sent her here to spy on me; the connection is quite obvious. That’s a serious matter, Mr Carrados. People have had to pay very large compensation for that sort of thing before now. Not that she could do any harm, simply because there is nothing discreditable to find out, but the imputation is there all the same. In fact it’s questionable if it doesn’t amount legally to a conspiracy to blackmail and the penalty for blackmail doesn’t stop at damages.’ With one of his terrifying changes of front he turned suddenly on Nora breathing menace: ‘Come now, girl, you’ve had the run of the house, you know; you may as well own up to it. What have you nosed out here that’s wrong. Eh? Eh?’
‘Oh nothing, nothing, Mr Joolby,’ she protested. ‘I’ve assured my uncle that we have been quite mistaken and that everything here is perfectly straightforward.’
‘And so it is. Everything O.K. and above the board. Well, well—’
‘I’m quite willing to admit that a mistake has been made, Mr Joolby, and to shoulder all the blame,’ interposed Carrados. ‘I shall notify Scotland Yard through my friend Inspector Beedel that I have unfortunately been on a wrong tack and in consequence misled them. After that you will have no further trouble.’
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