The Mystery of the Skeleton Key
Page 21
‘Gentlemen, that is the story.’
M. le Baron ceased speaking, and for a time a silence held among them all. Then presently Mr Bickerdike asked:
‘There is only one thing, Baron, which remains to puzzle me a little. Was not Ridgway’s employment in the case originally agreed to by Sir Calvin in response to a suggestion of yours?’
‘That is quite true.’
‘Was Sir Calvin himself, then, never moved to any sort of emotion or curiosity over the association which the detective’s name would naturally awaken in his mind?’
‘Emotion?—I think not. It would hardly describe a psychology so little superstitious as that of the General. The similarity of the names would have struck him as no more than an inconsiderable coincidence. With all his practical qualities, imagination is the last thing he would care to be accused of. But curiosity?—well, perhaps to a certain extent—though neither deep-seated nor lasting. You have to remember that from first to last, I suppose, he never knew, or troubled to know, what the Sergeant’s Christian name was; and even had he learned it, it would have conveyed nothing to him, as he knew no better; nor again, probably, had ever troubled to know, by what name his own disowned son was called. And very certainly he had never condescended to note the name of the Quartermaster-Sergeant’s individual offspring.’
‘I see. And had you yourself, in suggesting the Sergeant for the case, any arrière pensée at that time, connecting—?’
‘I had merely a curiosity, my friend, to observe the owner of a name—really ipsissima verba to me—so oddly associated in my mind with the teller of a certain fantastic story in Paris.’
‘Then you did not know—but of course you didn’t.’ He turned to the Baronet: ‘I congratulate you with all my heart, Orsden.’
‘Thanks, old fellow,’ said Sir Francis. ‘It’s all due to him there. I’ll give his health, in B-Bob Cratchit’s words. Here’s to M. le Baron, “the Founder of the Feast”!’
CHAPTER XXI
A LAST WORD
MISS KENNETT, still in process of qualifying herself for a musician, was at work on Czerny’s fifth exercise which, like the pons asinorum of an earlier strategist, could present an insuperable problem to an intelligence already painful master of the four preceding. To pick up one note with her was, like the clown with the packages, to drop half a dozen others; to give its proper value to the right hand was to leave the left struggling in a partial paralysis. Still she persevered, lips counting, eyes glued to the page, pretty fingers sprawling, until a sudden laugh at the open door of the room startled her efforts into a shiver of unexpected harmony. She looked up with a shake and a smile that suggested somehow to the observer a bird scattering water from its wings in a sunshiny basin.
‘O, Frank!’ she exclaimed, and stretched herself with glistening easefulness.
‘You p-poor goose,’ he answered. ‘You’ll never play, you know.’
She jumped up with a cry, and ran to him. ‘Do you mean it? Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Would you mind if I didn’t?’
‘Not half as m-much as I should if you did.’
‘But I tried, to please you, you know.’
‘But it doesn’t please me, you know.’
She looked at him doubtfully. He took her hands, his eyes glowing.
‘I love you for trying, you dear,’ he said, ‘but I shouldn’t love you if I let you go on trying—nor, I expect, would anyone else.’
‘Pig!’ she exclaimed.
‘Audrey,’ he said, ‘you couldn’t play when I fell in love with you, so why should I wish you to now? It would never be yourself; and that’s what I want of all things. Let everyone develop the best that’s in him, and leave affectation to the donkeys. So you’ll just come over to Barton’s farm with me, to give me your advice about the loveliest litter of bull-pups you ever saw.’
He had something to say to her, and when they were on their way he came out with it soberly.
‘I wanted just to tell you—he left a full confession; and—and it showed how the Baron had been right in almost every particular.’
She made no answer for a little; but presently she said softly, ‘I think I should like to be the one, Frank, to write and tell him so.’
‘Yes, Audrey.’
Again the silence fell between them, and again she broke it in the same tone.
‘We heard from Hughie this morning—only a short letter. He wrote from Karachi, where they had just landed. They were going straight on to Rawul Pindi.’
He nodded.
‘Now let us talk of something else.’
THE END
THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB
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THE PERFECT CRIME • ISRAEL ZANGWILL
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