The House of Dr. Edwardes

by Francis Beeding

  “Now, let us think clearly,” she continued. “There is only one immediate thing to be done. We must try to set free Doctor Murchison.”

  He looked at her bewildered.

  “I mean, of course, the real Doctor Murchison—the man Godstone has been keeping shut up all these weeks.”

  “But he is always drugged,” said Mr. Deeling.

  “I know that,” replied Constance, “but I have poured away the hyoscin in your dispensary, so that unless Godstone has got a private store of his own, he won’t be able to drug Doctor Murchison any more. I filled the bottle up with distilled water. He may not notice the difference. Anyway, it is our only hope. If we can get the real Doctor Murchison out, the three of us ought to be able to do something.”

  “You poured away my hyoscin,” said Mr. Deeling. “I must make a note of that, and you must please tell me the, quantity. It will throw out all my accounts.”

  Constance gazed at him.

  “Never mind that now,” she said. “We’ve got to decide how we are going to get at Doctor Murchison. Somehow I shall have to recover my keys. Perhaps I could persuade Godstone—”

  “Yes,” broke in Mr. Deeling eagerly. “That is the way. Talk to Godstone. Persuade him. He will do anything for you. Why, I’ve seen you together in the garden. Perhaps, if you were really nice to him—you may be able to save us both in that way. And, in any case, he will not kill you. No, he will not kill you. He has other views. Of that I am quite sure.”

  “I must, in any case, try to get the keys,” she said more to herself than to him.

  Mr. Deeling did not appear to hear what she said. An expression of idiotic dismay suddenly came over his face.

  “Good God,” he whispered. “Only to think of it.”

  “Why, what’s the matter now?” said Constance, looking at him in amazement.

  “The letter,” he exclaimed. “Doctor Murchison’s letter! It would have saved our lives.”

  “What letter?”

  “Warder Jones gave it to me only the other day. From Doctor Murchison to Doctor Edwardes. And I had forgotten all about it. It’s lying still in my drawer, and we cannot send it now.”

  III

  Mr. Deeling turned and left her. Constance imagined he must be going to see whether the letter to which he had referred was still in his possession.

  She was alone again, with nothing as yet decided. Her one ally was a man of straw. Poor Mr. Deeling! It was not altogether his fault. He was part of a machine, a small cog that could be relied upon to turn correctly, as moved by the larger cogs, above and beneath. The machine had gone wrong, and the small cog was out of action.

  What was the use of sitting there thinking about cogs and machines? Miss Archer had been murdered—murdered, by order, perhaps by the act, of the man with whom a few hours ago she had been playing tennis. He had played with his head and heart on the game, and yet he had known of that smear above Miss Archer’s bed—put it there, for all Constance knew. It must have happened last night out in the forest.—She had heard a drum, and Mr. Curtis had come back.—He had touched her dressing gown, and she had found a smudge where his hand had rested.

  Again the sick feeling rose. She must not think of these horrors, but consider only how to get at the real Doctor Murchison. She must contrive somehow to set him free. She pinned her whole faith on Doctor Murchison. He would know what to do. But how was she to get at him? And, if by a miracle she did get at him, what was to happen then? They could not leave the valley. If ever they were to open that gate in the fence, someone would have to remain at the doctor’s desk to control the lever. She had seen the lever more than once. To open the gate it had to be held in position by a human hand. It had to be switched over and the thumb pressed firmly on the knob at the end of the handle. It could not be tied or otherwise kept in position. Someone would have to hold it while they escaped. And who was that some one to be? They must all three get away. Doctor Murchison, Mr. Deeling and herself—for the one who was left behind would be torn in pieces.

  Of course, if any one must stay it must be herself. She was in charge, and she alone might perhaps have some influence with Godstone. He had loved her. He was a madman, but not, perhaps, inaccessible to persuasion. Should she stay behind and plead with him so that the others might get away? Could she hold the affection of a madman against the full force and strength of his mania:

  A line of poetry floated into her mind:

  “For each man kills the thing he loves.”

  If only she could divine his thoughts for one moment! As she sat, in shadow now, for the sun was over the highest of the peaks to the west and the light was fading, she began to remember the words Godstone had used earlier in the afternoon, his strange, incomprehensible ravings: the circle and the pentacle, and the weird beasts, the mole, the goat, the bat, incense and wine. She felt that those allusions were not merely aimless. Then to what dreadful ceremonial did they refer? He had used the word “sacrifice.” She gripped the arm of the stone bench. A sacrifice, with herself, perhaps, for the victim. He would kill the thing he loved, as a supreme sacrifice to the Lord of Evil who was his master.

  It was senseless to sit there and think. She was, it seemed, to be butchered. But, at any rate, she would make a fight for it first. She was not bound yet. Not yet was the knife at her throat. If only that lever could be controlled for half an hour!

  She heard a step on the path beside her, and looking up saw Mr. Clearwater. He was carrying a bunch of roses. He looked at her in a respectful, almost timid way.

  “Gracious lady,” he said, “behold a few poor flowers, pale and unworthy, together with this little roundel, which I have composed in your honor.”

  And forthwith he began to recite, waving his white hands gracefully up and down, and pointing his feet like an eighteenth-century dancing master.

  “Your eyes are set (he said)

  In sweet surprise.

  You laugh and yet,

  Your eyes,

  When laughter dies,

  With tears are wet.”

  He paused and looked at her.

  “All paradise

  Is here. Ah, let

  Me kiss, where lies

  Love in a net—

  Your eyes.”

  “But that, of course, is not for me,” he went on hurriedly.

  “For me it is permitted to kiss no more than the hem of your robe.”

  Before she could say or do anything, he had fallen on his knees and was kissing the edge of her skirt.

  “‘If I were rich, I would kiss her feet, and thereabouts where the gold hems meet,’” he whispered, “but, alas, I am very poor.

  “I am a fool, you know,” he went on, sitting cross-legged on the ground and looking up at her. “I am a fool, and sometimes I think I must be mad. Not often. But when the moon is at the full I have strange fancies. I dreamt last night that I put out to sea in a boat made of emeralds, but they were so heavy that the edge of the boat was level with the brine, and it sank like a stone just outside the harbor mouth.”

  He paused and looked at her wistfully.

  She raised the roses he had given her to her face.

  “Thank you, Mr. Clearwater,” she said gently, “for your poem and these roses. They are beautiful.”

  His white face flushed.

  “My lady is gracious,” he said. “How else is it possible to serve you?”

  She looked down at his upturned face.

  “Serve me?” she asked. “Would you really serve me, Mr.

  Clearwater?”

  “I would die for you,” he answered.

  It was simply said, without flourish or exaggeration. There he was, squatting at her feet, a ridiculous lanky figure, with his stained shirt open at the throat, and his old gray flannel trousers. But his eyes were alight with something that was not altogether madness.

  “I wonder,” she said, “if I can really trust you.”

  “What is it?” he asked. “Tell me at once, dear lady.�
��

  “I want you to go to the doctor’s study,” she said slowly, “the great library, you know, where I work so much during the day. When you are there, I want you to sit down at the doctor’s desk—”

  She got no further. Mr. Clearwater was gazing at her with a fixed intensity, and at the first mention of the doctor, he had put his hand upon her knee. He was tense and very still, as though all his faculties had been called to attention.

  “This thing you want me to do,” he interrupted. “Is it—is it against him?”

  “It is for me,” she answered. “And you can do it very easily.

  You will do it, won’t you, if I ask you to help me?”

  He looked away from her, dejected and unhappy.

  “Don’t ask me, please. You mustn’t ask me to do anything against him. Besides, it would be useless. He sees everything, you know.”

  “You needn’t worry about the doctor,” she urged. “He won’t be there. I will see to that.”

  He fidgeted a moment, and then suddenly he looked at her again.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “You will find a drawer in the desk,” she said slowly. “It is on the right hand, the second drawer. You will open it with a key which I shall give you.

  Inside you will find a little lever of black ebony. I want you to press that lever down and forwards, as far as it will go, and to hold it with your hand and keep it in that position, with your thumb on the knob on the handle, till—till you have counted up to five thousand.”

  He did not seem surprised at her strange request.

  “Up to five thousand,” he repeated gravely. “I push the lever forward and down as far as it will go, and keep my thumb on the knob. And I mustn’t take my hand away. If I took my hand away, the lever would spring back, and then it would all be to do again.”

  He paused a moment, and again looking away from her, he added with an abrupt change of tone.

  “Suppose I cannot do it. If he does not wish me to do it, he will surely prevent it.”

  “If you refuse to help me,” said Constance steadily, “I shall be in danger. We shall all be in very great danger.”

  “Danger,” he said. He sprang to his feet, and looked wildly away to the mountain.

  “I know what you mean,” he went on. “They will come down over the rocks. They will come swarming down—in hundreds and thousands—with their swords flashing and their eyes of flame. Over the rocks—over the rocks. Is that what you mean?”

  “Yes,” said Constance quietly, with compressed lips, “that is what I mean. You see now, don’t you, that you must do what I ask?”

  She was outraging every professional sense, playing deliberately upon his mania. But it was necessary. There was no other way to hold him.

  She heard footsteps suddenly at the end of the garden path. A group was walking towards them. Mr. Clearwater heard them as soon as she did. He bent to her while they were yet some distance off.

  “I’ll do it,” he said in a rapid undertone. “I am to press the lever forward and down, and count up to five million. Is that right?”

  “Up to five thousand,” said Constance in the same tone. “I will tell you later when I want you to do it.”

  She turned to meet the newcomers.

  “Good afternoon, Colonel,” she said. “Have you been playing golf?”

  “I’ve just been practising a bit with a putter,” said Colonel Rickaby. “But that confounded fellow, Hickett, wouldn’t let me go on. ‘You do our job of work,’ he said to me, ‘for I won’t be answerable for the consequences.’ So I went along to give old Curtis a hand. Confound him, where is he? Curtis! Where the deuce has he got to?”

  “I’m here. Colonel. I’ve been washing my hands,” said Mr.

  Curtis, appearing suddenly from behind a rose tree.

  “Stimson,” he called over his shoulder, “be very careful with that mole. See that it doesn’t get hurt at all. We aren’t going to kill it yet.”

  He turned back to Constance.

  “It’s the mole, you know,” he explained.

  “Dashed awful business it was,” mumbled the Colonel.

  “Thought we should get to Australia before we’d finished.

  And bless my soul, if that fellow Hickett, while we were digging it out, didn’t go chasing through the woods after bats.”

  “Bats?” said Constance.

  “Bats,” repeated the Colonel, “great big bats with leathery wings. He was out after ’em most of last night. Never shot a bat in my life. It isn’t sporting. You can’t pot ’em unless they’re sitting.”

  A shrill sound of lamentation arose from the end of the garden, and Miss Truelow appeared, her arm round Miss Collett, who was weeping bitterly. They were closely followed by the Reverend Mark Hickett.

  “Now, Miss Collett,” he was saying, “there’s nothing whatever to cry about.”

  “Oh, my dear Miss Sedgwick,” she wailed. “They have killed my poor little black kitten and cut his head off.”

  The Reverend Mark Hickett cast up his eyes.

  “Out of evil comes good,” he said. “Death is swallowed up in victory. No. I must remember not to use phrases like that. Curtis, kindly warn me if you hear me saying things of that nature.”

  “Certainly, sir,” replied Mr. Curtis hastily.

  “Stimson,” he added, “please make a note of that. No phrases of that kind to be used in this house.”

  “We shall be all quite ready for the wedding soon,” said Miss Truelow to Constance.

  “Why,” said Constance, “is somebody going to be married?”

  “You must let me be bridesmaid,” went on Miss Truelow. “I have frequently been a bridesmaid at weddings in St. George’s, Hanover Square. I shall know exactly what to do. I hope you don’t object.”

  “I—I don’t quite understand,” said Constance.

  “What a shy little person it is, to be sure,” said Miss Truelow. “But we are not quite blind, you know.”

  She wagged a roguish finger at Constance.

  “You were going to keep it as a surprise,” she went on.

  “Isn’t that so? But we know all about it now, even the happy day. Why, it’s to be in two days’ time.”

  “Two days’ time,” said a voice thickly.

  Constance stared.

  Mr. Deeling was standing in the path, swaying slightly.

  “Two—days’—time,” he repeated solemnly.

  “What’s this? What are you doing here,” said the Colonel.

  “The man is intoxicated,” observed Miss Truelow.

  Mr. Deeling took no notice of the interruption.

  “Two days’ time,” he said again. “Without benefit of clergy, as Kipling says. Fine fellow, Kipling. Fine fellow, Murchison—Godstone—whoever he is. All fine fellows—fine fellows.”

  Mr. Deeling turned in the path and lurched away in the direction from which he had come.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I

  Doctor Murchison was lying on his bed, gazing at the ceiling.

  It was about six o’clock in the evening, and the room was in shadow, for it faced north, and only the morning sunshine penetrated the narrow-barred window broken by the golf ball of Colonel Rickaby, which was its sole communication with the outer air. The room was furnished with a sort of bare comfort, efficient but quite impersonal. There were two padded chairs and a table with rounded corners and legs. The walls of the room were also padded with gray felt.

  He lay back breathing quietly, an acrid taste in his mouth. For the moment he could only realize his physical condition. His mind was not yet at work. Half phrases, catchwords of the old life, from which he had so long been shut off, came and went. “The morning after the night before.” But that was silly, for it was evening, six o’clock in the evening. Or was it early morning? He did not know. He had lost all count of time.

  His eyes wandered over the ceiling above him. There was a discolored patch in the plaster over his head. Ho
w often had he gazed at that patch since he had been shut up. Sometimes it appeared like some great animal, a misshapen elephant or a whale; sometimes like the topsail of a galleon driving before a storm; and, sometimes, merely a damp patch. It had become associated in his mind with all kinds of fantastic thoughts since that first moment when, awakening from unconsciousness, he had remembered the details of that disastrous journey from Thonon—the burst tire, the sudden outbreak of Godstone, the scream of the chauffeur as he had rolled over the precipice, and the crackling of boughs as the unhappy man had bounced through some dry bushes to his death. After that it had been a blank. For at that moment he had, he supposed, been struck on the head.

  He passed his tongue across his dry lips. He felt better today. His head was clear. The patch on the ceiling was a patch and nothing more. He had not often felt so well. How long had he been lying there? How many days was it since he had spoken to that woman? He had told her that he was Murchison, and she had not believed him. Obviously, she had not believed him, or he would not still be there.

  And then there was that terrible day when he had seen the marks on his feet. Had Warder Jones kept his word about that letter? He did not know. He had no means of telling. No one had come in answer to it. It could not yet have reached Doctor Edwardes.

  If only he had some means whereby to measure time. He had been drugged, of course, drugged on and off for days. He raised his arm, and pulling back the sleeve of his pyjamas, looked at the tiny punctures in the skin where the hypodermic needle had been pressed home. He had spent his days in the realm of dreams, not the quiet fancies of a happy man, but peopled with phantoms, armed and bickering, that had fought and torn each other under the shadow of topless cliffs by the margin of a poisoned sea.

  The worst of it was, of course, that Godstone had been trained as a doctor, so that he knew just the proper dose to give, just enough to keep his subject under, semi-conscious for days together, no trouble to any one, a sack of clay, dumped on a bed in a forgotten attic.

  That was all he had been. And, meanwhile, the madman was supreme in the castle. What was he doing? What unknown horrors had been perpetrated?