by Michael Sims
“A good many men have been flying kites of various kinds lately,” said Carrados. “Is he interested in aviation?”
“I dare say. He appears to have some knowledge of scientific subjects. Now what do you want me to do, Max?”
“Will you do it?”
“Implicitly—subject to the usual reservations.”
“Keep your man on Creake in town and let me have his reports after you have seen them. Lunch with me here now. Phone up to your office that you are detained on unpleasant business and then give the deserving Parkinson an afternoon off by looking after me while we take a motor run round Mulling Common. If we have time we might go on to Brighton, feed at the ‘Ship,’ and come back in the cool.”
“Amiable and thrice lucky mortal,” sighed Mr. Carlyle, his glance wandering round the room.
But, as it happened, Brighton did not figure in that day’s itinerary. It had been Carrados’s intention merely to pass Brookbend Cottage on this occasion, relying on his highly developed faculties, aided by Mr. Carlyle’s description, to inform him of the surroundings. A hundred yards before they reached the house he had given an order to his chauffeur to drop into the lowest speed and they were leisurely drawing past when a discovery by Mr. Carlyle modified their plans.
“By Jupiter!” that gentleman suddenly exclaimed, “there’s a board up, Max. The place is to be let.”
Carrados picked up the tube again. A couple of sentences passed and the car stopped by the roadside, a score of paces past the limit of the garden. Mr. Carlyle took out his notebook and wrote down the address of a firm of house agents.
“You might raise the bonnet and have a look at the engines, Harris,” said Carrados. “We want to be occupied here for a few minutes.”
“This is sudden; Hollyer knew nothing of their leaving,” remarked Mr. Carlyle.
“Probably not for three months yet. All the same, Louis, we will go on to the agents and get a card to view whether we use it to-day or not.” A thick hedge, in its summer dress effectively screening the house beyond from public view, lay between the garden and the road. Above the hedge showed an occasional shrub; at the corner nearest to the car a chestnut flourished. The wooden gate, once white, which they had passed, was grimed and rickety. The road itself was still the unpretentious country lane that the advent of the electric car had found it.
When Carrados had taken in these details there seemed little else to notice. He was on the point of giving Harris the order to go on when his ear caught a trivial sound. “Someone is coming out of the house, Louis,” he warned his friend.
“It may be Hollyer, but he ought to have gone by this time.”
“I don’t hear anyone,” replied the other, but as he spoke a door banged noisily and Mr. Carlyle slipped into another seat and ensconced himself behind a copy of The Globe. “Creake himself,” he whispered across the car, as a man appeared at the gate. “Hollyer was right; he is hardly changed. Waiting for a car, I suppose.”
But a car very soon swung past them from the direction in which Mr. Creake was looking and it did not interest him. For a minute or two longer he continued to look expectantly along the road. Then he walked slowly up the drive back to the house.
“We will give him five or ten minutes,” decided Carrados. “Harris is behaving very naturally.”
Before even the shorter period had run out they were repaid. A telegraph-boy cycled leisurely along the road, and, leaving his machine at the gate, went up to the cottage. Evidently there was no reply, for in less than a minute he was trundling past them back again. Round the bend an approaching tram clanged its bell noisily, and, quickened by the warning sound, Mr. Creake again appeared, this time with a small portmanteau in his hand. With a backward glance he hurried on towards the next stopping-place, and, boarding the car as it slackened down, he was carried out of their knowledge.
“Very convenient of Mr. Creake,” remarked Carrados, with quiet satisfaction. “We will now get the order and go over the house in his absence. It might be useful to have a look at the wire as well.”
“It might, Max,” acquiesced Mr. Carlyle a little dryly. “But if it is, as it probably is in Creake’s pocket, how do you propose to get it?”
“By going to the post office, Louis.”
“Quite so. Have you ever tried to see a copy of a telegram addressed to someone else?”
“I don’t think I have ever had occasion yet,” admitted Carrados. “Have you?”
“In one or two cases I have perhaps been an accessory to the act. It is generally a matter either of extreme delicacy or considerable expenditure.”
“Then for Hollyer’s sake we will hope for the former here.” And Mr. Carlyle smiled darkly and hinted that he was content to wait for a friendly revenge.
A little later, having left the car at the beginning of the straggling High Street, the two men called at the village post office. They had already visited the house agent and obtained an order to view Brookbend Cottage, declining with some difficulty the clerk’s persistent offer to accompany them. The reason was soon forthcoming. “As a matter of fact,” explained the young man, “the present tenant is under our notice to leave.”
“Unsatisfactory, eh?” said Carrados encouragingly.
“He’s a corker,” admitted the clerk, responding to the friendly tone. “Fifteen months and not a doit of rent have we had. That’s why I should have liked—”
“We will make every allowance,” replied Carrados.
The post office occupied one side of a stationer’s shop. It was not without some inward trepidation that Mr. Carlyle found himself committed to the adventure. Carrados, on the other hand, was the personification of bland unconcern.
“You have just sent a telegram to Brookbend Cottage,” he said to the young lady behind the brasswork lattice. “We think it may have come inaccurately and should like a repeat.” He took out his purse. “What is the fee?”
The request was evidently not a common one. “Oh,” said the girl uncertainly, “wait a minute, please.” She turned to a pile of telegram duplicates behind the desk and ran a doubtful finger along the upper sheets. “I think this is all right. You want it repeated?”
“Please.” Just a tinge of questioning surprise gave point to the courteous tone.
“It will be fourpence. If there is an error the amount will be refunded.”
Carrados put down his coin and received his change. “Will it take long?” he inquired carelessly, as he pulled on his glove.
“You will most likely get it within a quarter of an hour,” she replied.
“Now you’ve done it,” commented Mr. Carlyle as they walked back to their car. “How do you propose to get that telegram, Max?”
“Ask for it,” was the laconic explanation. And, stripping the artifice of any elaboration, he simply asked for it and got it. The car, posted at a convenient bend in the road, gave him a warning note as the telegraph-boy approached. Then Carrados took up a convincing attitude with his hand on the gate while Mr. Carlyle lent himself to the semblance of a departing friend. That was the inevitable impression when the boy rode up.
“Creake, Brookbend Cottage?” inquired Carrados, holding out his hand, and without a second thought the boy gave him the envelope and rode away on the assurance that there would be no reply.
“Some day, my friend,” remarked Mr. Carlyle, looking nervously toward the unseen house, “your ingenuity will get you into a tight corner.”
“Then my ingenuity must get me out again,” was the retort. “Let us have our ‘view’ now. The telegram can wait.”
An untidy workwoman took their order and left them standing at the door. Presently a lady whom they both knew to be Mrs. Creake appeared.
“You wish to see over the house?” she said, in a voice that was utterly devoid of any interest. Then, without waiting for a reply, she turned to the nearest door and threw it open.
“This is the drawing-room,” she said, standing aside.
They walked
into a sparsely furnished, damp-smelling room and made a pretence of looking round, while Mrs. Creake remained silent and aloof.
“The dining-room,” she continued, crossing the narrow hall and opening another door. Mr. Carlyle ventured a genial commonplace in the hope of inducing conversation. The result was not encouraging. Doubtless they would have gone through the house under the same frigid guidance had not Carrados been at fault in a way that Mr. Carlyle had never known him fail before. In crossing the hall he stumbled over a mat and almost fell.
“Pardon my clumsiness,” he said to the lady. “I am, unfortunately, quite blind. But,” he added, with a smile, to turn off the mishap, “even a blind man must have a house.”
The man who had eyes was surprised to see a flood of colour rush into Mrs. Creake’s face. “Blind!” she exclaimed, “oh, I beg your pardon. Why did you not tell me? You might have fallen.”
“I generally manage fairly well,” he replied. “But, of course, in a strange house—”
She put her hand on his arm very lightly. “You must let me guide you, just a little,” she said. The house, without being large, was full of passages and inconvenient turnings. Carrados asked an occasional question and found Mrs. Creake quite amiable without effusion. Mr. Carlyle followed them from room to room in the hope, though scarcely the expectation, of learning something that might be useful.
“This is the last one. It is the largest bedroom,” said their guide. Only two of the upper rooms were fully furnished and Mr. Carlyle at once saw, as Carrados knew without seeing, that this was the one which the Creakes occupied.
“A very pleasant outlook,” declared Mr. Carlyle.
“Oh, I suppose so,” admitted the lady vaguely. The room, in fact, looked over the leafy garden and the road beyond. It had a French window opening on to a small balcony, and to this, under the strange influence that always attracted him to light, Carrados walked.
“I expect that there is a certain amount of repair needed?” he said, after standing there a moment.
“I am afraid there would be,” she confessed.
“I ask because there is a sheet of metal on the floor here,” he continued. “Now that, in an old house, spells dry rot to the wary observer.”
“My husband said that the rain, which comes in a little under the window, was rotting the boards there,” she replied. “He put that down recently. I had not noticed anything myself.”
It was the first time she had mentioned her husband; Mr. Carlyle pricked up his ears.
“Ah, that is a less serious matter,” said Carrados. “May I step out on to the balcony?”
“Oh yes, if you like to.” Then, as he appeared to be fumbling at the catch, “Let me open it for you.”
But the window was already open, and Carrados, facing the various points of the compass, took in the bearings.
“A sunny, sheltered corner,” he remarked. “An ideal spot for a deck-chair and a book.”
She shrugged her shoulders half contemptuously. “I dare say,” she replied, “but I never use it.”
“Sometimes, surely,” he persisted mildly. “It would be my favourite retreat. But then—”
“I was going to say that I had never even been out on it, but that would not be quite true. It has two uses for me, both equally romantic; I occasionally shake a duster from it, and when my husband returns late without his latchkey he wakes me up and I come out here and drop him mine.”
Further revelation of Mr. Creake’s nocturnal habits was cut off, greatly to Mr. Carlyle’s annoyance, by a cough of unmistakable significance from the foot of the stairs. They had heard a trade cart drive up to the gate, a knock at the door, and the heavy-footed woman tramp along the hall.
“Excuse me a minute, please,” said Mrs. Creake.
“Louis,” said Carrados, in a sharp whisper, the moment they were alone, “stand against the door.”
With extreme plausibility Mr. Carlyle began to admire a picture so situated that while he was there it was impossible to open the door more than a few inches. From that position he observed his confederate go through the curious procedure of kneeling down on the bedroom floor and for a full minute pressing his ear to the sheet of metal that had already engaged his attention. Then he rose to his feet, nodded, dusted his trousers, and Mr. Carlyle moved to a less equivocal position.
“What a beautiful rose-tree grows up your balcony,” remarked Carrados, stepping into the room as Mrs. Creake returned. “I suppose you are very fond of gardening?”
“I detest it,” she replied.
“But this Gloire, so carefully trained—?”
“Is it?” she replied. “I think my husband was nailing it up recently.”
By some strange fatality Carrados’s most aimless remarks seemed to involve the absent Mr. Creake. “Do you care to see the garden?”
The garden proved to be extensive and neglected. Behind the house was chiefly orchard. In front, some semblance of order had been kept up; here it was lawn and shrubbery, and the drive they had walked along. Two things interested Carrados: the soil at the foot of the balcony, which he declared on examination to be particularly suitable for roses, and the fine chestnut-tree in the corner by the road.
As they walked back to the car Mr. Carlyle lamented that they had learned so little of Creake’s movements.
“Perhaps the telegram will tell us something,” suggested Carrados. “Read it, Louis.”
Mr. Carlyle cut open the envelope, glanced at the enclosure, and in spite of his disappointment could not restrain a chuckle.
“My poor Max,” he explained, “you have put yourself to an amount of ingenious trouble for nothing. Creake is evidently taking a few days’ holiday and prudently availed himself of the Meteorological Office forecast before going. Listen: ‘Immediate prospect for London warm and settled. Further outlook cooler but fine.’ Well, well; I did get a pound of tomatoes for my fourpence.”
“You certainly scored there, Louis,” admitted Carrados, with humorous appreciation. “I wonder,” he added speculatively, “whether it is Creake’s peculiar taste usually to spend his weekend holiday in London.”
“Eh?” exclaimed Mr. Carlyle, looking at the words again, “by gad, that’s rum, Max. They go to Weston-super-Mare. Why on earth should he want to know about London?”
“I can make a guess, but before we are satisfied I must come here again. Take another look at that kite, Louis. Are there a few yards of string hanging loose from it?”
“Yes, there are.”
“Rather thick string—unusually thick for the purpose?”
“Yes, but how do you know?”
As they drove home again Carrados explained, and Mr. Carlyle sat aghast, saying incredulously: “Good God, Max, is it possible?”
An hour later he was satisfied that it was possible. In reply to his inquiry someone in his office telephoned him the information that “they” had left Paddington by the four-thirty for Weston.
It was more than a week after his introduction to Carrados that Lieutenant Hollyer had a summons to present himself at The Turrets again. He found Mr. Carlyle already there and the two friends were awaiting his arrival.
“I stayed in all day after hearing from you this morning, Mr. Carrados,” he said, shaking hands. “When I got your second message I was all ready to walk straight out of the house. That’s how I did it in the time. I hope everything is all right?”
“Excellent,” replied Carrados. “You’d better have something before we start. We probably have a long and perhaps an exciting night before us.”
“And certainly a wet one,” assented the lieutenant. “It was thundering over Mulling way as I came along.”
“That is why you are here,” said his host. “We are waiting for a certain message before we start, and in the meantime you may as well understand what we expect to happen. As you saw, there is a thunderstorm coming on. The Meteorological Office morning forecast predicted it for the whole of London if the conditions remained. That is wh
y I kept you in readiness. Within an hour it is now inevitable that we shall experience a deluge. Here and there damage will be done to trees and buildings; here and there a person will probably be struck and killed.”
“Yes.”
“It is Mr. Creake’s intention that his wife should be among the victims.”
“I don’t exactly follow,” said Hollyer, looking from one man to the other. “I quite admit that Creake would be immensely relieved if such a thing did happen, but the chance is surely an absurdly remote one.”
“Yet unless we intervene it is precisely what a coroner’s jury will decide has happened. Do you know whether your brother-in-law has any practical knowledge of electricity, Mr. Hollyer?”
“I cannot say. He was so reserved, and we really knew so little of him—”
“Yet in 1896 an Austin Creake contributed an article on ‘Alternating Currents’ to the American Scientific World. That would argue a fairly intimate acquaintanceship.”
“But do you mean that he is going to direct a flash of lightning?”
“Only into the minds of the doctor who conducts the postmortem, and the coroner. This storm, the opportunity for which he has been waiting for weeks, is merely the cloak to his act. The weapon which he has planned to use—scarcely less powerful than lightning but much more tractable—is the high voltage current of electricity that flows along the tram wire at his gate.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Lieutenant Hollyer, as the sudden revelation struck him.
“Some time between eleven o’clock to-night—about the hour when your sister goes to bed—and one thirty in the morning—the time up to which he can rely on the current—Creake will throw a stone up at the balcony window. Most of his preparation has long been made; it only remains for him to connect up a short length to the window handle and a longer one at the other end to tap the live wire. That done, he will wake his wife in the way I have said. The moment she moves the catch of the window—and he has carefully filed its parts to ensure perfect contact—she will be electrocuted as effectually as if she sat in the executioner’s chair in Sing Sing prison.”