“Well?
“The next day, Tuesday, they lunched together in an Italian restaurant in Frith Street, and sat over their coffee and for a long time afterwards, looking very dejected and talking very earnestly. They must have realised then that the game was up, the Clutter money scattered to the winds, and all their hopes smashed.”
Strickland nodded. After a moment of silence he said, sinking down in his chair and puffing out the smoke of his cigar:
“You know, if only Clutter hadn’t invented his vile plan of kidnapping Ariadne, I should feel damned sorry for him.”
Culalla’s face lit up with a smile.
“So should I. He certainly has had the baby to hold all his life, hasn’t he? But there it is. He has been turned into a wild beast of the jungle, with all the cunning of a wild beast as well as its ferocity. And when wild beasts come out of the jungle into the towns, they have got to be put into cages, haven’t they?”
“Yes,” Strickland agreed, but still with a trifle of reluctance.
Lord Culalla leaned forward and touched him on the arm.
“You know, you made the great mistake,” he said very quietly. “For yourself, for Ariadne, for Archie Clutter, too. That night behind Mogok, when you had Clutter at the end of your rifle, you should have pulled the trigger.”
Strickland sat up and brought his fist down upon the table.
“To whom do you say that?” he cried. “Don’t I know it? I have been regretting my folly ever since. But I didn’t! No, I didn’t! No, I didn’t! So Clutter and his friend must go back to Cayenne.”
“Yes.”
“And as soon as possible. For I gather that the simple life in Provence isn’t running very smoothly.”
Culalla moved a little uneasily.
“Yes, well, we shan’t keep them penned up there for very long,” he said.
The confidence had gone from his voice, however. He was not accustomed to rebuffs, even of a temporary kind; still less had he the habit of acknowledging them. He was now therefore in a galling position which he had foreseen and avoided until this moment. Strickland looked at him anxiously.
“I thought you told me the French would act,” he said.
“So they will. But Clutter and Roussencq have after all slipped through our fingers.”
“What?”
Strickland’s cry held so much of consternation that Culalla was quite taken by surprise. He had guessed accurately enough that Strickland loved Ariadne, but there seemed to him to be no reason for so great a pother in this set-back. After all, it only meant delay.
“We shall pick them up again pretty quickly, never fear, Colonel Strickland,” he said in soothing tones. “We only lost touch with them yesterday.”
“Yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“In the morning?”
“To be precise, the last time Clutter was seen was at half-past eleven. He was lost in the great stores in Oxford Street. You know what a crowd there is thronging the aisles at that hour. Hospel Roussencq got away about the same time in the tube station at Piccadilly Circus.”
“They had planned, then, to get away from you?”
Strickland was not looking at his host. His eyes, indeed, were ranging over the table-cloth, held for a second by this or that trivial article, a glittering fork, a glass which caught the light. When he spoke his voice was quite toneless. But his very manner of indifference conveyed to Culalla an impression of acute distress more clearly than a torrent of words.
“Yes. They had discovered they were under surveillance. So they made a bolt for some other burrow. I haven’t a doubt of it.”
“I wish I hadn’t,” said Strickland.
For a week he had been going about with a mind at ease in a smiling world. Now a pit black with menaces and horrors was opening at his feet. He edged his chair a little closer to Culalla’s and lowered his voice.
“Which of your servants was it,” he asked, “who collected Corinne’s suit-case at the ‘Noughts and Crosses Club’ on the morning after Archie Clutter’s visit?”
Culalla, without any premeditation, lowered his voice to the pitch of Strickland’s.
“Cowcher,” he answered.
“Was it Cowcher, too, who took that luggage to Folkestone, met the two girls at three in the morning at the door of the hotel, put the motor-car on board the steamer, and saw the travellers off?
“Yes.”
Culalla’s surprise at the questions turned into anxiety. “Why,” he added, “Cowcher’s invaluable in that kind of work.”
“No doubt,” said Strickland in the same even voice. “Did he know, too, to what place the ladies were travelling?”
“Let me think for a moment”; and after a moment: “Yes, he knew. I sent him to the post office with a telegram addressed to the lodge-keeper at the Villa Laure.”
“Exactly,” said Strickland.
He ran a finger vaguely backwards and forwards along the edge of the table-cloth, and then he asked a final question, so unexpected that Culalla wondered for a second whether his visitor had gone mad.
“Did you know that his Christian name was George? Cowcher,” — and he traced a couple of brackets with his fingers on the cloth—”(George)?”
“No, upon my soul, I didn’t know that,” cried Culalla, and at that moment he learned that Strickland was not indeed mad or hovering. For Strickland raised his face for the first time since he had begun to ask questions. It was as white as the table-cloth with which he had been playing and his eyes were heavy with pain. He took out his watch and consulted the dial.
“I’ll tell you where Clutter and Roussencq are at this minute of time. It is five minutes past three. They are in a Rapide which is slowing down as it approaches Lyons.”
Culalla stared open-mouthed at his visitor. Not for years had he been so disconcerted. His head was in a whirl. He had been so confident in dispatching those two fugitives to his retreat in Provence. He had been so pleased that Ariadne’s beauty should grace it for a little while and leave perhaps some fragrance of her to linger in the rooms. He had been so sure that she would be happy there, all the more sure because it was only a house in a dream to him, that house which each man selects as his heart’s desire, so long as he never puts his heart’s desire to the test and proceeds actually to dwell in it. Now Strickland was telling him in so many words that he had sent Ariadne running towards a trap. And Cowcher! The invaluable Cowcher! How could he, the composite portrait of all the butlers who ever were, be the colleague of convicts and assassins?
“It’s impossible!” he said, keeping still to that low voice which Strickland’s example prescribed. “Cowcher isn’t the man to stand in with Archie Clutter.”
“I agree,” said Strickland grimly. “Stand in? No, Archie Clutter would see to that. But—”
He broke off, and pointing to a bell-button set in enamel which stood on the table at Lord Culalla’s elbow, he dropped his voice still lower.
“Where does that bell ring?”
“In the butler’s pantry,” Lord Culalla whispered back.
“Near this room?”
“No, at the other end of the house.”
“Good! We will see now. Will you be good enough to ring that bell and tell Cowcher, when he comes, to bring me a glass of water.”
Culalla rang the bell at once. Strickland raised a forefinger for silence and both men strained their ears to listen.
But the bell was not answered at all.
“You see?” continued Strickland. “Cowcher never heard that bell ring in his pantry on the other side of the house, because he’s standing in mortal terror outside this door here with his ear to the panel to overhear us. I must tell you about Cowcher (George).”
Strickland could no longer respect the credit of Caroline Beagham, or even the happiness of Judy. He could not keep his promise to Angus Trevor. Life and death were in the balance now. Ariadne was in peril. The two wild beasts of the jungle were hunting. What might not happen in
the Villa Laure set apart in its sequestered park? He told to Lord Culalla in a low voice the story of his visit to Peacock Farm, of the theft of Cowcher’s letter, of its contents as revealed in the copy.
“There’s little doubt in my mind that Clutter and Roussencq were the thieves. The footprints they left in the mould under the window bear me out. Serving as waiters they were certain to come across some discharged private servants who were clients of Caroline Beagham. No doubt Archie Clutter knew that Corinne supped with you on the night when Elizabeth Clutter died. It was worth while spending a night in finding out whether Cowcher sent any details of that supper-party — worth while to anyone, but especially worth while to the man who had worked his passage across half the world to come up with Maung H’la at the ruby mines. And if Cowcher had, why Cowcher belonged to them.”
“That’s true,” Culalla agreed. “But — Cowcher!” and in exasperation he rang the bell again, and yet a third time.
Both men were listening, even holding their breath that they might listen the better. They heard an urgent whispering in the corridor outside the door. Someone had come from the servants’ quarters to warn Cowcher that he was wanted. A pause followed, then came a distant cough (Cowcher’s) needlessly loud, and a heavy tread (Cowcher’s) needlessly heavy. In stratagems Cowcher (George) would hardly have passed the children’s standard. He entered the room sedately.
“You rang, my lord?”
“Yes. Will you please give Colonel Strickland a glass of water?”
“Certainly, my lord.”
Cowcher took a salver from the sideboard in his left hand and placed upon it a tumbler. In his right hand he took a beautiful glass jug with a glint of grey lead in its composition. Strickland took the tumbler from the salver. Cowcher filled it from the jug.
“I rang for you more than once, Cowcher,” suddenly said Lord Culalla in his most brisk and metallic voice.
“I very much regret it, my lord,” said Cowcher. “I was not at the moment within hearing of the bell.”
“That, indeed, seems to be indicated,” said his lordship pleasantly.
Cowcher looked about the table. He could see nothing now missing which gentlemen usually require at this hour.
“Do you require me any more, my lord?”
“Yes,” said Lord Culalla. He looked at the jug which Cowcher was still holding. “That glass is Waterford, Cowcher. I think you had better put it safely down upon the table before I go on. You might otherwise drop it.”
Cowcher’s face was not one of those which reward the student of human nature with lucid expressions of emotions. But even behind the screen of that thick, pale flesh, a stir of uneasiness was visible now. His little eyes were anxious. He seemed to be saying to himself. “This is not a promising beginning. No! Nobody in the world could say that.” He stepped forward and placed the Waterford jug upon the table.
“Yes, my lord.”
His lordship was brutally direct, knowing his man.
“You wrote an account of an event which took place in this room to a Mrs. Caroline Beagham and you were paid for it.”
“I did, my lord?” Cowcher stammered.
“Yes. That letter was stolen. What communication have you had during the last three days with the man who stole it?”
There were certain openings for Cowcher. He might, for instance, have flatly denied that he had ever sent a letter to Mrs. Beagham. Since he was certain to be dismissed he might even have said, “Go to Hell!”
He might possibly have gone a step farther and inquired politely of his lordship whether his lordship would like a picturesque narrative of the event in question to appear in the press. But all these expedients stipulated some combative element in the character of the man, and Cowcher (George) was no fighter. He shook and stammered, and then did what, to Strickland at all events, was a disgusting thing. He cried. Two great tears plumped on to his fat cheeks. They were followed by others. Cowcher suddenly dropped upon his knees, clasped his hands and extended them appealingly to his master. Nothing is more curious to note than how often the derided stock gestures of melodrama actually repeat themselves in the scenes of real distress. Cowcher had not a thought of acting. His cheeks shook and, sobbing and swallowing, he poured out his confession. He ‘adn’t meant any ‘arm, my lord!...Yes, he ‘ad written a letter...he would willingly bite out his tongue, if he could ‘ave that letter back unposted. But temptation came in Cowcher’s way. Ah, temptation What a terrible thing, my lord, for poor people — All this morning he had felt something brooding over the ‘ouse, he ‘ad, my lord.
Culalla was the last man to whom such sentimental pleas would appeal.
“Cut that out!” he said, and his words were like, the clang of iron upon iron. “Come to the point!”
Cowcher admitted that a man had written to him saying that he was in possession of the letter.
“Name?” asked Culalla.
“He signed himself ‘John the Hangman,’” said Cowcher lamentably.
“When did you get the letter?”
“I received it by the first post, yesterday, my lord.”
Culalla looked across the corner of the table to Colonel Strickland.
“Written after their long confabulation in the Italian restaurant on the Tuesday afternoon,” he said, and he turned back to the kneeling Cowcher.
“What did ‘John the Hangman’ say?”
“I was told to meet him at a certain place, my lord, at eleven-thirty that morning.”
“And you did?”
“Yes, my lord. I waited ten minutes and he came.”
“Describe him!”
Cowcher, for the purposes of his correspondence with Caroline Beagham, had acquired observation and a rough capacity to express what he saw. He left no doubt in the minds of his auditors that John the Hangman was Archie Clutter. “John the Hangman,” in addition, was the name which Archie Clutter would have chosen. It was alarming and it suited his particular form of humour.
“Where did you meet him?” Culalla rasped out.
“My lord, in the Chapel of Rest on the Bayswater Road.”
“What!”
Culalla was suddenly provoked out of his sledgehammer calm into violence. He glared at Cowcher savagely. To Strickland, who was quite at a loss to understand why so small a detail as the actual meeting-place should so affect him, he appeared a man shocked and outraged. But Culalla was a curious blend of a man. In and out amongst those practical activities which had amassed for him millions, iridescent threads were always weaving him dreams. There was a side of him which was quite contemplative, and it had made him acquainted with the unobtrusive little red chapel, which stands back at the end of a stone-flagged path so near to the roar of the Marble Arch. He had turned aside from the hot turmoil of the day into that place of quietude, often and often; and sitting in one of its tiny pews had looked upon its painted walls, and bathed his soul for a little while in a pool of shadows and peace. Now these two men had defiled it for him, so that it would be a closed door always in the future. For he would see there always Archie Clutter and his butler, the wild beast and the craven, preparing harm and setting evil afoot.
“What did you tell him?” Lord Culalla asked.
“He threatened me, my lord. He would send you a copy of the letter—”
“What did you tell him? Answer!”
Cowcher’s tears rained down his face.
“I told him where the young ladies had gone.”
“Avignon?” Strickland interrupted with just a gleam of hope that the butler’s betrayals had stopped there.
“No, sir. The Villa Laure, a few kilometres from Avignon.”
Strickland leaned back in his chair with an exclamation of disgust. Whatever harm to those two girls Cowcher could do in his cowardice, he had done. Culalla, however, had still a question for him.
“I want to get a little more light on the mentality of this man Clutter, if I can,” he said. “Did he let you go thus, Cowcher?”
; “No, my lord! He didn’t exactly let me go. But he was sort of took, like a man who ‘as ‘ad a stroke.” All Cowcher’s carefully treasured aspirates had gone by the board. He could not carry that luxury-cargo on this voyage of affliction. His native accent winged his words. “He sat there and never moved muscle or limb, except twice when ’e shivered tremendously. It was somethink orful to see ’im. Once I spoke to ’im. I said, ‘Now I must be getting along,’ or words like that. But ’e didn’t ‘ear— ’e didn’t even see me go. I left ’im there, a broken man.”
Cowcher was making the most of Archie Clutter’s disappointment. He had almost a conviction that he himself had dealt the fellow unconsciously a stunning blow. In a little while he would probably have felt injured by the treatment of his employer. Lord Culalla, however, did not give him that little while.
“Get up! Pack! Go!” he said. “You must be out of the house in an hour.”
The tone of the metallic voice was final. Cowcher rose from his knees and sniffed his way out of the dining-room without another word. He went out of the thoughts of the two men he left there at the same time. They looked at one another in consternation. Culalla was the first to break the silence.
“I am humiliated beyond words,” he said in contrition. “I thought that I was doing so clever a thing.” He caught suddenly at an argument. “But we mustn’t forget, my dear fellow,” and to point the hopeful consideration, he hitched his chair forward— “No, we mustn’t forget that, although it’s very likely those two men, their minds unbalanced and all their dreams of wealth and ease at an end, might risk everything on a rush through France with the chance of a profit after all, and the certainty of a revenge at the end of their journey, they would still have to have passports.”
Strickland laughed harshly.
“So Corinne said. She seemed to amuse Archie Clutter by saying it. Didn’t she tell you his answer? Archie understood that innocent people going upon their holidays did have some difficulty over passports, but not people like himself and his little friend. And, by God, he was right, too,” Strickland flashed out with a thump of his fist upon the table. “Every crook who wants to swindle you with a non-existent oil share, every propagandist from Moscow who wants to make a little more dirt in Glasgow — Oh yes, they can slip in and out, and the Government’s quite pained if a Member of Parliament asks a question about it. But you and I, and the Smiths of Surbiton when we want to go abroad, we have to go on our knees to our own servants at the Passport Office, and tell them actually why we want to go abroad, before we are condescendingly granted permission. The damned impertinence of it!”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 82