The little party crouched low among the tangle of the undergrowth. They drew their hats low upon their foreheads, and hid the flesh of their faces behind their coat sleeves. Mr. Ricardo was certain that his heart was making as much noise as the propeller of his launch. Whoever was moving in the courtyard must hear it, and be warned. He pressed his hand upon it as he lay on his chest; he felt himself choking; and as he began to breathe again he noticed a surprising thing. He should have observed it before as surely Hanaud had. He had enjoyed more opportunities than Hanaud. He was much to blame. There was a slit in the brick wall by the side of the postern door, a long slit like a perpendicular letter slot in a giant’s pillar box; or like the opening of a scene-dock at the back of a theatre.
Hanaud’s hand tightened upon his shoulders.
“Do you see? Do you see?” He hardly breathed the words. “Watch! Watch!”
Even Hanaud was shaking in his excitement. And suddenly the slit in the brick wall was wider — oh, ever so little, but without doubt wider. And Ricardo understood Hanaud’s excitement and his own delusion. In the grey and eerie light of the dawning the door of the courtyard was opening upon the forest of Brotonne. But so slowly that one could hardly endure it. Mr. Ricardo felt an almost overwhelming impulse to spring to his feet and charge out of the trees down the slope with a cry. He had to dig his fingers into the ground to hold himself in check. But just when his flesh and blood were finding the suspense quite beyond bearing, when he must know at all costs, who stood behind that door and so silently pushed it out — what prisoner they had overlooked in their examination of the house, the weight of the door quickened its movement. It swung open wide as swiftly as if a strong wind had caught it and with a slight thud lay back against the wall. Mr. Ricardo felt that thud like a blow on the head.
Hanaud turned quickly to Durasoy. He nodded to him with a smile of commendation and pointed towards the doorway. Then his eyes were back again. Across the open doorway, at the level of a man’s thighs, a piece of rope was stretched — a piece of rope which in the colourless grey dawn gleamed strangely white. Ricardo remembered. Durasoy had noticed in the tool shed by the side of the gate a pot of white paint with its brush in the pot, and a rope with the white paint fresh and wet upon it.
But what purpose could it serve, Ricardo asked himself, and a little petulantly. Things really ought to have a reason for being so, however they were. One could stoop under that rope, couldn’t one? It wouldn’t hinder anyone going out or coming in. It would only make a mess of them. Then why fix it up at all? But Ricardo’s questions were shocked the next moment out of his thoughts altogether. For in the doorway a man was standing. He was wearing a pair of white tennis shoes, flannel trousers, and a flannel jacket. The jacket was open, and it looked as if he had just slipped these clothes over his pyjamas. There was light enough now to recognise him. The man was Scott Carruthers and he carried in his hand a spade.
He took a step forward and was checked by the rope and stopped. But he pressed forward again, the rope was seen to strain and stretch, but it held, cutting across his thighs and bringing him sharply up. “He’ll have to stoop,” said Ricardo to himself, “or break the rope.” But Scott Carruthers did neither. He stood where he was. He passed his hand over his forehead like a man dazed. He lifted the spade and looked at it in a dull way as though he had never seen a spade in his life before. Then, more alertly, he stared at the rope and at the streak of white across his thighs. He looked back at the house; and at once he became active and purposeful. He disappeared and returned with his hands empty. He unfastened the piece of rope at both ends and took that away. He came back a second time and his eyes searched the forest. But every face of those who watched was pressed now to the ground and though they looked upon daylight, he was gazing into the darkness and looked still upon night. He took a step out of the doorway. There was no rope now to hold him back; and carefully, so that no hinge creaked, he drew the door towards him. Once more they heard the tiny grating of a key in a rusty lock; and after that nothing.
“Wait!” whispered Hanaud. “There are the windows of the corridor. Give him time!”
Hanaud gave him so much time to return to his room that Mr. Ricardo suffered an agony of cramp and emerged from that distress to endure such an attack of pins and needles as he had never known. But he did not flinch. He foresaw a time when sitting in his club he would say: “Ah, my dear fellow, no doubt your operation gave you some uncomfortable moments. But if you want to know what real pain is, let me tell you of the night when Hanaud and I lay perdu in the forest of Brotonne.”
“Now, I think,” said Hanaud after aeons had passed — in fact the sun was rising and here and there a shaft of pale gold slanted through a break in the leaves. They rose and crept quietly along until they were opposite to the middle of the park wall. Here the forest guard stopped and said:
“We must climb a little here. There is an open space ahead of us.”
It was the space where Guy Stallard had stood out against the green three days ago and beckoned the birds of the air to come and make friends with him. The trees indeed were already thinning in front of them, and they mounted deeper into the secrecy of the forest. They made the circuit of the house, and when Mr. Ricardo was bedewed with perspiration, and he could not lift his feet high enough above the roots to keep himself from stumbling at every other step and he was beginning to feel that really, really, he had taken enough exercise to justify some days of session in a deep arm-chair with a cushioned leg-rest, right in front of his nose stood the huge smooth pebble of rock from which the house below him took its name.
They halted at its side and Hanaud took a little compass from his pocket and made out a direction.
“It is a rough and ready calculation,” he explained. “For I was standing at a window of the corridor to the west of us, and I dared only have a hasty glance at this.” In fact Ricardo had never seen him palm the compass and look at it at all. “But I think this line should take us to where we want to go.”
Hanaud took the lead now, walking upwards and westwards in a diagonal from the rock. The forest became darker, but the boles of the beech trees were free of low branches. They seemed to be walking in an underground cavern with the blackness of midnight just ahead of them, but always receding as they advanced, and leaving them a curiously clear brown twilight, through which to move and see. They reached the foot of a knoll and Hanaud uttered a low cry of satisfaction.
“We are close,” he said. “Where the shot was fired the trees rose above their neighbours.”
One after the other, they scrambled up the knoll. The trunks of the beeches were clustered on the summit in a thicker coppice than any they had yet encountered. Again Hanaud exclaimed in delight. He stooped and picked up a cartridge case from the ground. He held it up so that all could see it. It had a green shell, on the brass head of it was embossed the name Harris and on the pink end the number of the shot.
“Number four,” Hanaud read aloud and again he inclined his head in praise to Durasoy the Brigadier.
Then he looked round; and the picture was one which none of them forgot. They were standing from three to four feet above the floor of the forest. Ahead of them the ground was a dark red from its vast litter of dead leaves, but there was hardly any undergrowth and it was, for a wonder, flat. Ricardo counted three little clumps of scrub and there were no more. It was a plain set with high tree trunks like pillars, surrounded with darkness, and itself filled with a clear subdued light warmer than the light of a cathedral. None of them knew what they were out to find, none of them knew whether there was anything to find at all. But here a forest watchman’s dog had been shot, and hence its body had been dragged in a sack for at least a couple of miles. Why?
Mr. Ricardo couldn’t answer; Hanaud didn’t want to answer, but a horrible fear possessed him. He turned to Ricardo with an odd savagery in his voice.
“What did I say to you in Havre. When you and I found ourselves in an alliance, there was
always a horror that was fantastic, a cruelty beyond endurance.” He stood for a moment, thereafter, with his eyes upon the ground, as though he did not wish to see any foot of that forest floor except that on which he stood. What Ricardo could see of his face was heavy with distress and his big frame was hunched.
“The dog wouldn’t have been more than fifty or sixty yards away,” he said as he raised his head. “Let’s work forward in a line.”
They descended the knoll and spread out into open order, each one examining his share of the ground as he advanced. They had covered about forty yards, the dead leaves crackling underfoot, when Durasoy shouted. He was standing by one of the clumps of scrub; and the rest of the party ran to him.
“Look, sir,” he said to Hanaud.
There was a mess of blood upon the litter of fallen leaves and from that spot a rough track where the leaves had been overturned and brushed aside, led away to the west.
“This is where the dog was shot. That’s the way it was dragged to where we found it,” said Durasoy.
“Yes.”
Hanaud spoke absently; and his eyes were not on the patch of stained leaves but on the clump of brushwood beside it. He stooped and pulled some of it aside. It had been bent over and broken to hide a strip of ground which its roots did not cover; and the soil of that strip was disturbed and humped. Leaves had been heaped upon it to make a show that it had long lain undisturbed. But here and there these leaves had been scattered and the soil beneath scraped up into holes as though an animal had been digging there.
Hanaud stood up again. The agitation had gone now from his manner and his voice. But his face was pale and his eyes hard as pebbles.
“We must dig too, like the dog,” he said.
He sent the forest guard back to his village to fetch a spade, and bade him if he could to bring it secretly and quickly.
“For us, we must wait.”
He looked above his head. The canopy of leaves looked as solid as a roof of slate.
“We may smoke whilst we wait.”
He drew his blue packet of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. Parcolet lit another. Durasoy started a pipe. Ricardo dropped upon the ground. There were no birds in this underworld of green and such a hush reigned as deserts and high mountains know. Ricardo spoke on a low note.
“Scott Carruthers must have seen us.”
“Why?”
“He was coming to smooth down that mound.”
“Then why the white rope across the doorway? It. is not so simple as all that.”
Again silence held and enthralled them until, a long time afterwards, they heard the boots of the forest guard brushing through the leaves. He carried a spade.
“It is my own,” he said. “No one is yet awake. I wasn’t seen.”
Hanaud set the lustiest of the gendarmes to work and Mr. Ricardo turned away. The thrill of the darkness and the night had gone from him. He was conscious of a void in the pit of his stomach, which owed nothing to hunger. He heard Hanaud’s voice:
“Gently now! Gently,” and he shivered, as though this was the month of December and the snow upon the ground. Other words were spoken. “We should have had some ropes.”
“Now up!”
And then Hanaud touched him upon the arm. Mr. Ricardo felt very sick, but he turned obediently:
“We none of us know,” said Hanaud. “You must tell us who he is.”
He spoke quietly, but very firmly. Mr. Ricardo suffered himself to be led. He saw a shallow trench in the ground, and on the surface at the side of it the form of a man, outstretched and quiet in the dress of a chauffeur. A handkerchief, woven in the two colours of crimson and yellow, hid his face, his dress was stained with clay. Hanaud led Mr. Ricardo to the side of this still and lifeless body. He gave an order to Durasoy and at the same time tightened upon Ricardo’s arm the grasp of his sleeve. “You shall tell us who this man is,” said Hanaud.
Very carefully, Durasoy, kneeling by the side of the open trench, untied the handkerchief from the dead man’s face, removed a pad from his mouth and stood aside, leaving the face open for all who were there to see, with its jaw dropped and its eyes staring blindly up to the canopy of leaves.
“Who is it?” Hanaud asked. “Tell us!”
“Oliver Ransom,” answered Mr. Ricardo. He went apart and was very sick.
CHAPTER XXIII
MR. RICARDO ASKS A SUBTLE QUESTION
HANAUD SAT ON the ground and called Ricardo to his side. He spread out the handkerchief and examined it.
“Do you see?” he asked, looking up into Ricardo’s face; Ricardo knew now what to look for and where in the texture of the handkerchief. He recognised the broader stripe of crimson, the narrower ones of yellow.
“The sixth,” said Mr. Ricardo.
Hanaud took out of his pocket again the indelible pencil, and summoning Parcolet and Durasoy to witness what he did, he marked the handkerchief with the letters O.R. and put it away in his pocket.
“Now we go. For we have much to do. Monsieur le Commissaire, you will leave Durasoy on the watch here? Perhaps the forest guard will keep him company. It will be necessary for the Doctor to ascertain the cause of death. There are no wounds.” He picked up the pad and smelt it.
“Chloroform,” he said. “Let us hope that the poor man—” He broke off and gazed down upon the body at their feet. “But it must have been. There is no sign of a struggle, no contortion of the face, as there would have been had he waked up with the clay upon his face. Not that the gentlemen who did this thing cared!” He was very suave and smooth as he spoke of these gentlemen, but Mr. Ricardo was very glad that he was not one of them. “No, they would not care. We will remember that. Come!”
He started off by the path along which they had come, and at an uncomfortable speed for the shortlegged Commissaire as well as for Ricardo. But Ricardo was not going to be left behind in the forest of Brotonne. It was a place of ghosts. Since he must trot, he trotted. But the return journey was not so difficult. There was light, the kind of greenish light he remembered in the tanks of an aquarium, and the roots no longer caught malignantly at his feet. He was nevertheless very glad to drop into a chair in the stern of his launch.
“And we do not mind the noise,” said Hanaud. “We go at the maximum.”
In the fields along the river’s banks peasants were moving and smoke was rising from the cottage chimneys. But the blinds in the House of the Pebble were still drawn and the town of Caudebec still asleep. One man, however, was waiting on the hard, and as the launch drew in Parcolet pointed to him.
“My secretary, Lestrelin.”
Lestrelin, a young man in civilian clothes, stooped at the side of the launch and handed a paper to Hanaud.
“It arrived from Paris an hour ago.”
Hanaud read it, passed on the paper to Parcolet, and taking out a little pocket-book from his pocket, found a page and compared it with the paper. He looked at Mr. Ricardo.
“You are not tired? A few minutes more and you sleep. But we must move now.”
There was a great anxiety in Hanaud’s expression, an urgency in his voice which Ricardo was not the man to resist.
“To where you will,” he replied.
Hanaud held a little conference with Parcolet in so low a voice that only a few words reached Ricardo’s ears. It was obvious, however, that Parcolet was being reluctantly driven into imprudencies.
“It is for you, yes, the Commissaire, the Magistrate,” Hanaud said. “You have the authority to-day. Tomorrow you have the great name too.”
“No, no,” began Monsieur Parcolet, but something was wrong with Hanaud’s hearing. For he cried:
“That is magnificent! The strong hand, what! Precisely. We insist? I congratulate you on your decision. Where my function ends, Monsieur le Commissaire takes command in a twinkling. That is great character, Monsieur le Commissaire.”
While that man of great character was doubtfully stroking his small beard and wondering how in the world
he was to avoid his responsibility and retain this reputation which had been thrust upon him, Hanaud was on his way to the steps leading up to the little forward deck. He had to pass Ricardo, and he cried:
“You will see, I think, something. There is nothing polite about this case. So we too — we fit ourselves to it. Our manners to-day are not of the nobility.”
“Though I have known you for a long time, my dear Hanaud,” Mr. Ricardo answered languidly. “I cannot remember when they ever were.”
But he moved his chair hurriedly when he had spoken, for Hanaud dropped upon the step beside him, with a broad grin upon his face and an elbow which menaced his ribs.
“Oho!” said the Inspecteur Principal, “you make an amusement with your poor friend. Very well! Now he punish you. He will not tell the news which was telephoned from Paris at five this morning.”
Mr. Ricardo smiled acidly, and declined to answer. It was not at all to punish him that Hanaud kept his news to himself. It was so that at a suitable moment he might make a cheap effect of the theatre. Hanaud went forward to the pilot, and the nose of the launch was pushed off into the stream. Hanaud dropped once more into the stern of the launch. The banter and the raillery were no more than signs of his anxiety. He was desperately nervous.
“We go — yes, we go,” he said, and he was talking to reassure himself. The engine roared, driving the boat upstream and setting the water surging up the bank. “Perrichet is watching,” he went on. “The intelligent Perrichet,” and now Mr. Ricardo knew whither they were bound. They flew past the front of Caudebec, past the ferry pier, and with a startling cessation of clatter and noise they slid up to the side of the Marie-Popette.
Hanaud was over the side and into the house-boat whilst Mr. Ricardo was still hoisting himself out of his chair. The two gendarmes followed Hanaud, but waited to assist Mr. Ricardo, whose joints were growing rapidly stiff from his unusual exertions. Then the four of them crowded into the saloon and filled it. Lucrece Bouchette was sitting on her bench in front of the table without so much as a look of surprise upon her face. Marie was standing, her features distorted by terror, and her muscles for the moment paralysed by the irruption of the men in uniform. When she turned to the door leading forward, she was already too late. For before she could grasp the handle, one of the gendarmes took her by the shoulders and swung her aside.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 141