The House 'Round the Corner Part 24

"Well, wait till I examine you in the morning," he said. "Sometimes, injuries of the sprain order yield very rapidly to treatment. Take this, and you'll have a night's rest, at any rate."

He shook some crystals out of a small bottle into a little water, and watched Whittaker drinking the decoction.

"Lie quiet now," he went on soothingly. "You'll soon be asleep. If that bandage hurts when you wake, you must grin and bear it. I'll be here about ten o'clock."

Downstairs, he told Armathwaite that he had given Whittaker a stiff dose of bromide.

"Here's the bottle," he said. "If he's awake in half an hour's time, let him have a similar lot. Don't be afraid. He can stand any amount of it."

Armathwaite smiled, and Scaife smiled back at him. They understood, without further speech, that a youngster of p.r.o.nounced neurotic temperament could withstand a quant.i.ty of the drug that would prove dangerous to the average man.

"Who is he?" continued the doctor. "I haven't seen him here before. Is there any difficulty about his remaining in the Grange?"

"He is a friend of Meg's," explained Armathwaite. "She was staying with his sister at Chester, and we all reached Elmdale within a few hours of one another."

Thus was another pitfall safely skirted. By the time Dr. Scaife was in the dining-room and talking to Meg, he had arrived at conclusions which were perfectly reasonable and thoroughly erroneous.

In response to Armathwaite, he promised to bring a nurse in the morning, as he was confident that the sprain would keep Whittaker bed-ridden at least a couple of weeks. Then he took his leave.

"I'll go and sit with Percy a little while now," said Marguerite. "Poor fellow! What a shame he should have met with this mishap after his gallant walk to-day. Perhaps that is why he fell. His muscles may have relaxed owing to over-exertion. Will you ever forgive me, Bob, for all the worry I have caused you?"

"No," he said. "I want you to remind me of it so often that we shall lose count of the number of times. But, before you go upstairs, let me warn you that Dr. Scaife gave our young friend about twenty grains of bromide in one gulp. He may be dozing. If he is, don't wake him."

In a couple of minutes she was back in the library, where Armathwaite was seated with a book and a pipe.

"He's asleep," she whispered.

"I'm glad to hear it. Now, come and sit down. Are you too tired to answer questions?"

"Try me."

"Concerning your change of name--can you explain more definitely how it came about?"

"I told you. It was on account of a legacy."

"But from whom? Who was the Ogilvey who left the money? A relative on your father's side, or your mother's?"

"Dad's, I understood."

"Did you ever hear of anyone named Faulkner?"

"Yes. Some people of that name lived here years ago. We were distantly related. In fact, that is how the property came into dad's possession.

But he never really went into details. One day he said he had made a will, leaving me everything, subject to a life interest for mother, and that when he was dead a lawyer would tell me all that I ought to know.

Then I cried at the horrid thought that he would have to die at all, and he laughed at me, and that was the last I ever heard of it. Why do you ask?"

"You remember that we promised not to hide anything from one another?"

"Of course I remember."

"Well, then, I think I have hit on a sort of a clew to the Ogilvey part of the mystery, at any rate. By the merest chance, while awaiting the return of Mr. Burt's man from the village, our talk turned on the history of this house. He spoke of the Faulkners, and mentioned the fact that the eldest son of a daughter of the family, a Mrs. Ogilvey, was born here. That would be some fifty odd years ago. How old is your father?"

"Fifty-four."

"The dates tally, at all events."

Meg knitted her brows over this cryptic remark.

"But," she said, "if you imply that my father may be the son of a Mrs.

Ogilvey, that would mean that his name never was Garth."

"Exactly."

"Isn't such a guess rather improbable? I am twenty-two, and I was born in this very house, and I lived here twenty years except during school terms at Brighton and in Brussels, and we were known as Garths during all that long time."

Armathwaite blew a big ring of smoke into the air, and darted a number of smaller rings through it. The pattern, beautifully distinct at first, was soon caught in a current from an open window, and eddied into shapelessness. He was thinking hard, and had acted unconsciously, so it was with a sense of surprise that he heard the girl laugh half-heartedly.

"I've been forming mad and outrageous theories until my poor head aches," she said, answering the unspoken question in his eyes. "Some of them begin by being just as perfectly proportioned as your smoke-rings, but they fade away in the next breath."

"My present theory is nebulous enough," he admitted, "but it is not altogether demolished yet. Can you endure a brief a.n.a.lysis of my thoughts? You won't be afraid, and lie awake for hours?"

"No. I mean that I want to hear everything you wish to tell me."

"The man who died here two years ago must have resembled your father in no common degree. Dr. Scaife is not the sort of person who makes a mistake in such a vital matter as the identification of a dead body, especially when the subject is an old and valued friend of his. By the way, you called him uncle, but that, I take it, was merely an affectionate mode of address dating from your childhood?"

"Yes. It's a Yorks.h.i.+re custom among intimates."

"Have you ever heard of a real uncle--your father's brother--or of a first cousin who was very like him?"

"No. I have asked my people about relatives but we seemed to have none.

Even the Ogilvey of the legacy was never mentioned by either of them until mother read me a letter from dad received while we were in Paris."

"Exactly. This testamentary Ogilvey appeared on the scene soon after Stephen Garth died and was buried. Your father was well aware of that occurrence, because he contrived it. He knew that the man who died was coming here, so he sent your mother and you to Paris to get you safely out of the way. Now, don't begin to tremble, and frighten yourself into the belief that I am proving your father's guilt of some dreadful crime.

You yourself are convinced that he is incapable of any such act. May I not share your good opinion of him, yet try to reach some sort of firm ground in a quagmire where a false step may prove disastrous? Suppose, Mr. Garth, as he was called at that time, merely got rid of his wife and daughter until an unwelcome guest had been received and sent on his way again, and that fate, with the cra.s.sness it can display at times, contrived that the visitor died, or was killed, or committed suicide, at the most awkward moment it is possible to conceive, can you not imagine a hapless, middle-aged scholar availing himself of the most unlikely kind of expedient in order to escape a scandal? Your father is a student, a writer, almost a recluse, yet such a man, driven suddenly into panic-stricken use of his wits, oft-times devises ways and means of humbugging the authorities which an ordinarily clever criminal would neither think of nor dare. I am insisting on this phase of the matter so that you and I may concentrate our intelligence on the line of inquiry most likely to yield results. Let me tabulate my contentions in chronological sequence:

_A._--Mr. Garth received some news which led him to disturb the peaceful conditions of life which had obtained during twenty years.

His first care was to send his wife and daughter to a place far removed from Elmdale.

_B._--Mrs. Garth shared her husband's uneasiness, and agreed to fall in with the plan he had devised.

_C._--In order to secure complete secrecy, the whole staff of servants was dismissed, practically at a moment's notice, and probably paid liberal compensation.

_D._--After a week of this gradual obliteration of himself in Elmdale, Mr. Garth is missed, with the inevitable outcome that his dead body is found hanging in the hall, and, lest there should be any doubt as to his ident.i.ty, a letter is left for the coroner, in which he a.s.serts a thing, which his friend, Dr. Scaife, knew to be untrue, namely, that he was suffering from incurable disease. The statement, conveyed otherwise than in a letter, would have been received with skepticism; it was made with the definite object of giving a reason for an apparent suicide, and leaving testimony, in his own handwriting, that the disfigured body could be that of no other person than Stephen Garth. If a general resemblance of the dead to the living did not suffice--if the wearing of certain clothes, and the finding of certain doc.u.ments and trinkets, such as a watch and chain, for instance--"

Marguerite, who had been listening intently, could no longer restrain her excitement.

"Yes," she cried, "that is so correct that it is quite wonderful. My father had a half-hunter gold watch and a chain of twisted leather which he wore as long as I can remember. Both had gone when he came to us in Paris; when I missed them, and asked what had become of them, he said they were lost, much to his annoyance, and he had been obliged to buy a new watch in London."

"There is nothing wonderful in treating a watch and chain as the first objects which would lead to a man's identification," said Armathwaite.