Till the Clock Stops Part 18

Alan Craig, as he afterwards stated, had entered Grey House at a quarter before midnight; the clock had attracted his attention as soon as he lit the candles. The candles, he had noticed, had been used not long previously, for the wicks were softish, and he had been aware of an odour of tobacco, not stale, in the atmosphere of the study. These two little discoveries had been sufficient to end the incipient idea induced by the stillness and chilliness that the house might be temporarily uninhabited.

Less than half an hour prior to Alan's arrival, the man Marvel left by unbolting the outer door. He had entered by cutting through a lightly barred window at the back, and would have retired by the same way but for the fact that he had wounded one of his hands rather severely, and could not risk disturbing his rough and hasty bandage.

But though injured and drenched to the skin, and facing a long tramp in the vilest of weather, he turned from the gates of Grey House in a fairly cheerful temper. He had done the job and done it easily. The Green Box reposed in his suit case, and would fetch four hundred pounds on delivery. Only four hundred pounds? Well, Mr. Bullard had named that sum, but perhaps--and Mr. Marvel grinned against the gale--Mr. Bullard was not going to get off quite so cheaply. To Marvel's sort, possession is not just a miserable nine points of the law: it is all the law and as much of the profits as trickery can extract.

No, no!--he stumbled in the almost pitch darkness, and cursed briefly--Mr. Bullard was not going to handle his Green Box for much less than a thousand pounds! If only the key had been available, reflected this choice specimen of humanity, he would have had a look at the contents. Papers, Mr. Bullard had said--more incriminating doc.u.ments, no doubt! Mr. Bullard was a very nice man, he was, but he could not always have it his own way. Mr. Bullard ...

A sound in, but not of, the storm, muttered in Marvel's ears. Peering ahead, he descried a small light. He was pa.s.sing a wood at the time, and the windy tumult as well as the roaring from the loch made confusion for his hearing; but presently he recognised the intruding sound as the throbbing of a motor. "Some silly fool got a breakdown," he was thinking sympathetically, when a terrific gust caught and fairly staggered him.

Ere he fully recovered balance and breath something cold and clammy fell upon his face, was dragged down over his shoulders and arms, blinding, pinioning him. The suit case was rudely wrenched from his hand; he was violently pushed and tripped; and with a stifled yell he fell heavily on the footpath and rolled into the br.i.m.m.i.n.g gutter.... By the time he regained footing, the use of eyes and ears, there was no light visible, no sound save that of wrathful nature.

In the doctor's study it was the host who undertook the duty of breaking to Alan the news of his uncle's death; it was Caw who informed him of the old man's thought for him during the last year of life, on the very last day of it.

"You must understand, sir," the servant added, "that from the day after you went away my master was living not in his own house, but in yours. It pleased him to think of it that way, sir. 'I am not leaving my nephew anything,' he used to say to me; 'I have given him what I had to give.'

He always believed in your safe return, though to others it seemed so impossible. There are many things to be told--you have already witnessed something that must have puzzled you, sir--but with your permission I will say no more till tomorrow, when I have got my wits together again, as it were."

"I think I can keep my curiosity under till then, Caw," said the young man, "and, to tell the truth, I don't feel equal to talking about my Uncle Christopher's affairs just yet. But if Dr. Handyside isn't too tired, I'd like to explain without delay why I made a secret of my existence, also why I came home--well, like a thief in the night." He glanced a little quizzingly at Marjorie, who blushed and retorted good-humouredly--

"Don't you think you owe me--us--the explanation, Mr. Craig?"

"Mr. Craig owes us nothing," Handyside said; "and I ought to remind him that while we were his uncle's friends--his most intimate friends, I might say, these five years--we are now, in a sense, intruders who have no claim whatever on Mr. Craig's confidence. Further"--the doctor's tone became rueful--"I fear I am greatly to blame--"

Alan interposed, "I want you to accept my confidence. I came home expecting to find myself as poor as when I went to the Arctic, and now I find my good uncle has altered all that, and in my new circ.u.mstances I may decide to change certain plans I had made. But I must first put myself right with my uncle's friends as well as his trusted servant. I'll make a short story of it--just the bare facts."

"As you will," said the doctor. "Caw, take a chair."

"If I may say so, sir, I prefer to stand."

"Caw," said Miss Handyside, "take a chair."

"Very good, miss," said Caw, and seated himself near the door.

"As I learned by consulting old newspapers on the other side," said Alan, "the expedition returned home safely at the time appointed; but I was reported lost--lost while out hunting. I'll start from that hunting episode, though trifling incidents had happened before then, which ought, perhaps, to have put me on the alert. One of the best shots, if not the best, in the expedition was a man named Flitch. Like myself, he joined in place of another man, almost at the last moment. He was a rough character, and his position was merely that of an odd-job man, but I must say he did most things well, especially in the mechanical line. He and I had frequently made hunting excursions together, but always with one or two other members of the party. And now, for the first time, we went out from the camp alone."

"Oh!" murmured Marjorie.

"We tramped an unusually long way from the camp--at Flitch's instigation, as I recognised afterwards; but in the end we were rewarded by coming on a fine bear. 'You take first shot,' said Flitch, in his curt, sullen fas.h.i.+on. I did, and was lucky. But the gun was not down from my shoulder when Flitch deliberately shot me in the back--not with his gun, but with a revolver he had never shown before--"

"The dirty hound!" growled Caw.

"I fell, feeling horribly sick, and as I lay I saw him toss the revolver into a seal hole. Then, as he stood staring at me, I must have fainted."

"The beast!" cried Marjorie.

"When I came to myself--how long I remained unconscious, I never learned exactly--I was on a sort of bed, and an aged Eskimo was bending over me.

I had been picked up by a couple of his party out after seals. I must have lain there for weeks under the care of that queer old medicine man who, somehow, contrived to doctor or bewitch me back from the grave, for the wound was rather a bad one. The Eskimos treated me very decently, and it was not till I was convalescent that I realised I was their prisoner.

I rather think they must have fled with me from the search party mentioned in the newspapers. The tribe, as far as I could gather, had a grudge against white men in general, though not against any person in particular. Well, I practically became one of them for the winter that followed. In time I grew fit and ready for anything, but they had annexed my gun and other belongings, which left me pretty helpless. However, I had the luck to save one of the young men during a tussle with a bear, and he was absurdly grateful. Eventually he planned a way of escape and guided me, after a good many mishaps, to an American whaler that had been compelled to winter in the ice. I told the skipper most of my story, but begged him to keep it quiet from the others, and between us we invented a plausible enough tale for the crew. The s.h.i.+p came out of the ice all right, but was wrecked, by running ash.o.r.e, on the homeward trip. Some of us got to land and found our way into British Columbia. I had enough money to take me across Canada, but when I got to Montreal I was penniless. I took any jobs that offered until I had sc.r.a.ped together enough for a steerage ticket home--"

"But my master would have sent anything you had asked for!"

exclaimed Caw.

"I did not doubt it. Only, you see, I was desperately afraid of my existence getting known, and--"

"But why?"--from the impulsive Marjorie.

"An obsession, if you like," said Alan with a grave smile. "During all the time of my convalescence, and in all the periods of leisure that followed, I kept wondering what on earth had made Flitch want to kill me.

We had never had anything like a quarrel, and what had he to gain by my death? He had robbed me of nothing. It's a great big 'Why,' and I've got to find the answer to it. But I'm keeping you from bed."

"Go ahead," said Handyside. "Have you no suspicions?"

"I have; but they seem a bit far-fetched, especially now that I'm home.

At any rate, I dare not mention them yet.... I arrived in Glasgow this afternoon, and got made as civilised-looking as was possible in a couple of hours. I had intended coming on here by rail and steamer, but an out-of-date time-table deceived me, and too late I found that the winter service just started gave no train after five. At the hotel they suggested motoring, and after a meal I started on what seemed a first rate car. But we had a breakdown lasting an hour, a dozen miles out of Glasgow, and then, running down Garelochside in the face of the storm, we smashed into the ditch. After making sure that the car was hopeless, I left the man at a wayside cottage and tramped the rest of the way. Hence my late arrival, and you know the rest."

"May I ask," said Caw, "if you met anybody on the road--near home, I mean?"

"I pa.s.sed a person who seemed to be intoxicated, if judged by his violent language, but in the darkness and the rain we must have been practically invisible to each other."

"If he was using bad language, sir," said Caw, rising, "he was certainly not the party I am thinking of. May I retire, gentlemen?" he inquired, glancing towards Miss Handyside.

"Yes, Caw. You will have much to tell Mr. Craig to-morrow," said the doctor. "I leave it to you to explain why you were absent to-night. I doubt I shall never get over it."

Caw made a stiff little inclination, saying, "My fault alone, sir,"

and went out.

"There goes a good and faithful servant," remarked Handyside; "and a good chauffeur, too," he added with a heavy sigh.

"Mr. Craig," said Marjorie, breaking a silence, "do you wish us to regard you as non-existent--I mean to say, do you wish your return to be kept a secret?"

"I'm going to sleep on that question, Miss Handyside," he replied.

"I can keep a secret rather well, and I believe father can, too," she said. "Won't you tell us whom you sus--"

"Marjorie," the doctor interposed, "the lateness of the hour is telling on your discretion."

"I'm afraid it is." She got up, went to her bureau, scribbled something on a half sheet of paper, folded it neatly, and presented it to Alan.

"Don't look at it till you are in your room," she said softly. "Good night, and sleep well."

Ten minutes later, in the guest's bedroom, Alan opened the paper and read the words--

"Mr. Bullard?"

CHAPTER XIII

By ten o'clock next morning Caw, who had risen at five, had Grey House in a fair state of comfort for the reception of its new master, if not its new owner. The producers of warmth and electricity were at work again; the elderly housekeeper, who in Christopher's time had never been upstairs, was recalled from a near village just when she was beginning to wonder whether, after all, perfect happiness was included in retirement with an ample annuity, in the garden a man was already reducing the more apparent ravages of the gale. Caw himself quietly repaired the moderate damage done by the thief of the Green Box. Following the instructions written by his late master, he had sent a telegram to the Glasgow lawyer.