The Red House Mystery by A. A. Milne (most popular ebook readers txt) 📕
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- Author: A. A. Milne
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“Well, but where does that lead you?”
“Where it led Mark. The passage.”
“Do you mean that he’s been hiding there all the time?” Antony was silent until Bill had repeated his question, and then with an effort he came out of his thoughts and answered him.
“I don’t know. But look here. Here is a possible explanation. I don’t know if it is the right one—I don’t know, Bill; I’m rather frightened. Frightened of what may have happened, of what may be going to happen. However, here is an explanation. See if you can find any fault with it.”
With his legs stretched out and his hands deep in his pockets, he lay back on the garden-seat, looking up to the blue summer sky above him, and just as if he saw up there the events of yesterday being enacted over again, he described them slowly to Bill as they happened.
“We’ll begin at the moment when Mark shoots Robert. Call it an accident; probably it was. Mark would say it was, anyhow. He is in a panic, naturally. But he doesn’t lock the door and run away. For one thing, the key is on the outside of the door; for another, he is not quite such a fool as that. But he is in a horrible position. He is known to be on bad terms with his brother; he has just uttered some foolish threat to him, which may possibly have been overheard. What is he to do? He does the natural thing, the thing which Mark would always do in such circumstances. He consults Cayley, the invaluable, inevitable Cayley.
“Cayley is just outside, Cayley must have heard the shot, Cayley will tell him what to do. He opens the door just as Cayley is coming to see what is the matter. He explains rapidly. ‘What’s to be done, Cay? What’s to be done? It was an accident. I swear it was an accident. He threatened me. He would have shot me if I hadn’t. Think of something, quick!’
“Cayley has thought of something. ‘Leave it to me,’ he says. ‘You clear out altogether. I shot him, if you like. I’ll do all the explaining. Get away. Hide. Nobody saw you go in. Into the passage, quick. I’ll come to you there as soon as I can.’
“Good Cayley. Faithful Cayley! Mark’s courage comes back. Cayley will explain all right. Cayley will tell the servants that it was an accident. He will ring up the police. Nobody will suspect Cayley—Cayley has no quarrel with Robert. And then Cayley will come into the passage and tell him that it is all right, and Mark will go out by the other end, and saunter slowly back to the house. He will be told the news by one of the servants. Robert accidentally shot? Good Heavens!
“So, greatly reassured, Mark goes into the library. And Cayley goes to the door of the office.... and locks it. And then he bangs on the door and shouts, ‘Let me in!’”
Antony was silent. Bill looked at him and shook his head.
“Yes, Tony, but that doesn’t make sense. What’s the point of Cayley behaving like that?”
Antony shrugged his shoulders without answering.
“And what has happened to Mark since?”
Antony shrugged his shoulders again.
“Well, the sooner we go into that passage, the better,” said Bill.
“You’re ready to go?”
“Quite,” said Bill, surprised.
“You’re quite ready for what we may find?”
“You’re being dashed mysterious, old boy.”
“I know I am.” He gave a little laugh, and went on, “Perhaps I’m being an ass, just a melodramatic ass. Well, I hope I am.” He looked at his watch.
“It’s safe, is it? They’re still busy at the pond?”
“We’d better make certain. Could you be a sleuthhound, Bill—one of those that travel on their stomachs very noiselessly? I mean, could you get near enough to the pond to make sure that Cayley is still there, without letting him see you?”
“Rather!” He got up eagerly. “You wait.”
Antony’s head shot up suddenly. “Why, that was what Mark said,” he cried.
“Mark?”
“Yes. What Elsie heard him say.”
“Oh, that.”
“Yes I suppose she couldn’t have made a mistake, Bill? She did hear him?”
“She couldn’t have mistaken his voice, if that’s what you mean.”
“Oh?”
“Mark had an extraordinary characteristic voice.”
“Oh!”
“Rather high-pitched, you know, and—well, one can’t explain, but——”
“Yes?”
“Well, rather like this, you know, or even more so if anything.” He rattled these words off in Mark’s rather monotonous, high-pitched voice, and then laughed, and added in his natural voice, “I say, that was really rather good.”
Antony nodded quickly. “That was like it?” he said.
“Exactly.”
“Yes.” He got up and squeezed Bill’s arm. “Well just go and see about Cayley, and then we’ll get moving. I shall be in the library.”
“Right.”
Bill nodded and walked off in the direction of the pond. This was glorious fun; this was life. The immediate programme could hardly be bettered. First of all he was going to stalk Cayley. There was a little copse above the level of the pond, and about a hundred yards away from it. He would come into this from the back, creep cautiously through it, taking care that no twigs cracked, and then, drawing himself on his stomach to the edge, peer down upon the scene below him. People were always doing that sort of thing in books, and he had been filled with a hopeless envy of them; well, now he was actually going to do it himself. What fun!
And then, when he had got back unobserved to the house and reported to Antony, they were going to explore the secret passage! Again, what fun! Unfortunately there seemed to be no chance of buried treasure, but there might be buried clues. Even if you found nothing, you couldn’t get away from the fact that a secret passage was a secret passage, and anything might happen in it. But even that wasn’t the end of this exciting day. They were going to watch the pond that night; they were going to watch Cayley under the moonlight, watch him as he threw into the silence of the pond—what? The revolver? Well, anyhow, they were going to watch him. What fun!
To Antony, who was older and who realized into what deep waters they were getting, it did not seem fun. But it was amazingly interesting. He saw so much, and yet somehow it was all out of focus. It was like looking at an opal, and discovering with every movement of it some new colour, some new gleam of light reflected, and yet never really seeing the opal as a whole. He was too near it, or too far away; he strained his eyes and he relaxed his eyes; it was no good. His brain could not get hold of it.
But there were moments when he almost had it.... and then turned away from it. He had seen more of life than Bill, but he had never seen murder before, and this which was in his mind now, and to which he was afraid to listen, was not just the hot-blooded killing which any man may come to if he lose control. It was something much more horrible. Too horrible to be true. Then let him look again for the truth. He looked again—but it was all out of focus.
“I will not look again,” he said aloud, as he began to walk towards the house. “Not yet, anyway.” He would go on collecting facts and impressions. Perhaps the one fact would come along, by itself which would make everything clear.
Mr. Beverley Qualifies for the Stage
Bill had come back, and had reported, rather breathless, that Cayley was still at the pond.
“But I don’t think they’re getting up much except mud,” he said. “I ran most of the way back so as to give us as much time as possible.”
Antony nodded.
“Well, come along, then,” he said. “The sooner, the quicker.”
They stood in front of the row of sermons. Antony took down the Reverend Theodore Ussher’s famous volume, and felt for the spring. Bill pulled. The shelves swung open towards them.
“By Jove!” said Bill, “it is a narrow way.”
There was an opening about a yard square in front of them, which had something the look of a brick fireplace, a fireplace raised about two feet from the ground. But, save for one row of bricks in front, the floor of it was emptiness. Antony took a torch from his pocket and flashed it down into the blackness.
“Look,” he whispered to the eager Bill. “The steps begin down there. Six feet down.”
He flashed his torch up again. There was a handhold of iron, a sort of large iron staple, in the bricks in front of them.
“You swing off from there,” said Bill. “At least, I suppose you do. I wonder how Ruth Norris liked doing it.”
“Cayley helped her, I should think.... It’s funny.”
“Shall I go first?” asked Bill, obviously longing to do so. Antony shook his head with a smile.
“I think I will, if you don’t mind very much, Bill. Just in case.”
“In case of what?”
“Well, in case.”
Bill, had to be content with that, but he was too much excited to wonder what Antony meant.
“Righto,” he said. “Go on.”
“Well, we’ll just make sure we can get back again, first. It really wouldn’t be fair on the Inspector if we got stuck down here for the rest of our lives. He’s got enough to do trying to find Mark, but if he has to find you and me as well—”
“We can always get out at the other end.”
“Well, we’re not certain yet. I think I’d better just go down and back. I promise faithfully not to explore.”
“Right you are.”
Antony sat down on the ledge of bricks, swung his feet over, and sat there for a moment, his legs dangling. He flashed his torch into the darkness again, so as to make sure where the steps began; then returned it to his pocket, seized the staple in front of him and swung himself down. His feet touched the steps beneath him, and he let go.
“Is it all right?” said Bill anxiously.
“All right. I’ll just go down to the bottom of the steps and back. Stay there.”
The light shone down by his feet. His head began to disappear. For a little while Bill, craning down the opening, could still see faint splashes of light, and could hear slow uncertain footsteps; for a little longer he could fancy that he saw and heard them; then he was alone....
Well, not quite alone. There was a sudden voice in the hall outside.
“Good Lord!” said Bill, turning round with a start, “Cayley!”
If he was not so quick in thought as Antony, he was quick enough in action. Thought was not demanded now. To close the secret door safely but noiselessly, to make sure that the books were in the right places, to move away to another row of shelves so as to be discovered deep in “Badminton” or “Baedeker” or whomever the kind gods should send to his aid—the difficulty was not to decide what to do, but to do all this in five seconds rather than in six.
“Ah, there you are,” said Cayley from the doorway.
“Hallo!” said Bill, in surprise, looking up from the fourth volume of “The Life and Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.” “Have they finished?”
“Finished what?”
“The pond,” said Bill, wondering why he was reading Coleridge on such a fine afternoon. Desperately he tried to think of a good reason.... verifying a quotation—an argument with Antony—that would do. But what quotation?
“Oh, no. They’re still at it. Where’s Gillingham?”
‘The Ancient Mariner’—water, water, everywhere—or was that something else? And where was Gillingham? Water, water everywhere...
“Tony? Oh, he’s about somewhere. We’re just going down to the village. They aren’t finding anything at the pond, are they?”
“No. But they like doing it. Something off their minds when they can say they’ve done it.”
Bill, deep in his book, looked up and said “Yes,” and went back to it again. He was just getting to the place.
“What’s the book?” said Cayley, coming up to him. Out of the corner of his eye he glanced at the shelf of sermons as he came. Bill saw that glance and wondered. Was there anything there to give away the secret?
“I was just looking up a quotation,” he drawled. “Tony and I had a bet about it. You know that thing about—er—water, water everywhere, and—er—not a drop to drink.” (But what on earth, he wondered to himself, were they betting about?)
“‘Nor any drop to drink,’ to be accurate.”
Bill looked at him in surprise. Then a happy smile came on his face.
“Quite sure?” he said.
“Of course.”
“Then you’ve saved me a lot of trouble. That’s what the bet was about.” He closed the book
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