The Jade God by Alan Sullivan (snow like ashes series txt) 📕

even want to go and look up my sister; but I did, and the same feeling lifted me out of their farm in Alberta. Up till about two months ago I believed I wasn’t wanted here; then I knew I was wanted for something.” He frowned to himself at this, as though he hardly expected to be either understood or taken seriously. “Maybe I was a fool to come,” he added, “but in a way it wasn’t left to me to decide. It’s the first time I ever struck anything like that. It was like jungle-fever without the fever.”

“You simply had to come,” said Derrick quickly.

“I’m not given to such feelings, but, since you say it, yes, I reckon I had to come.”

Derrick had a faint thrill of triumph. Here again the mysterious factor was at work, the thing to which he himself was yielding so completely. It had spread its potent and invisible filaments half round the world, penetrated the Burmese jungle, and haled this shifty-eyed man back to the tiny Sussex village from which he had fled under the shadow of a great crime as yet undetected. How could these filaments have been set in motion if not at the demand of the dead Millicent whose quiet features now surveyed this recaptured wanderer? What would the thing that had been Millicent arrange next? At the thought of this Derrick’s pulse gave a throb of excitement. Then he looked Martin full in the face.

“Who found your master?”

The man dropped his cap, and all the blood in his body seemed to climb to his temples.

“Miss Perkins found him,” he said jerkily.

“Where did she find him?” If Martin had lied the fact would come out now.

Martin pointed to the desk. “Where you are sitting, Mr. Derrick. He was leaning forward, his head on one side.”

“Dead?”

“Yes, sir, but not long.”

“What had happened?”

“Stabbed in the neck.”

“By what?”

“I do not know, sir.”

“And no trace of what killed him has ever been found?”

“Nothing that I ever heard of.” Martin moved a little impatiently, but Derrick’s voice was very even.

“Of course you were at the inquest? These are some of the things you need not answer, unless you’re determined to get that job.”

“Yes, I was there”⁠—this with a defiant glance⁠—“and they examined me, and when it was over not a man had a word to say against me.”

Derrick sharpened his tone. “Your master is just behind you.”

The man started violently and made a harsh noise in his throat. He turned slowly and unwillingly, forcing himself inch by inch, till, following Derrick’s gaze he saw the portrait. At that his color changed, his face becoming overcast with anger.

“By God, but you frightened me,” he said thickly. “I didn’t know what you meant⁠—thought it was a ghost.”

“Is that a good likeness?”

Martin breathed deeply and pulled himself together stretching his fingers with a slow gesture of relief.

“Yes, that’s him all right, but he looked older, a good deal older toward the end. Something like you, sir, isn’t he?”

“Where were you at the time it happened? Can you tell me exactly, and what you were doing?”

The dark face grew threatening. “Is this another inquest, Mr. Derrick? I came here to try and get my old job.”

“You can drop it if you like, Martin, or else answer my questions.”

“Well,” said the man truculently, “I was smoking in that little garden beside the cottage⁠—I lived there then⁠—when I heard Perkins. She was running like a deer down from the house and calling at the top of her voice. She was only half dressed, and I thought she was mad, screaming about the master being killed. I ran back with her, and found him as I told you⁠—where you’re sitting now. Then I ran to the village for the doctor. When we got him here he said that Mr. Millicent must have been dead for over an hour. He had been struck with great force in the neck with a dagger of some kind. And that’s all I know.”

Derrick nodded, apparently satisfied. “It’s practically what I’ve heard elsewhere.” He sat for a moment, plunged in thought. “Wait where you are for a moment, Martin. I want to have a word with Miss Derrick before deciding.”

He went out. Martin balanced himself on the edge of his chair, listened keenly to the retreating footsteps, heard a creak on the stair, and glanced cautiously about. Then he got up, stole on tiptoe to the door, and put his ear to the keyhole. Satisfied that he was secure, he crept noiselessly across the floor, darting a look at the portrait as he went, and halted stiffly beside the big desk. Here his hands became intensely busy, his thick fingers passing swiftly over the carved frame, like those of a blind man. One particular spot he explored with strained attention, turning his massive head every few seconds toward the door, his whole body keyed to the utmost nervous pitch. He had his back to the French window, and the lamp cast his gigantic shadow on the ceiling, where its distorted shadow quivered like that of a brooding giant.

But from the window another pair of eyes surveyed this silent drama. Once again the curtains had parted slightly some five feet above the floor, and, from the gap so lately tenanted by Martin’s threatening mask, Derrick now watched every move. This was what he sought, this opportunity, but what had guided him to his vantage-point he could not tell. He had remembered that the window was unfastened. He believed that the curtain would keep him safe from discovery, because he was assured that his strange visitor had come to stay and not to steal. To observe Martin when Martin thought himself unobserved, in that direction might lie knowledge. But what was it Martin sought now?

The scrutiny lasted but a few seconds. The gardener was back in his seat when Derrick entered unconcernedly, resumed his seat at the desk, and lit his pipe with extreme deliberation. Martin’s face was utterly blank, and he got