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

growing conviction that this, like all the rest of it, was meant to be. Perhaps it was grotesque, but had not Perkins said weeks ago that others were coming to Beech Lodge, drawn by mysterious signals they could not withstand? Then Martin had come, and Jean Millicent, and who should say that here was not the last of the gathered company. It was not a bundle of trinkets that had brought this wanderer to these tragic gates.

“What’s your name? You speak good English, but you’re not English, are you?”

The peddler shook his head. “No, sir, my name is Blunt. My father was English and my mother a Malay woman. I was born out there and spent most of my time between the islands. Now I’m for getting back as soon as I can, so I’m heading for the East India Docks, where I’ll sign on. It’s too cold for me in this country. Couldn’t I spend the night in one of the outhouses, sir?”

“Well,” said Derrick thoughtfully, “I think perhaps my gardener might find a corner for you in his cottage. I’ve no objections. You can see him about it, if you like.”

The man’s dark eyes took on a sudden gleam. “That’s good of you, sir, and I won’t be a bit of trouble to anyone. If there’s any work to be done, I’ll do it. Here, you’d better take this bangle now.”

He held out the yellow circlet. Derrick was about to refuse when something whispered to him to take it. Slipping it into his pocket, he was surprised at its weight.

“Why do you offer something worth a sovereign for a night’s lodging?” he queried.

The peddler sent him a curious glance. “That’s all right, sir. A few pennyweight of gold is neither here nor there in a lifetime.”

Derrick nodded. “Perhaps not⁠—to either of us. If you turn in here I think you’ll find the gardener just on the other side of the cottage.”

The man rolled up his pack and moved along the drive toward the house. Derrick stood irresolute for a moment; then something impelled him to follow. Presently he stopped and, making no noise, slipped behind a sheltering tree. The peddler was now thirty yards ahead. At this moment Martin, who had been working among his rosebushes, looked up and saw the stranger.

What happened next was all over in an instant. He made a swift involuntary gesture in which fear and astonishment were tensely blended. The spade slipped from his fingers, and his eyes protruded. He seemed to sway a little as he stood with an uncouth elephantine motion, and his lips trembled, but no sound came from them. Then, as Derrick emerged from behind the tree and came carelessly toward him, he made an extraordinary noise in his throat and turned again to his work. And, so far as the master of Beech Lodge could determine, the peddler had given no sign whatever.

Derrick lounged forward with a manner of complete indifference.

“Martin, this man has asked that he might sleep somewhere on the place tonight, and I told him I had no objection to his spending it in the cottage if you’re willing. His name is Blunt, and it’s for you to say. You will be responsible for him if he does stay, so you can settle it between you.”

The gardener’s face had become rigidly impassive, but there was no concealing the blood that surged into it. He glanced first at his master, then at the mysterious stranger, and moistened his dry lips.

“Name of Blunt, sir,” he said thickly. “That will be all right as far as I’m concerned. I’ll look after him.”

Derrick, fearing that his curiosity might become too apparent, nodded and strolled on toward the house. He was very deep in thought. Another factor was now added to the problem and had to be dealt with. In a way it was not unexpected. There had been built up a triangle with a dead man in the center and an undeciphered personality at each corner. Was this all coincidence, or was not destiny rather arranging the puppets of a great drama without any extraneous assistance?

His first instinct was to report the new arrival to Sergeant Burke, but on second thought he decided to say nothing at the moment. The sergeant’s methods were too heavy-handed, too likely to disturb whatever process was now at work. However vague to human eyes it might be, he was convinced that subtle causes were in motion, wheels of fate that revolved within other wheels, a mechanism that operated silently, mysteriously, and with some inflexible purpose. As to himself, he could only wait. Instructions would come, as they always had come, and in the appointed time, from the same imperceptible and unchanging source.

As though in search of these, he went into the study and gave himself up to thought, leaving the windows of his mind open to the lightest breath of influence. His vision embraced four divergent figures, all of them inextricably linked. Perkins, with the half-told tale of her life shrouded behind her sphinx-like face, a domestic automaton as imperturbable as the jade god itself, the rigid guardian of her own secret, who talked a strange language in her sleep, and in that sleep mourned the disappearance of her murdered master. Martin, new come from round the world, the recipient of viewless signals that reached and followed him through the rotting jungles, signals that worked and whispered till they penetrated his slow brain and he came back perforce ten thousand miles of land and sea, a suspect to the source of suspicion, to work within sight of the window of the dead man of whose violent passing he no doubt knew the secret.

Then the peddler, with restless intelligence in his ageless eyes, himself a traveler from the same land of strange peoples, tongues, and gods, tramping indomitably along the deep Sussex lanes till he arrived as though by chance at the door of one who apparently knew him not, yet regarded his advent