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Thousandth Woman

[Pg 98] <h2>VII AFTER MICHELANGELO</h2> "I was thinking of his cap," said Cazalet, but only as they returned to the tradesmen's door, and just as Blanche put in her word, "What about me?" Mr. Drinkwater eyed the trim white figure standing in the sun. "The more the merrier!" his grim humor had it. "I dare say you'll be able to teach us a thing or two as well, miss." She could not help nudging Cazalet in recognition of this shaft. But Cazalet did not look round; he had now set foot in his old home. It was all strangely still and inactive, as though domestic animation had been[Pg 99] suspended indefinitely. Yet the open kitchen door revealed a female form in mufti; a sullen face looked out of the pantry as they passed; and through the old green door (only now it was a red one) they found another bowler hat bent over a pink paper at the foot of the stairs. There was a glitter of eyes under the bowler's brim as Mr. Drinkwater conducted his friends into the library. The library was a square room of respectable size, but very close and dim with the one French window closed and curtained. But Mr. Drinkwater shut the door as well, and added indescribably to the lighting and atmospheric effects by switching on all the electric lamps; they burned sullenly in the partial daylight, exposed as thin angry bunches of red-hot wire in dusty bulbs. The electric light had been put in by[Pg 100] the Cravens; all the other fixtures in the room were as Cazalet remembered them. The bookshelves contained different books, and now there were no busts on top. Certain cupboards, grained and varnished in Victorian days, were undeniably improved by being enameled white. But the former son of the house gave himself no time to waste in sentimental comparisons. He tapped a pair of mahogany doors, like those of a wardrobe let into the wall. "Have you looked in here?" demanded Cazalet in yet another key. His air was almost authoritative now. Blanche could not understand it, but the experienced Mr. Drinkwater smiled his allowances for a young fellow on his native heath, after more years in the wilderness than were good for young fellows. "What's the use of looking in a cigar[Pg 101] cupboard?" that dangerous man of the world made mild inquiry. "Cigar cupboard!" echoed Cazalet in disgust. "Did he really only use it for his cigars?" "A cigar cupboard," repeated Drinkwater, "and locked up at the time it happened. What was it, if I may ask, in Mr. Cazalet's time?" "I remember!" came suddenly from Blanche; but Cazalet only said, "Oh, well, if you know it was locked there's an end of it." Drinkwater went to the door and summoned his subordinate. "Just fetch that chap from the pantry, Tom," said he; but the sullen sufferer from police rule took his time, in spite of them, and was sharply rated when he appeared. "I thought you told me this was a cigar cupboard?" continued Drinkwater, in the[Pg 102] browbeating tone of his first words to Cazalet outside. "So it is," said the man. "Then where's the key?" "How should I know? I never kept it!" cried the butler, crowing over his oppressor for a change. "He would keep it on his own bunch; find his watch, and all the other things that were missing from his pockets when your men went through 'em, and you may find his keys, too!" Drinkwater gave his man a double signal; the door slammed on a petty triumph for the servants' hall; but now both invaders remained within. "Try your hand on it, Tom," said the superior officer. "I'm a free-lance here," he explained somewhat superfluously to the others, as Tom applied himself to the lock in one mahogany door. "Man's been[Pg 103] drinking, I should say. He'd better be careful, because I don't take to him, drunk or sober. I'm not surprised at his master not trusting him. It's just possible that the place was open—he might have been getting out his cigars before dinner—but I can't say I think there's much in it, Mr. Cazalet." It was open again—broken open—before many minutes; and certainly there was not much in it, to be seen, except cigars. Boxes of these were stacked on what might have been meant for a shallow desk (the whole place was shallow as the wardrobe that the doors suggested, but lighted high up at one end by a little barred window of its own) and according to Cazalet a desk it had really been. His poor father ought never to have been a business man; he ought to have been a poet. Cazalet said this now as simply as[Pg 104] he had said it to Hilton Toye on board the Kaiser Fritz. Only he went rather farther for the benefit of the gentlemen from Scotland Yard, who took not the faintest interest in the late Mr. Cazalet, beyond poking their noses into his diminutive sanctum and duly turning them up at what they saw. "He used to complain that he was never left in peace on Saturdays and Sundays, which of course were his only quiet times for writing," said the son, elaborating his tale with filial piety. "So once when I'd been trying to die of scarlet fever, and my mother brought me back from Hastings after she'd had me there some time, the old governor told us he'd got a place where he could disappear from the district at a moment's notice and yet be back in another moment if we rang the gong. I fancy he'd got to tell her where it was,[Pg 105] pretty quick; but I only found out for myself by accident. Years afterward, he told me he'd got the idea from Jean Ingelow's place in Italy somewhere." "It's in Florence," said Blanche, laughing. "I've been there and seen it, and it's the exact same thing. But you mean Michelangelo, Sweep!" "Oh, do I?" he said serenely. "Well, I shall never forget how I found out its existence." "No more shall I. You told me all about it at the time, as a terrific secret, and I may tell you that I've kept it from that day to this!" "You would," he said simply. "But think of having the nerve to pull up the governor's floor! It only shows what a boy will do. I wonder if the hole's there still!" Now all the time the planetary [Pg 106]detective had been watching his satellite engaged in an attempt to render the damage done to the mahogany doors a little less conspicuous. Neither appeared to be taking any further interest in the cigar cupboard, or paying the slightest attention to Cazalet's reminiscences. But Mr. Drinkwater happened to have heard every word, and in the last sentence there was one that caused him to prick up his expert ears instinctively. "What's that about a hole?" said he, turning round. "I was reminding Miss Macnair how the place first came to be—" "Yes, yes. But what about some hole in the floor?" "I made one myself with one of those knives that contain all sorts of things, including a saw. It was one Saturday afternoon in the summer holidays. I[Pg 107] came in here from the garden as my father went out by that door into the hall, leaving one of these mahogany doors open by mistake. It was the chance of my life; in I slipped to have a look. He came back for something, saw the very door you've broken standing ajar, and shut it without looking in. So there I was in a nice old trap! I simply daren't call out and give myself away. There was a bit of loose oilcloth on the floor—" "There is still," said the satellite, pausing in his task. "I moved the oilcloth, in the end; howked up one end of the board (luckily they weren't groove and tongue), sawed through the next one to it, had it up, too, and got through into the foundations, leaving everything much as I had found it. The place is so small that the oilcloth was obliged to fall in place if it fell [Pg 108]anywhere. But I had plenty of time, because my people had gone in to dinner." "You ought to have been a burglar, sir," said Mr. Drinkwater ironically. "So you covered up a sin with a crime, like half the gentlemen who go through my hands for the first and last time! But how did you get out of the foundations?" "Oh, that was as easy as pie; I'd often explored them. Do you remember the row I got into, Blanche, for taking you with me once and simply ruining your frock?" "I remember the frock!" said Blanche. It was her last contribution to the conversation; immediate developments not only put an end to the further exchange of ancient memories, but rendered it presently impossible by removing Cazalet from the scene with the two detectives. Almost without warning, as in the [Pg 109]harlequinade of which they might have been the rascal heroes, all three disappeared down the makeshift trap-door cut by one of them as a schoolboy in his father's floor; and Blanche found herself in sole possession of the stage, a very envious Columbine, indeed! She hardly even knew how it happened. The satellite must have popped back into the Michelangelo cigar cupboard. He might have called to Mr. Drinkwater, but the only summons that Blanche could remember hearing was almost a sharp one from Drinkwater to Cazalet. A lot of whispering followed in the little place; it was so small that she never saw the hole until it had engulfed two of the trio; the third explorer, Mr. Drinkwater himself, had very courteously turned her out of the library before following the others. And he had said so very little beforehand for[Pg 110] her to hear, and so quickly prevented Cazalet from saying anything at all, that she simply could not think what any of them were doing under the floor. Under her very feet she heard them moving as she waited a bit in the hall; then she left the house by way of the servants' quarters, of course without holding any communication with those mutineers, and only indignant that Mr. Drinkwater should have requested her not to do so. It was a long half-hour that followed for Blanche Macnair, but she passed it characteristically, and not in morbid probings of the many changes that had come over one young man in less than the course of a summer's day. He was excited at getting back, he had stumbled into a still more exciting situation, so no wonder he was one thing one moment[Pg 111] and another the next. That was all that Blanche allowed herself to think of Sweep Cazalet—just then. She turned her wholesome mind to dogs, which in some ways she knew better and trusted further than men. She had, of course, a dog of her own, but it happened to be on a visit to the doctor or no doubt it would have been in the way all the afternoon. But there was a dog at Uplands, and as yet she had seen nothing of him; he lived in a large kennel in the yard, for he was a large dog and rather friendless. But Blanche knew him by sight, and had felt always sorry for him. The large kennel was just outside the back door, which was at the top of the cellar steps and at the bottom of two or three leading into the scullery; but Blanche, of course, went round by the garden. She found the poor old dog quite[Pg 112] disconsolate in a more canine kennel in a corner of the one that was really worthy of the more formidable carnivora. There was every sign of his being treated as the dangerous dog that Blanche, indeed, had heard he was; the outer bars were further protected by wire netting, which stretched like a canopy over the whole cage; but Blanche let herself in with as little hesitation as she proceeded to beard the poor brute in his inner lair. And he never even barked at her; he just lay whimpering with his tearful nose between his two front paws, as though his dead master had not left him to the servants all his life. Blanche coaxed and petted him until she almost wept herself; then suddenly and without warning the dog showed his worst side. Out he leaped from wooden sanctuary, almost knocking her down, and[Pg 113] barking horribly, but not at Blanche. She followed his infuriated eyes; and the back doorway framed a dusty and grimy figure, just climbing into full length on the cellar stairs, which Blanche had some difficulty in identifying with that of Cazalet. "Well, you really are a Sweep!" she cried when she had slipped out just in time, and the now savage dog was still butting and clawing at his bars. "How did you come out, and where are the enemy?" "The old way," he answered. "I left them down there." "And what did you find?" "I'll tell you later. I can't hear my voice for that infernal dog." The dreadful barking followed them out of the yard, and round to the right, past the tradesmen's door, to the verge of the drive. Here they met an elderly[Pg 114] man in a tremendous hurry—an unstable dotard who instantly abandoned whatever purpose he had formed, and came to anchor in front of them with rheumy eyes and twitching wrinkles. "Why, if that isn't Miss Blanche!" he quavered. "Do you hear our Roy, miss? I ha'n't heard that go on like that since the night that happened!" Then Cazalet introduced himself to the old gardener whom he had known all his life; and by rights the man should have wept outright, or else emitted a rustic epigram laden with wise humor. But old Savage hailed from silly Suffolk, and all his life he had belied his surname, but never the alliterative libel on his native country. He took the wanderer's return very much as a matter of course, very much as though he had never been away at all, and was demonstrative only in his[Pg 115] further use of the East Anglian pronoun. "That's a long time since we fared to see you, Mus' Walter," said he; "that's a right long time! And now here's a nice kettle of fish for you to find! But I seen the man, Mus' Walter, and we'll bring that home to him, never you fear!" "Are you sure that you saw him?" asked Blanche, already under Cazalet's influence on this point. Savage looked cautiously toward the house before replying; then he lowered his voice dramatically. "Sure, Miss Blanche. Why, I see him that night as plain as I fare to see Mus' Walter now!" "I should have thought it was too dark to see anybody properly," said Blanche, and Cazalet nodded vigorously to himself. "Dark, Miss Blanche? Why, that was broad daylight, and if that wasn't there were the lodge lights on to see him by!"[Pg 116] His stage voice fell a sepulchral semitone. "But I see him again at the station this very afternoon, I did! I promised not to talk about that—you'll keep that a secret if I tell 'e somethin'?—but I picked him out of half a dozen at the first time of askin'!" Savage said this with a pleased and vacuous grin, looking Cazalet full in the face; his rheumy eyes were red as the sunset they faced; and Cazalet drew a deep breath as Blanche and he turned back toward the river. "First time of prompting, I expect!" he whispered. "But there's hope if Savage is their strongest witness." "Only listen to that dog," said Blanche, as they passed the yard. <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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