Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) (79 page)

“‘“So!” said I. “This is how you repay the trust which we have reposed in you. You will leave my service to-morrow.”

“‘He bowed with the look of a man who is utterly crushed, and slunk past me without a word. The taper was still on the table, and by its light I glanced to see what the paper was which Brunton had taken from the bureau. To my surprise it was nothing of any importance at all, but simply a copy of the questions and answers in the singular old observance called the Musgrave Ritual. It is a sort of ceremony peculiar to our family, which each Musgrave for centuries past has gone through on his coming of age — a thing of private interest, and perhaps of some little importance to the archaeologist, like our own blazonings and charges, but of no practical use whatever.’

“‘We had better come back to the paper afterwards,’ said I.

“‘If you think it really necessary,’ he answered, with some hesitation. ‘To continue my statement, however: I relocked the bureau, using the key which Brunton had left, and I had turned to go when I was surprised to find that the butler had returned, and was standing before me.

“‘“Mr. Musgrave, sir,” he cried, in a voice which was hoarse with emotion, “I can’t bear disgrace, sir. I’ve always been proud above my station in life, and disgrace would kill me. My blood will be on your head, sir — it will, indeed — if you drive me to despair. If you cannot keep me after what has passed, then for God’s sake let me give you notice and leave in a month, as if of my own free will. I could stand that, Mr. Musgrave, but not to be cast out before all the folk that I know so well.”

“‘“You don’t deserve much consideration, Brunton,” I answered. “Your conduct has been most infamous. However, as you have been a long time in the family, I have no wish to bring public disgrace upon you. A month, however is too long. Take yourself away in a week, and give what reason you like for going.”

“‘“Only a week, sir?” he cried, in a despairing voice. “A fortnight — say at least a fortnight!”

“‘“A week,” I repeated, “and you may consider yourself to have been very leniently dealt with.”

“‘He crept away, his face sunk upon his breast, like a broken man, while I put out the light and returned to my room.

“‘“For two days after this Brunton was most assiduous in his attention to his duties. I made no allusion to what had passed, and waited with some curiosity to see how he would cover his disgrace. On the third morning, however he did not appear, as was his custom, after breakfast to receive my instructions for the day. As I left the dining-room I happened to meet Rachel Howells, the maid. I have told you that she had only recently recovered from an illness, and was looking so wretchedly pale and wan that I remonstrated with her for being at work.

“‘“You should be in bed,” I said. “Come back to your duties when you are stronger.”

“‘She looked at me with so strange an expression that I began to suspect that her brain was affected.

“‘“I am strong enough, Mr. Musgrave,” said she.

“‘“We will see what the doctor says,” I answered. “You must stop work now, and when you go downstairs just say that I wish to see Brunton.”

“‘“The butler is gone,” said she.

“‘“Gone! Gone where?”

“‘“He is gone. No one has seen him. He is not in his room. Oh, yes, he is gone, he is gone!” She fell back against the wall with shriek after shriek of laughter, while I, horrified at this sudden hysterical attack, rushed to the bell to summon help. The girl was taken to her room, still screaming and sobbing, while I made inquiries about Brunton. There was no doubt about it that he had disappeared. His bed had not been slept in, he had been seen by no one since he had retired to his room the night before, and yet it was difficult to see how he could have left the house, as both windows and doors were found to be fastened in the morning. His clothes, his watch, and even his money were in his room, but the black suit which he usually wore was missing. His slippers, too, were gone, but his boots were left behind. Where then could butler Brunton have gone in the night, and what could have become of him now?

“‘Of course we searched the house from cellar to garret, but there was no trace of him. It is, as I have said, a labyrinth of an old house, especially the original wing, which is now practically uninhabited; but we ransacked every room and cellar without discovering the least sign of the missing man. It was incredible to me that he could have gone away leaving all his property behind him, and yet where could he be? I called in the local police, but without success. Rain had fallen on the night before and we examined the lawn and the paths all round the house, but in vain. Matters were in this state, when a new development quite drew our attention away from the original mystery.

“‘For two days Rachel Howells had been so ill, sometimes delirious, sometimes hysterical, that a nurse had been employed to sit up with her at night. On the third night after Brunton’s disappearance, the nurse, finding her patient sleeping nicely, had dropped into a nap in the arm-chair, when she woke in the early morning to find the bed empty, the window open, and no signs of the invalid. I was instantly aroused, and, with the two footmen, started off at once in search of the missing girl. It was not difficult to tell the direction which she had taken, for, starting from under her window, we could follow her footmarks easily across the lawn to the edge of the mere, where they vanished close to the gravel path which leads out of the grounds. The lake there is eight feet deep, and you can imagine our feelings when we saw that the trail of the poor demented girl came to an end at the edge of it.

“‘Of course, we had the drags at once, and set to work to recover the remains, but no trace of the body could we find. On the other hand, we brought to the surface an object of a most unexpected kind. It was a linen bag which contained within it a mass of old rusted and discoloured metal and several dull-coloured pieces of pebble or glass. This strange find was all that we could get from the mere, and, although we made every possible search and inquiry yesterday, we know nothing of the fate either of Rachel Howells or of Richard Brunton. The county police are at their wits’ end, and I have come up to you as a last resource.’

“You can imagine, Watson, with what eagerness I listened to this extraordinary sequence of events, and endeavored to piece them together, and to devise some common thread upon which they might all hang. The butler was gone. The maid was gone. The maid had loved the butler, but had afterwards had cause to hate him. She was of Welsh blood, fiery and passionate. She had been terribly excited immediately after his disappearance. She had flung into the lake a bag containing some curious contents. These were all factors which had to be taken into consideration, and yet none of them got quite to the heart of the matter. What was the starting-point of this chain of events? There lay the end of this tangled line.

“‘I must see that paper, Musgrave,’ said I, ‘which this butler of your thought it worth his while to consult, even at the risk of the loss of his place.’

“‘It is rather an absurd business, this ritual of ours,’ he answered. ‘But it has at least the saving grace of antiquity to excuse it. I have a copy of the questions and answers here if you care to run your eye over them.’

“He handed me the very paper which I have here, Watson, and this is the strange catechism to which each Musgrave had to submit when he came to man’s estate. I will read you the questions and answers as they stand.

“‘Whose was it?’

“‘His who is gone.’

“‘Who shall have it?’

“‘He who will come.’

“‘Where was the sun?’

“‘Over the oak.’

“‘Where was the shadow?’

“‘Under the elm.’

“How was it stepped?’

“‘North by ten and by ten, east by five and by five, south by two and by two, west by one and by one, and so under.’

“‘What shall we give for it?’

“‘All that is ours.’

“‘Why should we give it?’

“‘For the sake of the trust.’

“‘The original has no date, but is in the spelling of the middle of the seventeenth century,’ remarked Musgrave. ‘I am afraid, however, that it can be of little help to you in solving this mystery.’

“‘At least,’ said I, ‘it gives us another mystery, and one which is even more interesting than the first. It may be that the solution of the one may prove to be the solution of the other. You will excuse me, Musgrave, if I say that your butler appears to me to have been a very clever man, and to have had a clearer insight than ten generations of his masters.’

“‘I hardly follow you,’ said Musgrave. ‘The paper seems to me to be of no practical importance.’

“‘But to me it seems immensely practical, and I fancy that Brunton took the same view. He had probably seen it before that night on which you caught him.’

“‘It is very possible. We took no pains to hide it.’

“‘He simply wished, I should imagine, to refresh his memory upon that last occasion. He had, as I understand, some sort of map or chart which he was comparing with the manuscript, and which he thrust into his pocket when you appeared.’

“‘That is true. But what could he have to do with this old family custom of ours, and what does this rigmarole mean?’

“‘I don’t think that we should have much difficulty in determining that,’ said I; ‘with your permission we will take the first train down to Sussex, and go a little more deeply into the matter upon the spot.’

“The same afternoon saw us both at Hurlstone. Possibly you have seen pictures and read descriptions of the famous old building, so I will confine my account of it to saying that it is built in the shape of an L, the long arm being the more modern portion, and the shorter the ancient nucleus, from which the other had developed. Over the low, heavily-lintelled door, in the centre of this old part, is chiseled the date, 1607, but experts are agreed that the beams and stone-work are really much older than this. The enormously thick walls and tiny windows of this part had in the last century driven the family into building the new wing, and the old one was used now as a store-house and a cellar, when it was used at all. A splendid park with fine old timber surrounds the house, and the lake, to which my client had referred, lay close to the avenue, about two hundred yards from the building.

“I was already firmly convinced, Watson, that there were not three separate mysteries here, but one only, and that if I could read the Musgrave Ritual aright I should hold in my hand the clue which would lead me to the truth concerning both the butler Brunton and the maid Howells. To that then I turned all my energies. Why should this servant be so anxious to master this old formula? Evidently because he saw something in it which had escaped all those generations of country squires, and from which he expected some personal advantage. What was it then, and how had it affected his fate?

“It was perfectly obvious to me, on reading the ritual, that the measurements must refer to some spot to which the rest of the document alluded, and that if we could find that spot, we should be in a fair way towards finding what the secret was which the old Musgraves had thought it necessary to embalm in so curious a fashion. There were two guides given us to start with, an oak and an elm. As to the oak there could be no question at all. Right in front of the house, upon the left-hand side of the drive, there stood a patriarch among oaks, one of the most magnificent trees that I have ever seen.

“‘That was there when your ritual was drawn up,’ said I, as we drove past it.

“‘It was there at the Norman Conquest in all probability,’ he answered. ‘It has a girth of twenty-three feet.’

“‘Have you any old elms?’ I asked.

“‘There used to be a very old one over yonder but it was struck by lightning ten years ago, and we cut down the stump.’

“‘You can see where it used to be?’

“‘Oh, yes.’

“‘There are no other elms?’

“‘No old ones, but plenty of beeches.’

“‘I should like to see where it grew.’

“We had driven up in a dog-cart, and my client led me away at once, without our entering the house, to the scar on the lawn where the elm had stood. It was nearly midway between the oak and the house. My investigation seemed to be progressing.

“‘I suppose it is impossible to find out how high the elm was?’ I asked.

“‘I can give you it at once. It was sixty-four feet.’

“‘How do you come to know it?’ I asked, in surprise.

“‘When my old tutor used to give me an exercise in trigonometry, it always took the shape of measuring heights. When I was a lad I worked out every tree and building in the estate.’