Touch and Go (14 page)

“Why do you ask that?”

Bertrand stood still, holding her by the arm.

“You ask me why I tell you that someone took out the screws. Was it you—or I—or her cousin—or Lucilla herself? Bah! How can one believe it? There remains this Mr. Brown who comes here from nowhere at all, of whom we know only what he says himself. Why does he come here? Why does he live at the Cow and Bush? It is not an
hotel-de-luxe
, I can tell you that. Why does he get up in the night and go out? Now listen! Last night I followed him. Where did he go, I ask of you. Well, I can tell you that. He went into the gate of the Red House, and into what you call the shrubbery where the trees are thick, and there I lose him. I do not like to go too near. I wait some time. Then I think I will go nearer to the house, and all at once I hear voices. He is there, and he is talking to a woman.”

“He was talking to me,” said Sarah.

“To
you
?”

“Yes, my child. And it wasn't an assignation, and we weren't planning a burglary.”

“What were you doing—
Sarah
?”

“Talking of this and that. Darling Ran, you have too much imagination. I couldn't sleep, so I went for a walk. And I suppose Mr. Brown couldn't sleep either. I bumped into him in the dark. We talked for a few minutes, and then I went in again.”

Bertrand took his hand away from her arm.

“Sarah, have you become mad? You find this man walking in the night where he has no business, and you think it is nothing—and you go in and say nothing? What a folly! Do you not ask yourself what this man wants, and who he is?”

“Who do you think he is?” said Sarah in a different voice.

“I have got my ideas,” said Bertrand Darnac.

“Ran—what are they?”

“Someone took out those screws. Someone wanted that Lucilla should ride a bicycle without brakes down a hill where it would be very easy for her to be killed. Someone wanted that, and I ask myself why.”

“Ran!”

“People do not do such things for nothing. Have you listened to the old lady's histories of the family? She tells them every minute, and they are to make the head go round, but I have asked Lucilla about them, so I get them what you call sorted out. Lucilla's father, he is killed in the war. He has an elder brother who is Henry, and a younger brother who is Maurice.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Maurice, he is missing in the war. They think he is alive for a long time—the old lady thinks so still. Henry, he dies a few months ago, and Lucilla is the heiress. She would be the heiress even if Maurice were alive. It is Lucilla who tells me that. But figure to yourself—if this Maurice were not dead—if he had lost his memory, perhaps for years, and then suddenly remembered. There have been such cases.”

“Someone would recognize him.”

“After how long? Seventeen—eighteen years. And he was a boy of perhaps nineteen.” He shrugged his shoulders. “It is a very long time, Sarah. Then suppose he comes back. There is no place for him—Lucilla has everything. He has been shell-shocked—his brain it is perhaps not quite right. And so the screws come out of Lucilla's bicycle.”

“Oh no!” said Sarah. “Oh no, Ran!”

“If Lucilla is dead, and Maurice is alive, then
vois-tu
, Sarah, there is a very good place for Maurice—there is Holme Fallow, and there is the London property from which the money comes, Lucilla tells me of it. When those screws are gone I look for a motive, and that is where I find one.”

“You think he is Maurice Hildred?” said Sarah in a low horrified tone.

“I do not know,” said Bertrand Darnac.

Through the dusk Lucilla came flying back to them.

“Come along, you two! We can't begin without you.”

CHAPTER XVII

They went up the west drive all together and in through the side door. It was quite dark in the house. It was almost as dark as it had been on the night when Sarah blundered in upon the burglar. She hadn't told anyone about that. She hadn't told Ran what she and John Brown had talked about in the shrubbery of the Red House last night. She didn't know why she hadn't told him. She hadn't wanted to. If she had told Ran that something came dashing against Lucilla's window in the dark, he would have been quite certain that John Brown was mixed up with it.

Sarah pulled herself up with a jerk. Where were her own suspicions? Had anything happened to allay them? Should they not have been quickened by what had happened this afternoon? Maurice Hildred.… It was absurd. Was it? Such things had happened.

She shuddered violently as they crossed the hall. A hand was laid on her arm, and John Brown's voice said,

“Are you cold?”

Sarah caught her breath.

“How did you know it was me?”

She heard him laugh, and he said quite low in her ear,

“I told you I could see in the dark.”

“Why should I be cold?”

“I heard you shiver.”

And with that the beam of a torch cut the dark. It was Mr. Brown's torch. It cast a powerful ray which came to rest on the dining-room door.

The dining-room was to be Home. Snagge kept an oil lamp there, so the torch was only a temporary expedient. They must have one lighted room, and the rest of the dark house to play Hide and Seek in.

Lucilla's head and arm came suddenly into the ray. She threw open the dining-room door and turned, laughing and blinking, with the light in her eyes.

“Come along in. Who's got the torch? The lamp ought to be on the sideboard.”

Sarah was held back as the others trooped in.

Bertrand whispered, “That Mr. Brown—it is he who has the torch.
Dis donc
, Sarah—how does he know so well which is the right door? Has he been here before?”

Sarah pulled away from him. She was on the threshold, standing where she had stood on that other night when there had been a burglar in the room beyond. She had seen no more of him than the black outline of head, shoulder, and arm as he swung his torch. She stared now at what might have been the same picture. There was the dark room, there was the moving ray, there was the black outline of head, and arm, and hand. Just for a moment the two pictures were the same picture. It was as if something odd had happened to her sense of time, as if it had folded back upon itself, so that this moment was really that other moment ten days ago. She felt so giddy that she caught at the jamb for support.

Then someone struck a match and lamplight filled the room.

Sarah came forward to join the others. The giddiness had passed, but she had a strange shocked feeling. She hoped she didn't look as queer as she felt. She was quite, quite sure that it was Mr. Brown whom she had seen the first time she came to Holme Fallow. There had been a burglary that night. She had seen the burglar. She had seen John Brown. She hadn't seen anyone. She had seen the ray of a torch, and the black outline of a head, a shoulder, and an arm. She had seen what she had just seen again. She had seen a burglar.… Something in her said “No.” What had been taken? An old desk had been rummaged. The ray had rested upon the portrait of Lucilla's grandmother.…
What had she seen
? Maurice Hildred looking at his mother's picture? Maurice Hildred haunting his old home like a ghost? Or perhaps someone who would claim to be Maurice Hildred—someone getting up a case—rummaging in an old desk for papers, staring at the family portraits.…

Ricky's voice startled her out of these thoughts.

“Sarah's moonstruck. Someone pinch her. What's the matter, Sarah? Have you seen a ghost?”

John Brown was adjusting the lamp, an old-fashioned heavy table-lamp with a round china globe like a harvest moon. He looked over it, met Sarah's eyes, and very slightly smiled.

She said, “I think so.”

“What was it like?”

“Sarah darling, you
didn't
!”

Sarah laughed. What a fool to say that. It slipped out. “Oh, my poor Sarah, pull up your socks!” The laugh sounded quite all right. She said,

“You all looked like ghosts.”

“If anyone talks about ghosts, I won't play,” said Lucilla.

Bertrand linked his arm in hers.

“Hand in hand we go. I am of a courage quite extraordinary.”

“Who's going to be
He
?” said Ricky.

Lucilla giggled and began to count.

“Eena, meena, mina, mo,

Catch a nigger by the toe,

If he hollers, let him go—

Eena, meena, mina—
mo
.”

She pointed at each word. The last “Mo” fell on Ricky.

“All right—now we can start. I've mugged it all up from Aunt Marina. Ricky, you've got to count sixty,
slowly
, before you open the door, so as to give us time to get clear. The
He
can stay in the hall, or he can come and look for us. The game is to get back here without being caught. Oh, and I promised we'd stay in this part of the house—not go into the servants' wing. Are you ready? All right—go!”

She ran out of the room with Bertrand. Sarah followed. John Brown brought up the rear, and the door was shut.

Sarah had made up her mind to cross the hall and hide behind the first door she came to. As she slipped in, leaving it ajar, she heard a whispering and a giggling from the stairs. Mr. Brown seemed to have melted into the darkness. She leaned against the wall of what she took to be the drawing-room and waited. She was glad to be alone. The sense of shock was wearing off, but she wasn't quite ready to play. She kept thinking of those two moments which had merged into one moment. Why hadn't she spoken of what she had seen to Lucilla or to Geoffrey Hildred? She ought to have spoken. She certainly couldn't speak now. Couldn't—or wouldn't? She said, “Of course he's not a burglar!” and was surprised at her own certainty. If she hadn't seen a burglar, there wasn't anything to tell. If she hadn't seen a burglar, whom
had
she seen? Maurice Hildred, come back from the dead to find no place in his old home? It all went round in her head, and round again.

A shout from the hall announced that Ricky had caught someone. She was a little surprised, on emerging, to discover that it was Mr. Brown. It had not occurred to her that he would be caught. She found herself wondering if he had wanted to be caught, if he had wanted to be left in the dining-room alone.

They played another round. Mr. Brown was
He
. This time Sarah hid behind the door through which she had come into the hall on that other night. She thought how strange it would be if John Brown were to come across and open the door and put his hand on her in the dark. They had both come that way before. She went over the whole thing in her mind again. It was like some strange recurrent dream which she could not escape. It mesmerized her. And all the time her ears were strained for the sound of a footstep and a touch on the door.

A scream, a scuffle, and a giggle in the hall. She looked through her chink and saw the dining-room door wide open, and John Brown holding Lucilla a yard or two away. Bertrand Darnac was in the lighted room, and even as Sarah looked, Ricky slipped past and joined them. Lucilla was protesting.

“It wasn't fair! I was nearly there! You saw me when Bertrand opened the door!”

“Fair cop!” said Ricky.

Sarah made a dash for it, and got in.

They started out again, leaving Lucilla in the dining-room. This time Sarah made for the stairs. She had had enough of her own thoughts What was the good of them anyhow? She couldn't do anything about it—it wasn't her affair. Ran had been talking nonsense about the bicycle screws. Screws
did
come out of things. There hadn't been an accident, and nobody was a penny the worse—

She found herself at the top of the stairs in an inky blackness not knowing where to go. She felt her way for about a dozen paces and then stopped to listen. She could hear nothing at all until quite suddenly there was a hand under her elbow and a voice said in her ear, “This way.”

It was Mr. Brown's voice, and the extraordinary thing was that it gave her a sense of relief. She didn't really like this groping round in the dark. It might have been different if she had known the house, but as it was, it was rather like the horrid sort of dream in which your sense of direction is gone and you don't know where you are. The touch on her arm brought her back. The dream feeling vanished. It was just a dark house through which she was being guided—very efficiently guided. A door opened and shut again, all with the least possible sound. They stood still. There was a feeling of being in a small enclosed space.

“Where are we?” said Sarah under her breath.

“Where no one will find us unless we talk too loud.”

“How do you know?

“I'm very good at guessing.”

He had let go of her arm, but he was so near she had the feeling that if she moved she would touch him. She didn't like being very close to anyone, and she couldn't bear being touched. She hadn't minded John Brown's hand upon her arm. All this was rather confusing. She leaned back against what felt like panelling and heard him say,

“You got out of that very cleverly just now.”

“Out of what?”

He laughed quite softly.

“
Did
you see a ghost?”

Sarah's heart beat hard. Absurd of it, but she couldn't stop the thing. She said.

“You ought to know.”

“I?”

“If you don't, nobody does.”

He laughed again.

“Whose ghost do you think it was, Sarah?”

Sarah felt something, she didn't quite know what. It might have been anger, it might have been something else. It made her say,

“Perhaps it was a burglar's ghost.”

“Oh, I don't think so,” said John Brown.

“Sure?”

“I'd like you to feel sure.”

“Why?”

“I'd like it a good deal.”

There was a silence—the sort that you want to break, and can't. John Brown broke it, not with words, but with a sigh. And at once Sarah found that she could speak. She not only could, but had to. The words said themselves in a rush.