XXXIII
THE HOUSE OF MYSTERIES
The sympathetic stranger almost laid down his pen, he was so interested by this unexpected reply.
"What!" he exclaimed. "Really a burglary in this house? I say, how awfully interesting! When did it happen?"
"Well, sir," said Mary in an impressive voice, "it's a most extraordinary thing, but it was actually the very self same night of Sir Reginald's murder!"
So surprised and interested was the visitor that he actually did lay down his pen this time.
"Was it the same man, do you think?" he asked in a voice that seemed to thrill with sympathetic excitement.
"Indeed I've sometimes wondered!" said she.
"Tell me how it happened!"
"Well, sir," said Mary, "it was on the very morning that we heard about Sir Reginald—only before we'd heard, and I was pulling up the blinds in the wee sitting room when I says to myself. 'There's been some one in at this window!"
"The wee sitting room," repeated her visitor. "Which is that?"
He seemed so genuinely interested that before she realised what liberties she was taking in the master's house, she had led him into a small sitting room at the end of a short passage leading out of the hall. It had evidently been intended for a smoking room or study when the villa was built, but was clearly never used by Mr. Rattar, for it contained little furniture beyond bookcases. Its window looked on to the side of the garden and not towards the drive, and a grass lawn lay beneath it, while the room itself was obviously the most isolated, and from a burglarious point of view the most promising, on the ground floor.
"This is the room, sir," said Mary. "And look! You still can see the marks on the sash."
"Yes," said the visitor thoughtfully, "they seem to have been made by a tacketty boot."
"And forbye that, there was a wee bit mud on the floor and a tacket mark in that!"
"Was the window shut or open?"
"Shut, sir; and the most extraordinary thing was that it was snibbed too! That's what made the master say it couldna have been a burglar at all, or how did he snib the window after he went out again?"
"Then Mr. Rattar didn't believe it was a burglar?"
"N—no, sir," said Mary, a little reluctantly.
"Was anything stolen?"
"No, sir; that was another funny thing. But it must have been a burglar!"
"What about the other windows, and the doors? Were they all fastened in the morning?"
"Yes, sir, it's the truth they were," she admitted.
"And what did Mr. Rattar do with the piece of mud?"
"Just threw it out of the window."
The sympathetic stranger crossed to the window and looked out.
"Grass underneath, I see," he observed. "No footprints outside, I suppose?"
"No, sir."
"Did the police come down and make enquiries?"
"Well, sir, the master said he would inform the pollis, but then came the news of the murder, and no one had any thoughts for anything else after that."
The sympathetic visitor stood by the window very thoughtfully for a few moments, and then turned and rewarded her with the most charming smile.
"Thank you awfully for showing me all this," said he. "By the way, what's your name?" She told him and he added with a still nicer smile, "Thank you, Mary!"
They returned to the library and he sat down before the table again, but just as he was going to pick up the pen a thought seemed to strike him.
"By the way," he said, "I remember hearing something about the loss of a ring. The burglar didn't take that, did he?"
"Oh, no, sir, I remember the advertisement was in the paper before the night of the burglary."
He opened his eyes and then smiled.
"Brilliant police you've got!" he murmured, and took up the pen again.
"There was another burglar here and he might have taken it!" said Mary in a low voice.
The visitor once more dropped the pen and looked up with a start.
"Another burglar!" he exclaimed.
"Well, sir, this one didn't actually burgle, but—"
She thought of the master if he chanced to learn how she had been gossiping, and her sentence was cut short in the midst.
"Yes, Mary! You were saying?" cooed the persuasive visitor, and Mary succumbed again and told him of that night when a shadow moved into the trees and footprints were left in the gravel outside the library window, and the master looked so strangely in the morning. Her visitor was so interested that once she began it was really impossible to stop.
"How very strange!" he murmured, and there was no doubt he meant it.
"But about the master's ring, sir—" she began.
"You say he looked as though he were being watched?" he interrupted, but it was quite a polite and gentle interruption.
"Yes, sir; but the funny thing about losing the ring was that he never could get it off his finger before! I've seen him trying to, but oh, it wouldn't nearly come off!"
Again he sat up and gazed at her.
"Another mystery!" he murmured. "He lost a ring which wouldn't come off his finger? By Jovel That's very rum. Are there any more mysteries, Mary, connected with this house?"
She hesitated and then in a very low voice answered:
"Oh, yes, sir; there was one that gave me even a worse turn!"
By this time her visitor seemed to have given up all immediate thoughts of writing his note to Mr. Rattar. He turned his back to the table and looked at her with benevolent calm.
"Let's hear it, Mary," he said gently.
And then she told him the story of that dreadful night when the unknown visitor came for the box of old papers. He gazed at her, listening very attentively, and then in a soothing voice asked her several questions, more particularly when all these mysterious events occurred.
"And are these all your troubles now, Mary?" he enquired.
He asked so sympathetically that at last she even ventured to tell him her latest trouble. Till he fairly charmed it out of her, she had shrunk from telling him anything that seemed to reflect directly on her master or to be a giving away of his concerns. But now she confessed that Mr. Rattar's conduct, Mr. Rattar's looks, and even Mr. Rattar's very infrequent words had been troubling her strangely. How or why his looks and words should trouble her, she knew not precisely, and his conduct, generally speaking, she admitted was as regular as ever.
"You don't mean that just now and then he takes a wee drop too much?" enquired her visitor helpfully.
"Oh, no, sir," said she, "the master never did take more than what a gentleman should, and he's not a smoking gentleman either—quite a principle against smokers, he has, sir. Oh, it's nothing like that!"
She looked over her shoulder fearfully as though the walls might repeat her words to the master, as she told him of the curious and disturbing thing. Mr. Rattar had been till lately a gentleman of the most exact habits, and then all of a sudden he had taken to walking in his garden in a way he never did before. First she had noticed him, about the time of the burglary and the removal of the papers, walking there in the mornings. That perhaps was not so very disturbing, but since then he had changed this for a habit of slipping out of the house every night—every single night!
"And walking in the garden!" exclaimed Mr. Carrington.
"Sometimes I've heard his footsteps on the gravel, sir! Even when it has been raining I've heard them. Perhaps sometimes he goes outside the garden, but I've never heard of anyone meeting him on the road or streets. It's in the garden I've heard the master's steps, sir, and if you had been with him as long as I've been, and knew how regular his habits was, you'd know how I'm feeling, sir!"
"I do know, Mary; I quite understand," Mr. Carrington assured her in his soothing voice, and there could be no doubt he was wondering just as hard as she.
"What o'clock does he generally go out?" he asked.
"At nine o'clock almost exactly every night, sir!"
Mr. Carrington looked thoughtfully out of the window into the garden, and then at last looked down at the ink and paper and pen. Not a word was written on the paper yet.
"Look here, Mary," he said very confidentially. "I am a friend of Mr. Rattar's and I am sure you would like me to try and throw a little light on this. Perhaps something is troubling him and I could help you to clear it up."
"Oh, sir," she cried, "you are very kind! I wish you could!"
"Perhaps the best thing then," he suggested, "would be for me not to leave a note for him after all, and for you not even to mention that I have called. As he knows me pretty well he would be almost sure to ask you whether I had come in and if I had left any message and so on, and then he might perhaps find out that we had been talking, and that wouldn't perhaps be pleasant for you, would it?"
"Oh, my! No, indeed, it wouldn't!" she agreed. "I'm that feared of the master, sir, I'd never have him know I had been talking about him, or about anything that has happened in this house!"
So, having come to this judicious decision, Mr. Carrington wished Mary the kindest of farewells and walked down the drive again. There could be no question he had plenty to think about now, though to judge from his expression, it seemed doubtful whether his thoughts were very clear.