Berry and Co Part 11

"I wish you would. It's rather important."

"You're through."

"Tallboy speaking," said a faint voice. "Tallboy. Tallboy."

"How d'ye do?" said I.

"Ill," said the voice, "so ill. All these years I've carried it, and no one knew----"

"Pardon me," said I. "I only put it there five minutes ago. You see, the fire was almost out and----"

"Measurements tell," said the voice. "But they never do that. They polish my panels and lay fair linen within me, and great folk have stood about me telling each other of my elegance, and once a baby child mirrored its little face in one of my sides. And all the time measurements tell. But they never do that."

A sigh floated to my ears, a long, long sigh that rose into a wail of the wind, and a cas.e.m.e.nt behind me blew to with a shaking clash.

Somewhere a dog was howling.

On a sudden I felt cold. The sunshine was gone, and the chamber had become grey and dismal. Misery was in the air.

A stifled exclamation made me look round.

My lady had backed shrinking into a corner, one little hand pressed to her heart, and in her hunted eyes sat Fear dominant. The sweet face was drawn and colourless, and her breath came quickly, so that it was grievous to mark the flutter of her smooth white chest.

Mechanically I turned to seek the cause of her terror.

I saw a powerfully-built man standing square in the closet's doorway.

His face was coa.r.s.e and red and brutal, and his small black eyes glowed with an ugly twinkle as he surveyed his quarry. Upon the thick lips there was a sinister smile, which broadened hideously as he glanced at the nosegay held betwixt his finger and thumb--the little nosegay that she had gathered so lightly from the painted plate. A wide-skirted coat of red fell nearly to his knees and hid his breeches. His short black periwig was bobbed, and a black silk tie was knotted about his neck.

Stockings were rolled above his knees, and a huge tongue thrust out from each of his buckled shoes. And in his left hand was a heavy riding-whip whose handle was wrought about with gold. This he kept clapping against his leg with a smack and a ghastly relish that there was no mistaking.

Again that phantom chorus rose up and rang in my ears--

"_A woman, a spaniel, and a walnut tree, The more you beat them, the better they be._"

But the jubilant note was gone, and, though the tune was the same, the voices were harsh, and there was a dreadful mockery of woe in the stave that made me shudder.

My lady heard it too.

"No, no, Ralph. You do me wrong. I plucked them myself. Who is there now to send me posies? And I am sick--you know it. The last time----" The hurrying voice faltered and stumbled piteously over a sob. "The last time I was near spent, Ralph. So near. And now----You do not know your strength. Indeed----Oh, Ralph, Ralph, what have I done that you should use me so?"

The bitter cry sank into a dull moan, and, setting a frail white arm across her eyes, she bowed her head upon it, as do weeping children, and fell to sobbing with that subdued despair that spells a broken spirit.

My lord's withers were unwrung.

For a moment he stood still, leering like some foul thing that feasts on Anguish. Then he let fall the nosegay and took the whip in his right hand....

And I stood there frozen and paralysed and dumb.

Posing his victim with a horrible precision, the monster raised his whip, but it struck a pendant lantern, and with an oath he turned to the gallery, where he should find room and to spare for his brutality. At this delay my lady fell upon her knees, in a wild hope, I think, to turn her respite into a reprieve, but the beast cried out upon her, struck down her outstretched hands, and, twisting his fingers in her soft dark hair, dragged her incontinently out of the closet. The little whimper she gave was awful....

And I stood there paralysed.

Five minutes, perhaps, had pa.s.sed, slow-treading, pregnant minutes, when my lord reappeared. He stood for a moment listening at the top of the stairs, his chin on his shoulder. Then he stepped lightly down. His vile face was pale and his eyes shifted uneasily. The devil looked out of them yet, but Fright looked with him. Two paces brought the fellow before the tallboy. He put up his hands as if to pull open a drawer, when something about the whip he was holding caught his attention. For a second he stared at it, muttering. Then, with a glance at the doorway, he thrust the thing beneath the skirt of his coat and wiped it as it had been a rapier....

Again he made to open a drawer, but the spell under which I lay seemed to be lifted, and I shot out a hand and clapped him on the shoulder.

For all the notice he took, I might not have been there. The more incensed, I shook the man violently....

"Repose," said Jonah, "is one thing, gluttonish sloth another. And even if you have once again overestimated the capacity of your stomach, why advertise your intemperance in a public place?" He lifted his hand from my shoulder to look at his watch. "It's now ten minutes to three. Do you think you can stagger, or must you be carried, to the car?"

I sat up and looked about me. Except for Jill, who was standing a-tiptoe before a mirror, we were alone in the lounge.

"I've been dreaming," said I. "About--about----"

"That's all right, old chap. Tell Nanny all about it to-night, after you've had your bath. That's one of the things she's paid for."

"Don't be a fool," said I, putting a hand to my head. "It's important, I tell you. For Heaven's sake let me think. Oh, what was it?" My cousins stared at me. "I'm not rotting. It was real--something that mattered."

"'Orse race?" said Jonah eagerly. "Green hoops leading by twelve lengths or something?"

I waved him away.

"No, no, no. Let me think. Let me think."

I buried my face in my hands and thought and thought.... But to no purpose. The vision was gone.

Hastily I made ready for our journey to Town, all the time racking my brain feverishly for some odd atom of incident that should remember my dream.

It was not until I was actually seated in the Rolls, with my foot upon the self-starter, that I thought about Berry.

Casually I asked what had become of him.

"That's what we want to know," said Jill. "He motored down here with Miss Childe, and now they've pushed off somewhere, but they wouldn't say----"

"Childe!" I shouted. "Miss Childe! I've got it!"

"What on earth's the matter?" said Jonah, as I started the car.

"My dream," I cried. "I remember it all. It was about that tallboy."

"What--the one we saw?" cried Jill.

I nodded.

"I'm going to double my bid," I said. "We simply must have it, whatever the price."