Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land Part 43

'There's one easy solution of the mystery that doesn't seem to have occurred to you,' said McKeith. 'The gin Oola could easily have stolen the key--they're cunning as the devil--half-castes--and as treacherous--I know them--I've had my own good reasons for not letting one of them inside the fence of my head-station.'

'That may be--I can only say what I know, and you can form your own opinion.'

'Say what you know then--I'm waiting to hear. But be quick about it, man, I've no time to waste this morning.'

Harris began his tale--how he had watched at the window of his little room, till after midnight, his gun ready, his eyes glued on the padlocked door opposite; how overcome with drowsiness against which he had vainly struggled--'for a man that's been pretty near two days and nights in the saddle may be excused if his eyes begin blinking,' Harris put it. He had dropped dead asleep--he confessed it--at his post. Then, how on awakening suddenly, for no apparent reason, all seeming quiet around, he had got up as he was, half dressed and in his boots--had stepped across to the hide-house, had found the padlock intact and, hearing no sound, had concluded the black-boy was inside safe asleep.

How then, with a relieved mind, he had been going back to his stretcher, when the noise of a goat bleating had set him on the look-out from his veranda. How, presently, looking at the veranda opposite, he had seen the door of Mr Maule's bedroom open, and a woman come out, how she had stood a few moments facing him, with the moonlight straight on her, so that there was no possibility of his making a mistake. Harris paused. McKeith glared at the man, who, had he been quick at psychological interpretations, would have read an awful apprehension underlying the ill-restrained fury in the other's face.

The question came in hoa.r.s.e jerks.

'What--Who--Who was it you saw--?'

'It was the Lady Bridget, Boss.... I--'

Before he could proceed, a strong arm struck out and McKeith's hand clutched at the Police Inspector's neck.

'You hound! You contemptible skunk! Take back that lie, or I'll throttle it in your throat.'

Harris was of powerful build also, and, moreover knew some tricks of defence and a.s.sault. He freed himself by a dexterous duck of his head, and a sharp shake of his body, and stepped backward so that the office table was between him and his antagonist.

His face was scarlet, his bull's eyes protruded from their full sockets. But he was wary, and not anxious to provoke the devil in McKeith.

'Wait a bit,' he said thickly. 'If you'll keep your hands off me, and let me finish what I was going to say, I'll show you the proof that I'm not telling you lies--though you're mistaking my meaning in regard to her Ladyship....

'Leave her Ladyship out of it, will you,' McKeith snarled, his teeth showing between his tense lips.

'I would do that willingly, Boss, for there's no disrespect intended I can a.s.sure you. Only it means that this Wombo business will have to be reported, and if you can help me to the right evidence--well, so much the pleasanter for all parties,' returned the Police Inspector craftily.

McKeith made a slight a.s.senting movement of his head, but said nothing.

His brows puckered, and he stiffened himself as he listened, strung to the quick, while Harris continued.

'Well--I did see--that lady,'--the volcanic gleam from McKeith's eyes stopped him from p.r.o.nouncing Lady Bridget's name. 'I saw her come out of that room,' he jerked his thumb along the veranda. 'The moon was right on her just then. I saw her give a shiver--she'd been out in the wet. Then she walked up the veranda to where there's the covered bit joining on to the Old Humpey, and I noticed her sit down on the steps--'

'Stop,' broke in McKeith. 'If you were on the veranda over there, you couldn't have seen as far as the steps.'

'Right you are, Boss. But I wasn't waiting on the veranda. When the lady turned her back, I moved into the yard, and I was standing by that flower-bush'--Again he jerked his thumb, this time to the centre bed, and a young bohinia shrub covered with pink blossoms 'If you try yourself from there, you'll find you can look slick through to the front garden. That's where I saw Maule step out of--I guessed he'd come round by the back of the Old Humpey. I guessed too, he thought she oughtn't to be sitting out there in the damp--She was shivering again--she'd put a rug that was lying on the steps round her. He just picked her up in his arms, and carried her right along, and when I stepped across I saw him take her into one of those rooms at the end of the front veranda....'

A m.u.f.fled growl, something like the sound a hunted beast might make when the dogs had got to touch of him, came from McKeith. Again he stiffened himself; his lips hard pressed; his eyes on Harris' face. The Police Inspector avoided his gaze; but he too was watchful.

'You see I was thinking of my prisoner, and wondering if there could be anything afoot about him. So as I knew there was n.o.body then--in Mr Maule's room, I went back and looked in. I wanted to make sure, if I could, where the key of the hide-house might be. There was a candle left alight, and I saw the key right enough on the chest of drawers beside Maule's watch and chain. It never came into my mind then, that anybody could have used it. I noticed a bit of folded paper under the watch. That's it, Mr McKeith. There's the proof that I am not lying about what I saw.'

Harris had taken out of his breast pocket, a piece of newspaper in which was wrapped the leaf torn out of Maule's notebook, folded and addressed. He opened it out, and laid it on the office table in front of McKeith, keeping his own stubby finger on one corner of the sheet.

Still McKeith maintained his difficult self-restraint.

'So you stole--a private communication that had been left in another person's room, and was intended for his eyes alone?'

'Come now, Boss. You know well enough that a constabulary officer who's up against tricks to release a prisoner has got to keep his eyes peeled, and mustn't let any clue to mischief escape him. How was I to know that there wasn't some plot to cheat the law? How do I know that there wasn't? That's why I'm showing you the paper. I'm not a French scholar--I suppose that's French--and as I suppose you are, I'll ask you to translate what's written there.'

McKeith pushed aside the man's finger, and taking up the paper carried it to the window, where he stood with his back to Harris, spelling out Lady Bridget's hurriedly written sentences.

He seemed a long time in getting at the sense of what he read. As a matter of fact, he had only a limited acquaintance with any modern languages except his own. He had picked up some colloquial German, and once when laid up in hospital, had set himself to read Balzac's PERE GORIOT with the aid of a dictionary. Thus he had acquired a fairly extensive if somewhat archaic vocabulary. But Lady Bridget's veiled intimation of Wombo's escape couched in up-to-date and highly idiomatic French which would have been perfectly intelligible to Willoughby Maule, conveyed little to him beyond the fact of a secret understanding between his wife and a man whom he knew had once been her lover. That idea drove every other into the background of his thoughts. He did not care in the least how Wombo had escaped. It seemed clear to him that Oola had stolen the key after Harris had gone back to his room, while Maule and his wife were together--together in Lady Bridget's own chamber. The blood surged to his brain, and his temples throbbed as though they would burst. In the madness of his jealousy, the words of the paper, combined with Harris' revelations were d.a.m.natory confirmation of his wife's guilt. He felt now that he had foreseen what would happen, from the moment that he had surprised the look on Lady Bridget's face, when Maule had unexpectedly appeared before her. She had given herself away then. And, a little sooner, rather than a little later--as might have been the case had he not left them together--the inevitable had come to pa.s.s.

Yes, through the agony of that conviction now brought home to him, a dogged resolve formed itself in his mind--the determination not to betray himself or her. It beat upon him with insistent force. Though his G.o.ddess must be dethroned from her shrine in his heart, she should not be cast down for a vulgar brute like Harris to gloat over her shame....

'Well, Boss,' the Police Inspector asked with affected nonchalance that bordered on insolence. 'Can you make anything that's satisfactory to you out of that?'

McKeith turned, Harris thought he was going to leap upon him in a fit of blind fury, and started up from his seat by the office table.

McKeith's eyes blazed, his taut sinews quivered; his face was now quite pallid, and the hand in which he held the piece of paper was clenched so tight that the veins stood out like thick cords, and the knuckles were perfectly bloodless.

But suddenly the pitch on his nerves was eased. His eyelids dropped, and when he lifted them, the eyes were quiet and intently observant.

He moved into his usual office chair.

'Sit down again, won't you, Harris?' he said, and Harris resumed his former place.

'What were you asking?' McKeith continued. 'Satisfactory to me is it?

Yes, perfectly satisfactory, thank you.... I'm only amused--as you see... to find that I was quite right in my suspicions.' And he laughed in what Harris thought a very odd way.

'Eh? I don't take your meaning.' Harris' manner was distinctly objectionable.

McKeith gave him a sharp look, and his teeth went over his under lip.

Then, to the man's evident surprise, he laughed again, throwing his head back so that the muscles of his throat showed under his beard, working, as it were, automatically. It really seemed as if the man's mechanical merriment were no part of himself. He was, in fact, gaining time to propound an explanation which he did not believe in the least, but which happened to be almost the exact truth.

He answered with an air of ironic indifference.

'Well, you know, I wouldn't go in for the detective line, if I were you, Harris. You aren't subtle enough for it. You jump too quickly at conclusions which have nothing to do with the main point. In fact, you're a fool, Harris--a d.a.m.ned fool.'

Harris' puzzled expression turned to one of extreme indignation. 'Seems to me, Mr McKeith, that it's you who are--well, d.a.m.ned queer about this affair. I'm sure I don't know what you've got to laugh at. But if you've found out who let the black-boy out of the hide-house, I'd be glad to know, that's all.'

McKeith ceased from his mirthless laughing and his sarcastic bluff. He leaned forward, facing Harris with his hands on the paper which he had laid on the table before him. He picked up the other's last words.

'Yes, that IS all. It's the only part of this note which concerns you.

Well, I can tell you that it was the half-caste woman, as I thought, who let Wombo out of the hide-house. She stole the key from Mr Maule's room when HE was asleep, and let Wombo out when YOU were asleep--a longer time perhaps than you imagined, Harris. The black-boy made for the scrub, and I suppose they were in too great a hurry to think of shutting the door. Oola sneaked back--they've got the cunning of whites and blacks put together, those half-castes--and no doubt she guessed there'd be a hue and cry directly the door was found open. So she locked it again--and brought the key to her ladyship.'

McKeith seemed to force the last words from between his teeth.

'Well, that's quite simple, isn't it?'

'Now, I shouldn't call it as simple as you make out, Boss. It appears mighty odd to me that the gin should have worried round after her ladyship when she might have sneaked back with the key to the place she took it from. And then there's all the rest--the putting the key back and fitting in times and all that.... Seems to me a bit too much of the Box and c.o.x trick--a sort of jig-saw puzzle, d'you see.'

Manifestly, Harris was endeavouring to square probabilities. McKeith still held himself in.

'I've given you the facts. You can figure out your details for yourself. I've my own business to attend to, and I must be off on it.'

He got up, and folding Lady Bridget's note, deliberately put it in his breast pocket. Harris stretched forth a restraining hand.

'Boss, I say--that's important--for my report, you know.'