The Four Corners of the World Part 29

But while I waited the door of the next room was opened, and Rymer and I both ceased to talk. We pretended no more. We listened, and, _although we heard voices, we could not distinguish words_. Both Violet and the servant were speaking in their ordinary tones, and Rymer and I were now on the far side of the room. An expression of immense relief shone upon Bradley Rymer's face for a moment, and he rose up with the smile and the friendliness I knew.

"Will you stay to dinner?" he asked. "Do!" But I dared not. I should have betrayed the trouble I was in. I made a lame excuse and left the house.

It was now quite dark, and in the cool night air I began, before I had reached the lodge, to wonder whether I had not been misled altogether by some hallucination. Bradley Rymer brought to my memory the tragic case of his brother, and I asked myself for a moment if the long and late hours of a country practice were unbalancing me. But I looked back towards the house as I took the track over the turf, and the scene through which I had pa.s.sed returned too vividly to leave me in any doubt. I could see Bradley Rymer clearly as he opened and shut the drawer of his writing-table. I could hear his voice raised in bitter reproach to Violet and the click of the typewriting machine. No, I had not been dreaming.

I had walked about a hundred yards down the slope when a sharp whistle of two notes sounded a little way off upon my right, and almost before I had stopped a man sprang from the gra.s.s at my very feet with a guttural cry like a man awakened from a doze. Had I taken another step I should have trodden upon him. The next moment the light from an electric torch flashed upon my face, blinding me. I stepped back and put up my hand to my eyes. But even while I raised my hand the b.u.t.ton of the torch was released and the light went out. I stood for a moment in utter blackness, then dimly I became aware of some one moving away from in front of me.

"What do you want?" I cried.

"Nothing," was the word spoken in answer.

I should have put the fellow down for one of the gipsies who infest those Downs in the summer, and thought no more about him, but for one reason. He had spoken with a p.r.o.nounced German accent. Besides, there was the warning whistle, the flash of the torch. I could not resist the conviction that Bradley Rymer's house was being watched.

I walked on without quickening my pace, for perhaps a hundred yards.

Then I ran, and as fast as I could, down to the village. I did not stop to reason things out. I was in a panic. Violet was in that house, and it was being watched by strangers. We had one policeman in the village, and he not the brainiest of men. I got out my bicycle and rode fourteen miles, walking up the hills and coasting down them until I reached the town of Reading. I rode to the house of the Chief Constable, whom I happened to know.

"Is Captain Bowyer in?" I asked of the servant.

"No, sir; he's dining out to-night."

"In the town?"

"Yes, sir."

I was white with dust and wet through with sweat. The girl looked me over and said:

"I have orders to telephone for him if he is wanted."

"He is," I replied, and she went off to the telephone at once.

I began to cool down in more ways than one while I waited. It seemed to me very likely that I had come upon a fool's errand. After all, what had I got to go upon but a German accent, a low, sharp whistle, and an electric torch? I waited about half an hour before Bowyer came in. He was a big man, with a strong face and a fair moustache, capable, but not imaginative; and I began my story with a good deal of diffidence. But I had not got far before his face became serious, though he said not a word until I had done.

"Bradley Rymer's house," he then remarked. "I know it." He went out into the pa.s.sage, and I heard his voice at the telephone. He came back in a moment.

"I have sent for some men," he said, "and a car. Will you wait here while I change?"

"Yes."

I glanced at the clock. For now that he took the affair seriously all my fears had returned.

"What time did you leave the house?" he asked.

"Nine."

"And it's now eleven. Yes, we must hurry. Bradley Rymer's house! So that's where they are."

He hurried away. But before he had changed his clothes a great touring motor-car whirred and stopped in front of the door. When we went out on to the steps of the house there were four constables waiting. We climbed into the car, and the hilly road to Streatley, which had taken me so long and painful a time to traverse, now rose and fell beneath the broad wheels like the waves of a sea. At Streatley we turned uphill along the Aldworth Road, and felt the fresh wind of the downland upon our faces. Then for the first time upon the journey I spoke.

"You know these men?" I asked of Captain Bowyer.

"I know of them," he answered, and he bent forwards to me. "With all these kings and emperors in London for the funeral, of course a great many precautions were taken on the Continent. All the known Anarchists were marked down; most of them on some excuse or another were arrested. But three slipped through the net and reached England."

"But they would be in London," I urged.

"So you would think. We were warned to-day, however, that they had been traced into Berkshire and there lost sight of."

A hundred questions rose to my lips, but I did not put them. We were all in the dark together.

"That's the house," I said at length, and Captain Bowyer touched the chauffeur on the shoulder.

"We'll stop, then, by the road."

Very quietly we got out of the car and crept up the hill. The night was dark; only here and there in a c.h.i.n.k of the clouds a star shone feebly. Down in the village a dog barked and the wind whistled amongst the gra.s.ses under our feet. We met no one. The lodge at the gates was dark; we could not see the house itself, but a glare striking upon the higher branches of the trees in the garden showed that a room was brightly lit.

"Do you know which room that is?" Bowyer asked of me in a whisper.

"The library."

We spread out then and made a circuit of the garden wall. There was no one any longer watching, and we heard no whistle.

"They have gone," I said to Bowyer.

"Or they are inside," he replied, and as he spoke we heard feet brushing upon the gra.s.s and a constable loomed up in front of us.

"This way, sir," he whispered. "They are inside."

We followed him round to the back of the garden. Just about the middle of that back wall the men stood in a cl.u.s.ter. We joined them, and saw that an upright ladder rose to the parapet. On the other side of the wall a thick coppice of trees grew, dark and high. Without a word, one after another we mounted the ladder and let ourselves down by the trees into the garden. A few paces took us to the edge of the coppice, and the house stood in the open before us. Standing in the shadow of the branches, we looked up. The house was in complete darkness but for the long row of library windows upon the first floor. In these, however, the curtains were not drawn, and the light blazed out upon the green foliage. There was no sound, no sign of any disorder. Once more I began to think that I had brought Bowyer and his men here upon a fool's errand. I said as much to him in a whisper.

"But the ladder?" he answered, "my men found it there." And even while he spoke there appeared at one of these windows a stranger. It was as much as I could do in that awful moment to withhold a cry, I gripped Bowyer's arm with so much violence that he could show me the bruises of my fingers a week afterwards. But he stood like a rock now.

"Is that Rymer?"

"No. I have never seen him in my life before."

He was a dark man, and his hair and moustache were turning grey. He had the look of a foreigner, and he lounged at the window with as much a.s.surance as if he owned the place. Then he turned his face towards the room with a smile, and, as if in obedience to an order, carelessly drew down the blinds.

They were in the house, then--these men who had slipped through the net of the Continental police; more, they were masters in the house; and there was no sound. They were in peaceful possession. My heart sank within me when I thought of Violet Rymer and her father. What had become of them? In what plight were they?

Bowyer made a sign, and, stepping carefully on the turf border and keeping within the shadow of the trees, we crept round to the back of the house. One of the party ran swiftly and silently across a gravel path to the house-wall and followed it for a little way. Then as swiftly he came back.

"Yes, there's a window open," he said. We crossed to it. It yawned upon black emptiness. We listened; not a sound reached us.

"What does it give on to?" asked Bowyer.

"A pa.s.sage. At the end of the pa.s.sage there's a swing door. Beyond the swing door the hall."

We climbed in through the window.