The Moon Rock by Arthur J. Rees (e novels to read TXT) 📗

to where the broken hood clock had been replaced on its bracket. He stood there regarding it, and the round eyes in the moon’s face seemed to return his glance with a heavy stare.

“If that fat face in the clock could only speak as well as goggle its eyes!” he said, with a mirthless smile. “We should learn something then. What’s the idea of it all—the rolling eyes, the moon, the stars, and a verse as lugubrious as a Presbyterian sermon on infant damnation. The whole thing is uncanny.”

“It’s a common enough device in old clocks,” said the lawyer, joining him. “It is commoner, however, in long-cased clocks—the so-called grandfather clock. I have seen all sorts of moving figures and mechanisms in long-cased clocks in old English country houses. A heaving ship was a very familiar device, the movement being caused, as in this clock, by a wire from the pendulum. I have never seen a specimen with the rotating moon-dial before, though they were common enough in some parts of England at one time. This is a Dutch clock, and the earlier Dutch makers were always fond of representing their moons as human faces. It was made by a great master of his craft, as famous in his native land as old Dan Quare is in England, and its mechanism has outlived its creator by more than three hundred years.”

“Would it be an accurate timekeeper, do you think?” asked Barrant, looking mistrustfully at the motionless face of the moon, as though he suspected it of covertly sneering at him.

“I should think so. These old clockmakers made their clocks to keep perfect time, and outlast Time himself! And this clock is a perfect specimen of the hood clock, which marked a period in clock-making between the old weight clocks and the long cases. Hood clocks were popular in their day in Holland, but they have always been rare in this country. It would be interesting to trace how this one came into this house. No doubt it was taken from a wreck, like so much of the furniture in old Cornish houses.”

“You seem to know a lot about old clocks.”

Mr. Brimsdown, astride his favourite hobby, rode it irresistibly. He discoursed of clocks and their makers, and Barrant listened in silence. The subject was not without its fascination for him, because it suggested a strange train of thought about the hood clock which was the text, as it were, of the lawyer’s discourse. He looked up. Mr. Brimsdown, in front of the clock, was discoursing about dials and pendulums. Barrant broke in abruptly with the question on his mind—

“Can you, with your knowledge of old clocks, suggest any reason which would cause Robert Turold to go to it? Are the works intricate? Would such a clock require much adjustment?”

“Robert Turold was not likely to think of adjusting a clock in his dying moments,” returned Mr. Brimsdown, with a glance which betokened that he perfectly understood his companion had some other reason for his question.

“There’s a smear of blood on the dial,” said Barrant, staring at it.

“Was that made by the right or left hand?”

“The right hand was resting on the clock-face. Why do you ask?”

Mr. Brimsdown hesitated, then said: “The thought has occurred to me that Robert Turold may have gone to the clock for a different purpose—not for papers. Perhaps his last thought was to indicate the name of the murderer on the white face of the clock.”

“In his blood? Rather a melodramatic idea, that! He had writing materials before him if he wanted to do that, if he thought of it. He was shot down in the act of writing, remember.”

A silence fell between them on this declaration—a silence terminated by Barrant remarking that it was really late, and he must be getting back to Penzance. Mr. Brimsdown made no suggestion to accompany him. Instead he rustled papers in Robert Turold’s cabinet as though to convey the impression that the sorting and searching of them would take him some time. Barrant, from whose eyes speculation and suspicion looked out from a depth, like the remote glance of a spider which had scurried to a hole, gave a slight sign of farewell, and wheeled out of the apartment without another word.

Downstairs he went, plunged in the deepest thought. Looking downward, he saw Thalassa escorting Dr. Ravenshaw to the front door. The doctor’s voice reached him.

“… She must not be left alone on any account—understand that. You ought to get somebody to look after her.”

“I can’t afford nobody,” Thalassa made reply.

Dr. Ravenshaw was about to say something more, but the figure of the descending detective caught his eye. Barrant made a detaining gesture, and the doctor waited in the passage for him. Barrant, with a slight glance at the motionless figure of Thalassa, led the way into the front room. He closed the door before he spoke.

“Doctor,” he said, “have you told anybody about those marks on Robert Turold’s arm?”

“I have not,” said the doctor promptly, looking up. “Why do you ask?”

His glance carried conviction, and interrogation also. But it was Barrant’s province to ask questions, not to answer them. He ignored Dr. Ravenshaw’s.

“There’s another matter, doctor,” he continued. “One of the coast fishermen has a story that when Robert Turold was out on the moors he used to hasten home with great strides, like a man who feared pursuit. Did you ever observe this peculiarity in him?”

“I have observed that he used to walk at a quick pace.”

“This was more than a quick pace—it was almost a run, according to the fisherman—looking backward over his shoulder as he went.”

“I did not notice that, but I should not be surprised if it were true, with a man of Robert Turold’s temperament.”

“He feared pursuit—some unknown danger, then?”

“I cannot say. He may have suffered from agoraphobia.”

“What is that?” asked Barrant.

“The dread of open spaces.”

“I have heard of claustrophobia—the dread of closed spaces—but not of this.”

“It is common enough—an absurd but insurmountable aversion to open spaces. The victims are oppressed by a terrible anxiety when crossing a field. I have known a man who would be terrified at the idea of crossing Trafalgar Square.”

“What is the cause of agoraphobia?” asked Barrant.

“It is a nervous disorder—one of the symptoms of advanced neurasthenia.”

“Did Robert Turold suffer from neurasthenia?”

“His nervous system was in a state of irritable weakness through the monomania of a fixed idea,” was the reply—“too much seclusion and concentration on one object, to the exclusion of all other human interests.”

“How’s your patient?” said Barrant, giving the conversation an abrupt turn.

“What patient do you mean—Mrs. Thalassa?” asked Dr. Ravenshaw in some surprise.

“Yes. I gathered from what I overheard you say to Thalassa that you have been attending her.”

“I have been attending her since Mr. Turold’s death.”

“She is in a strange condition,” observed Barrant reflectively. “I was questioning her the other night, but I could get nothing out of her. She seems almost imbecile.”

“She is not a woman of strong mind, and she is now suffering from a severe shock. She should be looked after or taken away from here altogether, but her husband seems quite indifferent.”

“Do you think she will recover?”

“It is impossible to say.”

“How do you think the shock was caused?”

“I should not like to hazard an opinion on that point, either,” replied Dr. Ravenshaw gravely. He glanced at his watch as he spoke. “I must be going,” he said.

They left the house together, but branched off at the gate—Dr. Ravenshaw to visit a fisherman’s dying wife, and Barrant to seek the Three Jolly Wreckers for supper before returning to Penzance.

From the kitchen window Thalassa watched them go: the doctor walking across the cliffs with resolute stride, the detective making for the path over the moors with bent head and slower step, as though his feet were clogged by the weight of his thoughts. Thalassa watched their dwindling forms until they disappeared, and then stood still, in a listening attitude. The sound of the lawyer stirring in the study overhead seemed to rouse him from his immobility. He closed the door, and stood looking up the staircase with the shadow of indecision on his face.

Chapter XXII

Upstairs Mr. Brimsdown made unavailing search among Robert Turold’s papers for proofs of his statement about his marriage. The lawyer believed that they existed, and his failure to find them brought with it a belated realization of the fact that he, too, had been cherishing hopes of Sisily’s innocence. It was the memory of her face which had inspired that secret hope. That was not sentiment (so Mr. Brimsdown thought), but the worldly wisdom of a man whose profession had trained him to read the human face. Sisily’s face, as he recalled it now, had looked sad and a little fearful that night at Paddington, but there was nothing furtive or tainted in her clear glance. He felt that a judge would look with marked attention at such a face in the dock. Judges, like lawyers, and all whose business it is to trip their kind into the gins of the law, scan faces as closely as evidence in the effort to read the stories written there.

But the disappearance of certain papers which had probably been abstracted from that room weighed more in the scale of suspicion against Sisily than her look of innocence. She stood to gain most by the suppression or destruction of the proofs of her mother’s earlier marriage. But Mr. Brimsdown could not see that this rather negative inference against the girl brought the actual solution of the mystery any nearer. It did nothing to explain, for instance, the marks on the dead man’s arm and his posthumous letter. The letter! What was the explanation of the letter? Was it not an argument of equal weight for Sisily’s innocence, suggesting the existence of some hidden avenging figure glimpsed by Robert Turold in time to give him warning of his death, but not in time to enable him to avert it?

There were other things too. What was the meaning of that sly and stealthy shake of the head which Austin Turold had given his son that afternoon. A warning obviously—but a warning for what purpose? Mr. Brimsdown could not guess, but his contemplation of the incident brought before him the image of the restless and unhappy young man, as he stood by the bedside in the next room, pointing to the marks on the dead man’s arm. Even in his vehement assertions of Sisily’s innocence Mr. Brimsdown had conceived the impression that he was keeping something back. What did Charles Turold know? Did his father share his secret knowledge? Mr. Brimsdown could not answer these questions, and he was greatly perturbed at the way in which they brought a host of other thoughts and doubts in their train. He reflected that the Turolds, father and son, were after all the greatest gainers by their relative’s death. The father came into immediate possession of a large and unexpected fortune which he would bequeath to his son. And Austin Turold was not anxious apparently to proceed with his brother’s claim for the title.

These were facts which could not be gainsaid, but where did they lead? The trouble was that no conceivable theory covered the facts of the case, so far as they were known. So far as they were known! That was the difficulty. Any line of thought stopped short of the real solution, because the facts themselves were inconclusive. There was much that was still concealed—Mr. Brimsdown felt sure of that.

As he applied his mind to the problem, the definite impression came back to him, and this time with renewed force, that the mystery surrounding Robert Turold’s death was something which might not bear the light of day. He set his lips firmly as he considered that possibility. If that proved to be the case it would be his duty to cover it up again. He was an adept at such work, as many of his clients, alive and dead, could have approvingly testified. He had spent much time in safeguarding family secrets. Several old families had found him their rock of refuge in distress. If he had been a man of the people, baby lips might have been taught to call down Heaven’s blessings on his discreet efforts. Those members of the secluded domain of high respectability for whom he strived showed their gratitude in a less emotional but more substantial way—generally in the mellow atmosphere of after-dinner conferences … “You had better see my man, Brimsdown. I’ll give you a note to him. He’ll square this business for you. Safe? None safer.”

Mr. Brimsdown did not accept the axiom of a great English jurist that every man is justified in evading the law if he can, because it is the duty of lawmakers not to leave any loophole for evasion. That point