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

worst. He got up from the table, then forced himself to sit down again and eat. An untouched breakfast tray might quicken the suspicions in the mind of that most treacherous woman downstairs, might hasten her hand. But why had she delayed so long?

He passed the morning between his chair and the window, watching, and listening for footsteps. He saw Mrs. Brierly leave the house early, and wondered if she would return with the police. Another reflection came to his mind. Charles had some inkling, and had fled in time. Perhaps that was just as well, if he got out of England. For himself there was no such retreat, nor did he wish it. He would have to face things out, if they had to be faced, and he did not yet despair of saving the situation, so far as it affected himself. What did that diabolical female know, really? He had a momentary vision of her stealing about the house, prying, watching, listening. He sank into a motionless brooding reverie.

The day passed its meridian, but he still sat there in solitude with his anxious thoughts. As the afternoon declined his hopes rose. Could it be that he was mistaken, that his fears were imaginary? Perhaps, after all—

At that sharp ring of the doorbell downstairs he walked noiselessly to the window, and shrank back with the startled look of a man who has had his first glimpse of the bared teeth of the law. He stood still, listening intently. He heard the door opened, a sharp question, then the sound of ascending footsteps. When the knock came at his own door he was in complete command of himself as he went to open it. He was well aware of the ordeal before him, but he did not show it. There was nothing but ironical self-possession in the glance which took in the figures of Detective Barrant and Inspector Dawfield, revealed on the threshold of the opening door.

Barrant lost no time in coming to the point. “I want to see your son,” he said, entering and glancing quickly round the apartment.

“I am afraid that is impossible.”

“Why?”

“He is not here.”

“Where is he?”

“I think he has gone to London.”

Barrant was plainly taken aback at this unexpected piece of news. “When did he go?” he demanded.

“Yesterday evening.”

Barrant cast a look at Dawfield, which said plainly: “He’s had word of this and bolted.” His glance returned to Austin. “Can you tell me where he is staying in London?”

“I have not the least idea,” returned Austin negligently.

“Does he not live with you?”

“As a rule—yes.”

“What is your London address?”

Austin took a card from his case and laid it on the table. Barrant picked it up, glanced at it, and said: “Is your son likely to be there?”

“He may be, but he said nothing to me about going there. He has his own liberty of action, like every other young man of his age. May I ask the reason of these questions, Detective Barrant?”

Barrant did not choose to reply. He drew Inspector Dawfield to the doorway and conferred with him in an undertone. Austin saw Barrant slip the card into his colleague’s hand, and Dawfield then hastened away. The inference was plain. Dawfield had been sent off to intercept the flight or start the pursuit. Austin found himself profoundly hoping that his son was by that time out of England.

He had not much leisure to think of that, for Barrant turned towards him again with an annoyance that he did not attempt to dissemble. “Why has your son gone to London—perhaps you can tell me that much?” he exclaimed.

“I gathered from him that it is his intention to look for his cousin Sisily.”

“For what purpose?”

“Because he strongly believes in her innocence.”

“It is strange that he should have rushed off like this.”

“Without waiting for your visit, do you mean? Really, Detective Barrant, may I constrain you to give me some explanation of all this? I want to help you all I can, but your actions savour too much of a peremptory jack-in-the-box, even in these bureaucratic days. What is the object of this visit? Why did you want to see my son?”

“I wished to interview him.”

“About what, may I ask?”

Barrant did not immediately reply, but Austin, scanning him furtively, sought to reach his thoughts by the varying shades of expression on his face. It was the state of mind of a man who was at once chagrined, amazed, suspicious, and wondering. The older man could picture Barrant thinking to himself: “This man before me—how far is he involved in this?” And, watching him mutely, Austin steeled himself for a sudden outburst: “You picked up the key. You declared it was suicide. What does that mean—now?”

But he under-estimated Barrant’s intelligence. Barrant had no intention of doing anything so crude. The situation was sufficiently awkward as it stood without putting the father on his guard. Austin might guess that he was under suspicion as well as his son, but that did not matter so much. Barrant instinctively realized that flight was impossible for Austin Turold, though he might seek to warn his son not to go near their London home because the police were after him. But that was a warning which would be useless, for the police were ahead of him there. Barrant reflected that he gained nothing by not divulging the object of his visit when the inference of it was so transparently palpable. The disclosure might even serve a useful purpose by lessening Austin’s apprehensions in his own case. With this consideration in view he brought it out frankly—

“I wished to question your son about his movements on the night of the murder.”

“Is my son suspected—now?”

Barrant winced under the delicate inflection of irony which conveyed in that brief reply the inference of another blunder in his own changing suspicions. That sneer roused the official in him, and it was in a curt tone of command that he said—

“What time did your son get home on the day of the murder?”

“I am unable to say.”

“He did not return with you after the funeral?”

“No, he did not.”

“Where did he go?”

“These are strange questions, Detective Barrant. I really cannot tell you that either, because I do not know.”

He put up his glasses to look at Barrant with an assumption of resentment, but the detective’s return glance was hard and searching. “Was your son in to dinner that night?” he asked.

“We have midday dinner, in this house.”

“Well, supper. Was he in to supper?”

Austin reflected rapidly. He dared not refuse to answer the question, and any attempt to mislead the questioner would only make things worse when the two women in the house knew the truth.

“Yes. He was in to supper.”

“And went out afterwards?”

This was put more as a simple statement of fact than a question. Again, Austin’s subtle intelligence could see no better course than truth.

“He did. My son frequently goes out walking of an evening after supper.”

“What time did he return—on this evening?”

“I do not know.”

“Do you mean that?” Barrant’s tone was incredulous.

“I do.” The impulse which had dictated his previous answer sprang from the thought that the foolish females downstairs could not contradict it, and he adhered calmly to the course now he was committed to it.

“What time did Thalassa come for you from Flint House with the news that your brother was dead?”

“I do not know the exact time. He called at the police station first.”

“Had not your son returned by then?”

“I am unable to inform you. He frequently goes straight to his room when he returns from an evening walk.”

“Then you do not know whether he was in or out when you left the house?”

“I assumed he was in, as it was after his usual time for returning.”

“You did not go to his room, to see?”

“No. I did not wish to disturb him.”

Barrant looked as though there was only one possible construction to be placed on these replies, but he still did not utter the question which Austin feared and dreaded most. In a harsh peremptory voice he said—“Show me your son’s room.”

In those words he stood revealed as one with all the resources of the law at his back, able to issue commands which other people must obey. The rights of liberty and freedom were in his hands. It needed not that to show Austin Turold how near he stood to the edge of the precipice. The strain of the interview had told on him. This was the first actual buffet of the beast’s paw. He led the way to his son’s room and watched Barrant go through his intimate belongings with the feeling that intelligence was a flimsy shield against the brutal force of authority. The law in search of prey cared nothing for such civilized refinements as intellect or self-respect. As well try to stop a tiger with a sonnet.

The search revealed nothing, and Barrant went away without another word. A moment later Austin heard him questioning the frightened women on the floor beneath. Listening intently, he made out a fragment of the conversation, sufficient to remove all doubts of the origin of the detective’s present visit. Austin’s mind flew to the episode he had seen from his window on the previous afternoon. Why in the name of heaven had this Brierly woman been such a fool? Why had she not come to him with her story, and asked for money to shut her mouth? Why was she sobbing and snivelling downstairs now, when it was too late?

Chapter XXIV

Austin Turold was wrong in supposing that his son had left Cornwall to fly from England. Charles had stated his intention truly enough when he said he was going to London to look for Sisily, but he did not disclose to his father the real reason that led him there.

His visit to London was the pursuit of a definite plan. He was animated by the hope that he knew where Sisily was likely to have sought shelter. Ever since her disappearance this idea had lurked in his imagination and occupied his secret thoughts.

It was the fruit of one of their last talks together—a memory they shared in common. How well he remembered the occasion! They had been on the cliffs looking down at the Gurnard’s Head wallowing like a monster with a broken back in the foam of a raging sea. It was the day after the death of Sisily’s mother, and Sisily had clung to him as if he were the only friend she had in the world. She had spoken to him from the depth of an overburdened soul impelled to confide in another, telling him of her mother’s sad life, unintentionally revealing something of the unhappiness of her own. And she told him a strange thing about her mother’s last hours.

On her death-bed the unhappy woman must have had her fears concerning the future of her daughter—belated uneasy premonitions arising after her dying confession to the man supposed to be her husband, perhaps causing her to doubt the wisdom of that revelation. That seemed plain enough to Charles afterwards, though not apparent at the time Sisily had confided in him, for she had died without giving the girl the slightest indication of her life’s secret, as if in some inscrutable hope that the tangle might be made straight.

What she did do was to make a feeble effort to save her daughter from the consequences of her own unhappy act, or at least to help her if those results arose. She had whispered a name, the name of an old friend of her girlhood who would befriend her child if ever she needed help. At her urgent request Sisily had propped her up in bed while she wrote down the address. Having performed this feat with infinite labour, she dropped back on her pillow, clinging fast to the hand of the child she loved and whose future she had blasted at the command of conscience.

Charles recalled how Sisily had taken that pathetic little scrap of paper from her blouse, kissed it with quivering lips, and handed it to him in silence. He had deciphered the pencilled scrawl with difficulty. The name was Catherine Pursill, Charleswood, Surrey. It remained in his mind for a special reason. Sisily was afraid she might lose the paper (perhaps, like her mother, she had some prescience of the future) and he had endeavoured to divert her thoughts by making “memory pictures” of the name and address after the method of a thought reader. He had told her to picture a cat sitting on a window ledge, and that would fix the name in her mind. “Purr”—“Sill”—there it was! As for the place, it was only necessary to imagine him wandering in a wood (he slyly suggested it)—Charleswood, and there they