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

down. There was a chapter on water clocks, to begin with: “Known to the Egyptians and the Holy Land.” Barrant turned the leaves. “The Ancient Chinese used a smouldering wick as timekeeper.” Barrant shook his head impatiently. “King Alfred’s supposed device of measuring Time by Candles—a Myth.” Would to heaven his invention of juries was a myth, too. Scotland Yard would get on much better without them. “A Lamp-clock was another Simple and Ingenious Design.” How intolerably long-winded the writer was. What had he to say about hood clocks? “Very few of the Early Clocks had Dials. The Device was generally a Mechanical Figure which struck the Hour on a Bell.” Evidently the forerunner of the devilish alarum clock. “Early clockmakers—Old English monks as Clockmakers.” The pages flowed rapidly through Barrant’s fingers. “Introduction of Minute Hand Marks—Period of Clocks Showing Tides—Longfaced Clocks.” Ah, here it was at last—“Hood Clocks.”

He began to read the chapter with interest, but as he was about to turn the first page the silence of the room was broken by a faint cackling laugh—an elfin sound which died away instantly. He looked up, startled. His surprise was not lessened at the sight of Mrs. Thalassa watching him from the open doorway. She entered on tiptoe, with a strange air of caution, examining him with restless eyes.

“I heard you,” she mumbled. “I saw you go upstairs. Mr. Thalassa was out, and I was afraid to go to the door. I’ve been playing patience, and it won’t come out.”

She showed her apron full of small cards. She placed them on the table, and arranged them in rows.

A new idea came into Barrant’s mind as he looked at her. If the poor creature had recovered sufficient wits to take to her cards again she might be coaxed to recall what she had seen on the night of the murder. He drew near her. “Can I help you?” he said.

She nodded sideways at him like a child—a child with withered face and grey hair.

Together they bent over the cards. A gull flashed past the window with a scream, as though it had seen them and was repelled at the strange sight.

“Only kings can go into vacant spaces,” murmured Barrant’s companion, intent on the game.

The result of the game was inconclusive. A king remained surrounded by small cards, like a real monarch overwhelmed by the rabble on May Day. Mrs. Thalassa’s eyes strayed mournfully over the rows, then she gathered up the cards and shuffled them again.

“Do you know any other games of patience?” Barrant asked.

She shook her head.

“Then this is the game you were playing on that night?”

“What night?” she whispered.

“The night Mr. Turold was killed.”

“I don’t want to think of that—it frightens me.”

She remembered, then! Her face went grey, but her eyes were alert, watching his.

“Listen to me”—he spoke very gently—“I want to help you get rid of your fear and terror, but to do so I must talk to you about that night. Do you understand?”

The kindness in his voice seemed to reach her feeble consciousness, and she looked at him earnestly.

“Will you try and recollect?”

She seemed to search his eyes for courage, and gave a trembling nod.

“What time was it when you heard the crash upstairs? Think well.”

She seemed to make an effort to remember. “I don’t know,” she said at last.

“Think again. You were playing patience—the game you have just shown me?”

Her eyes turned to the cards on the table. “Yes,” she said.

“What time did you commence—can you think?”

She shook her head. “I seem to remember it was half-past eight by the kitchen clock when I started my last game. I was alone in the kitchen then. The game was just coming out when I heard a crash—”

She broke off suddenly with a painful sigh and a frightened glance at the hood clock on the wall.

“One game!” Barrant glanced at his watch with an air of mistrust. “You mean two, don’t you?”

Her eyes returned to his. She shook her head with a rapid tremulous motion. “No!” she exclaimed excitedly. “One, only one!”

Barrant cast another glance at his watch, which he Still held in his hand. “You are quite sure you did not play two?” he persisted, with a puzzled glance.

“No, no—one!” She sprang to her feet excitedly.

“Very well—one,” acquiesced Barrant soothingly. “One. Go on.”

But his effort to calm her came too late. She cast a wild and fearful glance at the wall behind her, as if there was something there which frightened her.

“How it rings—how it rings!” Her indistinct utterance grew louder. “Yes, Jasper, I hear. Yes, sir, I’m coming. Where’s the supper tray?”

“Don’t be afraid, Mrs. Thalassa,” said Barrant, approaching her, but she backed hurriedly away towards the door.

“Coming with the supper tray—coming with the supper tray…. What’s that? Ah-h-h-h-h!”

Her disjointed mutterings ended in a shrill scream which went ringing through the stillness and seemed to linger in the room after she had disappeared. Barrant heard her muttering and laughing as she descended the stairs.

The sounds died away into a silence so absolute as to suggest the impression of a universe suddenly stricken dumb. Barrant crossed the room to the window, where he stood looking out, deep in thought.

What was the meaning of it all—of this latest scene in particular? The game of patience so tempestuously concluded had occupied half-an-hour. He had noted the time. Yet Mrs. Thalassa insisted she had played only one game after half-past eight on the night of the murder. If he dared accept such a computation of time an unimagined possibility in the case stood revealed. But—a demented woman. “A parable in the mouth of a fool.” Perhaps it was because she was a fool that he had stumbled on this revelation. She lacked the wit to lie about it.

If so—

His eyes, straying incuriously over the outstretched panorama of sea and cliffs beneath the window, fell upon a man’s outline scaling the cliff path near the Moon Rock. Disturbed in his meditations, Barrant watched the climber. He reached the top and appeared in full view on the bare summit of the cliffs. Barrant stared down upon him, amazed beyond measure. The advancing figure was Charles Turold.

Chapter XXX

Barrant hastened from the room downstairs to the front door. From the open doorway he saw Charles Turold advancing across the rocks in the direction of the house, and he ran swiftly down the gravel path to intercept him.

Charles looked up and came on as if there was nothing to turn back for. His clear glance dwelt on the figure by the gate without fear—with seeming gratification. Barrant was amazed. He had been prepared for an attempt at flight, but not this welcoming look. Never before had he known a man show joy at the prospect of arrest. The experience was so disturbing that he went across the intervening space to meet Charles, and laid a hand upon his arm.

“I suppose you know you are wanted by the police?” he said.

“I am aware of it,” was the quiet reply. “I was going to give myself up.”

“Did you come back to Cornwall for that purpose?” asked the detective, shooting another puzzled glance at him.

“I came back to try and discover the truth.”

“About what?”

“About my uncle’s death.”

“And have you discovered it?”

“I have.”

Barrant did not understand the young man’s attitude, or the tone of heartfelt relief in which he uttered these words, but he felt that the conversation in its present form had gone far enough.

“Do you propose to tell me the truth?” he asked, with a slight cynical emphasis on the last word.

“I do.”

Barrant’s surprise kept him silent for a moment, but when he spoke he was very incisive—

“In that case it is my duty to warn you—”

“There is no need to warn me,” Charles quickly interrupted. “I know. Any statement I make will be taken down and used against me. That’s the formula, isn’t it, or something to that effect? Let us go into the house—my story will take some time in the telling.”

He made this request as a right rather than a favour, and Barrant found himself turning in at the gate with him. In silence they walked to the house, and it was Charles Turold who led the way to the sitting-room.

“It was here it began,” he murmured, glancing round the deserted apartment, “and it seems fitting that the truth should be brought to light in the same place.”

“Provided that it is the truth,” commented his companion.

Charles did not reply. They had been standing face to face, but he now drew a chair to the table and sat down. Barrant walked to the door and locked it before seating himself beside him.

“You can begin as soon as you like,” he said.

“I think I had better tell you about my own actions, first of all, on that night,” said Charles, after a brief silence. “It will clear the way for what follows. I was up here that night—the night of the murder.”

“I know that much,” was Barrant’s cold comment.

“You suspected it—you did not know it,” Charles quickly rejoined.

He remained profoundly silent for a moment, as if meditating his words, and then plunged into his tale.

The account of his own visit to Flint House on the night of the murder he related with details withheld from Sisily. The visit was the outcome of a quarrel between father and son over Robert Turold’s announcement about his wife’s previous marriage. Charles was shocked by his uncle’s decision to make the story public, and had wandered about the cliffs until dark trying to decide what to do. Ultimately he returned home and asked his father to use his influence with his brother to keep the secret in the family. His father called him a fool for suggesting such a thing, declined to offend his brother or blast his own prospects by such damned quixotic nonsense. On this Charles had announced his intention of seeing his uncle and telling him he would leave England immediately and forever unless the scandal was kept quiet. That made his father angry, and they quarrelled violently. Charles cut the quarrel short by flinging out of the house in the rain, to carry out his intention of interviewing his uncle. He walked across the moors to Flint House. The front door was open, the downstairs portion of the house in darkness, and his uncle lying upstairs in his study—dead.

He hurried over all this as of small importance in the deeper significance of Thalassa’s story. That was to him the great thing—the wonderful discovery which was to clear Sisily and put everything right. He believed that the plan which had brought him to Cornwall was working splendidly. The chance encounter with the detective was really providential—a speeding up, a saving of valuable time.

The possibility of disbelief did not dawn upon him. He overlooked that his listener was also his custodian and judge—the suspicious arbiter of a belated story told by one whose own actions were in the highest degree suspicious. His overburdened mind forgot these things in the excitement of hope. He talked with the candour and freedom of one young man confiding in another. When he had finished he looked at his companion expectantly, but Barrant’s eyes were coldly official.

“A strange story!” he said.

“A true one,” Charles eagerly rejoined. “Thalassa has been walking along the coast ever since in the expectation of finding this man. He will kill him if he meets him.”

It was Barrant’s lot to listen to many strange stories which were always true, according to the narrators, but generally they caused him to feel ashamed of the poverty of human invention. He was not immediately concerned to discover whether Thalassa’s story was true or false, or whether it had been concocted between him and Charles with the object of deceiving the authorities. The consideration of that infamous brownfaced scoundrel’s confession could be postponed—if it had ever been made. The present business was with Charles Turold. There was something infernally mysterious in his unexpected reappearance in that spot. He had gone to London when he disappeared—he admitted that. What had brought him back? To see Thalassa, as he said, in order to try and get at the truth? Nonsense! He—Barrant—was not simple enough to believe that. What then?

Barrant was not prepared to supply a ready answer to that question. But his trained ear had detected many gaps in the young man’s own narrative which, filled in, might give it. Turold knew more than he had said—he was keeping things back. Again—what things? Behind him stood the shadowy figure of the girl and her unexplained flight. Barrant’s instinct told him that Charles was shielding her. He turned to the task of endeavouring to reach the truth.

“Let’s go back a bit,” he said casually. “You’ve left one or two points in your own story unexplained. What about