lounge. A single faint bulb in an old ship’s lantern burned in the entry, behind the single bottle-glass pane in the door. Mr. Pinkerton looked about. No one was there. There was no trace of the young man who had slipped down there not three minutes before.
Mr. Pinkerton paused an instant, and scuttled up the opposite steps and along a narrow crooked hall. Sir Lionel was in Number Four, and he knew vaguely where that was, because Mrs. Humpage had shown it to him the day before. It was the Old Angel’s most pretentious room, with a bed that Queen Elizabeth had slept in when she visited Rye in 1573; it adjoined a chintz-and-copper furnished sitting room looking down into the narrow inn court, where there was still the mouth of a subterranean chute that had once carried kegs up and down from the undercliff, in the golden smuggling days of Romney Marsh.
Mr. Pinkerton stopped again. He could make out the copper “4” on the door from the single light left burning in the W. C. He put his hand to the wooden latch, and hesitated. The etiquette of the situation suddenly smote him full in the face. Could a former schoolmaster and scullery maid enter the room of a knight of the realm, even if he was groaning in mortal pain? Mr. Pinkerton did not know; upon his soul he did not. Then, hearing that awful sound in his mind again, because he could not hear it in his ears at all now, he lifted the latch, and peered inside.
Through the door at the side of the room he heard the sound again, quite weak now, and weaker still as it came once more. Mr. Pinkerton bolted across the room like a rabbit across the moor, and pushed open the door. The light bulb in the old worn red velvet canopy was on. Under its stark pale filaments lay a terrible mass, heaving weakly. Mr. Pinkerton sprang across the drugget and up the little platform that held the old queen’s bed . . . and stopped there, his watery grey eyes almost popping out of his head.
It was Sir Lionel Atwater, and he had not had a stroke—except a very wicked one. Protruding from his breast, near the heart, was a long silver handle. Mr. Pinkerton recognized it instantly as a silver skewer . . . one that had once, no doubt, pinioned a boar’s head or a rump of stolen venison; and saw instantly that every feeble move the old man made, twisted over on one side, was driving it deeper into his body. He heard the breath rattling in Sir Lionel’s throat as he reached out, turned his head and closed his eyes, and plucked the skewer from the wound. There was a horrible surge of blood. Sir Lionel Atwater groaned once more. Mr. Pinkerton, shaking, bent over him.
“My son . . .”
The old man’s breath rattled the words.
“My heir . . .”
Then there was a last choking sound in Sir Lionel Atwater’s throat, and he lay quite still, the light in the ceiling of the bed going sharply out as his hand collapsed.
Mr. Pinkerton stood, the bloody skewer in his hand, frozen with horror. As suddenly as the light in the canopy had gone out, a light in the sitting room went on. Mr. Pinkerton saw standing in the door through which he had come, in long flannel nightdress and purple dressing gown and night-cap, a candle in her hand, the tiny figure of Lady Atwater. He stood utterly petrified, quite unable to move. Lady Atwater came across the room.
“Was it the fish, dear?” she asked.
Then the pale nimbus of her candle reached and included the little man in his overcoat, the meat skewer dripping blood in his hand. Lady Atwater stared for one instant and screamed, the candle dropping from her hand. She screamed again, and fell in a heap on the floor. In one instant—it seemed less than that to Mr. Pinkerton, in one way, and a million times longer in another—the room was full of people, all staring horror-stricken, from the little man still standing there paralyzed, to the murdered man in the bed. For a terrible moment they were all utterly speechless, though not as speechless as the little Welshman in the cheap grey overcoat by the bed, or the old knight in it. In the sudden appalling clarity that flashed into his mind Mr. Pinkerton could see each one of them: Jeffrey Atwater (“My son . . . my heir,” Mr. Pinkerton thought mechanically), Darcy Atwater, Pamela, the arrogant Mr. Fleetwood, Mrs. Humpage, Mr. McPherson. Not Kathleen, Mr. Pinkerton thought, still mechanically; not the pale young man, or the deaf and dumb gentleman, or—his heart curvetted and sank—not Inspector Bull.
Then Mr. Fleetwood took two strides up to him and caught his wrist so that the skewer dropped with a thin horrible clink to the floor. Jeffrey Atwater bent down, lifted his mother and carried her back into the sitting room. Mr. Fleetwood, still holding Mr. Pinkerton’s wrist in a grip of steel, seized him by the scruff of the neck, piloted him across the room, and thrust him down in a chair.
“Get a doctor, Darcy, you fool!” he shouted. “And fetch the police!”
Then Mr. Pinkerton saw, bulking incredibly large in the sitting-room door, the cinnamon-brown figure of Inspector Bull, still in his great cinnamon tweed overcoat and his cinnamon-brown fedora.
“I am the police,” Inspector Bull said calmly. “Quietly, please.”
Mr. Pinkerton, sinking back in the chair, closing his eyes, could feel the tears running down his cheeks. Then he opened his eyes again, not being able to keep them closed any more than the pack can keep from yelping on the scent.
They were all looking at the big man in the door.
“I’m from Scotland Yard,” Inspector Bull said placidly. “I’ll take charge here until Inspector Kirtin comes.”
He turned to Mrs. Humpage. “Get a doctor, ma’am. And get Inspector Kirtin on the phone.”
Mr. Pinkerton saw Mrs. Humpage’s apple cheeks go a little pale.
“—Scotland Yard, sir?”
“Inspector Kirtin of the Rye police, ma’am,” Inspector Bull said, though Mr. Pinkerton knew very well that that was not what she had meant. “And the rest of you step in here and sit down quietly.”
He crossed the room to the huge bed and bent over what had been Sir Lionel Atwater.
Mr. Pinkerton saw Pamela Atwater look at Mr. Fleetwood, who stiffened aggressively.
“Come along, Mr. Fleetwood,” Inspector Bull said. “You know the law, sir. I’ve got my work cut out for me.”
Fleetwood hesitated. “You’re right, Sergeant,” he said. He glanced down at the shrinking little figure in the ridiculous orchid pyjamas. The beak of the embroidered eagle on the red ribbon across Mr. Pinkerton’s scrawny bosom protruded from between the lapels of his overcoat. Mr. Pinkerton tried to cover it up, but Mr. Fleetwood had seen it.
“He’s a dirty Russian rat,” he said hoarsely.
Mr. Pinkerton moistened his very dry lips and swallowed. He looked at Inspector Bull. The blue twinkle he thought he saw in those deceptively mild eyes he knew was a mirage caused by the salt tears in his own.
“I’ll attend to him, sir,” Inspector Bull said. “Step along now, please. Tell Inspector Kirtin I’m in here.”
He closed the door behind them, and stood for a long time looking about the room; at the narrow leaded casement windows, at the débâcle on the bed, at the bloody skewer on the floor, and finally at the little rabbit of a man huddled miserable and speechless in the chair, his overcoat still clutched about his neck to cover up the pseudo decoration on his breast.
“Well, now,” Inspector Bull said, not unkindly. “Let’s have it, Mr. Pinkerton.”
5
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