The House in Lordship Lane

Chapter 25

At Arkwright’s Farm

A.E.W. Mason


INDEED Septimus had something to tell. He sat in an arm-chair in a big room overlooking the Square and overlooked by none. He was bathed, shaven, dressed in clean linen borrowed from Ricardo, with a dark-blue dressing-gown over all. But, the marks of terror were still engraved upon his face and his eyes were the eyes, unmistakably explicit, of one who has passed through the shadows of death. They tell no story, they deny that they have a story to tell, but they inspire the prayer, “God forbid that I should suffer as this man has!” And he was years older, shrunken in his spirit and his courage as much as in his frame. He was like, too, some sharp and watchful animal of the forests and the heath. The simplest little unexpected sound set him quivering and, still worse, cringing, as if there were no end to the new horrors which stood darkly about him. That this man had ever commanded a great ship through gales and reefs, across the wide oceans of the world, and brought his cargoes and his passengers safe to far ports, seemed to the most unimaginative of his visitors beyond credulity itself to believe.

Happily Mr. Ricardo had an inspiration from a kindly heart. He came into, the room with Maltby and Hanaud at his heels, carrying a box of Havana cigars. It was all very well for Septimus to tell the world that his cigars were the best, but they were no better than Ricardo’s. And, as he held out the box, Ricardo said: “I thought that you might like to lunch alone, Mr. Crottle, after these stormy times, but these I hope you will enjoy in company.”

The old man’s face lit up with the cigar. Mr. Ricardo could have done nothing more wise. The smoke curling upwards, the fragrance which comes from nowhere but Havana, with all its associations of ease and pleasurable moments, brought comfort and a smile to Septimus Crottle.

“I thank you,” he said warmly to Ricardo, and Hanaud, must add his comment.

“He has the tact, my friend Ricardo. Not from the books of the deportment writers. No, no, he has it here,” and he laid his hand admiringly upon his heart.

Septimus, however, was finding his recollection crystallise more easily into speech, now that he had cigar between his lips.

“When I became conscious, my eyes were covered,” he said with a shiver of disgust. “I was aware we were in a car—a man—I think—I can’t be sure, but I doubt if my instincts would lead me astray—a man of the sea and a woman.” He was silent for a little while, and went on choosing rather meticulously his words. “Afterwards—I can’t say more than that now at events—there was I with the nightmare of a life discovered and made true—oh, yes, discovered! When the nightmare began, I can’t remember, for I’ve always remembered the nightmare,”—he shut his eyes and shivered, looking back over years of watchfulness and years of imagined horror.

“To be confronted with it, eh?” he looked at Hanaud and from Hanaud to Ricardo, perhaps with some vague idea that they, who had been present when his voice had broken over the dreadful history of the young Dauphin, would picture to themselves with what detail that history had been staged again.

“They had a lanthorn, which they set upon a white deal table. They emptied my pockets. They took everything from me except two things. This,” he took out of his waistcoat pocket a small thin diary with a single thin pencil in a sheath. “They were very jocose about it. It would pass the time for me to read in the daylight by the chinks of the shutters the engagements I was going to keep. Oh, very jocose they were, and unwise. And the second thing was this. They were funny about this, too.”

The second thing was an old battered silver watch with an old strap and buckle, which he took from his watch-pocket. It was as big as a turnip, thick and round, and indeed, to modern eyes, looked comical enough. But Septimus Crottle handled it as fondly as if it had been a jewel fashioned by Cellini.

“I bought that when I was an apprentice in a clipper. Very funny they were about that, too. What a fortunate thing it was for me that, when I wanted to know the time, I shouldn’t have to ask a policeman! Very funny, and still more unwise.” He looked at the clock. “Listen,” he said.

The hands made the hour to be three and the silence was broken by three faint little silvery chimes from Crottle’s watch.

“A repeater!” exclaimed Ricardo.

“A repeater. They didn’t know. It was just a piece of luggage. They left it with me and slammed the door and locked it. I was in the dark with the watch in my hand and, as I stood there, I heard above the roof of the house the drone of an aeroplane, the throb and pulse of its engines, the rush overhead and the swift decline to silence. Even at that moment it was pleasant, companionable, a promise. I asked my watch the time. It was midnight.”

The next morning, by a ray of light, a golden ray on which the sun danced like Blondin on his tight-rope into the black room, Septimus had ticked off in his diary the day, October the eighth, on which he had been taken, and this new day which had come. That night, too, the friendly aeroplane roared at midnight a friendly “Here I am,” and was gone. Septimus Crottle could test his watch by its passage. There was a water-tap and a basin and a bucket and a straw mattress in his shuttered room besides the deal table. At times—and with difficulty he blurted out a word here and there—he must stand silent with his face to the wall, whilst the room was cleaned and his food brought in. But no one spoke and, like all prisoners, he began to live little things, and, above all, for the moments when could tick off the day in his diary and when the aeroplane announced from afar its approach, thundered overhead and died away.

“In a little while I was able to expect it,” he said, “sitting in the dark. Then I would hear it and press the spring of the repeater. It was punctual like a postman, sometimes on the tick of twelve, sometimes few seconds later. I think that waiting for the noise it kept me alive all through that first week. And the one night it didn’t come at all.”

To each one of his auditors, so completely were the held by the sombre fire of his eyes and the simplicity his tale, the sudden drop of his voice to a whisper brought the same shock of catastrophe which the absence of the aeroplane had brought to him.

“Even later on . . . ?” Hanaud began in a hush.

“That night it never passed overhead at all.”

“You are sure? “

“I lay awake until the morning was a grey mist in the room.”

“And what morning was this?” cried Maltby with curious violence.

Old Septimus opened his diary.

“The fourteenth of October. Look! I put a ring about the line which marked the day. For it looked as if I had lost my only friend.”

Maltby almost snatched the diary from his hand.

“Yes, the fourteenth. But you heard it the next night?”

Septimus came to life again. There was a smile upon his face, a kind of lilt in his voice.

“Yes, I heard it the next night. And every night of the six nights which followed. I heard it even yesterday.”

But Maltby had not waited to hear the end of that sentence. He was out of the room. They heard his feet running down the stairs to the hall; and a moment afterwards his voice upon the telephone.

But they distinguished none of the words; and now that Septimus had come to the end of his narrative, the fatigue of his adventure was upon him and his head nodding on his shoulders. A bedroom, however, had been prepared for him and Mr. Ricardo’s housekeeper, a matron and such as one could count upon in that household, was at the door.

“A nice sleep, a nice dinner in bed . . . ”

“And another nice cigar after the dinner,” said Crottle with a grin at Ricardo.

“And the gentleman will be himself again,” observed Mrs. Ffennell, the housekeeper, “if he isn’t that already.”

But there was still some knowledge for which Hanaud could not endure to wait until the next morning.

“Before you go, sir,” he exclaimed, throwing himself in front of Septimus and his hands flapping signals of distress to Ricardo.

“Let us finish with it. You are wondering how you came to find me on a bench half-way along the Fairmile?”

“But exactly,” cried Hanaud.

“Well, I can’t tell you. All I know is that these people, the man and the woman, talked late. I heard their voices through the floorboards. Then I heard the motor-car being brought from somewhere. I used my watch. It was three in the morning. They came up the stairs almost immediately afterwards with the lanthorn. But I was not able to see much, as you know,” and now there was more anger than horror at the indignities which he had suffered. “I was no match for them, even if I had possessed my usual strength. I got up and dressed, whilst they hurried me.”

He stopped for a moment whilst he straightened out his recollections.

“Yes. They were frightened. It gave me a sudden shock of pleasure,” and Crottle’s face cracked with grin more blissful than any which Hanaud could remember. “Their hands shook. They spoke too quickly to be understood, as if the hangman were at their heels.”

Again the old man’s voice dropped to a whisper. “When I could see nothing, nor speak, they were busy with the room. There were nails torn out of the, shutters and the shutters folded back. The mattress was pulled out of the room. It all took a few minutes I think the room was dismantled Then I was take down to the car. They spoke in whispers. We drove off quietly and slowly. Then we drove faster and for hours. But whether we went backwards and forwards, or straight, is more than I can tell. They turned me out about seven o’clock—a little later perhaps.”

He stood for a moment. Mr. Ricardo was looking at his diary. Summer time would end in a couple of days now. The dawn would just be showing when Septimus Crottle was pushed out of the car at the edge of the common.

“Yes, we passed about eight,” Mr. Ricardo declared but Hanaud did not answer.

“That’s all I have to tell you,” said the old man.

Mr. Ricardo sprang to his feet and went with him to the door. There Mrs. Ffennell, the housekeeper, and Thompson awaited him and led him to his room.

“That was interesting,” said Mr. Ricardo as he came back into the room. He saw Hanaud still seated in his chair, his face troubled and perplexed.

“Yes,” he continued, “a terrible story. Did you follow Crottle’s reactions? Now that old fear was at the top of his mind, now the mishandling, the affront to his dignity.”

Mr. Ricardo was excited. He was living great deep moments. He took a glance at the window. Outside, in the Square, men and women were going about their ordinary business, unaware of all that was happening up here just above their heads. An old man telling a story of cruelty, and Hanaud and Maltby and himself launched out to catch the criminals.

“A strange, grim story, my friend,” he cried with pride. He almost added, “Find its equal in France, if you can!”

But, before he could utter so outrageous a boast, Hanaud quietly interposed.

“Do you know what I find most curious? They were frightened. The man and the woman. In the middle of the night they must take the old fellow away, dump him somewhere along an empty road and fly off. They were frightened. Why? No one challenged them. Why?”

He was still pondering this question when the door was flung open. Maltby came back into the room and his face was alight.

“Mr. Crottle?” he asked.

“He has gone to bed.”

“Good. There will be a plain-clothes officer in the house to-night. He will run no danger.”

Hanaud looked up at him.

“You have news?”

Maltby nodded his head. Mr. Ricardo could have shaken him. He had no vivacity, no emotions? But at last Maltby spoke.

“The Western Air Company flies a nightly service from Heston. It stops at Taunton, Exeter and Plymouth. It leaves Heston at eleven. On the night of the fourteenth of October the engine failed a quarter of an hour after it had taken off. It was able to return to Heston. There was no service to Plymouth that night.”


The House in Lordship Lane - Contents    |     Chapter 26 - Two of the Little Accidents


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