"I've told him," said Beaumaroy.

"Of heart disease," Mary added. "Quite painlessly, I think--and quite a normal case, though, of course, it's distressing."

"I--I'm sorry," stammered Captain Alec.

Beaumaroy's eyes met Mary's in the candle's light with a swift glance of surprise and inquiry.

CHAPTER XVI

DEAD MAJESTY

Mary did not appear to answer Beaumaroy's glance; she continued to look at, and to address herself to, Captain Alec. "I am tired, and I should love a ride home. But I've still a little to do, and--I know it's awfully late, but would you mind waiting just a little while? I'm afraid I might be as much as half-an-hour."

"Right you are, Doctor Mary--as long as you like. I'll walk up and down, and smoke a cigar; I want one badly." Mary made an extremely faint motion of her hand towards the house. "Oh, thanks, but really I--well, I shall feel more comfortable here, I think."

Mary smiled; it was always safe to rely on Captain Alec's fine feelings; under the circ.u.mstances he would--she had felt pretty sure--prefer to smoke his cigar outside the house. "I'll be as quick as I can. Come, Mr.

Beaumaroy!"

Beaumaroy followed her up the path and into the house. The Sergeant was still on the floor of the pa.s.sage; he rolled apprehensive resentful eyes at them; Mary took no heed of him, but preceded Beaumaroy into the parlor and shut the door.

"I don't know what your game is," remarked Beaumaroy in a low voice, "but you couldn't have played mine better. I don't want him inside the house; but I'm mighty glad to have him extremely visible outside it."

"It was very quiet inside there"--she pointed to the door of the Tower--"just before I came out. Before that, I'd heard odd sounds. Was there somebody there--and the Sergeant in league with him?"

"Exactly," smiled Beaumaroy. "It is all quiet. I think I'll have a look."

The candle on the table had burnt out. He took another from the sideboard and lit it from the one which Mary still held.

"Like the poker?" she asked, with a flicker of a smile on her face.

"No you come and help, if I cry out!" He could not repress a chuckle; Doctor Mary was interesting him extremely.

Lighted by his candle, he went into the Tower. She heard him moving about there, as she stood thoughtfully by the extinct fire, still with her candle in her hand.

Beaumaroy returned. "He's gone--or they've gone." He exhibited to her gaze two objects--a checked pocket-handkerchief and a tobacco pouch.

"Number one found on the edge of the grave--Number two on the floor of the dais, just behind the canopy. If the same man had drawn them both out of the same pocket at the same time--wanting to blow the same nose, Doctor Mary--they'd have fallen at the same place, wouldn't they?"

"Wonderful, Holmes!" said Mary. "And now, shall we attend to Mr.

Saffron?"

They carried out that office, the course of which they had originally prepared. Beaumaroy pa.s.sed with his burden hard by the Sergeant, and Mary followed. In a quarter of an hour they came downstairs again, and Mary again led the way into the parlor. She went to the window, and drew the curtains aside a little way. The lights of the car were burning; the Captain's tall figure fell within their rays and was plainly visible, strolling up and down; the ambit of the rays did not, however, embrace the Tower window. The Captain paced and smoked, patient, content, gone back to his own happy memories and antic.i.p.ations. Mary returned to the table and set her candle down on it.

"All right. I think we can keep him a little longer."

"I vote we do," said Beaumaroy. "I reckon he's scared the fellows away, and they won't come back so long as they see his lights."

Rash at conclusions sometimes--as has been seen--Beaumaroy was right in his opinion of the Captain's value as a sentry, or a scarecrow to keep away hungry birds. The confederates had stolen back to their base of operations--to where their car lay behind the trees. There, too, no Sergeant and no sack! Neddy reached for his roomy flask, drank of it, and with hoa.r.s.e curses consigned the entire course of events, his accomplices, even himself, to nethermost perdition. "That place ain't--natural!" he ended in a gloomy conviction. "'Oo pinched that sack?

The Sergeant? Well--maybe it was, and maybe it wasn't." He finished the flask to cure a recurrence of the shudders.

Mike prevailed with him so far that he consented--reluctantly--to be left alone on the blasted heath, while his friend went back to reconnoiter.

Mike went, and presently returned; the car was still there, the tall figure was still pacing up and down.

"And perhaps the other one's gone for the police!" Mike suggested uneasily. "Guess we've lost the hand, Neddy! Best be moving, eh? It's no go for to-night."

"Catch me trying the bloomin' place any other night!" grumbled Neddy.

"It's given me the 'orrors, and no mistake."

Mike--Mr. Percy Bennett, that erstwhile gentlemanly stranger--recognized one of his failures. Such things are incidental to all professions.

"Our best game is to go back; if the Sergeant's on the square, we'll hear from him." But he spoke without much hope; rationalist as he professed himself, still he was affected by the atmosphere of the Tower.

With what difficulty do we entirely throw off atavistic notions! They both of them had, at the bottom of their minds, the idea that the dead man on the high seat had defeated them, and that no luck lay in meddling with his treasure.

"I 'ave my doubts whether that ugly Sergeant's 'uman himself," growled Neddy, as he hoisted his bulk into the car.

So they went back to whence they came; and the impression that the night's adventure left upon them was heightened as the days went by. For, strange to say, though they watched all the usual channels of information, as Ministers say; in Parliament, and also tried to open up some unusual ones, they never heard anything again of the Sergeant, of the sack of gold, of the yawning tomb with its golden lining, of its silent waxen-faced enthroned guardian who had defeated them. It all--the whole bizarre scene--vanished from their ken, as though it had been one of those alluring, thwarting dreams which afflict men in sleep. It was an experience to which they were shy of alluding among their confidential friends, even of talking about between themselves. In a word--uncomfortable!

Meanwhile the Sergeant's a.s.sociation with Tower Cottage had also drawn to its close. After his search and his discovery in the Tower, Beaumaroy came out into the pa.s.sage where the prisoner lay, and proceeded to unfasten his bonds.

"Stand up and listen to me, Sergeant," he said. "Your pals have run away; they can't help you, and they wouldn't if they could, because, owing to you, they haven't got away with any plunder, and so they'll be in a very bad temper with you. In the road, in front of the house, is Captain Naylor--you know that officer and his dimensions? He's in a very temper with you too. (Here Beaumaroy was embroidering the situation; the Sergeant was not really in Captain Alec's thoughts.) Finally, I'm in a very bad temper with you myself. If I see your ugly phiz much longer, I may break out. Don't you think you'd better depart--by the back door--and go home? And if you're not out of Inkston for good and all by ten o'clock in the morning, and if you ever show yourself there again, look out for squalls. What you've got out of this business I don't know. You can keep it--and I'll give you a parting present myself as well."

"I knows a thing or two--" the Sergeant began, but he saw a look that he had seen only once or twice before on Beaumaroy's face; on each occasion it had been followed by the death of the enemy whose act had elicited it.

"Oh, try that game, just try it!" Beaumaroy muttered. "Just give me that excuse!" He advanced to the Sergeant, who fell suddenly on his knees.

"Don't make a noise, you hound, or I'll silence you for good and all--I'd do it for twopence!" He took hold of the Sergeant's coat-collar, jerked him on to his legs, and propelled him to the kitchen and through it to the back door. Opening it, he dispatched the Sergeant through the doorway with an accurate and vigorous kick. He fell, and lay sprawling on the ground for a second, then gathered himself up and ran hastily over the heath, soon disappearing in the darkness. The memory of Beaumaroy's look was even keener than the sensation caused by Beaumaroy's boot. It sent him in flight back to Inkston, thence to London, thence into the unknown, to some spot chosen for its remoteness from Beaumaroy, from Captain Naylor, from Mike and from Neddy. He recognized his unpopularity, thereby achieving a triumph in a difficult little branch of wisdom.

Beaumaroy returned to the parlor hastily; not so much to avoid keeping Captain Alec waiting--it was quite a useful precaution to have that sentry on duty a little longer--as because his curiosity and interest had been excited by the description which Doctor Mary had given of Mr.

Saffron's death. It was true, probably the precise truth, but it seemed to have been volunteered in a rather remarkable way and worded with careful purpose. Also it was the bare truth, the truth denuded of all its attendant circ.u.mstances--which had not been normal.

When he rejoined her, Mary was sitting in the armchair by the fire; she heard his account of the state of affairs up-to-date with a thoughtful smile, smoking a cigarette; her smile broadened over the tale of the water-b.u.t.t. She had put on the fur cloak in which she had walked to the cottage--the fire was out and the room cold; framed in the furs, the outline of her face looked softer.

"So we stand more or less as we did before the burglars appeared on the scene," she commented.

"Except that our personal exertions have saved that money."

"I suppose you would prefer that all the circ.u.mstances shouldn't come out? There have been irregularities."

"I should prefer that, not so much on my own account--I don't know and don't care what they could do to me--as for the old man's sake."

"If I know you, I think you would rather enjoy being able to keep your secret. You like having the laugh of people. I know that myself, Mr.

Beaumaroy." She exchanged a smile with him. "You want a death certificate from me," she added.

"I suppose I do," Beaumaroy agreed.

"In the sort of terms in which I described Mr. Saffron's death to Captain Alec? If I gave such a certificate, there would remain nothing--well, nothing peculiar--except the--the appearance of things in the Tower."

Her eyes were now fixed on his face; he nodded his head with a smile of understanding. There was something new in the tone of Doctor Mary's voice; not only friendliness, though that was there, but a note of excitement, of enjoyment, as though she also were not superior to the pleasure of having the laugh of people. "But it's rather straining a point to say that--and nothing more. I could do it only if you made me feel that I could trust you absolutely."