"It's not a question of what I thought I saw; I should not have made an accusation of that sort had I not been certain. Just as you see me strike this match"--he struck one to ill.u.s.trate his words--"as certainly I saw Beaton cheat."

"I'm not denying that in the least, but, you see, I didn't."

"What has that to do with the matter? If I tell you that I did strike this match, are you to be at liberty to doubt it merely because you didn't happen to see me do it?"

"The things ain't the same; you can't compare them. Because you're satisfied that you saw Sydney Beaton cheat, it doesn't follow that I am; and until I am I'm not going to keep the money which was his if he played fair."

"You seem to be altogether forgetting," put in Frank Clifford, "that Dodwell wasn't the only person who saw. What about Draycott? And look at the way in which Beaton did a bunk!"

"I'm not so sure, if I'd been treated as we treated him, that I shouldn't have acted as Beaton did; we had all of us had as much as was good for us to drink--and that's where it was. As for Draycott, I had a chat or two with him, and it isn't so clear to me as it might be, that he wasn't rather sorry that he spoke."

Anthony Dodwell had looked very black, and he then and there publicly announced that if that was the way in which Tickell chose to look at it, he would insist on having the whole business referred to arbitrators, who would act as members of a court of honour.

So far Dodwell had not gone any farther; that is, he had not brought the matter before his official superiors in a form which would render it impossible for them to continue to ignore it. It is possible that he had been given the hint not to, and that words had been spoken both to him and to Mr. Tickell which had been meant to be not only words of healing, but also of warning.

That night, at the mess dinner, Dodwell had seemed to be in a curious frame of mind; nor, when they were in the billiard-room, did his mood seem to have sweetened. He had what is apt to be a very unpopular possession--a biting tongue; under the guise of a smiling exterior he could, when he liked, set a whole room by the ears. Jackie Tickell not only never said willingly a thing which could wound either the present or the absent, but there were not infrequent occasions when it was only with difficulty that he said anything at all; his tongue was certainly not the readiest part of him, a fact of which Dodwell, apparently relying on his notorious good temper, had more than once taken advantage. Dodwell played all games well; the different varieties of billiards he played almost as well as a professional. Tickell played very few games well; at billiards he was a notorious duffer; why he ever played snooker--which, for a poor performer, in good company, at anything like points, is apt to be an expensive amus.e.m.e.nt--he alone could tell. What amus.e.m.e.nt he derived from it was a mystery; at the end of a game he was almost invariably the one player who had to pay all the others. Yet there never was a game of snooker from which he was willingly left out.

That evening he was, if possible, playing worse than usual, missing easy shots, leaving certainties for the man who followed--who happened to be Dodwell. Thanks partly to his own skill, and almost as much to Jackie's generosity, Anthony Dodwell was piling up a huge score, and nearly every time he put a ball down he returned sarcastic thanks to Jackie. As a bad player of snooker pool not only loses himself, but is the cause of loss to others, Jackie's misdemeanours gratified no one but Dodwell.

"Really, Jackie," declared Cyril Harding, when on one occasion he had managed to leave a white ball over one pocket and, in some mysterious fashion, the black over another, "you might be doing it on purpose. I wonder how many that is you've given Dodwell?"

"I do seem to be making rather a mess of it tonight," admitted Jackie.

"I sometimes wonder," persisted Payne, "if it ever occurs to you that you are not the only person who has to pay. If there's anything to which I personally object, it is to seeing Dodwell get that a.s.sistance that he does not stand in need of; as if he couldn't put the lot of us in the cart without help from anyone."

Dodwell, putting down both the white and the black, proceeded to make a break, for which he professed himself grateful to Jackie at the end.

"Thank you, Tickell; these gifts which you persist in making me are really rather overwhelming. Every time I come to the table I find that you have left me everything you possibly can; I hope the victims of your unnatural generosity will not think that we are in collusion. Do you know, I myself am almost moved to wonder if you are doing it on purpose?"

Mr. Tickell looked unhappy, but he said nothing; his tongue, as was its wont, seemed to be tied in a knot. He moved away from Dodwell's neighbourhood; but the other's sarcasm followed him.

"I'm in rather a difficult position; if I don't take advantage of your leaves they'll think that I'm not trying; and if I do, since they are so regular, they'll wonder."

As the victim continued silent, and something in the bearing of the others more than hinted that in their opinion he was going too far, some contrary spirit seemed to push Dodwell farther still.

"At bridge, I've heard it maintained that a bad player ought to pay his partner's losses; if that was the rule at snooker, Tickell, it would be awkward for you; you might have to break in on that little pot of money of which we have heard so much, and which you so chivalrously refused to put into your pocket because, as I understand the matter, some friend of yours put Noel Draycott away."

At this Major Reith, who was the senior officer present, interposed.

"Dodwell, you have no right to say that sort of thing."

"In your opinion? Thank you for its expression."

Jackie Tickell came towards the speaker.

"I didn't quite catch what you said, Dodwell--at least, I hope I didn't. Did I understand you to say that a friend of mine had put Noel Draycott away?"

"It would at least appear--I won't say at a convenient moment for you--that someone has--would you prefer that I should use another form of words, and say--murdered Noel Draycott?"

"Who says that someone has murdered Noel Draycott?"

The words did not come from one of the previous speakers; they were uttered by someone who had just come into the room; in a voice which was startlingly familiar to all those who heard it. With one accord each man in the room turned round to stare in the direction from which the words had come. Just standing inside the doorway was the man who had first been spoken of as having been put out of the way, and then as having been murdered--Noel Draycott.

CHAPTER XXVIII

An Irregular Visitor

It was probably some moments before the occupants of the billiard-room realised what had happened; it was certainly some little time before they even dimly perceived what the advent of the new-comer must mean.

It was George Payne's turn to play; he was just about to make his stroke when the door had opened. Leaning over the table, his cue in position, he stared at the man who had just come in at the door. The other players, each with his cue in his hand, stared too.

Noel Draycott was something to stare at. He seemed to have grown thinner since they had seen him last; he looked as if he had been ill.

There was a recently healed scar on his forehead, another right across his left cheek. His hair had been cut very close to his head, a strip of plaster came from the back to the front. The fact was unmistakable that he must have been pretty considerably in the wars. He had on a dinner-jacket. In his right hand was an ebony cane with a crook handle, on which he seemed to lean as if in need of its support.

He stood looking round the room as if searching for individual faces.

His eyes rested first on one and then on another with a glance as of pleased recognition. When they reached Dodwell they rested on him rather longer than on any of the others, with, this time, something in them which was hardly pleasure.

It was he who broke the silence which had followed his appearance with a question:

"Playing snooker? Don't let me interrupt you. Go on playing. You look as though you had got an easy one. How's the family--all all right?"

As he came farther into the room they broke into speech; they came crowding round him.

"Noel, old man!" exclaimed Clifford, "is this a little game which you've been playing? To spring a surprise on us like this when we were all thinking---- Why, on my word, I was very nearly on the point of going into mourning. I'd sooner see you--I don't know that there is anything I'd rather see."

A hearty chorus of welcome greeted him from all sides.

"Draycott," declared Major Reith, "you may laugh at me, but as I look at you I hardly know whether I am standing on my head or my heels. Do you know that when last I saw you I would have been willing to swear before a jury of medical men that you were dead? My dear, dear man, if you only knew how glad I am to see you--what a weight you are lifting off my mind. You're sure you're not a ghost?"

Draycott's smile was a little pale and wan, as if the major's suggestion was hardly as much of a joke as he would have liked it to be.

"I've always understood that ghosts are unsubstantial things. If you'll have a prod at me with your cue, you'll find that I'm solid enough; only go easy--I'm not yet as firm on my pins as I mean to be soon."

"But, my dear fellow, where on earth have you been hiding all this time? Do you know that all the papers are full of what they call the mysterious disappearance of Captain Draycott? All sorts of theories have been started, but none of them has ever come to anything. People were beginning to wonder if you had been s.n.a.t.c.hed up by a flying machine, and carried above the clouds; and now you drop in in this unexpected fashion as if we'd only seen you half an hour ago! Do you realise the fact that you'll have to give a realistic account of what you've been up to, and why you've been keeping the readers of the halfpenny papers all gaping with wonder?"

"As it happens, I do recognise that some sort of explanation is required; and it is to give it, after a fashion, that I've come.

Captain Dodwell, may I trouble you not to leave the room?"

Anthony Dodwell had not been among those who had crowded round to bid the new-comer welcome. His demeanour had been singular. The major had spoken of Draycott as a possible ghost. Captain Dodwell was regarding him not only as if he were an actual ghost, but almost, as it seemed, with the unreasonable terror with which people are supposed to regard spectral visitants in tales and legends. At the sound of Draycott's voice he had started as if someone had struck him a heavy blow; when, turning, he saw him standing in the flesh, he gazed at him as if he were the most horrible sight he had ever seen. So far from showing any inclination to join the others in their cries of welcome, he had drawn himself farther and farther away from the object of so much attention, until, having at last reached the neighbourhood of the door, he seemed inclined to take himself through it.

It was this disposition which Noel Draycott's words were intended to check. Their immediate result was to divert general attention to Captain Dodwell. To judge from the look which came upon the different men's faces, the peculiarity of his bearing seemed to occasion them almost as much surprise as Draycott's original unexpected appearance.

There was no cooler person in the regiment than Anthony Dodwell. In a community in which sangfroid had been raised to the dignity of a fetish, his calmness had become a byword. That you could never take Anthony Dodwell by surprise; that under no conceivable conditions would he ever turn a hair; that he would continue wholly at his ease under all sorts of unpromising conditions; that he would meet difficulty, danger, death, with a smile--these were axioms among those who knew him.

How far removed from fact these judgments of his friends were, it needed at that moment only one glance at Anthony Dodwell to show.

Something, stirring him to the very sources of his being, had upset his equilibrium so entirely that it almost seemed to them as if they looked upon a stranger. When Draycott uttered his quietly spoken request that he would not leave the room, he stood for a second motionless; then, as he glanced at the speaker over his shoulder, they could see that his face had been transfigured by some violent emotion which was beyond their comprehension. It was with an effort which was obvious to all of them that at last he managed to speak.