A.E.W. Mason - The Summons

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"No!" he said. "No!" and he began to fold it up very carefully. "It's as
Millie says, a rather intolerable invention which has crept into the
social news. I must consider what steps we should take."

There was another at that table who was as disturbed as Sir Chichester
and Lady Splay. Martin Hillyard knew nothing of the paragraph which had
caused this consternation in his hosts; and he had asked no questions
last night. But he remembered every word that Joan had said. She had
seen Mario Escobar somewhere since leaving Rackham Park--that was
certain; and Mario Escobar had demanded information. "Demanded" was the
word which Joan had used. Mario Escobar was of the blackmailing type.
Martin's heart was in his mouth.

"An invention about us here?" he asked.

"About one of us," answered Sir Chichester; and Martin dared ask no
more.

Harry Luttrell, however, had none of Martin's knowledge to restrain him.

"In that case, sir, wouldn't it be wiser to read it now, aloud?" he
suggested. "It can't be suppressed now. Sooner or later every one will
hear of it."

Every one agreed except Hillyard. To him Harry Luttrell seemed wilfully
to be rushing towards catastrophe.

"Yes ... yes," said Sir Chichester slowly. He unfolded his newspaper
again and read; and of all those who listened no one was more amazed
than Hillyard himself. Mario Escobar had no hand in this abominable
work. For this is what Sir Chichester read:

"'A mysterious and tragic event has occurred at Rackham Park, where Sir
Chichester Splay, the well-known Baronet----'" He broke off to observe,
"Really, it's put quite civilly, Millie. It's a dreadful mistake, but so
far as the wording of the Editor is concerned it's put really more
considerately than I noticed at first."

"Oh, please go on," cried Millie.

"Very well, my dear," and he resumed--"where Sir Chichester Splay, the
well-known Baronet is entertaining a small party. At an early hour this
morning Mrs. Croyle, one of Sir Chichester's guests, died under strange
circumstances."

Miranda uttered a little scream.

"Died!" she exclaimed.

"Yes, listen to this," said Sir Chichester. "Mrs. Croyle was discovered
lying upon her side with her face bent above a glass of chloroform. The
glass was supported between her pillows and Mrs. Croyle's fingers were
still grasping it when she was discovered."

A gasp of indignation and horror ran round that breakfast table when Sir
Chichester had finished.

"It's so atrociously circumstantial," said Mr. Albany Todd.

"Yes." Sir Chichester seized upon the point. "That's the really damnable
point about it. That's real malice. This report will linger and live
long after the denial and apology are published."

Lady Splay raised her head.

"I can't imagine who can have sent in such a cowardly lie. Enemies of
us? Or enemies of Stella?"

"We can think that out afterwards, Lady Splay," said Harold Jupp. He was
of a practical matter-of-fact mind and every one turned to listen to his
suggestion. "The first thing to do is to get the report contradicted in
the evening papers."

"Of course."

There was something to be done. All grasped at the doing of it in sheer
relief--except one. For as the men rose, saying; one "I'll look after
it"; and another "No, you'd better leave it to me," Luttrell's voice
broke in upon them all, with a sort of dreadful fatality in the quiet
sound of it.

"Where is Mrs. Croyle now?" he asked, and he was as white as the
tablecloth in front of him.

There was no further movement towards the door. Slowly the men resumed
their seats. A silence followed in which person after person looked at
Stella's empty place as though an intensity of gaze would materialise
her there. Miranda was the first bravely to break through it.

"She hasn't come down yet," she said, and Millie Splay seized upon the
words.

"No, she never comes down for breakfast--never has all this week."

"Yes, that's true," returned Dennis Brown with an attempt at
cheerfulness.

"Besides--what makes--the idea--impossible," said Sir Chichester, "is
the publication this morning. There wouldn't have been time.... It's
clearly an atrocious piece of malice." He was speaking with an obvious
effort to convince himself that the monstrous thing was false. But he
collapsed suddenly and once more discomfort and silence reigned in the
room.

"Stella's not well," Millie Splay took up the tale. "That's why she is
seldom seen before twelve. Those headaches of hers----" and suddenly she
in her turn broke off. She leaned forward and pressed the electric bell
upon the tablecloth beside her. That small trivial action brought its
relief, lightened the vague cloud of misgiving which since Luttrell had
spoken, had settled upon all.

"You rang, my lady," said Harper in the doorway.

"Yes, Harper. We were making some plans for a picnic to-day and we
should like to know if Mrs. Croyle will join us. Can you find out from
her maid whether she is awake?"

It was superbly done. There was not a quaver in Lady Splay's voice, not
a sign of agitation in her manner.

"I'll inquire, my lady," replied Harper, and he left the room upon his
errand.

"One thing is certain," Mr. Albany Todd broke in. "I was watching Harper
over your shoulder, Lady Splay. He hasn't seen the paragraph. There's
nothing known of it in the servants' hall."

Sir Chichester nodded, and Millie Splay observed:

"Harper's so imperturbable that he always inspires me with confidence. I
feel that nothing out of the way could really happen whilst he was in
the house." And her attitude of tension did greatly relax as she
thought, illogically enough, of that stolid butler. A suggestion made by
Martin Hillyard set them to work whilst they waited.

"Let us see if the report is in any of the other papers," and all
immediately were busy with that examination--except one again. And that
one again, Harry Luttrell. He sat in his place motionless, his eyes
transfixed upon some vision of horror--as if he _knew_, Martin said to
himself, yes, as if all these questions were futile, as if he _knew_.

But no other newspaper had printed the paragraph. They had hardly
assured themselves of this fact, when Harper once more stood in the
doorway.

"Mrs. Croyle gave orders last night to her maid that she was not to be
disturbed until she rang, my lady," he said.

"And she has not rung?" Millie asked.

"No, my lady."

Miranda suddenly laughed in an odd fashion and swayed in her chair.

"Miranda!" Millie Splay brought her back to her self-control with a
sharp cry of rebuke. Then she resumed to Harper.

"I will take the responsibility of waking Mrs. Croyle. Will you please,
ask her maid to rouse Mrs. Croyle, and inquire whether she will join us
this morning. We shall start at twelve."

"Very well, my lady."

There was no longer any pretence of ease amongst the people seated round
the table. A queer panic passed from one to the other. They were awed by
the imminence of dreadful uncomprehended things. They waited in silence,
like people under a spell, and from somewhere in the house above their
heads, there sounded a loud rapping upon a door. They held their breath,
straining to hear the grate of a key in a lock, and the opening of that
door. They heard only the knocking repeated and repeated again. It was
followed by a sound of hurrying feet.

Jenny Prask ran down the great main staircase, and burst into the
breakfast room, her face mottled with terror, her hand spread above her
heart to still its wild beating.

"My lady! My lady! The door's locked. I can get no answer. I am afraid."

Sir Chichester rose abruptly from his chair. But Jenny Prask had more to
say.

"The key had been removed. My lady, I looked through the keyhole. The
lights are still burning in the room."

"Oh!"

Martin Hillyard had started to his feet. He remembered another time when
the lights had been burning in Stella Croyle's room in the full blaze of
a summer morning. She was sitting at the writing-table then. She had
been sitting there all through the night making meaningless signs and
figures upon the paper and the blotting-pad in front of her. The full
significance of that flight of the unhappy Stella to the little hotel
below the Hog's Back was now revealed to him. But between that morning
and this, there was an enormous difference. She had opened her door then
in answer to the knocking.

"We must get through that door, Lady Splay," he said. Sir Chichester was
already up and about in a busy agitation.

"Yes, to be sure. It's just an ordinary lock. We shall easily find a key
to fit it. I'll take Harper with me, and perhaps, Millie, you will
come."

"Yes, I'll come," said Millie quietly. After her first shock of horror
and surprise when she had first chanced upon the paragraph in the
_Harpoon_, she had been completely, wonderfully, mistress of herself.

"The rest of you will please stay downstairs," said Sir Chichester, as
he removed the key from the door of the room. Jenny Prask was not thus
to be disposed of.

"Oh, my lady, I must go up too!" she cried, twisting her hands together.
"Mrs. Croyle was always very kind to me, poor lady. I must come!"

"She won't keep her head," Sir Chichester objected, who was fast losing
his. But Milly Splay laid her hand upon the girl's arm.

"Yes, you shall come with us, Jenny," she said gently, and the four of
them moved out of the room.

The others followed them as far as the hall, and stood grouped at the
foot of the staircase.

"Miranda, would you like to go out into the air?" Dennis Brown asked
with solicitude of his wife.

"No, dear, I am all right. I--oh, poor woman!" and with a sob she
dropped her face in her hands.

"Hush!" Luttrell called sharply for silence, and a moment afterwards, a
loud shrill scream rent the air like lightning.

Miranda cowered from it.

"Jenny Prask!" said Hillyard.

"Then--then--the news is true," faltered Miranda, and she would have
fallen but for the arm of her husband about her waist.

They waited until Sir Chichester came down the stairs to them. He was
shaken and trembling. He, the spectator of dramas, was now a character
in one most tragically enacted under his own roof.

"The report is true to the letter," he said in a low voice. "Dennis,
will you go for McKerrel, the doctor. You know his house in Midhurst.
Will you take your car, and bring him back. There is nothing more that
we can do until he comes." He stood for a little while by the table in
the hall, staring down at it, and taking particular note of its grain.

"A curious thing," he said. "The key of her room is missing altogether."

To no one did it come at this moment that the disappearance of the key
was to prove a point of vast importance. No one made any comment, and
Sir Chichester fell to silence again. "She looked like a child
sleeping," he said at length, "a child without a care."

Then he sat down and took the newspaper from his pocket. Mr. Albany Todd
suddenly advanced to Harry Luttrell. He had been no less observant than
Martin Hillyard.

"You alone, Colonel Luttrell," he said, "were not surprised."

"I was not," answered Harry frankly. "I was shocked, but not surprised.
For I knew Mrs. Croyle at a time when she was so tormented that she
could not sleep at all. During that time she learnt to take drugs, and
especially that drug in precisely that way that the newspaper
described."

The men drifted out of the hall on to the lawn, leaving Sir Chichester
brooding above the outspread sheets of the _Harpoon_. Here was the
insoluble sinister question to which somehow he had to find an answer.
Stella Croyle died late last night, in the country, at Rackham Park; and
yet in this very morning's issue of the newspaper, her death with every
circumstance and detail was truthfully recorded, hours before it was
even known by anybody in the house itself.

"How can that be?" Sir Chichester exclaimed in despair. "How can it
be?"

CHAPTER XXIX

JENNY PUTS UP HER FIGHT

Stella, the undisciplined! She had flung out of the rank and file, as
long ago Sir Charles Hardiman had put it, and to this end she had come,
waywardness exacting its inexorable price. Harry Luttrell, however, was
not able to lull his conscience with any such easy reflections. He
walked with Martin Hillyard apart in the garden.

"I am to blame," he cried. "I took on a responsibility for Stella when I
went out of my way to do one kind, foolish thing.... Yet, she would have
killed herself if I hadn't--as she has done five years afterwards!... I
couldn't leave her when I had brought her home ... she was in such
misery!... and it couldn't have gone on.... Old Hardiman was right about
that.... It would have ended in a quarrel when unforgivable words would
have been used.... Yet, perhaps, if that had happened she wouldn't have
killed herself.... Oh, I don't know!"

Martin Hillyard had never seen Harry Luttrell so moved or sunk in such
remorse. He did not argue, lest he should but add fuel to this high
flame of self-reproach. Life had become so much easier as a problem with
him, so much inner probing and speculation and worry about small
vanities had been smoothed away since he had been engaged day after day
in a definite service which was building up by a law deduced here, an
inspired formula there, a tradition for its servants. The service, the
tradition, would dissolve and blow to nothing, when peace came again.
Meanwhile there was the worth of traditional service made clear to him,
in an indifference to the little enmities which before would have hurt
and rankled, in a freedom from doubt when decision was needed, above all
in a sort of underlying calm which strengthened as his life became more
turbulently active.

"It's a clear principle of life which make the difference," he said,
hesitating, because to say even so much made him feel a prig. "Stella
just drifted from unhappiness to unhappiness----"

But Harry Luttrell had no attention to give to him.

"I simply couldn't have gone on," he cried. "It wasn't a question of my
ruin or not.... It was simply beyond me to go on.... There were other
things more powerful.... You know! I once told you on the river above
Kennington Island.... Oh, my God, I am in such a tangle of argument--and
there she is up there--only thirty, and beautiful--such a queer, wayward
kid--'like a child sleeping.'"

He quoted Sir Chichester's phrase, and hurried away from his friend.

"I shall be back in a little while," he muttered. His bad hour was upon
him, and he must wrestle with it alone.

Martin Hillyard returned to the hall, and found Sir Chichester with the
doctor, a short, rugged Scotsman. Dr. McKerrel was saying:

"There's nothing whatever for me to do, Sir Chichester," he said. "The
poor creature must have died somewhere about one o'clock of the
morning." He saw Sir Chichester with a start fall once more to reading
the paragraph in the _Harpoon_, and continued with a warmth of
admiration, "Eh, but those newspaper fellows are quick! I saw the
_Harpoon_ this morning, and it was lucky I did. For I'd ha' been on my
rounds otherwise when that young fellow called for me."

"It was good of you to come so quickly," said Sir Chichester.

"I shall charge for it," replied Dr. McKerrel. "I'll just step round to
the Peace Officer at once, and I'll be obliged if you'll not have that
glass with the chloroform touched again. I have put it aside."

Martin Hillyard was disturbed.

"There will have to be an inquest then?" he asked.

"Aye, but there wull."

"In a case of this kind," Sir Chichester suggested, "it would be better
if it could be avoided."

"But it can't," answered Dr. McKerrel bluntly. "And for my part, I tell
you frankly, Sir Chichester, I have no great pity for poor neurotic
bodies like the young lady upstairs. If she had had a little of my work
to do, she would have been too tired in the evening to think about her
worries." He looked at the disconsolate Baronet with a sudden twinkle in
his eye. "Eh, man, but you'll get all the publicity you want over this
case."

Sir Chichester had no rejoinder to the quip; and his unwonted meekness
caused McKerrel to relent. He stopped at the door, and said:

"I'll give you a hint. The coroner can cut the inquest down to the
barest necessary limits, if he has got all the facts clear beforehand.
If he has got to explore in the dark, he'll ask questions here and
questions there, and you never know, nor does he, what he's going to
drag out to light in the end. But let him have it all clear and straight
first! There's only one character I know of, more free from regulations
and limitations and red-tape than a coroner, and that's the
police-sergeant who runs the coroner. Goodday to you."

A telegram was brought to Martin Hillyard whilst McKerrel was yet
speaking; and Hillyard read it with relief. Mario Escobar had been taken
that morning as he was leaving the hotel for the morning train to
London. He was now on his way to an internment camp. So that
complication was smoothed out at all events. He agreed with Sir
Chichester Splay that it would be prudent to carry out McKerrel's
suggestion at once.

"I will make the document out," said Sir Chichester importantly. Give
him a little work which set him in the limelight as the leader of the
Chorus, and nothing could keep down his spirits. He took a sheet of
foolscap, a blotting pad, a heavy inkstand, and a quill pen--Sir
Chichester never used anything but a quill pen--to the big table in the
middle of the hall, and wrote in a fair, round hand:

"The case of Mrs. Croyle."

and looked at his work and thought it good.

"It looks quite like a _cause celebre_, doesn't it?" he said buoyantly.
But he caught Martin Hillyard's eye, and recovered his more becoming
despondency. Harry Luttrell came in as the baronet settled once more to
his task. He laid a shining key upon the table and said:

"I found this upon the lawn. It looked as if it might be the key of Mrs.
Croyle's room."

It was undoubtedly the key of a door. "We'll find out," said the
baronet. Harper was sent for and commissioned to inquire. He returned in
a few minutes.

"Yes, sir, it is the key of Mrs. Croyle's room." He laid it upon the
table and went out of the room.

"I suppose it is then," said Harry Luttrell. "But I am a little
puzzled."

"Oh?"

"It wasn't lying beneath Mrs. Croyle's window as one might have
expected. But at the east side of the house, below the corridor, and
almost in front of the glass door of the library."

Both of his hearers were disturbed. Sir Chichester took up the key, and
twisted it this way and that, till it flashed like a point of fire in
the sunlight; as though under such giddy work it would yield up its
secret for the sake of peace. He flung it on the table again, where it
rattled and lay still.

"I can't make head or tail of it," Sir Chichester cried. Martin Hillyard
opened his mouth to speak and thought better of it. He could not falter
in his belief that Stella had destroyed herself. The picture of her that
morning in Surrey, with the lamps burning in her room and the bed
untouched, was too vivid in his memory. What she had tried to do two
years ago, she had found the courage to do to-day.

That was sure. But it was not all. There was some one in the shadows who
meant harm, more harm than was already accomplished. There was
malevolence at work. The discovery of the key in that position far from
Stella's window assured him of it. The aspect of the key itself as it
lay upon the table made the assurance still more sure. But whom was this
malevolence to hurt? And how? At what moment would the hand behind the
curtain strike? And whose hand would it be? These were questions which
locked his lips tight. It was for him to watch and discover, for he
alone overlooked the battle-field, and if he failed, God help his
friends at Rackham Park. Mario Escobar? Mario Escobar could at all
events do no harm now.

Sir Chichester explained to Harry Luttrell Dr. McKerrel's suggestion.

"Just a clear, succinct statement of the facts. The witnesses, and what
each one knows and is ready to depose. I shall put the statement before
the coroner, who is a very good fellow, and we shall escape with as
little scandal as possible. Now, let me see----" Sir Chichester put on
his glasses. "The most important witness, of course, will be Stella's
maid."

Sir Chichester rang the bell, and in answer to his summons Jenny came
down the stairs. Her eyes were red with weeping and she was very pale.
But she bore herself steadily.

"You wanted me, sir?" she asked. Her eyes travelled from one to the
other of the three men in the hall. They rested for a little moment
longer upon Harry Luttrell than upon the rest; and it seemed to Hillyard
that as they rested there they glittered strangely, and that the ghost
of a smile flickered about her mouth.

"Yes," said Sir Chichester, pompously. "You understand that there will
have to be an inquiry into the cause of Mrs. Croyle's death; and one
wants for the sake of everybody, your dead mistress more than any one,
that there should be as little talk as possible."

Jenny's voice cut in like ice.

"Mrs. Croyle had no reason that I know of to fear the fullest inquiry."

"Quite so! Quite so!" returned Sir Chichester, shifting his ground. "But
it will save time if we get the facts concisely together."

Jenny stepped forward, and stood at the end of the table opposite to the
baronet.

"I am quite willing, sir," she said respectfully, "to answer any
question now or at any time"; and throughout the little interrogatory
which followed she never once changed from her attitude of respect.

"Your name first."

"Jenny Prask," and Sir Chichester wrote it down.

"You have been Mrs. Croyle's maid for some time."

"For three and a half years, sir."

"Good!" said Sir Chichester, with the air of one who by an artful
question has elicited a most important piece of evidence.

"Now!" But now he fumbled. He had come to the real examination, and was
at a loss how to begin. "Yes, now then, Jenny!" and again he came to a
halt.

Whilst Jenny waited, her eyes once glittered strangely under their
half-dropped lids; and Martin Hillyard followed the direction of their
gaze to the door-key lying upon the table beside Sir Chichester's hand.

"Jenny," said Sir Chichester, who had at last formulated a question.
"You informed us that Mrs. Croyle instructed you last night not to call
her until she rang. That, no doubt, was an unusual order for her to
give."

"No, sir."

Sir Chichester leaned back in his chair.

"Oh, it wasn't?"

"No, sir."

Sir Chichester looked a little blank. He cast about for another line of
examination.

"You are aware, of course, Jenny, that your mistress was in the habit of
taking drugs--chloroform especially."

"Never, sir," answered Jenny.

"You weren't aware of it?" exclaimed Sir Chichester.

"She never took them."

Harry Luttrell made a little movement. He stared in perplexity at Jenny
Prask, who did not once remove her calm and respectful eyes from Sir
Chichester Splay. She waited in absolute composure for the next
question. But the question took a long time to formulate. Sir Chichester
had framed no interrogatory in a sequence; whereas Jenny's answers were
pat, as though, sitting by the bed whereon her dead mistress lay, she
had thought out the questions which might be asked of her and got her
answers ready. Sir Chichester began to get flurried. At every conjecture
which he expressed, Jenny Prask slammed a door in his face.

"But you told me----" he cried, turning to Harry Luttrell and so broke
off. "Are you speaking the truth, Jenny?"

Suddenly Jenny's composure broke up. The blood rushed into her face. She
shouted violently:

"I swear it! If it was my last dying word, I do! Chloroform indeed!" She
became sarcastic. "What an idea! Just fancy!"

Sir Chichester threw down his pen. He was aghast before the conclusion
to which his examination was leading him.

"But, if Stella didn't put that glass of chloroform between her
pillows--herself--of her own accord--why then, whilst she was
asleep----" He would not utter the inevitable induction. But it was
clear enough, hideous enough to all of them. Why then, whilst she was
asleep, some one entered the room, placed the chloroform where its
deadly fumes would do their work, locked her door upon her and tossed
the key out on to the lawn. A charge of murder--nothing less.

"Don't you see what you are suggesting, Jenny," Sir Chichester
spluttered helplessly.

"I am suggesting nothing, sir," the maid answered stolidly. "I am
answering questions."

She was lying, of course! Hillyard had not a doubt of it. Jenny Prask
was the malevolent force of which he was in search. So much had, at all
events, sprung clear from Sir Chichester's blunderings. And some hint,
too, of the plan which malevolence had formed--not more than a hint!
That Jenny Prask intended to sustain a charge of murder Martin did not
believe. She was of too strong a brain for that folly. But she had some
clear purpose to harm somebody; and Martin's heart sank as he
conjectured who that some one might, nay must, be. Meanwhile, he
thought, let Sir Chichester pursue his questioning. He got glimpses
through that clouded medium into Jenny Prask's mind.

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