By the Watchman's Clock Read online

  I’d never make a good diplomat—as Ben has several times observed. I can’t ever see the good of beating about the bush, and I’ve never learned when it’s best to leave something unsaid. On this case—as usual—I regretted my reply as soon as I’d made it.

  “It just seems strange to me that you’d come that way at all. It’s always locked. How did you expect to get out? What I mean is . . .”

  “I know what you mean, Martha,” she interrupted me quietly. “You mean I must have expected to find the gate open. Or even that I knew the gate was open. Otherwise I’d obviously have gone the other way, because we all know that gate’s always locked. That’s what you mean—isn’t it?”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  She didn’t say anything for a minute. We were walking rapidly along York Road. It wasn’t until we got to the main gate, and she had pressed the bell to wake Tim, that she said, “You’re quite right, Martha. I did expect to find the gate open.”

  That was all. No explanation, nothing. I could think what I pleased for the time being. And I did. I thought of the figure in the yellow lamp-light, the slip of paper in my pocket, Mr. Sutton’s accusation of some member of his own family, earlier in the evening.

  Perhaps it was the nature of my thoughts that made the time seem interminable before the latch went click-click-click and Thorn pushed open the little iron grill at the right of the great gate. We went in.

  “It’s us, Tim,” Thorn called as we passed under his window. “Too sleepy even to be angry,” she added to me when he didn’t open the window and deliver the usual tirade on burning the candle at both ends and turning God’s blessed night into day. Poor old Tim! There must be holy angels somewhere for people who believed in them with such childlike faith as Tim’s.

  At that moment neither of us was particularly concerned with Tim, and we went quickly up the drive, turning to the left of the box screen into the area in front of the Hall.

  “Look!” Thorn whispered suddenly; “there’s a light!” She broke into a run up the steps and peered in the long window at the side of the door. I followed her, and looked over her shoulder. The hall chandelier was lighted, but the hall was empty.

  “We’d better go around,” she said. “I don’t want to wake Lafayette.”

  For some quite hidden reason I put my hand on the great brass knob and turned it gently. I don’t think I in the least expected it to open; I’ve never known the front door of Seaton Hall to be unlocked. Maybe it was simply because everything was out of joint that I thought this might be too. In any case, the knob turned and the great door swung back as I pushed it open. Thorn and I looked at each other without a word. There was no doubting that she was completely bewildered by what in any other place than Daniel Sutton’s household would seem an ordinary inefficiency on some servant’s part.

  We stepped into the dimly lighted, ghastly silent hall. All of our senses were heightened, I imagine; I noticed a curious dry, faintly pungent odor that I’d never noticed before; I even noticed, I remember, several crystals missing on the candelabra, and the stain on the ceiling that was made when Susan left the tap on upstairs and the gardener turned off the sprinklers in the garden.

  Thorn suddenly clutched at my arm. I heard a faint sound, of someone moving back and forth. I even thought I heard the rustle of papers. Then everything was silent again. We waited breathlessly. I heard the noise again. I felt Thorn’s grip on my arm relax.

  “It’s Uncle Dan,” she whispered, although the need for whispering, I thought, should be over.

  We went a little further into the hall, quietly, until I could see the library door set in its deep frame. It was ajar about six inches. I went back and closed the hall door. Mr. Sutton was moving back and forth. I heard him move back a chair, and I heard the low buzz of the phone. I heard him speak; that is I heard the sound of his voice, though I couldn’t make out any words.

  Thorn took hold of my arm again. It was decidedly reassuring, someway, to know that we weren’t the only people awake and moving in the great downstairs rooms with their reverberating echoes of a hundred and sixty years of generations of children, men and women. As a matter of fact, in view of what the next half-hour was to bring, I can’t understand now why instead of being relieved when we heard Mr. Sutton in the library we weren’t alarmed. The more I’ve thought of it the odder it seems.

  By this time we were well into the hall. As we got to the foot of the stairs the grandfather clock on the landing whirred and struck three sonorous notes.

  “Aren’t you going in to see him?” I asked in a low voice.

  She shook her head. I could see the old resentment, that had somehow got lost in this half-hour, rising again and increasing in bitterness as it rose.

  “No,” she said sullenly. “Not tonight. That was Tim on the phone telling him we’d come in. If he’d wanted to see me he’d have come out,”

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “In that case,” I said, “I’m going to see that you get in bed, and then I’m going home. Anybody would think we were two lunatics, wandering about at this time of night and in this garb.”

  She turned to me with a sort of plea in her voice.

  “Why don’t you stay all night, Martha? Ben won’t even know you’ve gone.”

  “I know . . . that’s why I’d better go home.”

  We went upstairs. I sat on a window seat smoking a cigarette while Thorn got ready for bed. I was thinking how much greater the distance between people becomes when they’ve been very close and something happens to separate them. It’s much greater than the distance between casual friends. I suppose it’s the law of the pendulum again. Anyway, Thorn was undressing, thinking Heaven knows what. I shudder when I think of what it must have been. I’ve never discussed it with her since. My own thoughts weren’t any too pleasant, and I was getting to the point where I wanted some sleep.

  At last she got into the high bed with its lovely carved mahogany posts, drew the covers up around her chin and closed her eyes wearily. I tossed my cigarette into the grate and got up.

  “Shall I turn out your light?”

  She nodded without opening her eyes. I saw a tear creep out from under the closed lids and run down the side of her cheek, and disappear in the cluster of dark hair at her ear. My emotions about Thorn at the moment were highly mixed. Ordinarily she isn’t nervy and she doesn’t cry easily, and ordinarily I should have been sympathetic at once, under the circumstances. But now my chief feeling was that she ought to be spanked, that she was making an idiot of herself and keeping me up without any reason whatsoever.

  I snapped the light off, said goodnight as sweetly as I could, and started for the door.

  “Martha!”

  I heard the tight little voice choked out between sobs, and I went over to her bed. She was holding out her hand. I took it.

  “Don’t be silly,” I said gently. “It’ll seem better in the morning. Go to sleep.”

  Her hand clutched mine tightly.

  “Listen, Martha.”

  “What is it?”

  “Martha, please, please don’t think I’m horrible—will you? Promise me you won’t.”

  I was a little alarmed, I may say. I do like things to be calm, and I don’t like everybody always upset.

  “I’ll believe anything you tell me, Thorn, unless it’s obviously absurd,” I said, a little wearily I’m afraid. “Go to sleep, will you?”

  “Oh, I can’t! I don’t think I’ll ever go to sleep again. Please don’t go.”

  “All right,” I said. I was now becoming a little exasperated. “I’ll stay. But first I’m going to get you some hot milk. That’ll put you to sleep. I’ll stay as long as you want me to.”

  She nodded wearily and let go my hand. I felt the listless thud of her arm as it dropped at her side. It occurred to me that she’d probably be asleep in two minutes if I left her alone.

  I went back to the door and looked out into the hall. The light downstairs was still burning. N
o one had come upstairs, or we would have heard him. I felt some hesitancy—although not much—at prowling around in Seaton Hall at three o’clock in the morning in a tweed coat, a peach-colored night-dress and a pair of tennis slippers with a ten-cent store flashlight and a piece of dirty paper in my pocket. Nevertheless I decided to go to the kitchen and get Thorn the milk, and then get home if I could before daylight.

  I looked down the stair well and decided that the coast was clear enough for me to set out. I wasn’t even in danger of being seen from the library; Mr. Sutton had closed the door after Tim had called him. I suppose he probably didn’t care to see Thorn any more than she cared to see him. So I went back and closed Thorn’s door and started down. Half-way down I stopped dead in my tracks. I heard something, unmistakably, on the other side of the hall—not on the side of the library, where Mr. Sutton was, but across from it. It seemed to come from the back drawing room where Susan had interrupted the game of chess. I listened, absolutely petrified with fear. It was a stealthy, intermittent noise; it seemed to come closer and closer; and the closer it came the more utterly terrified I was. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t move. I simply stood there, my gaze rivetted down on the door in the shadow of the stairs at my right. God knows what I expected to see there. I was sick with fear.

  Suddenly I simply couldn’t stand it another moment. I made some sort of a desperate attempt to scream, but not a sound could I utter. My throat was dumb. Then I burst down the stairs and flew across the hall to the library. I opened the door.

  “Mr. Sutton!” I cried, and stopped short. The room was in utter darkness. I stood there, just inside the door, not daring to move forward in the inky darkness or to look back across the dimly lighted hall where I knew something was waiting. I was indescribably terrified. I felt myself swaying, until with a tremendous effort of will I felt along the wall until my numb fingers touched the light switch. I pressed it.

  Slowly I turned around then to face the hall and the doorway across it. I caught hold of the back of a high wing chair and leaned against it, waiting, in an agony of suspense. The great house was as silent as an empty grave, with the pulse of time beating eternally against it: tick, tock; tick, tock; tick, tock. It seemed to me, standing there, gripping the soft brocatelle, that something horrible must come through that door, and that I mustn’t move until it came. Tick, tock; tick, tock; tick, tock: the horrible deliberateness of the clock was unbearable. Gradually and slowly I relaxed my grip on the chair and let my hand drop, until . . . I shrieked and turned . . . and raised my hand dripping with blood. I stared at it like a maniac, and then at the thing it had touched. It was Daniel Sutton, sitting in that chair. He was dead, the blood still wet on the glazed surface of his shirt front, still slowly dripping from the ghastly cavern in his head.

  I stood still. A terrible nauseating wave flowed over me. I didn’t see Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe when he came into the room; but I saw him just as I lost all consciousness, and I knew he caught me when I fell.

  CHAPTER XII

  I don’t know how long I was unconscious. I seemed lost in one of those infinite wells of time. It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, because Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe was still holding me, and wiping the cold viscid wet crimson smear from my fingers. And as I came to I heard the other steps on the landing. The Englishman with a grim friendly smile said “Steady on, there’s a stout fella,” as Dan and Bill burst into the room.

  “What’s up?” Dan said, staring at me.

  He couldn’t see behind the high shielding back of the wing chair. All that he and Bill could see was my outlandish coat over my nightdress and my tennis slippers, and the blood on the handkerchief in Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe’s hand.

  He stepped forward.

  “There’s been an accident, I’m afraid, Sutton,” he said steadily.

  Then Dan saw what I hadn’t seen, the limp hand hanging over the short arm of the chair. It all happened in a flash: his seeing the hand, then seeing his father, then knowing that he was dead.

  “Dad!” he said.

  Bill was just behind him. I couldn’t see their faces. I didn’t want to. I couldn’t avoid seeing the sudden slump in their young shoulders, and Bill’s arm go over Dan’s shoulder, and hear Dan saying huskily “Steady, old son.” I saw Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe turn away, and I saw him straighten suddenly. I followed his gaze to the door.

  It was Susan. She stood there in a long yellow negliée, pushing her tangled yellow mop of hair from her flushed sleepy face.

  “What’s the ghastly row about?” she demanded drowsily.

  Then she saw me and wrinkled her forehead. Gradually it dawned on her that something was wrong.

  “What’s the matter?” she said sharply, wide awake now. “Did he die?”

  Even Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe started.

  “Who, Miss Atwood?” he asked quietly.

  “Mr. Baca, of course.”

  She looked in bewilderment from one of us to the other. I had to remind myself that she also couldn’t see Mr. Sutton from where she stood.

  It was our turn to be astonished. Bill left his brother and went to the door.

  “What makes you think of Mr. Baca, Sue?” he asked gently.

  “Because he was up. I saw him out of my window about two, or a little after. I just thought something had happened to him—that’s all.”

  “It’s not Baca, Sue,” Bill said with a little gulp. “It’s Dad. He’s dead . . . shot.”

  She took it very well. Her face grew pale, she closed her eyes a second, then opened them and put her hand on Bill’s arm.

  “I’m sorry, Bill,” she whispered. “Dear Uncle Dan.”

  Tears came to my eyes. I think it was the sweetest epitaph Daniel Sutton had.

  A deep sob shook Bill’s shoulders, and he bowed his head for an instant. Then he said, “We’ll have to get Dr. Mac, Dan.”

  Dan came over to Susan too.

  “Go upstairs, Sue, will you? You’d better tell Thorn and Aunt Mildred. I’ll call Sullivan. Will you stay here, Arbuthnot? Don’t touch anything and don’t let anybody in.”

  Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe nodded. He had been glancing around the room. I caught, or thought I caught, a steely flicker in his eyes when Susan said she’d seen the Mexican from her window. There was something rather reassuring about his large figure in striped pajamas and camel’s-hair dressing gown. At least there was until I happened to look at his feet. He had on rubber-soled shoes.

  I’m afraid I stared at them longer than I should have done. When I glanced up he was looking at me with a quizzical semi-smile on his bronzed face.

  “Well?” he asked in an undertone. “What do you make of it?”

  “It just looks funny, that’s all,” I said feebly.

  “It is, rather, isn’t it?” he smiled, and let it go at that.

  In a moment Dan came back.

  “I think we’ll get out of here and go in the parlor,” he said. “Sullivan will be over in a minute.”

  He looked at me. A curious expression came into his eyes. I think he just that instant realized that there was anything unusual about my being there. Even then the grotesqueness of my costume didn’t strike him.

  He closed the door after us, put the key in the lock and turned it. Then he put the key in his pocket and we went across the hall. I hesitated involuntarily before I stepped into that room. The few seconds on the stairs were still too vivid in my mind, in spite of what I had seen in the library.

  Dan snapped on the light.

  “Hello!” he exclaimed. “What’s this?”

  Curiosity overcame what reluctance I felt about going in there. I looked between the two men and saw what had surprised Dan. One of the long windows opening out on the porch was open. The gauze curtain was billowing gently in the breeze. I shivered convulsively.

  “I guess we’d better keep out of here too,” Dan said quietly. We went out into the hall. Just then the doorbell rang and Dr. Mac came in. I think all of us had the feeling
that everything would be much better now that he was there. Dr. Mac is getting too stout now—he puffs when he walks up stairs—and they say he drinks more port than he should; but for all that his kindly grey eyes see through every pain you ever have, and his medicine, whether it’s something bitter out of a bottle or something healing in his soul, never fails the people of Landover. He came in and set his bag down.

  “What’s the trouble?” he asked, and then saw me, shivering behind the big Englishman.

  “Whatever it is, you go home, Martha, and go to bed,” he said. Because we’re all used to obeying him, I nodded at once.

  Dan looked at me, trying vaguely to figure out how I came to be there. I think he wanted to ask me, but couldn’t quite.

  “I’ll take you home, Mrs. Niles,” the Englishman said. “Where do you live?”

  “Just up the road.” I felt myself on the verge of tears now that people were bothering about me again. I find it much easier to be brave when I haven’t anybody to depend on.

  I looked up at him and found him eyeing my costume quizzically.

  “If you came in that, I fancy I can go in this—what?” he asked with a grin.

  I nodded. “It isn’t far,” I said, “and it’s still dark.”

  As we went out I heard them open the door to the library. A little sick wave went over me. Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe took my arm and led me down the path. The gate was open, so we got out without waking Tim. His lodge was dark, which struck me as queer even then. I figured later that Thorn and I had left the side gate open when we came in. I couldn’t remember having closed it.

  York Road was perfectly silent as we went along it. The college campus was dark, except for the dim fan light in the President’s House. We didn’t say anything until we came to the corner of King Charles Street.

  “This is where I live,” I said then.

  “Have you got a key?”

  I shook my head. “We never lock our doors in Landover.”

  “You’d better to-night.” He said it so seriously that I was startled.

  “Why?” I asked.