Something New Part 27

He was sorry for that, because it troubled him to think that a sick man would not be made well; but, on the whole, looking at it from every aspect, it would be best to get the scarab as soon as possible and leave Mr. Peters' digestion to look after itself.

Being twenty-six and an optimist, he had no suspicion that Fate might be playing with him; that Fate might have unpleasant surprises in store; that Fate even now was preparing to smite him in his hour of joy with that powerful weapon, the Efficient Baxter.

He looked at his watch. It was five minutes to one. He had no idea whether they kept early hours at Blandings Castle or not, but he deemed it prudent to give the household another hour in which to settle down. After which he would just trot down and collect the scarab.

The novel he had brought down with him from London fortunately proved interesting. Two o'clock came before he was ready for it.

He slipped the book into his pocket and opened the door.

All was still--still and uncommonly dark. Along the corridor on which his room was situated the snores of sleeping domestics exploded, growled and twittered in the air. Every menial on the list seemed to be snoring, some in one key, some in another, some defiantly, some plaintively; but the main fact was that they were all snoring somehow, thus intimating that, so far as this side of the house was concerned, the coast might be considered clear and interruption of his plans a negligible risk.

Researches made at an earlier hour had familiarized him with the geography of the place. He found his way to the green-baize door without difficulty and, stepping through, was in the hall, where the remains of the log fire still glowed a fitful red. This, however, was the only illumination, and it was fortunate that he did not require light to guide him to the museum.

He knew the direction and had measured the distance. It was precisely seventeen steps from where he stood. Cautiously, and with avoidance of noise, he began to make the seventeen steps.

He was beginning the eleventh when he b.u.mped into somebody-- somebody soft--somebody whose hand, as it touched his, felt small and feminine.

The fragment of a log fell on the ashes and the fire gave a dying spurt. Darkness succeeded the sudden glow. The fire was out.

That little flame had been its last effort before expiring, but it had been enough to enable him to recognize Joan Valentine.

"Good Lord!" he gasped.

His astonishment was short-lived. Next moment the only thing that surprised him was the fact that he was not more surprised. There was something about this girl that made the most bizarre happenings seem right and natural. Ever since he had met her his life had changed from an orderly succession of uninteresting days to a strange carnival of the unexpected, and use was accustoming him to it. Life had taken on the quality of a dream, in which anything might happen and in which everything that did happen was to be accepted with the calmness natural in dreams.

It was strange that she should be here in the pitch-dark hall in the middle of the night; but--after all--no stranger than that he should be. In this dream world in which he now moved it had to be taken for granted that people did all sorts of odd things from all sorts of odd motives.

"h.e.l.lo!" he said.

"Don't be alarmed."

"No, no!"

"I think we are both here for the same reason."

"You don't mean to say--"

"Yes; I have come here to earn the five thousand dollars, too, Mr. Marson. We are rivals."

In his present frame of mind it seemed so simple and intelligible to Ashe that he wondered whether he was really hearing it the first time. He had an odd feeling that he had known this all along.

"You are here to get the scarab?"

"Exactly."

Ashe was dimly conscious of some objection to this, but at first it eluded him. Then he pinned it down.

"But you aren't a young man of good appearance," he said.

"I don't know what you mean. But Aline Peters is an old friend of mine. She told me her father would give a large reward to whoever recovered the scarab; so I--"

"Look out!" whispered Ashe. "Run! There's somebody coming!"

There was a soft footfall on the stairs, a click, and above Ashe's head a light flashed out. He looked round. He was alone, and the green-baize door was swaying gently to and fro.

"Who's that? Who's there?" said a voice.

The Efficient Baxter was coming down the broad staircase.

A general suspicion of mankind and a definite and particular suspicion of one individual made a bad opiate. For over an hour sleep had avoided the Efficient Baxter with an unconquerable coyness. He had tried all the known ways of wooing slumber, but they had failed him, from the counting of sheep downward. The events of the night had whipped his mind to a restless activity.

Try as he might to lose consciousness, the recollection of the plot he had discovered surged up and kept him wakeful.

It is the penalty of the suspicious type of mind that it suffers from its own activity. From the moment he detected Mr. Peters in the act of rifling the museum and marked down Ashe as an accomplice, Baxter's repose was doomed. Nor poppy nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy sirups of the world, could ever medicine him to that sweet sleep which he owed yesterday.

But it was the recollection that on previous occasions of wakefulness hot whisky and water had done the trick, which had now brought him from his bed and downstairs. His objective was the decanter on the table of the smoking-room, which was one of the rooms opening on the gallery that looked down on the hall.

Hot water he could achieve in his bedroom by means of his stove.

So out of bed he had climbed and downstairs he had come; and here he was, to all appearances, just in time to foil the very plot on which he had been brooding. Mr. Peters might be in bed, but there in the hall below him stood the accomplice, not ten paces from the museum's door. He arrived on the spot at racing speed and confronted Ashe.

"What are you doing here?"

And then, from the Baxter viewpoint, things began to go wrong. By all the rules of the game, Ashe, caught, as it were, red-handed, should have wilted, stammered and confessed all; but Ashe was fortified by that philosophic calm which comes to us in dreams, and, moreover, he had his story ready.

"Mr. Peters rang for me, sir."

He had never expected to feel grateful to the little firebrand who employed him, but he had to admit that the millionaire, in their late conversation, had shown forethought. The thought struck him that but for Mr. Peters' advice he might by now be in an extremely awkward position; for his was not a swiftly inventive mind.

"Rang for you? At half-past two in the morning!"

"To read to him, sir."

"To read to him at this hour?"

"Mr. Peters suffers from insomnia, sir. He has a weak digestion and pain sometimes prevents him from sleeping. The lining of his stomach is not at all what it should be."

"I don't believe a word of it."

With that meekness which makes the good man wronged so impressive a spectacle, Ashe produced and exhibited his novel.

"Here is the book I am about to read to him. I think, sir, if you will excuse me, I had better be going to his room. Good night, sir."

He proceeded to mount the stairs. He was sorry for Mr. Peters, so shortly about to be roused from a refres.h.i.+ng slumber; but these were life's tragedies and must be borne bravely.

The Efficient Baxter dogged him the whole way, sprinting silently in his wake and dodging into the shadows whenever the light of an occasional electric bulb made it inadvisable to keep to the open.

Then abruptly he gave up the pursuit. For the first time his comparative impotence in this silent conflict on which he had embarked was made manifest to him, and he perceived that on mere suspicion, however strong, he could do nothing. To accuse Mr.

Peters of theft or to accuse him of being accessory to a theft was out of the question.

Yet his whole being revolted at the thought of allowing the sanct.i.ty of the museum to be violated. Officially its contents belonged to Lord Emsworth, but ever since his connection with the castle he had been put in charge of them, and he had come to look on them as his own property. If he was only a collector by proxy he had, nevertheless, the collector's devotion to his curios, beside which the lioness' attachment to her cubs is tepid; and he was prepared to do anything to retain in his possession a scarab toward which he already entertained the feelings of a life proprietor.

No--not quite anything! He stopped short at the idea of causing unpleasantness between the father of the Honorable Freddie and the father of the Honorable Freddie's fiancee. His secretarial position at the castle was a valuable one and he was loath to jeopardize it.

There was only one way in which this delicate affair could be brought to a satisfactory conclusion. It was obvious from what he had seen that night that Mr. Peters' connection with the attempt on the scarab was to be merely sympathetic, and that the actual theft was to be accomplished by Ashe. His only course, therefore, was to catch Ashe actually in the museum. Then Mr. Peters need not appear in the matter at all. Mr. Peters' position in those circ.u.mstances would be simply that of a man who had happened to employ, through no fault of his own, a valet who happened to be a thief.