Tab pulled at his pipe in silence. Presently he said:
“There are all sorts of rumors about old Jesse Trasmere. A fellow told me the other day that he is a known miser; keeps his money in the house, which, of course, is a romantic lie.”
“He hasn’t a banking account,” said the other surprisingly, “and I happen to know that he does keep a very large sum of money at Mayfield. The house is built like a prison and it has an underground strongroom which is the strongest room of its kind. I have never seen it, but I have seen him go down to it. Whether or not he sits down and gloats over his pieces of eight, I have never troubled to discover. But it is perfectly true, Tab,” he said earnestly, “he has no banking account. Everything is paid out in cash. I suppose he does have transactions through banks, but I have never heard of them. As to his being a miser,” he hesitated, “well, he is not exactly generous. For example, six months ago, he discovered that the man and his wife who looked after Mayfield, which is a very small house, were in the habit of giving the pieces of food left over to one of their poorer relatives, and he fired them on the spot! When I was there this year, he was shutting up all the rooms in the house except his own bedroom and his dining-room, which he uses also as a study.”
“What does he do for servants?” asked Tab, and the other shook his head.
“He has his valet, Walters, and two women who come in every day, one to cook and one to clean. But for the cook he has built a small kitchen away from the house.”
“He must be a cheerful companion,” said Tab.
“He is not exactly exhilarating. He has a fresh cook every month. I met Walters the other day and he told me that the new cook is the best they’ve had,” admitted the other, and there followed a silent interval of nearly five minutes.
Then Tab got up and knocked the ashes from his pipe.
“She certainly is pretty,” he said, and Rex Lander looked at him suspiciously, for he knew that Tab was not talking about the cook.
III
Mr. Jesse Trasmere sat at the end of a long, and, except in his immediate vicinity, bare table. At his end it was laid and Mr. Trasmere was slowly and deliberately enjoying a lean cutlet.
The room gave no suggestion of immense wealth and paid no silent tribute either to his artistic taste or his acquaintance with China. The walls were innocent of pictures, the furniture old, European and shabby. Mr. Trasmere had bought it secondhand and had never ceased to boast of the bargain he had secured.
If there were no pictures, there were no books. Jesse Trasmere was not a reader, even of newspapers.
It was one o’clock in the afternoon and through the folds of his dressing-gown, the grey of his pyjama jacket showed open at his lean throat, for Mr. Trasmere had only just got out of bed. Presently he would dress in his rusty black suit and would be immensely wakeful until the dawn of tomorrow. He never went to bed until the grey showed in the sky, nor slept later than two o’clock in the afternoon.
At six-thirty, to the second, Walters, his valet, would assist him into his overcoat, a light one if it was warm, a heavy, fur-lined garment if it was cold, and Mr. Trasmere would go for his walk and transact whatever business he found to his hand. But before he left the house there was a certain ceremonial, the locking of doors, the banishment of the valet to his own quarters, and the disappearance of Mr. Trasmere through the door which led from his study-dining-room to the basement of the house. This done he would go out. Walters had watched him from one of the upper windows scores of times, walking slowly down the street, an unfurled umbrella in one hand, a black bag in another. At eight-thirty to the minute he was back in the house. He invariably dined out. Walters would bring him a cup of black coffee and at ten o’clock would retire to his own room, which was separated from the main building by a heavy door which Mr. Trasmere invariably locked.
Once in the early days of his service, Walters had expostulated.
“Suppose there is a fire, sir,” he complained.
“You can get through your bathroom window on to the kitchen and if you can’t drop to the ground from there, you deserve to be burnt to death,” snarled the old man. “If you don’t like the job you needn’t stay. Those are the rules of my establishment and there are no others.”
So, night after night, Walters had gone to his room and Mr. Trasmere had shuffled after him in his slippered feet, had banged and locked the door upon him and had left Walters to solitude.
This procedure was only altered when the old man was taken ill one night and was unable to reach the door. Thereafter a key was hung in a small, glass-fronted case, in very much the same way as fire-keys are hung. In the event of his illness, or of any other unexpected happening, Walters could secure the key and answer the bell above his bed-head. That necessity had not arisen.
Every morning the valet found the door unlocked. At what hour old Jesse came he could not discover, but he guessed that his employer stopped on his way to bed in the morning to perform this service.
Walters was never allowed an evening off. Two days a week he was given twenty-four hours’ leave
