“But there isn’t a book called that.”
“I know. Many might be, but none are. However, I saw what was up. The porter, by a train of thought which I find myself unable to follow, had taken the book home to his wife: and it was no surprise to me when she produced a copy of Momerie’s Immortality. It had been a disappointment to her, it seemed, and she made no difficulty about parting with it.”
“But have you any reason for thinking it’s the book we’re looking for?”
“Yes. There are a lot of lines down the side, queries and shriek-marks occasionally, which convince me that the thing was in Brotherhood’s hands. Only, of course, we want your copy of the cipher to read it from.”
“Excellent man. Let’s come up at once. I ought to be able to lay my hands on it, though I can never be certain. I play a perpetual game with the maid who does my rooms; she always seems to think that documents are more easy to deal with if they’re piled up in a great heap, instead of lying scattered about. Every morning I disarrange them, and the next morning, as sure as fate, they are piled up again.” They had reached Reeves’ room by now. “Let’s see; that’s the Income Tax, and that’s my aunt, and that’s that man … Ha! what’s this? No … No … this can’t be it … well, I’m dashed! The thing seems to have gone.”
“You’re sure you didn’t keep it in your pocket?”
“I don’t think so … No, it’s not there. Look here, I’ll go through them again … You know, it’s a very rum thing, because I took another look at that cipher only last night.”
“And now it’s gone. Anything else missing?”
“Not that I can see. Oh, I say, this is the limit! First of all I got the cipher without the key, and then I get the key without the cipher.”
“How like life,” suggested Gordon.
“What’s this? ‘Hold it and thoughts with the …’ oh, splendid! Look here, I worked the cipher out all wrong in this beastly Formation of Character book. But when I did that, I turned down all the pages I wanted, and underlined the significant words. So old Watson will come in useful after all. Hang on one moment—yes, here it is. Now, ready? The word ‘hold’ is the fifth word on the seventh line of page 8. What’s that in Momerie?”
“That’s ‘you.’ It sounds all right for the beginning of a message.”
And so they worked it out, this time more fruitfully. When the process was complete, Carmichael had a half-sheet in front of him on which the words appeared, “You will perish if you go back upon your faith.”
“Yes,” said Gordon meditatively. “That’s too good to be mere coincidence. That was the message—was it a threat or a warning?—which was sent to Brotherhood, and old Brotherhood worked it out, presumably, in his Momerie, but wasn’t in time to profit by it. The only thing is, now we’ve got it, it doesn’t seem to get us much further.”
“It means, I suppose,” said Carmichael, “that Brotherhood had promised to do something, and was trying to back out of it.”
“Possibly that,” said Reeves.
“Why possibly? What else could it mean?”
“Oh, I don’t know … No, of course; that’s it. But, as Gordon says, it doesn’t seem to get us much further.”
“Not in itself,” agreed Carmichael. “But meanwhile it has incidentally provided us with an extra clue.”
“What’s that?” asked Gordon.
“I’ll tell you some other time. I say, it’s time for luncheon. Let’s go down.”
And it was not till they were downstairs that he explained his meaning. “The other clue is the disappearance of the cipher. There’s more in that than meets the eye, unless I’m mistaken.”
XI
A Funeral and a Vigil
“I don’t quite see what you mean,” said Reeves as they sat down to luncheon.
“Never mind,” said Carmichael, “we shall see if I’m right or not. Meanwhile, there’s the funeral this afternoon, and it would hardly be decent to take any action till after that, would it? Hullo, Marryatt, what time does the thing start?”
“Half-past two. A good many of the members mean to turn out, and one wanted them to get away in time for an afternoon round. I must say, I think the club’s done handsomely by poor Brotherhood, considering how few of us really knew him. The Committee has sent a very fine wreath.”
“And that’s the only one, I should think,” said Gordon.
“Oddly enough, it isn’t. There’s one other, a peculiarly expensive-looking thing, which came down from London. There’s no name on it, no inscription of any kind, in fact.”
“H’m!” said Reeves; “that’s curious.”
“My dear Reeves,” expostulated Gordon, “I’m not going to have you examining the wreaths on the coffin with your lens and forceps. There are limits of decency.”
“Well, I won’t worry about it anyhow till Carmichael has—Hullo! hit him on the back, Gordon.” For Carmichael had been overtaken by one of those choking fits which the best-behaved of us are liable to.
“It’s a curious thing,” he gasped on recovering, “that one always used to say, when one was small, that one’s drink had ‘gone the wrong way.’ Nothing at all to do with the windpipe, I believe.”
The funeral was, it must be confessed, a riot of irony. The members who attended had decided that it would look bad to take their clubs with them to the churchyard, but their costumes were plainly a compromise between respect for the dead and a determination to get on with business as soon as it was over. None of them had any tears to shed. The village of Paston Oatvile turned out to a child in sheer morbidity, to see “ ’im as fell down off of the railway put away.” The sonorous assurances of the burial service had to be read out
