Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone
—and yet there had been a sort of feudal dignity about their manner of departing. But this unknown sojourner of a day, who had known hardly a soul in the parish, who had loved nothing of all that countryside except eighteen little holes in the ground, what mourning could there be for him—the body so mangled, the soul whose existence he had denied?
One understood why people wanted to be cremated. While we keep all our seriousness for our frivolities, what wonder that men feel a sense of disproportion about the traditional solemnities of interment? With the villagers, indeed, it was different—you might almost say that the hour of their funerals was the hour they lived for. It made them one with the earth they had tilled and furrowed; it gave them, at last, a permanent tenure among their own immemorial fields. “Man that is born of woman is full of sorrow and hath but a short time”—they had learned, unconsciously, to measure their lives by the secular oaks in the great park, by the weather-beaten antiquity of the village church itself. But this strange race of lighthearted invaders, to whom each spot of ground was no more than a good lie or a bad one, what part had they in the communal life of these retired valleys? It meant nothing to them.
We have been following the service with Gordon’s eyes; Reeves, it is probable, was lost in speculation as to the donor of the mysterious wreath, and Carmichael was doubtless reminded of a thousand things. But it was over at last, and Reeves, eager to get back to business, implored Carmichael to explain his hints about the disappearance of the cipher. “Wait till we get back to your room,” was the only answer. And, when the desired haven was reached, “Have another look among those papers, and make certain you didn’t pass it over by mistake.”
“Good Lord,” said Reeves suddenly, “here it is! But I swear it wasn’t when I looked before. I say, Carmichael, have you been playing the funny ass with the thing?”
“No,” said Carmichael, “I haven’t.”
“Who has, then?”
“That’s the point. I should be glad if I were in a position to enlighten you. You see, I know the maid was blameless as regards that piece of paper. She only does the rooms early in the morning; now, I came in after breakfast, when you’d gone off to Binver, to have another look at the cipher and see if I could make anything of it by inspection. And it was still there.”
“And you’re sure you didn’t take it away with you?”
“Positive. Now, observe this: that document must have been taken away while you and Gordon were both at Binver, while I was over at the station.”
“But how did it get back there?”
“It was put back there. And it was put back there, not during luncheon, for I had another look afterwards, but while we were down at the funeral. It follows that none of our party this afternoon has been meddling with your papers—I’m glad to think, for example, that the Secretary escapes suspicion.”
“But do you seriously mean to say there’s somebody in this house who comes into my room and disturbs my papers for his own ends?”
“Don’t be so shocked about it. You’ve been spending the last three days spying on other people; is it impossible that other people should spy on you? Look here, that paper is in your room at half-past ten; it is no longer there at half-past twelve; it is back again at four o’clock. Do you mean to tell me that somebody acquainted with your habits hasn’t been meddling with your papers?”
“What made you suspect it?”
“That’s the odd thing. Did you ever notice how often a false calculation puts you on the track of a true one? Puzzling over that odd experience we had last night about the photograph, I found myself wondering whether conceivably someone could have come in and altered it while you were out. Well, upon reflection, that was impossible, because we were in the room the whole time, all four of us. But meanwhile, it did occur to me that perhaps our proceedings were being rather too public. Look how full of comparative strangers this dormy-house is; any one of those may be Brotherhood’s murderer, for all we know, or at least an accomplice. And then, when you found the cipher gone, it occurred to me at once, ‘I was right; there is somebody on the spot who is following our movements!’ That was why I had that choking-fit at luncheon—you were just going to talk about the disappearance of the cipher in a crowded dining-room; and it seemed to me imprudent.”
“But, look here, what’s the man’s game? Why take the thing away and then put it back again?”
“My dear Reeves, you shouldn’t go to funerals, it has a depressing effect on your intelligence. The cipher was taken away this morning, when it might have been of some use to you, I suspect, by somebody who had seen me looking at it and so realized that it was important. Then, by a mere accident, it proved that you did not need the paper after all, and had read the message without it. I saw what would happen—if we left your room empty, the cipher, now useless, would be put back. And that is exactly what happened. The hypothesis has become a certainty.”
“Good Lord,” said Reeves, walking up and down the room. “What on earth are we to do about it?”
“Keep quiet about our movements for one thing. I shouldn’t even discuss
