“You mean the murderer?”
“Not necessarily the murderer. The man who is watching us; it may not be the murderer at all.”
“But how do you propose to catch him?”
“I propose that two of us—preferably you and Gordon, because I am fond of my sleep—should sit up tonight and watch outside the door. Meantime, we have to excite the curiosity of your visitor so powerfully that he will want to come out and investigate your room. I propose that we should put up a notice (with the Secretary’s leave, of course) saying that you have one or two of Brotherhood’s books and things which you are prepared to give away as souvenirs to anybody who cared for him; please apply to your rooms tomorrow. And now let’s go down and have some tea.”
“But I haven’t got any of Brotherhood’s things,” objected Reeves as they went downstairs.
“Exactly. And nobody cared a brass farthing for Brotherhood. But meanwhile, there is every chance that this anonymous gentleman will be interested to see what you have got, and will pay a nocturnal visit to your room. If you see anybody pass, you can fall on him and throttle him. If nobody passes, at about one o’clock I should go to bed if I were you. It’s a pity to forgo one’s sleep.”
“Well, we’d better do the thing thoroughly. I’ll go out this evening and come in with a bag, so as to look as if I’d been over and got some things from Brotherhood’s house.”
“That’s a good idea. One moment, I must go over to young van Beuren and get some chewing-gum.”
“Carmichael,” said Reeves when he got back, “you’ve been surprising us a good deal lately, but one thing I should never have guessed about you—I should never have imagined that you chewed.”
“I don’t,” said Carmichael, and would answer no more questions on the subject. Nor had Reeves any opportunity to press the point, for Marryatt came in soon afterwards, and sat down at their table. “Is it true?” asked Carmichael, “that Brotherhood is the first member of the club to be buried here?”
“He is. There was Parry, of course, who died here, but he was buried in London. It must be strange for these Oatviles, who have had all the expensive funerals to themselves for the last two hundred years, to make room for an old fellow like that.”
“Two hundred? Why not three hundred?” asked Reeves.
“Well, the Oatviles were Catholics, you know, up to James II’s time. People say that the room we use as the billiard-room now used to be the chapel at one time. And the Oatviles don’t seem to have been buried here till the time of Queen Anne.”
“Really, Marryatt?” said Carmichael. “That is most interesting. They must have died abroad, I fancy, for of course Protestant burial was the only kind legal in England. Did it ever occur to you how little early Renaissance architecture you find in English villages? It’s an odd testimony, I think, to the vitality of Catholicism. Puritanism must have had something to do with it, of course, but considering what an itch for architecture the Renaissance brought with it, you would expect more traces of it, if the Laudian religion had ever really taken hold.”
“I think, to judge by the parish register, the Oatviles must have been very staunch recusants, and a great trouble to my predecessors. They were important people, too, in the neighbourhood, even before the great house was built, while they lived here at the Dower-house.”
Gordon was not acquainted with the evening’s programme till after dinner; he accepted his part in it with a wry face; but with pleasurable tremors of excitement. It would be the first time, he said, his revolver would have been loaded since he shot off his last cartridges in November, 1918. There was a small, unoccupied room whose door faced that of Reeves; this door habitually stood ajar, and there was not much likelihood that any unauthorized wanderer would trespass there. Gordon and Reeves were to make their way there quietly at twelve o’clock, and sit there in the dark till one. They pleaded hard to be allowed to play bezique with an electric torch, but Carmichael was firm. Even whispering was not to be carried on except in case of necessity, and to crown their privations, they were warned not to smoke. Until twelve they sat playing bridge in Reeves’ room with Marryatt: then the company dispersed, although Carmichael insisted on being left behind for a little, while Reeves and Gordon went off and pretended to undress, “to make sure,” he said, “that our visitor doesn’t arrive too early.”
It is extraordinary what a lot you can hear, even in a country house, when you sit for an hour in the dark on the alert. Expresses whistled through Paston Oatvile; and one goods train only passed its signals after several stoppages, each of which meant a repetition of the musical clink-clink-clink which goods trucks make as they hit one another. A dog somewhere at the back had a fit of loneliness, and howled; cats told their nightly tale of love and hate. Coals fell out of distant grates; the woodwork creaked uncannily at intervals. But at no moment was there a step in the passage: nor was any hand laid on the door of the room opposite. They both felt cramped and overwatched when one o’clock sounded from the belfry of the old stables, and they were free to creep back to their beds.
“I say,” whispered Reeves, “why not come into my room and have a whisky-and-soda before we turn in?”
“Oh,” replied Gordon, “didn’t Carmichael tell you? We are not to go into your sitting-room on
