“The damned doctor,” added Mr. O’Brien with a grin.
I began to apologise, but O’Brien who was by this time in capital spirits, interrupted me with,
“Faith, you needn’t apologise, Mr. Merton. As long as you’re not one of my damned relations I’m delighted to see you, and the doctor here is always pining for a fresh face. He’s getting sick of mine!”
This remark seemed to have a spice of malice behind it, and the doctor certainly frowned, but I was so anxious to seize this opportunity of putting a question or two that I did not stop to wonder what was implied; not, at least, till afterwards.
“I suppose you have little society in this charming island?” I suggested.
O’Brien was certainly ready enough to give me exactly the information I was after.
“There are just four civilised houses in the whole place, counting this,” said he. “There’s the laird’s—and saving the dear doctor’s presence I must say his cousin is a damned queer fish, besides being as poor as he’s cranky, and there are the two ministers, only one’s away and the other’s as dry as my own throat’s getting. What do you say to a drink, doctor?”
He grinned at Dr. Rendall with a malicious significance I could make nothing of. I could see that it perturbed the doctor, who answered in evident embarrassment,
“If Mr. Merton would care for a glass of lemonade—”
A hoot of laughter interrupted him. It reminded me of Jock, except that Mr. O’Brien’s laugh had such a flavour of ill-nature. The man might or might not be what I suspected, but he was indubitably objectionable.
“No, thank you,” I answered him. “I set out to call on Mr. Rendall and the time is passing.”
“Damned pleasantly in our society, eh?” put in O’Brien with the same sardonic laugh.
They both saw me to the door, and we said goodbye, without enthusiasm on the doctor’s part, with a grin on Mr. O’Brien’s, and with very mixed emotions on my own.
VI
A Petticoat
I was very thankful to get out of that depressing house and away from Mr. O’Brien’s laugh, and yet hardly was I on the high road again before I was blaming myself for not having lingered longer and pursued my investigations there a little further.
The other “Civilised” households in the island apparently numbered only three. Now, if my spy were working single handed he might conceivably be some better educated farmer who had lived abroad and turned traitor, but it seemed to me most unlikely that he should have no confederates, and it was scarcely possible for two or three men of that particular type to be gathered in so small a community. Brains and education seemed implied in every step of the dangerous game they were playing. Therefore it was only common sense to suspect one at least of these “civilised” houses, unless they could all manifestly clear their characters. Anyhow it were foolishness to neglect this consideration.
And what had I discovered already? A couple of men living by themselves in a criminal looking mansion, who hurriedly pulled down blinds, looked both suspicious and apprehensive at the sight of a stranger, and made odd innuendoes and allusions in their conversation. Why hadn’t I stayed on and pursued my investigations? Well, because the moment I discovered I was in the wrong house, my insistent idea was to push on to Mr. Rendall’s and consult with him about the whole situation. But now I began to reconsider this decision very seriously.
I was out of sight by this time in a secluded part of the road, where it ran through a dip in the ground, with the head of one of those little reedy lochs only a yard or two away, and a bright glimpse of the sea beyond. The marshy shores were a perfect blaze of yellow wild flowers and it looked so jolly that I sat down on the water’s edge and began to think things over.
First I thought Mr. O’Brien over. Middle height, a beard, and an Irish brogue. Could the German accent have been put on to conceal the brogue? Looking to what I was doing myself, why not? Then I thought Dr. Rendall over. Also middle height, a moustache, and no particular accent. But then again, if I put on an accent, why not he? Then I thought over what I had learned of the laird. A cousin of the doctor’s, a “damned queer fish,” almost the only associate of this couple, and hard up. Ought I to go straight off and confide in him?
“Not to begin with anyhow!” I said to myself, and up I jumped and continued my walk.
About a hundred yards further on I rounded a corner and came upon a very miserable figure. He was an old, old man with tinted spectacles and a long white beard, and the raggedest overcoat I ever saw, and he was sitting on the grass with his feet in the ditch apparently doing nothing but simply sitting still. As I approached he peered at me as though he were more than half blind and then in an extraordinary thin, high, piping voice he said,
“A fine day, mister!”
This time I did the Teutonic bully. It went horribly against the grain to strafe such a miserable object, but with no one looking on I thought that the kind of Hun I was supposed to be would probably treat a worm like this to a touch of the All-Highest.
“Be dashed and damned to you!” I growled.
The old boy started perceptibly, and in rather an eager voice he asked,
“Have you got a wax match, mister?”
“Wax match? No, and be confounded!” said I.
For the next quarter of a mile or so I felt too ashamed of myself and too contrite to think much about what the old fellow had said, and then suddenly it began to strike me that a wax match was rather a curious thing to
