him.'
It was a heavy weight. It had a habit of sagging between them, as when two people try to move a large mattress. Rampole found his chest tight and his muscles aching. They staggered through the scratching arms of bushes, and out across the long slope to where Sir Benjamin's Daimler was parked in the road.
'You'd better stay here on guard,' the chief constable said, when they had steadied Budge in the tonneau. 'Miss Starberth, will you ride in to Dr. Markley's with me and hold him on the rear seat? Thank you. Steady, now, while I turn round.'
The last sight Rampole had was of her holding Budge's head in her lap as the motor churned into life, and the big headlamps swung. When he turned to go back towards the prison, he found he was so weak that he had to lean against the fence. His brain, tired and stupid, moved round like a creaky wheel. So there he was, clinging to the fence in the clear moonlight, and still holding Budge's crushed hat in one hand.
He glanced at it, dully, and let it fall. Herbert Starberth
A light was coming closer. Dr. Fell's bulk waddled above the grey meadow.
'Halloa there!' the doctor called, poking his chins forward. He came up and put his hand on Rampole's shoulder. 'Good man,' he said after a pause. 'Well? What happened? Who was hurt?'
The doctor tried to speak levelly, but his voice grew high. He went on:
'I saw most of it from the balcony. I saw him run, and called out, and then I thought he fired at somebody… '
Rampole put a hand to his head. 'That butler fellow — what's his name-Budge. He must have been watching us from the wood. God knows why. I'd just hoisted him — you know, the dead one — over the edge of the well, and I heard you call, and somebody start to run. Budge got in his way, and took it in the chest.'
'He isn't-?'
'I don't know,' the American answered, despairingly. 'He wasn't dead when we put him in the car. They've taken him in to Chatterham.'
Both of them stood silent for a while, listening to the crickets. The doctor took a flask from his pocket and held it out. Cherry brandy went down Rampole's throat with a choking bite, and then crawled along his veins in a way that made him shudder.
'You've no idea who the man was?' Dr. Fell asked.
Rampole said, wearily: 'Oh, to hell with who it was. I didn't even get a glimpse of him; I just heard him running. I was thinking about what I'd seen down there…. Look here, we'd better get back to the dead one.'
'I say, you're shaking. Steady on?'
'Give me a shoulder for a second. Well, it was this way?'
Rampole swallowed again. He felt that his nostrils would never be free of the odour from that well, or from crawling things. Again he saw the rope curling down from the balcony, and felt the stone against his corduroy trousers as he swung himself over the edge.:.
'It was this way,' he went on, eagerly. 'I didn't have to use the rope very far. About five or six feet down there are stone niches hacked into the side, almost like steps. I'd figured it wouldn't be very far down, because heavy rains might flood out any hiding place Anthony had made. You had to watch yourself, because the niches were slimy; but there was one big stone scraped almost clean. I could see an 'om' and a 'me' cut into a round inscription. The rest was almost obliterated. At first I thought I couldn't move the stone block, but when I braced myself, and tied the rope round my waist, and put the edge of the trench-mattock into the side, I found it was only a thin slab. You could push it in fairly easily, and if you kept it upright there was a hole at one side where you could get in several fingers to pull it back again…. The place was full of water-spiders and rats….'
He shuddered.
'I didn't find a room, or anything elaborate. It was just an opening hollowed out of the flat stones they'd used for the well, and a part of the earth around; and it was half full of water, anyway. Herbert's body had been squeezed into it along the back. The first thing I touched was his hand, and I saw the hole in his head. By the time I had hauled him out I was as wet as he was. He's pretty small, you know, and by keeping the rope tied round my waist to brace me I could hoist him on my shoulder. His clothes were full of some kind of overblown flies, and they crawled on me. As for the rest of it…'
He slapped at himself, and the doctor gripped his arm.
'There wasn't anything else, except — oh yes, I found the handkerchief. It's pretty well rotted, but it belonged to old Timothy; T. S. on the edge, bloody and rolled in one corner. At least, I think it's blood. There were some candle-ends, too, and what looked like burnt matches. But no treasure; not a box, not a scrap. And that's all. It's cold; let me go back and get my coat. There's something inside my collar… '
The doctor gave him another drink of brandy, and they moved on heavy legs towards the Hag's Nook. Herbert Starberth's body lay where Rampole had deposited it beside the well. As they looked down at it under the doctor's light, Rampole kept wiping his hands fiercely up and down the sides of his trousers. Small and doubled, the body had its head twisted on one side, and seemed to be gaping at something it saw along the grass. The cold and damp of the underground niche had acted like an ice-house; though it must have been a week since the bullet had entered his brain, there was no sign of decomposition.
Rampole, feeling as though his brain were full of dull bells, pointed.
'Murder?' he asked.
'Undoubtedly. No weapon, and — you know.'
The American spoke words which sounded idiotic even to him in the way he felt. 'This has got to stop!' he said, desperately, and clenched his hands. But there was nothing else to say. It expressed everything. He repeated: 'This has got to stop, I tell you! Yes, that poor devil of a butler.. or do you suppose he was in on it? I never thought of that.'
Dr. Fell shook his head.
'No. No, there is only one man concerned in this. I know who he is.'
Leaning against the coping of the well, Rampole groped in his pocket after cigarettes. He lit one with a muddy hand on the match, and even the cigarette smelt of the depths down there. He said:
'Then we're near the end-?'
'We're near the end,' said Dr. Fell. 'It will come tomorrow, because of a certain telegram.' He was silent, meditating, with his light directed away from the body. 'It took me a long time to realize it,' he added, abruptly.
'There is one man, and only one man, who could have committed these murders. He has killed three men already, and tonight he may have killed a fourth Tomorrow there is an afternoon train arriving from London. We will meet that train. And there will be an end to the murderer.'
'Then — the murderer doesn't live here?'
Dr. Fell raised his head. 'Don't think about it now, young fellow. Go down to Yew Cottage and get a bath and a change of clothes; you need it. I can watch.'
An owl had begun to cry over the Hag's Nook. Rampole moved through the brush, back along the trampled trail where they had carried Budge. He glanced back only once. Dr. Fell had switched off his flashlamp. Against the blue and silver of the moonlight, Dr. Fell was standing motionless, a massive black silhouette with a leonine head, staring down into the well.
Budge was conscious only of dreams and pain. He knew that he was lying on a bed somewhere, with deep pillows under his head. Once he thought he saw a white-lace curtain blowing at a window; he thought that a lamp was reflected in the window-glass, and that somebody was sitting near him, watching.
But he could not be sure. He kept dozing off to sleep, without seeming to be able to move. There were noises like the shiver of beaten gongs. Somebody was arranging a prickly blanket about his neck, though.he felt too hot already. At the touch of the hands he felt terrified, and again he tried to lift his arms without success; the gong- noises and the swing of phantom rooms dissolved in a jerk of pain which ran through him as though it were flowing along his veins. He smelt medicine. He was a boy on a football field, under a dinning of shouts; he was winding clocks and measuring port from a decanter; and then the portrait of old Anthony, from its frame in the gallery at the Hall, leapt out at him. Old Anthony wore a white gardener's glove….
Even as he retreated, he knew that it was not old Anthony. Who was it? Somebody he had seen on the motion picture screen, associated with fighting and gunplay; and a whole genie-bottle of shadowy faces floated past. Nor yet was it any of these, but some person he had known a long time. A familiar face — .
