It was bending over him now, in his bed. His scream became a croak.
Impossible that it should be there. He was unhurt, and this was a fancy coloured with the smell of iodoform. The linen of the pillow felt cool and faintly rough to his cheek. A clock struck. Something was shaken and flashing, thin glass in lamplight, and there were tiptoeing footfalls. Distinctly he heard a voice say:
'He'll live.'
Budge slept. It was as though some subconscious nerve had been waiting for those words, so that afterwards sleep descended, and wound him rigid as in a soft dark ball of yarn.
When at length he awoke, he did not know at first how weak he was, nor had the morphine quite worn off. But he did know that a low sun was streaming in at the window. Bewildered and a little frightened, he tried to make a move; he knew with ghastly certainty that he had slept into the afternoon, a thing unheard-of at the Hall…. Then he saw that Sir Benjamin Arnold, a smile on his long face, was bending over the bed. Behind him was a person whom he did not at first recognize, a young man….
'Feeling better?' asked Sir Benjamin.
Budge tried to speak, and only croaked. He felt humiliated. A bit of remembrance swirled down into his consciousness, like a rope….
Yes. He remembered now. It swept in such vivid colours that he closed his eyes. The young Yankee, the white gloves, the pistol. What had he done? — it rushed over him that he had been a coward, as he had always felt, and the taste of that thought was like nauseous medicine.
'Don't try to say anything,' Sir Benjamin said. 'You're at Dr. Markley's; he said you couldn't be moved. So lie still. You got a nasty bullet wound, but you'll pull through. We'll clear out now.' Sir Benjamin seemed embarrassed. He fingered the iron post at the foot of the bed. 'As to what you did, Budge,' he added, 'well, I don't mind telling you-well, it was damned sporting, you know.'
Moistening his lips, Budge at last achieved speech.
'Yes, sir,' he said. 'Thank you, sir.'
His half-closed eyes opened in wonder and some anger when he saw that the young American had almost laughed….
'No offense, Budge,' Rampole hastily put in. 'It was just that you rushed his gun like an Irish cop, and now you act as if somebody had just offered you a glass of beer… I don't suppose you recognized him, did you?'
(Some struggle in the brain; a half-face, cut into whorls like water over sand. Budge felt dizzy, and there was something hurting inside his chest. The water washed out the face.)
'Yes, sir,' he said, with an effort. 'I shall remember it — soon. Just now I can't think…'Of course,' Rampole interposed, hurriedly. somebody in white beckoning them from the doorway. 'Well, good luck, Budge. You've got plenty of nerve.'
At the smiles of the others, Budge felt a responsive smile drawing at his own lips like a nervous twitch. He felt drowsy again, and his head sang, but he was floating pleasantly away now. He was not sure what had happened; but I warm satisfaction lulled him for the first time in his life — What a story! If only those housemaids wouldn't leave windows open….
His eyes closed.
'Thank you, sir,' said Budge. 'Please tell Miss Dorothy that I shall be back at the Hall tomorrow.'
Rampole closed the door of the bedroom behind them, and turned to face Sir Benjamin in the dim upper hallway of Dr. Markley's house. He could see the white skirt of a nurse descending the stairs ahead.
'He saw whoever it was,' the chief constable said, grimly. 'Yes, and he'll remember. What the devil, though, was he doing up there, to begin with?
'Just curiosity, I suppose. And now what?'
Sir Benjamin opened the case of a big gold watch, glanced at it rather nervously, and shut it up again.
'It's Fell's show. I'm dashed if I know.' His voice grew querulous. 'He's gone over my head completely-mine! I mean to say, he has quite a stand-in with Sir William Rossiter, the High Commissioner at the Yard; he seems to be on intimate terms with everybody in England. And he's been pulling wires…. All I know is that we're to meet the five-four train from London, and nab somebody who gets off it. Well, I hope everybody's waiting. Come along.'
Dr. Markley was still on his afternoon round, and they did not linger. As they went down into the High Street, Rampole was rather more nervous than the chief constable.
Neither last night nor today could he elicit anything more from Dr. Fell.
'What's more,' the chief constable grumbled, in the same tone, 'I will not go to Southampton to meet the rector's uncle. I don't care if he is an old friend; the rector is going instead. I have business in Manchester — that's Thursday-and I've got to be away a week at the least. Dash it! Something always comes up. I can't find Payne, either; he has some papers I must take to Manchester along with me. Dash it! Here I've wasted all this time with the blasted case, when I could easily turn it over to the proper people, and Fell takes the whole thing out of my hands…
He was talking rather desperately, Rampole sensed, talking away at anything that came into his head, so that he would not be forced to think. And the American agreed with him.
Sir Benjamin's grey Daimler was waiting in the elm-shadowed street. It was tea-time, and few people were abroad. Rampole wondered whether the news of Herbert's death had yet filtered into Chatterham; the body had been conveyed to the Hall late last night, and the servants warned with awesome threats to say nothing until they were given permission, but that was no guarantee at all. Last night, to keep away the horrors, Dorothy had stayed with Mrs. Fell. Until almost daybreak Rampole had heard them talking in the room next to his. Exhausted, and yet unable to sleep, he had sat at the window, smoking innumerable cigarettes, and staring with smarting eyelids at the whitening dawn….
Now the grey Daimler swept through Chatterham, and the wind stroked his face with cool fragrance. In the sky the fiery streaks had paled; there were white, and violet, and a smokiness of shadow creeping up from the lowlands. There were a few dark clouds, like slow sheep. He remembered the first evening he had walked into Chatterham with Dorothy Starberth, through this mysterious hour of the gold-darkened sky and the faint jangling bells; when a wind ran across the green corn, and the smell of hawthorn grew stronger with dusk. Remembering it, he did not believe that it had been only ten days ago.
'Tomorrow there is an afternoon train from London,' he could hear Dr. Fell speaking in the Hag's Nook. 'We will meet that train.'
The words had finality….
Sir Benjamin said nothing. The Daimler roared against the whipping breeze. Dorothy in New York. Dorothy as his wife. Lord! but it had a funny sound! — every time he thought of that, he thought of himself sitting in a class last year and thinking that if he flunked economics (which, like all intelligent people, he detested), it would be the end of the world. Possessing a wife, he would become suddenly a citizen, with a telephone number and a cocktail-shaker and everything; and his mother would have hysterics; and his father, up twenty-five floors in a law-office at Number One West Forty-Second Street, would drowsily lift an eyebrow and say, 'Well, how much do you need?'
The Daimler stopped with a slur of tires in the road. They would have to wait for this respectable citizenship; they would have to wait for a murderer.
In the darkening lane which led to Yew Cottage several figures were awaiting them. Dr. Fell's voice boomed out:
'How is he? Getting better? — I thought so. Well, we're ready.' He made a gesture with one cane. 'Everybody who was on the scene the night Martin was murdered, everybody who can give evidence, is going to be in at the death now. Miss Starberth didn't want to come, and neither did the rector. But they're both here. I think there will be others waiting for us at the railway station.' He added, testily, 'Well, climb in, climb in!'
The rector's huge figure loomed out of the lane. He almost stumbled as he assisted Dorothy into the car.
'I'm quite willing, of course,' he said. ` `But I don't understand what you said about needing me?'
They had come out of the lane's shadow now. Dr. Fell struck his stick in the dust. He said:
'That's the point. That's the whole point. I want you to identify somebody. There's something you can tell us, and I doubt whether you know it yourself. And, unless you all do exactly as I tell you, we shall never know. Do you hear?'
He glared at all of them. Sir Benjamin was racing his motor, keeping his stiff face turned away. He suggested in a cold voice that they be on their way. In the tonneau the rector was trying to arrange his large plump face along
