The Secret of the Tower/Chapter 10

Mary arrived home, she found Cynthia and Captain Alec still in possession of the drawing-room; their manner accused her legitimate entry into the room of being an outrageous intrusion. She took no heed of that, and indeed little heed of them. To tell the truth, she was ashamed to confess, but it was the truth, she felt rather tired of them that evening. Their affair deserved every laudatory epithet, except that of interesting; so she declared peevishly within herself as she tried to join in conversation with them. It was no use. They talked on, and in justice to them it may be urged that they were fully as bored with Mary as she was with them; so naturally their talents did not shine their brightest. But they had plenty to say to one another, and dutifully threw in a question or a reference to Mary every now and then. Sitting apart at the other end of the long low room—it ran through the whole depth of her old-fashioned dwelling—she barely heeded and barely answered. They smiled at one another and were glad.

She was very tired; her feelings were wounded, her nerves on edge; she could not even attempt any cool train of reasoning. The outcome of her talk with Beaumaroy filled her mind rather than the matter of it; and, more even than that, the figure of the man seemed to be with her, almost to stand before her, with his queer alternations of despair and mirth, of defiance and pleading, of derision and alarm. One moment she was intensely irritated with him; in the next she half forgave the plaintive image which the fancy of her mind conjured up before her eyes.

Her eyes closed—she was so very tired, the fight had taken it out of her! To have to do things like that was an odious necessity, which had never befallen her before. That man had done—well, Captain Alec was quite right about him! Yet still the shadowy image, though thus reproached, did not depart; it was smiling at her now with its old mockery—the kindly mockery which his face wore before they quarrelled, and before its light was quenched in that forlorn bewilderment. And it seemed as though the image began to say some words to her, disconnected words, not making a sentence, but yet having for the image a pregnant meaning, and seeming to her—though vaguely and very dimly—to be the key to what she had to understand. She was stupid not to understand words so full of meaning—just as stupid as Beaumaroy had thought.

Then Doctor Mary fell asleep, sound asleep; she had been very near it for the last ten minutes.

Captain Alec and Cynthia were in two chairs, close side by side, in front of the fire. Once Cynthia glanced over her shoulder; the Captain had glanced over his in the same direction already. One of his hands held one of Cynthia’s. It was well to be sure that Mary was asleep, really asleep.

She had gone to sleep on the name of Beaumaroy; on it she awoke. It came from Captain Alec’s lips. He was standing on the hearthrug with his arm round Cynthia’s waist, and his other hand raising one of hers to his lips. He looked admirably handsome—strong, protecting, devoted. And Cynthia, in her fragile appealing prettiness, was a delicious foil, a perfect complement to the picture. But now, under stress of emotion—small blame to a man who was making a vow of eternal fidelity!—under stress of emotion, as, on a previous occasion, under that of indignation, the Captain had raised his voice!

“Yes, against all the scoundrels in the world, whether they’re called Cranster or Beaumaroy!” he said.

Mary’s eyes opened. She sat up. “Cranster and Beaumaroy?” They were the words which her ears had caught. “What in the world has Mr. Beaumaroy to do with—” But she broke off, as she saw the couple by the fire. “But what are you two doing?”

Cynthia broke away from her lover, and ran to her friend with joyous avowals.

“I must have been sound asleep,” cried Mary, kissing her. Alec had followed across the room and now stood close by her. She looked up at him. “Oh, I see! She’s to be safe now from such people?” On this particular occasion Mary’s look at the Captain was not admiring; it was a little scornful.

“That’s the idea,” agreed the happy Alec. “Another idea is that I trot you both over in the car to Old Place—to break the news and have dinner.”

“Splendid!” cried Cynthia. “Do come, Mary!”

Mary shook her head. “No; you go, you two,” she said. “I’m tired, and I want to think.” She passed her hand across her eyes. She seemed to wipe away the mists of sleep. Her face suddenly grew animated and exultant. “No, I don’t want to think! I know!” she exclaimed emphatically.

“Mary dear, are you still asleep? Are you talking in your sleep?”

“The keyword! It came to me, somehow, in my sleep. The keyword—Morocco!”

“What the deuce has Morocco” Captain Alec began, with justifiable impatience.

“Ah, you never heard that, and, dear Captain Alec, you wouldn’t have understood it if you had. You thought he was reciting poems. What he was really doing”

“Look here, Doctor Mary, I’ve just been accepted by Cynthia, and I’m going to take her to my mother and father. Can you get your mind on to that?” He looked at her curiously, not at all understanding her excitement, perhaps resenting the obvious fact that his Cynthia’s happiness was not foremost in her friend’s mind.

With a great effort Mary brought herself down to the earth—to the earth of romantic love from the heaven of professional triumph. True, the latter was hers, the former somebody else’s. “I do beg your pardon. I do indeed. And do let me kiss you again, Cynthia darling—and you, dear Captain Alec, just once! And then you shall go off to dinner.” She laughed excitedly. “Yes, I’m going to push you out.”

“Let’s go, Alec,” said Cynthia, not unkindly, yet just a little pettishly. The great moment of her life—surely as great a moment as there had ever been in anybody’s life—had hardly earned adequate recognition from Mary. As usual, her feelings and Alec’s were at one. Before they passed to other and more important matters, when they drove off in the car she said to Alec, “It seems to me that Mary’s strangely interested in that Mr. Beaumaroy. Had she been dreaming of him, Alec?”

“Looks like it! And why the devil Morocco?” His intellect baffled, Captain Alec took refuge in his affections.

Left alone, and so thankful for it, Doctor Mary did not attempt to sit still. She walked up and down, she roved here and there, smoking any quantity of cigarettes; she would certainly have forbidden such excess to a patient. The keyword; its significance had seemed to come to her in her sleep. Something in that subconsciousness theory? The word explained, linked up, gave significance—that magical word Morocco!

Yes, they fell into place now, the things that had been so puzzling, and that looked now so obviously suggestive. Even one thing which she had thought nothing about, which had not struck her as having any significance, now took on its meaning—the gray shawl which the old gentleman so constantly wore swathed round his body, enveloping the whole of it except his right arm. Did he wear the shawl while he took his meals? Doctor Mary could not tell as to that. Perhaps he did not; at his meals only Beaumaroy, and perhaps their servant, would be present. But he seemed to wear it whenever he went abroad, whenever he was exposed to the scrutiny of strangers. That indicated secretiveness, perhaps fear, the apprehension of something. The caution bred by that might give way under the influence of great cerebral excitement. Unquestionably Mr. Saffron had been very excited when he waved the sheet of hieroglyphics and shouted to Beaumaroy about Morocco. But whether he wore the shawl or not in the safe privacy of Tower Cottage, whatever might be the truth about that—perhaps he varied his practice according to his condition—on one thing Doctor Mary would stake her life; he used the combination knife-and-fork!

For it was over that implement that Beaumaroy had tripped up. It ought to have been hidden before she was admitted to the cottage. Somebody had been careless, somebody had blundered—whether Beaumaroy himself or his servant was immaterial. Beaumaroy had lied, readily and ingeniously, but not quite readily enough. The dart of his hand had betrayed him; that, and a look in his eyes, a tell-tale mirth which had seemed to mock both her and himself, and had made his ingenious lie even at the moment unconvincing. Yes, whether Mr. Saffron wore the shawl or not, he certainly used the combination table implement!

And the “poems?” The poems which Mr. Saffron recited to himself in bed, and which he had said, in Captain Alec’s hearing, were good and “went well.” It was Beaumaroy, of course, who had called them poems; the Captain had merely repeated the description. But with her newly found insight Doctor Mary knew better. What Mr. Saffron declaimed in that vibrating, metallic voice, were not poems, but—speeches!

And “Morocco” itself! To anybody who remembered history for a few years back, even with the general memory of the man in the street, to anybody who had read the controversies about the war, Morocco brought not puzzle, but enlightenment. For had not Morocco been really the starting point of the Years of Crisis—those years intermittent in excitement, but constant in anxiety? Beaumaroy was to start tomorrow for Morocco—on the strength of the hieroglyphics! Perhaps he was to go on from Morocco to Libya; perhaps he was to raise the Senussi (Mary had followed the history of the war), to make his appearance at Cairo, Jerusalem, Bagdad! He was to be a forerunner, was Mr. Beaumaroy. Mr. Saffron, his august master, would follow in due course! With a sardonic smile she wondered how the ingenious man would get out of starting for Morocco; perhaps he would not succeed in obtaining a passport, or, that excuse failing, in eluding the vigilance of the British authorities. Or some more hieroglyphics might come, carrying another message, postponing his start, saying that the propitious moment had not yet arrived after all. There were several devices open to ingenuity; many ways in which Beaumaroy might protract a situation not so bad for him even as it stood, and quite rich in possibilities. Her acid smile was turned against herself when she remembered that she had been fool enough to talk to Beaumaroy about sensitive honor!

Well, never mind Mr. Beaumaroy! The case as to Mr. Saffron stood pretty plain. It was queer and pitiful, but by no means unprecedented. She might be not much of an alienist, as Dr. Irechester had been kind enough to suggest to Mr. Naylor, but she had seen such cases herself—even stranger ones, where even higher Powers suffered impersonation, with effects still more tragically absurd to onlookers. And she remembered reading somewhere—was it in Maudslay—that in the days of Napoleon, when princes and kings were as ninepins to be set up and knocked down at the tyrant’s pleasure, the asylums of France were full of such great folk? Potentates there galore! If she had Mr. Saffron’s “record” before her, she would expect to read of a vain ostentatious man, ambitious in his own small way; the little plant of these qualities would, given a morbid physical condition, develop into the fantastic growth of delusion which she had now diagnosed in the case of Mr. Saffron—diagnosed with the assistance of some lucky accidents!

But what was her duty now—the duty of Dr. Mary Arkroyd, a duly qualified, accredited, responsible medical practitioner? With a slight shock to her self-esteem she was obliged to confess that she had only the haziest idea. Had not people who kept a lunatic to be licensed or something? Or did that apply only to lunatics in the plural? And did Beaumaroy keep Mr. Saffron within the meaning of whatever the law might be? But at any rate she must do something; the state of things at Tower Cottage could not go on as it was. The law of the land—whatever it was—must be observed, Beaumaroy must be foiled, and poor old Mr. Saffron taken proper care of. The course of her meditations was hardly interrupted by the episode of her light evening meal; she was back in her drawing-room by half past eight, her mind engrossed with the matter still.

It was a little after nine when there was a ring at the hall door. Not the lovers back so early? She heard a man’s voice in the hall. The next moment Beaumaroy was shown in, and the door shut behind him. He stood still by it, making no motion to advance towards her. He was breathing quickly, and she noticed beads of perspiration on his forehead. She had sprung to her feet at the sight of him and faced him with indignation.

“You have no right to come here, Mr. Beaumaroy, after what passed between us this afternoon.”

“Besides being, as you saw yourself, very excited, my poor old friend isn’t at all well to-night.”

“I’m very sorry; but I’m no longer Mr. Saffron’s medical attendant. If I declined to be this afternoon, I decline ten times more to-night.”

“For all I know, he’s very ill indeed, Dr. Arkroyd.” Beaumaroy’s manner was very quiet, restrained, and formal.

“I have come to a clear conclusion about Mr. Saffron’s case since I left you.”

“I thought you might. I suppose ‘Morocco’ put you on the scent? And I suppose, too, that you looked at that wretched bit of paper?”

“I—I thought of it” Here Mary was slightly embarrassed.

“You’d have been more than human if you hadn’t. I was out again after it in five minutes—as soon as I missed it; you’d gone, but I concluded you’d seen it. He scribbles dozens like that.”

“You seem to admit my conclusion about his mental condition,” she observed stiffly.

“I always admit when I cease to be able to deny. But don’t let’s stand here talking. Really, for all I know, he may be dying. His heart seems to me very bad.”

“Go and ask Dr. Irechester.”

“He dreads Irechester. I believe the sight of Irechester might finish him. You must come.”

“I can’t—for the reasons I’ve told you.”

“Why? My misdeeds? Or your rules and regulations? My God, how I hate rules and regulations! Which of them is it that is perhaps to cost the old man his life?”

Mary could not resist the appeal; that could hardly be her duty, and certainly was not her inclination. Her grievance was not against poor old Mr. Saffron, with his pitiful delusion of greatness, of a greatness, too, which now had suffered an eclipse almost as tragical as that which had befallen his own reason. What an irony in his mad aping of it now!

“I will come, Mr. Beaumaroy, on condition that you give me candidly and truthfully all the information which, as Mr. Saffron’s medical attendant, I am entitled to ask.”

“I’ll tell you all I know about him, and about myself, too.”

“Your affairs and—er—position matter to me only so far as they bear on Mr. Saffron.”

“So be it. Only come quickly; and bring some of your things that may help a man with a bad heart.”

Mary left him, went to her surgery, and was quickly back with her bag. “I’ll get out the car.”

“It’ll take a little longer, I know, but do you mind if we walk? Cars always alarm him. He thinks that they come to take him away. Every car that passes vexes him; he looks to see if it will stop. And when yours does” He ended with a shrug.

For the first time Mary’s feelings took on a keen edge of pity. Poor old gentleman! Fancy his living like that! And cars, military cars, too, had been so common on the road across the heath.

“I understand. Let us go at once. You walked yourself, I suppose?”

“Ran,” said Beaumaroy, and, with the first sign of a smile, wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.

“I’m ready, Mr. Beaumaroy,” said Doctor Mary.

They walked along together in silence for fully half the way. Then Beaumaroy spoke. “He was extremely excited—at his worst—when he and I went into the cottage. I had to humor him in every way; it was the only thing to do. That was followed by great fatigue, a sort of collapse. I persuaded him to go to bed. I hope we shall find him there, but I don’t know. He would let me go only on condition that I left the door of the Tower unlocked, so that he could go in there if he wanted to. If he has, I’m afraid that you may see something—well, something rather bizarre, Dr. Arkroyd.”

“That’s all in the course of my profession.”

Silence fell on them again, till the outline of cottage and Tower came into view through the darkness. Beaumaroy spoke only once again before they reached the garden gate.

“If he should happen to be calmer now, I hope you will not consider it necessary to tell him that you suspect anything unusual.”

“He is secretive?”

“He lives in terror.”

“Of what?”

“Of being shut up. May I lead the way in, Dr. Arkroyd?”

They entered the cottage, and Beaumaroy shut the door. A lamp was burning dimly in the passage. He turned it up. “Would you kindly wait here one minute?” Receiving her nod of acquiescence, he stepped softly up the stairs, and she heard him open a door above; she knew it was that of Mr. Saffron’s bedroom, where she had visited the old man. She waited, now with a sudden sense of suspense. It was very quiet in the cottage.

Beaumaroy was down again in a minute.

“It is as I feared,” he said quietly. “He has got up again, and gone into the Tower. Shall I try and get him out, or will you”

“I will go in with you, of course, Mr. Beaumaroy.”

His old mirthful, yet rueful, smile came on his lips—just for a moment. Then he was grave and formal again. “This way, then, if you please, Dr. Arkroyd,” he said deferentially.