The Secret of the Tower/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
MR. SAFFRON AT HOME
To put it plainly, Sergeant Hooper—he had been a Sergeant for a brief and precarious three weeks, but he used the title in civil life whenever he safely could, and he could at InkstonSergeant Hooper was a villainous-looking dog. Beaumaroy, fresh from the comely presences of Old Place, unconscious of how the General had ripped up his character and record, pleasantly nursing a little project concerning Dr. Mary Arkroyd, had never been more forcibly struck with his protege’s ill-favoredness than when he arrived home on this same evening, and the Sergeant met him at the door.
“By gad, Sergeant,” he observed pleasantly, “I don’t think anybody could be such a rascal as you look. It’s that faith that carries me through.”
The Sergeant helped him off with his coat. “It’s some people’s stock-in-trade,” he remarked, “not to look a rascal like they really are, sir.” The “sir” stuck out of pure habit; it carried no real implication of respect.
“Meaning me!” laughed Beaumaroy. “How’s the old man to-night?”
“Quiet enough. He’s in the Tower there—been there an hour or more.”
The cottage door opened on to a narrow passage, with a staircase on one side, and on the other a door leading to a small square parlor, cheerfully if cheaply furnished, and well lit by an oil lamp. A fire blazed on the hearth, and Beaumaroy sank into a “saddle-bag” armchair beside it, with a sigh of comfort. The Sergeant had jerked his head towards another door, on the right of the fireplace; it led to the Tower. Beaumaroy’s eyes settled on it.
“An hour or more, has he? Have you heard anything?”
“He was making a speech a little while back, that’s all.”
“No more complaints and palpitations, or anything of that sort?”
“Not as I’ve heard. But he never says much to me. Mrs. Wiles gets the benefit of his symptoms mostly.”
“You’re not sympathetic, perhaps.”
During the talk Hooper had been to a cupboard and mixed a glass of whisky and soda. He brought it to Beaumaroy and put it on a small table by him. Beaumaroy regarded his squat paunchy figure, red face, small eyes (a squint in one of them), and bulbous nose with a patient and benign toleration.
“Since you can’t expect, Sergeant, to prepossess the judge and jury in your favor, the instant you make your appearance in the box”
“Here, what are you on to, sir?”
“It’s the more important for you to have it clearly in your mind that we are laboring in the cause of humanity, freedom, and justice. Exactly like the Allies in the late war, you know, Sergeant. Keep that in your mind, clinch it! He hasn’t wanted you to do anything particular to-night, or asked for me?”
“No, sir. He’s happy with—with what you call his playthings.”
“What are they but playthings?” asked Beaumaroy, tilting his glass to his lips with a smile perhaps a little wry.
“Only I wish as you wouldn’t talk about judges and juries,” the Sergeant complained.
“I really don’t know whether it’s a civil or a criminal matter, or both, or neither,” Beaumaroy admitted candidly. “But what we do know, Sergeant, is that it provides us with excellent billets and rations. Moreover, a thing that you certainly will not appreciate, it gratifies my taste for the mysterious.”
“I hope there’s a bit more coming from it than that,” said the Sergeant. “That is, if we stick together faithful, sir.”
“Oh, we shall! One thing puzzles me about you, Sergeant. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before. Sometimes you speak almost like an educated man; at others your speech is, well, illiterate.”
“Well, sir, it’s a sort of mixture of my mother; she was class, the blighter who come after my father, and the Board School”
“Of course! What they call the educational ladder! That explains it. By the way, I’m thinking of changing our doctor.”
“Good job, too. I ’ate that Irechester. Stares at you, that chap does.”
“Does he stare at your eyes?’” asked Beaumaroy thoughtfully.
“I don’t know that he does at my eyes particularly. Nothing wrong with ’em, is there?” The Sergeant sounded rather truculent.
“Never mind that; but I fancied he stared at Mr. Saffron’s. And I’ve read somewhere, in some book or other, that doctors can tell, or guess, by the eyes. Well, that’s only an idea. How does a lady doctor appeal to you, Sergeant?”
“I should be shy,” said the Sergeant, grinning.
“Vulgar! vulgar!” Beaumaroy murmured.
“That Dr. Mary Arkroyd?”
“I had thought of her.”
“She ought to be fair easy to kid. You ’ave notions sometimes, sir.”
Beaumaroy stretched out his legs, debonnair, well-rounded legs, to the seducing blaze of oak logs.
“I haven’t really a care in the world,” he said.
The Sergeant’s reply, or comment, had a disconcerting ring. “And you’re sure of ’Eaven? That’s what the bloke always says to the ’angman.”
“I’ve no intention of being a murderer, Sergeant.” Beaumaroy’s eyebrows were raised in gentle protest.
“Once you’re in with a job, you never know,” his retainer observed darkly.
Beaumaroy laughed. “Oh, go to the devil! and mix me another whisky.” Yet a vague uneasiness showed itself on his face; he looked across the room at the evil-shaped man handling the bottles in the cupboard. He made one queer, restless movement of his arms, as though to free himself. Then, in a moment, he sprang from his chair, a glad kindly smile illuminating his face; he bowed in a very courtly fashion, exclaiming, “Ah! here you are, sir? And all well, I hope?”
Mr. Saffron had entered from the door leading to the Tower, carefully closing it after him. Hooper’s hand went up to his forehead in the ghost of a military salute, but a sneering smile persisted on his lips. The only notice Mr. Saffron took of him was a jerk of the head towards the passage, an abrupt and ungracious dismissal, which, however, the Sergeant silently accepted and stumped out. The greeting reserved for Beaumaroy was vastly different. Beaumaroy’s own cordiality was more than reciprocated. It seemed impossible to doubt that a genuine affection existed between the elder and the younger man, though the latter had not thought fit to mention the fact to Sergeant Hooper.
“A tiring day, my dear Hector, very tiring. I’ve transacted a lot of business. But never mind that, it will keep. What of your doings?”
Having sat the old man in the big chair by the fire, Beaumaroy sauntered across to the door of the Tower, locked it, and put the key in his pocket. Then he returned to the fire and, standing in front of it, gave a lively and detailed account of his visit to Old Place.
“They appear to be pleasant people, very pleasant. I should like to know them, if it was not desirable for me to live an entirely secluded life.” Mr. Saffron’s speech was very distinct and clean cut, rather rapid, high in tone but not disagreeable. “You make pure fun of this Miss Wall, as you do of so many things, Hector, but—” he smiled up at Beaumaroy—“inquisitiveness is not our favorite sin just now!”
“She’s so indiscriminately inquisitive that it’s a thousand to one against her really finding out anything of importance, sir.” Beaumaroy sometimes addressed his employer as “Mr. Saffron,” but much more commonly he used the respectful “sir.” “I think I’m equal to putting Miss Delia Wall off.”
“Still she noticed our weekly journeys!”
“Half Inkston goes to town every day, sir, and the rest three times, twice, or once a week. I called her particular attention to the bag, and told her it was for books from Mudie’s!”
“Positive statements like that are a mistake.” Mr. Saffron spoke with a sudden sharpness, in pointed rebuke. “If I form a right idea of that woman, she’s quite capable of going to Mudie’s to ask about us.”
“By Jove, you’re right, sir, and I was wrong. We’d better go and take out a subscription tomorrow; she’ll hardly go so far as to ask the date we started it.”
“Yes, let that be done. And, remember, no unnecessary talk.” His tone grew milder, as though he were mollified by Beaumaroy’s ready submission to his reproof. “We have some places to call at to-morrow, have we?”
“They said they’d have some useful addresses ready for us, sir. I’m afraid, though, that we’re exhausting the most obvious resources.”
“Still, I hope for a few more good consignments. I suppose you remain confident that the Sergeant has no suspicions as regards that particular aspect of the matter?”
“I’m sure of it, up to the present. Of course there might be an accident, but with him and Mrs. Wiles both off the premises at night, it’s hardly likely; and I never let the bag out of my sight while it’s in the room with them, hardly out of my hand.”
“I should like to trust him, but it’s hardly fair to put such a strain on his loyalty.”
“Much safer not, sir, as long as we’re not driven to it. After all though, I believe the fellow is out to redeem his character, his isn’t an unblemished record.”
“But the work, the physical labor, entailed on you, Hector!”
“Make yourself easy about that, sir. I’m as strong as a horse. The work’s good for me. Remember I’ve had four years’ service.”
Mr. Saffron smiled pensively. “It would have been funny if we’d met over there! You and I!”
“It would, sir,” laughed Beaumaroy. “But that could hardly have happened without some very curious accident.”
The old man harked back. “Yes, a few more good consignments, and we can think in earnest of your start.” He was warming his hands, thin yellowish hands, at the fire now, and his gaze was directed into it. Looking down on him, Beaumaroy allowed a smile to appear on his lips, a queer smile, which seemed to be compounded of affection, pity, and amusement.
“The difficulties there remain considerable for the present,” he remarked.
“They must be overcome.” Once again the old man’s voice became sharp and even dictatorial.
“They shall be, sir, depend on it.” Beaumaroy’s air was suddenly confident, almost braggart. Mr. Saffron nodded approvingly. “But, anyhow, I can’t very well start till favorable news comes from”
“Hush!” There was a knock on the door.
“Mrs. Wiles, to lay the table, I suppose.”
“Yes! Come in!” He added hastily to Beaumaroy, in an undertone. “Yes, we must wait for that.”
Mrs. Wiles entered as he spoke. She was a colorless, negative kind of a woman, fair, fat, flabby, and forty or thereabouts. She had been the ill-used slave of a local carpenter, now deceased by reason of over-drinking; her nature was to be the slave of the nearest male creature, not from affection (her affections were anæmic) but rather, as it seemed, from an instinctive desire to shuffle off from herself any responsibility. But, at all events, she was entirely free from Miss Delia Wall’s proclivity.
Mr. Saffron rose. “I’ll go and wash my hands. We’ll dine just as we are, Hector.” Beaumaroy opened the door for him; he acknowledged the attention with a little nod, and passed out to the staircase in the narrow passage. Beaumaroy appeared to consider himself absolved from any preparation, for he returned to the big chair and, sinking into it, lit another cigarette. Meanwhile Mrs. Wiles laid the table, and presently Sergeant Hooper appeared with a bottle of golden-tinted wine.
“That, at least, is the real stuff,” thought Beaumaroy as he eyed it in pleasurable anticipation. “Where the dear old man got it, I don’t know; but in itself it’s almost worth all the racket.”
And really, in its present stages, so far as its present developments went, the “racket” pleased him. It amused his active brain, besides (as he had said to Mr. Saffron) exercising his active body, though certainly in a rather grotesque and bizarre fashion. The attraction of it went deeper than that. It appealed to some of those tendencies and impulses of his character which had earned such heavy censure from Major-General Punnit and had produced so grave an expression on Captain Alec’s handsome face without, however, being, even in that officer’s exacting judgment, disgraceful. And, finally, there was the lure of unexplored possibilities, not only material and external, but psychological not only touching what others might do or what might happen to them, but raising also speculation as to what he might do, or what might happen to him at his own hands; for example, how far he would flout authority, defy the usual, and deny the accepted. The love of rebellion, of making foolish the wisdom of the wise, of hampering the orderly and inexorable treatment of people just as, according to the best modern lights, they ought to be treated, this lawless love was strong in Beaumaroy. Not as a principle; it was the stronger for being an instinct, a wayward instinct that might carry him, he scarce knew where.
Mr. Saffron came back, greeted again by Beaumaroy’s courtly bow and Hooper’s vaguely reminiscent but slovenly military salute. The pair sat down to a homely beefsteak; but the golden tinted wine gurgled into their glasses. But, before they fell to, there was a little incident. A sudden, but fierce, anger seized old Mr. Saffron. In his harshest tones he rapped out at the Sergeant, “My knife! You careless scoundrel, you haven’t given me my knife!”
Beaumaroy sprang to his feet with a muttered exclamation: “It’s all my fault, sir. I forgot to give it to Hooper. I always lock it up when I go out.” He went to a little oak sideboard and unlocked a drawer, then came back to Mr. Saffron’s side. “Here it is, and I humbly apologize.”
“Very good! very good!” said the old man testily, as he took the implement.
“Ain’t anybody going to apologize to me?” asked Hooper, scowling.
“Oh, get out, Sergeant!” said Beaumaroy good-naturedly. “We can’t bother about your finer feelings.” He glanced anxiously at Mr. Saffron. “All right now, aren’t you, sir?” he inquired.
Mr. Saffron drank his glass of wine. “I am perhaps too sensitive to any kind of inattention; but it’s not wholly unnatural in my position, Hector.”
“We both desire to be attentive and respectful, sir. Don’t we, Hooper?”
“Oh my, yes!” grinned the Sergeant, showing his very ugly teeth. “It’s only owing that we ’aven’t quite been brought up in royal palaces.”