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- Herausgeber: DigiCat
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Nobody's Man," E. Phillips Oppenheim crafts a clever and engrossing narrative that delves into themes of identity, deception, and the intricate web of human relationships. Set against a richly detailed backdrop, Oppenheim employs a distinctive literary style characterized by sharp dialogue and wit, which elevates the traditional novel of intrigue. The novel masterfully blends elements of adventure and romance, reflecting the early 20th-century fascination with espionage and the shifting social paradigms of the time, making it both a historical artifact and a timeless tale of personal struggle. E. Phillips Oppenheim, often referred to as the "Prince of Storytellers," was a prolific British novelist whose body of work primarily focused on thrillers and adventure narratives. Born in 1866, his rich experiences, including his exposure to both the suffocating norms of Edwardian society and the burgeoning world of espionage, informed the layered characters and complex plots in his novels. Oppenheim's keen observations of human nature and societal dynamics influenced his writing, contributing significantly to the genre's evolution during his era. Recommended for both scholars of early 20th-century literature and casual readers alike, "Nobody's Man" offers a captivating exploration of identity and the human condition. Oppenheim's deft storytelling and vivid characterizations invite readers to reflect on their own lives while losing themselves in a world of suspense and intrigue.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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Nobody's Man
Table of Contents
CHAPTER II
Tallente's first impressions of Jane Partington were that an exceedingly attractive but somewhat imperious young woman had surprised him in a most undignified position. She had come cantering down the drive on a horse which, by comparison with the Exmoor ponies which every one rode in those parts, had seemed gigantic, and, finding a difficulty in making her presence known, had motioned to him with her whip. He climbed down from the steps where he had been busy fastening up some roses, removed a nail from his mouth and came towards her.
"How is it that I can make no one hear?" she asked. "Do you know if Mrs. Tallente is at home?"
Tallente was in no hurry to reply. He was busy taking in a variety of pleasant impressions. Notwithstanding the severely cut riding habit and the hard little hat, he decided that he had never looked into a more attractively feminine face. For some occult reason, unconnected, he was sure, with the use of any skin food or face cream, this young woman who had the reputation of living out of doors, winter and summer, had a complexion which, notwithstanding its faint shade of tan, would have passed muster for delicacy and clearness in any Mayfair drawing-room. Her eyes were soft and brown, her hair a darker shade of the same colour. Her mouth, for all its firmness, was soft and pleasantly curved. Her tone, though a trifle imperative, was kindly, gracious and full of musical quality. Her figure was moderately slim, but indistinguishable at that moment under her long coat. She possessed a curious air of physical well-being, the well-being of a woman who has found and is enjoying what she seeks in life.
"Won't you tell me why I can make no one hear?" she repeated, still good-naturedly but frowning slightly at his silence.
"Mrs. Tallente is in London," he announced. "She has taken most of the establishment with her."
The visitor fumbled in her side pocket and produced a diminutive ivory case. She withdrew a card and handed it to Tallente, with a glance at his gloved hands.
"Will you give this to the butler?" she begged. "Tell him to tell his mistress that I was sorry not to find her at home."
"The butler," Tallente explained, "has gone for the milk. He shall have the card immediately on his return."
She looked at him for a moment and then smiled.
"Do forgive me," she said. "I believe you are Mr. Tallente?"
He drew off his gloves and shook hands.
"How did you guess that?" he asked.
"From the illustrated papers, of course," she answered. "I have come to the conclusion that you must be a very vain man, I have seen so many pictures of you lately."
"A matter of snapshots," he replied, "for which, as a rule, the victim is not responsible. You should abjure such a journalistic vice as picture papers."
"Why?" she laughed. "They lead to such pleasant surprises. I had been led to believe, for instance, by studying the Daily Mirror, that you were quite an elderly person with a squint."
"I am becoming self-conscious," he confessed. "Won't you come in? There is a boy somewhere about the premises who can look after your horse, and I shall be able to give you some tea as soon as Robert gets back with the milk."
He cooeed to the boy, who came up from one of the lower shelves of garden, and she followed him into the hall. He looked around him for a moment in some perplexity.
"I wonder whether you would mind coming into my study?" he suggested. "I am here quite alone for the present, and it is the only room I use."
She followed him down a long passage into a small apartment at the extreme end of the house.
"You are like me," she said. "I keep most of my rooms shut up and live in my den. A lonely person needs so much atmosphere."
"Rather a pigsty, isn't it?" he remarked, sweeping a heap of books from a chair. "I am without a secretary just now—in fact," he went on, with a little burst of confidence engendered by her friendly attitude, "we are in a mess altogether."
She laughed softly, leaning back amongst the cushions of the chair and looking around the room, her kindly eyes filled with interest.
"It is a most characteristic mess," she declared. "I am sure an interviewer would give anything for this glimpse into your tastes and habits. Golf clubs, all cleaned up and ready for action; trout rod, newly-waxed at the joints—you must try my stream, there is no water in yours; tennis racquets in a very excellent press—I wonder whether you're too good for a single with me some day? Typewriter—rather dusty. I don't believe that you can use it."
"I can't," he admitted. "I have been writing my letters by hand for the last two days."
She sighed.
"Men are helpless creatures! Fancy a great politician unable to write his own letters! What has become of your secretary?"
Tallente threw some books to the floor and seated himself in the vacant easy-chair.
"I shall begin to think," he said, a little querulously, "that you don't read the newspapers. My secretary, according to that portion of the Press which guarantees to provide full value for the smallest copper coin, has 'disappeared'."
"Really?" she exclaimed. "He or she?"
"He—the Honourable Anthony Palliser by name, son of Stobart Palliser, who was at Eton with me."
She nodded.
"I expect I know his mother. What exactly do you mean by 'disappeared'?"
Tallente was looking out of the window. A slight hardness had crept into his tone and manner. He had the air of one reciting a story.
"The young man and I differed last Tuesday night," he said. "In the language of the novelists, he walked out into the night and disappeared. Only an hour before dinner, too. Nothing has been heard of him since."
"What a fatuous thing to do!" she remarked. "Shall you have to get another secretary?"
"Presently," he assented. "Just for the moment I am rather enjoying doing nothing."
She leaned back amongst the cushions of her chair and looked across at him with interest, an interest which presently drifted into sympathy. Even the lightness of his tone could not mask the inwritten weariness of the man, the tired droop of the mouth, and the lacklustre eyes.
"Do you know," she said, "I have never been more intrigued than when I heard you were really coming down here. Last summer I was in Scotland—in fact I have been away every time the Manor has been open. I am so anxious to know whether you like this part of the world."
"I like it so much," he replied, "that I feel like settling here for the rest of my life."
She shook her head.
"You will never be able to do that," she said, "at least not for many years. The country will need so much of your time. But it is delightful to think that you may come here for your holidays."
"If you read the newspapers," he remarked, a little grimly, "you might not be so sure that the country is clamouring for my services."
She waved away his speech with a little gesture of contempt.
"Rubbish! Your defeat at Hellesfield was a matter of political jobbery. Any one could see through that. Horlock ought never to have sent you there. He ought to have found you a perfectly safe seat, and of course he will have to do it."
He shook his head.
"I am not so sure. Horlock resents my defeat almost as though it were a personal matter. Besides, it is an age of young men, Lady Jane."
"Young men!" she scoffed. "But you are young."
"Am I?" he answered, a little sadly. "I am not feeling it just now. Besides, there is something wrong about my enthusiasms. They are becoming altogether too pastoral. I am rather thinking of taking up the cultivation of roses and of making a terraced garden down to the sea. Do you know anything about gardening, Lady Jane?"
"Of course I do," she answered, a little impatiently. "A very excellent hobby it is for women and dreamers and elderly men. There is plenty of time for you to take up such a pursuit when you have finished your work."
"Fifteen thousand intelligent voters have just done their best to tell me that it is already finished," he sighed.
She made a little grimace.
"Am I going to be disappointed in you, I wonder?" she asked. "I don't think so. You surely wouldn't let a little affair like one election drive you out of public life? It was so obvious that you were made the victim for Horlock's growing unpopularity in the country. Haven't you realised that yourself—or perhaps you don't care to talk about these things to an ignoramus such as I am?"
"Please don't believe that," he begged hastily. "I think yours is really the common-sense view of the matter. Only," he went on, "I have always represented, amongst the coalitionists, the moderate Socialist, the views of those men who recognise the power and force of the coming democracy, and desire to have legislation attuned to it. Yet it was the Democratic vote which upset me at Hellesfield."
"That was entirely a matter of faction," she persisted. "That horrible person Miller was sent down there, for some reason or other, to make trouble. I believe if the election had been delayed another week, and you had been able to make two more speeches like you did at the Corn Exchange, you would have got in."
He looked at her in some surprise.
"That is exactly what I thought myself," he agreed. "How on earth do you come to know all these things?"
"I take an interest in your career," she said, smiling at him, "and I hate to see you so dejected without cause."
He felt a little thrill at her words. A queer new sense of companionship stirred in his pulses. The bitterness of his suppressed disappointment was suddenly soothed. There was something of the excitement of the discoverer, too, in these new sensations. It seemed to him that he was finding something which had been choked out of his life and which was yet a real and natural part of it.
"You will make an awful nuisance of me if you don't mind," he warned her. "If you encourage me like this, you will develop the most juvenile of all failings—you will make me want to talk about myself. I am beginning to feel terribly egotistical already."
She leaned a little towards him. Her mouth was soft with sweet and feminine tenderness, her eyes warm with kindness.
"That is just what I hoped I might succeed in doing," she declared. "I have been interested in your career ever since I had the faintest idea of what politics meant. You could not give me a greater happiness than to talk to me—about yourself."
CHAPTER III
Very soon tea was brought in. The homely service of the meal, and Robert's plain clothes, seemed to demand some sort of explanation. It was she who provided the opening.
"Will your wife be long away?" she enquired.
Tallente looked at his guest thoughtfully. She was pouring out tea from an ordinary brown earthenware pot with an air of complete absorption in her task. The friendliness of her seemed somehow to warm the atmosphere of the room, even as her sympathy had stolen into the frozen places of his life. For the moment he ignored her question. His eyes appraised her critically, reminiscently. There was something vaguely familiar in the frank sweetness of her tone and manner.
"I am going to make the most idiotically commonplace remark," he said. "I cannot believe that this is the first time we have met."
"It isn't," she replied, helping herself to strawberry
"Are you in earnest?" he asked, puzzled.
"Do you mean that I have spoken to you?"
"Absolutely!"
"Not only that but you have made me a present."
He searched the recesses of his memory in vain. She smiled at his perplexity and began to count on her fingers.
"Let me see," she said, "exactly fourteen years ago you arrived in Paris from London on a confidential mission to a certain person."
"To Lord Peters!" he exclaimed.
She nodded.
"You had half an hour to spare after you had finished your business, and you begged to see the young people. Maggie Peters was always a friend of yours. You came into the morning-room and I was there."
"You?"
"Yes! I was at school in Paris, and I was spending my half-holiday with Maggie."
"The little brown girl!" he murmured. "I never heard your name, and when I sent the chocolates I had to send them to 'the young lady in brown.' Of course I remember! But your hair was down your back, you had freckles, and you were as silent as a mouse."
"You see how much better my memory is than yours," she laughed.
"I am not so sure," he objected. "You took me for the gardener just now."
"Not when you came down the steps," she protested, "and besides, it is your own fault for wearing such atrociously old clothes."
"They shall be given away to-morrow," he promised.
"I should think so," she replied. "And you might part with the battered straw hat you were wearing, at the same time."
"It shall be done," he promised meekly.
She became reminiscent.
"We were all so interested in you in those days. Lord Peters told us, after you were gone, that some day you would be Prime Minister."
"I am afraid," he sighed, "that I have disappointed most of my friends."
"You have disappointed no one," she assured him firmly. "You will disappoint no one. You are the one person in politics who has kept a steadfast course, and if you have lost ground a little in the country, and slipped out of people's political appreciation during the last decade, don't we all know why? Every one of your friends—and your wife, of course," she put in hastily, "must be proud that you have lost ground. There isn't another man in the country who gave up a great political career to learn his drill in a cadet corps, who actually served in the trenches through the most terrible battles of the war, and came out of it a Brigadier-General with all your distinctions."
He felt his heart suddenly swell. No one had ever spoken to him like this. The newspapers had been complimentary for a day and had accepted the verdict of circumstances the next. His wife had simply been the reflex of other people's opinion and the trend of events.
"You make me feel," he told her earnestly, "almost for the first time, that after all it was worth while."
The slight unsteadiness of his tone at first surprised, then brought her almost to the point of confusion. Their eyes met—a startled glance on her part, merely to assure herself that he was in earnest—and afterwards there was a moment's embarrassment. She accepted a cigarette and went back to her easy-chair.
"You did not answer the question I asked you a few minutes ago," she reminded him. "When is your wife returning?"
The shadow was back on his face.
"Lady Jane," he said, "if it were not that we are old friends, dating from that box of chocolates, remember, I might have felt that I must make you some sort of a formal reply. But as it is, I shall tell you the truth. My wife is not coming hack."
"Not at all?" she exclaimed.
"To me, never," he answered. "We have separated."
"I am so very sorry," she said, after a moment's startled silence. "I am afraid that I asked a tactless question, but how could I know?"
"There was nothing tactless about it," he assured her. "It makes it much easier for me to tell you. I married my wife thirteen years ago because I believed that her wealth would help me in my career. She married me because she was an American with ambitions, anxious to find a definite place in English society. She has been disappointed in me. Other circumstances have now presented themselves. I have discovered that my wife's affections are bestowed elsewhere. To be perfectly honest, the discovery was a relief to me."
"So that is why you are living down here like this?" she murmured.
"Precisely! The one thing for which I am grateful," he went on, "is that I always refused to let my wife take a big country house. I insisted upon an unpretentious place for the times when I could rest. I think that I shall settle down here altogether. I can just afford to live here if I shoot plenty of rabbits, and if Robert's rheumatism is not too bad for him to look after the vegetable garden."
"Of course you are talking nonsense," she pronounced, a little curtly.
"Why nonsense?"
"You must go back to your work," she insisted.
"Keep this place for your holiday moments, certainly, but for the rest, to talk of settling down here is simply wicked."
"What is my work?" he asked. "I tell you frankly that I do not know where I belong. A very intelligent constituency, stuffed up to the throat with schoolboard education, has determined that it would prefer a representative who has changed his politics already four times. I seem to be nobody's man. Horlock at heart is frightened of me, because he is convinced that I am not sound, and he has only tried to make use of me as a sop to democracy. The Whigs hate me like poison, hate me even worse than Horlock. If I were in Parliament, I should not know which Party to support. I think I shall devote my time to roses."
"And between September and May?"
"I shall hibernate and think about them."
"Of course," she said, with the air of one humoring a child, "you are not in earnest. You have just been through a very painful experience and you are suffering from it. As for the rest, you are talking nonsense."
"Explain, please," he begged.
"You said just now that you did not know where your place was," she continued. "You called yourself nobody's man. Why, the most ignorant person who thinks about things could tell you where you belong. Even I could tell you."
"Please do," he invited.
She rose to her feet.
"Walk round the garden with me," she begged, brushing the cigarette ash from her skirt. "You know what a terrible out-of-door person I am. This room seems to me close. I want to smell the sea from one of those wonderful lookouts of yours."
He walked with her along one of the lower paths, deliberately avoiding the upper lookouts. They came presently to a grass-grown pier. She stood at the end, her firm, capable fingers clenching the stone wall, her eyes looking seaward.
"I will tell you where you belong," she said. "In your heart you must know it, but you are suffering from that reaction which comes from failure to those people who are not used to failure. You belong to the head of things. You should hold up your right, hand, and the party you should lead should form itself about you. No, don't interrupt me," she went on. "You and all of us know that the country is in a bad way. She is feeling all the evils of a too-great prosperity, thrust upon her after a period of suffering. You can see the dangers ahead—I learnt them first from you in the pages of the reviews, when after the war you foretold the exact position in which we find ourselves to-day. Industrial wealth means the building up of a new democracy. The democracy already exists but it is unrepresented, because those people who should form its bulwark and its strength are attached to various factions of what is called the Labour Party. They don't know themselves yet. No Rienzi has arisen to hold up the looking-glass. If some one does not teach them to find themselves, there will be trouble. Mind, I am only repeating what you have told others."
"It is all true," he agreed.
"Then can't you see," she continued eagerly, "what party it is to which you ought to attach yourself—the party which has broken up now into half a dozen factions? They are all misnamed but that is no matter. You should stand for Parliament as a Labour or a Socialist candidate, because you understand what the people want and what they ought to have. You should draw up a new and final programme."
"You are a wonderful person," he said with conviction, "but like all people who are clear-sighted and who have imagination, you are also a theorist. I believe your idea is the true one, but to stand for Parliament as a Labour member you have to belong to one of the acknowledged factions to be sure of any support at all. An independent member can count his votes by the capful."
"That is the old system," she pointed out firmly. "It is for you to introduce a new one. If necessary, you must stoop to political cunning. You should make use of those very factions until you are strong enough to stand by yourself. Through their enmity amongst themselves, one of them would come to your side, anyway. But I should like to see you discard all old parliamentary methods. I should like to see you speak to the heart of the man who is going to record his vote."
"It is a slow matter to win votes in units," he reminded her.
"But it is the real way," she insisted. "Voting by party and government by party will soon come to an end. It must. All that it needs is a strong man with a definite programme of his own, to attack the whole principle."
He looked away from the sea towards the woman by his side. The wind was blowing in her face, blowing back little strands of her tightly coiled hair, blowing back her coat and skirt, outlining her figure with soft and graceful distinction. She was young, healthy and splendid, full of all the enthusiasm of her age. He sighed a little bitterly.
"All that you say," he reminded her, "should have been said to me by the little brown girl in Paris, years ago. I am too old now for great tasks."
She turned towards him with the pitying yet pleasant air of one who would correct a child.
"You are forty-nine years old and three months," she said.
"How on earth did you know that?" he demanded.
She smiled.
"A valuable little red book called 'Who's Who.' You see, it is no use your trying to pose as a Methuselah. For a politician you are a young man. You have time and strength for the greatest of all tasks. Find some other excuse, sir, if you talk of laying down the sword and picking up the shuttle."
He looked back seawards. His eyes were following the flight of a seagull, wheeling in the sunlight.
"I suppose you are right," he acknowledged. "No man is too old for work."
"I beg your pardon, sir."
They turned abruptly around. They had been so engrossed that they had not noticed the sound of footsteps. Robert, a little out of breath, was standing at attention. There was a disturbed look in his face, a tremor in his voice.
"I beg your pardon, sir," he repeated, "there is—some one here to see you."
"Some one?" Tallente repeated impatiently.
Robert leaned a little forward. The effort at lowering his voice only made his hoarse whisper sound more agitated.
"A police inspector, sir, from Barnstaple, is waiting in the study."
CHAPTER IV
Mr. Inspector Gillian of Barnstaple had no idea of denying his profession. He had travelled over in a specially hired motor-car, and he was wearing his best uniform. He rose to his feet at Tallente's entrance and saluted a little ponderously.
"Mr. Andrew Tallente, sir?" he enquired.
Tallente silently admitted his identity, waved the inspector back to his seat—the one high-backed and uncomfortable chair in the room—and took an easy-chair himself.
"I have come over, sir," the man continued, "according to instructions received by telephone from Scotland Yard. My business is to ask you a few questions concerning the disappearance of the Honourable Anthony Palliser, who was, I am given to understand, your secretary."
"Dear me!" Tallente exclaimed. "I had no idea that the young man's temporary absence from polite society would be turned into a melodramatic disappearance."
The inspector took mental note of the levity in Tallente's tone, and disapproved.
"The Honourable Anthony Palliser disappeared from here, sir, on Tuesday night last, the night of your return from London," he said. "I have come to ask you certain questions with reference to that disappearance."
"Go ahead," Tallente begged. "Care to smoke a cigar?"
"Not whilst on duty, thank you, sir," was the dignified reply.
"You will forgive my cigarette," Tallente observed, lighting one. "Now you can go ahead as fast as you like."
"Question number one is this, sir. I wish to know whether Mr. Palliser's abrupt departure from the Manor was due to any disagreement with you?"
"In a sense I suppose it was," the other acknowledged. "I turned him out of the house."
The inspector did not attempt to conceal his gratification. He made a voluminous note in his pocketbook.
"Am I to conclude, then, that there was a quarrel?" he enquired.
"I do not quarrel with people to whom I pay a salary," Tallente replied.
"When you say that you turned him out of the house, that rather implies a quarrel, doesn't it? It might even imply—blows."
"You can put your own construction upon it," was the cool reply.
"Had you any idea where the honourable Anthony Palliser was going to?"
"I suggested the devil," Tallente confided blandly. "I expect he will get there some time. I put up with him because I knew his father, but he is not a young man to make a fuss about."
The inspector was a little staggered.
"I am to conclude, then," he said, "that you were dissatisfied with his work as your secretary?"
"Absolutely," was the firm reply. "You have no idea what a mess he was liable to make of things if he was left alone."
The inspector coughed.
"Mr. Tallente, sir," he said, "my instructions are to ask you to disclose the nature of your displeasure, if any, with the Honourable Mr. Anthony Palliser. In plain words, Scotland Yard desires to know why he was turned away from his place at a moment's notice."
"I suppose it is the duty of Scotland Yard to be inquisitive in cases of this sort," Tallente observed. "You can report to them the whole of the valuable information with which I have already furnished you, and you can add that I absolutely refuse to give any information respecting the—er—difference of opinion between the young man and myself."
The inspector did not conceal his dissatisfaction.
"I shall ask, you, sir," he said with dignity, "to reconsider that decision. Remember that it is the police who ask, and in cases of this sort they have special privileges."
"As soon as any criminal case arises from Anthony Palliser's disappearance," Tallente pointed out, "you will be in a position to ask me questions from a different standpoint. For the present I have given you just as much information as I feel inclined to. Shall we leave it at that?"
The inspector appeared to have become hard of hearing. He did not attempt to rise from his chair.
"Being your private secretary, sir," he said, "the Honourable Anthony Palliser would no doubt have access to your private papers?"
"Naturally," Tallente conceded.
"There might be amongst them papers of importance, papers whose possession by parties in the other camp of politics—"
"Stop!" Tallente interrupted. "Inspector Gillan, you are an astute man. Excuse me."
He crossed the room and, with a key which he took from a chain attached to his trouser button, opened a small but powerful safe fitted into the wall. He opened it confidently enough, gazed inside and remained for a moment transfixed. Then he took up a few little packets of papers, glanced them through and replaced them. He still stood there, dangling the key in his hard. The inspector watched him curiously.
"Anything missing, sir?" he asked.
Tallente swung the door to and came back to his chair.
"Yes!" he admitted.
"Can I make a note of the nature of the loss, sir?" the man asked, moistening his pencil.
"A political paper of some personal consequence," Tallente replied. "Its absence disquiets me. It also confirms my belief that Palliser is lying doggo for a time."
"A hint as to the contents of the missing paper would be very acceptable, sir," Inspector Gillian begged.
Tallente shook his head.
"For the present," he decided, "I can only repeat what I said a few moments ago—I have given you just as much information as I feel inclined to."
The inspector rose to his feet.
"My report will not be wholly satisfactory to Scotland Yard, sir," he declared.
"My experience of the estimable body is that they take a lot of satisfying," Tallente replied. "Will you take anything before you go, Inspector?"
"Nothing whatever, thank you, sir. At the risk of annoying you, I am bound to ask this question. Will you tell me whether anything in the nature of blows passed between you and the Honourable Anthony Palliser, previous to his leaving your house?"
"I will not even satisfy your curiosity to that extent," Tallente answered.
"It will be my duty, sir," the inspector said ponderously, "to examine some of your servants."
"Scotland Yard can do that for themselves," Tallente observed. "My wife and the greater part of the domestic staff left here for London a week ago."
The representative of the law saluted solemnly.
"I am sorry that you have not felt inclined to treat me with more confidence in this matter, Mr. Tallente," he said.
He took his leave then. Tallente heard him conversing for some time with Robert and saw him in the garden, interviewing the small boy. Afterwards, he climbed into his car and drove away. Tallente opened his safe and once more let the little array of folded papers slip through his hands. Then he rang the bell for Robert, who presently appeared.
"The inspector has quite finished with you?" his master asked.
Robert was a portly man, a little unhealthy in colour and a little short of breath. He had been gassed in the war and his nerves were not what they had been. It was obvious, as he stood on the other side of the table, that he was trembling.
"Quite, sir. He was enquiring about Mr. Palliser."
His master nodded.
"I am afraid he will find it a little difficult to obtain any information round here," he remarked. "There are certain things connected with that young man which may throw a new light upon his disappearance."
"Indeed, sir?" Robert murmured.
Tallente glanced towards the safe.
"Robert," he confided, "I have been robbed."
The man started a little.
"Indeed, sir?" he replied. "Nothing very valuable, I hope?"
"I have been robbed of papers," Tallente said quietly, "which in the wrong hands might ruin me. Mr. Palliser had a key to that safe. Have you ever seen it open?"
"Never, sir."
"When did Mr. Palliser arrive here?"
"On the evening train of the Monday, sir, that you arrived by on the Tuesday."
"Tell me, did he receive any visitors at all on the Tuesday?"
"There was a man came over from a house near Lynton, sir, said his name was Miller."
"Have you any idea what he wanted?"
"No certain idea, sir," Robert replied doubtfully. "Now I come to think of it, though, it seemed as though he had come to make Mr. Palliser some sort of an offer. After I had let him out, he came back and said something to Mr. Palliser about three thousand pounds, and Mr. Palliser said he would let him know. I got the idea, somehow or other, that the transaction, whatever it might have been, was to be concluded on Tuesday night."
"Why didn't you tell me this before, Robert?" his master enquired.
"Other things drove it out of my mind, sir," the man confessed. "I didn't look upon it as of much consequence. I thought it was something to do with Mr. Palliser's private affairs."
Tallente glanced at the safe.
"I saw this man Miller at the station," he said, "when I arrived."
"That would be on his way back from here, sir," Robert acquiesced. "I gathered that he was coming back again after dinner in a car."
"Did you hear a car at all that night?"
"I rather fancied I did," the man asserted. "I didn't take particular notice, though."
Tallente frowned.
"I am very much afraid, Robert," he said, "that wherever Mr. Palliser is, those papers are."
Robert shivered.
"Very good, sir," he said, in a low tone.
"Any speculations as to that young man's whereabouts," Tallente continued thoughtfully, "must necessarily be a matter of pure guesswork, but supposing, Robert, he should have wandered in that mist the wrong way—turned to the left, for instance, outside this window, instead of to the right—he might very easily have fallen over the cliff."
"The walk is very unsafe in the dark, sir," Robert acquiesced, looking down at the carpet.
"It was not my intention," Tallente remarked thoughtfully, "to kill the young man. A brawl in front of the windows was impossible, so I took him with me to the lookout. I suppose he was tactless and I lost my temper. I struck him on the chin and he went backwards, through that piece of rotten paling, you know, Robert—"
"I know, sir," the man interrupted, with a little moan. "Please don't!"
Tallente shrugged his shoulders.
"I took him at no disadvantage," he said coolly. "He knew how to use the gloves and he was twenty years younger than I. However, there it is. Backwards he went, all legs and arms and shrieks. And with him went the papers he had stolen.—At twelve o'clock to-night, Robert, I must go down after him."
"It's impossible, sir! It's a sheer precipice for four hundred feet!"
"Nothing of the sort," was the cool reply. "There are heaps of ledges and little clumps of pines and yews. All that you will have to do is to pull up the rope when I am ready. You can fasten it to a tree when I go down."
"It's not worth it, sir," the man protested anxiously. "No one will ever find the body down there."
"Send the boy home to stay with his parents to-night," Tallente continued. "Your wife, I suppose, can be trusted?"
"She is living up at the garage, sir," Robert answered. "Besides, she is deaf. I'll tell her that I am sleeping in the house to-night as you are not very well. And forgive me, sir—her ladyship left a message. She hoped you would lunch with her to-morrow."
Tallente strolled out again in a few minutes, curiously impatient of the restraint of walls, and clambered up the precipitous field at the back of the Manor. Far up the winding road which led back into the world, a motor-car was crawling on its way up over. He watched it through a pair of field glasses. Leaning back in the tonneau with folded arms, as though solemnly digesting a problem, was Inspector Gillian. Tallente closed the glasses with a little snap and smiled.
"The Bucket type," he murmured to himself, "very much the Bucket type."
CHAPTER V
The moon that night seemed to be indulging in strange vagaries, now dimly visible behind a mist of thin grey vapour, now wholly obscured behind jagged masses of black cloud, and occasionally shining brilliantly from a little patch of clear sky. Tallente waited for one of the latter moments before he finally tested the rope which was wound around the strongest of the young pine trees and stepped over the rustic wooden paling at the edge of the lookout He stood there balanced between earth and sky, until Robert, who watched him, shivered. "There is nothing to fear," his master said coolly. "Remember, I am an old hand at mountain climbing, Robert. All the same, if anything should happen, you'd better say that we fancied we heard a cry from down below and I went to see what it was. You understand?"
"Yes, sir!"
Tallente took a step into what seemed to be Eternity. The rope cut into his hands for the first three or four yards, as the red sand crumbled away beneath his feet, and he was obliged to grip for his life. Presently he gained a little ledge, from which a single yew tree was growing, and paused for breath.
"Are you all right, sir?" Robert called out from above.
"Quite," was the confident answer. "I shall be off again in a minute."
