The Man without Nerves E-Book

E. Phillips Oppenheim

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

In this novel we have Oppenheim’s as it best, with the story of a man hunt set in an English village, and involving a well-known banker and the Lord of the Manor. The story is a thriller built on several interlaced mysteries which are suddenly thrust on the sleepy village of Sandywayes: three men committing shockingly unexpected suicides, three strangers with questionable backstories but no obvious connections simultaneously appearing in town, and large amounts of money quietly disappearing from the bank. This 1935 novel focuses on the conduct of bankers, their clients, and wealthy merchants in the English suburbs surrounding London in the interwar period. The comfortable society of tennis and golf, private cars in trains, and unspoken secrets of money and privilege are the keys to unlocking the mystery.

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CONCLUSION

CHAPTER I

THREE men were already seated in the reserved first-class compartment attached each morning to the eight-twenty train from Sandywayes to Waterloo. The other two places were as yet unoccupied. Mr. James Huitt, the bank manager, who was responsible for this innovation of what with mild humor they called the “Club Car,” and felt himself in a kind of way the master of ceremonies with regard to it, drew out his watch and studied it with a frown. He himself never varied the time of his arrival at the station by a single minute and he hated unpunctuality.

In his person, his speech and his attire he was the very prototype of the man of precise habits. His gold-rimmed spectacles only partially concealed a pair of shrewd and calculating eyes. His correctly shaped features lacked all expression. He was forty-four years old and he might easily have been mistaken for thirty-four or fifty-four. He had been for years sub-manager and was now manager of the Aldwych Branch of the great banking firm of Barton’s. Nine people out of ten who were interested in their fellow creatures would have correctly diagnosed his profession. The watch at which he was gazing was regulated every Monday morning and if there was one person in the city of London who knew the correct hour it was Mr. James Huitt.

“This time,” he remarked portentously, “I fear that our friend Martin has run it a little too fine.”

A robust, cheerful looking little man whose name was Cresset–Andrew Cresset of the firm of Cresset & Hollis, corset manufacturers, with offices situated in London Wall–who had only recently been promoted to a seat in this local holy of holies, also drew out his watch.

“Seems like it,” he agreed. “We shall be off in half a minute.”

Mr. Timothy Sarson, a wealthy wine merchant, a man of fine physique and bearing, lowered his newspaper. He was dressed in the old-fashioned style of the prosperous city merchant. His hat was large and of unusual shape. He wore gray side whiskers which went well enough with his healthy, almost rubicund complexion. He carried a fob and his white spats were obviously renewed every day.

“It will be the first time,” he remarked in a rich and throaty voice, “that any one of us has actually missed the train.”

There was a shout and the loud honking of an automobile horn in the country lane which passed by the entrance to the station. The guard dropped the flag which he had half raised and removed the whistle from his lips. Thirty seconds later an elderly gentleman, in a state of profuse perspiration, was pushed into the compartment.

“Don’t do you no good, Mr. Martin, to have to run for it like that,” the guard warned his passenger pleasantly as he slammed the door and concluded his signal to the engine driver.

The train moved off. There was a little chorus of incipient chaff from the three already installed occupants of the compartment. Then–a sudden silence. The bank manager broke off in the midst of a gentle admonitory remark. Mr. Timothy Sarson paused in the act of lighting a cigar and let the match go out in his fingers. Mr. Cresset left off in the middle of a sentence and forgot to close his mouth. The three men were all gazing at the new arrival. Roland Martin was a middle-aged man in poorish condition owing to the manner of his life, but it certainly seemed as though it must have been more than a mere fifty-yard sprint which was responsible for his quickly drawn breathing, his unwholesome color and the sweat which was streaming from his forehead. Here, without a doubt, was the bearer of tragic news. As might have been expected, James Huitt was the first to ask a definite question.

“Has anything happened, Mr. Martin?” he inquired. “You have had trouble with your car, perhaps? I had an idea your engine was missing fire when you were kind enough to give me that lift yesterday.”

There was no coherent reply. Then the late arrival, whose voice was usually hoarse and who suffered from shortness of breath, gasped out portions of a mutilated sentence.

“No one knows, then–you have not heard?”

“Heard what?” Mr. Cresset demanded.

“About–Sam Jesson.”

“What about him?” they all demanded more or less at the same time.

Martin, notwithstanding a gurgling in his throat, got the words out somehow: “Dead! Shot! Found in–garage this morning–cold–with a bullet through his chest–and a letter addressed to his wife by his side.”

There followed a grim and horrified silence. The social circle of Sandywayes, which included the village on the north side of the railway, the group of houses called the Oasis and the wilderness on the south side, was a small one, and Sam Jesson was one of its prominent members. He was one of themselves– their partner at golf, at bridge –the companion of their mild festivities. The three men seemed afflicted with a sort of dumbness of thought as well as of speech. From the dead man’s very nearness to them it seemed impossible to believe in such an appalling catastrophe. The carriage in which they were seated seemed full of the echoes of his conversation. Only last night he had been issuing challenges for a fourball golf match. Timothy Sarson was the first to find words. He was dizzily incredulous.

“Why, Sam dined with us last night. We were not looking for him this morning because he said that he wanted a couple of hours’ exercise and wouldn’t come up to town till the afternoon train. Never saw him more cheerful in my life. Martin, for God’s sake, pull yourself together, man! There must be some mistake. Tell us the truth.”

Roland Martin wiped his forehead.

“It’s not the sort of story one invents,” he groaned.

“How did you find out about it?” James Huitt inquired.

“It was Edwards, my own chauffeur, who found him not half an hour ago. Went in to borrow something and there he was lying stiff.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Barely twenty minutes. I don’t suppose I ought to have come away, but the sergeant was there and the doctor and half the village was streaming down. I couldn’t do any good and I don’t mind admitting that it gave me such a turn that I had one look at him and ran away!”

There was a brief, awe-stricken pause.

“Sam Jesson,” the wine merchant muttered. “The last man in the world I should have thought capable of a thing like that.”

“As full of life and good spirits as anyone I ever knew,” Mr. Cresset sighed.

“But what on earth could make him commit such a ghastly offense?” Timothy Sarson demanded. “He was all right financially, wasn’t he, Huitt?”

The bank manager frowned slightly.

“Samuel Jesson,” he said, “is–or I suppose I must say was–a client of mine. Even if this terrible thing has really happened, I am not in a position to discuss his affairs.”

Sarson indulged in a brief but poignant gesture. He had been known to call Mr. Huitt an old maid.

“Well, I’ll tell you all this,” he declared stubbornly. “You can say what you like–no one is going to make me believe that Sam Jesson committed suicide. He was not the type. Besides, why should he? What motive could he have had? He enjoyed life as well as any of us, and financially–well, he was never a gas bag but I have heard him talk of some of his investments and I would have changed places with him any day!”

James Huitt leaned a little forward in his place. Of the four men he was perhaps the least disturbed, but even he had gone pale and there was a glimmer of that half-awed look which comes with the fear of incomprehensible things gleaming in the eyes behind his gold-rimmed spectacles.

“No explanation has as yet been offered, I suppose, Martin, by any member of the family?”

“There was only his wife at home,” Martin reminded them all. “The sergeant has the letter. I don’t know whether he has given it to her yet; he seemed too scared to know what to do.”

Andrew Cresset spoke up suddenly, like a man on the verge of hysterics.

“I hope to God it hadn’t anything to do with money,” he exclaimed fervently.

“Not likely,” Sarson scoffed. “Why, any one of us would have done our bit to help Sam Jesson round a stiff corner if he needed it.”

“I am afraid,” James Huitt pronounced, “that nowadays most of the troubles with which our friends are afflicted are concerned more or less with finance. However, the letter he left behind for his wife will probably tell us everything. Whatever his motive may have been, it’s a terrible affair.”

Silence fell upon the little company. Timothy Sarson leaned back in his place and groaned heavily.

“You have a chance to give it to us from the horse’s mouth, Huitt,” he pointed out. “No one’s going to be the worse off either. I always understood he kept a good balance?”

“If that,” Mr. Huitt interrupted deliberately, “is a prelude to questions dealing with the financial position of my client, I can only beg you to have the good taste not to pursue the subject. My lips are sealed.”

Just as a sudden wave of joy or good news brings men of kindred habits and manner of life together and opens their hearts, so tragedy with its icy grip upon the nerves sometimes produces the reverse effect. During the remainder of that journey to Waterloo the four men in the reserved carriage from Sandywayes scarcely opened their lips. No one even tried to read his newspaper. They were simply afflicted by an uneasy and embarrassing indisposition for speech. The bond between them was temporarily broken. It was as though each suspected the other of some horrible crime.

When they glided into the station, instead of the usual volley of farewells, admonitions towards good behavior during the long day, cheerful prognostications concerning the journey home, they went their several ways in silence.

Towards three o’clock in the afternoon of that same day Mr. James Huitt, who sat in solitary splendor in a stiffly upholstered but expensively furnished private room at the back of his bank in Aldwych, received a visitor. He looked at the plain visiting card brought in by one of his clerks with a faint sense of recognition.

“Mr. Tyssen,” he said reflectively. “I wonder if that is not the name of Mrs. Foulds’ new lodger. Not a client, is he, Merton?”

“Not that I know of, sir.”

“Did he give you any idea as to his business?”

“None at all, sir, except that he begged for a word or two alone with you on a private matter.”

The bank manager shrugged his shoulders resignedly. The fact remained, however, that after eight years’ experience one of the pleasures of his life was still receiving visitors. He was proud of his position of bank manager of an important branch of a world-famed bank. He liked impressing people and, although there were some who refused to be impressed, there were many who accepted him at his own valuation. He decided to see his caller.

“Show him in,” he directed.

A young man of wholesome but somewhat ordinary appearance and indifferently dressed was in due course shown in. His complexion was freckled and he was–in the language of schoolboys– pug-nosed. His ears were inclined to stand out and his hair, which was of no definite color, was ill brushed. He was over six feet in height but loosely built. There was nothing about him calculated to impress. Mr. Huitt, however, as was his custom with visitors, was stonily civil.

“Mr. Tyssen,” he said, repeating his name, “you have come to stay in the neighborhood of Sandywayes, I believe?”

“That’s right, sir,” the young man acknowledged eagerly. “I am a writer by profession and I have been looking for a quiet spot like Sandywayes for some time. I am at work on a novel.”

“Indeed.”

“Before I took to fiction,” Tyssen continued, “I was on the staff of the Daily Reporter. I still send them occasional contributions. In fact, it is on their business that I have come to see you this afternoon.”

The bank manager remained silent. He had no special affection for journalists.

“I took the liberty of sending in my personal card,” the young man proceeded, “because my connection with the paper is no longer official. I am much obliged to you for seeing me, sir.”

Mr. Huitt did not at once connect the drama of the morning with the nervous youth who sat on one of the hard leather chairs twirling his hat in his hand. He nodded in somewhat puzzled fashion.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

“In the first place,” was the prompt reply, “I want you to be so good as to tell me, sir, whether this is the handwriting of a client of yours.”

Mr. Huitt adjusted his glasses, glanced at the envelope which the other had just passed across the table– casually enough at first and then more steadily. Something of the suaveness of his manner seemed to have passed. His small face had become set in more rigid lines. If one of his regular customers had been present at that moment he would not have ventured to allude to the matter of an overdraft.

“Yes,” the bank manager acknowledged. “I should say there is no doubt that this is the handwriting of Mr. Samuel Jesson. How did it come into your possession?”

The young man ignored the question.

“You have heard what has happened to him, I suppose?”

“I heard the news in the railway carriage coming up to town,” Huitt admitted. “He was found dead in a garage, I understand. Have you any particulars?”

“I can tell you all about it, sir,” Tyssen declared. “Mr. Jesson was found shot through the heart in the garage this morning when Mr. Martin’s chauffeur went in to borrow some gasoline. The police think that he must have been there the greater part of the night.”

“The local police?”

“The sergeant from the police station. A revolver with one cartridge discharged was found by his side–a revolver which everyone seems to know he possessed and which was, in fact, kept in the garage. There was also a letter to his wife.”

“That looks bad,” Mr. Huitt sighed.

“I can tell you what was in the letter,” the caller continued eagerly. “There were only about a couple of sentences. It simply said that owing to impending financial trouble he had decided to take his own life. He asked her forgiveness and gave a few particulars as to his property.”

“There is no doubt, then, about his having committed suicide?” the bank manager asked with his eyes fixed upon his visitor.

“Not the slightest,” was the confident reply. “Nevertheless, Mr. Huitt, I gather that there is considerable feeling in the city upon the subject.”

“What sort of feeling?”

“Well, my late sub-editor, for instance, was a great friend of Mr. Jesson’s, and he does not for a moment believe that he was in any financial straits. We newspaper men and fiction writers, you know, sir, are always on the lookout for a story, and I can’t help wondering whether there isn’t a mystery behind this affair.”

“What sort of mystery?” Mr. Huitt inquired in his even, precise tone. Tyssen scratched his chin. His rather uneasy eyes seemed disturbed by the steely glimmer from behind the bank manager’s spectacles.

“Whether, for instance, he was being blackmailed or anything of that sort.” Mr. Huitt’s tone became a trifle harder.

“The object of your visit to me, Mr. Tyssen,” he said, “remains obscure.”

The young man coughed.

“You, sir,” he went on, “as his banker, are without a doubt able to solve the question as to whether Mr. Jesson was or was not in financial difficulties.”

“Your surmise is quite correct,” Mr. Huitt admitted. “I am in a position to solve that question. And then?”

The young man was becoming more and more embarrassed. He took his courage into both hands, however.

“Well, the long and the short of it is, sir,” he brought out, “I thought you might give me a hint as to how things stood with your client. Supposing, for instance, you were in a position to tell me that his financial losses were imaginary and that he was a wealthy man, then I have the beginnings of a story for the paper and a very good background for my own novel.”

Mr. James Huitt glanced again at the card which lay upon the table.

“Mr. Tyssen,” he said deliberately, “I have always understood that gentlemen of your profession allowed themselves considerable latitude, but I take the liberty of telling you, sir, that I think your question addressed to me concerning the affairs of my late client is both impertinent and improper. I beg you will convey that expression of my opinion to your sub-editor.”

“I am very sorry, sir,” the young man apologized ruefully. “I didn’t mean to give any offense. It didn’t seem to me that there was very much harm in asking you something which the whole world will know in a day or so.”

“I will take it for granted,” Mr. Huitt said, “that the exigencies of your profession are responsible for your untimely visit. I will tell you as much as this, therefore: At the coroner’s inquest tomorrow afternoon I shall answer publicly any questions asked me as to Mr. Jesson’s financial position. Until then not a word concerning his affairs will pass my lips except to his relatives. Permit me to wish you good afternoon.”

Tyssen rose clumsily to his feet.

“Sorry if I have annoyed you, sir,” he apologized once more. “I suppose there is some reason for keeping things so dark. You couldn’t even give me a hint, could you?”

Mr. Huitt, who had already rung the bell, looked up at his clerk’s entrance.

“Show this gentleman out, Merton,” he directed.

For some minutes after the departure of his disappointed visitor the bank manager sat motionless in his chair, his eyes fixed upon the opposite wall. Presently, without change of expression, his fingers strayed towards the bell, which he firmly pressed. Merton made prompt appearance.

“Bring me a copy,” his chief instructed, “of Mr. Samuel Jesson’s account with us. I shall require it absolutely up-to-date for the inquest tomorrow.”

“Certainly, sir.”

The young man hurried out. He was gone about ten minutes. When he returned, Huitt, who was certainly not given to wasting his time, was still seated in precisely the same attitude, his eyes fixed upon exactly the same spot. His clerk laid the figures before him.

“You will remember, sir,” the former ventured, “that only yesterday afternoon Mr. Jesson rang up and inquired the exact state of his balance. We gave him the correct figures but he only laughed at us. He was to have come in this morning.”

“I remember perfectly,” Mr. Huitt acknowledged. “In fact, I had an appointment with Mr. Jesson at eleven o’clock. A very sad affair, Merton.”

“A bit mysterious, too, sir,” the young man ventured.

Mr. Huitt sighed.

“To us it may seem so, Merton,” his chief assented. “Somehow or other, though, I always felt that there was something sinister about these large cash withdrawals.”

“You are thinking of blackmail, sir?” The bank manager’s grave expression might have been taken for assent. He made no reply, however. It was not a matter for discussion with an employee.

At five minutes before the time for the departure of the return train that evening Mr. James Huitt, as was his almost invariable custom, took his place in the right-hand corner seat of the “Club Car” for Sandywayes. Mr. Timothy Sarson was already installed with a handful of evening papers. Mr. Cresset arrived a few minutes afterwards and Roland Martin, not content with his narrow escape of the morning, only entered the carriage when the train was on the point of leaving.

Greetings between the four men were quite perfunctory although the strain of the morning had disappeared. They expected to see one another, and secretly, although their feelings of friendship might not have been deep, they would have been disappointed to have found anyone missing. It would have been a link broken in the chain of their daily life.

“You have heard about the inquest tomorrow, Mr. Huitt?” Timothy Sarson asked.

“I received a subpoena at the bank,” was the quiet reply. “It is to be held, I gather, at the village hall at three o’clock.”

“There’s a great deal of curiosity in the city,” Mr. Cresset remarked, “with regard to poor Sam Jesson’s disclosure of financial losses.”

“The city is always curious,” the bank manager observed.

“I saw his brokers this morning,” Cresset continued. “Poor old Burrows –he’s the head of the firm, almost past it now, though–he couldn’t make head or tail of it. Said he should have put Jesson down for a wealthy man. Certainly he has never made any losses on what he bought from them.”

“Shall you come up to town tomorrow morning, Huitt?” Roland Martin asked.

“I shall come up at the usual hour,” the bank manager confided. “I have arranged with my deputy to take my place from one o’clock.”

“I’ll motor you up to the hall if you like,” Martin suggested. “It’s rather a long pull to the top of the village.”

“That would be exceedingly kind of you,” was the courteous acknowledgment. “About a quarter to three at the tennis courts. The whole affair will be quite formal except for your evidence.”

“So I understand,” Huitt acquiesced, seeking refuge in his evening newspaper.

At Sandywayes, as usual, the four occupants of the “Club Car” all went their separate ways. The village itself stretched irregularly up a winding hill on the left-hand side of the railway –a village in which there were still some charming old Sussex houses and one very beautiful one, Sandywayes Court, a country seat of the Earl of Milhaven, Deputy Lord Lieutenant of the county. The chief charm of the place, however, lay in the little stretch of country called the Oasis on the right-hand side. Here was an old-world Common, with a duck pond at one end, a cricket ground in the middle and lawn tennis courts at the farther extremity, the whole surrounded by a low, white rail and bordered on the right-hand side by a swiftly running stream. On the other side of the rail were long, irregular spinneys of pine trees, beyond which stretched the celebrated Paradise Golf Links, the most famous in the county for their perfect situation, their marvelous greens and magnificent clubhouse, once the Dower House of the Milhaven family. To the little colony who inhabited the Oasis, however, this was all unknown country. The Paradise Golf Links kept their perfection to themselves. A hundred- guinea entrance fee and an impossible committee kept their gates barred rigidly.

Huitt, opening the gate almost opposite the station yard, crossed the sweet-smelling meadow and by an almost indistinguishable footpath unlocked a gate marked “Private” with a key attached to his chain and passed between two privet hedges to the open space in which several tennis courts had been laid out. From the veranda of a small pavilion he returned courteously the greetings of the players, ordered a cup of tea from the woman attendant and sat down to watch.

It was a very peaceful scene. Sybil Cresset and Pauline Sarson were playing against the latter’s brother Anthony, a younger and even better-looking edition of his father, and the young man, Tyssen, who had been a visitor at the bank in Aldwych that afternoon. On the farther of the two courts several other people, including the local doctor –Anderson by name–and the curate of the village, Mr. Greatley, were engaged in making up a set. The latter, excusing himself for a few moments, came across and greeted the new arrival.

“I hope you think, Mr. Huitt, that we are doing right in playing this evening,” he remarked. “The vicar had an idea that we ought, perhaps, to close the courts for the day. I ventured to suggest, however, that we do so only on the day of the funeral. Mr. Jesson was never a great enthusiast. In fact, he seldom came near the place unless his daughter happened to be staying with them.”

“I think you decided quite rightly, Mr. Greatley,” the bank manager, who was president of the tennis club, pronounced. “If we close during the hours of the interment I think that is all that is necessary.”

“A very shocking affair,” the curate went on lugubriously. “Quite inexplicable. I saw Mrs. Jesson for a few minutes but she was not in a fit condition to talk to anyone. There is a great deal of gossip going on in the village.”

“Of what nature?” Huitt inquired. “There is a sort of an idea that there must have been some other cause beside the fear of poverty to induce the poor fellow to take his life. Excuse me, sir, I see that I am wanted.”

He hurried off and Mr. Huitt leaned back in his chair. From where he sat in-the corner of the raised veranda the view was a very pleasant one. Beyond the tennis courts the common stretched away past the cricket ground to some pine woods which appeared to afford a shelter for several pleasantly built bungalows almost hidden from sight amongst the trees. On the right-hand side of the common was his own exceedingly. pretty cottage, covered with bougainvillea and wisteria. On the left hand were most of the houses which made up the little settlement called the Oasis. There was the village police station, a creeper-covered building of ancient red brick, the post office-almost a twin building–and the rather more pretentious houses of Mr. Roland Martin, Mr. Timothy Sarson, Mr. Cresset and the victim of the last night’s tragedy–Mr. Samuel Jesson. All these residences were a trifle more modern but the architect had been kind to a very pleasant location and the creeping vines and luxuriantly filled gardens had been kinder still.

A dreamy little corner of the world, it seemed to Mr. Huitt as he sat there listening to the thump of the balls against the rackets and the laughing voices of the players.

“A sad thing about poor Mr. Jesson, sir,” the old lady who had made him his tea remarked, as she came out with the tray. “I seen him pass only yesterday morning. Cheerful as possible, he seemed.”

“A very sad affair, Mrs. Harris,” the president of the Lawn Tennis Club agreed.

“That there young gentleman as is come and is staying over yonder with Mrs. Foulds, he did seem struck all of a heap when he was told,” Mrs. Harris continued. “The young gentleman that’s playing tennis there now: a nicely spoken person, but nosey, and with queer wandering habits at night time.”

Mr. Huitt looked speculatively across at Tyssen–the young man in question. He appeared to no more advantage here in the country than in the city. He was powerfully enough built but his flannels were ill-fitting and his tennis was nothing wonderful.

“He was interested, was he?” the bank manager remarked. “I wonder why. He has scarcely had time to get to know any of us yet. Let me see– his name is Tyssen, isn’t it?”

“Tyssen it is, sir. They do say that he writes books and bits of things in magazines.”

“Holiday-making?”

“Maybe, sir. He is not one of those who talk much about themselves. He’s got secret ways with him, too, that I’m not altogether fond of.”

“You are a woman of observation, Mrs. Harris,” her companion remarked.

“I notice things more than most,” was the self-satisfied assent. “What I have noticed about that young man is that he seems more interested in everyone else’s business than in his own. I am a poor sleeper myself and I have seen him more than once wandering around at three or four o’clock in the morning.”

There was a brief silence. A very close observer, however, might have remarked that with Mr. Huitt it was not altogether a silence of indifference.

“Wandering around where?” he asked quietly.

“Well, all the houses, so to speak. Last night I saw him cross the Common and walk almost to your gate. A dark night it was, too.”

“So I remember. I am wondering how you saw him.”

Mrs. Harris smiled.

“It was one of those nights with sheet lightning opening the skies pretty well all the time, sir,” she told him. “I seen him on the Common. I saw him pass the cows and the next flash that came I seen him stepping over the railing just opposite your gate. I could even see the queer sort of stick he was carrying.”

“Well, I think this is very observant of you, Mrs. Harris,” her patron said pleasantly. “It is always useful to have someone who watches what is going on even in a quiet neighborhood like this. However, I daresay this young man means no harm. Have you seen him wandering about the wilderness at all?”

“I can’t say I’ve noticed him in that direction particularly,” Mrs. Harris admitted. “Not a night, anyway. But what I say is–why not stay in his bed like a Christian at nights instead of traipsing all over the place? What does he want to do it for? That’s what I ask myself.”

“Writers are supposed to have queer habits, you know, Mrs. Harris,” the bank manager reminded her, with a reassuring smile. “There’s not much mischief he can get into around here.”

“In a way of speaking that’s true, sir,” the woman agreed, “but when things happen like that poor gentleman killing himself last night–well, then I don’t like things about that we don’t rightly understand. What’s he doing here? Tennis? Why, Mr. Anthony could give him three-quarters of the game and beat him left-handed! He’s not a great one for talking to the young ladies either.”

“It appears to me,” her companion warned her, lowering his tone, “that the young man is coming over this way.”

Mrs. Harris took the hint and disappeared just as Mr. Greatley, the curate, arrived with the person whom they had been discussing.

“Mr. President,” the former said, “this is Mr. Tyssen, who is spending a week or two down here. He would like to join the club as a monthly member. He met you this afternoon, it appears, but only on business.”

Mr. Huitt rose to his feet and held out his hand. The young man did the same. His fingers were very bony. So were Mr. Huitt’s. His apparently weak eyes had a hard spot in the middle. So had Mr. Huitt’s, although his glasses partially concealed this. A very close observer might have wondered whether there was not some unexpressed significance in this introduction.

“We shall be very pleased to have Mr. Tyssen as a temporary member,” the president declared. “Our standard of play is not particularly high, Mr. Tyssen. I daresay you have already discovered that.”

“Quite good enough for me,” was the modest reply. “I am only a rabbit myself but I like the exercise.”

“I hope that you like the neighborhood?” Huitt inquired. “I wonder how you chanced to find us out. It’s very seldom that we have strangers here.”

“Just accident,” the young man confided. “Sheer accident. I am a curious sort of person about new places. I take a railway ticket to some village I have never heard of before and just wander round.”

“You are lodging with Mrs. Foulds, I understand, at the post office?”

“For the present. I rather had my eye on one of those bungalows up in the wood there.”

Mr. Huitt shook his head.

“I am afraid that you would have no chance in that direction,” he said. “The water supply is bad and Lord Milhaven, who owns most of the land round here, has decided not to build any more.”

“There’s one that doesn’t seem to be occupied,” Tyssen persisted.

“That one is being kept for the servants of the lady who is already in residence,” Mr. Huitt explained.

“The foreign lady?”

“I am not aware of the lady’s nationality,” the bank manager said, resuming his seat as a hint that the conversation might be considered over.

“I can tell you what it is if you want to know,” the young man observed. “Thank you,” was the stiff reply. “I am not interested.”

Tyssen, with no further excuse to linger, passed on. The Reverend Greatley, who was an observant person, found himself a trifle puzzled. He could almost have fancied that in this very ordinary meeting of a village visitor with a local magnate some unanalyzable disturbance had made itself felt.

Tyssen returned from the dressing-rooms of the lawn tennis pavilion just after Mr. Huitt had taken a dignified leave of the little company. The young man glanced at the disappearing figure of the bank manager with an air of disappointment. He paused in his almost ceaseless task of rolling dark-colored, unappetizing-looking tobacco into ill-shaped cigarettes, and for a moment seemed about to follow him. Anthony Sarson, who was seated with Sybil Cresset and his sister and who was really a very good-natured young man, beckoned him over.

“Our president is a little huffy tonight, Tyssen,” he said. “I should leave him alone. He hates to be questioned anyway. You have not met my sister formally, I think? Pauline, this is Mr. Tyssen, who is spending his summer vacation down here.”

The Sarsons were certainly a very good-looking family. Pauline, with the flawless complexion and clear brown eyes of her father and brother, possessed on her own account the attractions of deep yellow hair and a slim but most desirable figure. She was of a smaller type than her male relatives, with greater subtlety of feature and expression.

“I have heard about Mr. Tyssen,” she said, as she shook hands. “How did you come to find us out in this backwater?”

“I wanted a perfectly quiet place,” Tyssen explained.

“You have certainly succeeded in finding it,” Pauline assured him. “Is Mr. Huitt an old friend of yours?”

“I saw him for the first time to speak to this afternoon,” the young man confided. “I called at his bank.”

Anthony Sarson grinned.

“I’ve been there once or twice,” he told them. “Seems scarcely human when he’s in that magnificent inquisitorial chamber of his. He’s not a bad old sort, though.”

“I find him,” Tyssen observed, “a little reserved.”

“He is certainly not what you would call expansive,” Pauline remarked. “He has very strict ideas about everything –the etiquette of tennis, the etiquette of conversation, the etiquette of life.”

“Bank managers,” Anthony said, “have to be precise in their habits. Are you going to play again, Tyssen?”

“I should be glad to if there’s room for me anywhere,” the young man replied, with his eyes fixed upon Pauline.

“I don’t play very well, unfortunately.”

“You had better play with Pauline,” Anthony suggested, “against Sybil and me.”

“If your sister will be kind enough to take me,” Tyssen accepted eagerly.

“I shall like to,” the young woman remarked, rising to her feet. “Most of the men I play with–Mr. Greatley for one and Anthony for another–poach abominably. If you really are out of practice, Mr. Tyssen, perhaps I shall get my share of the play.”

“I am not so much out of practice,” Tyssen confided, as they strolled off towards the courts, “as a very indifferent player. I played a little as a boy. Since then–well, I’ve not had much time.”

“You write things, don’t you?” she asked.

“I try,” he admitted. “I started as a journalist. I want to write a novel. Just now I am studying life and character so far as I can.”

“You have come to a queer place for that,” she laughed.

“I suppose so,” he admitted doubtfully. “Yet there are plenty of adages about the quiet places, aren’t there? Unexpected things happen sometimes. For instance, the tragedy of last night!”

She sighed.

“Too dreadful! Shall I serve?”

“If you please.”

The set turned out to be a very interesting one. Tyssen exerted himself more than on any previous occasion although it was obvious that he had no great knowledge of the game. The four drank lemonade on the porch afterwards. Pauline was smiling quietly to herself as she listened to her partner’s rather clumsy compliments on her prowess.

“Shall I tell you one thing I have noticed about you, Mr. Tyssen?” she said.

“If you please,” he begged.

“You play, at any rate, with more energy when our president is not here. You don’t like him.”