The House 'Round the Corner Part 18

"How is that possible?" she insisted, turning wondering eyes on him.

"You yourself said that nothing we can do now will stop the authorities from re-opening the whole affair. There is no hope of closing people's mouths, Bob! Well, I've said it, and now Percy will be wild to learn the facts, because Meg Ogilvey doesn't run around calling by their Christian names men whom she has known a day without very good reason. But you don't know our local folk if you think our affairs are not being talked of in Elmdale and Nuttonby at this moment. Bland saw me, and James Walker will spread the tale far and wide. What good will I do by running away? Don't imagine I didn't hear what Walker said. He blurted out what you have hinted at. Some man was found dead in our house. It wasn't my father. Then, who was it?"

In her excitement she was hurrying Percy along at a rare pace, and Armathwaite saw, with a chill of foreboding, that the other was stepping out without protest, all an ear for impending revelations.

"From that point of view, Mr. Whittaker's presence is unquestionably advantageous," he said. "He is a friend in whom you can trust. He is acquainted with your relatives, I take it. His opinions will consequently be far weightier than mine."

"That's the way Bob talks when he's grumpy," said the girl, apparently for Whittaker's benefit alone. "He doesn't mean it really, but he thinks he ought to behave like a stage uncle and prevent an impulsive young thing from acting foolishly. Yet, all the time, he knows quite well that we could no more change the course of events now than hold back the tide."

"Will you kindly remember that if you were talking Greek, I'd have just about as much grasp of what you're saying as I have at this moment?" put in Whittaker.

Thus recalled to her task, Marguerite did not deviate from it any further. By the time Percy Whittaker had dropped into a chair in the dining-room, he had heard exactly what had happened since Armathwaite arrived in Elmdale. As he was hungry, a meal was improvised. He said little, only interpolating a fairly shrewd question now and again while Marguerite was amplifying some part of her recital. About this time he developed a new trait. He seemed rather to s.h.i.+rk comments which would draw Armathwaite into the conversation. When the girl appealed to the latter to verify some statement of fact, Whittaker remained silent. Even when it was necessary to refer directly to Armathwaite, he did so obliquely.

"You've spun a jolly queer yarn, Meg," he said, after she had retailed, for the second time, and with evident gusto, the discomfiture of James Walker. "I think it would be a good notion now if we found out what really did occur in this house after you and your mother went away.

Didn't you say there was a newspaper report of the inquest handy?"

"Betty Jackson promised to give it to Mr. Armathwaite."

"Well, couldn't we see it?"

"I'll go and ask her for it," said Armathwaite, and he left the room.

"Tell you what, Meg," drawled Percy, pouring out a third cup of tea, "you're making a howling mistake in letting that chap share your confidence."

Marguerite's eyebrows curved in astonishment. The very suddenness of this attack was disconcerting.

"What do you mean?" she cried.

"It's not always easy to give reasons for one's ideas. I was just thinking that he's a complete stranger, and here he is acting as though he was the head of the family. Who is he? Where does he come from? Why is he poking his nose into your private affairs? By gad, I can see Edie sniffing at him if she was here in my place!"

Some gleam of intuition warned the girl that she must repress the sharp retort on her lips.

"Then I am glad your sister is not here," she said quietly. "You must have woefully misunderstood every word I have uttered if you imagine that Mr. Armathwaite has done anything but strive manfully to keep a sordid story from my ken. He tried to make me go away this morning, and again this afternoon. He would certainly send me off early to-morrow if he were not afraid of some terrible thing happening. Please don't begin by being prejudiced against Mr. Armathwaite. I have enough trouble staring me in the face to dispense with absurd suspicions of one who has been a very real friend."

Whittaker seemed to weigh the point. Marguerite's self-control probably angered him as greatly as any other of the amazing things which had come to his knowledge during the past hour. He had expected her to bridle in defense of the man in whom she reposed such trust; her very calmness was unexpected and annoying.

"What will your people say when the whole business comes out?" he grumbled. "Dash it, Meg, I must speak plainly! It's no joke, you know, your coming here and being alone in the house with some fellow whom you never heard of before in your life."

Her face paled, and her brown eyes had a glint of fire in them; but with a splendid effort, she managed again to frame words other than those eager to burst forth.

"You miss the real problem that calls for solution," she said tremulously. "The consequences of my actions, no matter how foolish they may have been, count for nothing in comparison with the tragedy with which my father's name is bound up. Oh, Percy, don't you see what people must think? A man committed suicide in this house, and every one believed it was my father. Yet you yourself, less than an hour ago, brought me a letter written by my father yesterday! Suppose I leave Elmdale this instant--suppose, which is impossible, that the present excitement dies down--how can I go through life with such a ghastly secret weighing me down? It would drive me crazy!"

Armathwaite's firm tread was audible as he crossed the hall.

"Anyhow, take my tip, and don't blurt out everything you know the minute you're asked," muttered her counselor, and the door opened.

Armathwaite drew a chair to the window and unfolded a frayed newspaper, laying another on his knees. To all appearance, he had noted neither the sullen discontent in one face nor the white anguish in the other.

"This is a copy of the _Nuttonby Gazette_, dated June 22nd, two years ago," he said. "It contains what appears to be a verbatim report of the opening day's inquest, which seems to have created a rare stir, judging by the scare heads and s.p.a.ce allotted to it. Will it distress you, Miss Ogilvey, if I go through it from beginning to end?"

"Yes, it will distress me very greatly, but I don't see how I can avoid hearing it. If one visits the dentist there is no use in pretending that having a tooth drawn doesn't hurt. Please read every word."

He obeyed without further preamble. It was a disagreeable task, but he did not flinch from it, though well aware that the gruesome details would shock one of his hearers inexpressibly. Divested of the loud-sounding phrases with which a country reporter loves to clothe any incident of a sensational character, the newspaper added nothing to the facts already related by Betty Jackson and Police-constable Leadbitter, except a letter written and signed by the deceased man, in which he declared he had taken his own life because he was suffering from an incurable disease. It was only when the succeeding issue of the _Nuttonby Gazette_ was scanned, with its report of the adjourned inquest, that new light was vouchsafed.

The coroner was a Mr. Hill, a local solicitor; a Dr. Scaife, from Bellerby, who had conducted a post-mortem examination, had excited Mr.

Hill's ire by his excessive caution in describing the cause of death.

"I found no symptoms of what is popularly known as 'incurable disease,'"

said the doctor. "The brain, heart, liver, lungs, and internal organs generally were in a fairly healthy state except for ordinary post-mortem indications. Death by hanging is usually capable of clear diagnosis.

There is excessive fluidity of the blood, with hyperaemia of the lungs.

The right side of the heart is engorged, and the left nearly empty. The mucous membrane of the trachea is injected, and appears of a cinnabar-red color. The abdominal veins are congested, and apoplexy of the brain is present as a secondary symptom. Contrary to common belief, the eyes do not start from the head, and the tongue seldom protrudes beyond the teeth. Indeed, the expression of the face does not differ from that seen in other forms of death, and, in this connection, it must be remembered that death, the result of disease, may present all the signs of death by suffocation. The body showed few of these indices."

"Would you mind telling us what you are driving at, Dr. Scaife?" the coroner had asked. "Here is a man found hanging in his house, leaving a letter addressed to me in which he states his intention beyond a doubt.

Do you wish the jury to believe that his death may nevertheless have been a natural one?"

"No," was the reply. "I do not say that. But the absence of certain symptoms, and the presence of others, make it essential that I should state that Mr. Garth might just as well have died from apoplexy as from strangulation."

"Are we to understand that Mr. Garth may have died from apoplexy and afterwards hanged himself?"

"That would be nonsense," said Dr. Scaife.

"I agree, most emphatically. Do you refuse to certify as to the cause of death?"

"No. I am merely fulfilling a duty by pointing out what I regard as discrepancies in the post-mortem conditions. I looked for signs of organic disease. There was none."

Evidently, coroner and doctor were inclined to be testy with each other, and the newspaper report left the impression that Dr. Scaife was a hair-splitter. In the result, a verdict of "Suicide, while in a state of unsound mind," was returned.

There followed a description of the interment in Bellerby churchyard of "the mortal remains of Stephen Garth," when the vicar read a "modified form of the burial service," while the "continued absence from Elmdale of the dead man's wife and daughter," was referred to without other comment.

When Armathwaite laid aside the second newspaper, no one spoke for a minute or more. Percy Whittaker was seemingly interested in the effort of a fly to extract nutriment from a lump of sugar; Marguerite Ogilvey was staring at vacancy with wide-open, terror-laden eyes; Armathwaite himself appeared to be turning over the baffling problem in his mind.

At last, Whittaker stirred uneasily.

"What time does the post leave here, Meg?" he inquired. "I want to send Edie a line. She'll have a bad fit of the jumps if she hears from neither of us to-morrow."

CHAPTER VIII

WHEREIN PERCY WHITTAKER PROVES HIMSELF A MAN OF ACTION

The rather bizarre question startled the girl out of her melancholy thoughts. She looked at Whittaker as though she had completely forgotten his presence.

"The post," she repeated. "There is no post out of Elmdale this evening.

Miggles pa.s.sed through the village hours ago."

"Miggles?"