The Drunkard Part 67

The step he hears is like no step he knows. Perhaps, who can say? the dim, untutored mind discerns dimly something wicked, inimical and hostile approaching the house.

So The Dog Trust howls, stands for a moment upon his cold concrete sniffing the night air, and then with a sort of shudder plunges into the warm straw of his kennel.

Deep sleep broods over the Poet's house.

The morning was one of those cold bright autumn days without a breath of wind, which have an extraordinary exhilaration for every one.

The soul, which to the majority of folk is like an invisible cloud anch.o.r.ed to the body by a thin thread, is pulled down by such mornings.

It reenters flesh and blood, reanimates the body, and sounds like a bugle in the mind.

Tumpany, his head had been under the pump for a few minutes, arrived fresh and happy at the Old House.

He was going away with The Master upon a Wild-fowling expedition. In Ess.e.x the geese were moving this way and that. There was an edge upon antic.i.p.ation and the morning.

In the kitchen Phoebe and Blanche partook of the snappy message of the hour.

The guns were all in their cases. A pile of pigskin luggage was ready for the four-wheel dogcart.

"Perhaps when the men are out of the way for a day or two, Mistress will have a chance to get right... . Master said good-bye to Mistress last night, didn't he?" the cook said to Blanche.

"Yes, but he may want to go in again and disturb her."

"I don't believe he will. She's asleep now. Those things Dr. Heywood give her keep her quiet. But still you'd better go quietly into her room with her morning milk, Blanche. If she's asleep, just leave it there, so she'll find it when she wakes up."

"Very well, cook, I will," the housemaid said--"Oh, there's that Tumpany!"

Tumpany came into the kitchen. He wore his best suit. He was quite dictatorial and sober. He spoke in brisk tones.

"What are you going to do, my girl?" he said to Blanche in an authoritative voice.

"Hush, you silly. Keep quiet, can't you?" Phoebe said angrily.

"Blanche is taking up Mistress' milk in case she wakes."

"Where's master, then?"

"Master is in the library. He'll be down in a minute."

"Can I go up to him, cook? ... There's something about the guns----"

"No. You can _not_, Tumpany. But Blanche will take any message.--Blanche, knock at the library door and say Tumpany wants to see Master. But do it quietly. Remember Missis is sleeping at the other end of the pa.s.sage."

As Blanche went up the stairs with her tray, the library door was open, and she saw her master strapping a suit case. She stopped at the open door.

--"Please, sir, Tumpany wants to speak to you."

Lothian looked up. It was almost as if he had expected the housemaid.

"All right," he said. "He can come up in a moment. What have you got there--oh? The milk for your Mistress. Well, put it down on the table, and tell Tumpany to come up. Bring him up yourself, Blanche, and make him be quiet. We mustn't risk waking Mistress."

The housemaid put the tray down upon the writing table and left the room, closing the door after her.

It had hardly swung into place when Lothian had whipped open a drawer in the table.

Standing upon a pile of note-paper with its vermilion heading of "The Old House, Mortland Royal" was a square oil bottle with its silver plated top.

In a few twists of firm and resolute fingers, the top was loosened. The man took the bottle from the drawer and set it upon the tray, close to the gla.s.s of milk.

Then, with infinite care, he slowly withdrew the top.

The flattened needle which depended from it was damp with the dews of death. A tiny bead of crystalline liquid, no bigger than a pin's head, hung from the slanting point.

Lothian plunged the needle into the gla.s.s of milk, moving it this way and that.

He heard footsteps on the stairs, and with the same stealthy dexterity he replaced the cap of the bottle and closed the drawer.

He was lighting a cigarette when Blanche knocked and entered, followed by Tumpany.

"What is it, Tumpany?" he said, as the maid once more took up her tray and left the room with it.

"I was thinking, sir, that we haven't got a cleaning rod packed for the ten-bores. I quite forgot it. The twelve-bore rods won't reach through thirty-two-and-a-half barrels. And all the cases are strapped and locked now, sir. You've got the keys."

"By Jove, no, we never thought of it. But those two special rods I had made at Tolley's--where are they?"

"Here, sir," the man answered going to the gun-cupboard.

"Oh, very well. Unscrew one and stick it in your pocket. We can put it in the case when we're in the train. It's a corridor train, and when we've started you can come along to my carriage and I'll give you the key of the ten-bore case."

"Very good, sir. The trap's come. I'll just take this suit case down and then I'll get Trust. He can sit behind with me."

"Yes. I'll be down in a minute."

Tumpany plunged downstairs with the suit case. Lothian screwed up the bottle in the drawer and, holding it in his hand, went to his bedroom.

He met Blanche in the corridor.

"Mistress is fast asleep, sir," the pleasant-faced girl said, "so I just put her milk on the table and came out quietly."

"Thank you, Blanche. I shall be down in a minute."

In his bedroom, Lothian poured water into the bowl upon the washstand and shook a few dark red crystals of permanganate of potash into the water, which immediately became a purplish pink.

He plunged his hands into this water, with the little bottle, now tightly stoppered again, in one of them.

For two minutes he remained thus. Then he withdrew his hands and the bottle, drying them on a towel.

... There was no possible danger of infection now. As for the bottle, he would throw it out of the window of the train when he was a hundred miles from Mortland Royal.

He came out into the corridor once more. His face was florid and too red. Close inspection would have disclosed the curiously bruised look of the habitual inebriate. But, in his smart travelling suit of Harris tweed, with well-brushed hair, white collar and the "bird's eye" tie that many country gentlemen affect, he was pa.s.sable enough.