“I must ask you to forgive me, Mr. McKay. I—I have been under a considerable strain lately, largely from overwork. I was tired to-night, and on the way back I had a puncture. The delay and the knowledge that Ursula would be waiting for me and be anxious, perhaps terrified, preyed on my mind: and when I came in and unexpectedly found you there, I’m afraid it was your profession I remembered, rather than yourself, and jumped to the conclusion that you had been taking advantage of my absence to question her.”
“That’s all right,” Ellis said. “The question——”
“Our relationship has something more than usually protective about it, owing to her state of health. In that I am abnormally sensitive where she is concerned.”
“Quite right. I came to——”
“I hope you will find it in your heart to forgive what must have seemed not only boorish, but ungrateful.”
“Think no more about it. I had just one question to ask you, Mr. Rattray: the question that brought me to your house. Perhaps you would prefer me to leave it till later?”
“No, no. I am at your service.”
“When you went into the Baildons’ house, on Friday afternoon, to return the book you had borrowed, why were you in such a hurry when you came out?”
Rattray did not answer at once. He looked down at the ground, and the colour came back to his face. When he spoke his voice was indistinct, a muttering only.
“You humiliate me, Mr. McKay. I should have thought you had already seen enough of our life to realise——”
He threw up his head.
“My wife, as you have seen, is abnormally sensitive to any absence from her on my part. It is part of her illness. Often—I am telling you this in confidence—often it takes the form of a morbid suspicion. She fears, poor soul”—his face was contorted—“that her affliction has made her unattractive to me, and therefore she tends to misconstrue any absence from her which is not accounted for to the minute. Knowing that I was about to leave the book at the house, and knowing that, as it was a holiday, Joan would be at home, she—she exacted from me a schedule, a time-table——”
He was looking at the ground again, his face dark.
“I dare say you will think it unmanly of me to submit to such an extent to her whim, to humour her: but I believe it to be my duty, and Dr. Carter, I may say, agrees with me. Even so, I find it a very painful subject to discuss.”
Ellis nodded.
“Were you behind your schedule when you left the book?”
“I—I don’t—I may have been, by a minute or two. Why do you ask?”
“It would account for your anxiety not to be seen coming out of the gate.”
Ellis, carefully flicking at a flower with his finger, felt rather than saw Rattray stiffen and scrutinise him.
“I do not remember any anxiety. If I manifested any, it was probably an unconscious action. A reflex almost. One develops strange protections, under the pressure of a constant vigilance and suspicion.” He raised his chin. “Does that satisfy you, Mr. McKay?”
“For the moment. Good-night, Mr. Rattray.”
“Good-night. And try not to think too badly of my behaviour.”
“That’s all right.”
Ellis waved his hand, and stumped off in the rich golden dusk. Bats dipped above his head, and the trees, westward, stood out rich and dark against the mellowed splendour. He began to whistle softly, in low, liquid notes that filled the quiet roadway.
A villager called good-night to him from a doorway, and presently another and another. The warm, sing-song voices harmonised perfectly with the light and the air. Ellis sang back an answer, each encounter, each step almost, cleansing from him the marks of the hour he had just spent.
By the time he reached the inn, he was at peace. He exchanged a few words with the porter, looked at the sky, its softness pricked faintly with tiny stars, and then, in distaste at the thought of repeating to Gilkison what had happened, made straight for his room and went to bed.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Something’s wrong there. Something’s very wrong. But I’m damned if I know what it is.”
Ellis and Bradstreet were seated in the train, on the way to Devonport. The early mist still clung to the valleys and the banks of the river: there was every promise of the wonderful weather continuing. Ellis faced the open window, and the breeze blew his hair into a ludicrous red crest, to the secret amusement of his colleague.
“The man was in such a state,” Ellis went on, “that I can’t believe any degree of anxiety or apprehension over his wife could bring on. He was like a shell-shock case, or a man just after a murder.”
“Perhaps he’d done one,” Bradstreet suggested placidly.
“If he had, his condition wouldn’t have been excessive. I saw a chap, in just such a state, who’d been taken red-handed. Dazed, pin-point pupils, the same deep gasping respiration. The only difference was, Rattray had better co-ordination. He came flying into the room. His manner was damned odd, too. Charged at me, as furious as dammit, the jealous husband, all that sort of stuff: then collapsed, and ran to her like a little boy to mamma, God! Yes.” Ellis shuddered. “That’s just what it was.”
“Bit out of season, eh?” commented Bradstreet.
“Bless you, Bradder. You hit the nail on the head every time. That’s precisely what it was: a bit out of season. And then, after grovelling like a baby, he recovered like that”—Ellis snapped his fingers an inch off Bradstreet’s nose—“and, when I popped my question at him, gave me a damned plausible answer. The whole thing is odd: damned odd.”
“I’ve always thought of him as a bit hysterical and high-strung, like,” Bradstreet observed.
“Well—you ought to have seen him last night. I wonder what the hell he’d been up to.”
“Nothing so very much, I dare say. That type makes much out of molehills. Mr. Gilkison found anything more?”
“I didn’t give him much chance.”
Ellis told Bradstreet of the scene in the front room.
“He didn’t do any harm,” he concluded, “so I didn’t tell him off. It would only have upset him, and stiffened him. His own conscience will be much more effective. But I believe him when he says he didn’t think it up. I’ve had him around once or twice before on a case. He’s a good chap. He doesn’t interfere or get in the way. In fact, in one case he was the greatest help.”
“He may be in this. We shouldn’t have found out about the books being taken, only for him. Nor about Nelder.”
“Nor about Nelder. Do you think we’re going to get anything, Bradder? Or are we on a wild goose chase?”
“I can’t say.” Bradstreet looked out of the window. “It’s as pleasant a way of spending the day as any other, anyhow.”
Ellis looked at him admiringly. To this patient, placid man, one day’s work was like another. His duty was taking him to Devonport, he would enjoy the journey, untroubled by any speculation about its yield. If the day turned out to be wasted, he would come as cheerfully back again, and there would be another day to-morrow. The only difference between his working days was that some were pleasant and some were unpleasant. This was one of the pleasant days.
The line wound round the spurs of Dartmoor, spilled sharply into the valley of the Tavy, passed Tavistock, somnolent and peaceful with the sun on its grey roofs, ran through the woods, and came out by the broad prospect of the Tamar. A few minutes, and they were in Devonport, in streets which the sun seemed to have sealed up into a prim emptiness.