Ellis shook his head. His brow darkened angrily.
“Not much self-expression here.”
“I tell you, they were lucky to call their souls their own,” cried the doctor fiercely.
“By the way, doctor, who sent for you? There’s no phone.”
“Joan ran down. I live only three hundred yards away.”
“Did she find him?”
“No, thank God. Her mother did.”
“Shock to her? Did she need attention?”
“Not immediately. I was going to her, as soon as I’d finished——”
“Go on in now, would you mind? And see if she’s fit to answer a few questions.”
The doctor made an inarticulate sound. He towered over Ellis.
“I won’t have them bullied. You understand?”
“My dear good man. I feel to them as you do. Besides, I never bully anyone—except a bully. It doesn’t work.”
CHAPTER SIX
Frowning to himself, Ellis stood on the narrow landing, examining a book. It was dirty, and smelled of damp. He opened it at random, and sank his chin deep in the pink folds of flesh that flowed up to meet it.
“The Tench is unwholesome,” he read, “and of hard concoction: it is a muddie and excremental fish, unpleasant to the taste, noysome to the stomach, and filleth the body with gross and slimie humours. Notwithstanding——”
The bedroom door opened, and Dr. Carter came out.
“All right,” he growled. “They’re ready for you.”
Ellis looked up from the book.
“Tobias Venner,” he said. “An early colleague of yours. He thought poorly of coarse fish.”
He put the open book into Carter’s hand, and went to the bedroom, leaving the doctor staring after him.
Rounding yet another tall pile of books, Ellis knocked and went in. Mrs. Baildon and her daughter were sitting together on a small sofa by the window, locked in each other’s arms. The first impression he got was of four enormous eyes staring at him. The eyes, and the linked embrace, reminded him of a couple of lemurs. Mrs. Baildon was dead pale, and the hollows round her large eyes were of an unnatural darkness. The girl’s eyes were even bigger; a pair of glasses with thick lenses magnified them to an almost terrifying size, and, whereas her mother’s face was blank with shock, she glared at Ellis defiantly.
Ellis met the glare with a calm scrutiny. Joan was thin, tall, and well built, though not quite out of the gawkish age. Her face and body were rigid with tension, as if at any moment she might blaze into violence. The face was a pure oval, and she had a good skin. Ellis decided that, minus the disfiguring glasses, and given proper care and suitable clothes, she would be really good-looking. Her clothes were old-fashioned, and had a shapelessness which suggested that they were originally her mother’s, and had been altered in an attempt to fit her slim figure.
There was no tension about Mrs. Baildon. She directed upon Ellis a vague look of mournful enquiry, and did not seem to hear the reassuring formulæ with which he began the conversation.
The girl listened, quivering, and regarding him with animal intentness and hostility. Ellis seated himself casually on the edge of the bed, and swung his short legs.
“So, you see,” he concluded, “I must ask you one or two questions. I don’t want to distress you; but it will help both Dr. Carter and myself if you’ll answer them as clearly as you can.”
His manner began to take effect. They relaxed a little. Mrs. Baildon disengaged herself from her daughter’s arms. The girl stood up behind her, very straight, a hand on her mother’s shoulder.
Before Ellis could question her, Mrs. Baildon took out a handkerchief, and pressed it against her upper lip, rather in the manner of a person trying not to sneeze.
“All those books,” she murmured. “I kept warning him. But no, he must stack them up and stack them up. Joan knocked them down once, without meaning to. Didn’t you, Joan? And he would have them dusted. He insisted on it. I used to be terrified, climbing up there on a chair, for fear I’d have them over. It was terrible, Mr.——”
“McKay. You remember me, don’t you? I came in yesterday.”
“Yes. You had to go by on tiptoe, or he’d scream at you that you’d have them over.”
“Did everyone know about them? I mean, that they came down easily?”
“If they didn’t, it wasn’t for want of being told. It was the first thing he’d say to anyone coming in. Before they were in the room, even.”
“Right. Now let’s come to to-day. Did anyone call to see him? If I remember rightly, he told us he was expecting someone from New York.”
“An American gentleman. Yes, that’s right. He came this afternoon, soon after dinner.”
“I understood Mr. Baildon to say he was expecting him in the morning? That was why he put us off—Mr. Gilkison and myself.”
“Yes, he was. But the American gentleman sent a wire that he couldn’t come till the afternoon. Matt was very angry. He likes to rest after his dinner.”
“But the American came all right?”
“Yes. About twenty past two. I know, because I generally go and lie down myself then for a bit. I was ill last year, and Dr. Carter said I was to.”
She looked at Ellis, on the defensive. Sympathetically, he imagined what Matt’s comments must have been.
“An excellent thing, Mrs. Baildon. I had a good nap myself this afternoon.”
She did not smile back.
“I waited so as to let him in, and I wondered how long he would keep me, but it was only five minutes after my time.”
“Couldn’t Miss Baildon have shown him in? Or wasn’t she at home?”
The girl gave a stiff jerk, and threw up her head, as if Ellis had accused her of something. Her mother answered for her.
“Yes, Joan was here. But Matt didn’t like her to let people in. He said it was my place.”
“Well; you let the American in—what was his name, by the way?”
“I don’t remember. It was on his card. Stu—something.”
“Stuyvesant?”
“Something like that. I gave Matt the card. I dare say it’s downstairs there, under all the books.”
“We can look for it later. You showed the gentleman in, and went upstairs to rest. Then——?”
“I’d been resting twenty minutes, maybe, or half an hour, and was nearly off, when there was a terrible row. Woke me right up with ever such a jump, it did. Matt was screaming something dreadful. I could hear the American gentleman’s voice, trying to calm him down, like; but it was no good. I got up and put on my shoes. I was afraid Matt would have a fit. I ran down just as the American gentleman was going out of the door. He turned and called back to Matt.”
They both looked at Ellis, like amateur actors waiting for the next line. He took the cue.
“Did you hear what he said?”
“Yes. He said, ‘All right, Mr. Baildon. But you’re not going to get rid of me as easy as that. I’ll be back.’ That’s what he said, didn’t he, Joan? ‘I’ll be back.’ ”
“Yes. Yes. He said that.”
“Where were you, then, Miss Baildon?”
“In the kitchen, putting the things away. Dr. Carter said that mother mustn’t stand more than she can help. She sits on a stool by the sink, to wash up, and I dry and put the things away afterwards.”
“It hadn’t occurred to you to go in and see what all the row was about?”
“If I’d gone in every time father raised a row, I’d have been kept busy. Besides, he’d have bitten my head off. I wasn’t curious. It wasn’t any business of mine.”