Bat-Wing (11 page)

He remained in a very evil humour, and now the cause of this suddenly
came to light.

"I have spent a thoroughly unpleasant afternoon," he continued,
"interviewing an impossible country policeman who had never heard of my
existence!"

This display of human resentment honestly delighted me. It was
refreshing to know that the omniscient Paul Harley was capable of
pique.

"One, Inspector Aylesbury," he went on, bitterly, "a large person
bearing a really interesting resemblance to a walrus, but lacking that
creature's intelligence. It was not until Superintendent East had
spoken to him from Scotland Yard that he ceased to treat me as a
suspect. But his new attitude was almost more provoking than the old
one. He adopted the manner of a regimental sergeant-major reluctantly
interviewing a private with a grievance. If matters should so develop
that we are compelled to deal with that fish-faced idiot, God help us
all!"

He burst out laughing, his good humour suddenly quite restored, and
taking out his pipe began industriously to load it.

"I can smoke while I am changing," he said, "and you can sit there and
tell me all about Colin Camber."

I did as he requested, and Harley, who could change quicker than any
man I had ever known, had just finished tying his bow as I completed my
story of the encounter at the Lavender Arms.

"Hm," he muttered, as I ceased speaking. "At every turn I realize that
without you I should have been lost, Knox. I am afraid I shall have to
change your duties to-morrow."

"Change my duties? What do you mean?"

"I warn you that the new ones will be less pleasant than the old! In
other words, I must ask you to tear yourself away from Miss Val
Beverley for an hour in the morning, and take advantage of Mr. Camber's
invitation to call upon him."

"Frankly, I doubt if he would acknowledge me."

"Nevertheless, you have a better excuse than I. In the circumstances it
is most important that we should get in touch with this man."

"Very well," I said, ruefully. "I will do my best. But you don't
seriously think, Harley, that the danger comes from there?"

Paul Harley took his dinner jacket from the chair upon which the man
had laid it out, and turned to me.

"My dear Knox," he said, "you may remember that I spoke, recently, of
retiring from this profession?"

"You did."

"My retirement will not be voluntary, Knox. I shall be kicked out as an
incompetent ass; for, respecting the connection, if any, between the
narrative of Colonel Menendez, the bat wing nailed to the door of the
house, and Mr. Colin Camber, I have not the foggiest notion. In this,
at last, I have triumphed over Auguste Dupin. Auguste Dupin never
confessed defeat."

If luncheon had seemed extravagant, dinner at Cray's Folly proved to be
a veritable Roman banquet. To associate ideas of selfishness with Miss
Beverley was hateful, but the more I learned of the luxurious life of
this queer household hidden away in the Surrey Hills the less I
wondered at any one's consenting to share such exile. I had hitherto
counted an American freak dinner, organized by a lucky plunger and held
at the Café de Paris, as the last word in extravagant feasting. But I
learned now that what was caviare in Monte Carlo was ordinary fare at
Cray's Folly.

Colonel Menendez was an epicure with an endless purse. The excellence
of one of the courses upon which I had commented led to a curious
incident.

"You approve of the efforts of my chef?" said the Colonel.

"He is worthy of his employer," I replied.

Colonel Menendez bowed in his cavalierly fashion and Madame de Stämer
positively beamed upon me.

"You shall speak for him," said the Spaniard. "He was with me in Cuba,
but has no reputation in London. There are hotels that would snap him
up."

I looked at the speaker in surprise.

"Surely he is not leaving you?" I asked.

The Colonel exhibited a momentary embarrassment.

"No, no. No, no," he replied, waving his hand gracefully, "I was only
thinking that he—" there was a scarcely perceptible pause—"might wish
to better himself. You understand?"

I understood only too well; and recollecting the words spoken by Paul
Harley that afternoon, respecting the Colonel's will to live, I became
conscious of an uncomfortable sense of chill.

If I had doubted that in so speaking he had been contemplating his own
death, the behaviour of Madame de Stämer must have convinced me. Her
complexion was slightly but cleverly made up, with all the exquisite
art of the Parisienne, but even through the artificial bloom I saw her
cheeks blanch. Her face grew haggard and her eyes burned unnaturally.
She turned quickly aside to address Paul Harley, but I knew that the
significance of this slight episode had not escaped him.

He was by no means at ease. In the first place, he was badly puzzled;
in the second place, he was angry. He felt it incumbent upon him to
save this man from a menace which he, Paul Harley, evidently recognized
to be real, although to me it appeared wildly chimerical, and the very
person upon whose active coöperation he naturally counted not only
seemed resigned to his fate, but by deliberate omission of important
data added to Harley's difficulties.

How much of this secret drama proceeding in Cray's Folly was
appreciated by Val Beverley I could not determine. On this occasion, I
remember, she was simply but perfectly dressed and, in my eyes, seemed
the most sweetly desirable woman I had ever known. Realizing that I had
already revealed my interest in the girl, I was oddly self-conscious,
and a hundred times during the progress of dinner I glanced across at
Harley, expecting to detect his quizzical smile. He was very stern,
however, and seemed more reserved than usual. He was uncertain of his
ground, I could see. He resented the understanding which evidently
existed between Colonel Menendez and Madame de Stämer, and to which,
although his aid had been sought, he was not admitted.

It seemed to me, personally, that an almost palpable shadow lay upon
the room. Although, save for this one lapse, our host throughout talked
gaily and entertainingly, I was obsessed by a memory of the expression
which I had detected upon his face that morning, the expression of a
doomed man.

What, in Heaven's name, I asked myself, did it all mean? If ever I saw
the fighting spirit looking out of any man's eyes, it looked out of the
eyes of Don Juan Sarmiento Menendez. Why, then, did he lie down to the
menace of this mysterious Bat Wing, and if he counted opposition
futile, why had he summoned Paul Harley to Cray's Folly?

With the passing of every moment I sympathized more fully with the
perplexity of my friend, and no longer wondered that even his highly
specialized faculties had failed to detect an explanation.

Remembering Colin Camber as I had seen him at the Lavender Arms, it was
simply impossible to suppose that such a man as Menendez could fear
such a man as Camber. True, I had seen the latter at a disadvantage,
and I knew well enough that many a genius has been also a drunkard. But
although I was prepared to find that Colin Camber possessed genius, I
found it hard to believe that this was of a criminal type. That such a
character could be the representative of some remote negro society was
an idea too grotesque to be entertained for a moment.

I was tempted to believe that his presence in the neighbourhood of this
haunted Cuban was one of those strange coincidences which in criminal
history have sometimes proved so tragic for their victims.

Madame de Stämer, avoiding the Colonel's glances, which were
pathetically apologetic, gradually recovered herself, and:

"My dear," she said to Val Beverley, "you look perfectly sweet to-
night. Don't you think she looks perfectly sweet, Mr. Knox?"

Ignoring a look of entreaty from the blue-gray eyes:

"Perfectly," I replied.

"Oh, Mr. Knox," cried the girl, "why do you encourage her? She says
embarrassing things like that every time I put on a new dress."

Her reference to a new dress set me speculating again upon the apparent
anomaly of her presence at Cray's Folly. That she was not a
professional "companion" was clear enough. I assumed that her father
had left her suitably provided for, since she wore such expensively
simple gowns. She had a delightful trick of blushing when attention was
focussed upon her, and said Madame de Stämer:

"To be able to blush like that I would give my string of pearls—no,
half of it."

"My dear Marie," declared Colonel Menendez, "I have seen you blush
perfectly."

"No, no," Madame disclaimed the suggestion with one of those Bernhardt
gestures, "I blushed my last blush when my second husband introduced me
to my first husband's wife."

"Madame!" exclaimed Val Beverley, "how can you say such things?" She
turned to me. "Really, Mr. Knox, they are all fables."

"In fables we renew our youth," said Madame.

"Ah," sighed Colonel Menendez; "our youth, our youth."

"Why sigh, Juan, why regret?" cried Madame, immediately. "Old age is
only tragic to those who have never been young."

She directed a glance toward him as she spoke those words, and as I had
felt when I had seen his tragic face on the veranda that morning I felt
again in detecting this look of Madame de Stämer's. The yearning yet
selfless love which it expressed was not for my eyes to witness.

"Thank God, Marie," replied the Colonel, and gallantly kissed his hand
to her, "we have both been young, gloriously young."

When, at the termination of this truly historic dinner, the ladies left
us:

"Remember, Juan," said Madame, raising her white, jewelled hand, and
holding the fingers characteristically curled, "no excitement, no
billiards, no cards."

Colonel Menendez bowed deeply, as the invalid wheeled herself from the
room, followed by Miss Beverley. My heart was beating delightfully, for
in the moment of departure the latter had favoured me with a
significant glance, which seemed to say, "I am looking forward to a
chat with you presently."

"Ah," said Colonel Menendez, when we three men found ourselves alone,
"truly I am blessed in the autumn of my life with such charming
companionship. Beauty and wit, youth and discretion. Is he not a happy
man who possesses all these?"

"He should be," said Harley, gravely.

The saturnine Pedro entered with some wonderful crusted port, and
Colonel Menendez offered cigars.

"I believe you are a pipe-smoker," said our courteous host to Harley,
"and if this is so, I know that you will prefer your favourite mixture
to any cigar that ever was rolled."

"Many thanks," said Harley, to whom no more delicate compliment could
have been paid.

He was indeed an inveterate pipe-smoker, and only rarely did he truly
enjoy a cigar, however choice its pedigree. With a sigh of content he
began to fill his briar. His mood was more restful, and covertly I
watched him studying our host. The night remained very warm and one of
the two windows of the dining room, which was the most homely apartment
in Cray's Folly, was wide open, offering a prospect of sweeping velvet
lawns touched by the magic of the moonlight.

A short silence fell, to be broken by the Colonel.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I trust you do not regret your fishing
excursion?"

"I could cheerfully pass the rest of my days in such ideal
surroundings," replied Paul Harley.

I nodded in agreement.

"But," continued my friend, speaking very deliberately, "I have to
remember that I am here upon business, and that my professional
reputation is perhaps at stake."

He stared very hard at Colonel Menendez.

"I have spoken with your butler, known as Pedro, and with some of the
other servants, and have learned all that there is to be learned about
the person unknown who gained admittance to the house a month ago, and
concerning the wing of a bat, found attached to the door more
recently."

"And to what conclusion have you come?" asked Colonel Menendez,
eagerly.

He bent forward, resting his elbows upon his knees, a pose which he
frequently adopted. He was smoking a cigar, but his total absorption in
the topic under discussion was revealed by the fact that from a pocket
in his dinner jacket he had taken out a portion of tobacco, had laid it
in a slip of rice paper, and was busily rolling one of his eternal
cigarettes.

"I might be enabled to come to one," replied Harley, "if you would
answer a very simple question."

"What is this question?"

"It is this—Have you any idea who nailed the bat's wing to your door?"

Colonel Menendez's eyes opened very widely, and his face became more
aquiline than ever.

"You have heard my story, Mr. Harley," he replied, softly. "If I know
the explanation, why do I come to you?"

Paul Harley puffed at his pipe. His expression did not alter in the
slightest.

"I merely wondered if your suspicions tended in the direction of Mr.
Colin Camber," he said.

"Colin Camber!"

As the Colonel spoke the name either I became victim of a strange
delusion or his face was momentarily convulsed. If my senses served me
aright then his pronouncing of the words "Colin Camber" occasioned him
positive agony. He clutched the arms of his chair, striving, I thought,
to retain composure, and in this he succeeded, for when he spoke again
his voice was quite normal.

"Have you any particular reason for your remark, Mr. Harley?"

"I have a reason," replied Paul Harley, "but don't misunderstand me. I
suggest nothing against Mr. Camber. I should be glad, however, to know
if you are acquainted with him?"

"We have never met."

"You possibly know him by repute?"