XI

A murder lends to the locality in which it is perpetrated, a certain left-handed fame which those of its inhabitants who appear most disgusted, most enjoy. Human nature being what it is, trouble and misery have a larger sale value to newspapers, than have comfort and happiness. Nothing makes a newspaper reader more conscious of the emptiness of his journal, than to learn that his insignificant neighbour has unexpectedly inherited a fortune. Therefore, it is only natural that when the average man or woman finds himself or herself promoted from mere observer to participant, however indirect, he or she experiences a queer satisfaction that is no less satisfying because it is queer.

The woman of the house may shudder and make unusual efforts to “keep it from the children” but she listens avidly to the cook’s inside story of the crime that was committed next door, and presses for further details. The man may express his horror and indignation and talk of leaving his house and finding another in a less notorious neighbourhood, but for years he will point out to his visitors and guests the window of the room where the fell deed was done.

Opposite to Mayfield was the home of John Ferguson Stott, who, in addition to being a neighbour of the late Jesse Trasmere, was the employer of his nephew. This gave him an especial title to speak as an Authority. It supported him also in his determination to Say Nothing.

“It is bad enough, my dear, to be living in the street where this ghastly crime has been committed. I cannot afford to be dragged into the matter.”

He was a small, fat man, very bald, and he wore spectacles of great magnifying power.

“Eline says⁠—” began his buxom wife.

Mr. Stott held up a podgy hand and closed his eyes.

“Servants’ gossip!” said he. “Let us keep out of this business. I cannot afford to have my name in the papers. Why, we should have the house full of reporters in no time! And the police, too. I had quite trouble enough over the dog’s license, ever to want to see the police again.”

He sat soberly in his place before the window, glaring out at the darkening street. A light flitted to and fro in one of the upper windows of Mayfield, came and went, and came again. The police were searching. He was interested. Tomorrow, when he met the men at Toby’s, he would be able to say: “They are still searching old Trasmere’s house. I saw them last night⁠—the house is just opposite to mine.”

Presently the light disappeared for good and he turned to his wife.

“What did Eline say? Ring for her.”

Eline was a parlourmaid, grown of a sudden from the merest cipher in the great sum of parlourmaids, to an isolated and important factor.

“I’m sure it gives me the shivers to talk about it, sir,” she said. “Little did I ever think I should be mixed up in a case like this. I’m sure that I’d die if I was ever called into court to give evidence.”

“You will not be called into court,” said Mr. Stott decisively. “This must go no farther, do you understand that, Eline?”

Eline said she did, but she seemed in no way pleased that she was to be spared the painful publicity.

“I’ve had a toothache for the past fortnight⁠—”

“You should have it out,” said Mr. Stott. An opportunity for advising sufferers to have their teeth extracted is one which no normal man can miss. “It is always best to deal drastically with a decaying tooth. Out with it my girl⁠—well?”

“It comes on about half-past eleven and goes off at two. I could set the clock by it.”

“Yes, yes,” said Mr. Stott testily, his interest in Eline’s misfortune ended, “but what did you see at Mayfield?”

“I usually sit at the window until the pain has gone,” said Eline, and Mr. Stott resisted the temptation to tell her that that was the very last place in the world she ought to sit, “and naturally anything that happens in the street I see. The first night I was sitting there, I saw a little motorcar drive up to the front of the house. A lady got out⁠—”

“A lady?”

“Well, she might have been a woman,” admitted Eline. “But she got out, opened the gates and drove into the garden. I thought that was funny, because Mr. Trasmere hasn’t a garage, and I knew there was nobody staying with him.”

“Where did the car go?”

“Just into the garden. There is plenty of room for it because it is not exactly a garden⁠—more like a yard than anything. I think she took the car near the house and put out all the lights. Then she went up the steps and opened the door. There was a light in the passage the first night and I saw her taking the key out before she shut the door. She hadn’t been in the house a few minutes before I saw a man on a bicycle coming along the road. He jumped down and propped the machine against the curb. What struck me about him was the funny way he walked. Sort of queer little steps he took. He was smoking a cigar.”

“Where did he go?” asked Mr. Stott.

“Only as far as the gate and leant on it, smoking. By and by he threw away his cigar and lit another and I saw his face⁠—it was a Chinaman!”

“Good God!” said Mr. Stott. The mental picture she conjured of a Chinaman lighting a cigar in the vicinity of Mr. Stott’s stately home, was a particularly revolting one.

“Just before the policeman came along, he went back to his bicycle and rode away, but after the policeman had passed, he came back again and stood leaning on the gate until the front door of Mayfield opened. Then he sort of slunk back to his bicycle and rode in the opposite direction. I mean opposite to the way he had come. He had hardly got out of sight before I saw the lady come down and open the gates. Soon after, she brought out the car, got down, closed the gates again, and drove away. And then I saw the Chinaman riding behind and pedalling like mad as if he was trying to catch up to the car.”

“Extraordinary!” said Mr. Stott. “This happened once?”

“It happened every night⁠—Friday was the last night,” said Eline impressively, “the lady in the car, the Chinaman and everything. But on Sunday night two Chinamen came and one went into the garden and was there for a long time. I knew the other one was a Chinaman because he walked so curiously. But they didn’t come on bicycles. They had a car which stopped at the far end of the street.”

“Remarkable!” said Mr. Stott, and stroked his smooth face.

Eline had finished her story but was reluctant to surrender her position as news gleaner.

“The police have been taking things away from the house all day,” reported the observer, “boxes and trunks. The girl at Pine Lodge told me that they are leaving there tonight. They’ve been keeping guard on the house ever since the murder.”

“Very, very extraordinary; very remarkable,” said Mr. Stott. “But I don’t think that it is any business of ours. No. Thank you, Eline. I should certainly have that tooth out. You mustn’t be a baby and American dentistry has reached such a high level of efficiency that⁠—”

Eline listened respectfully but nervously and went up to her room to plug the aching molar with Dr. Billbery’s Kure-Ake.

It seemed to Mr. Stott that his head had scarcely touched the pillow before there came a knock upon the panel of his bedroom door.

“Yes?” he asked fiercely in case it was a burglar, who was in this polite manner seeking admission to his chamber.

“It is Eline, sir⁠—they’re there!”

Mr. Stott shivered and, conquering an almost irresistible desire to pull the bedclothes over his head and pretend that he had been talking in his sleep, he got reluctantly out of bed and pulled on his dressing-gown. As to Mrs. Stott, she never moved. She went to bed, as she had often said, to sleep.

“What is it, Eline⁠—waking me up at this time in the morning?” asked Mr. Stott irritably.

“They are there⁠—the Chinamen. I saw one getting through the window,” said the girl, her teeth chattering to the serious disturbance of Dr. Billbery’s Kure-Ake.

“Wait a moment until I get my stick.”

Mr. Stott kept hanging to his bed-rail, a heavily loaded cane. He had no intention of going nearer to Mayfield than the safe side of his dining-room window, but the holding of the stick gave him the self-confidence of which he was in need.

Cautiously the girl let up the blind of the dining-room window and unfastened the catch. The sash slid up noiselessly and gave them an interrupted view of Mayfield.

“There’s one!” whispered Eline.

Standing in the shadow was a figure. Mr. Stott saw it plainly. They watched in silence for the greater part of half-an-hour. Mr. Stott had an idea that he ought to telephone for the police, but refrained. In the case of ordinary burglars, he would not have hesitated. But these were Chinese, notoriously clannish and vengeful. He had read stories, in which Chinamen had inflicted diabolical injuries upon men who had betrayed them.

At the end of the half-hour’s vigil, the door of Mayfield opened and a man came out and joined the other. Together they walked up the road and that was the last Mr. Stott saw of them.

“Very remarkable!” said Mr. Stott profoundly. “I’m glad you called me, Eline. I wouldn’t have missed this for the world. But you must say nothing about this, Eline⁠—nothing. The Chinese people are very bloodthirsty. They would think no more of putting you into a barrel full of sharp pointed nails and rolling you down a hill, than I should think of⁠—er⁠—lacing my shoes.”

So Maple Manor kept its grisly secret and none knew of Yeh Ling’s visit to the house of death or his search for the tiny lacquer box wherein Jesse Trasmere kept a folded sheet of thin paper elegantly inscribed in Chinese characters by Yeh Ling, in his own hand.