The Man from the Clouds. J. Storer Clouston
Mr. O'Brien," added my new acquaintance as he opened the front door for me. "You're quite sure it's not me you're wanting?"
I had noticed more than a trace of accent in his own voice when he spoke, and there was no doubt now what it was; a very palpable Irish brogue. As he asked this question he looked at me with a curious mixture of humour and defiance. It seemed to me that the humour was assumed and the defiance genuine, but that may have been simply because the man impressed me unfavourably.
"No," I replied with a continental bow, "I am not so fortunate."
And then suddenly a thought flashed across me. Ought I to have answered in a very different key? But we were in the hall now and the next moment another gentleman appeared.
"Here's Dr. Rendall," said Mr. O'Brien, and I bowed again.
"My name is Mr. Roger Merton," I explained. "I have taken the liberty of calling upon you."
"Come into my study, Mr. Merton," said Dr. Rendall.
He spoke in a friendly enough voice, but if there was not a trace of suspicion in his eye too, I am greatly mistaken. And in both cases it seemed to me that it was suspicion tinged with apprehension, rather than the suspicion I was so deliberately cultivating. Indeed, I had not intended to cultivate any suspicion at all in this house, but fortunately (I think) I simply acted automatically.
Taking him altogether, Dr. Rendall was a decidedly more prepossessing looking man than O'Brien. In fact he was rather good-looking, with grey hair and moustache, face of a deep bronze-red hue and very blue eyes. He was well set up, and quite well dressed too in rough tweeds, and the only thing against him was that look in his eye as we exchanged our first sentences.
My wits were very wide awake by this time; I carried a picture of the outside of the house distinctly in my head as we turned out of the hall, and when we entered the study I knew it for the room where the blind had shut down.
"Is Mrs. Rendall at home?" I enquired.
O'Brien laughed.
"There are no ladies in this house, but just the doctor and me!" said he.
So no modest matron or maid had pulled the blind down. It had been Dr. Rendall's study blind, whipped down obviously by the doctor himself the instant he heard a strange footstep, and now raised again. Why had it been dropped? What had it hidden? In the look of the room itself there was not a suggestion of an answer to either question. It was just an ordinary man's study, a cross between a smoking room and a library, a much more comfortable room than the outside of that house promised. Yet people do not suddenly pull down blinds in the middle of the forenoon for no reason at all.
For a moment I thought of a passage at arms with a pretty housemaid as a solution. But it would obviously have been much quicker and simpler for any other party to flee the room than to make for the window and lower the blind. No; something had to be done which took a few minutes to do. I thought instantly of one possibility—the folding up or putting away of maps or plans. No doubt there were several other possibilities, but there seemed the best of reasons for not giving these worthy gentlemen my confidence. In fact quite a different course of action suggested itself.
Transfixing the doctor suddenly with a significant eye, I demanded in rather a low voice, "Are there many sheep in this island?" I still think it was a shot well worth risking, but to be quite candid it failed to come off. At least it did not come off entirely. Both the gentlemen certainly looked a little startled, but all Dr. Rendall did was to stare at me very hard, while O'Brien exclaimed.
"Faith, he's a dealer!"
But again I refused the proffered explanation, even though it was quite evidently the easiest way of accounting for myself.
"No," said I, "but I am very greatly interested in your beautiful island,
Dr. Rendall. What a convenient spot to own!"
I still threw a touch of significance into my remark—especially on the word "convenient"—but this time I got a wholly unexpected answer.
"But I am sorry to say I don't own it," said the doctor. "I am afraid you must be mistaking me for my cousin, Philip Rendall. He's the laird; I'm only the doctor."
"The damned doctor," added Mr. O'Brien with a grin.
I began to apologise, but O'Brien who was by this time in capital spirits, interrupted me with,
"Faith, you needn't apologise, Mr. Merton. As long as you're not one of my damned relations I'm delighted to see you, and the doctor here is always pining for a fresh face. He's getting sick of mine!"
This remark seemed to have a spice of malice behind it, and the doctor certainly frowned, but I was so anxious to seize this opportunity of putting a question or two that I did not stop to wonder what was implied; not, at least, till afterwards.
"I suppose you have little society in this charming island?" I suggested.
O'Brien was certainly ready enough to give me exactly the information I was after.
"There are just four civilised houses in the whole place, counting this," said he. "There's the laird's—and saving the dear doctor's presence I must say his cousin is a damned queer fish, besides being as poor as he's cranky, and there are the two ministers, only one's away and the other's as dry as my own throat's getting. What do you say to a drink, doctor?"
He grinned at Dr. Rendall with a malicious significance I could make nothing of. I could see that it perturbed the doctor, who answered in evident embarrassment,
"If Mr. Merton would care for a glass of lemonade"
A hoot of laughter interrupted him. It reminded me of Jock, except that Mr. O'Brien's laugh had such a flavour of ill-nature. The man might or might not be what I suspected, but he was indubitably objectionable.
"No, thank you," I answered him. "I set out to call on Mr. Rendall and the time is passing."
"Damned pleasantly in our society, eh?" put in O'Brien with the same sardonic laugh.
They both saw me to the door, and we said good-bye, without enthusiasm on the doctor's part, with a grin on Mr. O'Brien's, and with very mixed emotions on my own.
VI
A PETTICOAT
I was very thankful to get out of that depressing house and away from Mr. O'Brien's laugh, and yet hardly was I on the high road again before I was blaming myself for not having lingered longer and pursued my investigations there a little further.
The other "Civilised" households in the island apparently numbered only three. Now, if my spy were working single handed he might conceivably be some better educated farmer who had lived abroad and turned traitor, but it seemed to me most unlikely that he should have no confederates, and it was scarcely possible for two or three men of that particular type to be gathered in so small a community. Brains and education seemed implied in every step of the dangerous game they were playing. Therefore it was only common sense to suspect one at least of these "civilised" houses, unless they could all manifestly clear their characters. Anyhow it were foolishness to neglect this consideration.
And what had I discovered already? A couple of men living by themselves in a criminal looking mansion, who hurriedly pulled down blinds, looked both suspicious and apprehensive at the sight of a stranger, and made odd innuendoes and allusions in their conversation. Why hadn't I stayed on and pursued my investigations? Well, because the moment I discovered I was in the wrong house, my insistent idea was to push on to Mr. Rendall's and consult with him about the whole situation. But now I began to reconsider this decision very seriously.
I was out of sight by this time in a secluded part of the road, where it ran through a dip in the ground, with the head of one of those little reedy lochs only a