The Search Party. George A. Birmingham
he never asked a question about the drains. He’s the only tenant I ever heard of who didn’t make himself ridiculous about drains.”
“He hasn’t got typhoid yet,” said Dr. O’Grady. “If he’s the kind of man who pays six months’ rent in advance and asks no questions, I hope he soon will.”
“Unfortunately for you he seems to have neither wife nor children.”
“No, nor as much as a maid-servant,” said Dr. O’Grady. “And from the look of him, I’d say he was a tough old cock himself, the sort of man a microbe would hesitate about attacking.”
“You’ve seen him, then?”
“I happened to be standing at Jimmy O’Loughlin’s door the day he drove through in his motor car.”
“You would be, of course.”
“But I’ve never seen him since. Nobody has. He has a servant, an Englishman, I’m told, who comes into the village every second day in the motor, and buys what’s wanted for the house at Jimmy O’Loughlin’s.”
“Jimmy makes a good thing out of that, I expect,” said Lord Manton.
“Believe you me, he does. Jimmy’s the boy who knows how to charge, and these people don’t seem to care what they pay.”
“I hear he has two friends with him.”
“He has, foreigners, both of them. Jimmy O’Loughlin says they can’t either of them speak English. It was Jimmy who carted their things down to Rosivera from the station, so of course he’d know.”
“Byrne told me that,” said Lord Manton, chuckling as he spoke. “There seems to have been some queer things to be carted.”
The conversation turned on Mr. Red’s belongings, the personal luggage which the English servant had brought in the train, the packing-cases which had followed the next day and on many subsequent days. Byrne, it appeared, had also met Mr. Red and his party on their arrival; but, then, Byrne had a legitimate excuse wherewith to cover his curiosity. He was Lord Manton’s steward, and it was his business to put the new tenant in possession of Rosivera. He had given a full report of Mr. Red, the foreign friends and the English servant, to Lord Manton. He had described the packing-cases which, day after day, were carted from the railway station by Jimmy O’Loughlin. They were, according to Byrne, of unusual size and great weight. There were altogether twenty-five of them. It was Byrne’s opinion that they contained pianos. The station-master, who had to drag them out of the train, agreed with him. Jimmy O’Loughlin and his man, who had ample opportunities of examining them on the way to Rosivera, thought they were full of machinery, possibly steam engines, or as they expressed it, “the makings of some of them motor cars.”
“No man,” said Lord Manton, commenting on this information, “even if his name happens to be Red, can possibly want twenty-five grand pianos in Rosivera.”
“Unless he came down here with the intention of composing an opera,” said Dr. O’Grady.
“Even then—three, four, anything up to six I could understand, but twenty-five! No opera could require that. As for those cases containing steam engines or bits of motor cars, what on earth could a manufacturer of such things be doing at Rosivera?”
“My own belief,” said Dr. O’Grady, “is that the man is an artist—a sculptor, engaged in the production of a statue of unusual size.”
“With blocks of marble in the packing-cases?”
“Yes, and the two foreigners for models. They look like models. One of them had a long black beard, and the other was a big man, well over six foot, blond, seemed to be a Norwegian; not that I ever saw a Norwegian to my knowledge, but this fellow looked like the kind of man a Norwegian ought to be.”
“It will be a pretty big statue,” said Lord Manton, “if it absorbs twenty-five blocks of marble, each the size of a grand piano.”
“He looked like an artist,” said Dr. O’Grady; “he had a pointed beard, and a wild expression in his eye.”
“A genius escaped from somewhere, perhaps.”
“He very well might be. Indeed, I’d say from the glimpse I had of him that he’s worse than a genius. He had the eye of a mad gander. But, of course, I only saw him the once, sitting in his motor, the day he arrived. He hasn’t stirred out of Rosivera since, and, as I said before, I haven’t been sent for to attend him for anything.”
“The queerest thing about him was the message he sent me,” said Lord Manton. “By way of doing the civil thing, I told Byrne to say that I should make a point of calling on him as soon as I got home.”
“And he sent you word that he’d be thankful if you’d stay away and not bother him. I heard all about that. Byrne was furious. That is just one of the things which makes me feel sure he’s a genius. Nobody except a genius or a socialist would have sent a message of that kind to you; and he clearly isn’t a socialist. If he was, he couldn’t afford to pay six months’ rent in advance for Rosivera.”
Dr. O’Grady spoke confidently. He was not personally acquainted with any of the numerous men of genius in Ireland, but he had read about them in newspapers and was aware that they differed in many respects from other men. No ordinary man, that is to say, no one who is perfectly sane, would refuse to receive a visit from an earl. Mr. Red had refused, and so, since he was not a socialist, he must be a genius. The reasoning was perfectly convincing.
“I expect,” said Lord Manton, “that his statue, in spite of its immense size, will be a melancholy object to look at. Rosivera is the most depressing place I know. It was built to serve as a dower house by my grandfather, and he evidently chose the site and the style of architecture with a view to making his widow feel really sorry he was dead. If I had a wife whom I disliked intensely I should try to die at once so that she should have as long a time as possible to live at Rosivera.”
“I wouldn’t care to spend a winter alone there,” said Dr. O’Grady, “and I’m a man of fairly cheerful disposition.”
“I suppose there’s a lot of talk about Red in the village?”
“There was at first; but the people are getting a bit sick of him now. It’s a long time since he’s done anything the least exciting. About a fortnight after he came he sent a telegram which had the whole place fizzing for awhile.”
Telegrams in the west of Ireland, are, of course, public property. So are postcards and the contents of the parcels carried by his Majesty’s mails. Lord Manton, whose taste for the details of local gossip was strongly developed, asked what Mr. Red’s telegram was about.
“That’s what nobody could tell,” said Dr. O’Grady. “It began with four letters, A.M.B.A., and then came a lot of figures. Father Moroney worked at it for the best part of two hours, with the help of a Latin dictionary, but he could make no more out of it than I could myself.”
“Cipher,” said Lord Manton; “probably quite a simple cipher if you’d known how to go about reading it.”
“At the end of the week, another packing-case arrived, carriage paid from London. It was as big as any of the first lot. Byrne and I went up to the station to see it before Jimmy O’Loughlin carted it down to Rosivera. He seemed to think that it was another piano. Since then nothing of any sort has happened, and the people have pretty well given over talking about the man.”
Lord Manton yawned. Like the other inhabitants of Clonmore he was beginning to get tired of Mr. Red and his affairs. A stranger is only interesting when there are things about him which can be found out. If his affairs are public property he becomes commonplace and dull. If, on the other hand, it is manifestly impossible to discover anything about him, if he sends his telegrams in cipher, employs a remarkably taciturn servant to do his marketing, and never appears in public himself, he becomes in time quite as tiresome as the man who has no secrets at all.
“Any other