The Moon Rock. Arthur J. Rees
in his room, like as if something heavy had crashed down, then silence like the grave. I went up and called—an’ tried to open the door, but I couldn’t.”
“Why didn’t you try to break in the door?” said Dr. Ravenshaw.
“Tweren’t my place,” was the dogged retort. “I know my place. I was just going to St. Fair for you and his brother.”
“How long is it since this happened—since you heard the crash, I mean.”
“Not many minutes agone. Just before you came to the door.”
“Light us upstairs at once, Thalassa,” said Mrs. Pendleton sharply.
“Mrs. Pendleton, will you wait downstairs while we investigate?” suggested Dr. Ravenshaw.
“No,” she resolutely answered. “I will come with you, doctor. Robert may need me. Do not let us waste any more time.”
She slipped past him to Thalassa, who was mounting the stairs. Dr. Ravenshaw hurried after her. Mr. Pendleton, with an obvious call on his courage, followed last. The lamp in Thalassa’s hand burnt unsteadily, first flaming angrily, then flickering to a glimmer which brought them to a pause, one above the other on the stairs, listening intently, and looking into the darkness above.
“His bedroom is open and empty,” said Thalassa when they had reached the end of the passage above. “See!” He pointed to the gaping door, and then turned to the closed one opposite. “He’s in here.” His voice sank to a whisper. “It was from here the noise came.”
He placed the lamp on the floor, and knocked hesitatingly on the dark panel of the closed door, then again more loudly, but there was no reply. Far beneath them they could hear the solemn roar of the sea dashing against the cliffs, but there was no sound in the closed chamber. Its stillness and hush seemed intensified by the clamour of the sea, as though calamity were brooding in the darkness within.
“Robert, Robert!” The high pitch of Mrs. Pendleton’s voice shattered the quietude like the startling clang of an unexpected bell. “Knock again, Thalassa, more loudly, very loudly,” she cried, in the shrill accents of tightened nerves.
Thalassa approached the door again, but recoiled swiftly. “God A’mighty!” he hoarsely exclaimed, pointing, “what’s that?”
They followed the direction of his finger to the floor, and saw a sluggish thin dark trickle making its way underneath the door. Mr. Pendleton stooped and examined it, but rose immediately.
“There’s been trouble in there,” he said, with a pale face.
“How could anybody get in?” said Thalassa sullenly. “The door is locked from the inside, and it’s two hundred feet from the windows to the bottom of the cliffs.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake stop talking and do something,” cried Mrs. Pendleton hysterically. “My poor brother may be dying.” She rattled the door-handle. “Robert, Robert, what is the matter? Let me in. It is I—Constance.”
“We must break in the door,” said Dr. Ravenshaw. “Stand away, Mrs. Pendleton, please. Now, Thalassa, both together.”
The doctor and the servant put their shoulders to the door. Mr. Pendleton watched them with a white face, but did not go to their assistance. At the fourth effort there was a sound of splintering wood, the lock gave, and the door swung back.
They peered in. At first they could see nothing. The light of the swinging-lamp had been lowered, and the interior of the room was veiled in shadow. Then their eyes detected a dark outline on the floor between the table and the window—the figure of a man, lying athwart the carpet with arms outstretched, face downwards, the spread finger-tips clutching at some heavy dark object between the head and the arms.
Thalassa stepped across the threshold, and with shaking hand turned up the lowered wick of the swinging lamp. The light revealed the stark form of Robert Turold. At this sight Mrs. Pendleton broke into a loud cry and essayed to cross the room to her brother’s side.
“Keep back, Mrs. Pendleton!” cried Dr. Ravenshaw, interposing himself in front of her. “I begged of you not to come upstairs. Mr. Pendleton, take your wife away at once.”
But Mr. Pendleton’s timorous and inferior mind was incapable of translating the command into action. He could only stare dumbly before him.
“No, no! Let me stay, I will be calm,” Mrs. Pendleton pleaded. “Is—is he dead, doctor?”
Dr. Ravenshaw crossed to the centre of the room and bent over the body, feeling the heart. Husband and wife watched him, huddled together, their white faces framed in the shadow of the doorway. In a moment he was on his feet again, advancing towards them. “We can do no good here, Mrs. Pendleton,” he said gently. “Your brother is dead.”
“Dead? Robert dead!” Her startled eye sought his averted face, and her feminine intuition gathered that which he was seeking to withhold. “Do you mean that he has been killed?” she whimpered.
“I fear that there has been—an accident,” he replied evasively. He stood in front of them in a way which obscured their view of the prone figure, and a small shining thing lying alongside, which he alone had seen. “Come,” he said, in a professional manner, taking her by the arm. “Let me take you downstairs.” He got her away from the threshold, and pulled the broken door to, shutting out the spectacle within.
“Are you going to leave him there—like that?” whispered Mrs. Pendleton.
“It is necessary, till the police have seen him,” he assured her. “We had better send Thalassa in the car to the churchtown. Go for Sergeant Pengowan, Thalassa, and tell him to come at once. And afterwards you had better call at Mr. Austin Turold’s lodgings and tell him and his son. Hurry away with you, my man. Don’t lose a moment!”
Thalassa hastened along the passage as though glad to get away. His heavy boots clattered down the staircase and along the empty hall. Then the front door banged with a crash.
The others followed more slowly, stepping gently in the presence of Death, past the little lamps, hardly bigger than fireflies, which flickered feebly in their alcoves. They went into the front room, where a table lamp gave forth a subdued light. Mrs. Pendleton turned up the wick and sank into a chair, covering her face with her hands.
It was the room where only that afternoon Robert Turold had unfolded the history of his life’s quest: a large gloomy room with heavy old furniture, faded prints of the Cornish coast, and a whitefaced clock on the mantel-piece with a loud clucking tick. Dr. Ravenshaw knew the room well, but Robert Turold’s sister had seen it for the first time that day, and the recollection of what had taken place there was so fresh in her memory that it brought a flood of tears.
“Poor Bob!” she sobbed. “He denied himself all his life for the sake of the title, and what’s the good of it all—now?”
That was the only light in which she was able to see the tragedy in the first moment of the shock. Other thoughts and revelations about her brother’s strange death were to come later, when her mind recovered its bearings. For the moment she was incapable of thinking coherently. She was conscious only of the fact that her brother had been cut off in the very moment of success—before it, indeed; ere he had actually tasted the sweets of the ambition he had given all his years to gain.
Silence fell between them, broken only by the clucking of the whitefaced clock and the dreary sound of the wind outside, crying round the old house like a frightened woman in the dark. Nearly an hour passed before they heard the sound of a guarded knock at the front door. Dr. Ravenshaw went and opened it. Austin Turold was standing on the threshold.
“This is bad news, doctor,” he said, stepping quickly inside. “I came ahead of the others—walked over. Thalassa is waiting at the churchtown for the sergeant, who is away on some official business, but expected back shortly. They may be here at any minute.”
He