"It is dangerous to lay down a general rule," said Sir James Kelsey.
"But I should say, if you want to keep a secret tell half the truth.
People accept it and pa.s.s on to their own affairs." He hesitated for a moment and continued, rather slowly: "I am thinking of a tremendous secret which has been kept that way for a good number of years. I call it the story of the Brown Book."
At once the discussion ceased. It was so seldom that Kelsey indulged in anything like a confidence. Now on this one evening amongst his brethren it seemed that he was in the mood to talk.
"All of you will remember the name of John Rymer, and some of you his meteoric career and the tragic circ.u.mstances of his death. There was no doubt that he was a master of surgery. Yet at the age of thirty-seven, at eleven o"clock on a July morning, after performing three operations with all his accustomed skill, he walked into his consulting-room and blew his brains out."
Here and there a voice was raised.
"Yes, I remember."
"It was overwork, I think."
Sir James Kelsey smiled.
"Exactly," he said. "That"s the half-truth. Overwork there was. I am familiar with the details of the inquest, for I married John Rymer"s niece. It was proved, for instance, that during the last week of his life he had been curtailing his operations and spending more time over his dressings--a definite policy of his when, the strain became too heavy. Moreover, there was some mention made of a sudden reasonless fear which had attacked him, a fear that his practice was dropping away, and that he would be left with a wife and young family to support, and no means to do it with. Well, we all know round this table that that particular terror is one of the commonest results of overwork. So overwork there undoubtedly was. A spell of tropical heat no doubt, too, had its effect. Anyway, here was enough for a quite acceptable verdict, and so the world thought. The usual plat.i.tudes about the tension of modern life made their appearance. The public read, accepted, and pa.s.sed on to its own affairs. But behind John Rymer"s death there lay a tremendous secret."
Once more he hesitated. Then he took a cigar from the box which his host held out to him, and said, in a kind of rush: "No one could make any use of it now. For there"s no longer any evidence but my word, and I should deny it. It"s overwork John Rymer died of. Let us not forget it."
And then he told the story of the Brown Book. At the end of it his cigar was still alight, for he smoked while he talked. But it was the only cigar alight in that room.
I was twenty-five, and I had bought a practice at Chailsey, a village deep amongst tall, dark trees in the very heart of the Berkshire Downs. You"ll hardly find a place more pastoral and remote in all that country of remote villages. But a couple of training stables were established there, and, what with kicks and jumping accidents, there was a good deal of work at times. I quite liked the spot, and I liked it still more when Bradley Rymer and his daughter took the big house on the slope of the Down above the village.
John Rymer, the surgeon, had then been dead eight months, and Bradley Rymer was his brother, a shortish, broad man of forty-five with a big, pleasant face. Gossip had it that he had been very poor, so poor, indeed, that his daughter had made her living at a typewriting machine. There was no doubt, however, that he was rich now. "Canada"s the country," he used to say. "I made my money out of Canadian land,"
and when he fell into conversation of a morning with any of the stable-boys on the gallops he was always urging them to better themselves in that country.
His daughter Violet--a good many of you know her as my wife--had little of his fore-gathering disposition. She was an extremely pretty girl of nineteen, with eyes which matched her name. But she held herself apart. She seldom came down into the village, and even when one met her in her own house there was a constraint in her manner and a look upon her face which I was at a loss to understand. It wasn"t merely trouble. It was a kind of perplexity, as though she did not know where to turn. For the rest, the couple did not entertain.
"We have had hard lives," Bradley Rymer said to me one rare evening when I dined there, "and a year or two of quiet is what we want beyond everything." And never did man speak a truer word.
Bradley Rymer had lived for three months at Chailsey when Queen Victoria died, and all the great kings and the little kings flocked from Europe to her funeral. We at Chailsey--like the rest of Great Britain--determined to set up a memorial, and a committee of five was appointed to determine the form it was to take.
"It must be a drinking-fountain," said I.
"No; a stained-gla.s.s window," the vicar interrupted; and there we were, Grayly the trainer and I on one side, the vicar and Hollams the grocer on the other. The fifth member of the committee was absent.
"Well, I shall go up and see Mr. Bradley Rymer this afternoon," I said. "He has the casting vote."
"You may do just as you please," said the vicar, with some acerbity--Bradley Rymer did not go to church; "but until Mr. Bradley Rymer condescends to be present at our committee meetings, I shall pay not the slightest attention to his opinion."
Thereupon the committee broke up. I had a good many visits to pay to patients, and it was close upon eight o"clock when I set out upon my walk, and darker than it usually is at that time of the year. Bradley Rymer, I knew, did not dine until late, and I hoped to catch him just before he and Violet sat down.
The house stood a good half-mile from the village, even by the short cut which I took up the side of the Down. It was a big, square Georgian house with rows of high, flat windows; a large garden of lawns and flowers and beech trees surrounded it; and the whole property was enclosed in high red-brick walls. I was kept for a little while at the great wrought-iron gates. That always happened. You rang the big bell, the corner of a white curtain was cautiously lifted in the window of the lodge, you were inspected, and at last the gates swung open. Berkshire people were slow in those days, and, like most country-folk, curious. I walked up the drive to the house. The front door stood open. I rang the bell. A big mastiff came out from the hall and sniffed at me. But we were good friends, and he retired again to the corner. Finally a maid-servant appeared. It was perhaps a curious fact that Bradley Rymer had no man-servant living in the house.
"A butler is a spy you set upon yourself," he once said to me. Another case of the half-truth, you see. I accepted it, and pa.s.sed on to my own affairs. So when only a maid answered the bell I was not surprised.
"Can I see Mr. Rymer?" I asked.
"He is in the library, I think, sir," she answered.
"Very well. I know my way." And, putting down my hat, I climbed the stairs.
The library was a long, comfortably-furnished room upon the first floor, lighted by a row of windows upon one side and lined to the ceiling with bookshelves upon the other. Rymer had a wonderful collection of books bound in vellum and calf, but he had bought the lot at a sale, and I don"t think he ever read one of them. However, he liked the room, and it was the one which he usually used.
I opened the door and went into the library. But the servant had been mistaken. The library was empty. I waited, however, and while I waited a noise in the next room attracted my attention. I don"t think that I was conscious of it at first, for when I did notice it, It seemed to me that the room had perceptibly darkened. It was so familiar a noise, too, that one wouldn"t notice it unless there were some special unsuitability of time and place to provoke one"s curiosity. For a busy man walks through life to the sound of it. It was the sharp tack-tack-tack of a typewriting machine, with the little clang and break when the end of a line is reached. I listened to it first of all surprised at the relentless rapidity with which the machine was worked, and then, wondering why at this hour, in this house of leisure and wealth, so tremendous an a.s.siduity was being employed. Then in a rush the gossip of the village came back to me. Violet Rymer, in the days of her father"s poverty, had made her living in a typewriting office. Yes; but why should she continue so monotonous a practice now?
I couldn"t think that she, if it were she, was keeping up her proficiency for amus.e.m.e.nt. You can always tell whether the typist is interested or whether she is working against time from the sound of the machine. In the former case it becomes alive, one is conscious of a personality; in the latter one thinks of an absent-minded clergyman gabbling through the Lessons in church.
Well, it was just that last note which was being struck. The machine was racing to the end of a wearisome task, and, since already Violet Rymer was very much to me, I thought with a real discomfort of her bending over the keys. Moreover, I seemed to be stumbling upon a secret which I was not meant to know. Was this tack-tack-tacking the explanation of why Chailsey saw so little of her?
While I was asking myself this question a door opened and shut violently. It was the door into that next room, and as it was banged the typewriting ceased altogether. There was a moment"s pause, and then a voice was raised in pa.s.sion. It was Bradley Rymer"s voice, but I hardly recognised it.
"What is it now?" he cried, bitterly. "A novel, a volume of sermons, a pamphlet? Am I never to see you, Violet? You remain hidden in this room, breaking your back for sixpence an hour. Why, I bought this house for you. My one aim was to get rich for you." And the girl interrupted him with an agonised cry.
"Oh, don"t say that, father!"
"But I do say it." And suddenly his voice softened. "It"s true, Vi.
You know it"s true. The one thing I hated was that you should lose all the fun of your youth at that grinding work. And now you"re still at it. Why? Why?"
And through the door came her voice, in a pa.s.sionate, broken reply:
"Because--because--I feel--that not even the clothes I am wearing really belong to me."
The dispute suddenly ceased. A third voice spoke so low that I could not hear the words, but I heard Bradley Rymer"s startled reply:
"In the library?"
I had just time to get away into the farthest window before he entered the room. It was almost dark now, and he peered about in search of me.
I moved from the window towards him.
"Oh, you are there, Kelsey," he said, suavely. "We"ll have a light.
It"s so confoundedly dark that I can hardly see you."
He rang a bell and a lamp was brought, which he took from the hands of the servant and set down on the corner of his writing-table between us.
"How long have you been here?" he asked, and--I can"t account for it--he stood facing me in his dinner-jacket, with his usual pleasant, friendly smile; but I suddenly became quite sure that he was dangerous. Yes, that"s the word--dangerous.
"Just a minute or so," I answered, as indifferently as I could, and then, with a strangely swift movement, he crossed the room again to the fireplace and rang the bell. "Will you tell Miss Violet that Dr.
Kelsey is here?" he said to the parlourmaid, as soon as she appeared.
"You will find her in the next room."
He came softly back and seated himself at the writing-table.
"And why do you want to see me?" he asked, in a queer voice.
I spoke about the memorial, and he answered at random. He was listening, but he was not listening to me. In a sort of abstraction he drew open a drawer in his writing-table on a level with his hand, and every now and then he shut it, and every now and then he drew it open again.
I cannot hope to make you realise the uncanny feeling of discomfort which crept over me. Most of us at this table, I imagine, have some knowledge of photography and its processes. We have placed a gaslight paper in the developing-dish, and seen the face of our portrait flash out in a second on the white surface. I can never get accustomed to it. I can never quite look upon it as not a miracle. Well, just that miracle seemed to me to be happening now. Bradley Rymer suddenly became visible to me, a rogue, a murderous rogue, and I watched with an increasing fear that drawer in his table. I waited for his hand to slip into it.