Max Carrados, Ernest Bramah [children's books read aloud .TXT] 📗

us walk towards it. Are there any of the porters or officials about here?”

“No, sir; none.”

“Take this ruler. I want you to go up the steps—there are steps up the signal, by the way?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I want you to measure the glass of the lamp. Do not go up any higher than is necessary, but if you have to stretch be careful not to mark on the measurement with your nail, although the impulse is a natural one. That has been done already.”

Parkinson looked apprehensively around and about. Fortunately the part was a dark and unfrequented spot and everyone else was moving towards the exit at the other end of the platform. Fortunately, also, the signal was not a high one.

“As near as I can judge on the rounded surface, the glass is four and seven-eighths across,” reported Parkinson.

“Thank you,” replied Carrados, returning the measure to his pocket, “four and seven-eighths is quite near enough. Now we will take the next train back.”

Sunday evening came, and with it Mr Carlyle to The Turrets at the appointed hour. He brought to the situation a mind poised for any eventuality and a trenchant eye. As the time went on and the impenetrable Carrados made no allusion to the case, Carlyle’s manner inclined to a waggish commiseration of his host’s position. Actually, he said little, but the crisp precision of his voice when the path lay open to a remark of any significance left little to be said.

It was not until they had finished dinner and returned to the library that Carrados gave the slightest hint of anything unusual being in the air. His first indication of coming events was to remove the key from the outside to the inside of the door.

“What are you doing, Max?” demanded Mr Carlyle, his curiosity overcoming the indirect attitude.

“You have been very entertaining, Louis,” replied his friend, “but Parkinson should be back very soon now and it is as well to be prepared. Do you happen to carry a revolver?”

“Not when I come to dine with you, Max,” replied Carlyle, with all the aplomb he could muster. “Is it usual?”

Carrados smiled affectionately at his guest’s agile recovery and touched the secret spring of a drawer in an antique bureau by his side. The little hidden receptacle shot smoothly out, disclosing a pair of dull-blued pistols.

“To-night, at all events, it might be prudent,” he replied, handing one to Carlyle and putting the other into his own pocket. “Our man may be here at any minute, and we do not know in what temper he will come.”

“Our man!” exclaimed Carlyle, craning forward in excitement. “Max! you don’t mean to say that you have got Mead to admit it?”

“No one has admitted it,” said Carrados. “And it is not Mead.”

“Not Mead.... Do you mean that Hutchins——?”

“Neither Mead nor Hutchins. The man who tampered with the signal—for Hutchins was right and a green light was exhibited—is a young Indian from Bengal. His name is Drishna and he lives at Swanstead.”

Mr Carlyle stared at his friend between sheer surprise and blank incredulity.

“You really mean this, Carrados?” he said.

“My fatal reputation for humour!” smiled Carrados. “If I am wrong, Louis, the next hour will expose it.”

“But why—why—why? The colossal villainy, the unparalleled audacity!” Mr Carlyle lost himself among incredulous superlatives and could only stare.

“Chiefly to get himself out of a disastrous speculation,” replied Carrados, answering the question. “If there was another motive—or at least an incentive—which I suspect, doubtless we shall hear of it.”

“All the same, Max, I don’t think that you have treated me quite fairly,” protested Carlyle, getting over his first surprise and passing to a sense of injury. “Here we are and I know nothing, absolutely nothing, of the whole affair.”

“We both have our ideas of pleasantry, Louis,” replied Carrados genially. “But I dare say you are right and perhaps there is still time to atone.” In the fewest possible words he outlined the course of his investigations. “And now you know all that is to be known until Drishna arrives.”

“But will he come?” questioned Carlyle doubtfully. “He may be suspicious.”

“Yes, he will be suspicious.”

“Then he will not come.”

“On the contrary, Louis, he will come because my letter will make him suspicious. He is coming; otherwise Parkinson would have telephoned me at once and we should have had to take other measures.”

“What did you say, Max?” asked Carlyle curiously.

“I wrote that I was anxious to discuss an Indo-Scythian inscription with him, and sent my car in the hope that he would be able to oblige me.”

“But is he interested in Indo-Scythian inscriptions?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” admitted Carrados, and Mr Carlyle was throwing up his hands in despair when the sound of a motor car wheels softly kissing the gravel surface of the drive outside brought him to his feet.

“By gad, you are right, Max!” he exclaimed, peeping through the curtains. “There is a man inside.”

“Mr Drishna,” announced Parkinson, a minute later.

The visitor came into the room with leisurely self-possession that might have been real or a desperate assumption. He was a slightly built young man of about twenty-five, with black hair and eyes, a small, carefully trained moustache, and a dark olive skin. His physiognomy was not displeasing, but his expression had a harsh and supercilious tinge. In attire he erred towards the immaculately spruce.

“Mr Carrados?” he said inquiringly.

Carrados, who had risen, bowed slightly without offering his hand.

“This gentleman,” he said, indicating his friend, “is Mr Carlyle, the celebrated private detective.”

The Indian shot a very sharp glance at the object of this description. Then he sat down.

“You wrote me a letter, Mr Carrados,” he remarked, in English that scarcely betrayed any foreign origin, “a rather curious letter, I may say. You asked me about an ancient inscription. I know nothing of antiquities; but I thought, as you had sent, that it would be more courteous if I came and explained this to you.”

“That was the object of my letter,” replied Carrados.

“You wished to see me?” said Drishna, unable to stand the ordeal of the silence that Carrados imposed after his remark.

“When you left Miss Chubb’s house you left a ruler behind.” One lay on the desk by Carrados and he took it up as he spoke.

“I don’t understand what you are talking about,” said Drishna guardedly. “You are making some mistake.”

“The ruler was marked at four and seven-eighths inches—the measure of the glass of the signal lamp outside.”

The unfortunate young man was unable to repress a start. His face lost its healthy tone. Then, with a sudden impulse, he made a step forward and snatched the object from Carrados’s hand.

“If it is mine I have a right to it,” he exclaimed, snapping the ruler in two and throwing it on to the back of the blazing fire. “It is nothing.”

“Pardon me, I did not say that the one you have so impetuously disposed of was yours. As a matter of fact, it was mine. Yours is—elsewhere.”

“Wherever it is you have no right to it if it is mine,” panted Drishna, with rising excitement. “You are a thief, Mr Carrados. I will not stay any longer here.”

He jumped up and turned towards the door. Carlyle made a step forward, but the precaution was unnecessary.

“One moment, Mr Drishna,” interposed Carrados, in his smoothest tones. “It is a pity, after you have come so far, to leave without hearing of my investigations in the neighbourhood of Shaftesbury Avenue.”

Drishna sat down again.

“As you like,” he muttered. “It does not interest me.”

“I wanted to obtain a lamp of a certain pattern,” continued Carrados. “It seemed to me that the simplest explanation would be to say that I wanted it for a motor car. Naturally I went to Long Acre. At the first shop I said: ‘Wasn’t it here that a friend of mine, an Indian gentleman, recently had a lamp made with a green glass that was nearly five inches across?’ No, it was not there but they could make me one. At the next shop the same; at the third, and fourth, and so on. Finally my persistence was rewarded. I found the place where the lamp had been made, and at the cost of ordering another I obtained all the details I wanted. It was news to them, the shopman informed me, that in some parts of India green was the danger colour and therefore tail lamps had to show a green light. The incident made some impression on him and he would be able to identify their customer—who paid in advance and gave no address—among a thousand of his countrymen. Do I succeed in interesting you, Mr Drishna?”

“Do you?” replied Drishna, with a languid yawn. “Do I look interested?”

“You must make allowance for my unfortunate blindness,” apologized Carrados, with grim irony.

“Blindness!” exclaimed Drishna, dropping his affectation of unconcern as though electrified by the word, “do you mean—really blind—that you do not see me?”

“Alas, no,” admitted Carrados.

The Indian withdrew his right hand from his coat pocket and with a tragic gesture flung a heavy revolver down on the table between them.

“I have had you covered all the time, Mr Carrados, and if I had wished to go and you or your friend had raised a hand to stop me, it would have been at the peril of your lives,” he said, in a voice of melancholy triumph. “But what is the use of defying fate, and who successfully evades his destiny? A month ago I went to see one of our people who reads the future and sought to know the course of certain events. ‘You need fear no human eye,’ was the message given to me. Then she added: ‘But when the sightless sees the unseen, make your peace with Yama.’ And I thought she spoke of the Great Hereafter!”

“This amounts to an admission of your guilt,” exclaimed Mr Carlyle practically.

“I bow to the decree of fate,” replied Drishna. “And it is fitting to the universal irony of existence that a blind man should be the instrument. I don’t imagine, Mr Carlyle,” he added maliciously, “that you, with your eyes, would ever have brought that result about.”

“You are a very cold-blooded young scoundrel, sir!” retorted Mr Carlyle. “Good heavens! do you realize that you are responsible for the death of scores of innocent men and women?”

“Do you realise, Mr Carlyle, that you and your Government and your soldiers are responsible for the death of thousands of innocent men and women in my country every day? If England was occupied by the Germans who quartered an army and an administration with their wives and their families and all their expensive paraphernalia on the unfortunate country until the whole nation was reduced to the verge of famine, and the appointment of every new official meant the callous death sentence on a thousand men and women to pay his salary, then if you went to Berlin and wrecked a train you would be hailed a patriot. What Boadicea did and—and Samson, so have I. If they were heroes, so am I.”

“Well, upon my word!” cried the highly scandalized Carlyle, “what next! Boadicea was a—er—semi-legendary person, whom we may possibly admire at a distance. Personally, I do not profess to express an opinion. But Samson, I would remind you, is a Biblical character. Samson was mocked as an enemy. You, I do not doubt, have been entertained as a friend.”

“And haven’t I been mocked and despised and sneered at every day of my life here by your supercilious, superior, empty-headed men?” flashed back Drishna, his eyes leaping into malignity and his voice trembling with sudden passion. “Oh! how I hated them as I passed them in the street and recognized by a thousand petty insults their lordly English contempt for me as an inferior being—a nigger. How I longed with Caligula that a nation had a single neck that I might destroy it at one blow. I loathe you in your complacent hypocrisy, Mr Carlyle, despise and utterly abominate you from an eminence of superiority that you can never even understand.”

“I think we are getting rather away from the point, Mr Drishna,” interposed Carrados, with the impartiality of a judge. “Unless I am misinformed, you are not so ungallant as to include everyone you have met here in your execration?”

“Ah, no,” admitted Drishna, descending into a quite ingenuous frankness. “Much as I hate your men I love your women. How is it possible that a nation should be so divided—its men so dull-witted and offensive, its women so quick, sympathetic and capable of appreciating?”

“But a little expensive, too, at times?” suggested Carrados.

Drishna sighed heavily.

“Yes; it is incredible. It is the generosity of their large nature. My allowance, though what most of you would call noble, has proved quite inadequate. I was compelled to borrow money and the interest became overwhelming. Bankruptcy was impracticable because I should have then been recalled by my people, and much as I detest England a certain reason made the thought of leaving it unbearable.”

“Connected with the Arcady Theatre?”

“You know? Well, do not let us introduce the lady’s name. In order to restore myself I speculated on the Stock Exchange. My credit was