The Four Corners of the World

by A. E. W. Mason

THE BROWN BOOK

[THE BROWN BOOK]

A few friends of Murgatroyd, the physician, sat about his dinner-table, discussing that perplexing question, "How much of the truth should a doctor tell?" In the middle of the discussion a quiet voice spoke up from a corner, and all turned towards a middle-aged man of European reputation who sat fingering the stem of his wine-glass.

"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 pass 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 circumstances 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 platitudes about the tension of modern life made their appearance. The public read, accepted, and passed 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-glass 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 passed 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 assiduity 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 amusement. 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 passion. 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 passionate, 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.

But while I waited the door of the next room was opened, and Rymer and I both ceased to talk. We pretended no more. We listened, and, although we heard voices, we could not distinguish words. Both Violet and the servant were speaking in their ordinary tones, and Rymer and I were now on the far side of the room. An expression of immense relief shone upon Bradley Rymer's face for a moment, and he rose up with the smile and the friendliness I knew.

"Will you stay to dinner?" he asked. "Do!" But I dared not. I should have betrayed the trouble I was in. I made a lame excuse and left the house.

It was now quite dark, and in the cool night air I began, before I had reached the lodge, to wonder whether I had not been misled altogether by some hallucination. Bradley Rymer brought to my memory the tragic case of his brother, and I asked myself for a moment if the long and late hours of a country practice were unbalancing me. But I looked back towards the house as I took the track over the turf, and the scene through which I had passed returned too vividly to leave me in any doubt. I could see Bradley Rymer clearly as he opened and shut the drawer of his writing-table. I could hear his voice raised in bitter reproach to Violet and the click of the typewriting machine. No, I had not been dreaming.

I had walked about a hundred yards down the slope when a sharp whistle of two notes sounded a little way off upon my right, and almost before I had stopped a man sprang from the grass at my very feet with a guttural cry like a man awakened from a doze. Had I taken another step I should have trodden upon him. The next moment the light from an electric torch flashed upon my face, blinding me. I stepped back and put up my hand to my eyes. But even while I raised my hand the button of the torch was released and the light went out. I stood for a moment in utter blackness, then dimly I became aware of some one moving away from in front of me.

"What do you want?" I cried.

"Nothing," was the word spoken in answer.

I should have put the fellow down for one of the gipsies who infest those Downs in the summer, and thought no more about him, but for one reason. He had spoken with a pronounced German accent. Besides, there was the warning whistle, the flash of the torch. I could not resist the conviction that Bradley Rymer's house was being watched.

I walked on without quickening my pace, for perhaps a hundred yards. Then I ran, and as fast as I could, down to the village. I did not stop to reason things out. I was in a panic. Violet was in that house, and it was being watched by strangers. We had one policeman in the village, and he not the brainiest of men. I got out my bicycle and rode fourteen miles, walking up the hills and coasting down them until I reached the town of Reading. I rode to the house of the Chief Constable, whom I happened to know.

"Is Captain Bowyer in?" I asked of the servant.

"No, sir; he's dining out to-night."

"In the town?"

"Yes, sir."

I was white with dust and wet through with sweat. The girl looked me over and said:

"I have orders to telephone for him if he is wanted."

"He is," I replied, and she went off to the telephone at once.

I began to cool down in more ways than one while I waited. It seemed to me very likely that I had come upon a fool's errand. After all, what had I got to go upon but a German accent, a low, sharp whistle, and an electric torch? I waited about half an hour before Bowyer came in. He was a big man, with a strong face and a fair moustache, capable, but not imaginative; and I began my story with a good deal of diffidence. But I had not got far before his face became serious, though he said not a word until I had done.

"Bradley Rymer's house," he then remarked. "I know it." He went out into the passage, and I heard his voice at the telephone. He came back in a moment.

"I have sent for some men," he said, "and a car. Will you wait here while I change?"

"Yes."

I glanced at the clock. For now that he took the affair seriously all my fears had returned.

"What time did you leave the house?" he asked.

"Nine."

"And it's now eleven. Yes, we must hurry. Bradley Rymer's house! So that's where they are."

He hurried away. But before he had changed his clothes a great touring motor-car whirred and stopped in front of the door. When we went out on to the steps of the house there were four constables waiting. We climbed into the car, and the hilly road to Streatley, which had taken me so long and painful a time to traverse, now rose and fell beneath the broad wheels like the waves of a sea. At Streatley we turned uphill along the Aldworth Road, and felt the fresh wind of the downland upon our faces. Then for the first time upon the journey I spoke.

"You know these men?" I asked of Captain Bowyer.

"I know of them," he answered, and he bent forwards to me. "With all these kings and emperors in London for the funeral, of course a great many precautions were taken on the Continent. All the known Anarchists were marked down; most of them on some excuse or another were arrested. But three slipped through the net and reached England."

"But they would be in London," I urged.

"So you would think. We were warned to-day, however, that they had been traced into Berkshire and there lost sight of."

A hundred questions rose to my lips, but I did not put them. We were all in the dark together.

"That's the house," I said at length, and Captain Bowyer touched the chauffeur on the shoulder.

"We'll stop, then, by the road."

Very quietly we got out of the car and crept up the hill. The night was dark; only here and there in a chink of the clouds a star shone feebly. Down in the village a dog barked and the wind whistled amongst the grasses under our feet. We met no one. The lodge at the gates was dark; we could not see the house itself, but a glare striking upon the higher branches of the trees in the garden showed that a room was brightly lit.

"Do you know which room that is?" Bowyer asked of me in a whisper.

"The library."

We spread out then and made a circuit of the garden wall. There was no one any longer watching, and we heard no whistle.

"They have gone," I said to Bowyer.

"Or they are inside," he replied, and as he spoke we heard feet brushing upon the grass and a constable loomed up in front of us.

"This way, sir," he whispered. "They are inside."

We followed him round to the back of the garden. Just about the middle of that back wall the men stood in a cluster. We joined them, and saw that an upright ladder rose to the parapet. On the other side of the wall a thick coppice of trees grew, dark and high. Without a word, one after another we mounted the ladder and let ourselves down by the trees into the garden. A few paces took us to the edge of the coppice, and the house stood in the open before us. Standing in the shadow of the branches, we looked up. The house was in complete darkness but for the long row of library windows upon the first floor. In these, however, the curtains were not drawn, and the light blazed out upon the green foliage. There was no sound, no sign of any disorder. Once more I began to think that I had brought Bowyer and his men here upon a fool's errand. I said as much to him in a whisper.

"But the ladder?" he answered, "my men found it there." And even while he spoke there appeared at one of these windows a stranger. It was as much as I could do in that awful moment to withhold a cry, I gripped Bowyer's arm with so much violence that he could show me the bruises of my fingers a week afterwards. But he stood like a rock now.

"Is that Rymer?"

"No. I have never seen him in my life before."

He was a dark man, and his hair and moustache were turning grey. He had the look of a foreigner, and he lounged at the window with as much assurance as if he owned the place. Then he turned his face towards the room with a smile, and, as if in obedience to an order, carelessly drew down the blinds.

They were in the house, then--these men who had slipped through the net of the Continental police; more, they were masters in the house; and there was no sound. They were in peaceful possession. My heart sank within me when I thought of Violet Rymer and her father. What had become of them? In what plight were they?

Bowyer made a sign, and, stepping carefully on the turf border and keeping within the shadow of the trees, we crept round to the back of the house. One of the party ran swiftly and silently across a gravel path to the house-wall and followed it for a little way. Then as swiftly he came back.

"Yes, there's a window open," he said. We crossed to it. It yawned upon black emptiness. We listened; not a sound reached us.

"What does it give on to?" asked Bowyer.

"A passage. At the end of the passage there's a swing door. Beyond the swing door the hall."

We climbed in through the window.

"There should be a mastiff in the hall," I said.

"Oh!" and Bowyer came to a stop. "Do you think Rymer expected these men?" he asked. I had begun to ask myself that question already. It was clear the dog had not given any alarm. But we found out the reason when we crept into the hall. He was lying dead upon the stone floor, with a piece of meat at his side.

"Quick!" whispered Bowyer, and I led the way up the great staircase. At the head of it at last we heard voices, and stopped, holding our breath. A few words spoken in a foreign accent detached themselves from the general murmur.

"Where is it? You won't say! Very well, then!" A muffled groan followed the words, and once more the voice spoke. "Wait, Adolf! He gives in. We shall know now," and as the voice continued, some one, it was clear, between each question asked, answered with a sign, a shake of the head, or a nod. "It is in the bookcase? Yes. Behind the books? Good. There? No. To the right? Yes. Higher? Yes. On that shelf? Good. Search well, Adolf!" And with that Bowyer burst into the room with his men behind him. He held a revolver in his hand.

"I shall shoot the first man who moves," he said; and no one did move. They stood like wax figures moulded in an attitude for ever. Imagine, if you can, the scene which confronted me! On the library ladder, with a hand thrust behind the books on one of the highest shelves, was mounted one of the three foreigners. A second--he whom we had seen at the window--stood over a chair into which Bradley Rymer was strapped with a gag over his mouth. The third supported Violet. She was standing in the middle of the room, with her hands tied behind her and a rope in a noose about her neck. The end of the rope had been passed through a big ring in the ceiling which had once carried a lamp. I sprang towards her, cast off the noose, and she fainted there and then in my arms.

At the back of the bookshelf we found a slim little book of brown morocco with a broken lock.

At this point in Sir James Kelsey's story Dr. Murgatroyd leaned forward and interrupted.

"John Rymer's private case-book," he said.

"Exactly," replied Kelsey, "and also Bradley Rymer's boom in Canadian land."

There was a quick stir about that table, and then a moment of uncomfortable silence. At last one spoke the thought in the minds of all.

"Blackmail!"

"Yes."

There was hardly a man in the room who had not some record of a case locked away in a private drawer which was worth a fortune of gold, and each one began to think of the security of his locks.

"But where do your foreign revolutionaries come in?" asked Murgatroyd, and Kelsey took up his tale again.

"Bowyer and I went through that brown book together in my house, after the prisoners had been sent off. For a long time we could find no explanation. But right at the end of the book there was a case which puzzled me. A Mr. Johnson had entered Rymer's nursing-home on June 17th of the year before at five o'clock in the morning, a strange time to arrive. But there it was, noted down with every other particular of his case. Three days later Mr. Johnson was operated on for cancer of the throat. The operation was remarkably successful, and the patient left the home cured seven weeks later. I think it was the unusual time of Mr. Johnson's arrival which first directed my suspicions; and the more I thought of them the more credible they became. I had lighted a fire in the sitting-room, for the morning had come, and it was chilly. I said to Bowyer:

"'Just wait a moment here. I keep a file of The Times,' and I went upstairs, blessing the methodical instinct which had made me for so long keep in due order this record of events. I brought down the file of June of the year before, and, turning over the pages, I found under the date of June 14th the official paragraph of which I was in search. I put it under Bowyer's eyes. He read it through and sprang to his feet with a cry. The paragraph ran like this. I can remember every word of it. I am inventing a name for the country, that's all, instead of giving you the real one:

"'The Crown Prince of Galicia left the capital yesterday for his annual visit to his shooting-box in the Tyrol, where he will remain for two months. This news effectually dispels the rumours that His Royal Highness's recent indisposition was due to a malignant growth in the throat.'

"Underneath this paragraph there was an editorial note:

"'The importance of this news cannot be overrated. For by the constitution of Galicia no one suffering from or tainted by any malignant disease can ascend the throne.'

"Identify now Rymer's Mr. Johnson with the Crown Prince of Galicia, and not only Bradley Rymer's fortune but the attack upon his house by the revolutionaries was explained, for whether they meant to use the Brown Book for blackmail as Bradley Rymer had done, or to upset a monarchy, it would be of an inestimable value to them.

"'What are we to do?' asked Bowyer.

"'What John Rymer's executors would have done if the book had not been stolen,' I answered, balancing it above the fire.

"He hesitated. The official mind said 'No.' Then he realised the stupendous character of the secret. He burst through forms and rules.

"'Yes, by Heaven,' he cried, 'destroy it!' And we sat there till the last sheet blackened and curled up in the flames.

"I had not a doubt as to what had happened. I took the half-truth which the public knew and it fitted like a piece of a Chinese puzzle with our discovery. John Rymer, assailed with a causeless fear of penury, had consented for a huge fee to take the Crown Prince into his home under the false name. Bradley Rymer had got wind of the operation, had stolen the record of the case, and had the Galician Crown and Government at his mercy. John Rymer's suicide followed logically. Accused of bad faith, and already unbalanced, aware that a deadly secret which he should have guarded with his life had escaped, he had put the muzzle of a revolver into his mouth and blown his brains out."

"What became of the foreigners?" asked one of the guests, as Kelsey finished.

"They were kept under lock and key until the funeral was over. Then they were sent out of the country."

Kelsey rose from his chair. The hands of the clock pointed to eleven. But before anyone else got up Dr. Murgatroyd asked a final question:

"And what of Mr. Johnson?"

Kelsey laughed.

"I told you Rymer was a great surgeon. Mr. Johnson has been King of Galicia, as we are calling it, for the past ten years."