Colin smoked in silence a moment, frowning but bright-eyed. “Damned lot of use you are,” he said. “But hold your tongue now. I’m getting at it.”
He got up briskly and began walking up and down the black marble floor of the chapel.
“Come along,” he said. “You’ve got to help me to carry him out down the corridor, and through my room and into the hall, and then, you’ll be pleased to hear, all you’ve got to do is not to know that anything at all has happened. You’ll come back here afterwards and put things away, and then get to your bed and sleep or lie awake just as you feel inclined. Look, there’s the censer overturned, and burning a hole in that carpet. Spit on it or something.... My word, you’re lucky that this didn’t happen when you were alone with him, but had someone with you who doesn’t suffer from terror of the spirit. Now catch hold of him under his knees and lift him when I’ve got hold of his shoulders. Why, the man’s as light as a child. That’s the devout life.”
Under Colin’s directions they carried their burden with the slit cassock still over his face, and the arm hanging limply down, out into the hall, and laid him sprawling there, much as he had fallen. Then Colin twitched the cassock from the face, and gave it to the priest.
“Lock up that and the cotta,” he said, “and bury them to-morrow in your bit of garden. Or weight them, that will be better, and make a parcel of them and chuck them into the lake above the sluice. And now go back to the chapel, make everything ship-shape, just as you would have done if this had not occurred, and get to bed. You know nothing, nothing.”
Colin looked at his ashen face, in contemptuous pity. “You’re all to bits,” he said. “I suppose I shall have to come back and help you or you’ll forget to lock the chapel or something. Wait a minute!”
He went to the telephone and got connected with the house of the doctor at Rye.
“I’m Lord Yardley,” he said, as soon as he got a reply “and I’m so sorry to trouble you, but would you make all haste to come up to Stanier? My servant has had some sort of fit; he’s still unconscious. Thank you very much.”
Colin saw Father Douglas through with his part of the business and then waited in the hall, where he would hear the doctor’s wheels. There on the floor lay the body curiously insignificant, and now he noticed that the famous picture of old Colin, with the supposed deed of bargain let into the frame, was on the wall just above where it lay. There was something rather suitable about that.... But he gave no further thought to it: over and over in his mind he conned what he was going to say: framing answers to any questions that might be put, and above all rehearsing his own initial statement. That was the important thing, it was that which he must make so familiar to himself that he really believed it to be true, for no doubt he would have to repeat it again at the inquest. Over all else, though it teemed with surmise and wonder, he drew an impenetrable curtain. Nothing else mattered just now but what he must say to the doctor.
Before he had begun to expect his arrival, he heard the crunch of motor-wheels, and undid the bolts of the door.