Carmichael chuckled. “Well, let’s hope Brotherhood won’t walk,” he said. “It would be very embarrassing for you, Marryatt, if Brotherhood’s ghost came back to continue the discussion. It would speak with so much expert knowledge.”
“Really, Carmichael,” said Marryatt, “I wish you wouldn’t say those things. You told us yourself that you don’t believe in spiritualistic phenomena.”
“It’s all right,” said Gordon, “you’ll be able to exorcise him if he does turn up again. Try driving a stake through his body, I’m told it’s effective. Hullo!” he added, consulting his watch, “I’d no idea it was so late. I promised I’d go and help Murdoch fix up his wireless. So long——” and he disappeared, giving a slight tug at Reeves’ coat as he left.
He did not seem, however, to be in a hurry to redeem his promise. Instead, he made straight for Marryatt’s room, taking the stairs three at a time; and his proceedings in Marryatt’s room were sufficiently curious to be worth recording in detail. First, he took two out of the three pipes which lay there, and hid them carefully behind the coal-scuttle. Then he pulled the remaining pipe in half; picked a strand or two of tobacco out of the nearest tin, and rammed these tightly down the stem of the pipe, close to the mouthpiece. There were a couple of feathers on the mantelpiece; these he unscrupulously put in his pocket. And, “Now, my friend,” he said to himself out loud, as he left the room, “I think we’ve spiked your guns. I for one shall be surprised if you don’t come along hunting for pipe-cleaners.” And so he went down and rejoined Reeves in the deserted billiard-room.
The Committee had not yet decided what action to take about the secret passage, and it was with no difficulty that the two friends entered it again from the billiard-room end, and made their way along it, guided by Reeves’ torch. If it had lost its thrill of human mystery, it had acquired instead a kind of impersonal dreariness. One had not looked for ghosts, when one was expecting a murderer to be lurking there; now, you caught your breath a little as you passed the hiding-hole. Priests had lain close here many times; strange irony, that it should now be serving as a vantage-point for spying on a clerical delinquent. There were two cracks in the panelling of Reeves’ room, and through either you could see, in the shifting firelight, the dark outlines of the oaken cudgel that lay against Reeves’ arm-chair. By a grim accident, it stood exactly as if it were being held in the right hand of some one seated there. It could not fail to catch the eye of anyone who turned on the electric light, when he came in.
Voices, echoed up the staircase, proclaimed the breaking up of the dining-tables. They could distinguish Carmichael’s high-pitched accents, as he told an interminable story at the foot of the stairs—no doubt to Marryatt, who still delayed his coming. Then at last they heard Marryatt’s step, the rather boyish, light step that characterized him; he was still crooning, if further identification were needed, the hymn Reeves had heard from the church-yard.
Though, like a wanderer,
The sun gone down,
Darkness comes over me,
My rest a stone,
Still in my dreams I’d be——
and the sounds died away with the footfalls, as Marryatt turned the corner into his own room.
Then there was silence; a silence fraught with expectation, and for Gordon with anxiety. Why hadn’t he come? Had he, after all—one ought to have considered that—another pipe in his pocket? Had some splinter or paper-clip succeeded in removing the all-important obstruction? No; Marryatt’s door was suddenly flung open with an impatient gesture; Marryatt’s step was heard again in the passage; Marryatt’s voice still found occupation in rendering the hymn, but more savagely now—you pictured a bear robbed of her whelps.
There let my way appear,
Steps unto heaven,
All that Thou sendest me
In mercy given——