I wired back to the “Victoria” there was none: “bring boodle with you;” and then I went off and found Thatcher.
For always I had had the fancy to pay old Crage out of the place and be married on the same day, and here was now my chance. We were to be married in Nesshaven Church, in the grounds of Wharton Park, at twelve; what was to prevent us, I said to Thatcher, from walking on up to the house first with £30,000, completing the purchase, and hasting to the wedding afterwards? Thence back to “The French Horn” for a light lunch, afterwards catch the half-past-two train for Liverpool Street, and so to Folkestone in the evening.
There was nothing to prevent it, said Thatcher, who for the last two days had gone about in a triumphant, bulging white waistcoat; only it would require rather delicate handling, all to be done successfully. Crage should be prepared, for instance, he thought; for, notwithstanding the sight of the money, the sight of dear Lucy in her happy wedding radiance might turn him sour, and he might after all refuse to complete. What was to prevent one of us, he said—meaning, of course, me—going up to the house and sounding the old man first? Then we should know exactly how we stood, and what chance there was of our money being accepted.
Now, for the last week nothing had been seen of the old man, and rumors had reached us, chiefly through the gardener, he was very ill. He hadn’t been to church for more than a month, and at church he had always been a very regular attendant; not so much because he had any real religion in him as that he might aggravate the parson by catching him up loudly in the responses, and barking his way harshly through the hymns a good half-line behind the rest of the congregation. Indeed, the chief attraction, I fear, at Nesshaven Church was old Crage and his nauseous eccentricities, and people who had heard how he had once lighted up his pipe during the sermon and sat there sucking at it in the Wharton pew, came from miles round in the hope he would enliven the discourse by doing it again.
Nor had he been seen about the grounds, nor stumping down to the inn, as he mostly did once a week to insult the inmates; in short, the end that comes to us all—good, bad, and indifferent—was clearly coming now to him, and if business were ever to be done, it must be done speedily and at once.
So, before Brentin came, early on the Wednesday afternoon, I trudged alone up to the house. There wasn’t a sign of life in it, and when I rang at the hall door I heard the heavy bell clanging away down the empty passages and cold servants’ quarters as in the depths of an Egyptian tomb. I rang and rang, until at last I heard shuffling footsteps approach. From the other side of the door came stertorous breathing and wheezing, and the undoing of a chain; then a burglar’s bell was taken off and fell with a jangle on the stone floor inside, and at last the door was pulled ajar.
Poor old Crage! He looked out at me with his wicked, frightened old face, pinched, haggard, unshaven, dirty; terror-struck, as though he feared, I were Death himself who had been knocking at the door. He was in his shirt and trousers and a frowzy old dressing-gown, and his bare, bony feet were thrust in worn leather slippers. As he breathed his throat rattled dismally, and his long hand, with the thick, muddy veins, shook so he couldn’t fold the dressing-gown round his gaunt, corded, bare throat.
“Hullo, young cockney!” he croaked; “what’s to do?”
“How are you, Mr. Crage?” I asked, shocked at the old man’s fallen, forlorn look.
“Very bad!” he whispered, his rheumy eyes blinking with watery self-pity.