After Dark. Wilkie CollinsЧитать онлайн книгу.
Down came the clothes. No pockets in trousers. Waistcoat-pockets empty. Coat-pockets with something in them. First, handkerchief; secondly, bunch of keys; thirdly, cigar-case; fourthly, pocketbook. Of course I wasn’t such a fool as to expect to find the letter there, but I opened the pocketbook with a certain curiosity, notwithstanding.
Nothing in the two pockets of the book but some old advertisements cut out of newspapers, a lock of hair tied round with a dirty bit of ribbon, a circular letter about a loan society, and some copies of verses not likely to suit any company that was not of an extremely free-and-easy description. On the leaves of the pocketbook, people’s addresses scrawled in pencil, and bets jotted down in red ink. On one leaf, by itself, this queer inscription:
“MEM. 5 ALONG. 4 ACROSS.”
I understood everything but those words and figures, so of course I copied them out into my own book.
Then I waited in the pantry till Boots had brushed the clothes, and had taken them upstairs. His report when he came down was, that Mr. D——— had asked if it was a fine morning. Being told that it was, he had ordered breakfast at nine, and a saddle-horse to be at the door at ten, to take him to Grimwith Abbey—one of the sights in our neighborhood which I had told him of the evening before.
“I’ll be here, coming in by the back way, at half-past ten,” says I to the head chambermaid.
“What for?” says she.
“To take the responsibility of making Mr. Davager’s bed off your hands for this morning only,” says I.
“Any more orders?” says she.
“One more,” says I. “I want to hire Sam for the morning. Put it down in the order-book that he’s to be brought round to my office at ten.”
In case you should think Sam was a man, I’d better perhaps tell you he was a pony. I’d made up my mind that it would be beneficial to Tom’s health, after the tarts, if he took a constitutional airing on a nice hard saddle in the direction of Grimwith Abbey.
“Anything else?” says the head chambermaid.
“Only one more favor,” says I. “Would my boy Tom be very much in the way if he came, from now till ten, to help with the boots and shoes, and stood at his work close by this window which looks out on the staircase?”
“Not a bit,” says the head chambermaid.
“Thank you,” says I; and stepped back to my office directly.
When I had sent Tom off to help with the boots and shoes, I reviewed the whole case exactly as it stood at that time.
There were three things Mr. Davager might do with the letter. He might give it to his friend again before ten—in which case Tom would most likely see the said friend on the stairs. He might take it to his friend, or to some other friend, after ten—in which case Tom was ready to follow him on Sam the pony. And, lastly, he might leave it hidden somewhere in his room at the inn—in which case I was all ready for him with a search-warrant of my own granting, under favor always of my friend the head chambermaid. So far I had my business arrangements all gathered up nice and compact in my own hands. Only two things bothered me; the terrible shortness of the time at my disposal, in case I failed in my first experiments, for getting hold of the letter, and that queer inscription which I had copied out of the pocketbook:
“MEM. 5 ALONG. 4 ACROSS.”
It was the measurement most likely of something, and he was afraid of forgetting it; therefore it was something important. Query—something about himself? Say “5” (inches) “along”—he doesn’t wear a wig. Say “5” (feet) “along”—it can’t be coat, waistcoat, trousers, or underclothing. Say “5” (yards) “along”—it can’t be anything about himself, unless he wears round his body the rope that he’s sure to be hanged with one of these days. Then it is not something about himself. What do I know of that is important to him besides? I know of nothing but the Letter. Can the memorandum be connected with that? Say, yes. What do “5 along” and “4 across” mean, then? The measurement of something he carries about with him? or the measurement of something in his room? I could get pretty satisfactorily to myself as far as that; but I could get no further.
Tom came back to the office, and reported him mounted for his ride. His friend had never appeared. I sent the boy off, with his proper instructions, on Sam’s back—wrote an encouraging letter to Mr. Frank to keep him quiet—then slipped into the inn by the back way a little before half-past ten. The head chambermaid gave me a signal when the landing was clear. I got into his room without a soul but her seeing me, and locked the door immediately.
The case was, to a certain extent, simplified now. Either Mr. Davager had ridden out with the letter about him, or he had left it in some safe hiding-place in his room. I suspected it to be in his room, for a reason that will a little astonish you—his trunk, his dressing-case, and all the drawers and cupboards, were left open. I knew my customer, and I thought this extraordinary carelessness on his part rather suspicious.
Mr. Davager had taken one of the best bedrooms at the Gatliffe Arms. Floor carpeted all over, walls beautifully papered, four-poster, and general furniture first-rate. I searched, to begin with, on the usual plan, examining everything in every possible way, and taking more than an hour about it. No discovery. Then I pulled out a carpenter’s rule which I had brought with me. Was there anything in the room which—either in inches, feet, or yards—answered to “5 along” and “4 across”? Nothing. I put the rule back in my pocket—measurement was no good, evidently. Was there anything in the room that would count up to 5 one way and 4 another, seeing that nothing would measure up to it? I had got obstinately persuaded by this time that the letter must be in the room—principally because of the trouble I had had in looking after it. And persuading myself of that, I took it into my head next, just as obstinately, that “5 along” and “4 across” must be the right clew to find the letter by—principally because I hadn’t left myself, after all my searching and thinking, even so much as the ghost of another guide to go by. “Five along”—where could I count five along the room, in any part of it?
Not on the paper. The pattern there was pillars of trellis-work and flowers, inclosing a plain green ground—only four pillars along the wall and only two across. The furniture? There were not five chairs or five separate pieces of any furniture in the room altogether. The fringes that hung from the cornice of the bed? Plenty of them, at any rate! Up I jumped on the counterpane, with my pen-knife in my hand. Every way that “5 along” and “4 across” could be reckoned on those unlucky fringes I reckoned on them—probed with my penknife—scratched with my nails—crunched with my fingers. No use; not a sign of a letter; and the time was getting on—oh, Lord! how the time did get on in Mr. Davager’s room that morning.
I jumped down from the bed, so desperate at my ill luck that I hardly cared whether anybody heard me or not. Quite a little cloud of dust rose at my feet as they thumped on the carpet.
“Hullo!” thought I, “my friend the head chambermaid takes it easy here. Nice state for a carpet to be in, in one of the best bedrooms at the Gatliffe Arms.” Carpet! I had been jumping up on the bed, and staring up at the walls, but I had never so much as given a glance down at the carpet. Think of me pretending to be a lawyer, and not knowing how to look low enough!
The carpet! It had been a stout article in its time, had evidently began in a drawing-room; then descended to a coffee-room; then gone upstairs altogether to a bedroom. The ground was brown, and the pattern was bunches of leaves and roses speckled over the ground at regular distances. I reckoned up the bunches. Ten along the room—eight across it. When I had stepped out five one way and four the other, and was down on my knees on the center bunch, as true as I sit on this chair I could hear my own heart beating so loud that it quite frightened me.
I looked narrowly all over the bunch, and I felt all over it with the ends of my fingers, and nothing came of that. Then I scraped it over slowly and gently with my nails. My second finger-nail stuck a little at one place. I parted the