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Pro Cryptography
and Cryptanalysis
with C++20
Creating and Programming Advanced
Algorithms
—
Marius Iulian Mihailescu
Stefania Loredana Nita
Pro Cryptography and
Cryptanalysis with C++20
Creating and Programming
Advanced Algorithms
Copyright © Marius Iulian Mihailescu and Stefania Loredana Nita 2021, corrected
publication 2021
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Printed on acid-free paper
To our families.
Table of Contents
About the Authors�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� xiii
Part I: Foundations�������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 1
Chapter 1: Getting Started in Cryptography and Cryptanalysis�������������������������������� 3
Cryptography and Cryptanalysis��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 4
Book Structure������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 5
Internet Resources������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 9
Forums and Newsgroups������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 10
Standards������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 11
Conclusion���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 12
References���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 13
v
Table of Contents
Digital Signatures������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 32
Signing Process��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 33
Verification Process��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 33
Public-Key Cryptography������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 33
Hash Functions��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 36
Case Studies������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 53
Caesar Cipher Implementation in C++20������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 53
Vigenére Cipher Implementation in C++20��������������������������������������������������������������������������� 55
Conclusions��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 58
References���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 58
viii
Table of Contents
ix
Table of Contents
x
Table of Contents
xi
Table of Contents
Index��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 463
xii
About the Authors
Marius Iulian Mihailescu, PhD is the CEO of Dapyx Solution Ltd., a company based in
Bucharest, Romania. He is involved in information security- and cryptography-related
research projects. He is a lead guest editor for applied cryptography journals and a
reviewer for multiple publications on information security and cryptography profiles.
He has authored and co-authored more than 30 articles for conference proceedings, 25
articles for journals, and four books. For more than six years he has served as a lecturer
at well-known national and international universities (University of Bucharest, Titu
Maiorescu University, Spiru Haret University of Bucharest, and Kadir Has University,
Istanbul, Turkey). He has taught courses on programming languages (C#, Java, C++,
Haskell) and object-oriented system analysis and design with UML, graphs, databases,
cryptography, and information security. He worked for three years as an IT Officer
at Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. where he dealt with IT infrastructure, data security,
and satellite communications systems. He received his PhD in 2014 and his thesis is
on applied cryptography over biometrics data. He holds MSc degrees in information
security and software engineering.
Stefania Loredana Nita, PhD is a software developer and researcher at the Institute for
Computers of the Romanian Academy. Her PhD thesis is on advanced cryptographic
schemes using searchable encryption and homomorphic encryption. At the Institute for
Computers, she works on research and development projects that involve searchable
encryption, homomorphic encryption, cloud computing security, Internet of Things, and
big data. She worked for more than two years as an assistant lecturer at the University of
Bucharest where she taught courses on advanced programming techniques, simulation
methods, and operating systems. She has authored and co-authored more than 25
workpapers for conferences and journals, and has co-authored four books. She is a
lead guest editor for special issues on information security and cryptography such as
Advanced Cryptography and Its Future: Searchable and Homomorphic Encryption. She
has an MSc degree in software engineering and BSc degrees in computer science and
mathematics.
xiii
About the Technical Reviewer
Doug Holland is a Software Engineer and Architect at Microsoft Corporation. He holds
a Master’s degree in software engineering from the University of Oxford. Before joining
Microsoft, he was awarded the Microsoft MVP and Intel Black Belt Developer awards.
xv
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank our editors for their support, our technical reviewer for his
constructive comments and suggestions, the entire team that makes publishing this
book possible, and last but not least, our families for their unconditional support and
encouragement.
xvii
Other documents randomly have
different content
indications I found at the Hatcheries an hour ago? Do they back up
your theory, or are they wide of the mark?”
“It’s all according to schedule,” explained Carmichael, “but for a
reason quite different from any you imagined. You must consider
that the things we really find it hard to change are not the important
things of life, our moral or religious or political standpoint, but our
common, daily habits of living. Brotherhood might be an atheist, and
Davenant a Catholic; Brotherhood a violent Radical, Davenant a
Diehard Tory. But every man has his own preference in razors and in
shaving-soap and in tooth-powder; and if you looked into the thing,
you would find that if Davenant used A’s shaving-soap, so did
Brotherhood; if Brotherhood used B’s tooth-powder, so did
Davenant. There lay the real danger of detection. There was just the
danger that somebody—shall we say, an interfering old don?—might
hit upon the truth of the secret, and make investigations.
Accordingly, those little traces must be obliterated. And they have
been, for Davenant was careful to take them away with him. And so
has the photograph, a photograph which, I suspect, had a duplicate
in Brotherhood’s house—you see, neither Brotherhood nor Davenant
could live without it.”
“But the collars and the socks? Surely nobody is so intimately
wedded to one particular type of collar——”
“A blind. Davenant was to look as if he were packing up to go
away, so he must take some clothes with him, not merely the
shaving things.”
“But the towel and the soap? Surely they were not necessary to
complete the illusion?”
“No, they are even more significant. Davenant—don’t you
remember?—had rather darker eyebrows than Brotherhood. Quite
easily done, of course, with paint. But you want something to wash
it off with; and there are no corridors on the slow trains.”
“Yes, but look here,” objected Reeves, “why did he want to take all
these things away with him on Monday?—it was on Tuesday he was
timed to disappear—or rather, actually on Wednesday: his sleeper
was for Wednesday.”
“I don’t think he meant to sleep the Tuesday night at the
Hatcheries. He had transferred his base somewhere else—to London,
I suppose—and his visit to Paston Whitchurch, on the pretext of
picking up something he had left behind, was merely meant to
establish, in our eyes, the fact that he was a different man from
Brotherhood.”
“There’s one more thing, though,” said Marryatt; “I’m afraid it’s a
kind of professional objection. Is it possible that a man who was
really an atheist would be at the pains to go over every Sunday to
Mass at Paston Bridge? Davenant, you see, was very regular about
that. Or, granted that he was really a Catholic, could he bring himself
to get up and preach atheist doctrines on the village green?”
Carmichael pulled a wry face. “I’m afraid, Marryatt, you are
altogether too confiding. Don’t you see that he was a Catholic, and
was doing the work of his own Church by turning the villagers
against you and your doctrines? Don’t you see that if he managed to
make atheists of your people, it would be all the easier for the priest
at Paston Bridge to make Romans of them?”
“In fact,” said Gordon, “what it comes to is this: we have got to
look for a criminal still; but it’s no use looking for Davenant?”
“You would be chasing a phantom,” said Carmichael.
Chapter VIII.
The Inquest, and a Fresh Clue
The inquest was held on the following afternoon (that is, the
afternoon of Thursday) in the village school at Paston Whitchurch.
As he sat waiting to give his evidence, Reeves found his mind
dominated, as the mind is dominated at such moments, almost
entirely by irrelevant sense-impressions. There was the curious smell
of the schoolroom, which always suggests (it is hard to know why)
ink and chalk. There was the irritating pant and hoot of motors and
motor-bicycles outside the open windows. There was the inevitable
series of animals represented round the walls, looking like the
religious emblems of some strange, totemistic worship. The one
opposite Reeves had a caption underneath it in very large letters, the
pig is a mammal, as if to clear up any possible doubts which might be
felt by the youth of the parish as to what a pig was. There were the
names cut and inked on the desks; especially intriguing was the
signature of “H. Precious”—how did people in the country get such
odd names? And why were there so few names like that in the
London Telephone Directory? Carmichael would probably have a
theory about this. . . .
Such were the thoughts that kept dawdling through his mind,
when he felt that he ought to be forming important decisions. What
was he going to say when he was called in evidence? Was he going
to give any hint as to his suspicions of foul play, or would it be better
to leave the police to their own unaided intelligence? And if he did
breathe his suspicions, was he bound to mention the golf-ball which
he had found at the top of the embankment? Would they ask how
he had employed his time between the moment when he found the
body and the moment when the police arrived? He wished that he
had discussed all this beforehand with Gordon—or would that have
been conspiring to defeat the ends of justice? Anyhow, he wished
the preliminary proceedings would hurry up.
When he was actually called, he found that he was not asked for
his opinion on any theoretical point, and indeed was given no
opportunity of getting a word in edgeways as to the view he had
formed of the case. He was only asked details about the exact time
of his discovery (this question confused him rather) and the precise
attitude in which the body lay. Instead of being criticized for
disturbing the clues by removing the dead body, he was thanked for
having removed it. Altogether, the proceedings struck him as
singularly ill-calculated to assist in the clearing up of a mystery. It
seemed rather as if Society were performing a solemn act of
purification over the remains of the dead. In the end he sat down
feeling exactly (the atmosphere helped) as if he were back at school
again, had just been “put on construing,” not at the passage he had
specially “mugged up,” but at the passage next door to it, and had
acquitted himself better than he expected in the circumstances. The
feeling was intensified when Marryatt got up; Marryatt was still
intensely nervous over the prospect of a suicide verdict; and he
answered the questions put to him confusedly and at random, like a
schoolboy who has omitted the formality of preparing the lesson at
all.
The heroine of the afternoon was undoubtedly Mrs. Bramston. The
coroner was not ready for her, and she got right in under his guard,
pouring out a flood of promiscuous information which he neither
demanded nor desired. Then strangers came—people from
Brotherhood’s office in London, people from the Insurance Company,
people representing the creditors: people, too, who represented the
railway company, and dilated for hours on the impossibility of falling
out of their trains by accident. In fact, nobody seemed to care a
straw about the mangled temple of humanity that lay in the next
room, or whether it cried to heaven for vengeance. Only two points
mattered, whether the Insurance Company had got to pay up, and
whether the Railway Company owed Compensation. Brotherhood
had, as far as could be discovered, neither kith nor kin in the world,
and it was perhaps not unnatural that the verdict given was one of
death by suicide. Yet Marryatt was to be freed of his apprehensions:
Brotherhood had looked worried lately at the office—had said,
“Damn you, get out of the way” to the lift-boy—had complained of
headaches. He had committed suicide, clearly while of unsound
mind; and Marryatt might get on with the funeral.
Marryatt seemed five years younger when they met afterwards to
discuss the situation. Strange, Reeves reflected, how in certain
natures the wish is father to the thought. Only last night Marryatt
had seemed eager to follow up the clues of a murder, so as to get
the bugbear of suicide off his mind; now that the act of suicide was
declared inculpable, he showed no great interest in prosecuting the
inquiry. “It’s a mystery,” he kept on saying, “and I don’t think we’re
ever likely to get to the bottom of it. If we could have hunted
Davenant, we should have had something to go on. Now that we
know Davenant was a fictitious personage, what’s the use of
worrying? We’ve no clues that can help us to any further action.
Unless, of course, you like to go to the police and tell them what you
know.”
But to this Reeves would not consent. Ever since the apparent
indifference with which the police had treated his warning chits
when he was in the Military Intelligence, he had longed for an
opportunity to show them in the wrong.
“There are one or two things,” he pointed out, “which we’ve still
got to account for. There’s that cipher message we found in
Brotherhood’s pocket. There’s the list we found on the back of it;
only four words, but full of suggestion. And there’s the golf ball we
found on the embankment—there we have the actual clue in our
pockets.”
“A precious poor sort of clue,” objected Gordon. “Leave that ball
lying about, and every third man in the club will be prepared to
adopt it as his long-lost property.”
Carmichael seemed destined to overwhelm them with surprises. At
this point he suddenly remarked, “You know, that’s not all the clues
we’ve got. There’s one that dropped out of poor Brotherhood’s
pocket as the caddies were carrying off the body to the tool-house.
At least, the caddies said so: my private impression is that the young
ruffians searched the pockets on their own——”
“Why on earth should they do that?” asked Reeves.
“Well, you know what caddies are—it’s a demoralizing profession.
Not that I believe much in boys going to school myself, but it does
keep them out of mischief. Those two boys, I think, went through
the pockets on their own.”
“They left four bob there,” suggested Gordon.
“Yes, boys are frightened of stealing money; they connect it with
going to prison. But they don’t mind stealing other things; I think
they could tell you why the pouch was empty, and why there was
only one cigarette left in the case—they were too clever to clear
both completely. After all, you know, it isn’t very long since people
gave up ‘wrecking’ in Cornwall. I remember a very interesting
conversation I had with a man down there in the Lugger Inn at
Fowey——”
“You were going to tell us something about a clue,” said Gordon
gently.
“Ah yes: one of them came up to me afterwards—it was the one
they call Ginger. I wonder why are boys with red hair called Ginger?
Ginger is of a greenish-yellow tinge, if you come to think of it.
Where was I? Yes, he came up to me with a photograph, and told
me that it had fallen out of one of the pockets as they carried the
body. That is almost impossible, you know, for a man always carries
photographs in his breast pocket, and a thing can’t fall out of a
man’s breast pocket unless you turn him upside down and shake
him. Ginger was obviously scared at the thought that he might be
concealing a clue—he referred to it as a ‘clue’ himself—and did not
care to give it to the police; so he handed it over to me.”
“And you?”
“I have it here in my pocket—the breast pocket, observe. To tell
the truth, I am a little absent-minded, and it was only during the
inquest that I remembered the photograph; it seemed to me too late
then to mention anything about it in public.”
“Carmichael,” said Gordon very seriously, “if you don’t produce
that photograph it will, I gather, be necessary to turn you upside
down and shake you.”
“Of course, of course.” Carmichael fumbled in his pocket, and from
a voluminous pocket-book produced with great deliberation the
object of their impatience. It represented the head and shoulders of
a young woman: the features were refined, and might in real life
have been beautiful. The camera cannot lie, but the camera of the
local “artist” generally finds it difficult to tell nothing but the truth:
and this was the work of a Mr. Campbell, whose studio was no
further off than Binver. Meanwhile the photograph was not in its first
youth; and the style of coiffure represented suggested (with what
could be seen of the dress) a period dating some ten years back. It
was not signed or initialled anywhere.
“Well,” said Reeves, when the trove had been handed round, “that
doesn’t prove that we’re much further on. But it looks as if we had
come across a phase of Brotherhood’s life that wasn’t alluded to at
the inquest.”
Gordon shuddered. “Just think if one went off the hooks suddenly,
and people came round and tried to dig up one’s past from the old
photographs and keepsakes one had hidden away in drawers! One
should destroy everything—certainly one should destroy everything.”
But Reeves was no sentimentalist; he was a sleuth-hound with
nose down on the trail. “Let’s see,” he reflected, “I can’t remember
at the moment what the present Binver photographer is called.”
“You will find it,” suggested Carmichael, “on that group over your
head.” Reeves had it down in a minute.
“Yes, that’s right: Campbell,” he said. “Now, if one of us goes off in
Binver and says he’s found this photograph, and would Mr. Campbell
be kind enough to let us know the address it was originally sent to,
so that we can restore it, that ought to do the trick. Photographers
are full of professional etiquette, but I don’t see that we could go
wrong here.”
“I don’t mind going,” said Marryatt; “as a matter of fact, I’ve got
to ride in to see a man on business.”
“Heaven defend me,” said Reeves, “from having business with
anybody at Binver!”
“You will, though, with this man, some day.”
“Why, who is it?”
“The undertaker,” said Marryatt.
“Undertakers,” said Carmichael, “have been very much maligned in
literature. They are always represented as either cynical or morbid in
the exercise of their profession. As a matter of fact, I am told that
no class of men is more considerate or more tactful.”
“I’ll be back in three-quarters of an hour,” said Marryatt, buttoning
the photograph away. “Carmichael, I hope you won’t produce any
more clues while I’m away.”
When Marryatt had gone, and Carmichael had sauntered off to the
billiard-room, Reeves sat on there fidgeting and discussing the
possible significance of the latest find.
“It’s odd,” he said, “how one can live for years in the artificial life
of a club like this and not know one’s neighbours in the least. We’re
a world to ourselves, and an outside face like that conveys nothing
to us; probably the name won’t either. What beats me at present
about the photograph is this—how long ago would you say that
photograph was taken?”
“I’m not an authority on ladies’ fashions, I’m afraid, but surely it’s
pre-war.”
“Exactly. Now, Brotherhood only came here just at the end of the
war, at least, he only joined the Club then; I asked the Secretary
about it. And ‘Davenant’ joined even later, only a year or two ago.
When a man takes a house here, one assumes that he’s only come
here for the golf. But it looks as if Brotherhood, or else his phantom
self, Davenant, knew the Binver world already—at least well enough
to possess photographs of its belles.”
“Not necessarily,” Gordon pointed out. “She may have had no later
portrait to give him than that one, even if she gave it him only a
year or two ago.”
“That’s true. And yet women generally keep their portraits pretty
well up-to-date. Here’s another point—from the caddie’s account, it
seems that this portrait must have been loose in the pocket; but he
can’t always have carried it like that. . . . Good Lord, what a fool I
am! What size was the empty frame in Davenant’s cottage?”
“Oh, just that size. It’s a common size, of course, but I suppose
most likely it was that portrait which ‘Davenant’ caught up in a hurry
before he left his house; and crammed it into his pocket anyhow.
Assuming, of course, that Carmichael’s right.”
“Yes, that makes the thing as clear as daylight, so far. I hope
Marryatt makes good time. Look how slow we’ve been on the
murderer’s tracks; we’ve given him two full days already.”
“By the way,” said Gordon, “I’ve just remembered—Thursday’s
early closing day at Binver.”
Chapter IX.
The Animated Picture
“Well,” said Reeves impatiently, as Marryatt came, rather late, into
the dining-room, “did you find out?”
“Yes, I went round to Campbell’s——”
“But it’s early closing day.”
“Yes, only . . . only Campbell was open, for some reason. He made
no difficulty about identifying the portrait or about giving me the
address. When he told me the name and address I remembered
quite a lot about her.”
“Who is she, then?”
“Her name is Miss Rendall-Smith. Her father, old Canon Rendall-
Smith, was Rector of Binver for a long time, a learned old man, I
believe, but rather a bore. He died some years before the war—I
should think it would be about 1910, and left her very badly off; she
left the neighbourhood then—that was just before I came. Some
time during the early part of the war she came back, apparently in
much better circumstances, for she took that old brick house with
the white window-frames that stands next the Church and looks as if
it was the Rectory but isn’t. She lives there still; she did a good deal
of public work during the war, subscriptions and things, but I never
actually came across her. She’s a fine-looking woman still, Campbell
told me—by the way, there was no reticence about Campbell. He
showed me a more recent portrait of her which he was very proud
of, and told me he thought it was a pity a lady like that didn’t marry.
Altogether, we seem to have struck a public character, and a very
good woman, by all that’s said of her.”
“H’m,” said Reeves, “and Brotherhood kept a portrait of her—or
rather, Brotherhood in his capacity as Davenant kept a portrait of
her, and took it away with him when he meant to leave these parts
for a bit. It seems to me she ought to be able to tell us something
about him.”
“Good Lord!” said Marryatt, “you aren’t going to introduce yourself
to her as the Daily Mail reporter? Hang it all, it’s one thing to take in
Mrs. Bramston——”
“And another thing to take in Miss Rendall-Smith, because she’s a
lady? I’m afraid that seems to me mere sentimentalism.”
“What I meant was, if you present yourself to Miss Rendall-Smith
as a reporter, she’ll turn you out of the house.”
“Ye-es. There’s something in that. But then, I wouldn’t say I’d
come from the Daily Mail; I’d say I’d come from the County Herald,
and that I was commissioned to do a write-up of Brotherhood as a
prominent local personage.”
“But how,” objected Carmichael, “would you explain the fact that
you were coming to her? Remember, it isn’t certain that she knew
Brotherhood at all, that is, in his own person. You see it was not to
Brotherhood but to Davenant that she gave the photograph. And
natural enough—if I had been in that position, I would sooner have
gone courting as Davenant than as Brotherhood.”
“I could simply pretend I was coming to her as to one of the
oldest residents.”
“Tactful Openings, Number One,” suggested Gordon, crumbling his
bread. “No, Reeves, it won’t do. I’d like to see you dressed up as a
reporter again, because I think there’s something very fetching
about it. But I don’t believe that even in that disguise you will win
the heart of a mature female. You’ll have to think out some other
dodge.”
“I suppose you’d like me to burgle her house while she’s out,” said
Reeves, with unnecessary irritation.
“But you don’t want to see her house,” objected the literal-minded
Gordon, “you want to see her.”
“Very well, then,” said Reeves, “I shall go and tell her the truth. At
least, I shall tell her that we’re investigating Brotherhood’s murder,
and that this portrait of her was found on the body. I shall urge her
to tell me if she knows of any enemies that Brotherhood had, any
secrets which might throw light upon his end.”
“That’s far the best principle,” agreed Gordon. “Always tell the
truth, and people will never believe you.”
“Why shouldn’t she believe me?”
“No reason in the world; only as a matter of fact she won’t. It’s
rather a satire on humanity, but I’ve always found that the safest
way to conceal a fact is to state it quite baldly. Then people always
think you’re pulling their legs, or being sarcastic, and the secret is
preserved.”
“You’re a sceptical old Sadducee. I don’t believe a woman like this
would have such a low view of humanity.”
“Like what?”
“Like the portrait.”
“Are you falling in love with her already? Marryatt, it seems to me,
between funerals and marriages, you’re going to be a busy man.”
“Don’t be a fool,” said Reeves. “I don’t know anything about
women, except that some of them are so ugly I recognize them
when I meet them in the street. This clearly isn’t one of them. But I
have trained myself to judge faces a bit, and this looks to me like
the face of a woman who’s straight herself and expects others to be
straight with her.”
“Let’s have another look,” urged Gordon. Marryatt produced the
photograph, and it was passed round once more. “I dare say you’re
right,” admitted Gordon. “The curious thing to me is that a good-
looking woman like that who’s not actually a beauty—not classic
features, I mean—should look so deadly serious when she’s having
her photograph taken. I should have thought even Mr. Campbell
would have had the sense to make a little photographer’s joke; or at
least tell her to moisten her lips.”
“You’re right,” said Carmichael. “The look is a very serious one;
but I believe a portrait is all the better for that—as a portrait, I
mean. Have you ever thought what an advantage the historians of
the future will have over us? Think how late portraiture itself comes
into history; I think I’m right in saying that a thumb-nail sketch of
Edward II in the margin of an old chronicle is the earliest portrait
preserved to us in English history. And when portrait-painting did
come in, how soon the art was corrupted! You can see that Holbein
was telling the truth; but by the time you get to Vandyck it’s all court
flattery. Whereas the historians of the future will be able to see what
we really were like.”
“It looks to me,” said Reeves, “a sad face—the face of a woman
who’s had a good deal of trouble. I feel somehow that the serious
pose of the mouth was natural to her.”
“I don’t think that’s the ordinary impression you’d get from her
face,” put in Marryatt.
“How on earth do you know?” asked Reeves, staring.
“Well, you see, Campbell showed me this later photograph of her,
and it wasn’t at all like that.”
“Well,” suggested Gordon, “it’s not much good discussing the
portrait if Reeves is going to see the lovely original to-morrow. I
want to know what’s wrong with a game of bridge?”
“Good idea,” said Marryatt, “it’ll take our minds off the murder. You
know, I think you fellows are getting rather fanciful about the whole
thing.”
“All right,” said Reeves, “my room, though, not downstairs. What’s
the good of having one’s own fireplace if one can’t light a fire in
October?”
Reeves’ room deserves, perhaps, a fuller description than it has
hitherto been given. It had been the best bedroom of the old Dower-
house, and for some reason had been spared when several smaller
rooms had been divided up, at the time of the club’s installation. It
was, consequently, a quite unspoiled piece of early Tudor
architecture; there were latticed windows with deep recesses; dark,
irregular beams supported the white-plastered ceiling; the walls
were oak-panelled; the fireplace open and of genuine old brick.
When the fire, reluctant after long desuetude, had been induced to
crackle, and threw flickering reflections where the shade of the
electric light gave subdued half tones, there was an air of comfort
which seemed to dispel all thought of detective problems, of
murderers stalking the world unpunished, of the open grave that
waited in Paston Oatvile churchyard.
Gordon put down the photograph on a jutting cornice that went
round the panelling. “There, Reeves,” he said, “you shall sit opposite
the lady, and derive inspiration from her. I cannot ask you to hope
that she will smile upon your efforts, but it ought to be an
encouragement.”
They were soon immersed in that reverential silence and
concentration which the game fosters: and if Miss Rendall-Smith’s
portrait did not receive much of their attention, it is probable that
the lady herself, had she been present, would have been treated
with little more ceremony. Reeves, however, was bad at taking his
mind off a subject, and when, as dummy, he was given a short
interval of unrepose, his eyes strayed to the photograph anew. Was
this the face, perhaps, that had lured Brotherhood to his strange
doom? Was she even an accomplice, burdened now with the
participation of a guilty secret? Or was she the sufferer by the crime;
and did she wait vainly for news of Davenant, little knowing that it
was Davenant who lay waiting for burial at Paston Whitchurch? Poor
woman, it seemed likely in any case that she would have much to
bear—was it decent to inflict on her a detective interview and a
series of importunate questions? He crushed down the insurgent
weakness: there was no other way for it, she must be confronted
with the facts. The face looked even more beautiful as you saw it in
the firelight, shaded from the glare of the lamp. He strolled over to
look at it again just as the last trump was led.
“Good God!”
The others turned, in all the irritation of an interrupted train of
thought, to find him staring at the photograph as if in horror. Then
he stepped quickly across to the lamp, and turned it sideways so as
to throw the light full on the wall. And then they too turned a little
pale. The photograph had smiled.
There was, to be sure, only the faintest flicker of a smile on the
lips; you could not give any formula of it or trace the lines of it. And
yet it was the simultaneous impression of these four men that the
whole character, the whole impression of the face before them had
changed while they had played three hands of bridge. The whole
face was indefinably more human and more beautiful; but you could
not say why.
“Oh, for God’s sake let’s give the beastly thing up!” cried Marryatt.
“It doesn’t do to meddle with these things; one doesn’t know what
one’s up against. Reeves, I know it hurts your vanity to leave an
inquiry half-finished, but I’m sure it’s a mistake to go on.
Brotherhood, you know—he wasn’t quite canny; I always thought
there was something uncanny about him. Do let’s give it up.”
“The thing isn’t possible,” said Reeves slowly. “It’s the difference of
the light, I think; the light wasn’t so strong downstairs. It’s funny
how one can imagine these things.”
“I was never in a haunted house myself,” said Carmichael, “but I
remember very well the College used to own land at Luttercombe,
where the De Mumfords lived, don’t you know, and our old Bursar
always insisted that he heard screams in the night when he slept
there. I don’t believe in these things myself, though; fancy can play
such extraordinary tricks.”
“But look here, we all noticed the difference,” objected Marryatt.
“Well, there is such a thing as collective hallucination. Somebody
tells us the face looks grave, and our imagination reads gravity into
it; and then somebody says it’s changed, and we can’t see the
gravity there any longer.”
“That’s it,” said Reeves, who was pouring himself out a stiff
whisky-and-soda. “It’s collective hallucination. Must be.”
It was characteristic of Gordon that, without expressing any
opinion, he had been the only one of the four who quite liked to go
up and touch the photograph. He held it now close under the light,
and looked at it from different angles.
“I’m hanged if it doesn’t look different,” he said at last.
“Sympathetic ink? No, that’s nonsense. But it’s a dashed rum thing,
photography: I wonder if the heat of the room can have brought out
some bit of shadow on the face that wasn’t visible before?”
“A damp spot possibly,” said Reeves, “which has faded out. It was
rather close to the fire. Oh, what’s the good of worrying? Let’s all go
to bed. I’m going to lock the thing up in the drawer here; and we
can have another look at it in the morning. We’re all over-excited.”
“That’s it,” said Carmichael, opening the door, “I remember once in
Eastern Roumelia——” but, as he managed to fall down the step into
the passage, the reminiscence was fortunately lost.
Chapter X.
In which a Book is more
communicative than a Lady
Morning, as might have been expected, brought division of
counsel. Mordaunt Reeves could now find no difference between the
photograph as he saw it at the moment and the photograph as he
had seen it at dinner the previous night. Carmichael agreed with
him, though he still talked a good deal about collective
hallucinations. Gordon could not make up his mind one way or the
other; only Marryatt was certain that there had been a change.
Anyhow, change or no change, Reeves put the once dreaded object
in his pocket, and set out after breakfast in Gordon’s side-car.
Gordon volunteered to drive him over, though firmly announcing that
he would not go inside Miss Rendall-Smith’s house; Carmichael
sought to deter them by wise saws and modern instances, and they
left him multa volentem dicere at the clubhouse door.
It must be confessed that Reeves felt a certain misgiving as he
waited in Miss Rendall-Smith’s drawing-room. Rooms do echo
personalities, and this drawing-room spoke of a forceful one; the
furnishing was strategically perfect, the flowers were arranged
purposefully, the books were books that had been collected, not
simply amassed. The room smelt, Reeves said afterwards, of not
having been smoked in. Nor did the lady of the house belie this first
impression. Her beauty was still undeniable, but it was something
more than beauty which disarmed you. You felt at once that she was
kind and that she was competent, but you felt that if a choice had to
be made she would be competent rather than kind. She might have
been the matron of a big hospital, instead of an unoccupied
householder in a small country town.
“Good-morning, Mr. Reeves,” she said, “it’s very kind of you to
come and see me. I don’t think we ever met, did we? I know the
Secretary, of course, and several of the club members, but we’re
rather out of the golfing world down here. But my maid says you
want to see me on urgent business—please tell me if I can be of any
use.”
Mordaunt Reeves, with an unaccountable feeling of being the
detected rather than the detective, produced the photograph from
his pocket, and asked melodramatically, “Excuse me, Miss Rendall-
Smith, but do you recognize this photograph?”
There was just the fraction of a pause, just the suspicion of a
gasp. Then she said, “Of course I do! I don’t know whether my
looking-glass would, of course . . . but a thing like this can’t be done
behind one’s back, can it? I think it was taken when I was here
before, while my father was still alive. What did you want to know
about it?”
“I’m afraid it must seem very impertinent of me to be asking
questions about it, but the thing is of importance. I think I’d better
tell you the whole situation. You’ll have heard, of course, this sad
news about poor old Brotherhood, at Paston Whitchurch?”
“I read about it, of course, in the paper.”
“Well, one or two of his friends, that is, of people who knew him
down at the club, aren’t quite satisfied with the line the police have
taken about it. They think—we think they swallowed the idea of
suicide too easily, without examining all the facts; and—well, the
thing we can’t feel certain of is that there hasn’t been foul play.”
“Foul play? But why should anybody . . .”
“Oh, we’ve no suspicion of any motive. We thought, perhaps, that
was where you might help us. It was I and some friends of mine
who actually found the body, you know, and there were certain
indications which suggested to us that Brotherhood had . . . had
been murdered. There was the position of his hat, for example—still,
we needn’t go into all that. We did entertain the suspicion very
strongly, only the clues we had at our disposal weren’t sufficient to
let us follow up our suspicions, if you see what I mean. The only one
which we felt might help us to get any further was this photograph.
By a mere accident, for which I’m not responsible, it didn’t get into
the hands of the police.”
“The police know nothing about it?”
“We have no reason to think they do. But it was found in
Brotherhood’s pocket—at least, it was found in circumstances which
made it quite clear that it had fallen out of his pocket, when the . . .
when his body was being moved.”
Miss Rendall-Smith took another look at the portrait, which still lay
in her hands. “Then,” she said, “what exactly do you want me to do
about it?”
“Well, you must understand, of course, that we are very reluctant
to open up any subject which may be painful to you. But at the
same time, since it seemed likely that you had some knowledge of
Brotherhood’s history and circumstances which the world at large
doesn’t share, we thought perhaps you would tell us whether you
can form any guess yourself as to the circumstances of his death. To
put it in the concrete, do you know of any one who would have a
motive for wishing ill to Brotherhood, or who might be likely to take
his life?”
“I see. You want me to help justice. But you want me to help you,
not the police.”
“We are helping the police ourselves. Only the police are not
always very—what shall I say?—the police don’t always encourage
help from outside; there is a good deal of red tape about their
methods. I was in the Military Intelligence myself during the war,
and had some opportunity of seeing the unfortunate effects of
rivalry and jealousy between the various departments. We have not
approached the police; we thought it best to work on our own until
we could present them with a fait accompli. That is why we have not
even mentioned to the police the existence of this photograph which
we found on the body.”
“Mr. Reeves——”
A woman can use a surname as a bludgeon. That title of respect,
“Mr. So-and-So,” which expresses our relations to the outside world,
has often, indeed, had an ominous ring for us. Deans used it when
they were protesting at our neglect of chapels; proctors, when they
urged the immodesty of going out to dinner without a cap and
gown. But nobody can use it with the same annihilating effect as a
woman scorned. “Mister”—you are a man, I a defenceless woman.
“Mister”—you have the title of a gentleman, although you are
behaving like a cad. “Mister”—you see, I treat you with all possible
politeness, although you have not deserved any such respect from
me. There is irony in the word “Mister”; it makes one long for a title.
“Mr. Reeves, I am sorry to say that you are not telling me the
truth.”
Reeves sat stunned. It was too bad, that he should have thrown
away disguises only to be called a liar. It was too bad that Gordon
should have been right when he said “Nothing deceives like the
truth.” He sat there humbled, waiting for more.
“Of course, I don’t see at all why you and your friends see fit to
treat me in this way. The only thing that seems quite clear to me is
that it is unfair to expect me to be frank with you when you are not
being frank with me. I am sorry to say that I cannot help you.”
“May I say something? I am afraid you feel that you are being left
in the dark because I am not telling you everything, all the
suspicions we have formed as well as the facts which have come to
our notice. I can quite understand that, if that is what you mean,
but——”
“I mean nothing of the kind. I mean that the statements which
you have made to me are, to my certain knowledge, untrue.”
Reeves gave a rather ghastly smile. “Would you mind telling me
exactly which statement of mine it is that you call in question?”
“Really, Mr. Reeves, you seem to expect a great deal of me. You
come to me, a complete stranger, asking for private information. You
ask for it on the ground that you are conducting a private
investigation, and you tell me your story. I do not know whether
there is a word of truth in your story. I only know that one detail in it
is demonstrably false. You now expect me to tell you which that
detail is, so that you can correct the only part of your story which I
know to be false; is that reasonable? Come now, Mr. Reeves, tell me
the whole story again, exactly as it happened, and I will see if I can
help you.”
“I’m really very sorry, but I have already told you the truth to the
best of my ability. I am afraid I could not alter my ‘story,’ as you call
it, without falsification.”
“Well, I am afraid we seem to be at cross purposes. Perhaps it
would be best if you conducted your researches independently, since
we cannot agree?”
There was no mistaking the hint of the front door about this last
suggestion. Reeves rose with what dignity he could muster, and took
his leave. It must be regretfully admitted that Gordon received the
account he gave of his experiences with tempestuous laughter; and
Reeves was glad of that mantle of inaudibility which cuts off the
motor-cyclist from his side-car when it is in motion.
Carmichael, who met them at the door of the club, was more
sympathetic. In his view, Miss Rendall-Smith had given the
photograph to Davenant, not realizing his identity with Brotherhood,
and had thought it impossible that Davenant should have allowed so
precious a document to pass out of his possession. But he was in
high spirits, having made, he said, a little discovery of his own.
“You know you told me about your efforts to identify the book
from which the cipher was taken—the cipher on the postcard? Well,
you went the right way to work, but not, if you will excuse my
saying so, taking all the possibilities into account. Supposing that
Brotherhood had the actual book with him in the carriage when he
left London, you have to remember that he changed at Paston
Oatvile. Now, I asked myself, what if, from some carelessness or
want of interest, he should have left the book in that first-class
railway carriage? That train, you see, stops for good at Paston
Oatvile, and is cleaned out there the same night.”
“Of course. I was a fool not to think of that.”
“Well, I went off to the station while you were away, and repeated
your own trick.”
“Selecting an imaginary book of your own, I suppose?”
“No; it is always better to put one story about the country-side
rather than two. I said that a friend of mine had lost a copy of The
Sorrows of Satan, and was anxious to recover it. The porter referred
me to another porter, the other porter, to be accurate, and he
informed me that he had found, in that train, a copy of a book called
Immorality.”
“But there isn’t a book called that.”
“I know. Many might be, but none are. However, I saw what was
up. The porter, by a train of thought which I find myself unable to
follow, had taken the book home to his wife: and it was no surprise
to me when she produced a copy of Momerie’s Immortality. It had
been a disappointment to her, it seemed, and she made no difficulty
about parting with it.”
“But have you any reason for thinking it’s the book we’re looking
for?”
“Yes. There are a lot of lines down the side, queries and shriek-
marks occasionally, which convince me that the thing was in
Brotherhood’s hands. Only, of course, we want your copy of the
cipher to read it from.”
“Excellent man. Let’s come up at once. I ought to be able to lay
my hands on it, though I can never be certain. I play a perpetual
game with the maid who does my rooms; she always seems to think
that documents are more easy to deal with if they’re piled up in a
great heap, instead of lying scattered about. Every morning I
disarrange them, and the next morning, as sure as fate, they are
piled up again.” They had reached Reeves’ room by now. “Let’s see;
that’s the Income Tax, and that’s my aunt, and that’s that man . . .
Ha! what’s this? No . . . No . . . this can’t be it . . . well, I’m dashed!
The thing seems to have gone.”
“You’re sure you didn’t keep it in your pocket?”
“I don’t think so . . . No, it’s not there. Look here, I’ll go through
them again . . . You know, it’s a very rum thing, because I took
another look at that cipher only last night.”
“And now it’s gone. Anything else missing?”
“Not that I can see. Oh, I say, this is the limit! First of all I got the
cipher without the key, and then I get the key without the cipher.”
“How like life,” suggested Gordon.
“What’s this? ‘Hold it and thoughts with the . . .’ oh, splendid! Look
here, I worked the cipher out all wrong in this beastly Formation of
Character book. But when I did that, I turned down all the pages I
wanted, and underlined the significant words. So old Watson will
come in useful after all. Hang on one moment—yes, here it is. Now,
ready? The word ‘hold’ is the fifth word on the seventh line of page
8. What’s that in Momerie?”
“That’s ‘you.’ It sounds all right for the beginning of a message.”
And so they worked it out, this time more fruitfully. When the
process was complete, Carmichael had a half-sheet in front of him
on which the words appeared, “You will perish if you go back upon
your faith.”
“Yes,” said Gordon meditatively. “That’s too good to be mere
coincidence. That was the message—was it a threat or a warning?—
which was sent to Brotherhood, and old Brotherhood worked it out,
presumably, in his Momerie, but wasn’t in time to profit by it. The
only thing is, now we’ve got it, it doesn’t seem to get us much
further.”
“It means, I suppose,” said Carmichael, “that Brotherhood had
promised to do something, and was trying to back out of it.”
“Possibly that,” said Reeves.
“Why possibly? What else could it mean?”
“Oh, I don’t know . . . No, of course; that’s it. But, as Gordon
says, it doesn’t seem to get us much further.”
“Not in itself,” agreed Carmichael. “But meanwhile it has
incidentally provided us with an extra clue.”
“What’s that?” asked Gordon.
“I’ll tell you some other time. I say, it’s time for luncheon. Let’s go
down.”
And it was not till they were downstairs that he explained his
meaning. “The other clue is the disappearance of the cipher. There’s
more in that than meets the eye, unless I’m mistaken.”
Chapter XI.
A Funeral and a Vigil
“I don’t quite see what you mean,” said Reeves as they sat down
to luncheon.
“Never mind,” said Carmichael, “we shall see if I’m right or not.
Meanwhile, there’s the funeral this afternoon, and it would hardly be
decent to take any action till after that, would it? Hullo, Marryatt,
what time does the thing start?”
“Half-past two. A good many of the members mean to turn out,
and one wanted them to get away in time for an afternoon round. I
must say, I think the club’s done handsomely by poor Brotherhood,
considering how few of us really knew him. The Committee has sent
a very fine wreath.”
“And that’s the only one, I should think,” said Gordon.
“Oddly enough, it isn’t. There’s one other, a peculiarly expensive-
looking thing, which came down from London. There’s no name on
it, no inscription of any kind, in fact.”
“H’m!” said Reeves; “that’s curious.”
“My dear Reeves,” expostulated Gordon, “I’m not going to have
you examining the wreaths on the coffin with your lens and forceps.
There are limits of decency.”
“Well, I won’t worry about it anyhow till Carmichael has—Hullo! hit
him on the back, Gordon.” For Carmichael had been overtaken by
one of those choking fits which the best-behaved of us are liable to.
“It’s a curious thing,” he gasped on recovering, “that one always
used to say, when one was small, that one’s drink had ‘gone the
wrong way.’ Nothing at all to do with the wind-pipe, I believe.”
The funeral was, it must be confessed, a riot of irony. The
members who attended had decided that it would look bad to take
their clubs with them to the churchyard, but their costumes were
plainly a compromise between respect for the dead and a
determination to get on with business as soon as it was over. None
of them had any tears to shed. The village of Paston Oatvile turned
out to a child in sheer morbidity, to see “ ’im as fell down off of the
railway put away.” The sonorous assurances of the burial service had
to be read out in full earshot of the village green on which, little
more than a week ago, Brotherhood had laboriously disproved the
doctrine of personal immortality. To these same solemn cadences the
great lords of Oatvile, ever since they abandoned the Old Faith
under William III, had been laid to rest within these same walls—
Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone
—and yet there had been a sort of feudal dignity about their manner
of departing. But this unknown sojourner of a day, who had known
hardly a soul in the parish, who had loved nothing of all that
country-side except eighteen little holes in the ground, what
mourning could there be for him—the body so mangled, the soul
whose existence he had denied?
One understood why people wanted to be cremated. While we
keep all our seriousness for our frivolities, what wonder that men
feel a sense of disproportion about the traditional solemnities of
interment? With the villagers, indeed, it was different—you might
almost say that the hour of their funerals was the hour they lived for.
It made them one with the earth they had tilled and furrowed; it
gave them, at last, a permanent tenure among their own
immemorial fields. “Man that is born of woman is full of sorrow and
hath but a short time”—they had learned, unconsciously, to measure
their lives by the secular oaks in the great park, by the weather-
beaten antiquity of the village church itself. But this strange race of
light-hearted invaders, to whom each spot of ground was no more
than a good lie or a bad one, what part had they in the communal
life of these retired valleys? It meant nothing to them.
We have been following the service with Gordon’s eyes; Reeves, it
is probable, was lost in speculation as to the donor of the mysterious
wreath, and Carmichael was doubtless reminded of a thousand
things. But it was over at last, and Reeves, eager to get back to
business, implored Carmichael to explain his hints about the
disappearance of the cipher. “Wait till we get back to your room,”
was the only answer. And, when the desired haven was reached,
“Have another look among those papers, and make certain you
didn’t pass it over by mistake.”
“Good Lord,” said Reeves suddenly, “here it is! But I swear it
wasn’t when I looked before. I say, Carmichael, have you been
playing the funny ass with the thing?”
“No,” said Carmichael, “I haven’t.”
“Who has, then?”
“That’s the point. I should be glad if I were in a position to
enlighten you. You see, I know the maid was blameless as regards
that piece of paper. She only does the rooms early in the morning;
now, I came in after breakfast, when you’d gone off to Binver, to
have another look at the cipher and see if I could make anything of
it by inspection. And it was still there.”
“And you’re sure you didn’t take it away with you?”
“Positive. Now, observe this: that document must have been taken
away while you and Gordon were both at Binver, while I was over at
the station.”
“But how did it get back there?”
“It was put back there. And it was put back there, not during
luncheon, for I had another look afterwards, but while we were
down at the funeral. It follows that none of our party this afternoon
has been meddling with your papers—I’m glad to think, for example,
that the Secretary escapes suspicion.”
“But do you seriously mean to say there’s somebody in this house
who comes into my room and disturbs my papers for his own ends?”
“Don’t be so shocked about it. You’ve been spending the last three
days spying on other people; is it impossible that other people
should spy on you? Look here, that paper is in your room at half-
past ten; it is no longer there at half-past twelve; it is back again at
four o’clock. Do you mean to tell me that somebody acquainted with
your habits hasn’t been meddling with your papers?”
“What made you suspect it?”
“That’s the odd thing. Did you ever notice how often a false
calculation puts you on the track of a true one? Puzzling over that
odd experience we had last night about the photograph, I found
myself wondering whether conceivably some one could have come in
and altered it while you were out. Well, upon reflection, that was
impossible, because we were in the room the whole time, all four of
us. But meanwhile, it did occur to me that perhaps our proceedings
were being rather too public. Look how full of comparative strangers
this dormy-house is; any one of those may be Brotherhood’s
murderer, for all we know, or at least an accomplice. And then, when
you found the cipher gone, it occurred to me at once, ‘I was right;
there is somebody on the spot who is following our movements!’
That was why I had that choking-fit at luncheon—you were just
going to talk about the disappearance of the cipher in a crowded
dining-room; and it seemed to me imprudent.”
“But, look here, what’s the man’s game? Why take the thing away
and then put it back again?”
“My dear Reeves, you shouldn’t go to funerals, it has a depressing
effect on your intelligence. The cipher was taken away this morning,
when it might have been of some use to you, I suspect, by
somebody who had seen me looking at it and so realized that it was
important. Then, by a mere accident, it proved that you did not need
the paper after all, and had read the message without it. I saw what
would happen—if we left your room empty, the cipher, now useless,
would be put back. And that is exactly what happened. The
hypothesis has become a certainty.”
“Good Lord,” said Reeves, walking up and down the room. “What
on earth are we to do about it?”
“Keep quiet about our movements for one thing. I shouldn’t even
discuss them with Marryatt more than you can help: he’s a little
slow-witted, you see, and a little fond of talking, so anything you say
to him may get round. Gordon is different—he’s all right. The next
point is clear. We must set a trap of some kind, and catch our man
red-handed.”
“You mean the murderer?”
“Not necessarily the murderer. The man who is watching us; it
may not be the murderer at all.”
“But how do you propose to catch him?”
“I propose that two of us—preferably you and Gordon, because I
am fond of my sleep—should sit up to-night and watch outside the
door. Meantime, we have to excite the curiosity of your visitor so
powerfully that he will want to come out and investigate your room.
I propose that we should put up a notice (with the Secretary’s leave,
of course) saying that you have one or two of Brotherhood’s books
and things which you are prepared to give away as souvenirs to
anybody who cared for him; please apply to your rooms to-morrow.
And now let’s go down and have some tea.”
“But I haven’t got any of Brotherhood’s things,” objected Reeves
as they went downstairs.
“Exactly. And nobody cared a brass farthing for Brotherhood. But
meanwhile, there is every chance that this anonymous gentleman
will be interested to see what you have got, and will pay a nocturnal
visit to your room. If you see anybody pass, you can fall on him and
throttle him. If nobody passes, at about one o’clock I should go to
bed if I were you. It’s a pity to forgo one’s sleep.”
“Well, we’d better do the thing thoroughly. I’ll go out this evening
and come in with a bag, so as to look as if I’d been over and got
some things from Brotherhood’s house.”
“That’s a good idea. One moment, I must go over to young van
Beuren and get some chewing-gum.”
“Carmichael,” said Reeves when he got back, “you’ve been
surprising us a good deal lately, but one thing I should never have
guessed about you—I should never have imagined that you
chewed.”
“I don’t,” said Carmichael, and would answer no more questions
on the subject. Nor had Reeves any opportunity to press the point,
for Marryatt came in soon afterwards, and sat down at their table.
“Is it true?” asked Carmichael, “that Brotherhood is the first member
of the club to be buried here?”
“He is. There was Parry, of course, who died here, but he was
buried in London. It must be strange for these Oatviles, who have
had all the expensive funerals to themselves for the last two
hundred years, to make room for an old fellow like that.”
“Two hundred? Why not three hundred?” asked Reeves.
“Well, the Oatviles were Catholics, you know, up to James II’s
time. People say that the room we use as the billiard-room now used
to be the chapel at one time. And the Oatviles don’t seem to have
been buried here till the time of Queen Anne.”
“Really, Marryatt?” said Carmichael. “That is most interesting.
They must have died abroad, I fancy, for of course Protestant burial
was the only kind legal in England. Did it ever occur to you how little
early Renaissance architecture you find in English villages? It’s an
odd testimony, I think, to the vitality of Catholicism. Puritanism must
have had something to do with it, of course, but considering what an
itch for architecture the Renaissance brought with it, you would
expect more traces of it, if the Laudian religion had ever really taken
hold.”
“I think, to judge by the parish register, the Oatviles must have
been very staunch recusants, and a great trouble to my
predecessors. They were important people, too, in the
neighbourhood, even before the great house was built, while they
lived here at the Dower-house.”
Gordon was not acquainted with the evening’s programme till after
dinner; he accepted his part in it with a wry face; but with
pleasurable tremors of excitement. It would be the first time, he
said, his revolver would have been loaded since he shot off his last
cartridges in November, 1918. There was a small, unoccupied room
whose door faced that of Reeves; this door habitually stood ajar, and
there was not much likelihood that any unauthorized wanderer
would trespass there. Gordon and Reeves were to make their way
there quietly at twelve o’clock, and sit there in the dark till one. They
pleaded hard to be allowed to play bezique with an electric torch,
but Carmichael was firm. Even whispering was not to be carried on
except in case of necessity, and to crown their privations, they were
warned not to smoke. Until twelve they sat playing bridge in Reeves’
room with Marryatt: then the company dispersed, although
Carmichael insisted on being left behind for a little, while Reeves and
Gordon went off and pretended to undress, “to make sure,” he said,
“that our visitor doesn’t arrive too early.”
It is extraordinary what a lot you can hear, even in a country
house, when you sit for an hour in the dark on the alert. Expresses
whistled through Paston Oatvile; and one goods train only passed its
signals after several stoppages, each of which meant a repetition of
the musical clink-clink-clink which goods trucks make as they hit one
another. A dog somewhere at the back had a fit of loneliness, and
howled; cats told their nightly tale of love and hate. Coals fell out of
distant grates; the woodwork creaked uncannily at intervals. But at
no moment was there a step in the passage: nor was any hand laid
on the door of the room opposite. They both felt cramped and
overwatched when one o’clock sounded from the belfry of the old
stables, and they were free to creep back to their beds.
“I say,” whispered Reeves, “why not come into my room and have
a whisky-and-soda before we turn in?”
“Oh,” replied Gordon, “didn’t Carmichael tell you? We are not to go
into your sitting-room on any account.”
“The old brute!” said Mordaunt Reeves. “But I suppose he knows
what he’s doing.”