Best Horror Stories - [34]
‘Very well, my boy,’ said the Colonel, after a few more questions. ‘You run away home now. I expect it was some person trying to give you a start. Another time, like a brave English boy, you just throw a stone – well, no, not that exactly, but you go and speak to the waiter, or to Mr. Simpson, the landlord, and – yes – and say that I advised you to do so.’
The boy’s face expressed some of the doubt he felt as to the likelihood of Mr. Simpson’s lending a favourable ear to his complaint, but the Colonel did not appear to perceive this, and went on:
‘And here’s a sixpence – no, I see it’s a shilling – and you be off home, and don’t think any more about it.’
The youth hurried off with agitated thanks, and the Colonel and Parkins went round to the front of the Globe and reconnoitered. There was only one window answering to the description they had been hearing.
‘Well, that’s curious,’ said Parkins; ‘it’s evidently my window the lad was talking about. Will you come up for a moment. Colonel Wilson? We ought to be able to see if anyone has been taking liberties in my room.’
They were soon in the passage and made as if to open the door. Then he stopped and felt in his pockets.
‘This is more serious than I thought,’ was his next remark. ‘I remember now that before I started this morning I locked the door. It is locked now, and, what is more, here is the key.’ And he held it up. ‘Now,’ he went on, ‘if the servants are in the habit of going into one’s room during the day when one is away, I can only say that – well, that I don’t approve of it at all.’ Conscious of a somewhat weak climax, he busied himself in opening the door (which was indeed locked) and in lighting candles. ‘No,’ he said, ‘nothing seems disturbed.’
‘Except your bed,’ put in the Colonel.
‘Excuse me, that isn’t my bed,’ said Parkins. ‘I don’t use that one. But it does look as if someone had been playing tricks with it.’
It certainly did: the clothes were bundled up and twisted together in a most tortuous confusion. Parkins pondered.
‘That must be it,’ he said at last: ‘I disordered the clothes last night in unpacking, and they haven’t made it since. Perhaps they came in to make it, and that boy saw them through the window and then they were called away and locked the door after them. Yes, I think that must be it.’
‘Well, ring and ask,’ said the Colonel, and this appealed to Parkins as practical.
The maid appeared, and, to make a long story short, deposed that she had made the bed in the morning when the gentleman was in the room, and hadn’t been there since. No, she hadn’t no other key. Mr. Simpson he kep’ the keys; he’d be able to tell the gentleman if anyone had been up.
This was a puzzle. Investigation showed that nothing of value had been taken, and Parkins remembered the disposition of the small objects on tables and so forth well enough to be pretty sure that no pranks had been played with them. Mr. and Mrs. Simpson furthermore agreed that neither of them had given the duplicate key of the room to any person whatever during the day. Nor could Parkins, fair-minded man as he was, detect anything in the demeanour of master, mistress, or maid that indicated guilt. He was much more inclined to think that the boy had been imposing on the Colonel.
The latter was unwontedly silent and pensive at dinner and throughout the evening. When he bade good-night to Parkins, he murmured in a gruff undertone:
‘You know where I am if you want me during the night.’
‘Why, yes, thank you. Colonel Wilson, I think I do; but there isn’t much prospect of my disturbing you, I hope. By the way,’ he added, ‘did I show you that old whistle I spoke of? I think not. Well, here it is.’
The Colonel turned it over gingerly in the light of the candle.
‘Can you make anything of the inscription?’ asked Parkins, as he took it back.
‘No, not in this light. What do you mean to do with it?’
‘Oh, well, when I get back to Cambridge I shall submit it to some of the archaeologists there, and see what they think of it; and very-likely, if they consider it worth having, I may present it to one of the museums.’
‘ ‘M!’ said the Colonel ‘Well, you may be right. All I know is that, if it were mine, I should chuck it straight into the sea. It’s no use talking, I’m well aware, but I expect that with you it’s a case of live and learn. I hope so, I’m sure, and I wish you a good-night.’
He turned away, leaving Parkins in act to speak at the bottom of the stair, and soon each was in his own bedroom.
By some unfortunate accident, there were neither blinds nor curtains to the windows of the Professor’s room. The previous night he had thought little of this, but to-night there seemed every prospect of a bright moon rising to shine directly on his bed, and probably wake him later on. When he noticed this he was a good deal annoyed, but, with an ingenuity which I can only envy, he succeeded in rigging up, with the help of a railway-rug, some safety-pins, and a stick and umbrella, a screen which, if it only held together, would completely keep the moonlight off his bed. And shortly afterwards he was comfortably in that bed. When he had read a somewhat solid work long enough to produce a decided wish for sleep, he cast a drowsy glance round the room, blew out the candle, and fell back upon the pillow.
