Vanishing Point

CHAPTER 36

Nicholas came in through the gate and up to the front door. It was very late and he had walked from Dalling Grange, but it was only now, on his own doorstep as he slipped his key into the lock, that he was aware of fatigue. It was a purely physical sensation separate from himself, from the Nicholas who had emerged from a nightmare. Until the whole thing was over he had never let himself relax from taking just the one inescapable step which lay before him, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left. It was not until now, when the strain was over, that he could let himself think of Henry and feel ashamed because he had not dared to think of him before. If Brown hadn’t cracked, sticking to his superior pinnacle until it looked as if he had an unshakable footing there and then suddenly, horribly plunging from it, he supposed that the nightmare might have been going on still. It came to him there and then how heavy in cross-examination are the odds against the guilty man, and how with one single slip he may be precipitated into disaster. It is only the bedrock truth that cannot be shaken.

He knew now how much afraid he had been. About Henry. With every stammering word of Brown’s, he had waited for Henry Cunningham’s name. And it hadn’t come. It hadn’t come. Nicholas was to have been framed to account for the leakage, but Henry didn’t come into it at all. Things had been getting too hot, and a scapegoat had had to be found. Nicholas had been cast for the part. The incriminating notes had been planted. If he had done anything else than what he did do, disaster would have been sure enough. But he had gone straight to Burlington. And poor old ramshackle Henry didn’t come into it at all. He wondered now why he should ever have thought that he might. Something about the way he drifted through life-something that would make him an easy tool-the lost twenty years-

All these thoughts were in his mind as he turned his key in the lock. The door swung in, swung back. He let it go, and it made more noise than he had meant it to. There was a light still on in the hall. He turned to shoot the bolt.

Back in the study Lydia looked up.

“What was that?”

Henry Cunningham gazed in his vague way.

“It will be Nicholas-Lucy said-he wasn’t in-”

“Is that door locked?”

“Oh, no-I never lock it.”

She might have been young again, she moved so quickly. The key turned before he had finished speaking. Her breath came sharply. It was a moment before she could control it. She came back to the table. Then, almost soundlessly,

“I didn’t think even you would be such a fool.”

He looked mildly through his glasses.

“He won’t come here-he never does.”

“Suppose he did?”

“He would think it very odd that I should have locked the door.”

“Keep your voice down!”

She went back to the door, unlocked it, set it ajar, and looked down the hall. There was a light in the dining-room. The door stood open. She said over her shoulder,

“Does Lucy leave a tray for him?”

“If he is late.”

Lydia Crewe shut and locked the door again. Henry said,

“You needn’t do that. He won’t come here.”

“I’m not taking chances. And you shouldn’t. Where are the rubies?”

“Oh, in one of the drawers.”

“Just lying about loose, I suppose!”

“No, I don’t think so. I believe-in fact I’m sure-I put them… Now where did I put them? No, not this drawer-it must have been one of the others-”

He was pulling drawers in and out as he spoke, jerking them out and jerking them in again. Her voice was a mere bitter thread.

“An unlocked drawer! Do you know what they are worth?”

He said peevishly,

“I never lock anything up. It’s much safer not to. And I should be sure to lose my keys. Yes, here they are. I remember now- I put them in the middle of the cotton wool for packing the spiders. They are perfectly safe there. Neither Lucy nor Mrs. Hubbard would touch one of my drawers if you paid them. There was a live grass snake once, and Mrs. Hubbard wouldn’t do the room for weeks. So the stones are perfectly safe.”

She stood there looking down at him, frowning. His vagueness had always irritated her. It was a danger, but there were moments when she could see that it was an asset too. Who was going to suspect a man so genuinely absorbed in scientific pursuits, so careless with his belongings-everything just left lying-not even a locked-up drawer? Too much had been left lying a year ago, and Maggie Bell had had to go. She wasn’t squeamish, but these things were a risk, and it was Henry’s carelessness that had made it necessary to take the risk.

She maintained her frowning silence. She was not at the moment in a position to rebuke him. She had been careless herself, and the risk had had to be taken all over again with Miss Holiday. And this time with much more annoying consequences, since it left her short of a daily maid. And no one anxious to fill the gap. She had had to fall back on that half-witted Winnie Taylor who went about looking like something out of an asylum, though she wasn’t too bad at her work.

She pushed in the drawer which held the Melbury rubies in an untidy mess of cotton wool and said,

“Well, I must go. Give me time to get to the end of the passage before you unlock the door. And you had better get off to bed yourself. You look tired.”

He passed a hand across his forehead.

“Yes-perhaps I will. Lydia, you’re quite sure about Maggie?”

“Of course I’m sure! She had just got to the point where she had to have a change. She told me so, and I gave her the money to go away. But you had better keep that to yourself. There- does that make you feel better?”

He took off his glasses and wiped them. She found ridiculous that his eyes should be full of tears.

“Yes-yes-I think it does. And, Lydia, you said this was to be the last job.”

“Of course. Only don’t worry. It’s not good for you.”

He said, “No, it isn’t. Sometimes-I do-feel ill-”

Her hand came down on his shoulder and pressed it.

“Just go off to bed and leave everything to me. All you’ve got to think about is your spiders.”

On the other side of the panel Miss Silver had been moving inch by inch. The passage went on past the opening to the study. It would be interesting to know where it came out, but this was neither the time nor the place for anything which did not bear directly upon the present emergency. Craig followed her, she moved to leave the way clear for Miss Crewe’s retreat. They had indeed no more than a bare margin of safety when the panel slid and a rectangle of light lay on the passage floor. If Lydia Crewe had looked to her right she might have seen them. She held an electric torch. If she had turned it in their direction she must have done so. She looked neither to right nor left. As Henry shut the panel behind her, she followed the beam of the torch along the passage by the way that she had come.

When all sound of her going had died away Craig bent to Miss Silver’s ear.

“Well, what do we do next?”

She answered him, not in words but by a light pressure upon his arm, in obedience to which he began to move before her down the passage. But when they came to the door by which they had entered they found it locked against them. Craig allowed himself an almost noiseless laugh.

“Well-what now? I suppose we go back and see where the other end comes out. Have you any idea of where that may be? You know the geography of the house, and I don’t.”

She said in her usual composed manner,

“It would be in the hall or in the drawing-room, I should think. Both have panelling of a character very similar to that of the study.”

They retraced their steps. As they approached the panel which had been ajar, it was momentarily startling to see that light still came from it. Henry Cunningham had closed it-they had heard the click of the spring from where they stood, a yard or two away on the other side. But almost as Craig touched Miss Silver in a warning gesture they could both see that the light now came, not from the edge of the panel, but from a round knothole some five foot up from the floor. There was no doubt about its purpose. Anyone who approached through the passage could make sure that the coast was clear before stepping into the room.

Miss Silver had to raise herself a little in order to make this peephole available. She had a good view of the writing-table, and of Henry Cunningham leaning over it. In front of him on a sheet of white paper lay the spider which he had been dissecting, a sight which she found repulsive in the extreme. In his right hand he held a pair of tweezers with which with meticulous care he was inserting a large red stone into the cavity which had been made in the spider’s body. She could not doubt for a moment that she was looking at one of Lady Melbury’s lost rubies-probably, from its size, the central stone of her diamond and ruby necklace. It disappeared into the body of the spider and the tweezers were laid down. Another small instrument was then dipped into a saucer in which there was something black and glutinous, and drop by drop the stone was covered and the body rounded out again. Henry Cunningham’s hand was steady, his absorption complete.

After a minute Miss Silver yielded her place to Craig. Both received the same impression. For this time at least, Henry Cunningham was in a world of his own. It was a world in which he was hampered by neither doubt nor efficiency, a world in which there was no moral law and therefore no crime. There was only his own skill and the means of exercising it. The moment in which the thought of Maggie Bell had troubled him, the moment in which he had said of Lucy Cunningham, “She is my sister,” belonged to a different world altogether, and it was one from which he shrank, and from which he must at any cost escape.

Miss Silver began to move forward along the passage. It came out, as she supposed it might, in one of the darker corners of the hall, and the panel slid as silently as the other had done. Lydia Crewe would have seen to that. There was still a light burning. It striped the darkness as the panel slid back, seeming much brighter than it really was. The pressure of Craig’s hand upon the wood stopped suddenly. The dining-room light clicked out and Nicholas Cunningham came into view. The gap in the panel showed his easy, confident air. He crossed the hall and went soft-foot up the stairs. A door opened and shut on the landing above.