CHAPTER XI.

The Reverend Theodore Ussher

“There’s one thing, which we have got to realize at once,” said Antony,

“and that is that if we don’t find it easily, we shan’t find it at

all.”

“You mean that we shan’t have time?”

“Neither time nor opportunity. Which is rather a consoling thought to a

lazy person like me.”

“But it makes it much harder, if we can’t really look properly.”

“Harder to find, yes, but so much easier to look. For instance, the

passage might begin in Cayley’s bedroom. Well, now we know that it

doesn’t.”

“We don’t know anything of the sort,” protested Bill.

“We know for the purposes of our search. Obviously we can’t go tailing

into Cayley’s bedroom and tapping his wardrobes; and obviously,

therefore, if we are going to look for it at all, we must assume that

it doesn’t begin there.”

“Oh, I see.” Bill chewed a piece of grass thoughtfully. “Anyhow, it

wouldn’t begin on an upstairs floor, would it?”

“Probably not. Well, we’re getting on.”

“You can wash out the kitchen and all that part of the house,” said

Bill, after more thought. “We can’t go there.”

“Right. And the cellars, if there are any.”

“Well, that doesn’t leave us much.”

“No. Of course it’s only a hundred-to-one chance that we find it, but

what we want to consider is which is the most likely place of the few

places in which we can look safely.”

“All it amounts to,” said Bill, “is the living-rooms

downstairs—dining-room, library, hall, billiard-room and the office

rooms.”

“Yes, that’s all.”

“Well, the office is the most likely, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Except for one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, it’s on the wrong side of the house. One would expect the

passage to start from the nearest place to which it is going. Why make

it longer by going under the house first?”

“Yes, that’s true. Well, then, you think the dining-room or the

library?”

“Yes. And the library for choice. I mean for _our_ choice. There are

always servants going into dining-rooms. We shouldn’t have much of a

chance of exploring properly in there. Besides, there’s another thing

to remember. Mark has kept this a secret for a year. Could he have kept

it a secret in the dining-room? Could Miss Norris have got into the

dining-room and used the secret door just after dinner without being

seen? It would have been much too risky.”

Bill got up eagerly.

“Come along,” he said, “let’s try the library. If Cayley comes in, we

can always pretend we’re choosing a book.”

Antony got up slowly, took his arm and walked back to the house with

him.

The library was worth going into, passages or no passages. Antony could

never resist another person’s bookshelves. As soon as he went into the

room, he found himself wandering round it to see what books the owner

read, or (more likely) did not read, but kept for the air which they

lent to the house. Mark had prided himself on his library. It was a

mixed collection of books. Books which he had inherited both from his

father and from his patron; books which he had bought because he was

interested in them or, if not in them, in the authors to whom he wished

to lend his patronage; books which he had ordered in beautifully bound

editions, partly because they looked well on his shelves, lending a

noble colour to his rooms, partly because no man of culture should ever

be without them; old editions, new editions, expensive books, cheap

books—a library in which everybody, whatever his taste, could be sure

of finding something to suit him.

“And which is _your_ particular fancy, Bill?” said Antony, looking from

one shelf to another. “Or are you always playing billiards?”

“I have a look at ‘Badminton’ sometimes,” said Bill. “It’s over in that

corner there.” He waved a hand.

“Over here?” said Antony, going to it.

“Yes.” He corrected himself suddenly. “Oh, no, it’s not. It’s over

there on the right now. Mark had a grand re-arrangement of his library

about a year ago. It took him more than a week, he told us. He’s got

such a frightful lot, hasn’t he?”

“Now that’s very interesting,” said Antony, and he sat down and filled

his pipe again.

There was indeed a “frightful lot” of books. The four walls of the

library were plastered with them from floor to ceiling, save only where

the door and the two windows insisted on living their own life, even

though an illiterate one. To Bill it seemed the most hopeless room of

any in which to look for a secret opening.

“We shall have to take every blessed book down,” he said, “before we

can be certain that we haven’t missed it.”

“Anyway,” said Antony, “if we take them down one at a time, nobody can

suspect us of sinister designs. After all, what does one go into a

library for, except to take books down?”

“But there’s such a frightful lot.”

Antony’s pipe was now going satisfactorily, and he got up and walked

leisurely to the end of the wall opposite the door.

“Well, let’s have a look,” he said, “and see if they are so very

frightful. Hallo, here’s your ‘Badminton.’ You often read that, you

say?”

“If I read anything.”

“Yes.” He looked down and up the shelf. “Sport and Travel chiefly. I

like books of travel, don’t you?”

“They’re pretty dull as a rule.”

“Well, anyhow, some people like them very much,” said Antony,

reproachfully. He moved on to the next row of shelves. “The Drama. The

Restoration dramatists. You can have most of them. Still, as you well

remark, many people seem to love them. Shaw, Wilde, Robertson—I like

reading plays, Bill. There are not many people who do, but those who do

are usually very keen. Let us pass on.”

“I say, we haven’t too much time,” said Bill restlessly.

“We haven’t. That’s why we aren’t wasting any. Poetry. Who reads poetry

nowadays? Bill, when did you last read ‘Paradise Lost’?”

“Never.”

“I thought not. And when did Miss Calladine last read ‘The Excursion’

aloud to you?”

“As a matter of fact, Betty—Miss Calladine—happens to be jolly keen

on—what’s the beggar’s name?”

“Never mind his name. You have said quite enough. We pass on.”

He moved on to the next shelf.

“Biography. Oh, lots of it. I love biographies. Are you a member of the

Johnson Club? I bet Mark is. ‘Memories of Many Courts’—I’m sure Mrs.

Calladine reads that. Anyway, biographies are just as interesting as

most novels, so why linger? We pass on.” He went to the next shelf, and

then gave a sudden whistle. “Hallo, hallo!”

“What’s the matter?” said Bill rather peevishly.

“Stand back there. Keep the crowd back, Bill. We are getting amongst

it. Sermons, as I live. Sermons. Was Mark’s father a clergyman, or does

Mark take to them naturally?”

“His father was a parson, I believe. Oh, yes, I know he was.”

“Ah, then these are Father’s books. ‘Half-Hours with the Infinite’—I

must order that from the library when I get back. ‘The Lost Sheep,’

‘Jones on the Trinity,’ ‘The Epistles of St. Paul Explained.’ Oh, Bill,

we’re amongst it. ‘The Narrow Way, being Sermons by the Rev. Theodore

Ussher’—hal-_lo_!”

“What _is_ the matter?”

“William, I am inspired. Stand by.” He took down the Reverend Theodore

Ussher’s classic work, looked at it with a happy smile for a moment,

and then gave it to Bill.

“Here, hold Ussher for a bit.”

Bill took the book obediently.

“No, give it me back. Just go out into the hall, and see if you can

hear Cayley anywhere. Say ‘Hallo’ loudly, if you do.”

Bill went out quickly, listened, and came back.

“It’s all right.”

“Good.” He took the book out of its shelf again. “Now then, you can

hold Ussher. Hold him in the left hand—so. With the right or dexter

hand, grasp this shelf firmly—so. Now, when I say ‘Pull,’ pull

gradually. Got that?”

Bill nodded, his face alight with excitement.

“Good.” Antony put his hand into the space left by the stout Ussher,

and fingered the back of the shelf. “Pull,” he said.

Bill pulled.

“Now just go on pulling like that. I shall get it directly. Not hard,

you know, but just keeping up the strain.”

His fingers went at it again busily.

And then suddenly the whole row of shelves, from top to bottom, swung

gently open towards them.

“Good Lord!” said Bill, letting go of the shelf in his amazement.

Antony pushed the shelves back, extracted Ussher from Bill’s fingers,

replaced him, and then, taking Bill by the arm, led him to the sofa and

deposited him in it. Standing in front of him, he bowed gravely.

“Child’s play, Watson,” he said; “child’s play.”

“How on earth—”

Antony laughed happily and sat down on the sofa beside him.

“You don’t really want it explained,” he said, smacking him on the

knee; “you’re just being Watsonish. It’s very nice of you, of course,

and I appreciate it.”

“No, but really, Tony.”

“Oh, my dear Bill!” He smoked silently for a little, and then went on,

“It’s what I was saying just now—a secret is a secret until you have

discovered it, and as soon as you have discovered it, you wonder why

everybody else isn’t discovering it, and how it could ever have been a

secret at all. This passage has been here for years, with an opening at

one end into the library, and at the other end into the shed. Then Mark

discovered it, and immediately he felt that everybody else must

discover it. So he made the shed end more difficult by putting the

croquet-box there, and this end more difficult by—” he stopped and

looked at the other “by what, Bill?”

But Bill was being Watsonish.

“What?”

“Obviously by re-arranging his books. He happened to take out ‘The Life

of Nelson’ or ‘Three Men in a Boat,’ or whatever it was, and by the

merest chance discovered the secret. Naturally he felt that everybody

else would be taking down ‘The Life of Nelson’ or ‘Three Men in a

Boat.’ Naturally he felt that the secret would be safer if nobody ever

interfered with that shelf at all. When you said that the books had

been re-arranged a year ago—just about the time the croquet-box came

into existence—of course, I guessed why. So I looked about for the

dullest books I could find, the books nobody ever read. Obviously the

collection of sermon-books of a mid-Victorian clergyman was the shelf

we wanted.”

“Yes, I see. But why were you so certain of the particular place?”

“Well, he had to mark the particular place by _some_ book. I thought

that the joke of putting ‘The Narrow Way’ just over the entrance to the

passage might appeal to him. Apparently it did.”

Bill nodded to himself thoughtfully several times. “Yes, that’s very

neat,” he said. “You’re a clever devil, Tony.”

Tony laughed.

“You encourage me to think so, which is bad for me, but very

delightful.”

“Well, come on, then,” said Bill, and he got up, and held out a hand.

“Come on where?”

“To explore the passage, of course.”

Antony shook his head.

“Why ever not?”

“Well, what do you expect to find there?”

“I don’t know. But you seemed to think that we might find something

that would help.”

“Suppose we find Mark?” said Antony quietly.

“I say, do you really think he’s there?”

“Suppose he is?”

“Well, then, there we are.”

Antony walked over to the fireplace, knocked out the ashes of his pipe,

and turned back to Bill. He looked at him gravely without speaking.

“What are you going to say to him?” he said at last.

“How do you mean?”

“Are you going to arrest him, or help him to escape?”

“I—I—well, of course, I—” began Bill, stammering, and then ended

lamely, “Well, I don’t know.”

“Exactly. We’ve got to make up our minds, haven’t we?”

Bill didn’t answer. Very much disturbed in his mind, he walked

restlessly about the room, frowning to himself, stopping now and then

at the newly discovered door and looking at it as if he were trying to

learn what lay behind it. Which side was he on, if it came to choosing

sides—Mark’s or the Law’s?

“You know, you can’t just say, ‘Oh—er—hallo!’ to him,” said Antony,

breaking rather appropriately into his thoughts.

Bill looked up at him with a start.

“Nor,” went on Antony, “can you say, ‘This is my friend Mr. Gillingham,

who is staying with you. We were just going to have a game of bowls.’”

“Yes, it’s dashed difficult. I don’t know what to say. I’ve been rather

forgetting about Mark.” He wandered over to the window and looked out

on to the lawns. There was a gardener clipping the grass edges. No

reason why the lawn should be untidy just because the master of the

house had disappeared. It was going to be a hot day again. Dash it, of

course he had forgotten Mark. How could he think of him as an escaped

murderer, a fugitive from justice, when everything was going on just as

it did yesterday, and the sun was shining just as it did when they all

drove off to their golf, only twenty-four hours ago? How could he help

feeling that this was not real tragedy, but merely a jolly kind of

detective game that he and Antony were playing?

He turned back to his friend.

“All the same,” he said, “you wanted to find the passage, and now

you’ve found it. Aren’t you going into it at all?”

Antony took his arm.

“Let’s go outside again,” he said. “We can’t go into it now, anyhow.

It’s too risky, with Cayley about. Bill, I feel like you—just a little

bit frightened. But what I’m frightened of I don’t quite know. Anyway,

you want to go on with it, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said Bill firmly. “We must.”

“Then we’ll explore the passage this afternoon, if we get the chance.

And if we don’t get the chance, then we’ll try it to-night.”

They walked across the hall and out into the sunlight again.

“Do you really think we might find Mark hiding there?” asked Bill.

“It’s possible,” said Antony. “Either Mark or—” He pulled himself up

quickly. “No,” he murmured to himself, “I won’t let myself think

that—not yet, anyway. It’s too horrible.”