‘Why, it’s Mr Hallick!’ His voice was a gentle drawl. ‘Come down to see us at our country house!’
He saw Connor and nodded, almost bowed to him.
‘Well, this is most kind of you, Mr Hallick. You haven’t seen the park or the garage? Nor our beautiful billiard-room?’
‘That’ll do, Marks,’ said the warder sternly.
‘I beg your pardon, sir, I’m sure.’ The bow to the warder was a little deeper, a little more sarcastic. ‘Just badinage—nothing wrong intended. Fancy meeting you on the moor, Mr Hallick! I suppose this is only a brief visit? You’re not staying with us, are you?’
Hallick accepted the insult with a little smile.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Marks. ‘Even the police make little errors of judgment sometimes. It’s deplorable, but it’s true. We once had an ex-inspector in the hall where I am living.’
‘You know why I’ve come?’ said Hallick.
Marks shook his head, and then a look of simulated surprise and consternation came to his face.
‘You haven’t come to ask me and my poor friend about that horrible gold robbery? I see you have. Dear me, how very unfortunate! You want to know where the money was hidden? I wish I could tell you. I wish my poor friend could tell you, or even your old friend, Mr Leonard O’Shea.’ He smiled blandly. ‘But I can’t!’
Connor was chafing under the strain of the interview.
‘You don’t want me any more—’
Marks waved his hand.
‘Be patient with dear Mr Hallick.’
‘Now look here, Soapy,’ said Connor angrily, and a look of pain came to Marks’ face.
‘Not Soapy—that’s vulgar. Don’t you agree, Mr Hallick?’
‘I’m going to answer no questions. You can do as you like,’ said Connor. ‘If you haven’t found O’Shea, I will, and the day I get my hands on him he’ll know all about it! There’s another thing you’ve got to know, Hallick; I’m on my own from the day I get out of this hell. I’m not asking Soapy to help me to find O’Shea. I’ve seen Marks every day for ten years, and I hate the sight of him. I’m working single-handed to find the man who shopped me.’
‘You think you’ll find him, do you?’ said Hallick quickly. ‘Do you know where he is?’
‘I only know one thing,’ said Connor huskily, ‘and Soapy knows it too. He let it out that morning we were waiting for the gold lorry. It just slipped out—what O’Shea’s idea was of a quiet hiding-place. But I’m not going to tell you. I’ve got four months to serve, and when that time is up I’ll find O’Shea.’
‘You poor fool!’ said Hallick roughly. ‘The police have been looking for him for ten years.’
‘Looking for what?’ demanded Connor, ignoring Marks’ warning look.
‘For Len O’Shea,’ said Hallick.
There came a burst of laughter from the convict.
‘You’re looking for a sane man, and that’s where you went wrong! I didn’t tell you before why you’ll never find him. It’s because he’s mad! You didn’t know that, but Soapy knows. O’Shea was crazy ten years ago. God knows what he is now! Got the cunning of a madman. Ask Soapy.’
It was news to Hallick. His eyes questioned Marks, and the little man smiled.
‘I’m afraid our dear friend is right,’ said Marks suavely. ‘A cunning madman! Even in Dartmoor we get news, Mr Hallick, and a rumour has reached me that some years ago three officers of Scotland Yard disappeared in the space of a few minutes—just vanished as though they had evaporated like dew before the morning sun! Forgive me if I am poetical; Dartmoor makes you that way. And would you be betraying an official secret if you told me these men were looking for O’Shea?’
He saw Hallick’s face change, and chuckled.
‘I see they were. The story was that they had left England and they sent their resignations—from Paris, wasn’t it? O’Shea could copy anybody’s handwriting—they never left England.’ Hallick’s face was white.
‘By God, if I thought that—’ he began.
‘They never left England,’ said Marks remorselessly. ‘They were looking for O’Shea—and O’Shea found them first.’
‘You mean they’re dead?’ asked the other.
Marks nodded slowly.
‘For twenty-two hours a day he is a sane, reasonable man. For two hours—’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Mr Hallick, your men must have met him in one of his bad moments.’
‘When I meet him—’ interrupted Connor, and Marks turned on him in a flash.
‘When you meet him you will die!’ he hissed. ‘When I meet him—’ That mild face of his became suddenly contorted, and Hallick looked into the eyes of a demon.
‘When you meet him?’ challenged Hallick. ‘Where will you meet him?’
Marks’ arm shot out stiffly; his long fingers gripped an invisible enemy.
‘I know just where I can put my hand on him,’ he breathed. ‘That hand!’
Hallick went back to London that afternoon, a baffled man. He had gone to make his last effort to secure information about the missing gold, and had learned nothing—except that O’Shea was sane for twenty-two hours in the day.
CHAPTER V (#ulink_3356f137-db04-5a57-b1b8-2c03846ca04e)
IT was a beautiful spring morning. There was a tang in the air which melted in the yellow sunlight.
Mr Goodman had not gone to the city that morning, though it was his day, for he made a practice of attending at his office for two or three days every month. Mrs Elvery, that garrulous woman, was engaged in putting the final touches to her complexion; and Veronica, her gawkish daughter, was struggling, by the aid of a dictionary, with a recalcitrant poem—for she wooed the gentler muse in her own gentler moments.
Mr Goodman sat on a sofa, dozing over his newspaper. No sound broke the silence but the scratching of Veronica’s pen and the ticking of the big grandfather’s clock.
This vaulted chamber, which was the lounge of Monkshall, had changed very little since the days when it was the anteroom to a veritable refectory. The columns that monkish hands had chiselled had crumbled a little, but their chiselled piety, hidden now behind the oak panelling, was almost as legible as on the day the holy men had written them.
Through the open French window there was a view of the broad, green park, with its clumps of trees and its little heap of ruins that had once been the Mecca of the antiquarian.
Mr Goodman did not hear the excited chattering of the birds, but Miss Veronica, in that irritable frame of mind which a young poet can so readily reach, turned her head once or twice in mute protest.
‘Mr Goodman,’ she said softly.
There was no answer, and she repeated his name impatiently.
‘Mr Goodman!’
‘Eh?’ He looked up, startled.
