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The Yellow Streak

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And so with a gentle clatter of teacups and the accompaniment of
pleasantly modulated voices they sat and chatted--Lady Margaret, who was
always surprising in what she said, the doctor who was incredibly
opinionated, and young Trevert, who like all of the younger generation
was daringly flippant. He was airing his views on what he called "Boche
music" when he broke off and cried:

"Hullo, here's Mary! Mary, you owe me half a crown. Bude has come up to
scratch and there are tea-cakes after ... but, I say, what on earth's
the matter?"

The girl had come into the room and was standing in the centre of the
lounge in the ruddy glow of the fire. Her face was deathly pale and she
was shuddering violently. She held her little cambric handkerchief
crushed up into a ball to her lips. Her eyes were fixed, almost glazed,
like one who walks in a trance.

She stood like that for an instant surveying the group--Lady Margaret, a
silver tea-pot in one hand, looking at her with uplifted brows. Horace,
who in his amazement had taken a step forward, and the doctor at his
side scrutinizing her beneath his shaggy eyebrows.

"My dear Mary "--it was Lady Margaret's smooth and pleasant voice which
broke the silence--"whatever is the matter? Have you seen a ghost!"

The girl swayed a little and opened her lips as if to speak. A log,
crashing from the fire into the grate, fell upon the silence of the
darkening room. It seemed to break the spell.

"Hartley!"

The name came hoarsely from the girl. Everybody, except Lady Margaret,
sprang to his feet It was the doctor who spoke first.

"Miss Mary," he said, "you seem frightened, what ..."

His voice was very soothing.

Mary Trevert made a vague gesture towards the shadows about the
staircase.

"There ... in the library ... he's got the door locked ... there was a
shot ..."

Then she suddenly screamed aloud.

In a stride both the doctor and her brother were by her side. But she
motioned them away.

"I'm frightened about Hartley," she said in a low voice, "please go at
once and see what ... that shot ... and he doesn't answer!"

"Come on, Doctor!"

Horace Trevert was halfway to the big screen separating the lounge from
the outer hall. As he passed the bell, he pressed it.

"Send Bude to us, Mother, when he comes, please!" he called as he and
the doctor hurried away.

Lady Margaret had risen and stood, one arm about her daughter, on the
Persian rug spread out before the cheerful fire. So the women stood in
the firelight in Hartley Parrish's house, surrounded by all the
treasures which his wealth had bought, and listened to the footsteps
clattering away through the silence.




CHAPTER III


A DISCOVERY

Harkings was not a large house. Some three hundred years ago it had been
a farm, but in the intervening years successive owners had so altered it
by pulling down and building on, that, when it passed into the
possession of Hartley Parrish, little else than the open fireplace in
the lounge remained to tell of the original farm. It was a queer,
rambling house of only two stories whose elongated shape was accentuated
by the additional wing which Hartley Parrish had built on.

For the decoration of his country-house, Parrish had placed himself
unreservedly in the hands of the firm entrusted with the work. Their
architect was given _carte blanche_ to produce a house of character out
of the rather dingy, out-of-date country villa which Harkings was when
Hartley Parrish, attracted by the view from the gardens, first
discovered it.

The architect had gone to his work with a zest. He had ripped up walls
and ceilings and torn down irrational matchwood partitions, discovering
some fine old oak wainscot and the blackened roof-beams of the original
farmstead. In the upshot he transformed Harkings into a very fair
semblance of a late Jacobean house, fitted with every modern convenience
and extremely comfortable. Furnished throughout with genuine "period"
furniture, with fine dark oak panelling and parquet floors, it was
altogether picturesque. Neither within nor without, it is true, would a
connoisseur have been able to give it a date.

But that did not worry Hartley Parrish. He loved a bargain and he had
bought the house cheap. It was situated in beautiful country and was
within easy reach by car of his town-house in St. James's Square where
he lived for the greater part of the week. Last but not least Harkings
was the casket enshrining a treasure, the realization of a lifelong
wish. This was the library, Parrish's own room, designed by himself and
furnished to his own individual taste.

It stood apart from the rest of the house at the end of the wing which
Parrish had constructed. The wing consisted of a single ground floor and
contained the drawing-room--which was scarcely ever used, as both
Parrish and his guests preferred the more congenial surroundings of the
lounge--and the library. A long corridor panelled in oak led off the
hall to the new wing. On to this corridor both the drawing-room and the
library gave. Halfway down the corridor a small passage ran off. It
separated the drawing-room from the library and ended in a door leading
into the gardens at the back of the house.

It was to the new wing that Horace Trevert and Dr. Komain now hastened.
They hurried across the hall, where the big lamp of dulled glass threw a
soft yellow light, and entered the corridor through the heavy oak door
which shut it off from the hall. The corridor was wrapt in silence.
Halfway down, where the small passage ran to the garden door, the
electric light was burning.

Horace Trevert ran down the corridor ahead of the doctor and was the
first to reach the library door. He knocked sharply, then turned the
handle. The door was locked.

"Hartley!" he cried and rapped again. "Ha-a-artley! Open the door! It's
me, Horace!"

Again he knocked and rattled the handle. Not a sound came from the
locked room. There was an instant's silence. Horace and the doctor
exchanged an interrogatory look.

From behind the closed door came the steady ticking of a clock. The
silence was so absolute that both men heard it.

Then the door at the end of the corridor was flung open and Bude
appeared. He was running at a quick ambling trot, his heavy tread
shaking the passage,

"Oh? sir," he cried, "whatever is it? What has happened?"

Horace spoke quickly, incisively.

"Something's happened to Mr. Parrish, Bude," he said. "The door's locked
and he doesn't answer. We'll have to break the door down."

Bude shook his head.

"It's solid oak, sir," he began.

Then he raised his hand.

"Pardon me, gentlemen," he said, as though an idea had struck him. "If
we were to go out by the garden door here, we might get in through the
window. We could break the glass if needs be!"

"That's it!" exclaimed Horace. "Come on, Doctor!"

He dashed down the corridor towards the little passage. The doctor laid
a hand on Bude's arm.

"One of us had better stay here," he said with a meaning glance at the
closed door.

The butler raised an affrighted face to his.

"Go with Sir Horace, Bude," said the doctor. "I'll stay!"

Outside in the gardens of Harkings it was a raw, damp evening,
pitch-black now, with little gusts of wind which shook the naked bushes
of the rosery. The garden door led by a couple of shallow steps on to a
gravel path which ran all along the back of the house. The path extended
right up to the wall of the house. On the other side it flanked the
rosery.

The glass door was banging to and fro in the night wind as Bude, his
coat-collar turned up, hurried out into the darkness. The library, which
formed the corner of the new wing, had two windows, the one immediately
above the gravel path looking out over the rosery, the other round the
corner of the house giving on the same path, beyond which ran a high
hedge of clipped box surrounding the so-called Pleasure Ground, a plot
of smooth grass with a sundial in the centre.

A glow of light came from the library window, and in its radiance Bude
saw silhouetted the tall, well-knit figure of young Trevert. As the
butler came up, the boy raised something in his hand and there was a
crash of broken glass.

The curtains were drawn, but with the breaking of the window they began
to flap about. With the iron grating he had picked up from the drain
below the window young Trevert smashed the rest of the glass away, then
thrust an arm through the empty window-frame, fumbling for the
window-catch.

"The catch is not fastened," he whispered, and with a resolute thrust he
pushed the window up. The curtains leapt up wildly, revealing a glimpse
of the pleasant, book-lined room. Both men from the darkness without saw
Parrish's desk littered with his papers and his habitual chair beyond
it, pushed back empty.

Trevert turned an instant, a hand on the window-sill.

"Bude," he said, "there's no one there!"

"Best look and see, sir," replied the butler, his coat-tails flapping in
the wind.

Trevert hoisted himself easily on to the window-sill, knelt there for an
instant, then thrust his legs over the sill and dropped into the room.
As he did so he stumbled, cried aloud.

Then the heavy grey curtains were flung back and the butler saw the
boy's face, rather white, at the open window.

"My God," he said slowly, "he's dead!"

A moment later Dr. Romain, waiting in the corridor, heard the key turn
in the lock of the library door. The door was flung open. Horace Trevert
stood there, silhouetted in a dull glow of light from the room. He was
pointing to the open window, beneath which Hartley Parrish lay on his
back motionless.




CHAPTER IV


BETWEEN THE DESK AND THE WINDOW

Hartley Parrish's library was a splendid room, square in shape, lofty
and well proportioned. It was lined with books arranged in shelves of
dark brown oak running round the four walls, but sunk level with them
and reaching up to a broad band of perfectly plain white plasterwork.

It was a cheerful, comfortable, eminently modern room, half library,
half office. The oak was solid, but uncompromisingly new. The great
leather armchairs were designed on modern lines--for comfort rather
than for appearance. There were no pictures; but vases of chrysanthemums
stood here and there about the room. A dictaphone in a case was in a
corner, but beside it was a little table on which were set out some rare
bits of old Chelsea. There was also a gramophone, but it was enclosed in
a superb case of genuine old black-and-gold lacquer. The very books in
their shelves carried on this contrast of business with recreation. For
while one set of shelves contained row upon row of technical works,
company reports, and all manner of business reference books bound in
leather, on another were to be found the vellum-bound volumes of the
Kelmscott Press.

A sober note of grey or mole colour was the colour scheme of the room.
The heavy pile carpet which stretched right up to the walls was of this
quiet neutral shade: so were the easy-chairs, and the colour of the
heavy curtains, which hung in front of the two high windows, was in
harmony with the restful decorative scheme of the room.

The massive oaken door stood opposite the window overlooking the
rosery--the window through which Horace Trevert had entered. Parrish's
desk was in front of this window, between it and the door in
consequence. By the other window, which, as has been stated, looked out
on the clipped hedge surrounding the Pleasure Ground, was the little
table with the Chelsea china, the dictaphone, and one of the
easy-chairs. The centre of the room was clear so that nothing lay
between the door and the carved mahogany chair at the desk. Here, as
they all knew, Parrish was accustomed to sit when working, his back to
the door, his face to the window overlooking the rosery.

The desk stood about ten feet from the window. On it was a large brass
lamp which cast a brilliant circle of light upon the broad flat top of
the desk with its orderly array of letter-trays, its handsome
silver-edged blotter and silver and tortoise-shell writing
appurtenances. By the light of this lamp Dr. Romain, looking from the
doorway, saw that Hartley Parrish's chair was vacant, pushed back a
little way from the desk. The rest of the room was wrapt in unrevealing
half-light.

"He's there by the window!"

Horace was whispering to the doctor. Romain strode over to the desk and
picked up the lamp. As he did so, his eyes fell upon the pale face of
Hartley Parrish. He lay on his back in the space between the desk and
the window. His head was flung back, his eyes, bluish-grey,--the narrow,
rather expressionless eyes of the successful business man,--were wide
open and fixed in a sightless stare, his rather full mouth, with its
clean-shaven lips, was rigid and stern. With the broad forehead, the
prominent brows, the bold, aggressive nose, and the square bony jaw, it
was a fighter's face, a fine face save for the evil promise of that
sensuous mouth. So thought the doctor with the swift psychological
process of his trade.

From the face his gaze travelled to the body. And then Romain could not
repress an involuntary start, albeit he saw what he had half expected to
see. The fleshy right hand of Hartley Parrish grasped convulsively an
automatic pistol. His clutching index finger was crooked about the
trigger and the barrel was pressed into the yielding pile of the carpet.
His other hand with clawing fingers was flung out away from the body on
the other side. One leg was stretched out to its fullest extent and the
foot just touched the hem of the grey window curtains. The other leg was
slightly drawn up.

The doctor raised the lamp from the desk and, dropping on one knee,
placed it on the ground beside the body. With gentle fingers he
manipulated the eyes, opened the blue serge coat and waistcoat which
Parrish was wearing. As he unbuttoned the waistcoat, he laid bare a dark
red stain on the breast of the fine silk shirt. He opened shirt and
under-vest, bent an ear to the still form, and then, with a little
helpless gesture, rose to his feet.

"Dead?" queried Trevert.

Romain nodded shortly.

"Shot through the heart!" he said.

"He looked so ... so limp," the boy said, shrinking back a little, "I
thought he was dead. But I never thought old Hartley would have done a
thing like that ..."

The doctor pursed up his lips as if to speak. But he remained silent for
a moment. Then he said:

"Horace, the police must be informed. We can do that on the telephone.
This room must be left just as it is until they come. I can do nothing
more for poor Hartley. And we shall have to tell the others. I'd better
do that myself. I wonder where Greve is? I haven't seen him all the
afternoon. As a barrister he should be able to advise us about--er, the
technicalities: the police and all that ..."

Rapid footsteps reverberated down the corridor. Robin Greve appeared at
the door. The fat and frightened face of Bude appeared over his
shoulder.

"Good God, Doctor!" he cried, "what's this Bude tells me?"

The doctor cleared his throat.

"Our poor friend is dead, Greve," he said.

"But how? How?"

Greve stood opposite the doctor in the centre of the library. He had
switched on the light at the door as he had come in, and the room was
flooded with soft light thrown by concealed lamps set around the cornice
of the ceiling.

"Look!" responded the doctor by way of answer and stepped aside to let
the young man come up to the desk. "He has a pistol in his hand!"

Robin Greve took a step forward and stopped dead. He gazed for an
instant without speaking on the dead face of his host and rival.

"Suicide!"

It was an affirmation rather than a question, and the little doctor took
it up. He was not a young man and the shock and the excitement were
beginning to tell on his nerves.

"I am not a police surgeon," he said with some asperity; "in fact, I may
say I have not seen a dead body since my hospital days. I ... I ... know
nothing about these things. This is a matter for the police. They must
be summoned at once. Where's Bude?"

Robin Greve turned quickly.

"Get on to the police station at Stevenish at once, Bude," he ordered.
"Do you know the Inspector?"

"Yessir," the butler answered in a hollow voice. His hands were
trembling violently, and he seemed to control himself with difficulty.
"Mr. Humphries, sir!"

"Well, ring him up and tell him that Mr. Parrish ... Hullo, what do all
these people want?"

There was a commotion at the door. Frightened faces were framed in the
doorway. Outside there was the sound of a woman whimpering. A tall, dark
young man in a tail coat came in quickly. He stopped short when he saw
the solemn faces of the group at the desk. It was Parrish's man, Jay.
He stepped forward to the desk and in a frightened sort of way peered at
the body as it lay on the floor.

"Oh, sir," he said breathlessly, addressing Greve, "what ever has
happened to Mr. Parrish? It can't be true ..."

Greve put his hand on the young man's shoulder.

"I'm sorry to say it is true, Jay," he answered.

"He was very good to us all," the valet replied in a broken voice. He
remained by the desk staring at the body in a dazed fashion.

"Who is that crying outside?" Greve demanded. "This is no place for
women ..."

"It's Mrs. Heever, the housekeeper," Bude answered.

"Well, she must go back to her room. Send all those servants away. Jay,
will you see to it? And take care that Lady Margaret and Miss Trevert
don't come in here, either."

"Sir Horace is with them, sir, in the lounge," said Jay and went out.

"I'll go to them. I think I'd better," exclaimed the doctor. "I shall be
in the lounge when they want me. A dreadful affair! Dreadful!"

The little doctor bustled out, leaving Greve and the butler alone in the
room with the mortal remains of Hartley Parrish lying where he had
fallen on the soft grey carpet.

"Now, Bude," said Greve incisively, "get on to the police at once. You'd
better telephone from the servant's hall. I'll have a look round here in
the meantime!"

Bude stood for an instant irresolute. He glanced shrewdly at the young
man.

"Go on," said Robin quickly; "what are you waiting for, man? There's no
time to lose."

Slowly the butler turned and tiptoed away, his ungainly body swaying
about as he stole across the heavy pile carpet. He went out of the room,
closing the door softly behind him. He left Greve sunk in a reverie at
the desk, gazing with unseeing eyes upon the dead face of the master of
Harkings.

That sprawling corpse, the startled realization of death stamped for
ever in the wide, staring eyes, was indeed a subject for meditation.
There, in the midst of all the evidences of Hartley Parrish's meteoric
rise to affluence and power, Greve pondered for an instant on the
strange pranks which Fate plays us poor mortals.

Parrish had risen, as Greve and all the world knew, from the bottom rung
of the ladder. He had had a bitter fight for existence, had made his
money, as Greve had heard, with a blind and ruthless determination
which spoke of the stern struggle of other days. And Robin, who, too,
had had his own way to make in the world, knew how the memory of earlier
struggles went to sweeten the flavour of ultimate success.

Yet here was Hartley Parrish, with his vast financial undertakings, his
soaring political ambitions, his social aims which, Robin realized
bitterly, had more than a little to do with his project for marrying
Mary Trevert, stricken down suddenly, without warning, in the very
heyday of success.

"Why should he have done it?" he whispered to himself, "why, my God,
why?"

But the mask-like face at his feet, as he bent to scan it once more,
gave no answer to the riddle. Determination, ambition, was portrayed on
the keen, eager face even in death.

With a little hopeless gesture the young barrister glanced round the
room. His eye fell upon the desk. He saw a neat array of letter-trays,
costly silver and tortoise-shell writing appointments, a couple of heavy
gold fountain pens, and an orderly collection of pencils. Lying flat on
the great silver-edged blotter was a long brown envelope which had been
opened. Propped up against the large crystal ink-well was a letter
addressed simply "Miss Mary Trevert" in Hartley Parrish's big,
vigorous, and sprawling handwriting.

The letter to Mary Trevert, Robin did not touch. But he picked up the
long brown envelope. On the back it bore a printed seal. The envelope
contained a document and a letter. At the sight of it the young man
started. It was Hartley Parrish's will. The letter was merely a covering
note from Mr. Bardy, of the firm of Jerringham, Bardy and Company, a
well-known firm of solicitors, dated the previous evening. Robin
replaced letter and document in their envelope without reading them.

"So that's it!" he murmured to himself. "Suicide? But why?"

All the letter-trays save one were empty. In this was a little heap of
papers and letters. Robin glanced through them. There were two or three
prospectuses, a notice of a golf match, a couple of notes from West End
tradesmen enclosing receipts and an acknowledgement from the bank. There
was only one personal letter--a business communication from a Rotterdam
firm. Robin glanced at the letter. It was typewritten on paper of a dark
slatey-blue shade. It was headed, "ELIAS VAN DER SPYCK & Co., GENERAL
IMPORTERS, ROTTERDAM," and dealt with steel shipments.

Robin dropped the letter back into the tray and turned to survey the
room. It was in perfect order. Except for the still form lying on the
floor and the broken pane of glass in the window, there was nothing to
tell of the tragedy which had been enacted there that afternoon. There
were no papers to hint at a crisis save the prosaic-looking envelope
containing the will, and Parrish's note for Mary. The waste-paper
basket, a large and business-like affair in white wicker, had been
cleared.

Robin walked across to the fireplace. The flames leapt eagerly about a
great oak log which hissed fitfully on top of the glowing coals
contained in the big iron fire-basket. The grate was bare and tidy. As
the young man looked at the fire, a little whirl of blue smoke whisked
out of the wide fireplace and eddied into the room. Robin sniffed. The
room smelt smoky. Now he remembered he had noticed it as he came in.

He stood an instant gazing thoughtfully at the blazing and leaping fire.
He threw a quick glance at the window where the curtains tossed fitfully
in the breeze coming through the broken pane. Suddenly he stepped
quickly across the room and, lifting the reading-lamp from the table,
bore it over to the window which he scrutinized narrowly by its light.
Then he dropped on one knee beside the dead body, placing the lamp on
the floor beside him.

He lifted the dead man's left hand and narrowly examined the nails.
Without touching the right hand which clasped the revolver, he studied
its nails too. He rose and took the gold-mounted reading-glass from the
desk and scrutinized the nails of both hands through the glass.

Then he rose to his feet again and, having replaced lamp and
reading-glass on the desk, stood there thoughtfully, his brown hands
clasped before him. His eyes wandered from the desk to the window and
from the window to the corpse. Then he noticed on the carpet between the
dead body and the desk a little ball of slatey-blue paper. He bent down
and picked it up. He had begun to unroll it when the library door was
flung open. Robin thrust the scrap of paper in his pocket and turned to
face the door.




CHAPTER V


IN WHICH BUDE LOOKS AT ROBIN GREVE

The library door opened. A large, square-built, florid man in the
braided uniform of a police inspector stood on the threshold of the
room. Beside him was Bude who, with an air of dignity and respectful
mourning suitably blended, waved him into the room.

"The--ahem!--body is in here, Mr. Humphries, sir!"

Inspector Humphries stepped quickly into the room. A little countryfied
in appearance and accent, he had the careful politeness, the measured
restraint, and the shrewd eye of the typical police officer. In thirty
years' service he had risen from village constable to be Inspector of
county police. Slow to anger, rather stolid, and with an excellent
heart, he had a vein of shrewd common sense not uncommonly found in that
fast disappearing species, the English peasant.

He nodded shortly to Greve, and with a tread that shook the room strode
across to where Hartley Parrish was lying dead. In the meantime a
harassed-looking man with a short grey beard, wearing a shabby frock
coat, had slipped into the room behind the Inspector. He approached
Greve.

"Dr. Romain?" he queried, peering through his gold spectacles, "the
butler said ..."

"No, my name is Greve," answered Robin. "I am staying in the house. This
is Dr. Romain."

He motioned to the door. Dr. Romain came bustling into the room.

"Glad to see you here so promptly, Inspector," he said. "A shocking
business, very. Is this the doctor? I am Dr. Romain ..."

Dr. Redstone bowed with alacrity.

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