The Mysterious Mr. Quin

It was New Year's Eve. The elder members of the house party at Royston were assembled in the big hall.

Mr. Satterthwaite was glad that the young people had gone to bed. He was not fond of young people in herds. He thought them uninteresting and crude. They lacked subtlety and as life went on he had become increasingly fond of subtleties.

Mr. Satterthwaite was sixty-two—a little bent, dried-up man with a peering face oddly elflike, and an intense and inordinate interest in other people's lives. All his life, so to speak, he had sat in the front row of the stalls watching various dramas of human nature unfold before him. His role had always been that of the onlooker. Only now, with old age holding him in its clutch, he found himself increasingly critical of the drama submitted to him. He demanded now something a little out of the common.

There was no doubt that he had a flair for these things. He knew instinctively when the elements of drama were at hand. Like a war horse, he sniffed the scent. Since his arrival at Royston this afternoon, that strange inner sense of his had stirred and bid him be ready. Something interesting was happening or going to happen.

"Gad!" said Conway. "Listen to the wind. It's a wild night."

"A good night for ghosts to walk," said Portal with a reckless laugh. "All the devils in hell are abroad tonight."

"According to Lady Laura, even the blackest of them would bring us luck," observed Conway, with a laugh. "Hark to that!"

The wind rose in another terrific wail, and as it died away there came three loud knocks on the big nailed doorway.

Everyone started.

"Who on earth can that be at this time of night?" cried Evesham.

They stared at each other.

"I will open it," said Evesham. "The servants have gone to bed."

He strode across to the door, fumbled a little over the heavy bars, and finally flung it open. An icy blast of wind came sweeping into the hall.

Framed in the doorway stood a man's figure, tall and slender. To Mr. Satterthwaite, watching, he appeared, by some curious effect of the stained glass above the door, to be dressed in every color of the rainbow. Then, as he stepped forward, he showed himself to be a thin dark man.

"I must really apologize for this intrusion," said the stranger, in a pleasant, level voice. "But my car broke down. Nothing much, my chauffeur is putting it to rights, but it will take half an hour or so, and it is so confoundedly cold outside—"

He broke off, and Evesham took up the thread quickly.

"I should think it was. Come in and have a drink. We can't give you any assistance about the car, can we?"

They retraced their steps in silence to the house. Walking almost noiselessly on the soft turf, each absorbed in his own thoughts, they became unwittingly eavesdroppers. They were rounding the corner of the holly hedge when they heard Iris Staverton's voice, raised fierce and clear from the depths of the Privy Garden: "You shall be sorry—sorry—for this!"

Scott's voice answered, low and uncertain, so that the words could not be distinguished; and then the woman's voice rose again, speaking words that they were to remember later. "Jealousy—it drives one to the devil—it is the devil! It can drive one to black murder. Be careful, Richard; for God's sake, be careful."

And then, on that, she had come out of the Privy Garden, ahead of them, and on round the corner of the house without seeing them, walking swiftly, almost running, like a woman hag-ridden and pursued.

Mr. Satterthwaite thought again of Lady Cynthia's words. A dangerous woman. For the first time he had a premonition of tragedy, coming swift and inexorable, not to be gainsaid.

She walked on a few steps, and Mr. Satterthwaite joined her. They were beyond the houses now. The road stopped. As Naomi had said, this was the end, the back of beyond, the beginning of nowhere. Behind them the white ribbon of the road, in front of them—nothing. Only far, far below, the sea.

Mr. Satterthwaite drew a deep breath. "It's an extraordinary place. One feels that anything might happen here, that one might meet—anyone—"

He stopped, for just in front of them a man was sitting on a boulder, his face turned to the sea. They had not seen him till this moment, and his appearance had the suddenness of a conjuring trick. He might have sprung from the surrounding landscape.

"I wonder—" began Mr. Satterthwaite.

But at that minute the stranger turned, and Mr. Satterthwaite saw his face.

"Why, Mr. Quin! How extraordinary. Miss Carlton-Smith, I want to introduce my friend Mr. Quin to you. He's the most amazing fellow. You are, you know. You always turn up in the nick of time—"

He stopped, with the feeling that he had said something awkwardly significant, and yet for the life of him he could not think what it was.

"'Give back what is not yours. Give back what you have stolen.' On each occasion I switched on the light, but the room was quite empty and there was no one there. In the end I got so nervous that I got Clayton, Mother's maid, to sleep on the sofa in my room."

"And the voice came just the same?"

"Yes, but—and this is what frightens me—Clayton did not hear it."

Mr. Satterthwaite reflected for a minute or two. "Did it come loudly or softly that evening?"

"It was almost a whisper," admitted Margery. "If Clayton was sound asleep, I suppose she would not really have heard it. She wanted me to see a doctor."

The girl laughed bitterly. "But since last night even Clayton believes," she continued.

"What happened last night?"

"I am just going to tell you. I have told no one as yet. I had been out hunting yesterday and we had had a long run. I was dead tired and slept very heavily. I dreamed—a horrible dream—that I had fallen over some iron railings and that one of the spikes was entering slowly into my throat. I woke to find that it was true—there was some sharp point pressing into the side of my neck and at the same time a voice was murmuring softly, 'You have stolen what is mine. This is death.'

"I screamed," continued Margery, "and clutched at the air but there was nothing there. Clayton heard me scream from the room next door where she was sleeping.