Free The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris by Leon Garfield Page B

beckoning him from the stairs.
    â€œWhen you call on Bunnion’s second,” he’d urged, “tell him we’re open to reason!”
    Bunnion’s second. That was him. “My principal’s open to reason,” muttered Mr. Brett to himself in a quiet corner, and half waited for a reply. To his overwrought mind it seemed that there must be at least two James Bretts. But alas, neither was an improvement on the other. Too well he knew that all his separate selves were made of the same weak clay.
    Then he saw Bunnion
père
shambling toward him, his enormous eyes gleaming with
second
thoughts. Panic seized Mr. Brett. The school seemed full of Bunnions and Alexanders. Wherever he turned they appeared, from corner, door, stair, from the very shadows; smiling, beckoning, plucking at him, drawing him nearer and nearer to that moment of exposure when he would be revealed as an object of universal contempt and disgust. And in that universe would be Tizzy, her eyes outflashing a skyful of stars.
    The headmaster was almost upon him when he saw Sorley, the fat boarder, passing on his way to the kitchen. “Sorley!” cried Mr. Brett, and clutched fiercely at the boy, who stared from master to master with slow alarm. Dr. Bunnion patted Sorley on thehead. Not for worlds would he have brought up the scandal of his son and Major Alexander in Sorley’s presence. Mr. Brett knew it and for the next hour or so took to following the baronet’s son everywhere, thus driving the fat boarder into a truly pitiable state of guilt for he knew not what.
    â€œWe must be discreet,” said Mr. Brett as he seated himself between Ralph and Frederick and gazed from one to the other in a dazed kind of way. Dr. Bunnion’s last words to him had been concerned with the overwhelming need for discretion. Ralph’s whole future was in the balance; a word out of place could wreck it. After all, the Sorleys of Cuckfield would scarcely be pleased to connect themselves with a scandal. It was more to Frederick than to Ralph that Mr. Brett addressed his words, in the hope of impressing him with Dr. Bunnion’s fears and Ralph’s marital hopes.
    â€œThe Sorleys,” mused Frederick. “Ain’t that Sir Walter Sorley of Cuckfield?”
    In his father’s livery-stable business, Frederick had made himself master of a real directory of titled names. It was his only intellectual accomplishment and he was fond of displaying it.
    â€œNo need to shout,” said Ralph, uncomfortably aware of the stranger with the clubfoot whose large, innocent eyes seemed fastened to his magnificent waistcoat like buttons on abnormally long threads. “I suppose the other second will be calling on you any time now,” he went on, turning to Mr. Brett,who nodded eerily. “And then you’ll be seeing about Doctor Harris? What the—”
    Suddenly there’d come a sharp scraping noise from the direction of the stranger. His terrible boot had moved forward and remained, swaying slightly, as if straining on a leash. Then the stranger, observing all eyes upon him, smiled apologetically, finished his brandy and water, and clumped out of the parlor.
    â€œGood riddance!” muttered the landlord under his breath.
    Mr. Selwyn Raven’s vigil had at last been rewarded. He had heard what he’d been waiting for: the connection between one secret and another. He had found the telltale thread that sooner or later would lead him to the center of the weird labyrinth in which the mystery of Adelaide Harris was concealed. He went back up to his room to fit the pieces of the puzzle together in his mind.
    One tiny thing, the unguarded mention of a single name, had illuminated everything. Dr. Harris. The inquiry agent sat down by the window and patiently recalled the fragments of talk he’d overheard. Blackmail, pistols, forced marriages, a Sussex baronet and then, like a key turning in these dark wards, the