Bill Beverley Quotes

“I make a point of being polite at breakfast,” said Bill, helping himself largely to porridge.

“Personally,” said Bill, “I think relations are a great mistake.”

Beverley and he met again a little later at a restaurant. Both of them were in evening-dress, but they did different things with their napkins, and Antony was the more polite of the two. However, he still liked Bill.

It would have interested Antony to know that, just at the time when he was feeling rather superior to the prejudiced inspector, the Inspector himself was letting his mind dwell lovingly upon the possibilities in connection with Mr. Gillingham. Was it only a coincidence that Mr. Gillingham had turned up just when he did? And Mr. Beverley’s curious answers when asked for some account of his friend. An assistant in a tobacconist’s, a waiter! An odd man, Mr. Gillingham, evidently. It might be as well to keep an eye on him.

“Oh, I beg your pardon. But anyhow, Bill, I want you more than she does just now. So try and put up with me.” “I say, do you really?” said Bill, rather flattered. He had a great admiration for Antony, and was very proud to be liked by him.

Bill looked at him eagerly. “I say, are you being the complete detective?” “Well, I wanted a new profession,” smiled the other. “What fun! I mean,” he corrected himself apologetically, “one oughtn’t to say that, when there’s a man dead in the house, and one’s host—” He broke off a little uncertainly, and then rounded off his period by saying again, “By Jove, what a rum show it is. Good Lord!”

“What’s the good of talking about it at all, if it comes to that?” “What, indeed?” said Antony, and to Bill’s great disappointment they talked of books and politics during the meal.

“Are you prepared to be the complete Watson?” he asked. “Watson?” “Do-you-follow-me-Watson; that one. Are you prepared to have quite obvious things explained to you, to ask futile questions, to give me chances of scoring off you, to make brilliant discoveries of your own two or three days after I have made them myself—all that kind of thing? Because it all helps.” “My dear Tony,” said Bill delightedly, “need you ask?”

No, not a murderer; not Cayley. That was rot, anyway. Why, they had played tennis together.

“I say, what fun! I love secret passages. Good Lord, and this afternoon I was playing golf just like an ordinary merchant! What a life! Secret passages!”

There seemed to be no doubt now that Cayley was a villain. Bill had never been familiar with a villain before. It didn’t seem quite fair of Cayley, somehow; he was taking rather a mean advantage of his friends.

“My dear Watson,” he said, “you aren’t supposed to be as clever as this.”

“I love you on Mark,” he said. “You’re priceless.”

“One should modulate the voice, my dear William, while breathing gently from the hips. Thus one avoids those chest-notes which have betrayed many a secret..”

“Are you often like this at breakfast?” “Almost invariably. Said he with his mouth full. Exit W. Beverley, L.” “It’s a touch of the sun, I suppose,” said Bill, shaking his head sadly. “It’s the sun and the moon and the stars, all acting together on an empty stomach.”

Cayley says that you will amuse me, but so far you have not made me laugh once. You must try and be more amusing when you have finished your breakfast.

Bill continued his breakfast with a slightly bewildered air. He did not know that Cayley was smoking a cigarette outside the windows behind him; not listening, perhaps; possibly not even overhearing; but within sight of Antony, who was not going to take any risks. So he went on with his breakfast, reflecting that Antony was a rum fellow, and wondering if he had dreamed only of the amazing things which had happened the day before.

“I say, what fun! You do want me, don’t you?” “Of course I do. Only, Bill don’t talk about things inside the house, unless I begin. There’s a good Watson.”

“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.”

“Shaw, Wilde, Robertson—I like reading plays, Bill. There are not many people who do, but those who do are usually very keen.”

Cayley’s qualities, as they appeared to Bill, may have been chiefly negative; but even if this merit lay in the fact that he never exposed whatever weaknesses he may have had, this is an excellent quality in a fellow-guest (or, if you like, fellow-host) in a house where one is continually visiting. Mark’s weaknesses, on the other hand, were very plain to the eye, and Bill had seen a good deal of them.

Yet, though he had hesitated to define his position that morning in regard to Mark, he did not hesitate to place himself on the side of the Law against Cayley. Mark, after all, had done him no harm, but Cayley had committed an unforgivable offence. Cayley had listened secretly to a private conversation between himself and Tony. Let Cayley hang, if the Law demanded it.

“By Jove! You mean that as soon as the pond has been dragged, Cayley will hide something there?” “Yes, I’m afraid so.” “But why afraid?” “Because I think that it must be something very important, something which couldn’t easily be hidden anywhere else.”

“What’s the safest place in which to hide anything very important?” “Somewhere where nobody will look.” “There’s a better place than that.” “What?” “Somewhere where everybody has already looked.”

“My dear Tony, he had more clothes than anybody in the world. He just kept them here in case they might be useful, I expect.

“It was a hobby with him, collecting clothes. If he’d had half a dozen houses, they would all have been full of a complete gentleman’s town and country outfit.”

“He was very finicking.”

“What did he want to shut the door for?” said Bill. “That’s what I don’t understand. You couldn’t have seen him, anyhow.” “No. So it follows that I might have heard him. He was going to do something which he didn’t want me to hear.” “By Jove, that’s it!” said Bill eagerly. “Yes; but what?” Bill frowned hopefully to himself, but no inspiration came.

“Oh, idiot, idiot!” Antony cried. “Oh, most super-excellent of Watsons! Oh, you lamb, you blessing! Oh, Gillingham, you incomparable ass!”

“The window, the window!” cried Antony, pointing to it. Bill turned back to the window, expecting it to say something. As it said nothing, he looked at Antony again.

“You’re being dashed mysterious, old boy.”

“Mark had an extraordinary characteristic voice.”

This was glorious fun; this was life. The immediate programme could hardly be bettered. First of all he was going to stalk Cayley. There was a little copse above the level of the pond, and about a hundred yards away from it. He would come into this from the back, creep cautiously through it, taking care that no twigs cracked, and then, drawing himself on his stomach to the edge, peer down upon the scene below him. People were always doing that sort of thing in books, and he had been filled with a hopeless envy of them; well, now he was actually going to do it himself. What fun!

Even if you found nothing, you couldn’t get away from the fact that a secret passage was a secret passage, and anything might happen in it.

He was facing the secret door; if it opened he would see it. At any moment now it might open. Bill dropped into a chair and thought. Antony must be warned. Obviously. But how? How did one signal to anybody? By code. Morse code. Did Antony know it? Did Bill know it himself, if it came to that? He had picked up a bit in the Army—not enough to send a message, of course. But a message was impossible, anyhow; Cayley would hear him tapping it out. It wouldn’t do to send more than a single letter. What letters did he know? And what letter would convey anything to Antony?.... He pulled at his pipe, his eyes wandering from Cayley at his desk to the Reverend Theodore Ussher in his shelf. What letter? C for Cayley.

“There is nothing that you and I could not accomplish together, if we gave our minds to it.” “Silly old ass.” “That’s what you always say when I’m being serious. Well, anyway, thanks awfully. You really saved us this time.”

Antony was silent, and since it is difficult to keep up a conversation with a silent man for any length of time, Bill had dropped into silence too. Or rather, he hummed to himself, hit at thistles in the grass with his stick and made uncomfortable noises with his pipe.

“Yes—Angela Norbury,” murmured Bill. “Not bad-looking, is she?”

They were close to Jallands now, an old thatched farmhouse which, after centuries of sleep, had woken up to a new world, and had forthwith sprouted wings; wings, however, of so discreet a growth that they had not brought with them any obvious change of character, and Jallands even with a bathroom was still Jallands.

The girl who stood by the little white gate of Jallands was something more than “not bad-looking,” but in this matter Bill was keeping his superlatives for another. In Bill’s eyes she must be judged, and condemned, by all that distinguished her from Betty Calladine. To Antony, unhampered by these standards of comparison, she seemed, quite simply, beautiful.

“You see,” he said to Bill, as they walked back, “we know that Cayley is perjuring himself and risking himself over this business, and that must be for one of two reasons. Either to save Mark or to endanger him. That is to say, he is either whole-heartedly for him or whole-heartedly against him. Well, now we know that he is against him, definitely against him.”

“But, I say, you know,” protested Bill, “one doesn’t necessarily try to ruin one’s rival in love.” “Doesn’t one?” said Antony, turning to him with a smile.

“Yes, but you were so dashed mysterious about that. I asked you what the point of it was, and you wouldn’t say anything.”

“I suppose you meant that Cayley deliberately betrayed Mark, and tried to make him look like a murderer?”

“You may be right, but it’s all guess-work, you know.” Antony laughed. “Good Lord, of course it is,” he said. “And to-night we shall know if it’s a good guess or a bad one.”

“I say, to-night’s going to be rather fun. How do we work it?”

“Of course,” he said at last, “we ought to inform the police, so that they can come here and watch the pond to-night.” “Of course,” grinned Bill. “But I think that perhaps it is a little early to put our theories before them.” “I think perhaps it is,” said Bill solemnly. Antony looked up at him with a sudden smile. “Bill, you old bounder.” “Well, dash it, it’s our show. I don’t see why we shouldn’t get our little bit of fun out of it.” “Neither do I. All right, then, we’ll do without the police to-night.” “We shall miss them,” said Bill sadly, “but ‘tis better so.”

He’s bound to be suspicious of everybody in the house, and more particularly of us, because we’re presumably more intelligent than the others.

“Of course, the trouble with water is that one bit of it looks pretty much like the next bit. I don’t know if that had occurred to you.”

“Well, it’s rather useful, that’s all.” “Said Sherlock Holmes enigmatically,” added Bill. “A moment later, his friend Watson had hurled him into the pond.”

“I love being Sherlocky,” he said. “It’s very unfair of you not to play up to me.”

“Why is that fence useful, my dear Holmes?” said Bill obediently. “Because you can take a bearing on it. You see—” “Yes, you needn’t stop to explain to me what a bearing is.”

“And there, I almost forgot to remark, will the taller eagle, Beverley by name, do his famous diving act. As performed nightly at the Hippodrome.” Bill looked at him uneasily. “I say, really? It’s beastly dirty water, you know.”

“Right, old boy. Leave it to me. I can do this on my head.”

Cayley seemed very fond of them that night. After dinner was over, he suggested a stroll outside. They walked up and down the gravel in front of the house, saying very little to each other, until Bill could stand it no longer. For the last twenty turns he had been slowing down hopefully each time they came to the door, but the hint had always been lost on his companions, and each time another turn had been taken.

Cayley’s business would make no noise, give no sign, to attract the most wakeful member of the household, so long as the household was really inside the house. But if he wished to reassure himself about his guests, he would have to wait until they were far enough on their way to sleep not to be disturbed by him as he came up to reassure himself. So it amounted to the same thing, really. He would wait until they were asleep.

Good heavens, what fools they had been!

The pond was waiting for them, more solemn in the moonlight. The trees which crowned the sloping bank on the far side of it were mysteriously silent. It seemed that they had the world very much to themselves.

For a long time, as it seemed to the watchers, he stood there, very big, very silent, in the moonlight. At last he seemed satisfied. Whatever his secret was, he had hidden it; and so with a gentle sigh, as unmistakable to Antony as if he had heard it, Cayley turned away and vanished again as quietly as he had come.

Good Lord, what a life!

“You’re quite sure that you wouldn’t like to do the diving yourself?” “Quite, thanks.”

“What’s it like?” said Antony. “Cold. Well, here’s luck to it.”

“I feel that if I threw you a sardine,” said Antony, with a smile, “you’d catch it in your mouth quite prettily.” “It’s awfully easy to be funny from where you are. How much longer have I got to go on doing this?” Antony looked at his watch. “About three hours. We must get back before daylight. But be quicker if you can, because it’s rather cold for me sitting here.” Bill flicked a handful of water at him and disappeared again.

“He did a lot of early morning exercises which were supposed to make him bright and cheerful at breakfast. They didn’t do that, but they seemed to keep him pretty fit.”

It was nearly eight o’clock when William Beverley, the famous sleuth-hound, arrived, tired and dusty, at ‘The George,’ to find Antony, cool and clean, standing bare-headed at the door, waiting for him.

When the first edge of his appetite had worn off, and he was able to spare a little time between the mouthfuls, Bill gave an account of his adventures. The landlord of the “Plough and Horses” had been sticky, decidedly sticky—Bill had been unable at first to get anything out of him. But Bill had been tactful; lorblessyou, how tactful he had been.

“Have some more beer,” said Antony with a smile. And Bill had to be content with that.

Don’t let Bill think too badly of me. He is a good fellow; look after him. He will be surprised. The young are always surprised. And thank you for letting me end my own way. I expect you did sympathize a little, you know.

“He’s a clever devil. If you hadn’t turned up just when you did, he would never have been found out.”

“It was decent of you to give him a chance. I’m glad you did.”