The Dinner Club Read online

  “Then he came towards me, and I felt I had to say something. But even as I spoke the thought flashed across my mind that he would have appeared far more at home in a London bar than in a rambling Appledore garden.

  “‘I was admiring your flowers,’ I said as he came up. ‘Your irises are wonderful.’

  “He looked vaguely at some lupins, then his intent gaze came back to me.

  “‘The garden is well known locally,’ he remarked. ‘Are you a member of these parts?’

  “‘No,’ I answered, ‘I come from London,’ and it seemed to me his gaze grew more intent.

  “‘I am only a bird of passage, too,’ he said easily. ‘Are you just down for the day?’

  “I informed him that I had come down to write up the local fête; being young and foolish, I rather think I implied that only the earnest request of the organiser for me in particular had persuaded the editor to dispense with my invaluable services even for a few hours. And all the time his eyes, black and inscrutable, never left my face.

  “‘The show is being held in a field about a quarter of a mile farther on,’ he said when I had finished. ‘Good morning.’

  “He turned abruptly on his heels and walked slowly away towards the house, leaving me a little annoyed, and with a feeling that not only had I been snubbed, but, worse still, had been seen through. I felt that I had failed to convince him that editors tore their hair and bit their nails when they failed to secure my services; I felt, indeed, just that particular type of ass that one does feel when one has boasted vaingloriously, and been listened to with faintly amused boredom. I know that as I resumed my walk towards the agricultural fête I endeavoured to restore my self-respect by remembering that he was merely a glorified yokel, who probably knew no better.”

  The Writer leant back in his chair with a faint smile.

  “That awful show still lives in my memory,” he continued after a while. “There were swing boats, and one of those ghastly shows where horses go round and round with a seasick motion and ‘The Blue Bells of Scotland’ emerges without cessation from the bowels of the machine.

  There were coconut shies and people peering through horse-collars to have their photographs taken, and over everything an all-pervading aroma of humanity unsuitably clad in its Sunday best on a warm day. However, the job had to be done, so I bravely plunged into the marquees devoted to the competing vegetables. I listened to the experts talking around me with the idea of getting the correct local colour, but as most of their remarks were incomprehensible, I soon gave that up as a bad job and began looking about me.

  “There were potatoes and carrots and a lot of things which I may have eaten, but completely failed to recognise in a raw state. And then suddenly, through a gap in the asparagus, I saw a vast yellowy-green object. It seemed about four times the size of an ordinary Rugby football, and a steady stream of people circled slowly round it and an ancient man, who periodically groomed it with a vast coloured handkerchief. So I steered a zigzag course between a watery-eyed duck on my right and a hand-holding couple on my left, and joined the stream. At close quarters it seemed even vaster than when viewed from the other side of the tent, and after I’d made the grand tour twice, I thought I’d engage the ancient man in conversation. Unfortunately, he was stone deaf, and his speech was a little indistinct owing to a regrettable absence of teeth, so we managed between us to rivet the fascinated attention of every human being in the tent. In return for the information that it was the largest pumpkin ever produced in Kent, I volunteered that I had come from London specially to write about it. He seemed a bit hazy about London, but when I told him it was larger than Appledore he appeared fairly satisfied that his pumpkin would obtain justice.

  “He also launched into a voluble discourse, which was robbed of much of its usefulness by his habit of holding his false teeth in position with his thumb as he spoke. Luckily a local interpreter was at hand, and from him I gathered that the old man was eighty-five, and had never been farther afield than Ashford, forty-eight years ago. Also that he was still gardener at Cedarlime, a house which I must have passed on my way from the station. Standing well back it was: fine flower gardens – ‘but not what they was. Not since the new gentleman come – a year ago. Didn’t take the same interest–not him. A scholard, they said ’e was; crates and crates of books had come to the house – things that ’eavy that they took three and four men to lift them.’

  “He rambled on did that interpreter, while the ancient man polished the pumpkin in the time-honoured manner, and wheezed spasmodically. But I wasn’t paying much attention, because it had suddenly come back to me that Cedarlime was the name of the house where I had spoken to the inscrutable stranger. Subconsciously I had noticed it as I crossed the road; now it was brought back to my memory.

  “‘Is the owner of Cedarlime a youngish man?’ I asked my informant. ‘Dark hair; rather sallow face?’

  “He shook his head. The owner of Cedarlime was a middle-aged man with grey hair, but he often had friends stopping with him who came from London, so he’d heard tell – friends who didn’t stop long – just for the weekend, maybe, or four or five days. Probably the man I meant was one of these friends.

  “My informant passed on to inspect a red and hairy gooseberry, and I wandered slowly out of the stuffy tent. Probably a friend – in fact, undoubtedly a friend. But try as I would to concentrate on that confounded flower show, my thoughts kept harking back to Cedarlime. For some reason or other, that quiet house and the man who had come so silently out of the bushes had raised my curiosity. And at that moment I narrowly escaped death from a swing boat, which brought me back to the business in hand.

  “I suppose it was about three hours later that I started to stroll back to the station. I was aiming at a five o’clock train, and intended to write my stuff on the way up to Town. But just as I was getting to the gates of the house that interested me, who should I see in front of me but the venerable pumpkin polisher. He turned as I got abreast of him and recognised me with a throaty chuckle. And he promptly started to talk. I gathered that he had many other priceless treasures in his garden – wonderful sweet peas, more pumpkins of colossal dimensions. And after a while I further gathered that he was suggesting I should go in and examine them for myself.

  “For a moment I hesitated. I looked at my watch – there was plenty of time. Then I looked over the gates and made up my mind. I would introduce this ancient being into my account of the fête; write up, in his own setting, this extraordinary old man who had never left Appledore for forty-eight years. And, in addition, I would have a closer look at the house possibly even see the scholarly owner.

  “I glanced curiously round as I followed him up the drive. We went about halfway to the house, then turned off along a path into the kitchen garden. And finally he came to rest in front of the pumpkins – he was obviously a pumpkin maniac. I should think he conducted a monologue for five minutes on the habits of pumpkins while I looked about me. Occasionally I said ‘Yes’; occasionally I nodded my head portentously; for the rest of the time I paid no attention.

  “I could see half the front and one side of the house – but there seemed no trace of any occupants. And I was just going to ask the old man who lived there, when I saw a man in his shirt-sleeves standing at one of the windows. He was not the man who had spoken to me at the gate; he was not a grey-headed man either, so presumably not the owner. He appeared to be engrossed in something he was holding in his hands, and after a while he held it up to the light in the same way one holds up a photographic plate. It was then that he saw me.

  “Now, I have never been an imaginative person, but there was something positively uncanny in the way that man disappeared. Literally in a flash he had gone and the window was empty. And my imagination began to stir. Why had that man vanished so instantaneously at the sight of a stranger in the kitchen garden?

  “And then anoth
er thing began to strike me. Something which had been happening a moment or two before had abruptly stopped – a noise, faint and droning, but so steady that I hadn’t noticed it until it ceased. It had been the sort of noise which, if you heard it today, you would say was caused by an aeroplane a great way off – and quite suddenly it had stopped. A second or two after the man had seen me and vanished from the window, that faint droning noise had ceased. I was sure of it, and my imagination began to stir still more.

  “However, by this time my venerable guide had exhausted pumpkins, and, muttering strange words, he began to lead me towards another part of the garden. It was sweet peas this time, and I must say they were really magnificent. In fact, I had forgotten the disappearing gentleman at the window in my genuine admiration of the flowers, when I suddenly saw the old man straighten himself up, take a firm grip of his false teeth with his one hand and touch his cap with the other. He was looking over my shoulder, and I swung round.

  “Three men were standing behind me on the path. One was the man I had spoken to that morning; one was the man I had seen at the window; the other was grey-haired, and, I assumed, the owner of the house. It was to him I addressed myself.

  “‘I must apologise for trespassing,’ I began, ‘but I am reporting the agricultural fête down here, and your gardener asked me in to see your sweet peas. They are really magnificent specimens.’

  “The elderly man stared at me in silence.

  “‘I don’t quite see what the sweet peas in my garden have to do with the fête,’ he remarked coldly. ‘And it is not generally customary, when the owner is at home, to wander round his garden at the invitation of his gardener.’

  “‘Then I can only apologise and withdraw at once,’ I answered stiffly. ‘I trust that I have not irreparably damaged your paths.’

  “He frowned angrily and seemed on the point of saying something, when the man I had spoken to at the gate took his arm and whispered something in his ear. I don’t know what it was he said, but it had the effect of restoring the grey-haired man to a better temper at once.

  “‘I must apologise,’ he said affably, ‘for my brusqueness. I am a recluse, Mr – ah – Mr–’

  “‘Graham is my name,’ I answered, partially mollified.

  “He bowed. ‘A recluse, Mr Graham – and my garden is a hobby of mine. That and my books. I fear I may have seemed a little irritable when I first spoke, but I have a special system of my own for growing sweet peas, and I guard it jealously. I confess that for a moment I was unjust and suspicious enough to think you might be trying to pump information from my gardener.’

  “I looked at old Methuselah, still clutching his false teeth, and smiled involuntarily. The elderly man guessed my thoughts and smiled, too.

  “‘I am apt to forget that it takes several months to interpret old Jake,’ he continued. ‘Those false teeth of his fascinate one, don’t they? I shall never forget the dreadful occasion he dropped them in the hotbed. We had the most agonising search, and finally persistence triumphed. They were rescued unscathed and restored to their rightful place.’

  “And so he went on talking easily, until half-unconsciously I found myself strolling with him towards the house. Every now and then he stopped to point out some specimen of which he was proud, and, without my realising it, twenty minutes or so slipped by. It was the sound of a whistle at the station that recalled me to the passage of time, and I hurriedly looked at my watch.

  “‘Good Heavens!’ I cried, ‘I’ve missed my train. When is the next?’

  “‘The next, Mr Graham. I’m afraid there isn’t a next till tomorrow morning. This is a branch line, you know.’

  “Jove! how I swore inwardly. After what old Andrews had said to me only that morning, to go and fail again would finally cook my goose. You must remember that it was before the days of motorcars, and, with the fête in progress, the chance of getting a cart to drive me some twelve miles to Ashford was remote – anyway for the fare I could afford to pay.

  “I suppose my agitation showed on my face, for the grey-haired man became quite upset.

  “‘How stupid of me not to have thought of the time,’ he cried. ‘We must think of the best thing to do. I know,’ he said suddenly – ‘you must telegraph your report. Stop the night here and telegraph.’

  “I pointed out to him rather miserably that newspapers did not like the expense of wiring news unless it was important, and that by no stretch of imagination could the Appledore Flower Show be regarded as coming under that category.

  “‘I will pay the cost,’ he insisted, and waved aside my refusal. ‘Mr Graham,’ he said, ‘it was my fault. I am a wealthy man; I would not dream of letting you suffer for my verbosity. You will wire your article, and I shall pay.’”

  The Writer smiled reminiscently.

  “What could have been more charming,” he continued – “what more considerate and courteous? My stupid, half-formed suspicions, which had been growing fainter and fainter as I strolled round the garden with my host, had by this time vanished completely, and when he found me pens, ink, and paper, as they say in the French exercise book, I stammered out my thanks. He cut me short with a smile, and told me to get on with my article. He would send it to the telegraph office, and tell his servants to get a room ready for me. And with another smile he left me alone, and I saw him pottering about the garden outside as I wrote.

  “I don’t know whether it has ever happened to any of you fellows” – the Writer lit a cigarette – “to harbour suspicions which are gradually lulled, only to have them suddenly return with redoubled force. There was I, peacefully writing my account of the Appledore fête, while outside my host, an enthusiastic gardener, as he had told me, pursued his hobby. Could anything have been more commonplace and matter of fact? He was engaged on the roses at the moment, spraying them with some solution, presumably for green fly, and unconsciously I watched him. No, I reflected, it couldn’t be for green fly, because he was only spraying the roots, and even I, though not an expert, knew that green fly occur round the buds. And at that moment I caught a momentary glimpse of the two other men. They were roaring with laughter, and it seemed to me that my host was the cause of the merriment. He looked up and saw them, and the hilarity ceased abruptly. The next moment they had disappeared, and my host was continuing the spraying. He went on industriously for a few minutes, then he crossed the lawn towards the open window of the room where I was writing.

  “‘Nearly finished?’ he asked.

  “‘Very nearly,’ I answered. ‘Green fly bad this year?’

  “‘Green fly?’ he said a little vaguely. ‘Oh! so-so.’

  “‘I thought you must be tackling them on the roses,’ I pursued.

  “‘Er, quite – quite,’ he remarked. ‘Nasty things, aren’t they?’

  “‘Is it a special system of yours to go for the roots?’ I asked.

  “He gave me one searching look, then he laughed mysteriously.

  “‘Ah, ha! my young friend,’ he answered. ‘Don’t you try and get my stable secrets out of me.’

  “And I felt he was lying. Without thinking something made me draw a bow at a venture, and the arrow went home with a vengeance.

  “‘Wonderful delphiniums you’ve got,’ I remarked, leaning out of the window and pointing to a bed underneath.

  “‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m very proud of those.’

  “And the flowers at which I was pointing were irises. So this enthusiastic gardener did not know the difference between a delphinium and an iris. Back in an overwhelming wave came all my suspicions; I knew there was a mystery somewhere. This man wasn’t a gardener; and, if not, why this pretence? I remember now that every time he had drawn my attention to a specimen he had taken the attached label in his hand. Quite unobtrusive it had been, unnoticeable at the time, now it suddenly became significant. Why was he playing th
is part – pretending for my benefit? Futilely spraying the roots of roses, making me miss my train. I was convinced now that that had been part of the plan – but why? Why the telegraphing? Why the invitation to stop the night?

  “The old brain was working pretty quickly by this time. No one, whatever his business, would object to a bona fide journalist writing an account of a fête, and if the business were crooked, the people engaged on it would be the first to speed that journalist on his way. People of that type dislike journalists only one degree less than the police. Then why – why? The answer simply stuck out – they suspected me of not being a journalist, or, even if they did not go as far as that, they were taking no chances on the matter.

  “In fact, I was by this time definitely convinced in my own mind that I had quite unwittingly stumbled into a bunch of criminals, and it struck me that the sooner I stumbled out again the better for my health. So I put my article in my pocket and went to the door. I would wire it off, and I would not return.

  “The first hitch occurred at the door, which had thoughtfully been locked. Not being a hero of fiction, I confess it gave me a nasty shock – that unyielding door. And as I stood there taking a pull at myself I heard the grey-haired man’s voice outside the window: “‘Finished yet, Mr Graham?’

  “I walked across the room, and in as steady a voice as I could muster I mentioned the fact that the door was locked.

  “‘So that you shouldn’t be disturbed, Mr Graham’ – and I thought of the Wolf in ‘Red Riding Hood,’ with his satisfactory answers to all awkward questions.