That bothered the old man’s exit. Ross went too, and she sat alone, wondering where Carston had got to. “He’s up with the bees, honey,” said her nurse. Tell the bees. Nanna did that when one of them died. Which of them was going to die first?
Picus had taken his father’s cup.
Picus had stunted its origin.
Picus had had an idea, or why the book?
Picus had run into small mystifications.
Picus had made love to her.
Picus would not make love again, because they had been found out.
Picus led Clarence a hard life.
No one could go to Picus and say: “So much for your silly devilries.
Meanwhile, Carston had discovered a dormer in the attic roof, and saw her walking the lawns. He stuck his head out, powdered with the shells of dead bees, and called. She ran in and up to the attic door.
“Couldn’t you,” he whispered, “get him over to Tollerdown to look for himself? Get Clarence to take him. That will give us time.”
“Good,” she said, “I’ll go down and try it.” They both saw that the real need was to get rid of the old man. But as she opened Picus’s door, she heard:
“Go over to Tollerdown to satisfy myself. Why? You’ve got it and you can keep it. Would you like to know its history? In India it was the poison-cup of a small rajah I knew. He was poisoned, all the same, drinking out of it. I saw him with a yard of froth bubble coming out of his mouth. Burnt up inside, I believe. I brought it away and gave it to a lady, who was frequently at Tambourne when you were at school. When she contracted tuberculosis she had a fancy for it as a spitting-cup. That is, so far as I know, any interest that attaches to the thing.”
“Your mother drowned herself, didn’t she, Picus?” said Ross, with that impersonal interest in the event which was sometimes too strong an antiseptic, never a poison.
“Yes,” said Clarence.
“You see,” said the old man to his son—“since that is your selection from my collection you may as well know your choice. You know now, and that your efforts to identify it as a mass-cup will hardly succeed.”
“Picus,” said Felix, “it is up to you to tell us if you have this thing.”
“You fool,” said the old man, “I saw him take it, when he thought I was asleep before the fire.”
“What does it matter if he did, when we have none of us seen the thing?”
Picus raised his shoulders out of the sheets:
“Oh, cut that, Felix, when it’s where you put it, downstairs in the bureau drawer.” They noticed the father in the son. Then Scylla’s turn came—“From the bridegroom to the bride. Hardly as propitious as one would like.”
“That is superstitious,” said Ross,—“Scylla’s no bride for any son of yours, and the cup’s bitter history concerns no one but the dead.”
“Why did he pretend it was the cup of the Sanc-Grail?” said the old man.
“How did you pretend he did?” said Ross.
“A snip of an American called Carston told me last night at Starn. Another candidate for your rather second-hand beauties, Scylla—”
“Felix, will you fetch him?” said Ross.
Upstairs, through the bee-roar, Carston heard the boy say:
“So you did give us away last night at Starn!”
“I’m damned if I did. That’s his bluff.” He thought: ‘I knew I’d have to go down. I’m in this. How life arranges itself without our tugging and kicking.’ “Give me a run-over what’s been said.”
“He wants us to have it,” said Felix. “It was a rajah’s poison cup. Jade is supposed to shew poison. Of course, it doesn’t, and the man died. I shouldn’t be surprised if old Tracy hadn’t a hand in it. He brought it back and gave it to a female tart. That was a bad story, because Picus’s mother pined about it, till they found her in the stream beneath old Tracy’s house. Picus was a kid at the time, and he adored her, and the old man had the woman to live with him at Tambourne till she died of t.b., and the cup was one of her belongings. Sort of thing which wouldn’t work out so badly to-day with divorces and fresh air. The old man’s loving it; spotted that Picus has given Scylla the cup.”
“Then why on earth the stunt about the spear and the well?”
“I don’t know— He’s the old man’s son. Come down.”
Carston felt his position false again. Somehow he had given a clue to this hag-driven ancient: he was a little in alliance with him: he protested. Picus’s father said:
“Quite enough, my dear boy, quite enough. You were obviously startled, and I had my theory of what startled you. I’m sure Scylla will forgive you in time, and I must be off now. I’ll leave you your treasure, but I should like my book on the mass-cups back. You see now that it will be quite useless to try and identify it from that.”
