Читать книгу The Gallows of Chance - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 5

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“I never realised that it would have made so much difference,” the woman moaned.

Humphrey Rossiter made no immediate reply. He was seated before his library desk, his chair turned slightly towards the woman who was the only other occupant of the room. Before him was a sheaf of papers marked “REX versus BRANDT,” which he appeared to have been studying. He was still wearing the shooting clothes in which he had left Keynsham, but his appearance generally was dishevelled, and in the green, shaded lamplight his expression was almost ghastly.

“I ought to have told the truth at first,” the woman went on, in a gentler and more collected tone. “Cecil, with all his roughness at times, was terribly sensitive. He loathed the idea of what he called a bedroom drama. I know I shouldn’t have listened to him, but I was half crazy at the time. Does it really make things so very different?”

This time Sir Humphrey answered her. With his forefinger, he tapped the papers in front of him. He looked at her almost incuriously. He had scarcely noticed the fact that she was beautiful. He was conscious only of an immense fatigue.

“The story you have told,” he explained, “would have made all the difference, if told at the time of your husband’s trial. The charge would probably have been reduced to manslaughter. According to the evidence you gave in Court, your husband returned on a Sunday afternoon when you were not expecting him, found Benham there as an ordinary caller waiting to see you in his study. Your husband never minced words and he told Benham that he was not a welcome visitor at any time. The two men quarrelled and your husband killed Benham under circumstances of considerable brutality. The jury quite properly returned a verdict of murder. Now you tell me at the very last moment that Benham was in your bedroom when your husband returned, that the fight took place there, and it was only after Benham had been killed that your husband carried his body down to the study.”

“You don’t think—” she faltered.

“Of course, I don’t,” he interrupted. “I don’t even ask you for any explanation. I daresay it will never be necessary to offer any—”

“But I must tell you just what did happen,” she insisted eagerly. “I was compelled to see Gervase Benham that afternoon. We were to start rehearsing the next day, and there were still two places in the cast to fill. He called, and the servant opened the door to him and showed him into the study in the usual way. Then she came up to announce him and I said ‘all right.’ I was lying down with a headache and I really believe that I dozed off for a little time. I woke up with a start, remembered that he was waiting and tapped on the floor with my foot. That is why he came up.”

“And you told the other story,” Rossiter meditated, “at your husband’s insistence, to prevent scandal. He did not wish it known that he had killed this man Benham in your bedroom.”

“That is what he said,” she assented wearily. “It did not seem to make much difference where it was done—the man was dead, and I was crazy with the horror of it all.”

“Your husband’s point of view, though of course blameworthy, does credit to his sensibility,” Sir Humphrey pronounced. “I always maintained that he was fond of you in his way, and here is the proof of it. If the Press had known that the struggle took place in your bedroom, the whole matter would have been looked at from another angle.”

“I should have risked it,” she said sadly. “I don’t believe any one in the world would have believed that there was anything between me and Gervase Benham. Did you, Humphrey?”

“Of course not,” he answered. “You will forgive me, though, Katherine, if I remind you that we must keep the personal side out of it altogether, during this short conversation. Your visit to me is entirely official. People might have strange things to say under the circumstances if ever any other idea got about.”

“I quite understand,” she murmured. “Anyhow, I have brought you the true story, whether I have to go to prison for it or not. It is not too late, is it?”

“It is not too late,” Sir Humphrey replied; “but why did you wait until now?”

His nervous fingers drummed upon the edge of the desk. He looked into what were supposed to be the most beautiful eyes in London. At that moment they were set and almost glassy. Notwithstanding the warmth of the room, she shivered.

“You must not ask me that,” she begged. “You must not indeed. It came to me suddenly—it might even have been from overhearing a chance conversation—that it might make this great difference. I thought the truth might have leaked out some other way. When the time got so short, I knew then that I had to act. You won’t ask me any more, Humphrey?”

He considered for a moment. It was such a strange position for a man with a scrupulous sense of honour.

“No,” he decided, “I do not think that I need ask you any more.”

“And it is not too late?” she repeated, with a terrible note of wistfulness in her tone.

“It is not too late,” was the firm reply. “I shall feel justified now in arranging for the reprieve. If you had told the truth in the witness box, notwithstanding your husband’s request, it would have been better. Even now it is not too late, though. You can set your mind at rest on that point.”

She rose to her feet. Sir Humphrey was too weary himself to take note of ordinary things, although for a moment he thought it strange that there were no tears in her eyes. She carried her handkerchief crumpled up in her hand like a ball, but it remained dry.

“I am going to send you away now,” he said, touching a button upon his desk. “It may sound very brutal, but I think you must realise that it is best for nothing but official words to pass between us to-night. I am glad that you have come. I am glad that you have given me the opportunity of sparing you the greatest shock of all.”

The butler made his silent approach. Sir Humphrey touched his visitor’s icy cold fingers and patted them with his other hand.

“You can show Mrs. Brandt out, Parkins,” he directed, “and if she hasn’t her car, send for a taxi. Believe me,” he added to her, “I am grateful for your visit.”

She left the room, a silent wraith of a woman, attempting no word of thanks or even of farewell.

Sir Humphrey resumed his seat in his favourite chair before his favourite table in the room which was his greatest solace in life. The window in front of him, across which the dark red curtains were now drawn, looked out on to a pleasant square where there was very little traffic and at certain times of the year a fragrant barricade of flowering limes. But it was, after all, a winter room. There were very few law books or parliamentary records amongst the volumes with which the walls were lined. There were books of sport, of poetry, of classical fiction, or biography, historical works—the mental playground of a man with cultivated tastes. The furniture was massive but comfortable, and Parkins saw to it that there were always plenty of flowers. It was here that Humphrey Rossiter considered the problems of his own day-by-day existence. In other places, in Whitehall and Westminster, he did his life’s work. As a rule to sit in that chair, to feel himself steeped in the atmosphere he loved, was sufficient to rest his overtired brain, to bring him relief from any crisis. To-night the charm failed. Continually his hand was creeping up to his neck. He fancied that the smell of hemp was always in his nostrils. He heard the hammering, felt again the horror of that gruesome pageant. Impossible though it might seem, he knew that he had been on the point of death. Not death alone, but the terrible and sordid extinction of what was really a great career. The horror of it was unrealisable. It was there now at the back of his brain. It was there in those shivering fits, which he was always trying to control, the tired twitching of his limbs, the fluttering pain which kept on coming and going. He thought even with satisfaction of the sleeping draught recently prescribed which he would find in his bedroom.... Where was he? He sat up with a start. Was it sleep, or what was it which had nearly stolen his senses away? He tried to remember why he was seated there and his eyes fell upon the pile of documents. REX versus BRANDT. Why, of course, there was work to be done before he went to bed. He reached out for the telephone.

“Give me the night exchange of Wandsworth Prison,” he directed. “Official.”

He suddenly began to tremble. He had been holding the receiver in his hand a moment ago. Now it was lying upon the floor. Some one else had been speaking. It could not have been his voice—those strange, quavering tones, the half-finished sentence. And the room—the room was full of mist. It was spinning round. His neck! He grasped at it frantically. The rope was there again. After all, he had not escaped. They were going to hang him in that awful place. He was slipping—already slipping from his chair. Below him was that awful cellar....

They found him later, lying upon the carpet.

When he opened his eyes, a nurse flitted to the bedside. She smiled at him cheerfully and called out to an elderly man who was seated at the table, writing. He came over at once and Sir Humphrey recognised his doctor.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Have I been ill?”

“Something like it,” the other admitted. “You are going to be all right, though. I warned you that you were run down, you know, before you went on that shooting visit. You will have to rest now.”

Sir Humphrey’s fingers were playing nervously with his forehead. They lingered around his throat. Hemp! Why was that horrible odour in his nostrils? Why was the doctor wearing something white over his face? He was standing on the edge of something. What was it? There were other people in the room, fading away and coming again—a man with a cruel voice. There was something he had to do, something on his mind.... Suddenly his cry rang through the room. He raised himself fiercely in bed and gripped at the arm of the doctor who was leaning over him.

“What time is it?” he demanded harshly. “How long have I been here?”

The doctor pushed him back, for with a sudden access of strength he was already halfway out of the bed.

“What time is it?” he groaned. “Tell me.”

“It is four o’clock in the afternoon,” the physician said soothingly. “It was midnight when they sent for me and we brought you up here at once. Do be a good fellow and lie down.”

“Oh, my God!” Rossiter moaned. “Brandt—that man Brandt. He was to have been hanged at eight o’clock.”

The doctor nodded gravely.

“I saw it in the early editions,” he confided. “Brandt was hung, all right, at Wandsworth Prison.”

Then once more everything faded away. They had him this time, all right. A black sea of horror seemed to close over his head. He felt himself sinking through space. Unconsciousness was a blessed relief.