Читать книгу The Gallows of Chance - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 6

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Along Piccadilly and Pall Mall, across Trafalgar Square and down the Strand a slowly driven limousine was making leisurely progress in the dusk of a February afternoon. Its occupant sat back as far as possible in the car with folded arms, his hat pulled forward over his eyes, his general air being that of one who desires to escape observation. He looked like a man who had been near the grave, as indeed he had. He had also the expression of one driving to his own funeral, as indeed was allegorically the case. The Right Honourable Sir Humphrey Rossiter was about to call upon the woman whose husband he had sent to the scaffold.

The rain pattering against the windows was rather a relief than otherwise, for it aided the seclusion which he sought. It was not until the door of the car was thrown open by the blue-coated commissionaire outside the Savoy Court that he became a visible person. All London knew him from photographs, caricatures and from the days when he himself was a figure in Society and a constant diner-out. Hats were raised, polite speeches embarked upon, even during those few seconds when he stepped across the pavement and rang the bell for the lift. No one, however, directly addressed him. A well-known journalist, who had just paid a visit to an American film star, stepped forward, then thought better of it. Every one knew that Katherine Brandt lived in the Savoy Court, and a good many realised that he was on his way to visit her.

The lift man made bold to express his pleasure at seeing Sir Humphrey about again, and the latter acknowledged his kindly speech with a nod and a very faint smile. He had preserved his good looks through his illness, but he was still gaunt and pallid. His throat seemed to have fallen away—he had the air of a man who had looked at death. The lift man brought him exactly to the level of the fourth floor and, stepping across the carpeted way, rang the bell at the number for which he had asked. The door was opened almost at once by a maid in quiet, dark clothes. He had no need to ask any question. She took his coat and hat and he followed her into the sitting room....

Katherine Brandt rose impulsively to her feet, from the depths of the easy-chair in which she had been seated, and held out both her hands. She had been wondering for days how she would meet him and had decided to leave it to chance. In the end they were both perfectly natural.

“Humphrey,” she said, “I have been living in the shadow of tragedy and so have you. It is time our wills came to work. I am reading light novels and translating two plays from the French. In a week or two I am going over to Cannes. As a matter of fact, I am only here now because I had made up my mind that I would not leave London without seeing you.”

“That was very kind,” he murmured, still holding her hands.

“It was not really kindness,” she insisted, and he could not fail to notice that she was an altered woman since that night when she had sat at the other side of his writing table and told her story. “It was not really kindness,” she repeated. “It was just a passionate desire to get this thing over. There are two men dead—one very unjustly—and you and I who are living have suffered agonies as great as anything they could have suffered. I am very sorry for poor Gervase Benham and I am very sorry for Cecil, but the world belongs to the living, Humphrey. It belongs to us. We cheat ourselves and we cheat God when we wrap this cloak of misery around us because of the past,—the past which no one can alter. After all, there are many other unhappy people in the world, only our unhappiness has been frothed up with melodrama.... You will have tea, won’t you? I will order it and get that over.”

She touched a bell and then she saw to it that he had a comfortable chair.

“Of course you understood,” he began, “what happened? Doctor Standish came to see you?”

“I understood perfectly,” she assured him.

“I sat before the telephone, I had even called the number,” he recounted. “I had been feeling ill. The past month had been one of great anxiety and even on that very night I had had a great shock. I never dreamed, though, that any crisis in my health was so near at hand, or I would have sent for the Prime Minister, or some one who could have taken things over. I had my recommendations all ready and the telephone receiver in my hand. Suddenly I felt the room sway and I remember nothing until four o’clock the next afternoon.”

“It was a strange tragedy,” she reflected, “but perhaps I can make you feel a little better about it. I have something to tell you.”

“Yes?”

She poured out his tea. He watched her, fascinated. Life had returned to her. There was even colour in her cheeks. The beautiful dark gold of her hair had never seemed so glossy, her eyes, blue enough to appear almost violet, were soft and brilliant.

“I’ll tell you what I think would be best,” she said. “Here we are—two people who should know each other, because we have been and always will be friends. We may as well look the facts in the face. If one could mention the word humour in connection with our present plight, it would be a strange thought for the world to know that one of the only men I have ever cared for was the man who in Cecil’s last days held the power of life or death in his hands. That, I know, was what made it so terrible for you.”

She spoke no longer in a dreary monotone as she had done six weeks ago in the library. She might almost have been speaking of other people. She was intensely vital. He felt the life creeping back into his own veins, felt that there had been something morbid about his state.

“Now I want you to listen carefully,” she went on. “That afternoon Gervase Benham absolutely had to see me about the casting of our new play. I told him to come round to the flat. I must say that I was glad Cecil was supposed to be out of town until Monday morning, because he was, as every one knew, insanely jealous about any one connected with the theatre. I had a bad headache and was lying down on the couch before the fire. The maid came and told me that Gervase had called. I nodded and said that I would be down in a few minutes. She asked me then if I wished her to remain in to make tea. Well, it was her Sunday out, I didn’t want any tea and I knew Gervase preferred whisky and soda, so I told her that she could go. Forbes, the butler, and his wife had already left directly after luncheon, and my own maid always had Sunday afternoons and evenings off. We kept up a very small establishment really, because we couldn’t make up our minds where to buy a house, and it was not at all unusual for me to be alone, if by any chance I was in town. The girl went away, and I imagine she left the flat in a few minutes. I felt simply too lazy to get up, so I knocked with my heel upon the carpet, hoping Gervase would understand that he could come up. You know, we don’t think so much of these things in my profession, and my bedroom was very large and furnished almost as a sitting room. As a matter of fact, though, Gervase had never been in it. I explained that I was very tired and commenced to discuss the matter he came to see me about, he standing upon the hearthrug—and you know what happened. Cecil, who, it seems, had been watching the house, burst in. He wouldn’t listen to a word from either of us. There are some details I have wiped out from my mind, because unless I destroyed the very germs of the memory, I should lose control of myself. He killed Gervase there and then brutally. We both knew that Gervase was dead. I had been shrieking all the time, trying to get help, but of course doing no good. After it was all over, Cecil was cooler than I have ever seen him. I have known him more agitated and upset when the soup had come in cold.

“ ‘I am not going to have him found in your room,’ he said to me.

“ ‘What are you going to do about it, then?’ I asked.

“ ‘I am going to take him down to my study,’ he replied, ‘and, listen to me. If ever you tell a single soul that it was in your room I killed him, I will come back from the grave and treat you the same way.’ That is the sort of man Cecil was, and that is what he said to me. He carried Gervase into the study quite easily, arranged him cunningly in a natural attitude, telephoned for the police and confessed that a man had come to see him whom he very much disliked, that they had quarrelled and that he had killed him. Don’t shiver, Humphrey. You practically knew all this. Now I am going to add something.”

“There is something else I very much want to know,” Sir Humphrey admitted.

“You are going to know it,” she promised him. “I was allowed to see him just before the end. I am going over this quickly. He had only one thing to say to me—‘If ever you tell where I killed Gervase Benham,’ he threatened, ‘you will disobey my dying wish, and if they try to keep me in foul penal servitude, I will break out, whomever I have to murder, and I will come back to you.’ ”

“God!” Sir Humphrey muttered. “You mean he wanted to die, then?”

“He preferred death to penal servitude. Now you know. He didn’t want his reprieve. He didn’t want to live. For some reason or other, he was afraid to live. I daresay no doctor could ever have found it out, but there are many forms of madness, and Cecil was as mad as the maddest lunatic in any asylum. I honestly believe, Humphrey,” she concluded, leaning a little towards him and taking one of his hands in hers, “that if your illness had not come upon you as it did, and you had signed that reprieve, worse tragedies might have happened.”

Sir Humphrey drew a long breath. Katherine’s words had been like an inspiration. To him also seemed to have come some return of vigour, a keener appetite for life.

“This is the end of one of the greatest tragedies through which two people could ever have passed,” she murmured. “You believe all that I have said—I mean that you follow me and understand it?”

“Absolutely,” he assured her.

“Then listen to the summing up,” she went on, with a smile. “You have a wonderful brain and a tremendous amount of will power. The whole world knows that. At the same time, you are highly sensitive, and yours is not the sensitiveness of overwrought nerves and vanity, like Cecil’s was. You know perfectly well that the sensitiveness must be lived down. You have a great career and you must go on with it, for your own sake and for mine, because it would make me miserable to know that disaster had come to you on my account.”

He made a little movement towards her and she saw the grateful light in his eyes. There was all the spirit of response in her swift smile.

“Dear Humphrey,” she said, “I know exactly what is at the back of your mind. You feel that the tragedy of Cecil’s death was your fault, and you are filled with a spirit of self-immolation. Just now we are too overwrought. We must be ourselves again before we yield to emotions like these.... Now I am going to ring for your favourite afternoon whisky and soda—push that tea away—and you are going to sit down and be quite natural and talk. Tell me your plans for the future and forget the past. Why not smoke? I have some wonderful cigarettes.”

He lit one.

“The first since my illness,” he confided, “and I thought myself an inveterate smoker. Katherine, for the present I shall accept your point of view. You are, as I always knew you were, one of the most wonderful women in the world. I am not going to be behind you in this time of crisis. I will push the horror away, but before we dismiss it, I must ask you one question.”

“Ask me anything you will,” she begged.

It seemed, as he sat there, as though the lines deepened in his face. Once again he was sensing those moments of terror. His voice became almost metallic.

“Have you any idea,” he asked, “what happened to me on the way up from Norfolk that night?”

“What happened to you,” she repeated fearfully. “What do you mean?”

Her magnificent fortitude had gone. She was a changed woman—the terrifying ghost of a woman who had leaned across his desk with twitching fingers and horrified eyes, telling her story to him on that awful night. She was an actress, but there had come a time when she could not act. She was frightened.

“What I am going to tell you will sound like melodrama,” he said gravely, “but it is the truth. I fell into the hands of a band of men who honestly, I believe, meant putting me out of the way in horrible fashion unless I promised to sign a reprieve for Cecil.”

“Don’t tell me any more about it,” she cried. “Hadn’t I been through it all before? I don’t want to hear. I refused at first, but I telephoned—I promised to go to you—I swore that I would get the reprieve, that you would give it to me when I told the truth.”

“Then you saved my life,” he acknowledged. “I very nearly lost my reason, but you saved my life.”

“Forget it,” she begged feverishly. “Do forget it. I broke my word to Cecil for that reason, and for that reason only. Your life was too precious a thing.”

He sat a little more upright in his chair.

“Who were those people?” he asked, and already his eyes were harder and there was a touch of the official in his tone.

The entrance of the waiter, the business of serving him with whisky and soda and pouring her own cocktail gave her a few minutes’ respite. When the waiter had finally gone, she was still a shaken woman, but she had recovered a measure of her poise.

“Humphrey,” she said, and this time she came near to him and for the moment touched his shoulder with her fingers, “you know that I have a great affection for you and always have had. Anything in the world that was possible I would do for you. Do not ask me impossibilities. I know nothing about that business—nothing. I want to forget it. It is part of the hideous past. I will not look back.”

He reclined in his chair, drinking his whisky and soda with obvious enjoyment, thoughtful and tolerant, somehow feeling that he himself had been reprieved. He was becoming himself again. The pleasant little wrinkles at the corners of his eyes had reëstablished themselves, the slight frown upon his fine forehead had nothing in it save of the intellectual. One felt that a live brain was at work upon a live problem.

“I don’t know that I can blame you, Katherine,” he conceded, “for trying to wipe out altogether the memory of everything that has happened. I am not sure, though, that it is quite possible. You must not forget that I have an official position, and it is my duty to find out who those lawbreakers were, or resign. I look to you to help me.”

“I cannot do that,” she cried passionately. “I know nothing. Leave it alone, Humphrey. No one was hurt. Forget it.”

“I am convinced,” he told her impressively, “that they meant murder and murder of a peculiarly noxious type. They gave me a shock, the memory of which I shall never forget so long as I live. It is a very grave offence indeed, Katherine, to try to tamper with the administration of the law.”

She suddenly rose once more, crossed the hearthrug, and fell on her knees by his side, took his head between her hands and kissed him on either cheek. It appeared like a spontaneous outburst of light-heartedness, but there was a note of hysteria which jangled. Her fingers burned upon his flesh.

“You old dear,” she exclaimed, “I am so glad they made you Home Secretary. You would have been an awful bore as a judge! Don’t be so terribly serious, please, and don’t bother your head any more about things that are done with. Just sit down and get well and start work again. All the papers say how you have been missed. Besides, you have my interests to look after now. You have no time for any more complications.”

He smiled.

“What a slave driver you are!” he remarked. “I was rather thinking that I ought to resign my post and come to Cannes with you!”

“You will do nothing of the sort,” she admonished him. “I have remained an honest woman through many temptations, and when I go to Cannes with you or any other man, I am going as his wife. All the same, I am in favour of a holiday for you later on. You need it, you poor man, and Cannes is always there.”

“I felt so when I got up this morning,” he confessed. “This is actually my first excursion into the outside world, and though I wanted to see you so much, I rather dreaded it. I see now that I was foolish. Although I have found you wickedly obstinate, I have also found you the most wonderful tonic in the world. I am going to send my doctor packing and get back into harness again. When can we have dinner together?”

She considered the matter for a moment, sipping her cocktail, enjoying the warmth of the fire, light-hearted again, almost happy at the signs of the loosening up of that tension in his face. She was watching the man reborn. His self-confidence was reëstablished. Already the terror was slipping away into the background of his thoughts. There it must remain until it was finally buried.

“Can it be the day after to-morrow?” she suggested. “I am always lonely on a Sunday night. Not a restaurant, of course; and you and I alone. Here or at your house?”

“At my house,” he begged, “at eight o’clock—earlier, if you like. I want to make the evening as long as possible and I’m packed off to bed at eleven.”

“I will be with you at eight,” she promised, “and I will tell you then what they want me to do in the spring. I have a wonderful offer from America. You had better give up being a Cabinet Minister and be my agent, Humphrey!”

“I have no doubt I should be better off,” he remarked. “I used to be rather good at theatrical contracts when I was a struggling man of law....”

He rose presently to make his farewell and she walked with him to the door. All the time he felt that her eyes were searching his—there was something which she wanted him to say. Her happiness glowed and faded. In her last words she showed it. There was fear still in her heart.

“You won’t think anything more of that nightmare, Humphrey?” she begged. “You won’t open up all this miserable business again?”

He kissed her fingers which he drew gently from his arm. He disregarded, however, the burning enquiry of her eyes.

“I can’t be drawn into rash promises,” he said lightly. “You must give me time to get my bearings.”