Читать книгу The Law of the Land - Fred M. White - Страница 5

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The deed was done, done beyond recall. It seemed to Ralph as if he had been the victim of some hypnotic force. Surely, with his own hand, he had never struck a fellow creature down like that! And there had been no provocation, no battling of one life against an other, no mere struggle for existence. It seemed impossible—but there it was.

And all in the twinkling of an eye. A red patch had blazed and burned before him. As to the rest, he could not speak definitely. He could feel the handle of the paper-knife in his grasp, a grasp so painful that the flesh of his palm was bruised. There was crimson on his right hand, dull glowing patches like carbuncles on the shining surface of the dining table. On the carpet, Stephen Holt lay stretched at length, face downwards, his hands flung over his head. A great band of crimson stained the delicate cream and gold and blue of the priceless Persian carpet; there were specks of horrid red on the great bowl of tea roses on the table. All those minute details Ralph noticed with an astounding grasp of little things. As a writer he had always had an eye for details, but never was that faculty more keenly developed than now. Ralph wondered at his own calmness. As he stood there he could feel his heart beating with normal regularity.

He bent over the dreadful thing lying on the floor, the dull husk of what had been a palpitating human being a few moments before. Stephen Holt was dead. There was not the faintest pulsation; the hands were already turning to a clammy blue. The murderer had no delusion on that score. Stephen Holt was dead.

And he, Ralph, a murderer. He started as the thought came home to him. A cold-blooded, wilful, and deliberate murderer. That is what the jury would say. And he would not have even one single plea in self-defence. He could not drag Enid's name into this horrible business; he could only say that Stephen Holt had come to blackmail him. There were no signs of a struggle, no suggestion of a quarrel and mutual violence. So far as Ralph could see, there was no incriminating evidence.

He would be taken to the place from whence he came and hanged by the neck till he was dead. Ralph had heard those dreaded words fall from the lips of a Judge once, and had never forgotten them nor their effect on a crowded court. And now he would stand in the dock and hear another judge say the same thing—to him! It sounded incredible.

A few minutes ago he had been one of the happiest men alive. It seemed deplorable that he should have everything and suffer like this for such a creature as Stephen Holt. He was better dead than alive; Ralph had done the State some service after all. And nobody knew that Holt had been there; he had crept into the house like a thief in the night. Nobody could know that he had come to Abbey Close; nobody had seen him leave the railway train at the Junction. If he were missed, it might be assumed that he had fallen out of the carriage. By this time his portmanteau had reached the London terminus. Ralph was listening to the honied voice of temptation now. Nobody had been near to see the tragedy. The whole house was perfectly still. And down at the foot of the garden was a deep lake that would for ever hold its ghastly secret. It was only necessary to drag the body there and fill the pockets of the dead man with stones. . . . . . .

Ralph bent over the prostrate figure. But he could not touch it. His impulse was to scream—the hysterical scream of a frightened woman. Besides there was the hideous crimson pool on the carpet, which would have to be accounted for. That priceless carpet could not be changed, or cleaned, or spirited away. There were the red spots on the tea roses, but they did not matter much.

No, that idea would have to be abandoned. Surely there was some other way? What was the use of being a creative novelist if he could not devise a way out of a situation like this? Thee great idea of sensational fiction was to find the way of safety for the hero, and Ralph had cultivated this line with distinct success. But somehow in fiction the thing seemed different—then facts could be fitted to the situation, here the situation was inviolate. A score of schemes rushed through Ralph's mind.

Finally it came to him, he would do nothing. He would go to bed and leave the window open. It would be an easy matter to fill the pockets of the dead man with little art treasures, and leave him there to be found by the servants in the morning. The inference might be that there were two burglars, and that they had quarrelled. A poor story, but in the circumstances the best that Ralph could invent.

Ralph was himself again by this time; he was even conscious of a certain indignation. He might have rung the bell and summoned the household to hear that he had killed a man in self-defence. But Ralph was as poor an actor as authors generally are, and shrank from the make-believe of it. He did not realise that his acting powers would be more severely taxed by his adopted scheme. But he made up his mind to go through with it now; nobody should know, and he would marry Enid and live happily ever afterwards. His mind was beginning to move more rapidly. To be quite safe he must go to bed. He extinguished the lights, purposely leaving open the window by which Holt had entered. He crept up the stairs and along the corridor. A silt of light from one of the doors attracted his attention. He could just see into Barca's room. The latter had removed his dress-coat and vest and had assumed a workmanlike apron. A prettily shaded lamp was on a side table, and under it Barca was doing something mysterious with liquids and a pair of test-tubes. He appeared to be engrossed in his labours.

A sudden thought came to Ralph. He slipped quietly along to his room and took off his clothes. Then he slipped into his pyjamas and rumpled his hair. After that he walked down the lobby till he came to Barca's room. Without hesitation he flung open the door, rubbed his eyes, and yawned.

"Not gone to bed!" he exclaimed. "Very busy?"

"I thought you had not come upstairs yet," Barca suggested.

"Been up a long time," Ralph replied. He was surprised to find how readily the lie came to his lips. "Fact is, I followed you up. I suppose I must have been asleep an hour when I thought I heard a voice downstairs. I came to investigate, and found your door open. Did you hear anything?"

Barca replied quite gravely that he had heard nothing. He had just broken a test tube, and perhaps that sound had disturbed Ralph. Barca appeared to be engrossed in his work, and did not once look at his companion. Ralph was grateful for that.

He had made up his mind what to do now, he could see it through to the end. He ought to have gone back to bed, but feared the silence of the night. It would be broad daylight at 4 o'clock, but it wanted three hours for that time. And to lie tossing in the darkness with that stark body lying below was more than Ralph could bear.

"How long are you going to be over that experiment?" he asked. Barca shrugged his shoulders, but did not look up.

"I can't say," he explained. "Perhaps an hour, perhaps all night. When once I get fascinated, I pay no heed to the flight of time. I have worked for 40 hours at a stretch without food or rest. You see that spot of liquid at the bottom of the tube? That is a new kind of acid. It is wonderful stuff; it will take stains, what are called indelible stains, out of anything, and never hurt the fabric a bit."

"Useful in case of crime," said Ralph with a shudder. He was thinking of the great purple patch on the Persian carpet. "I was speaking of forgery and the like. Could you remove the writing on a cheque without destroying the water-mark?"

"Quite easily," Barca said in the same level tone of voice. "The murderer need not fear the tell-tale stain of blood with this in his possession. And it permeates. A few spots sprinkled on a packet of letters, for instance, would in a short time leave all the sheets blank. Your letters to Kate Lingen, for instance."

The suggestion fairly startled Ralph. It so nearly touched the tragedy downstairs that he could feel the rapid beating of his heart. His guilty conscience asked him if Barca knew anything. But that was almost impossible; the remark was a mere coincidence. And Barca had not looked up; he was going on with his work with the same stolid, painstaking gravity.

"Those letters are destroyed," Ralph said coldly. "Kate told me so. And, in any case, she could gain nothing by keeping them."

"Except for purposes of revenge," said Barca, meaningly. "In case you get engaged—"

Again there was the subtle suggestion that Barca knew something.

There was a note of warning in his voice that Ralph could not wholly ignore. He would have liked to challenge the speaker, but Barca refused to look up. He gave Ralph the impression that he was merely talking for the sake of politeness.

"I am engaged," Ralph said, as if accepting the challenge. "I am going to marry Miss Enid Charteris, of Charteris Park. If you think that I have anything to fear—"

"My dear fellow, I did not say so. I merely suggested the possibility of it. 'Revenge is sweet, especially to woman,' as Byron says. Knowing something of your temperament, I should say that your letters were by no moans deficient of what another poet calls 'purple patches.' They might make a pretty wedding present for your bride. It would be by no moans the first instance of the kind."

"In that case I should have to procure some of your wonderful acid," Ralph laughed. The feeling that he could laugh startled, him. "If you could spare enough—"

Barca smiled in his peculiar way, though he did not look Ralph quickly and squarely in the face as he generally did. As a rule, Barca's eyes were notes of interrogation, and when he met a stranger he flashed his dark glance over him like the rays of a searchlight, and from that moment appeared to understand the other thoroughly. But now he was bending over his tubes as if he had no thought for anything else. It was some time before he spoke.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," he said in an absent kind of way. "Upon my word, I am so engrossed in what I am doing that I had forgotten your presence altogether. You were saying something to me about the acid, weren't you?"

"I was," Ralph replied. "I am interested in what you were saying, and I was wondering whether you could let me have a small quantity?"

"What do you want it for?" Barca asked.

"It occurred to me that I might make use of this stuff by bringing it into a story that I have had in my mind. You wouldn't understand—"

"I think I should," Barca responded, with his eyes still bent upon the tubes. "The story would have to be something sensational, I suppose? For instance, let us assume that there is a body in the story. It is necessary to get rid of the body and also the bloodstains left behind. Have I got any sort of grip on the plot of your new romance?"

"Something like that," Ralph said. He was fairly startled by Barca's words. "Can you let me have some of the stuff?"

"Not at present. That spot is all I have; enough to treat a square inch or two, perhaps. It will be weeks before I can manufacture it in bulk. In any case, you will have to submit to the tender mercies of Kate Lingen. She has the face and smile of an angel, the blue eyes of an innocent child, and the air of unsullied purity. And yet there is not a more cold-blooded, designing wretch on the face of the earth. There are men who would die for one of her smiles, or commit any crime for a touch of her lips. And yet she would, care nothing; in fact, nothing after—"

Barca paused and turned aside with a hard laugh. For the moment the pulsating intensity of his passion had startled Ralph. He had never seen the cold and self-centered man of science moved in this way before. He had never heard his voice throb with emotion.

"Do you hate her as much as that?" Ralph asked. Barca laughed again, this time more gently. His hands were steady once more.

"You are a clever man," he said. "Your boast is that you have a subtle interest where humanity and the moving strings of life are concerned. But you are as blind as the rest. And all this money comes to you who will use it to educate your children in the stereotyped way, and entertain your thick-headed neighbours to dinner! Whereas if it belonged to me—but go to bed. You are sadly interfering with the train of my thoughts. But there is no accounting for what a man in love will do. Ask me again in a week's time, and perhaps by then I shall be in a position to give you the thing that you require."

Ralph still lingered, although he could see plainly that Barca wanted to get rid of him, and all the time his mind was tortured by the feeling that Barca knew more than he cared to disclose. As his mind reviewed the lurid and tragic event of an hour ago, he began to see the surroundings more clearly. He recollected now that his quarrel with Holt had not been conducted in whispers. The house was very quiet, and it was possible that some of the sounds of strife had carried as far as Barca's room.

And yet nothing could be gathered from the scientist's sphinx-like face. He was going on with his experiments as if he had forgotten the presence of his companion.

"Still here," he said, by-and-by. "Are you working out another romance? Because, if you are, I can give you as much material as you want. Do you know that I could toll you no less than five different ways of poisoning a person without the slightest trace of foul play being discovered? What do you think of that for a power in the hands of a poor man like myself? But you are not listening to what I am saying, and you are taking up a great deal of my valuable time. It is not a nice thing to tell a man to go to bed in his own house, and I hope the hint will be sufficient."

Ralph laughed in a dreary kind of way. He slowly made his way towards the door. He had perhaps never disliked Barca quite so much as he did at that moment, but human companionship, however detestable, was bettor than solitude.

"Very good," he said. "I am really going now. Good-night."