The Best Crime Stories Ever Told (42 page)

Alice Arne smiled, and balanced the objects she was holding. He motioned her to pour out the liquid from one to the other, but she took no heed; she was listening with all her ears. It was the nearest approach to the language of compliment, to anything in the way of loverlike personalities that she had heard fall from his lips since his illness. He went on, becoming as it were lukewarm to his subject—

“But the worst of it is that once break the cord that links you to humanity—it can’t be mended. Man doesn’t live by bread alone . . . or lives to disappoint you. What am I to you, without my own poor personality? . . . Don’t stare so, Alice! I haven’t talked so much or so intimately for ages, have I? Let me try and have it out. . . . Are you in any sort of hurry?”

“No, Edward.”

“Pour that stuff out and have done. . . . Well, Alice, it’s a queer feeling, I tell you. One goes about with one’s looks on the ground, like a man who eyes the bed he is going to lie down in, and longs for. Alice, the crust of the earth seems a barrier between me and my own place. I want to scratch the boardings with my nails and shriek something like this: ‘Let me get down to you all, there where I belong!’ It’s a horrible sensation, like a vampire reversed! . . .”

“Is that why you insisted on having this room in the basement?” she asked breathlessly.

“Yes, I can’t bear being upstairs, somehow. Here, with these barred windows and stone-cold floors . . . I can see the people’s feet walking above there in the street . . . one has some sort of illusion . . .”

“Oh!” She shivered and her eyes travelled like those of a caged creature round the bare room and fluttered when they rested on the sombre windows imperiously barred. She dropped her gaze to the stone flags that showed beyond the oasis of Turkey carpet on which Arne’s chair stood. . . .

Then to the door, the door that she had closed on entering. It had heavy bolts, but they were not drawn against her, though by the look of her eyes it seemed she half imagined they were. . . .

She made a step forward and moved her hands slightly. She looked down on them and what they held . . . then changed the relative positions of the two objects and held the bottle over the glass. . . .

“Yes, come along!” her husband said. “Are you going to be all day giving it me?”

With a jerk, she poured the liquid out into a glass and handed it to him. She looked away—towards the door. . . .

“Ah, your way of escape!” said he, following her eyes. Then he drank, painstakingly.

The empty bottle fell out of her hands. She wrung them, murmuring—

“Oh, if I had only known!”

“Known what? That I should go near to cursing you for bringing me back?”

He fixed his cold eyes on her, as the liquid passed slowly over his tongue.

“—Or that you would end by taking back the gift you gave?”

W. W. JACOBS

T
wo men stood in the billiard-room of an old country house, talking. Play, which had been of a half-hearted nature, was over, and they sat at the open window, looking out over the park stretching away beneath them, conversing idly.

“Your time’s nearly up, Jem,” said one at length, “this time six weeks you’ll be yawning out the honeymoon and cursing the man—woman I mean—who invented them.”

Jem Benson stretched his long limbs in the chair and grunted in dissent.

“I’ve never understood it,” continued Wilfred Carr, yawning. “It’s not in my line at all; I never had enough money for my own wants, let alone for two. Perhaps if I were as rich as you or Croesus I might regard it differently.”

There was just sufficient meaning in the latter part of the remark for his cousin to forbear to reply to it. He continued to gaze out of the window and to smoke slowly.

“Not being as rich as Croesus—or you,” resumed Carr, regarding him from beneath lowered lids, “I paddle my own canoe down the stream of Time, and, tying it to my friends’ door-posts, go in to eat their dinners.”

“Quite Venetian,” said Jem Benson, still looking out of the window. “It’s not a bad thing for you, Wilfred, that you have the doorposts and dinners—and friends.”

Mr. Carr grunted in his turn. “Seriously though, Jem,” he said, slowly, “you’re a lucky fellow, a very lucky fellow. If there is a better girl above ground than Olive, I should like to see her.”

“Yes,” said the other, quietly.

“She’s such an exceptional girl,” continued Carr, staring out of the window. “She’s so good and gentle. She thinks you are a bundle of all the virtues.”

He laughed frankly and joyously, but the other man did not join him.

“Strong sense—of right and wrong, though,” continued Carr, musingly. “Do you know, I believe that if she found out that you were not—”

“Not what?” demanded Benson, turning upon him fiercely. “Not what?”

“Everything that you are,” returned his cousin, with a grin that belied his words. “I believe she’d drop you.”

“Talk about something else,” said Benson, slowly; “your pleasantries are not always in the best taste.”

Wilfred Carr rose and taking a cue from the rack, bent over the board and practiced one or two favourite shots. “The only other subject I can talk about just at present is my own financial affairs,” he said slowly, as he walked round the table.

“Talk about something else,” said Benson again, bluntly.

“And the two things are connected,” said Carr, and dropping his cue he half sat on the table and eyed his cousin.

There was a long silence. Benson pitched the end of his cigar out of the window, and leaning back closed his eyes.

“Do you follow me?” inquired Carr at length.

Benson opened his eyes and nodded at the window.

“Do you want to follow my cigar?” he demanded.

“I should prefer to depart by the usual way for your sake,” returned the other, unabashed. “If I left by the window all sorts of questions would be asked, and you know what a talkative chap I am.”

“So long as you don’t talk about my affairs,” returned the other, restraining himself by an obvious effort, “you can talk yourself hoarse.”

“I’m in a mess,” said Carr, slowly, “a devil of a mess. If I don’t raise fifteen hundred by this day fortnight, I may be getting my board and lodging free.”

“Would that be any change?” questioned Benson.

“The quality would,” retorted the other. “The address also would not be good. Seriously, Jem, will you let me have the fifteen hundred?”

“No,” said the other, simply.

Carr went white. “It’s to save me from ruin,” he said, thickly.

“I’ve helped you till I’m tired,” said Benson, turning and regarding him, “and it is all to no good. If you’ve got into a mess, get out of it. You should not be so fond of giving autographs away.”

“It’s foolish, I admit,” said Carr, deliberately. “I won’t do so any more. By the way, I’ve got some to sell. You needn’t sneer. They’re not my own.”

“Whose are they?” inquired the other.

“Yours.”

Benson got up from his chair and crossed over to him. “What is this?” he asked, quietly. “Blackmail?”

“Call it what you like,” said Carr. “I’ve got some letters for sale, price fifteen hundred. And I know a man who would buy them at that price for the mere chance of getting Olive from you. I’ll give you first offer.”

“If you have got any letters bearing my signature, you will be good enough to give them to me,” said Benson, very slowly.

“They’re mine,” said Carr, lightly; “given to me by the lady you wrote them to. I must say that they are not all in the best possible taste.”

His cousin reached forward suddenly, and catching him by the collar of his coat pinned him down on the table.

“Give me those letters,” he breathed, sticking his face close to Carr’s.

“They’re not here,” said Carr, struggling. “I’m not a fool. Let me go, or I’ll raise the price.”

The other man raised him from the table in his powerful hands, apparently with the intention of dashing his head against it. Then suddenly his hold relaxed as an astonished-looking maid-servant entered the room with letters. Carr sat up hastily.

“That’s how it was done,” said Benson, for the girl’s benefit as he took the letters.

“I don’t wonder at the other man making him pay for it, then,” said Carr, blandly.

“You will give me those letters?” said Benson, suggestively, as the girl left the room.

“At the price I mentioned, yes,” said Carr; “but so sure as I am a living man, if you lay your clumsy hands on me again, I’ll double it. Now, I’ll leave you for a time while you think it over.”

He took a cigar from the box and lighting it carefully quitted the room. His cousin waited until the door had closed behind him, and then turning to the window sat there in a fit of fury as silent as it was terrible.

The air was fresh and sweet from the park, heavy with the scent of new-mown grass. The fragrance of a cigar was now added to it, and glancing out he saw his cousin pacing slowly by. He rose and went to the door, and then, apparently altering his mind, he returned to the window and watched the figure of his cousin as it moved slowly away into the moonlight. Then he rose again, and, for a long time, the room was empty.

It was empty when Mrs. Benson came in some time later to say good-night to her son on her way to bed. She walked slowly round the table, and pausing at the window gazed from it in idle thought, until she saw the figure of her son advancing with rapid strides toward the house. He looked up at the window.

“Good-night,” said she.

“Good-night,” said Benson, in a deep voice.

“Where is Wilfred?”

“Oh, he has gone,” said Benson.

“Gone?”

“We had a few words; he was wanting money again, and I gave him a piece of my mind. I don’t think we shall see him again.”

“Poor Wilfred!” sighed Mrs. Benson. “He is always in trouble of some sort. I hope that you were not too hard upon him.”

“No more than he deserved,” said her son, sternly. “Good night.”

The well, which had long ago fallen into disuse, was almost hidden by the thick tangle of undergrowth which ran riot at that corner of the old park. It was partly covered by the shrunken half of a lid, above which a rusty windlass creaked in company with the music of the pines when the wind blew strongly. The full light of the sun never reached it, and the ground surrounding it was moist and green when other parts of the park were gaping with the heat.

Two people walking slowly round the park in the fragrant stillness of a summer evening strayed in the direction of the well.

“No use going through this wilderness, Olive,” said Benson, pausing on the outskirts of the pines and eyeing with some disfavour the gloom beyond.

“Best part of the park,” said the girl briskly; “you know it’s my favourite spot.”

“I know you’re very fond of sitting on the coping,” said the man slowly, “and I wish you wouldn’t. One day you will lean back too far and fall in.”

“And make the acquaintance of Truth,” said Olive lightly. “Come along.”

She ran from him and was lost in the shadow of the pines, the bracken crackling beneath her feet as she ran. Her companion followed slowly, and emerging from the gloom saw her poised daintily on the edge of the well with her feet hidden in the rank grass and nettles which surrounded it. She motioned her companion to take a seat by her side, and smiled softly as she felt a strong arm passed about her waist.

“I like this place,” said she, breaking a long silence, “it is so dismal —so uncanny. Do you know I wouldn’t dare to sit here alone, Jem. I should imagine that all sorts of dreadful things were hidden behind the bushes and trees, waiting to spring out on me. Ugh!”

“You’d better let me take you in,” said her companion tenderly; “the well isn’t always wholesome, especially in the hot weather.

“Let’s make a move.”

The girl gave an obstinate little shake, and settled herself more securely on her seat.

“Smoke your cigar in peace,” she said quietly. “I am settled here for a quiet talk. Has anything been heard of Wilfred yet?”

“Nothing.”

“Quite a dramatic disappearance, isn’t it?” she continued. “Another scrape, I suppose, and another letter for you in the same old strain: ‘Dear Jem, help me out.’”

Jem Benson blew a cloud of fragrant smoke into the air, and holding his cigar between his teeth brushed away the ash from his coat sleeves.

“I wonder what he would have done without you,” said the girl, pressing his arm affectionately. “Gone under long ago, I suppose. When we are married, Jem, I shall presume upon the relationship to lecture him. He is very wild, but he has his good points, poor fellow.”

“I never saw them,” said Benson, with startling bitterness. “God knows I never saw them.”

“He is nobody’s enemy but his own,” said the girl, startled by this outburst.

“You don’t know much about him,” said the other, sharply. “He was not above blackmail; not above ruining the life of a friend to do himself a benefit. A loafer, a cur, and a liar!”

The girl looked up at him soberly but timidly and took his arm without a word, and they both sat silent while evening deepened into night and the beams of the moon, filtering through the branches, surrounded them with a silver network. Her head sank upon his shoulder, till suddenly with a sharp cry she sprang to her feet.