Anthony Lyveden Part 31

"So? You're pleased, are you? Ah, well..."

He turned out the gas, and the two pa.s.sed upstairs.

Anthony was as good as his word.

You cannot kill Memory, but you can send the jade packing. That he did faithfully. By sheer force of will he thrust all thoughts of Valerie out of his head. They returned ceaselessly, to be as ceaselessly rejected. Their rejection took the form of displacement. They were, so to speak, crowded out. All day long he was for ever forcing his attention upon some matter or other to the exclusion of the lady. A thousand times she came tripping--always he fobbed her off.

Considering how much of late he had been content to drift with the stream, the way in which his mind bent to the oars was amazing. His output of mental energy was extraordinary. Will rode Brain with a b.l.o.o.d.y spur. When night came, the man was worn out....

In the circ.u.mstances it was hard, though not surprising, that he should have dreamed so persistently of the tall, dark girl. It suggests that Nature is an unscrupulous opponent. Be that as it may, night after night, while the man slept, the tares were sown. Sleep, whom he had counted his ally, proved herself neutral. She was content to knit up the sleeve of care. That her handmaidens as fast unravelled it was none of her business. After a week of this devilry, Anthony groaned.

Then he set his teeth, and, pleading insomnia, obtained permission to walk abroad after supper. With Patch at his heels, he covered mile after mile. So, though the mental strain was prolonged, he became physically played out. His determination had its reward. He came to sleep like the dead.

With a sigh for his simplicity, Nature plucked another iron out of the fire....

Anthony began to lose weight.

Thursday afternoon came and went, and with it Lady Touchstone and Valerie. The b.u.mbles were duly overwhelmed, treating their visitors with an embarra.s.sing deference which nothing could induce them to discard: out of pure courtesy Lady Touchstone ate enough for a schoolboy; thereby doing much to atone for Valerie, who ate nothing at all: the Alisons respectfully observed the saturnalia and solemnly reduced Mason to a state of nervous disorder by entertaining him in the servants' hall: Anthony kept out of the way.

Not so Patch, however, who must, of course, put his small foot into it with a splash.

The visitors were in the act of emerging from the front door, Mrs.

b.u.mble was dropping the second of three tremulous curtsies, and Mr.

b.u.mble was offering the stirrup-cup of humble duty, when the terrier emerged from some laurels and, recognizing Valerie, rushed delightedly to her side. Before she was aware of his presence, he was leaping to lick her face....

To disregard such unaffected benevolence would have been worse than churlish, and Valerie stooped to the Sealyham and gave him her cheek.

Patch lay down on his back and put his legs in the air. His tail was going, and there was a shy invitation in the bright brown eyes which was irresistible. Valerie hesitated. Then, on a sudden impulse, she picked up the little white dog and held him close.

"Good-bye, Patch," she whispered. "Good-bye."

She kissed the rough white head and put him down tenderly. Then she stepped into the car with a quivering lip.

It was as the car was turning out of the drive that she burst into tears....

Such consolation as Lady Touchstone sought to administer was gently but firmly declined: and, since her niece would have none of it, neither, gentlemen, shall you.

It was a few hours later--to be exact, at a quarter before ten o'clock--that a gentleman of some distinction laid down _The Times_.

For a moment or two he sat still, looking into the fire. Then he picked up a pile of depositions and drew a pencil-case from his pocket.

For a while the occasional flick of a page argued his awful attention to the recital of crime: then the keen grey eyes slid back to the glowing coals, and the longhand went by the board. It was evident that there was some extraneous matter soliciting his lords.h.i.+p's regard, and in some sort gaining the same because of its importunity.

Mr. Justice Molehill was all alone. He had sent his marshal to the cinema, "lest the boy should grow dull," and, except for the servants, somewhere below stairs, the great gaunt mansion used as the Judge's Lodging, lodged for the nonce no other inmate.

The room in which the Judge sat was enormous. Indeed, the shaded lamp, set upon a table close to his shoulder, did little more than insist upon the depths of the chamber, which to illumine effectively you would have needed a score of lamps slung from the ceiling. For all its size, however, the room was spa.r.s.ely furnished. At the far end a huge carved writing-table loomed out of the shadows; six high-backed chairs reared themselves here and there against the walls; between prodigious windows a gigantic press lifted its ma.s.sive head. Reckoning the little table bearing the lamp, and a pair of easy-chairs, that is a ready inventory.

A heavy carpet and curtains of the same dull red certainly excluded the draughts. For all that, it was not a chamber in which to sit apart from the fire. The marshal hated the place openly, and, on being rallied by the Judge, had confessed that it "got on his nerves." He had even suggested that it was haunted. Mr. Justice Molehill had laughed him to scorn.

His lords.h.i.+p, then, was gazing upon the fire. After, perhaps, about two minutes of time, he crossed his knees suddenly and flung up his hand in a little gesture of impatience.

"Anthony Lyveden," he muttered. "Where on earth have I heard that name?"

The expression upon his face was that of a man absorbed in searching his memory. He was, indeed, so much engrossed in this occupation that the keen grey eyes went straying whither they listed.

Let us follow those eyes.

From the light of the fire in its cage to the toe of his lords.h.i.+p's pump, up to the chiselled mantel and the cigarette-box--the marshal's--perched on the narrow ledge, down to the heavy bell-pull by the side of the hearth, on to a high-backed chair against the wall, down again to the floor--all black here, for the light is too distant to show the carpet's hue--on into the shadows, where something--the table, of course--shows like a grim bas-relief hewn out of the darkness, on to its ponderous top, where the candles...

It was upon the top of the table that the keen grey eyes came to rest--idly. The next moment his lords.h.i.+p's frame stiffened with a shock.

The radiance of two wax candles was illuminating the bitterness of death upon a man's face. It was an old face, long, gaunt, clean-shaven, and the ill-fitting wig that gaped about the shrunken temples gave it the queer pinched look which tells of a starved belly.

Eyes red-rimmed and staring, a long thin nose, and an unearthly pallor made it displeasing: the dropped jaw, showing the toothless gums, made it repulsive.

The hair upon Mr. Justice Molehill's head began to rise.

For a moment the face stayed motionless. Then the grey lids flickered, and a trembling hand stole up out of the darkness to twitch at the lower lip. A paper upon the table appeared to claim the attention of those horrible eyes.... But not for long. Indeed, they had subjected the doc.u.ment to the very barest perusal, when, with a convulsive movement, the creature clawed at the paper, tore it with ravening hands and, clapping the fragments to its distorted mouth, bit and savaged it like a demoniac....

Hardened as he was to the spectacle of Rage dominant his lords.h.i.+p paled before this paroxysm of unearthly pa.s.sion. All the agony of disappointed avarice, all the torment of mortification in defeat, all the frenzy of impotent fury, blazed in one hideous blend out of that frightful countenance. Could he have moved, the Judge would have crossed himself.

Then suddenly came a change. The pa.s.sion ebbed out of the face, the paper fluttered out of the loosened fingers, the red-rimmed eyes took on another look. Snail-slow the trembling hand was travelling across the table....

Immediately between the silver candle-sticks lay a horse-pistol. As the fingers approached it, their trembling increased. Twice they hesitated, craven flesh rebelling against a recreant will. They shook so frightfully upon encountering the b.u.t.t that it seemed as if to grasp it were beyond their power. Once they had seized it, however, the trembling left them and pa.s.sed into the hand....

With the approach of the weapon, the horror upon the face became unspeakable. The eyes were starting, the mouth working painfully.

Resolved to be rid of life, yet terrified to die, the wretch was writhing. There never was seen so loathsome a paradox. Cowardice was gone crusading.

The Judge's tongue clove to the roof of his mouth.

With the a.s.sistance of the other hand, the pistol had been turned about, but head and hands were all shaking so violently that the introduction of the muzzle into the gaping mouth was hardly accomplished. Twice cup missed lip, and the steel went jabbing against the ashen cheek. The next moment gums drummed on the metal with a hideous vibration.

With a shock his lords.h.i.+p recognized the sound as one which he and the marshal had heard more than once at this hour, and, after discussion, had attributed to an idiosyncrasy of water under the influence of heat.

That the supreme moment had arrived would have been patent from the eyes alone. Riveted upon the trigger-finger, squinting until the pupils were almost lost to view, they were the orbs of a fiend. Even as the Judge gazed, the light of Insanity took flaming possession.

h.e.l.l, grown impatient, had sent a sheriff for the usurer's soul....

With a dull crash the fire fell in, and the Judge started to his feet with an oath.

The candles were gone.

The first thing which Mr. Justice Molehill did was to wipe the sweat from his face, and the second, to mix himself and consume the strongest whisky and soda he had swallowed for years. Then, being a man of stout heart, he picked up the lamp and walked to the writing-table at the end of the room. Here all was in order, and the closest scrutiny failed to reveal any trace of the vision. The chair was there, certainly, but its seat was dusty, and upon the table itself there was nothing at all.

The curtain behind the chair, when disarranged, disclosed a window, heavily shuttered as usual, but nothing more.

Now, his lords.h.i.+p disliked defeat as much as anybody, but if there was one thing which he detested more than another, it was an inability to prove an excellent case. Looking at it from his point of view, he had here a personal experience at once as interesting and incredible as a man could fairly be expected to relate. The reflection was most provoking. So much so, indeed, that, after a moment's hesitation, the Judge picked up the chair and placed it upon the table. Then he bent down and, thrusting his hands beneath the edge of the carpet, lifted this up from the floor. The fabric was heavy, but he hauled with a will, and a moment later he was standing upon the boards he had uncovered. Thereafter, at the cost of a good deal of exertion, he managed to roll it back from the window as far as the table itself.

Holding it in place with his knee, his lords.h.i.+p reached for the lamp....

It was his intention to discover whether the boards did not afford some real evidence of the crime, and it is a matter for regret that, upon perceiving that the floor had been diligently stained all over with some coffee-coloured preparation, for the second time in the evening his lords.h.i.+p swore. He was, in fact, in some dudgeon about to replace the lamp, when the torn edge of paper, showing between two boards, caught his observant eye....

The fine handwriting was faded, but still quite legible.