Till the Clock Stops Part 36

"Curse you! what are you drivelling about?"

Flitch, his face chalky, continued: "And so I sent Mr. Alan Craig a wire warnin' him that--oh! for G.o.d's sake don't look at me so! I didn't give _you_ away!" His voice rose wildly as Bullard's hand stole to a drawer behind him. "No, no; ye shan't shoot me! I must ha' time to repent proper." He took a step forward. "I'm not goin' to hurt ye, but I'm not goin' to let ye kill me till--"

From his desk Bullard whipped a long, heavy ruler, sprang to his feet and lashed out at the other's head. "You two-faced swine!"

Flitch reeled backward, sobbing with pain and pa.s.sion. "Ye devil's hound! ... But I'll go for ye now!" Recovering his balance, he plunged furiously at the striker.

Bullard struck again--a fearful blow with a horrid sound.

This time Flitch did not go back, but toppled forward, clawing at Bullard's waistcoat, and reached the floor with a thud and a single gasp.

And there was a silence, a period of petrifaction, that might have lasted for one minute or ten: Bullard could not have gauged it. At last he came to himself. His teeth were chattering slightly. He examined the ruler, drew it through his fingers; it was quite clean, and he replaced it on the desk, softly, as though to avoid disturbing any one. Yet he wiped his hands on his handkerchief before he crossed the room to an antique ebony cabinet where he helped himself to a little brandy. Then he came back to the desk and for a while stood lax, staring at the blurs of white paper thereon.

Stiffening himself, he turned and for the first time looked down on his handiwork....

Bullard had not meant to kill, though his heart had been murderous when he struck. It was without hope that he knelt to examine his victim.

Flitch's time for repentance had been short indeed. He lay sprawled on his side, his hands clenched, yet his countenance was not so repulsive.

Well, he had escaped human judgement, and worse men have lived longer.

Bullard got upon his feet. His mental energies were working once more.

He must act at once. The simplest way out was simply to 'phone for the police and give himself in charge for killing a man in self defence.

But that would mean, among other things, a trial! ... Out of the question! There must be another and safer if less simple way out. He thought hard, and it was not so long before he found it. The fog!--if it were still there.

He shut off the lights and pa.s.sed to the window. The sill was low; the sash opened inwards. Outside was a narrow balcony, with a foot-high stone bal.u.s.trade. Presently he was peering out into the bitter, filthy night.

The fog was denser than ever; he had never seen it so thick. The presence of lamps in the deserted street below was betrayed by a mere glow. Across the way the dark buildings could scarce be distinguished. The sounds of human life seemed to come from a great distance.

Leaving the window open, he gropingly moved back to his desk, struck a vesta and kneeling, went carefully through the dead man's pockets. A sc.r.a.p or two of paper he took possession of. With the aid of another vesta he found his way to the cabinet for more brandy. Physically he required stimulant. Flitch had been a big heavy man ... he was no smaller nor lighter now.

And so, at long last, the ponderous, inert, uncanny thing lay balanced across the bal.u.s.trade and sill, the legs sticking into the room.

Breathing hard, Bullard grasped the ankles. A heave, a jerk, a twist, a push.... Hands pressed hard over his ears, Bullard waited for an age of thirty seconds. Then action once more. He closed the window, switched on the lights, and inspected the floor. Finally he rang up the police station.

"I'm Bullard, Aasvogel Syndicate, Manchester House. A man attempting to enter by the window has fallen to the street. I'll remain here till you come."

CHAPTER XXIII

The spiritual glow in which Alan left Earl's Gate had cooled considerably by the time he reached the Midland Hotel. It was not that he actually regretted his actions of an hour ago; rather was it as though an inward voice kept repeating, "Why aren't you happier, now that you have lifted a crus.h.i.+ng load from an exhausted fellow-creature? Why aren't you in the seventh heaven since you are going to marry that most desirable girl?"

There was never yet human exaltation without its reaction, but in Alan's case the latter had followed cruelly fast.

In the smoke-room, almost empty at so early an hour, he dropped into a chair and lit a cigarette. "What the deuce is wrong with me?" By the time the cigarette was finished he could, with a little more courage, have answered the question. For he could not deny that his thoughts had gone straying, not back to the brightly lighted drawing-room and the beautiful hostess, but to a dark garden and a terrified girl with a little revolver in her hand. Ordering himself not to be a cad as well as a fool, he removed to one of the writing-tables. There he set himself to compose a nicely worded note of invitation to Mrs. Lancaster. After that was done he drew a couple of cheques for the same amount and wrote the following letter to Mr. Bullard:

"Dear Mr. Bullard:

"You will no doubt be surprised to see my writing again, and I take this way of announcing my return home lest you should hear of it before I can find time to call upon you, which, however, I hope to do before long.

To-night, on my arrival here, I called upon Mr. Lancaster, and was sorry to learn that he was too ill to receive me. But I do not wish to delay an hour longer than necessary the settlement of my debt to you both, and so I ask you kindly to receive on his behalf and your own, the enclosed two cheques in payment of the amounts of, and interests on, the advances which you and he so generously made to me in April of last year. I daresay you have almost forgotten the incident which meant so much to me, and still does. Until we meet,

"Faithfully yours,

"Alan Craig."

"A bit stiff and formal," was his comment after rereading it several times, "but I don't think it gives much away."

The two hours that followed were perhaps the dreariest he had ever spent in civilised circ.u.mstances. London had given him enough to think about in all conscience, but his mind would not be controlled; as surely as a disturbed compa.s.s needle it kept moving back to the north.

Teddy's arrival, half an hour after midnight, he hailed as a great relief. Teddy wore a tired and soiled aspect, but his eyes glinted with repressed excitement.

"Let's go up to my room, Alan," he said at once; "I've got something to shew you."

The moment they were there, with the door bolted, Teddy's fingers went to his waistcoat pocket.

"Recognise it?" he asked, holding up an inch of fine gold chain bearing a small nugget.

"No I don't. Stay! it's not unfamiliar--but no; I can't place it.

Whose is it?"

"Bullard's."

"Oh! Where did you pick it up, Teddy?"

Teddy sat down on the edge of the bed. In a voice not wholly under control he replied--

"I took it from the hand of a dead man, a couple of hours ago."

"A dead man! Good--"

"He seemed to fall out of the fog, but it was actually from the window of Bullard's office, in New Broad Street. I was watching from the other side of the street when he fell. I--I was the first person to reach him. He was quite dead--awfully smashed, poor chap. There was a lamp near. One of his fists was slightly open. I noticed a glitter in it. It was this thing. I took it.--I must have a smoke."

"Better ring for something to drink."

"No. I want all my wits to make a clear story of it. Look here, Alan! The long and short of it is: Bullard committed murder to-night--"

"Oh, I say!"

Teddy ignored the interruption. "Of course I went with the crowd to the police station, and, though not as a witness, managed to get in. Bullard with an inspector turned up before long, but I kept out of his way. He had called the police himself. The man, he stated, had been trying the window of his private room while he was in another part of the premises; on entering his private room and switching on the lights, he had caught a glimpse of a face and hands falling backwards. That was all a lie. The lights had been out for some time when the man fell. The fog was horribly thick, but I can be sure of that much. And then--this!" he dangled the nugget.

Alan broke the silence. "It looks bad, certainly, but still, you know, Bullard might not--and quite naturally, too--have liked to admit that after a struggle he pushed the man from the window--if that's what you mean."

"No, that's not what I mean. About twenty minutes earlier, I saw the man enter Bullard's office by the usual way--"

"Ah!"

"And note this, Alan! At the police station, I saw his fingers go to the nugget--he has a habit of playing with the thing when he is talking--and when he realised that it wasn't there, I thought he was going to faint.