Defenders of Democracy Part 15

"Well? Are you going to let me stand here all night?"

"No, of course not. Wait a minute--I'm thinking." He spoke in a quick, hoa.r.s.e tone, a tone alas! which Kitty at one time in their joint lives had come to a.s.sociate with deep feeling on his part, in those days when she used to come and tell the lonely man of her sorrows, of her temptations, and of her vague, upward aspirations....

She lurched a little towards him. Everything was going far better than she could have hoped; why, Sherston did not seem angry, hardly annoyed, at her unheralded return!

Suddenly he felt her thin, strong arms closing round his body, in a horrible vice-like grip--

"Don't touch me!" he cried fiercely; and making a greater physical effort than he would have thought himself capable of, he shook himself violently free.

He saw her reel backwards and fall, with a queer grotesque movement, head over heels down the stone steps. The dull thud her body made as she fell on the half landing echoed up and down the bare well of the staircase.

Sherston's heart smote him. He had not meant to do THAT. Then he reminded himself bitterly that drunkards always fall soft. She could not have hurt herself much, falling that little way.

He waited a few moments; then, as she made no effort to raise herself, he walked down, slowly, unwillingly, towards her. From the little he could see in the dim light cast from above, Kitty was lying very oddly, all in a heap, her head against the wall.

He knelt down by her side.

"Kitty," he said quietly. "Try and get up. I'm sorry if I hurt you, but you took me by surprise. I--I--"

But there came no word, no moan even, in answer.

He felt for her limp hand, and held it a moment, but it lay in his, inertly. Filled with a queer, growing fear, he struck a match, bent down, and saw, for the first time that night, her face. It looked older, incredibly older, than when he had last seen it, five years ago! The hair near the temples had turned gray. Her eyes were wide open--and even as he looked earnestly into her face, her jaw suddenly dropped. He started back with an extraordinary feeling of mingled fear and repugnance.

Striking match after match as he went, he rushed up again into his chambers, and looked about for a hand mirror.... He failed to find one, and at last he brought down his shaving gla.s.s.

With shaking hands he laid it close against that hideous, gaping mouth, for five long dragging minutes. The gla.s.s remained clear, untarnished.

Putting a great constraint on himself, he forced himself to move her head. And the truth came to him! In that strange short fall Kitty had broken her neck. For the second time he was free. But this time her death, instead of cutting a knot, bound him as with cords of twisted steel to shame, and yes, to deadly peril.

Slowly he got up from his knees. Unless he went and jumped over the parapet of the Embankment into the river--a possibility which he grimly envisaged for a few moments--he knew that the only thing to do was to go off at once for the police, and make, as the saying is, a clean breast of it. After all he was innocent--innocent of even a secret desire of encompa.s.sing Kitty's death. But would it be possible to make even the indifferent, when aware of all the circ.u.mstances, believe that? Yes, there was one such human being--and as he thought of her his heart glowed with grat.i.tude to G.o.d for having made her known to him. Helen would believe him, Helen would understand everything--and nothing else really mattered. It was curious how the thought of Helen, which had been agony an hour ago, now filled him with a kind of steadfast comfort.

As Sherston turned to go down the staircase, there came the distant sound of the bursting of a motor tire, and the unhappy man started violently. His nerves were now in pieces, but he remembered, as he went down the stone steps, to feel in one of his pockets, to be sure he had what he so seldom used, a card-case on him.

On reaching the front door he was surprised to find it open, and to see just within the hall, their white caps and pale faces dimly illumined by the little light that glimmered in from outside, two trained nurses with bags in their hands. They were talking eagerly, and took no notice of him as he pa.s.sed.

For a moment Sherston wondered whether he ought to tell them of the terrible accident which had just happened upstairs--but after a momentary hesitation he decided that it would be better to go straight off to the Police Station. Already his excited brain saw a nurse standing in the witness-box at a trial where he himself stood in the dock on a charge of murder. So, past the two whispering women, he hurried out into the darkness.

Even in the grievous state of mental distress in which he now found himself, Sherston noticed that the street lamps were turned so low that there only shone out, under their green shades, pallid spots of light. And as he stumbled across the curb of the pavement, he told himself, with irritation, that that was really rather absurd!

More accidents proceeded from the absence of light than were ever likely to be caused by the Zeppelins.

Perforce walking warily, he hastened towards the Strand. There was less traffic than usual, fewer people, too, on the pavement, but it was just after nine o'clock, the quietest time of the evening.

Suddenly a huge column of flame shot up some thirty yards in front of him, and then (it seemed to all to happen in a moment) a line of men, police, and special constables, spread across the thoroughfare in which he now was, barring off the Strand.

Sherston quickened his footsteps. For a moment his own disturbed and fearsome thoughts were banished by the extraordinary and exciting sight before him. Higher and higher mounted the pillar of fire, throwing a sinister glare on the buildings, high and low, new and old, round about it. "Good Heavens!" he exclaimed involuntarily.

"Is that the Lyceum on fire?" A policeman near whom he was now standing, turned round and said shortly, "Can't say, I'm sure, sir."

He witnessed in the next few minutes a strange scene of confusion, of hurrying and scurrying hither and thither. Where there had been almost pitch darkness, was now a glittering, brilliant bath of light, in which the figures of men and women, moving swiftly to and fro, appeared like animated silhouettes. But even as he stared before him at the extraordinary Hogarthian vision, the roadway and the pavements of the Strand became strangely and suddenly deserted, while he began to hear the hoot, hoot of the fire-engines galloping to the scene of the disaster. Before him the line of police and of special constables remained unbroken, and barred his further progress.

"I don't want to go past the theater," he whispered urgently. "I only want to get to Bow Street, as quickly as possible, on a very important matter." He slipped the half-crown he had meant to give the waif he had taken Kitty to be, into a policeman's hand, and though the man shook his head he let him through.

Sherston shot down the Strand, to his left. Almost filling up the steep, lane-like street which leads down to the Savoy Hotel, were rows of ambulances, groups of nurses, and Red Cross men, and absorbed though he was once more in his own sensations, and the thought of the terrible ordeal that lay in front of him, Sherston yet found himself admiring the quickness with which they had been rushed hither.

On he went, and crossed the empty roadway. How strange that so little attention was being paid to the fire! Instead of a hurrying mob of men and women, the Strand was now extraordinarily empty, both of people and of vehicles, and now and again he could hear the sound of knocking, of urgent knocking, as if some one who has been locked out, and is determined to be let in.

He strode quickly along, feeling his way somewhat, for apart from the reflection of the red sky, it was pitch dark in the side streets, and soon he stood before the Police Station. The big old-fas.h.i.+oned building was just within the outer circle of light cast by the huge fire whose fierceness seemed to increase rather than diminish, and Sherston suddenly espied an Inspector standing half in the open door. "I've some very urgent business," he said hurriedly. "Could you come inside for a moment, and take down a statement?"

"What's your business about?" said the man sharply, and in the wavering light Sherston thought his face looked oddly distraught and pale.

"There's a woman lying dead at No. 19 Peter the Great Terrace,"

began Sherston curtly--

The man bent forward. "There's many women already lying dead about here, sir, and likely to be more--babies and children too--before we're through with this h.e.l.lish business!" he said grimly. "If she's dead, poor thing, we can do nothing for her. But if you think there's any life left in her--well, you'll find plenty of ambulances, as well as doctors and nurses, down Strand way. But if I was you, I'd wait a bit before going back. They're still about--" and even as he uttered the word "about" he started back into the shelter of the building, pulling Sherston roughly in with him as he did so, and there came a loud, dull report, curiously a.n.a.logous to that which a quarter of an hour ago--it seemed hours rather than minutes--Sherston had taken for the bursting of a motor tire. But this time the sound was at once followed by that of shattered gla.s.s, and of falling masonry.

"Good G.o.d!" he cried. "What's that?"

"A goodish lot of damage this time, I should think," said the Inspector thoughtfully. "Though they're doing wonderfully little considering how they--"

"THEY?"

"Zeppelins, of course, sir! Why didn't you guess that? They say there're two over us if not three." Then in a voice, so changed, so charged with relief, that his own mother would not have known it for the same, the man exclaimed, "Look up, sir--there they are!

And they're off--the h.e.l.lish things!" And Sherston throwing up his head, did indeed see what looked to his astonished eyes like two beautiful golden trout swimming across the sky just above him.

As he stood awestruck, fascinated at the astounding sight, he also saw what looked like a falling star shoot down from one of the Zeppelins, and again there fell on his ears that strange explosive thud.

The man by his side uttered a stifled oath. "There's another--let's hope it's the last in this district!" he exclaimed. "See! They're off down the river now!"

Even as he said the words the s.p.a.ce in front of the Police Station was suddenly filled with a surging ma.s.s of people, men, women, even children, making their way Strandward, to see all that there was to see, now that the immediate danger was past.

"If I were you, sir, I think I'd stay here quietly a bit, till the crowd has thinned, and been driven back. I take it you can't do that poor woman of whom you spoke just now any good--I take it she's dead, sir?" the Inspector spoke very feelingly.

"Yes, she certainly is dead," said Sherston dully.

"Well, I must be going now, but if you like to stay here a while, I'm sure you're welcome, sir."

"No," said Sherston. "I think I'll go out and see whether I can do anything to help."

The two pa.s.sed out into the roadway, and took their place among the slowly moving people there, the Inspector make a way for himself and his companion through the excited, talkative, good-humored c.o.c.kney crowd. "There it is! Can't you see it? Up there just like a little yellow worm." "There's naught at all! You've got the cobble-wobbles!" and then a ripple of laughter.

Sherston was borne along with the human stream, and with that stream he suddenly found himself stopped at the westward end of Wellington Street. Over the heads of the people before him--they were, oddly enough, mostly women--he could see the column of flame still burning steadily upwards, and scarcely affected at all by the huge jets of water now playing on it.

It seemed to start from the ground, a ma.s.sive pillar of fire, and all round it was an empty s.p.a.ce--a zone no human being could approach for fear of being at once roasted and shriveled up to death. "The bomb got down to the big gas main," observed a voice close to him.

"It'll be days before they get THAT fire under!"

He, Sherston, felt marvelously calm. This strange, awful visitation had made for him a breathing s.p.a.ce in which to reconsider what he had better do, and suddenly he decided that he would go and consult Mr. Pomeroy. But before doing that he must force himself to go back and fetch certain doc.u.ments which fortunately he had kept....

He made his way, with a great deal of difficulty--for it was as if all London had by now flocked to this one afflicted area--by a circuitous way to the Strand. Tramping through a six-inch-deep flood of broken gla.s.s he made his way by the Embankment and the Waterloo Bridge steps to the upper level, that leading to, and past, Peter the Great Terrace.