The Man Who Couldn't Sleep Part 4

I stepped down on the iron ladder that led into the uncertain darkness, covering the trap after me. I began to feel, as I groped my way downward, that the whole thing was becoming more than a game. I was disturbed by the thought of how deep I had ventured into an uncertainty. I began to be oppressed by the thought of how complicated my path was proving. I felt intimidated by the undetermined intricacies that still awaited me. A new anxiety was taking possession of me, a sort of low fever of fear, an increasing impatience to replace my precious porcelain, end my mission, and make my escape to the open.

It began to dawn on me, as I groped lower and lower down through the darkness, that a burglar's calling was not all beer and skittles. I began to feel a little ashamed of my heroics of an hour before.

Then I drew up, suddenly, for a sound had crept to my ears. The tingle that ran through my body was not wholly one of fright. Yet, as I stood there in the darkness with one hand against the wall, I caught the rhythm of a slow and m.u.f.fled snoring. There was something oddly rea.s.suring in that reiterated vibration, even though it served to emphasize the dangers that surrounded me. It was not unlike the sound of a bell-buoy floating up to a fog-wrapped liner's bridge.

I was no longer a prey to any feeling of hesitancy. I was already too deep in the woods to think of turning back. My one pa.s.sion now was to complete the circuit, to emerge on the other side.

I began to wonder, as I felt for the stair banister and groped my cautious way down the treads, just how the burglar himself had effected that final exit from the house. And the sooner I got away from the sleeping quarters, I felt, the safer I would be. Every bedroom was a shoal of dangers, and not all of them, I very well knew, would be equipped with the same generous whistling-buoy as that I had just left behind me. There was, too, something satisfying in the knowledge that I was at least getting nearer and nearer the ground-floor. This was due, not so much to the fact that I was approaching a part of the house with which I was more or less familiar, but more to the fact that my descent marked an approach to some possible pathway of escape. For that idea was now uppermost in my mind, and no aviator with a balky motor ever ached to get back to earth more eagerly than I.

The utter darkness and silence of the lower halls were beginning to get on my nerves. I was glad to feel the newel-post, which a.s.sured me that I had reached the last step in my descent. I was relieved to be able to turn carefully and silently about to the left, to grope toward a door which I knew stood before me in the gloom, and then cautiously to turn the k.n.o.b and step inside.

I knew at once, even before I took the flashlight from my pocket, that I was in the library. And the room that opened off this, I remembered, half cabinet-lined study and half informal exhibition-room, was the chamber wherein Anthony Gubtill treasured his curios. It would take but a minute or two, I knew, to replace his priceless little porcelain.

And another minute or two, I felt, ought to see me safely out and on my way home.

I stood with my back to the door, determined that no untimely blunder should mar the end of my adventure. My first precaution was to thrust out my flashlight and make sure of my path. I let the incandescent ray finger interrogatively about the ma.s.sively furnished room, resting for a moment on marble and metal and gla.s.s-fronted book-shelf. I remembered, with almost a smile of satisfaction, the little _Clytie_ above the fireplace, and the _Hebe_ in bronze that stood beside the heavy reading-lamp. This lamp, Gubtill had once told me, had come from Munich; and I remembered his chuckle over the fact that it had come in a "sleeper" trunk and had evaded duty.

Then I let the wavering light travel toward the end of the glimmering and dark-wooded reading-table. I stood there, picking out remembered object after object, remarking them with singular detachment of mind as my light continued to circle the end of the room.

Then I quietly made my way to the open door in the rear, and bisecting that second room with my spear of light, satisfied myself that the s.p.a.ce between the peach-bloom amphora and the ashes-of-roses Yang Lao with the ivory base was indeed empty.

I stood listening to the exotic tick of a brazen-dialed Roumanian clock. I lingered there, letting my bald light-shaft root like a hog's-snout along that shelf so crowded with delicate tones and contours. I sighed a little enviously as I turned toward the other end of the room.

Then, of a sudden, I stopped breathing. Automatically I let my thumb lift from the current-spring of my storage-lamp and the light at once went out. I stood there with every nerve of my body on edge. I crouched forward, tingling and peering into the darkness before me.

For I had suddenly discovered that I was not alone in the room.

There, facing me, picked out as distinctly as a baby spot-light picks out an actor's face, I had seen the owner of the house himself, not ten paces from me. He was sitting in a high-backed armchair of green leather. He must have been watching me from the first, every moment and every movement. He had made no effort to interrupt or intercept me. He had been too sure of his position.

I waited for what seemed an interminable length of time. But not a sound, beyond the querulous tick of the clock, came to my ears. Not even a movement took place in the darkness.

The undefined menace of this silence was too much for me. The whole thing grew into something strangely like a nightmare. I moved away, involuntarily, wondering what I should say, and after what fas.h.i.+on I should begin my foolish explanation. I crouched low and backed off obliquely, as though some value lay in the intervention of s.p.a.ce, and as though something venomous were confronting me. I fell slowly back, pawing frenziedly about me for some sustaining tangibility to which to cling. As I did so my body came in contact with some article of furniture--just what I could not tell. But I s.h.i.+ed away from it in a panic, as a colt s.h.i.+es at a fallen newspaper.

My sudden movement threw over a second piece of furniture. It must have been some sort of collapsible screen, for it fell to the floor with an echoing crash. I waited, holding my breath, with horripilations of fear nettling every limb of my body, knowing only too well that this must indeed mark the end.

But there was no movement, no word spoken, no slightest sound. I stared through the darkness, still half expectant. I tried to tell myself that it may have been mere hallucination, that expectant attention had projected into my line of vision a purely imaginary fig-lire. I still waited, with my heart pounding. Then the tension became more than I could endure. I actually crept forward a step or two, still peering blindly through the darkness, still listening and waiting.

Then I caught my breath with sudden new suspicion, with a quick fear that crashed, bullet-like, through the film of consciousness. It was followed by a sickening sense of shock, amounting almost to physical nausea.

I once more raised the flashlight. This time my hand shook perceptibly as I turned the electric ray directly in front of me. I let the minute circle of illumination arrow through the darkness, direct to the white face that seemed to be awaiting it. Then I let it come to a rest.

I remember falling back a step or two. I may have called out, but of that I am not sure. Yet of one thing I was only too certain. There before me sat Anthony Gubtill. _He was quite dead_.

My first feeling was not altogether one of terror. It was accompanied by a surge of indignation at the injustice, at the brutality, of it all. I was able to make note of the quilted dressing-gown that covered the relaxed body. I was collected enough to a.s.sume that he had overheard the intruder; had come to investigate, and had been struck down and cunningly thrust into a chair. This inference was followed by a flash of exultation as I remembered that his murderer was known, that the crime could easily be proved against him, that even at the present moment he was safe in Benson's custody.

I moved toward the dead man, fortified by the knowledge of a vast new obligation. It was only after I had examined the face for a second time and seen how death had been caused by a cruelly heavy blow, dealt by some blunt instrument, that the enormity of my own intrusion into that house of horror came home to me. I felt a sudden need for light, for sobering and rationalizing light. Even the ticking from the brazen-faced clock had become something phantasmal and unnerving.

I groped feverishly and blindly about in search of an electric switch-b.u.t.ton. Then, of a sudden, I stopped again, my movement arrested by a sound.

I knew, as I stood and listened, that it was only the purr of an automobile, faint and m.u.f.fled from the street outside. But it suddenly brought home to me the awkwardness of my position. To be found in that house, or even to be seen leaving it, was no longer a desirable thing.

My foolhardy caprice, before an actuality so overawing, dwindled into something worse than absurdity. And thought came back at a bound to the porcelain in my pocket. I recalled the old-time rivalry between the dead man and myself for The Flame. I recalled the details of my advent between those walls where I stood. And my blood went cold. It was not a matter of awkwardness; it was a matter of peril. For who, I again asked myself, would believe a story so absurd, or accept an excuse so extravagant?

The clock ticked on accusingly. The sound of the automobile stopped.

I had just noted this with relief when the thud of a quietly closed door fell on my startled ears. Then came the murmur of voices. There was no longer any doubt about the matter. A motor had come to the door, and from it certain persons had entered the house.

I crept to the library and listened. Then I tiptoed back and closed the door of the inner room. I felt more secure with even a half-inch panel between me and what that inner room held.

Then I listened. I began to hear the padded tread of feet. Then came the sound of another opened door, and then the snap of a light-switch.

There was nothing secret about the new invasion. I knew, as I shrank back behind one of the high-backed library chairs, that the front of the house was already illuminated.

Then came the sound of a calling voice, apparently from the head of the stairs. It was a cautious and carefully modulated voice; I took it for that of a young man of about twenty.

"Is that you, Caddy?"

Then came a silence.

"I say, is that you, Orrie?" was demanded in a somewhat somnolent stage-whisper. There was something strangely rea.s.suring in that commonplace boyish voice. Anthony Gubtill, I knew, had no immediate family. I vaguely recalled, however, some talk of a Canadian nephew and niece who had at times visited him.

"Sh--s--s.h.!.+" said a woman's voice from the lower hall, "Don't wake Uncle Anthony."

It must have been a young woman. Her voice sounded pensive, like that of a girl who might be coming home tired from a dance at Sherry's.

Yet, knowing what I did, its girlish weariness took on a pathos indescribably poignant.

"It's an awful hour, isn't it?" asked a second man's voice from the lower hall. There were sounds that seemed to imply that wraps were being removed.

"Almost four," came the answer from above. "Had a good time, Caddy?"

I heard a stifled yawn.

"Rather," answered the girl's voice.

"I say, Orrie, bring up those Egyptian gaspers for a puff or two, will you?" requested the youth from above, still in a stage-whisper. "And, Caddy, be sure the latch is on."

"On what?" demanded Orrie.

"The door, you idiot!" was the sleepily good-natured retort.

Then I suddenly ducked low behind my chair-back, for the young man called Orrie had flung open the library door. He came into the room gropingly, without switching on the electrics. I could see his trim young shoulders, and the white blur of his s.h.i.+rt-front. Behind him, framed in the doorway, stood a young girl of about twenty, a blonde in pale blue, with bare arms and bare shoulders. Her skin looked very soft and baby-like in the strong sidelight. I could not repress something that was almost a shudder at the thought of this careless gaiety and youth so close to the grim tragedy behind me, so unconscious of the awakening that might come to them at almost any moment.

"_Do_ hurry!" said the tired girl, as the young man fumbled about the table-end. I realized, as I peeped out at her, that my first duty would be to keep those round young eyes from what might confront them in that inner room.

"I've got 'em!" answered the man. He stood a moment without moving.

Then he turned and walked out of the room, quietly closing the door behind him.

I emitted a gasp of relief and stood up once more. Nothing alive or dead, I determined, would now keep me in that house. Yet for all that new-born ecstasy of impatience, I was still compelled to wait, for I could hear the occasional sound of feet and a whisper or two from behind the closed door. Then all sound died away; the gloom and silence again engulfed me.

I took the Yang Lao porcelain from my pocket, unwrapped it, and crept back to the inner room. I groped along the wall in the darkness, circling wide about the green-leather chair in the center. I put the vase back on its cabinet, without so much as flas.h.i.+ng my light. Then I circled back along the wall, felt for the library door, and groped cautiously across the perilous breadth of the furniture-crowded chamber. It took me several seconds to find the door that opened into the hallway. Once through it and across the hall, I knew, only a spring-latch stood between me and the street. So I turned the k.n.o.b quickly and swung back the door.

But I did not pa.s.s through it. For, instead of darkness, I found myself confronted by a blaze of light. In that blaze of light stood three waiting and expectant figures. What most disturbed me was the fact that the man called Orrie held in his hand a revolver that seemed the size of a toy-cannon. This was leveled directly at my blinking eyes. The other youth, in cerise pajamas with orange colored frogs and a dressing-gown tied at the waist with a silk girdle, stood just behind him, holding an extremely wicked-looking Savage of the magazine make.

Behind this youth again, close by the newel-post, stood the girl in blue, all the sleepiness gone out of her face.