Mortmain Part 2

Mortmain turned and pa.s.sed out without reply. He hated intruders and had not liked the way in which Flynt had calmly received the clerk in his private study. On the whole, he regarded the solicitor as presuming.

It was dark already and the street lamps glowed nebulously through the gathering fog. The air was chilly, and a thick mealy paste, half sleet, half water, formed a sort of icing upon the sidewalk, which made walking slippery and uncomfortable. Few people were abroad, for fas.h.i.+onable London was in its clubs and boudoirs, and the workers trudged in an entirely different direction.

The club was but a few streets away, and it was only ten minutes after the hour when he entered it and strolled carelessly through the rooms.

No one whom he cared particularly to see was there, and the fresh, if bitter, December air outside seemed vastly preferable to the stuffy atmosphere of the smoke-filled card and reading rooms. Therefore, as he had nearly an hour before it would be time to dress, he left the club, and, with the vague idea of extending his evening ramble, turned northward. Unconsciously he kept repeating Flynt's words: "The death of Lord Russell or your own." Then, without heed to where he was going, he fell into a reverie, in which he pondered upon the emptiness and uselessness of his life.

At length he entered a large square, and found himself asking what was so familiar in the picket fence and broad flight of steps that led up to the main entrance of the mansion on the corner. A wing of the house made out into a side street and presented three brilliantly lighted windows to the night. Two were empty, but on the white shade of the third, only a few feet above the sidewalk, appeared the sharp shadow of a man's head bending over a table. Now and then the lips moved as if their owner were addressing some other occupant of the chamber. It was the head of an old man, bald and shrunken.

Mortmain muttered an oath. What tricks was Fate trying to play with him by leading his footsteps to the house of the very man who, on the following morning, would ruin him as inevitably and inexorably as the sun would rise! A wave of anger surged through him and he shook his fist at the shadow on the curtain, exclaiming as he had done in his study half an hour before, "Curse him!"

"Ain't got much bloomin' 'air, 'as 'e, guv'nor?" said a thick voice at his elbow.

Sir Richard started back and beheld by the indistinct light of the street lamp the leering face of Flaggs, the clerk.

"Tha'sh yer frien' S'Gordon Russell," continued the other with easy familiarity. "A bloomin' bad un, says I. 'Orrid li'l bald 'ead! Got'sh notes, too. _Your_ notes, S'Richard. Don't like 'im myself!"

Mortmain turned faint. This wretched scrivener had stumbled upon or overheard his secret. That he was drunk was obvious, but that only made him the more dangerous.

"Take yourself off, my man. It's too cold out here for you," ordered the baronet, slipping a couple of s.h.i.+llings into his hand.

"Than' you, S'Richard," mumbled Flaggs, leaning heavily in Mortmain's direction. "I accept this as a 'refresher.' Although you've never given me a retainer! Ha! ha! Not so bad, eh? Lemme tell you somethin'. 'Like to kill 'im,' says you? Kill 'im, says I. Le's kill 'im together. 'Ere an' now! Eh?"

"Leave me, do you hear?" cried the baronet. "You're in no condition to be on the street."

Flaggs grinned a sickly grin.

"Same errand as you, your wors.h.i.+p. Both 'ere lookin' at li'l old bald 'ead. Look at 'im now----"

He raised his finger and pointed at the window, then staggered backward, lost his balance, and fell over the curb along the gutter. In another instant a policeman had him by the collar and had jerked him to his feet. The fall had so dazed the clerk that he made no resistance.

"I 'ope 'e didn't hoffer you no violence, Sir Richard," remarked the bobby, touching his helmet with his unoccupied hand. "Hit's disgraceful--right in front of Lord Russell's, too!"

"No, he was merely offensive," replied Mortmain, recognizing the policeman as an old timer on the beat. "Thank you. Good night."

The baronet turned away as the bobby started toward the station house, conducting his bewildered victim by the nape of the neck. Without heeding direction, Mortmain strode on, trying to forget the drunken Flaggs and the little bald head in the window. The clerk's words had created in him a feeling of actual nausea, so that a perspiration broke out all over his body and he walked uncertainly. After he had covered half a mile or so, the air revived him, and, having taken his bearings, he made a wide circle so as to avoid Farringham Square again, and at the same time to approach his own house from the direction opposite to that in which he had started. He still felt shocked and ill--the same sensation which he had once experienced on seeing two navvies fighting outside a music hall. He remembered afterwards that there seemed to be more people on the streets as he neared his home, and that a patrol wagon pa.s.sed at a gallop in the same direction. A hundred yards farther on he saw a long envelope lying in the slush upon the sidewalk, and mechanically he picked it up and thrust it in the pocket of his coat.

Joyce came to the door just as the hall clock boomed seven. Sir Richard had been gone exactly an hour.

"Fetch me a brandy and soda," ordered the baronet huskily, and stepped into the study without removing his furs. The fire had been replenished and was cracking merrily, but it sent no answering glow through Sir Richard's frame. The shadow of the little bald head still rested like a weight upon his brain, and his hands were moist and clammy. He thrust them into his pockets and came into contact with the wet manila cover of the envelope, and he drew it forth and tossed it upon the table as Joyce entered with the brandy.

The butler removed his master's coat and noiselessly left the room, while Mortmain drained the gla.s.s and then carelessly examined the envelope. The names of "Flynt, Steele & Burnham" printed in the upper left-hand corner caught his eye. The names of his own solicitors! That was a peculiar thing. Perhaps Flynt had dropped it--or Flaggs. He turned it over curiously. It was unsealed, as if it had formed one of a package of papers. The baronet lifted the envelope to the lamp and peeped within it. There were three thin sheets of paper covered with writing, and unconsciously he drew them forth and examined them. At the foot of each, in delicate, firm characters, appeared his own name staring him familiarly in the face. In the corners were the unmistakable figures 25,000. He rubbed his forehead and read all three carefully. There could be no doubt of it--they were his own three notes of hand to Lord Gordon Russell. Fate was playing tricks with him again.

"A fire from heaven to consume the notes," Flynt had said. Here were the notes--there was the fire. Had Heaven perhaps really interposed to save him? Was this chance or Providence? With a short breath the baronet grasped the notes and took a step toward the hearth. As he did so the extension telephone by the mantel began to ring excitedly. His heart thumped loudly as, with a feeling of guilt, he relaid the notes upon the table and seized the telephone.

"Yes--yes--this is Mortmain!"

"Richard," came the voice of a friend at the club in anxious tones, "are you there? Are you at home?"

"Yes--yes!" repeated the baronet breathlessly. "What is it?"

"Have you heard the news--the news about Lord Russell?"

Mortmain's head swam with a whirl of premonition.

"No," he replied, trying to master himself, while the perspiration again broke out over his body. "What news? What has happened?"

"Lord Russell was murdered in his library at half after six this evening. Some one gained access to the room and killed the old man at his study table."

"Killed Lord Russell!" gasped Sir Richard. "Have they caught the murderer?"

"No," continued his friend. "The a.s.sa.s.sin escaped by one of the windows into the street. The police have taken possession. There is nothing to indicate who did the deed. There was blood everywhere. His secretary, a man named Leach, was discharged two days ago and a general alarm has been sent out for him."

"This is terrible," groaned Sir Richard in horror.

"It is, indeed. I thought you ought to know. I may see you at the opera.

If not--good night."

The receiver fell from the baronet's fingers, and the room grew black as he clutched at the mantel with his other hand. He staggered slightly, tried to regain his equilibrium, and in so doing upset one of the bronze dragon vases which grinned down upon him.

The vase fell, and the baronet clutched at it in its descent. It was too late. The heavy bronze crashed downward to the floor carrying Sir Richard with it, and one of the verdigris-covered dragon's fangs pierced his right hand.

Mortmain uttered a moan and lay motionless on the floor. The little Sevres clock ticked off forty seconds and then softly chimed the quarter, while the blood from the baronet's hand spurted in a tiny stream upon the rug.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Mortmain . . . lay motionless on the floor."]

III

When Sir Richard Mortmain next opened his eyes after his fall he found himself in his bedchamber. The curtains were tightly drawn, allowing only a s.h.i.+mmer of suns.h.i.+ne to creep in and play upon the ceiling; an unknown woman in a nurse's uniform was sitting motionless at the foot of his bed; the air was heavy with the pungent odor of iodoform, and his right arm, tightly bandaged and lying extended upon a wooden support before him, throbbed with burning pains. Too weak to move, unable to recall what had brought him to such a pa.s.s, he raised his eyebrows inquiringly, and in reply the nurse laid her finger upon her lips and reaching toward a stand beside the bed held a tumbler containing a gla.s.s tube to the baronet's lips. Mortmain sucked the contents from the tumbler and felt his pulse strengthen--then weakness manifested itself and he sank back, his lips framing the unspoken question, "What has happened?"

The nurse smiled--she was a pretty, plump young person--not the kind Sir Richard favored (Burne-Jones was his type), and whispered:

"You have been unconscious over twelve hours. You must lie still. You have had a bad fall and your hand is injured."

In some strange and unaccountable way the statement called to Mortmain's fuddled senses a confused recollection of a scene in Hauptmann's "Die Versunkene Glocke," and half unconsciously he repeated the words:

"I _fell_. I--fe--l--l!"

"Yes, you did, indeed!" retorted the pretty nurse. "But Sir Penniston will never forgive me if I let you talk. How is your arm?"

"It burns--and burns!" answered the baronet.

"That horrid vase crushed right through the palm. Rather a nasty wound.

But you will be all right presently. Do you wish anything?"

Suddenly complete mental capacity rushed back to him. The disagreeable scene with Flaggs, the finding of the notes, the news of Russell's murder, and his accident. The murder! He must learn the details. And the notes. What had he done with them? He could not recollect, try hard as he would. Were they on the table? His head whirled and he grew suddenly faint. The nurse poured out another tumbler from a bottle and again held the tube to his lips. How delicious and strengthening it was!