Havoc Part 55

"I am sorry," she replied, turning away. "I will come back as soon as I can."

He called out after her and she paused.

"Look here," he said, "you were absent from the performance the other evening, and now you are skipping rehearsal without even waiting for permission. It can't be done, young lady. You must do your playing around some other time. If you're not here when you're called, you needn't trouble to turn up again. Do you understand?"

Her lips quivered and the sense of impending disaster which seemed to be brooding over her life became almost overwhelming.

"I'll come back as soon as I can," she promised, with a little break in her voice,--"as soon as ever I can, Mr. Heepman."

She hurried out of the theatre and took her place once more among the hurrying throng of pedestrians. Several people turned round to look at her. Her white face, tight-drawn mouth, and eyes almost unnaturally large, seemed to have become the abiding-place for tragedy. She herself saw no one. She would have taken a cab, but a glimpse at the contents of her purse dissuaded her. She walked steadily on to Jermyn Street, walked up the stairs to the third floor, and knocked at her brother's door. No one answered her at first. She turned the handle and entered to find the room empty.

There were sounds, however, in the further apartment, and she called out to him.

"Arthur," she cried, "are you there?"

"Who is it?" he demanded.

"It is I--Zoe!" she exclaimed.

"What do you want?"

"I want to speak to you, Arthur. I must speak to you. Please come as quickly as you can."

He growled something and in a few moments he appeared. He was wearing the morning clothes in which he had attended court earlier in the day, but the change in him was perhaps all the more marked by reason of this resumption of his old attire. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes scarcely for an instant seemed to lose that feverish gleam of terror with which he had returned from Liverpool.

He knew very well what she had come about, and he began nervously to try and bully her.

"I wish you wouldn't come to these rooms, Zoe," he said. "I've told you before they're bachelors' apartments, and they don't like women about the place. What is it? What do you want?"

"I was brought here last time without any particular desire on my part," she answered, looking him in the face. "I've come now to ask you what accursed plot this is against Stephen Laverick? What were you doing in the court this morning, lying? What is the meaning of it, Arthur?"

"If you've come to talk rubbish like that," he declared roughly, "you'd better be off."

"No, it is not rubbis.h.!.+" she went on fearlessly. "I think I can understand what it is that has happened. They have terrified you and bribed you until you are willing to do any despicable thing--even this. Your father was good to my mother, Arthur, and I have tried to feel towards you as though you were indeed a relation.

But nothing of that counts. I want you to realize that I know the truth, and that I will not see an innocent man convicted while the guilty go free."

He moved a step towards her. They were on opposite sides of the small round table which stood in the centre of the apartment.

"What do you mean?" he demanded hoa.r.s.ely.

"Isn't it plain enough?" she exclaimed. "You came to my rooms a week or so ago, a terrified, broken-down man. If ever there was guilt in a man's face, it was in yours. You sent for Laverick. He pitied you and helped you away. At Liverpool they would not let you embark--these men. They have brought you back here. You are their tool. But you know very well, Arthur, that it was not Stephen Laverick who killed the man in Crooked Friars' Alley! You know very well that it was not Stephen Laverick!"

"Why the devil should I know anything about it?" he asked fiercely.

A note of pa.s.sion suddenly crept into her voice. Her little white hand, with its accusing forefinger, shot out towards him.

"Because it was you, Arthur Morrison, who committed that crime," she cried, "and sooner than another man should suffer for it, I shall go to court myself and tell the truth."

He was, for the moment, absolutely speechless, pale as death, with nervously twitching lips and fingers. But there was murder in his eyes.

"What do you know about this?" he muttered.

"Never mind," she answered. "I know and I guess quite enough to convince me--and I think anybody else--that you are the guilty man.

I would have helped you and s.h.i.+elded you, whatever it cost me, but I will not do so at Stephen Laverick's expense."

"What is Laverick to you?" he growled.

"He is nothing to me," she replied, "but the best of friends. Even were he less than that, do you suppose that I would let an innocent man suffer?"

He moistened his dry lips rapidly.

"You are talking nonsense, Zoe," he said,--"nonsense! Even if there has been some little mistake, what could I do now? I have given my evidence. So far as I am concerned, the case is finished.

I shall not be called again until the trial."

"Then you had better go to the magistrates tomorrow morning and take back your evidence," she declared boldly, "for if you do not, I shall be there and I shall tell the truth."

"Zoe," he gasped, "don't try me too high. This thing has upset me.

I'm ill. Can't you see it, Zoe? Look at me. I haven't slept for weeks. Night and day I've had the fear--the fear always with me.

You don't know what it is--you can't imagine. It's like a terrible ghost, keeping pace with you wherever you go, laying his icy finger upon you whenever you would rest, mocking at you when you try to drown thought even for a moment. Don't you try me too far, Zoe.

I'm not responsible. Laverick isn't the man you think him to be.

He isn't the man I believed. He did have that money--he did, indeed."

"That," she said, "is to be explained. But he is not a murderer."

"Listen to me, Zoe," Morrison continued, leaning across the table.

"Come and stay with me for a time and we will go away for a week--somewhere to the seaside. We will talk about this and think it over. I want to get away from London. We will go to Brighton, if you like. I must do something for you, Zoe. I'm afraid I've neglected you a good deal. Perhaps I could get you a better part at one of the theatres. I must make you an allowance. You ought to be wearing better clothes."

She drew a little away.

"I want nothing from you, Arthur," she said, "except this--that you speak the truth."

He wiped his forehead and struck the table before her.

"But, good G.o.d, Zoe!" he exclaimed, "do you know what it is that you are asking me? Do you want me to go into court and say--'That isn't the man... It is I who am the murderer'? Do you want me to feel their hands upon my shoulder, to be put there in the dock and have all the people staring at me curiously because they know that before very long I am to stand upon the scaffold and have that rope around my neck and--"

He broke off with a low cry, wringing his hands like a child in a fit of impotent terror. But the girl in front of him never flinched.

"Arthur," she said, "crime is a terrible thing, but nothing in the world can alter its punishment. If it is frightful for you to think of this, what must it be for him? And you are guilty and he is not."

"I was mad!" Morrison went on, now almost beside himself. "Zoe, I was mad! I called there to have a drink. We were broke,--the firm was broke. I'd a hundred or so in my pocket and I was going to bolt the next day. And there, within a few yards of me, was that man, with such a roll of notes as I had never seen in my life. Five hundred pounds, every one of them, and a wad as thick as my fists.

Zoe, they fascinated me. I had two drinks quickly and I followed him out. Somehow or other, I found that I'd caught up a knife that was on the counter. I never meant to hurt him seriously, but I wanted some of those notes! I was leaving the next day for Africa and I hadn't enough money to make a fair start. I wanted it--my G.o.d, how I wanted money!"

"It couldn't have been worth--that!" she cried, looking at him wonderingly.

"I was mad," he continued. "I saw the notes and they went to my head. Men do wild things sometimes when they are drunk, or for love. I don't drink much, and I'm not over fond of women, but, my G.o.d, money is like the blood of my body to me! I saw it, and I wanted it and I wanted it, and I went mad! Zoe, you won't give me away? Say you won't!"

"But what am I to do?" she protested. "He must not suffer."

"He'll get off," Morrison a.s.sured her thickly. "I tell you he'll get off. He's only to part with the doc.u.ment, which never belonged to him, and the charge will be withdrawn. They know who the murdered man was. They know where the money came from which he was carrying. I tell you he can save himself. You wouldn't dream of sending me to the gallows, Zoe!"

"Stephen Laverick will never give up that doc.u.ment to those people,"