Within the bungalow of the Ilams there remained only two persons who were legally entitled to be there, and those persons were Mrs. Ilam, motionless for ever, but with her bright, tragic eyes staring continually at the same point in the ceiling, and Rosie Dartmouth. These two women, however, were decidedly not alone in the house. It was a large house, a bungalow more by the character of its architecture and its many balconies, than by its size and shape. Most bungalows are long and low; this one was long without being low. On the ground floor were the reception rooms and kitchen offices; on the first floor were the principal bedrooms; and above these was a low-ceiled floor of servants’ bedrooms. Nor was that all; for the steeply-sloping roof had been utilized by an architect who hated to waste space as a miser hates to waste money, and hence, above even the servants’ floor was a vast attic, serviceable for storage. The attic was reached by a little flight of stairs of its own, and it was lighted by two panes of glass let into the roof, one on either side.
The ground-floor and the servants’ floor were now dark and uninhabited. On the first floor the only occupied room was the bedchamber of Mrs. Ilam, where Rosie stood nervously by the mantelpiece in an attitude of uneasy expectation. The sole illumination was given by the small rose-shaded lamp, which threw a circle of light on the white cloth of the invalid’s night-table; all else, including Rosie, was in gloom.
Rosie was evidently listening—the door was ajar—and after a few moments she stepped hastily outside on to the landing, and glanced up the well of the staircase. At the summit of the staircase she saw the door of the great attic open, and a figure emerge; the figure, which was carrying a small electric lantern, carefully locked the door of the attic behind it, and then, with some deliberation, descended the narrow attic stairs, and, more quietly, the stairs from the servants’ floor to the first floor.
The figure was that of Mr. Jetsam, clothed in his eternal suit of blue serge.
The stairs and landing were quite dark, save for his lantern and the faint glimmer that came from Mrs. Ilam’s bedroom. Mr. Jetsam had moved without a sound, for he was wearing thick felt slippers. He did not immediately notice Rosie on the landing, and when the light of his lantern caught and showed her dress, he started back slightly. Rosie made no move.
“I did not expect you to be there,” he whispered.
She regarded him with steady eyes, and then, without a word, motioned him to proceed further downstairs to the ground-floor.
“You want to talk to me?” he whispered again.
He had a voice which was curiously capable of being almost inaudible, and yet at the same time distinct.
She nodded.
He pointed to the open door of Mrs. Ilam’s room, but Rosie shook her head.
“Why not?” he demanded.
She shook her head once more, and they went downstairs to the dining-room, both silently creeping. With infinite precautions he opened the dining-room door, and shut it when they had entered.
“It would have been better to remain upstairs,” he said mildly. “The least possible movement is dangerous enough. At this stage a creaking stair might spoil the whole business.”
“I cannot talk there,” she said.
“But, since Mrs. Ilam is utterly helpless,” he protested, “what can it matter what she hears? She cannot talk.”
“The fact that she hears is more than enough to upset me,” said Rosie. “I am like that, you see. I know it is silly, but I can’t help it. I wanted to tell you that I have just had a dreadful scene with Pauline.”
“A dreadful scene! You’ve not quarrelled?” he demanded anxiously.
“Oh, no! But I’ve lied to her—I’ve lied to her in the most shocking way, and, what is worse, I fancy she didn’t quite believe me.”
“She suspects something?”
His tone sounded apprehensive in the gloom.
“I don’t know; I hope not. In any case, what can she suspect? She’s been in bed all the time.”
“True,” said Mr. Jetsam reflectively. “True! You have behaved magnificently, Miss Rosie. Never, never, in this world, shall I be able to thank you. I had not thought that such a woman as you existed. You have given me the first sympathy I have ever had. Yes, the first!—without you I could never have succeeded. I could scarcely have begun. And now I shall succeed. Listen to me—I shall succeed! A wrong will be righted. Justice will be done. If it isn’t, I shall kill myself.”
He finished grimly, as it were, ferociously.
“Don’t say that,” pleaded Rosie.
He laughed. Then he lifted the little lantern and threw its ray on her face. She did not flinch. “You are very pale,” he remarked softly.
“What do you expect?” she answered. “You have gone much further—very much further than I ever dreamt of. You have led me on.”
“No,” he said, “it is your own kindness of heart, your sympathy with the unfortunate that has led you on. I assure you I was never so bold before I met you, before I appealed to you that night when you stood on your balcony. Do you regret? If you tell me to stop, to abandon my plans and depart—well, I will depart.”
She smiled sadly.
“I do not want you to do that,” she said. “Nevertheless, I tremble for what you have done.”
“Do not tremble,” he said coaxingly. “If I am not safe here, where am I safe? Is not this the very last place where anyone would expect to find me and my—my booty?”
“But, then, sending the servants away,” she exclaimed.
“Nothing simpler,” he commented.
“I don’t know how I did it,” she mused, as if aghast at the memory of what she had achieved; “and as for to-morrow, how I shall explain it to Pauline I really can’t imagine!”
“To-morrow,” he said, “everything will be over one way or the other; you will be able to resume your habit of speaking the truth. By the way,” he went on, in a tone carefully careless, “you managed to do what I asked you with the boat?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“Did you meet anyone?”
“Not a soul.”
“And you pulled the plug out and cut the boat: adrift?”
“Pulled the plug out and cut the boat adrift!” she repeated after him, amazed. “No; you never told me to do that!”
“Pardon me,” he said, “that was the most important thing of all. It is essential that there should be no trace of the boat.”
“I didn’t understand,” she faltered. “I’m so sorry. I never heard——”
“I regret I didn’t make myself more clear,” he remarked. “You see, at intervals during the night the watchmen do their patrols, and I know there is a regular inspection of the terrace. Supposing the boat is seen?”
“I really don’t remember, that you asked me to do that,” she persisted.
“Anyhow,” he said politely, “what you have done deserves all my praise and gratitude. But——”
“You would like me to go and sink the boat, wouldn’t you?”
“I hesitate to ask you. It is really too much——”
“Yes, yes,” she said passionately. “I will go and do it—alone.” Then she paused. “But suppose I meet the patrol?”
“You are you,” was Jetsam’s response. “You are the President’s cousin. You have the right to amuse yourself with a boat, at no matter what hour of the day or night.”
“Just so,” she admitted. “I will go now. I shall be back quite soon. Shall you be ready by the time I return?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Everything is all right?” She seemed to question him anxiously.
“Quite all right,” he said; “Let me thank you again.”
With an impulsive movement he took her hand and kissed it. She blushed and trembled. Then he opened the door and they passed out into the hall.
“I will unfasten the front-door for you,” he whispered. “I think I can do it more quietly than you. It may be left on the latch till you come back;” and he unfastened the front-door. Through its panes a faint light entered the hall.
“I must get my hat,” she said.
They went upstairs.
“I’ll leave you,” he whispered. “You can manage?”
She nodded. He put the light on a bracket on the landing and ascended to the upper parts of the house. Rosie went into her bedroom. When she came out, wearing a hat, she noticed for the first time that the door of Pauline’s bedroom was not shut. She pushed it open very carefully, and peered in. A feeble reflection of the moonlight redeemed it from absolute obscurity, and Rosie perceived that the bed was unoccupied, that it had not even been slept in. Instantly her mind became full of suspicions. Had Pauline lied to her as she had lied to Pauline? Was her part in the plot of Mr. Jetsam discovered? No, impossible! And yet—Then she recollected having heard, or having thought that she had heard, the distant ringing of one of the service-bells in the house some time before Mr. Jetsam came downstairs. She had forgotten to mention this disturbing fact to Mr. Jetsam. Evidently he had not heard the ringing, or he would have questioned her about it. Supposing they were being watched, after all? And in any case where was Pauline? Pauline had given her to understand that she had retired to rest, and lo! the bed had not been touched! Full of tremors, she silently shut the door on the empty room.
She remembered Jetsam’s threat of what he should do if his plans failed, and she hesitated.
Mr. Jetsam, having with an attentive ear heard the vague sound of the shutting of a door, came out a second time from the mysterious attic and descended the stairs. He was a man to omit no precautions, and every door that he passed he locked on the outside, not only on the servants’ floor, but on the first floor. He penetrated then to the ground-floor, and fastened not merely every door, but every window. At last he arrived at the front door.
“It’s a pity to lock her out,” he murmured to himself; “but what can I do? It would be madness to let her assist at the scene I have to go through. She expects to, but I must disappoint her.”
And he noiselessly bolted and locked the front door.
The fact was that Mr. Jetsam’s plans had been slightly deranged. He had hoped to get through his great scene—the scene to which all his efforts had tended—during Rosie’s first absence on the river. He relied on Rosie; he had been amazed at her goodness and her fortitude; he had been still more amazed at his singular influence over her; and he naturally told her a great deal. But he did not tell her quite everything. He feared to frighten her. Hence proceeded one of his reasons for sending her to the boat, with the object of sinking the coffer further in the river as the tide fell. But she had dispatched the business with such extraordinary celerity, and he, on his part, had been so hindered by such an unexpected contretemps, that she was back again before even he had begun.
Thus, he had been obliged to invent a new errand for her, and he flattered himself that he had invented the errand, and dispatched her on it, with a certain histrionic skill—and he had the right so to flatter himself. It desolated him to deceive her, to hoodwink her; but he saw no alternative.
Having secured the house, he ascended again, this time taking less care to maintain an absolute silence, to the first floor. The affair was fully launched now, and no one could interrupt him. If Pauline awoke in her locked bedroom and heard things, so much the worse for her, he reflected. She could not go out on to her balcony because he had seen long ago to the fastening of the window. Therefore she might cry as much as she liked. He laughed as he thought of this, not having the least idea that he had so elaborately fastened the door and the window of an empty room.
He went into Mrs. Ilam’s bedroom with a slight swagger, and shut the door. A fire was burning in the grate. He cast a single glance at the bed and its mute and helpless occupant, and putting his little lantern on the mantelpiece, he walked round the room, inspecting its arrangement and its corners. Then, suddenly remembering his own burglarious exploit of forcing an entrance into the room by the window, he approached the window, flung it wide open and stepped outside on to the balcony. Far across the expanse of the Oriental Gardens, in the moonlight, he discerned a figure vaguely moving in the direction of the river. It was a woman’s figure.
“There she is,” he murmured. “Admirable creature! Why did I not meet such a woman when I was younger?”
Then he came in again, shut and fastened the window, and drew the heavy curtains across it, taking care that no chink was left through which light could be seen. Then he began to whistle softly, and he turned on all the electricity in the apartment; there were a cluster of lamps in the ceiling, and two lights over’ the dressing-table, besides the table-lamps, and his own trifling gleam of a lantern. The room was brilliantly, almost blindingly, lit, and every object stood revealed.
He stepped towards the bed, and deliberately gazed into the eyes of the stricken old woman. Mrs. Ilam’s burning orbs blinked at intervals. Otherwise she gave no sign of volition or of life. Jetsam placed his eyes in the fixed line of her gaze, so that they were obliged to exchange a glance. She appeared to be unconscious of it. Only a scarcely perceptible trémulation ran along her arms, which lay stretched, as usual, outside the coverlet, like the arms of a corpse.
“Well,” said Jetsam, “here I am at last, you see. Do you recognize me? I’ve changed, haven’t I, old hag? But you can’t be mistaken in me.”
The pent-up bitterness of a lifetime escaped from him in the tones of his voice. But the old woman showed no symptom that the terrible past was thus revisiting her in its most awful form.
“You thought I was dead, didn’t you?” Jetsam continued. “For over forty years you have been sure that I was dead, and that your crime was one of the thousands of crimes which go unpunished. And look here,” he went on; “if you have any doubt, murderess, as to my identity, look at this. I’ll make you look at it, by heaven!”
He bent down, drew up the trouser of his left leg to the knee, and pushed the sock into his boot, so that the calf of the leg was exposed. On the fleshy part of the calf could be plainly seen a large birth-stain. With the movement of an acrobat he raised that leg over the bed, over the eyes of Mrs. Ilam, and held it there during several seconds. Then he dropped it.
“There!” he exclaimed. “That’s to show you who it is you have to deal with.”
His voice was cruel, icy, and inexorable. He had no pity, no trace of mercy, for the woman who, whatever the enormity of her sins, was entitled to some respect by reason of her extreme age, her absolutely defenceless condition, and her suffering.
“They tell me you can answer ‘yes’ or ‘no,’” he said, “by your eyelids. Blinking means ‘yes,’ and no movement means ‘no.’ I am going to put some questions to you. Did you take the photograph out of the box? Answer.”
Mrs. Ilam closed her eyes and kept them closed.
“What does that mean?” Jetsam grumbled. “Open your eyes again, murderess.”
But Mrs. Ilam did not open her eyes again. She obstinately kept them closed; and she might have been asleep, except that now and then a tear exuded from under the lids.
“I’ll make you open them,” cried Jetsam.
His hand approached the old woman’s eyes, but even his implacable and cruel bitterness recoiled from the coward villainy of touching that stricken and helpless organism. He drew back his hand, and some glimmering sense of the dreadfulness of the scene which he was acting reached his heart. The thought ran through his brain that it was a good thing Rosie had not been present.
“Very well,” he said, “as you like. Only I know that you, or one of you, must have taken that photograph out of the box, and I have every reason to believe that it is in this room. In any case I mean to know very shortly whether it is or not.”
So saying, he went abruptly out of the room, shutting the door, and climbed once more to the attic.
“Jakel” he called quietly.
And a Soudanese, the brother of Ilam’s protector, “Spats,” obediently appeared.
“I am ready,” said Jetsam. “Come, pass in front of me. I will lock the door myself.”
They went together to Mrs. Ilam’s bedroom.
“You know how to search, Jake?” Jetsam instructed him. “Everything in this room has to be searched to find a photograph—a photograph, you know—the same sort of thing as this.” And he pointed to a portrait of Josephus Ilam that stood on the mantelpiece.
The Soudanese nodded.
“Begin with the chest of drawers,” he said.
In a quarter of an hour the room was in such a state of havoc as might have resulted from the passage through it of a cyclone. Every drawer in every piece of furniture had been ransacked and emptied. The Soudanese had even climbed on a chair in order to inspect the top of the wardrobe, and had dislodged therefrom a pile of cardboard boxes. Every book had been torn to pieces. Piles of letters lay scattered about. The floor was heaped up with Mrs. Ilam’s private possessions. Chairs were overturned. One or two vases with narrow necks and wide bases had been smashed in order the better to search their interiors. The place was wrecked. But the mysterious photograph which Jetsam wanted had not been discovered. The Soudanese had found dozens of photographs, but not the right one.
The bed of the invalid was alone undisturbed. Among all the ruins of the chamber it remained untouched, white, apparently inviolate, and the old woman’s arms lay ever in the same position, and her eyes, open and blazing now, gazed ever at the same spot in the ceiling.
“I have it!” exclaimed Jetsam suddenly. “The bed—the bed! The box was hidden under the bed, but I got it. The photograph is hidden under the bed, and I will get it.”
He hesitated. Dare he search the bed? Dare he disturb its helpless burden? He wondered. He was ready for anything. He was capable of slaughter, but he wavered and retreated before the idea of searching for the photograph in the place where the box had been.
Then he suddenly decided.
“Take firm hold of the bed itself, not the mattress,” he ordered the Soudanese, “and I will take hold on this side. Be very gentle. Do not disarrange the clothes. We will lift it over the foot of the bedstead and place it on the floor. Carefully now—carefully!”
And with the utmost delicacy the two men lifted the bed bodily and laid it very gently on the floor, and Mrs. Ilam’s gaze was directed to a new point: of the ceiling.
“That will be a change for you,” said Jetsam, with a touch of compunction in his voice. “I was obliged to do it. We’ll put you back presently.”
And he searched thoroughly the mattress and the bedstead, but there was no photograph.
He paused and wiped, his brow. The Soudanese stood at attention by the side of the bed. Jetsam looked at Jake.
“Go and fetch him down,” he said peremptorily to the Soudanese.
And Jake vanished.
“One way or another this shall end,” he murmured, gazing at the old woman in her lowly position among the heaped confusion of the floor; and he waited, eyeing at intervals the door.
At length the door opened, and the Soudanese came in, and he was leading by the hand Josephus Ilam. Jetsam stepped quickly behind them and shut and locked the door.
“Now then, Ilam,” said he, “sit down. Make him sit down, Jake.”
And quite obediently Ilam sat down on a chair, near the night-table. He made no remark; he scarcely looked round; his senses seemed to be dulled; it was as though his mind had retired to some fastness from which it refused to emerge.
“What do you want?” Ilam demanded gloomily. “What have you been doing?”
“I’m going to make one last appeal to you, Ilam,” said Jetsam. “I kidnapped you for this, I may tell you. I was determined to confront the mother and the son if necessity should arise. But you nearly did for me by swallowing too much of that blessed opiate. You are clumsy, even when you are a victim. However, you’ve got over it nicely, haven’t you? Pretty notion, wasn’t it,” he continued, “to conceal you in your own attic, where no one would ever think of looking for you? But it wanted doing, my weighty friend—it wanted doing.”
“What are you after?” Ilam asked again, as if in the grip of one fixed idea. “You’ve got the money—what else do you want?”
“You know perfectly well what I want,” said Jetsam. “My case is complete except for that photograph, and I’ve secured as much money as will keep me on my pins till I’ve forced you to see reason. But the photograph is lacking; you are aware of that. It’s certainly rather hard lines on you that you should be forced to give up the very thing whose possession by me will ruin you. But what would you have? I am desperate, and no one knows better than you and this sad creature here that my cause is just. Tell me where the photograph is.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Ilam doggedly.
Jetsam turned to Mrs. Ilam.
“Listen, murderess,” he said, and Ilam shuddered at that word: “if you do not answer my questions I will kill your son before your eyes. Does Ilam know where the photograph is?”
Once again the old woman obstinately shut her eyes and refused to give any indication.
Ilam, who seemed mentally to be quickly regaining his normal state, stood up and moved to the fireplace.
“Stand!” said Jetsam angrily, and he drew his revolver from his pocket. “I will know where that photograph is or I will hang for you. I shall not be the first man who has died in a good cause. Now, where is that photograph? Did you or your mother take it out of the box?”
He lifted the revolver.
“I took it out of the box,” snarled Ilam—“I—I—I—and my mother knew nothing.”
“And where is it?” asked Jetsam, smiling triumphantly.
“It is here,” Ilam cried, and he took a faded photograph from his breast pocket. “You never thought of searching me, eh? Ass!”
“Give it me,” said Jetsam quietly.
“No,” said Ilam; and with a sudden movement he stuck it in the fire.
The flame destroyed it in an instant.
Jetsam sprang towards him, and then fell back as if stunned. Jetsam was beaten, after all. He gave a sort of groan and walked to the other side of the room, as if in a dream. He had failed, and he meant to commit suicide. All his trouble, all his risks, had gone for nothing. He raised the revolver again, and no one in the room quite guessed the tragedy that was preparing for them. His finger was on the trigger.
Immediately behind him was a draught-screen, and the draught-screen began mysteriously to sink forward. It lodged lightly on his shoulders. He turned, the revolver at his temple; and round the screen, from behind it, appeared Rosie.
“Don’t do that,” she said calmly, and she took the revolver out of his unresisting hand.
Jetsam turned round, saw that the person who had so mysteriously interfered was Rosie herself, and sank down on a chair.
“You have done me an evil turn,” he breathed, at the same time with a gesture ordering the Soudanese to leave the room.
“I have saved your life,” she said simply.
“Yes,” he replied, with a trace of bitterness. “That is what I mean. You are not the first who has saved my life. And if the first saviour had refrained we should all have been happier now.”
“Do not say that,” she whispered. “I——”
“You—you would never have met me,” he said curtly.
“I am glad I have met you,” she retorted, bravely facing him.
“Ah!” he sighed. “And yet you play tricks on me! Yet you make promises to me and break them!”
“No, no,” she cried. “I only promised to go to the boat, and I would have gone to the boat afterwards.”
“Why did you not go at once?”
She told him how she had gone by accident into Pauline’s bedroom and found it empty, and how thus all her suspicions were aroused.
“I was afraid your plans might fail,” she said; “and you had threatened to kill yourself if they failed; and I thought something dreadful might happen during my absence. And so—so—I hid myself here—without thinking. I’m so sorry.”
And tears came to her eyes.
“A few minutes ago I might have been seriously perturbed by what you have told me,” said Jetsam. “But what does it matter now? If your sister is against me, if the house is surrounded by spies, it makes no difference. I wanted to kill this man here. I should have killed him; but I thought of the annoyance it would give you. Yes,” he smiled, “I did really. Not to mention the futile trouble it would cause me. And on the whole I regarded it as simpler and neater to kill myself. But you have stopped that. Will you oblige me by putting down that revolver? It is at full cock.”
“You will not touch it?” she demanded.
“I will not touch it,” he replied.
She laid it at the foot of the bed, and then bent down inquiringly to old Mrs. Ilam, who rested with closed eyes.
“She is asleep,” murmured Rosie.
“Through all this?”
“Yes, thank heaven! She sleeps very heavily sometimes. Will you not put the bed back in its place? I do not like to see it here. It is painful, very painful, in spite of all you have told me about her, to see this. She is very old and very helpless.” During the conversation Ilam had remained in a sort of stupor. It was as though the effort of putting the photograph in the fire, and then the shock of Rosie’s sudden appearance, had exhausted the energies which he had managed with difficulty to collect as the results of the narcotic passed away; it was as though the narcotic had resumed its sway over him for a time. But now he came brusquely forward, taking two long steps across the room, and stood between Rosie and Jetsam, and he put his face quite close to Rosie’s face, as an actor does to an actress on the stage.
“Are you this scoundrel’s accomplice?” he asked hoarsely.
“Cousin,” said Rosie, “Mr. Jetsam is not a scoundrel, and I am nobody’s accomplice.”
“He has nearly killed me, and he has robbed me of two thousand five hundred pounds,” pursued Ilam. “If that is not being a scoundrel, what is? Tell me that. You are his accomplice. You came into this house to serve his ends.”
“Indeed, I did not,” protested Rosie, “I came into this house with my sister at your urgent request.”
“Yes,” sneered Ilam. “That is what you made me believe, you chit! You worked it very well; but I know different now.”
“Until I came here I had never seen Mr. Jetsam,” said Rosie.
“You have come to understand each other remarkably well in quite a few days.”
“Perhaps we have,” admitted the girl. “But if you object you have a simple remedy.”
“What is that?”
“You say he is a thief and almost a murderer. You say that I am his accomplice; we are criminals therefore. Bring us to justice. Have the entire affair thrashed out, Cousin Ilam.”
“You know that I cannot do that,” said Ilam.
“I am well aware that you dare not,” said Rosie. “The scandal would be intolerable. Think of Pauline’s feelings.”
“But suppose Pauline, too, is in the conspiracy?”
“There would always be the scandal. It would ruin the City.”
“It is neither the scandal nor the City that you are thinking of, Cousin Ilam,” said Rosie. “It is merely yourself or your mother. If it is your mother, well and good.”
Ilam retired a couple of paces, uncertain what to say in reply, and possibly fearing some attack from Mr. Jetsam, who stood behind him. There was a silence, and then Ilam murmured:
“Ah! my poor mother, sleeping there in the midst of all this!”
It was a cry from the strange man’s heart, and another silence ensued. The situation had reached such a point as baffled all the parties to it to discover a solution.
It was Jetsam who broke the silence.
“I will leave you,” he said in a low voice.
“Good-bye,” he said, as no one replied.
“Where are you going to?” asked Rosie.
“I am merely going,” answered Jetsam.
“But you will tell me where?” she insisted.
“It is vague,” he replied. “Out of your life—that is all I can say. It was too much to hope that at the end of a career which has been one long and uninterrupted misfortune the sun of happiness should shine on me. I was destined to failure from the beginning. You do not know all my story; but you know some of it—enough to enable you, perhaps, to forgive me. Good-bye!”
He moved to the door.
“You will not leave me like that,” said Rosie. “You dare not leave me like that. You are going to kill yourself.”
“No,” he said. “I have got over that caprice, I think. I shall drag out my existence to its natural end.”
“Give me your address,” Rosie said doggedly.
He shook his head.
“You are cruel,” she whimpered. “After——”
She was interrupted by Ilam himself, who said:
“Rosie, go downstairs. I have two words to speak to this fellow. Go downstairs. Leave us.” His tone was cold and acid.
“Yes,” Jetsam agreed after a moment. “Leave us; we have to speak to each other.”
“You will not go without seeing me?” asked Rosie.
“I will not,” replied Jetsam, and the next instant the two men were alone together in the room, save for the unconscious form of Mrs. Ilam.
The door had been locked again, this time by Ilam.
“She is in love with you,” Ilam shouted fiercely. “You have imposed on her; you have taken advantage of her ignorance of life, and she is in love with you! It is infamous. I am stronger than you, and unless you promise me——”
“Idiot!” Jetsam stopped him. “What are you raving about? You must be mad. You must have forgotten—as your mother forgets. As for this poor girl being in love with me——-” He stopped with a hard laugh. “What has that to do with you?”
“It has everything to do with me,” cried Ilam, and, as if transported by fury, he suddenly sprang on Jetsam, who was all unprepared, and, clasping him in a murderous embrace, threw him to the ground. “I’ve had enough of you,” he ground out the words through his teeth. “And if I finish you, I can easily show that it was in self-defence.”
And he had scarcely spoken when his hands fell lax in astonishment and alarm, for immediately outside the window, or so it seemed, there sounded four notes of a trombone, brazen, clear, and imposing in the night. No one who has heard Beethoven’s greatest symphony will ever forget the four notes—commonly called the notes of fate—with which the most tremendous of musical compositions opens. It was these notes which the trombone had given forth. There was a silence, and the instrument repeated them, and in the next pause that followed, the two men who an instant before had been joined in a dreadful struggle, lay moveless, listening to their own breathing; and a third time the trombone sounded.
When Pauline, standing outside Carpentaria’s bungalow, had communicated to Carpentaria the fateful fact that all Ilam’s servants had disappeared from their rooms, and had given expression to the vague and terrible fear that was beginning to take possession of her, the musician said in reply:
“You have every reason to be afraid, and yet I shall ask you to try to calm your apprehensions. Whether the servants are there or not, nobody can get into your house without our knowing it, and when anybody starts to attempt to get in, there will be plenty of time for you to alarm yourself then.”
“But Rosie alone there with poor Mrs. Ilam!” sighed Pauline.
“Mrs. Ilam can’t do her any harm, at any rate,” said Carpentaria comfortingly.
And with that he commenced a cautious perambulation of the exterior of Ilam’s house, Pauline following him.
“I wish you would go to my sister until I have something to report,” he murmured. “You will take cold, and you will work yourself up into a fever, and do no good to anybody.”
“I shall not work myself up into a fever,” replied Pauline firmly. “I am capable of being just as calm as you are yourself. Let us go at once into the house—let us go to Rosie.”
“What!” expostulated Carpentaria, “and spoil whatever scheme is going on? No, my dear young lady, we have gone so far that we must go a little further. We must catch the schemers red-handed. If we do not, our night’s work will have been wasted.”
The idea of weakly and pusillanimously changing a course of conduct at the very moment when that course promised the most interesting adventures shocked all the artist in him.
They stared blankly at the house, whose form was clearly revealed in the misty moonlight, but none of whose windows showed the slightest glimmer of light. It was an extremely modern tenement, and its architecture was in no way startlingly original; nevertheless, in those moments it seemed to both of them the strangest, the most mysterious, the most insubstantial house that the hand of man had ever raised.
Suddenly Pauline clutched his arm.
“I hear some one walking somewhere in the grounds,” she said.
They both listened. In the stillness of the night regular steps sounded plainly from a distance.
“It is the patrol on the terrace,” said Carpentaria.
“It is assuredly on the terrace—the sound of heavy boots on stone flags, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Pauline agreed, loosing his arm.
They were twenty or thirty yards from the house.
“I want you to be brave and to do something for me.”
Carpentaria turned to her.
“What is it?”
“Go to the patrol, and tell him I have sent you, and that he is to remain within sight of the boat there, until further orders, keeping as much in the background as possible. Will you go?”
“Alone?”
“Alone. There is no danger. Besides, one of us must remain here, and one person can more easily keep out of sight than two. My fear is that the boat may be used again. The patrol is not to prevent the boat being used. He is not to show himself; he is merely to observe. You understand?”
“Then you insist on my going?”
“No, I entreat you to go.”
And without more words she went. It was her figure, and not the figure of Rosie, that Mr. Jetsam had seen in the gardens when he peeped out of the window of Mrs. Ilam’s bedroom.
Carpentaria, now alone, recommenced from a fresh spot his vigil over the closed house. He argued with himself with much ingenuity as to what point the persons who wished to enter it would choose for their appearance, but he could decide nothing. They might, he thought, come by the avenue, or round by the back from the other side of the buildings of the Central Way, or even through the gardens. He was growing impatient of a delay apparently interminable, and then his glance happened to wander upwards to the roof of the house. He could not see the roof itself, because he was now too near the wall, but it appeared to him that he detected a phenomenon above the roof which was somewhat unusual. He walked carefully away from the house until the expanse of roof became visible; and, indeed, he had not been mistaken. There was a radiance there. The small square pane of the attic, flat with the surface of the roof itself, was illuminated, and sent up a faint shaft of light into the sky.
Instantly he saw his own shortcomings as a counter-schemer against schemers. He had assumed that the schemers were not already in the house, whereas he had had no grounds for such an assumption. The schemers were most obviously in the house, and they had most obviously been there for a considerable time, since no one could have recently entered it without his knowledge. He was angry with the schemers, and he was more angry with himself, and one of those wild ideas seized him—one of those ideas which could only occur to a Carpentaria. He would catch these schemers himself, by his own devices, and he would do it leisurely, dramatically, and effectively. He would make such a capture as never had been made before. He did not know precisely who the schemers were, nor their numbers, nor their nefarious occupations in the house; and he did not care. When once he was in the toils of a grand romantic idea he cared for nothing except the execution of it. He laughed with joy.
“Why do you laugh?” said a voice behind him.
It was Pauline, who had returned. She had given the instructions to the patrol.
“An idea,” he replied—“a notion that appealed to me.” And then he perceived that he must at all costs get rid of Pauline, and he continued: “My sister is extremely disturbed,” he said. “Will you not, as a last favour, go and stay with her? Do not refuse me this. I will find some one to assist me in my work here—one of my trombone-players on whom I can rely. I—I really do not care for you to be out here like this. The strain is too much for you.”
“But Rosie——” she objected again.
“Rosie is all right,” he reassured her. “I will answer for Rosie’s safety with my life; and when I say that, I mean it.”
“I will do as you wish,” said Pauline at length.
“Let me see you into the house,” he murmured, enchanted.
He unlocked his front-door for her, and called out softly, “Juliette!”
“Is that you, Carlos?” said a voice in the darkness at the top of the stairs.
“Yes,” he said. “Here is Miss Dartmouth come to keep you company. Do not use a light—at least, use as little light as possible, until you hear some music.”
“Hear some music? What music?”
“Never mind what music. If you should hear some music you will know that you are at liberty to turn on all the lights you like. Miss Dartmouth will tell you why I want darkness at present. Here are the stairs, Miss Dartmouth. Cling to the rail. Au revoir.”
“But——” faltered Pauline.
“Au revoir, I said,” he whispered insistently.
Before leaving the house he rushed into the kitchen, found a long clothes-line, of which he seemed to know exactly the whereabouts, and appropriated it.
The next minute he was tying the handle of Ilam’s front-door firmly to the railing, so that it would be impossible to open the door from the inside. He secured in the same manner the side-door and also the gate in the wall of the kitchen yard. He then fixed pieces of rope under windows, in such a manner that a person endeavouring to leap from a window to the ground would almost certainly be caught in the rope, and break a leg or an arm, if not a neck or so.
“Cheerful for them!” he murmured maliciously. “I only hope it won’t be Miss Rosie who tries to make her exit by the window. I have answered for her. However, I must take the risks.”
He glanced finally round the house, throwing away some short unused pieces of rope, but keeping two long pieces. He surveyed the house with satisfaction.
“I think I can safely leave it for five minutes or so now,” he said to himself; and he shut his penknife with a vicious snap and put it in his pocket.
Then he ran off at a great speed in the direction of the Central Way. At the southern end of the Central Way, nearly opposite to the general offices of the City, was an elegant building known as the band-house. Here dwelt the majority of the members of Carpentaria’s world-renowned orchestra. Some members, being married to women instead of married to their art, had permission to possess domestic hearths in London and the suburbs, but these were few. The edifice was a very large one, as it. had need to be. A peculiar feature of it was the rehearsal-room on the top floor, constructed, like the finest flats in New York, in such a manner as to be absolutely sound-proof.
Carpentaria rang the electric bell at the portals of the band-house, and the portals were presently opened by a sleepy person whose duty it was to admit bandsmen returning after late leave.
“Look ’ere,” said the porter, “this is a bit thick, this is. Do you know as the hour is exactly——”
“Hold your tongue, you fool!” Carpentaria stopped him briefly, “and go and bring Mr. Bruno to me at once; it’s very important. Let’s have some light.”
“I beg pardon, sir,” said the porter, astounded by this nocturnal apparition of the autocrat of the band. “Mr. Bruno is asleep, sir. He had two whiskies to make him sleep, and went to bed afore midnight, sir.”
“I know he’s asleep. Do you suppose I thought he was standing on his head waiting for the dawn? Go and waken him—and quicker than that! Here, I’ll go with you.”
The two men went upstairs together, and Mr. Bruno, principal trombone-player of the band, was soon sitting up in bed, awaking to the presence of his chief.
“Bruno, my lad,” said Carpentaria, “give me your trombone.”
“My trombone, sir?”
“Yes,” said Carpentaria. “Mendelssohn once remarked that the trombone was an instrument too sacred to use often, but I think the supreme occasion has arrived for me to use it to-night.”
“It’s there, in the corner, sir,” said Bruno, wondering vaguely what was this latest caprice of Carpentaria’s.
Carpentaria rushed to the thing, took it out of its case, and put it to his mouth.
“H’m!” he murmured, after he had sounded a note gently. “I can do it, I think. Listen, Bruno! The occasion is not only supreme; it is unique. You are to rouse all the men; you are to dress, and take your instruments; and you are to go out quietly and surround the bungalow of our honoured President, Mr. Josephus Ilam. You are to make no noise of any kind until you hear me give the first bars of a tune, either with my mouth or with this instrument. You are then to join in that tune.”
“What tune, sir?”
“You will hear.”
“Where shall you be, sir?”
“You will see. Get up, now; don’t lose a second.” Carpentaria was off again. He returned to Ilam’s house, and climbed to the balcony of the window of Mrs. Ilam’s bedroom. It was fortunate that he had preserved the rope, for he could not have climbed with the trombone in his arms. His method was to leave the trombone on the ground, the rope tied to it; he kept the other end of the rope in his hand, and drew the trombone after him.
Then it was that he sounded on the trombone the terrible phrase of Beethoven’s, which put a period to the struggle between Ilam and Jetsam.
He felt for the handle of the French window, and, finding the window fastened on the inside, adopted the simple device of leaning with his full weight against the window-frame. The whole thing gave way, and through a crashing of glass, a splintering of wood, and the tearing of curtains he backed into the room, the trombone held precariously in one hand and his revolver very firmly in the other.
The scene that confronted him was sufficiently surprising. Amid the extraordinary disorder of the chamber he found its three occupants all stretched on the floor. The old woman was apparently oblivious, but the two men, releasing each other, gazed at him for all the world like two schoolboys caught in an act contrary to discipline.
“Did I startle you? I hope so,” said Carpentaria, when he had found his bearings. “I meant to.”
Jetsam was the first to rise.
“You with the red hair!” cried Jetsam. “You are trying to save my life again!”
“Never mind my red hair,” said Carpentaria, ruffled. “I am not trying to save anybody’s life. I’m here on a mission of inquiry. No one leaves this room until I have had a full explanation of everything. I have stood just about as much as I can stand of the mystery that has been hanging over this City for a week past. Ilam, let me beg you to get up and take a seat over there in that corner. Thanks!”
He relinquished the musical instrument as Ilam clumsily resumed his feet and obeyed.
“As for you, Mr. Jetsam,” continued Carpentaria, “you know, from accounts which have reached me, the precise moral effect of a loaded revolver such as I am now pointing at you. Go into the other corner.”
“I won’t,” said Jetsam. “You can fire if you like. As a matter of fact, you daren’t.”
“You propose to leave the room and defy me?”
“I propose to leave the room.”
“Listen,” said Carpentaria.
He took the trombone and blew on it loudly a few notes which neither Jetsam nor Ilam immediately recognized. But the musicians, who had by this time surrounded the house, recognized them. And at once there entered by the smashed window the solemn and moving strains of the Dead March in “Saul.” The house seemed to be ringed in a circle of awful melody.
Jetsam shuddered.
“Now kindly stay where you are,” said Carpentaria.
And Jetsam stayed where he was, at the foot of the bed, his back to Mrs. Ilam’s prone figure.
The playing continued.
“What foolery is this?” demanded Ilam slowly.
“It is part of a larger piece of foolery that has rescued you, Ilam,” Carpentaria replied, and he was crossing the room to approach Ilam, when he saw something in the looking-glass over the mantelpiece, and he started back.
Mrs. Ilam, the paralytic, roused in some strange way, either by the violence of the scenes at which she had assisted, or by the inexplicable influence of the music, was almost erect in her bed, and her trembling parchment hands had seized the revolver which Rosie had left on the floor, and she was endeavouring to point it between Jetsam’s shoulders. The other two men turned and saw the fatal and appalling movement of the aged creature, who was evidently in the grip of some tremendously powerful instinct—the kind of instinct that only dies with death.
Carpentaria alone retained his self-possession. With a swift and yet gentle movement he disarmed the terrible old woman, and she sank back, with streaming eyes, helpless and moveless as before. The incident was over in a few seconds.
“And now,” said Carpentaria, “I will hear your story, Mr. Jetsam. But first, we must lift this bed back to its proper-position.”
“Very well,” replied Jetsam, trembling in spite of himself. “You shall hear my story.”
The music ceased.