Livid, horror-stricken, with beads of sweat gathering on his high, narrow forehead, Loane sat and listened to that clam, deadly, explanation.
“As Schuhmacher I admitted you to the flat. And it is known to the porter below that you are here at present alone with Mr. Boscawen’s servant, awaiting the return of Mr. Boscawen, who happens to be absent. That brings us up to the present moment, Now for what is to come.” He paused. “I hope I am not boring you, by the way,” he inquired politely.
A grimace — its purport entirely impossible to read-twisted Loane’s face. He emitted an incoherent growl.
“I interest you? Good!” Boscawen slightly shifted his position. “Now mark the sequel,” he said. And as he spoke, he rose and moved round his chair, so that he placed it between himself and his visitor. The movement appeared to be idle and subconscious, but it was not. He leaned now upon the tall, padded chair-back, and thus the revolver — apparently idly held — was without any effort on his part covering Loane.
“When our little transaction is over, Mr. Loane,” he continued, “the servant Shuhmacher will walk out of this flat, and make a point of speaking to the hall-porter before he leaves the mansions. He will then take his departure, and make his way to a house in Soho, in which he rented a room on the ground-floor on the day before entering Mr. Boscawen’s service. There he will carefully remove the dye from his hair and face, he will burn his beard, and deflate the air-cushion which now provides him with his embonpoint; and by a simple change of neck-tie and shirt-stud, Mr. Boscawen, the master, in the correct evening dress of a man-about-town, will emerge from the chrysalis of Schuhmacher, the servant, in the unfailing dress-clothes of his office.
“Being, then, myself once more, I shall have to see that I slip out of the house unobserved. My collar up and my face in a muffler, and shaded by the American slouch hat affected by Schuhmacher will all be of assistance. Before I reach Piccadilly, I shall have found some dark corner in which to complete the transformation, by unmuffling my face, pocketing the American hat, and replacing it by an opera-hat which I shall have with me for the purpose! Now, obviously myself again, I saunter into my club. I have already been seen there earlier in the evening and in various other places — purely superfluous precautions; still, I thought it as well to take them. A sort of alibi can be established should my whereabouts this evening come to be questioned, which is in the highest degree unlikely. I remain at the club for an hour or so; then I call a cab, and drive home. As I enter, I make a point of inquiring from the porter whether Schuhmacher is in. He will tell me that Schuhmacher went out to look for me as the gentleman I was expecting has arrived, and is waiting for me upstairs.
“Need I continue? Very well. I come up, and I discover that a murder has been committed in my absence. I find a shady character of the name of Loane lying on the floor of my study with a bullet through the heart or the brain, as the case may be. I raise the alarm. The police are sent for; a doctor is summoned. Both arrive. The doctor ascertains that the man has been dead at least an hour. The porter instantly accuses Schuhmacher, stating that he knows of the servant’s movements. A hue-and-cry is raised, the man’s description circulated, a reward is offered — all to no purpose. Schuhmacher has utterly vanished, leaving not a trace behind him. For a while the papers theorise upon the motive. Remembering Loane’s shady antecedents, they have little difficulty in conjecturing one; they will circulate rumours of the murderer’s capture, to contradict them in the next issue; the crime may have come to be known as ‘The Hampton Gardens Murder,’ or perhaps ‘The Valet Mystery.’ There will be letters to the Press denouncing aliens, and all the usual thrillers. Then gradually the interest will subside; other and more immediate affairs will overlay it; the police, disheartened, will abandon the quest for Schuhmacher, and the entire affair will be relegated to the limbo of unsolved criminal mysteries.
“Meanwhile, Mr. Loane” — and Boscawen smiled pensively as he spoke— “I shall not have permitted this unpleasant event to interfere with my arrangements. I shall have been married in peace, assured that there will be no dirty, sneaking blackguard to interfere with me, to threaten my happiness, or wreck my future. What do you think of it all?”
The other’s answer was something between a roar and a snarl, as he hurled himself forward, swinging his clubbed cane — Boscawen now proved the foresight that had caused him to lean over the back of the armchair. He had several times moved it, idly as it seemed, backwards and forwards; his intent had been to get the casters into line, so that at the slightest thrust it would roll forward lightly. He thrust it forward now, as Loane sprang at him. The edge of the low seat caught Loane on the shins, and, thrown off his balance, the fellow toppled forward into it. Instantly the round, cold muzzle of the revolver was pressed to his temple.
“It shall be in the brain, I think!” said the cold voice of Boscawen.
“Wait! Wait!” screamed the other. “Wait! I’ll make terms! You shall have the letters!”
Boscawen drew back, covering his man. He came slowly round the chair, the other watching him and waiting. “If you move an inch without my permission, it shall be the last conscious movement you will ever make! Don’t be a fool, Loane! I have you, and I shall need no great inducement to put a bullet through you! I’d prefer you dead! Do you understand?”
“I am worth more to you alive!” cried the other, fighting desperately in the deadly trammels in which he was caught. “You know I am! You shall have your letters! What more can I do? What have you to fear from me, then?”
“I don’t know. But I should have nothing to fear from you dead!”
“The letters would remain. They might be found.”
“True,” Boscawen admitted. “But I don’t attach great importance to them if you are not at hand to use them!”
“Still, they will be very dangerous to you. Come, Mr. Boscawen,” the fellow implored wildly. “I’m a married man. I have three children. You wouldn’t have their lives ruined? You wouldn’t have them thrown upon the world?”
“So! You have children?” said Boscawen sharply. “God help them! That is the greatest of all your crimes! And a wife! Poor, poor soul!” His tone changed abruptly. “Of course, you have not the letters on you?”
“Of course not. I—”
“Why, then—”
“But I can get them in a few minutes!” screamed the other, in abject terror now. “I have made arrangements in case you decided to buy them. If you’ll send a messenger with a note from me, you shall have the letters at once. It isn’t far.”
Boscawen measured him with a contemptuous eye. He seemed to put aside his murderous project with the greatest reluctance.
“For your wife and children’s sake, then!” he said slowly. “There! You’ll find what you want at that desk. Write!” Loane obeyed, what time Boscawen stood over him, reading the fellow’s message to his wife, bidding her deliver to bearer a letter-case which she would find in a drawer which he described, and of which he enclosed the key.
He handed the letter to Boscawen, who, unperceived by Loane, immediately touched the button of an electric bell. Almost instantly the door opened, and, to Loane’s utter bewilderment, Smith, calm and correct, the perfect servant who, according to Boscawen’s story had been dismissed a week ago, entered the room.
“Is the messenger-boy there?” inquired Boscawen.
“He is waiting, Sir,” answered Smith, the suspicion of a grin lurking at the comers of his mouth.
“Let him take this letter to that address and await the answer.” Smith received the letter from his master’s hands, and turned to go. In that moment Loane woke from his stupefaction, and realised what was taking place.
With a strangled cry, he sprang after Smith. But as he moved Boscawen thrust out a leg, and the blackmailer pitched heavily forward. Boscawen knelt to pin him down. Smith turned and came to his master’s aid with a pair of handcuffs. The business done, he withdrew. They heard his voice outside, and the boy’s answer.
A moment later the door of the flat closed with a slam on the departing messenger.
Loane, winded and pinioned, sat huddled in the great chair again, and again Boscawen faced him across the room.
“I regret to have to detain you, Loane, until the messenger returns,” he said. “I trust I am not keeping you from any pressing engagement?”
A hideous smile writhed across the blackmailer’s livid face. “Spoofed, by gad!” he swore. “Spoofed by a fool like you!”
“I’m afraid so!” said Boscawen, smiling.
THE ORDEAL
London Magazine, April 1913. The London Magazine, April 1913
No one could deny that Lady Sutliffe was possessed of at least two devils. Both were devils who make feminine affairs their province, and neither was particularly malign. The first was the mischievous Imp of Coquetry, whose business it is slyly and playfully to clear the way for Satan himself, but who makes as many failures as successes in his undertakings; the second was the Demon of Perversity, one of the younger children of Pride, an insidious little fiend who keeps you amused by his drolleries what time he digs a pit for your destruction.
The first of these demons led her into encouraging the manifest admiration of the elegant and accomplished Mr. Gadsby; the second caused her to plunge further into that dangerous make-believe pastime when Sir George — her husband — remonstrated with her for want of circumspection.
Thus matters stood when one morning as Lady Sutliffe sat before the long mirror in her boudoir, and her maid was brushing from her ladyship’s shimmering tresses some remains of last night’s powder, Sir George intruded unannounced upon her toilet. He bore a letter in his hand; a frown sat between his brows.
It was in the mirror that her ladyship caught the first glimpse of his tall figure in its caped riding-coat.
“I did not hear you knock, sir,” said she, very pertly, for there was a sort of feud between them on the subject of this Mr. Gadsby.
“I have to speak to you, madam,” said he very quietly, disregarding her implied rebuke. “Will you be so good as to dismiss your maid?”
She regarded his reflection in the long glass wearily.
“Is so much necessary?” she drawled.
He laughed a little scornfully.
“Hardly, i’ faith,” said he, “considering the publicity which your affairs have gained already.”
A delicate flush overspread the pretty face; a frown came to mar the smoothness of the perfect brow.
“Leave us, Françoise,” she said. And the French maid went out — to glue her ear to the keyhole.
“The last insult which it remained for you to offer me, you have now offered,” said she, when they were alone. “You have affronted me before my woman.”
Again he ignored her challenge, and came straight to the matter that brought him.
“I regret to reopen the topic,” said he, in deliberate, level tones that were habitual with him, for a more self-contained man than Sir George Sutliffe never lived, “but necessity is again thrust upon me of speaking to you concerning your friend Mr. — Gadfly.”
“I assume,” said she modelling her tones upon his own, “you mean Mr. Gadsby?”
“Oh, Madam,” said he, “I could wish that you had the same care for your own name that you have for his!”
She flushed under the hit, then smiled disdainfully.
“Is this an example of the wit for which, I am told, you cultivate a reputation?”
“Was ‘reputation’ the word you uttered, ma’am?” quoth he. “It is very timely, for it reminds me that I came to talk to you upon the subject of your own, an echo of which, it seems, has reached to Gloucester.”
She swung round on her seat with a swish of her flowered silken gown.
“What do you mean?” Anger quickened her voice.
“I have here a letter from Gloucester, from a Mrs. Gadsby — the wife, I understand, of this painter friend of yours. She appeals to me to rescue her husband from the wiles of my wife, to whose ways she applies certain epithets taught her, no doubt, by the lewd voice of common rumour. But read the letter for yourself, ma’am. It would be diverting, were it not pathetic.” And he held out the written sheet.
For a moment she looked into his calm face with its urbane, inscrutable smile. Herself she was a little out of countenance now; a little alarmed at learning the extent of the scandal to which her foolish conduct had given birth. At last, almost with hesitation, she took the letter. In reading it she composed herself, for all that there was a deal to wound her in what was written. Having read it carefully through:
“Why,” she protested, “what a poor scrawl of pothooks is this! Is it a letter, did you say? I vow you’re very clever to have guessed it. And is it English, or have they a language of their own in Gloucester?” With a pretty pout of regret she offered it to him again. “I protest I can make out no word of it,” she ended.
Sir George took the epistle gravely.
“I have written to this lady,” he said, “the comforting and reassuring letter that her state of mind appears to require. I have assured her that I profoundly agree with every word that she has written—”
“You have dared!” blazed her ladyship, breaking in upon his deliberate speech. “You have dared put such an affront upon me, to humiliate me by agreeing with such expressions as that creature uses!”
“To what expressions are you referring, madam? Is it possible that the letter was not as illegible to you as you protested?”
“Let us have done with pretence, Sir George!” she clamoured angrily.
“With all my heart, ma’am,” said he, and laughed.
“Did you write in such terms as you say to this woman?”
“Should I say so if I had not? And I added a promise, in earnest of my respect and sympathy for her, to take the burden of this matter upon my own shoulders. Since Mr. Gadsby’s lingering in town appears to be due to the friendship with which your ladyship honours him, I undertook to set a term to this friendship, so that here there might be nothing to keep Mr. Gadsby from returning to Gloucester.”
He paused, and she rose and stood considering him. Her face was white, her beautiful eyes blazed, her bosom heaved rapidly under its flimsy silken garment. Then, quite suddenly, she sat down again and burst into tears.
“Madam,” said he, “I am glad to see you penitent at last.”
“Penitent!” she flared, her tears suddenly forgotten under the goad of that word. “Penitent!” she repeated, and swung with a furious swish, to face him anew.
“You have humiliated me as if I were a — a—” An adequate object of comparison failed to suggest itself.
“I think, madam, that you have humiliated yourself.” And his grey eyes surveyed her with a wistful calm that was more exasperating than his words. “You have given your name to be the sport of this foul town.”
“Leave my room, Sir!” she bade him, am arm outflung dramatically towards the door.
“As soon as you shall have promised me to comply with his wife’s wishes and my own concerning Mr. Gadsby.”
Her ladyship bit her lip, and considered the pattern of the French carpet, her daintily slippered foot tapping the floor the while.
“I shall promise nothing, sir,” she said at length. Her voice was quite deliberate. The Demon of Perversity was in full possession of her now. “You have insulted and humiliated me.”
He was the very incarnation of urbane patience.
“You shall promise me,” he insisted, with a hint of insistence in his tone, “that you will dance no more with Mr. Gadsby, nor saunter in the Ring with him, nor receive him here at your house, either alone or in the presence of others. In short, I desire that from this hour you shall not further pursue the acquaintance of Mr. Gadsby.”
“And is that all?” quoth she, trilling, the faintest of ironical laughs.
“That is all,” said he. “I will not have you the talk of the town.”
She smiled scornfully. “And if I
refuse?”
“It will be the worse for Mr. Gadsby.”
The smile froze on her lips. She looked at him, and her eyes dilated.
“What do you mean?” And without waiting for an answer — for his meaning, after all, was plain enough— “That were indeed to cover my name with scandal!” she exclaimed.
“My only concern is for my promise to Mrs. Gadsby,” he returned. “One way or the other it must be fulfilled. But you need fear no increase of scandal. Your name shall not be dragged into the affair.”
He had startled her to some purpose. She advanced towards him in her alarm, flinging scorn and even dignity to the winds.
“You shall not do it, George! You shall not do it!” she cried.
Beholding her so white and scared, hearing the strident note of fear in her voice, Sir George felt a tightening at the throat. Was it for Gadsby that she feared? Was it possible, after all, that her relations with him were not purely foolishness? Hitherto he had attached no importance to the matter beyond resenting an indiscretion of conduct that afforded food to the foul maw of scandal. But was it possible that the thing was serious in itself? Was it possible that she cared for the fellow?
He rose, and set hands upon her shoulders. His keen, grey eyes intently scanned her face for the least sign of what was really in her heart.
“I shall refrain, ma’am, only if you give me the promise I am asking.”
She flung away from him, her anger, rising again at this restraint which he sought to impose upon her. She could not brook it. She resented it bitterly. Stamping her foot, she uttered what was in thoughts.
“You make a child of me!” she said. “I will not be the slave of your caprice!”
“Nor I the butt of yours,” he countered. “Will you promise?”
“No,” she answered, hurling the word at him as if it had been a material thing.
He fell back as from a blow. His lips tightened. Then, without another word, he bowed and left the room.
An hour later, his face placid, his soul in the dread torment of doubt, he lounged into a room at White’s, where a considerable company sat at play about a faro-table. All were known to him, and of the company was Gadsby, the man he sought, who since coming to town and success was a rabid gamester.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 469
