‘The ivy blowing against the window. There, it’s your move now, Eustace.’
‘It wasn’t the ivy, you idiot. It was someone tapping at the window,’ and he pulled up the blind. On the outer side of the window, clinging to the sash, was the hand.
‘What is it that it’s holding?’
‘It’s a pocket-knife. It’s going to try to open the window by pushing back the fastener with the blade.’
‘Well, let it try,’ said Eustace. ‘Those fasteners screw down; they can’t be opened that way. Anyhow, we’ll close the shutters. It’s your move, Saunders. I’ve played.’
But Saunders found it impossible to fix his attention on the game. He could not understand Eustace, who seemed all at once to have lost his fear. ‘What do you say to some wine?’ he asked. ‘You seem to be taking things coolly, but I don’t mind confessing that I’m in a blessed funk.’
‘You’ve no need to be. There’s nothing supernatural about that hand, Saunders. I mean it seems to be governed by the laws of time and space. It’s not the sort of thing that vanishes into thin air or slides through oaken doors. And since that’s so, I defy it to get in here. We’ll leave the place in the morning. I for one have bottomed the depths of fear. Fill your glass, man! The windows are all shuttered, the door is locked and bolted. Pledge me my uncle Adrian! Drink, man! What are you waiting for?’
Saunders was standing with his glass half raised. ‘It can get in,’ he said hoarsely; ‘it can get in! We’ve forgotten. There’s the fireplace in my bedroom. It will come down the chimney.’
‘Quick!’ said Eustace, as he rushed into the other room; ‘we haven’t a minute to lose. What can we do? Light the fire, Saunders. Give me a match, quick!’
‘They must be all in the other room. I’ll get them.’
‘Hurry, man, for goodness’ sake! Look in the bookcase! Look in the bathroom! Here, come and stand here; I’ll look.’
‘Be quick!’ shouted Saunders. ‘I can hear something!’
‘Then plug a sheet from your bed up the chimney. No, here’s a match.’ He had found one at last that had slipped into a crack in the floor.
‘Is the fire laid? Good, but it may not burn. I know—the oil from that old reading-lamp and this cotton-wool. Now the match, quick! Pull the sheet away, you fool! We don’t want it now.’
There was a great roar from the grate as the flames shot up. Saunders had been a fraction of a second too late with the sheet. The oil had fallen on to it. It, too, was burning.
‘The whole place will be on fire!’ cried Eustace, as he tried to beat out the flames with a blanket. ‘It’s no good! I can’t manage it. You must open the door, Saunders, and get help.’
Saunders ran to the door and fumbled with the bolts. The key was stiff in the lock.
‘Hurry!’ shouted Eustace; ‘the whole place is ablaze!’
The key turned in the lock at last. For half a second Saunders stopped to look back. Afterwards he could never be quite sure as to what he had seen, but at the time he thought that something black and charred was creeping slowly, very slowly, from the masses of flames towards Eustace Borlsover. For a moment he thought of returning to his friend, but the noise and the smell of the burning sent him running down the passage crying, ‘Fire! Fire!’ He rushed to the telephone to summon help, and then back to the bathroom —he should have thought of that before—for water. As he burst open the bedroom door there came a scream of terror which ended suddenly, and then the sound of a heavy fall.
***
This is the story which I heard on successive Saturday evenings from the senior mathematical master at a second-rate suburban school. For Saunders has had to earn a living in a way which other men might reckon less congenial than his old manner of life. I had mentioned by chance the name of Adrian Borlsover, and wondered at the time why he changed the conversation with such unusual abruptness. A week later Saunders began to tell me something of his own history; sordid enough, though shielded with a reserve I could well understand, for it had to cover not only his failings, but those of a dead friend. Of the final tragedy he was at first especially loath to speak; and it was only gradually that I was able to piece together the narrative of the preceding pages. Saunders was reluctant to draw any conclusions. At one time he thought that the fingered beast had been animated by the spirit of Sigismund Borlsover, a sinister eighteenth-century ancestor, who, according to legend, built and worshipped in the ugly pagan temple that overlooked the lake. At another time Saunders believed the spirit to belong to a man whom Eustace had once employed as a laboratory assistant, ‘a black-haired, spiteful little brute,’ he said, ‘who died cursing his doctor, because the fellow couldn’t help him to live to settle some paltry score with Borlsover.’
From the point of view of direct contemporary evidence, Saunders’s story is practically uncorroborated. All the letters mentioned in the narrative were destroyed, with the exception of the last note which Eustace received, or rather which he would have received, had not Saunders intercepted it. That I have seen myself. The handwriting was thin and shaky, the handwriting of an old man. I remember the Greek ‘e’ was used in ‘appointment.’ A little thing that amused me at the time was that Saunders seemed to keep the note pressed between the pages of his Bible.
I had seen Adrian Borlsover once. Saunders I learnt to know well. It was by chance, however, and not by design, that I met a third person of the story, Morton, the butler. Saunders and I were walking in the Zoological Gardens one Sunday afternoon, when he called my attention to an old man who was standing before the door of the Reptile House.
‘Why, Morton,’ he said, clapping him on the back, ‘how is the world treating you?’
‘Poorly, Mr Saunders,’ said the old fellow, though his face lighted up at the greeting. ‘The winters drag terribly nowadays. There don’t seem no summers or springs.’
‘You haven’t found what you were looking for, I suppose?’
‘No, sir, not yet; but I shall some day. I always told them that Mr Borlsover kept some queer animals.’
‘And what is he looking for?’ I asked, when we had parted from him.
‘A beast with five fingers,’ said Saunders. ‘This afternoon, since he has been in the Reptile House, I suppose it will be a reptile with a hand. Next week it will be a monkey with practically no body. The poor old chap is a born materialist.
‘It’s a queer coincidence, by the way, that you should have known Adrian Borlsover and that you should have received a blessing at his hand. Has it brought you any luck?’
‘No,’ I answered slowly, as I looked over a life of inconspicuous failure, ‘I don’t think it has. It was his right hand, you know.’
SIX TO SIX-THIRTY
THE CLOCK on the mantelpiece struck six as Leslie Gideon entered the room. He closed the French-windows after him and bolted them. Dusk had already fallen, and the faint yet steady drizzle promised badly for the morrow’s shoot. He drew a chair up to the fire and, yawning, filled his pipe. The keen air of the fells had made him sleepy. He was in the act of striking a match when the telephone rang. Impatiently he walked to the alcove by the door where the instrument was installed and took up the receiver.
‘Gideon speaking,’ he said; ‘Gideon; Carnaby Lodge. Dr Pen-der? Good evening, doctor.’
A pause followed.
‘What’s that you say? A telephone message has been sent on to you from your surgery in Dunswick to Carnaby Vicarage? The original message came from me? I said I was dying —had been shot, two men, one tall and the other—But I’m speaking! Yes, Leslie Gideon. I’ve only just come in from a stroll. Fit as a fiddle. Only got down here yesterday with Mrs Gideon. You were asked to come immediately? Well, come, by all means. You’ll be here in a quarter of an hour, if you are speaking from the Vicarage. I suppose it’s some confounded hoax.’
Gideon replaced the receiver. His face was red with anger. This came of having telephones in the house; there was no getting away from the outside world. If it was no
t business, or polite society, it was this tomfoolery! Angrily he took down the telephone directory. 68 Dunswick; that was the number he wanted, the police-station.
‘Put me through to the inspector, or whoever is in charge,’ he said curtly.
‘It’s Leslie Gideon speaking, from Carnaby Lodge.’ ‘Yes, the shooting-box on the moors. Good evening, inspector. Someone rang up from here about five minutes ago to Dr Pender’s surgery. The message purported to come from me. I said I had been shot, and was dying. Two men were the assailants, apparently. The doctor was at Carnaby Vicarage, and the message was ’phoned on. The point is, I know nothing about it. I’m in perfect health, and have just come in from a stroll. Yes, I’m alone in the house. Mrs Gideon went into Dunswick this afternoon. My manservant is out. A woman who comes over from Outershaw to help has gone home for the night. Yes, Robinson’s daughter. We only came down yesterday, and the servants will be coming in tomorrow.
‘Any valuables? Well, nothing to justify murder.
‘You think there may be something in it besides a hoax—that an attack is intended? Well, I’ll be on the look out anyhow. And you’ll come down immediately? Good.’
Gideon stood for a minute with his back to the fire, a deep frown on his forehead.
Of course he had enemies. He was reputed to be a hard man. He was certainly a successful man, who had made his way and paid for it. But murder, planned in cold blood. The thing was absurd.
Not too absurd, however, to prevent his taking down a gun from the rack behind the door, and, having loaded it, to place it on the table. Then he moved his chair so that he sat with the door on his right, the French-windows in front of him, and on his left the window that looked out on the bare shoulder of Carnaby Fell. At his back was wall, solid wall. As his eyes moved from door to window, from window to door, Leslie Gideon tried to understand the situation. The message came to Pender’s surgery a little before six; if the doctor had been in and had come out immediately he would have been at Carnaby Lodge at latest by half-past six, when—if the message meant anything—he would find Gideon’s dead body by the telephone. It was now ten minutes past six. The next twenty minutes would finally settle the matter.
The clock went on ticking.
A knock at the door—quite an ordinary knock.
‘Come in!’ said Gideon, as he put his hand on the gun.
Merrit, the manservant, entered the room; and proceeded to draw the curtains.
‘I thought you were going down to the station to see about those cases that were to have come from the stores’, said Gideon to the man’s black back as he stood by the French-windows.
‘I beg pardon, sir, but I came over faint two hours ago, and when the postman called, he promised to see the stationmaster about them. I would have asked your permission, Mr Gideon, but you were out of the house at the time.’
‘Faintness better, I hope, Merrit?’
‘Thank you, sir, yes.’
‘Seen anyone about the place—two men, for instance, one tall, and the other—?’
‘Oh no, sir. The postman is the only one who has called. Mr Gideon, could I have a word with you in private?’
‘Oh, I suppose so. But don’t fidget with those curtains. Sit down on that chair and say what you’ve got to say.’
‘I wanted to ask for the loan of fifteen pounds. I know it’s very irregular, and I can’t give security. But I’ve been with you six years, Mr Gideon, and you know me, sir.’
‘Not very well, Merrit, if it comes to that. What is it? Backed a loser for the St Leger? Come man, if I am to help you, I must have a reason.’
‘It’s about my wife, sir.’
‘I never knew you were married.’
‘I didn’t think it necessary to tell you, sir, when I applied for the place. You see, we are separated. She is in Canada, and now the man she was with has left her.’
‘Why don’t you get a divorce, Merrit?’
‘It costs too much, and besides, I’ve got to go through with it now. But she ought to be back in England. She could get decent work in England. That’s why I want the money. You see, sir, there’s the fare from Winnipeg, as well as the passage on the boat.’
‘Then you don’t intend to—er—resume the old relationship, if she comes back?’
‘I don’t think so, sir. I can’t trust her now, and it would be hell to live with a woman you can’t trust.’
‘I suppose it would. Well, you shall have the money, Merrit, this time. Here is the key of the safe. Open it, and bring me the pile of notes in the top left-hand drawer.’
Merrit took the key in a hand that shook. Gideon watched his back with a puzzled expression as the man bent over the safe which stood in a recess behind the fireplace.
‘There,’ he said, counting out the notes. ‘Don’t thank me; it’s a bad business at best; you may regret the step you are taking, but, after all, you are the only one who can judge. Oh, and Merrit,’ he added, as the man was leaving the room, ‘see that all the doors are locked, and if Dr Pender calls, show him in here.’
‘A queer business,’ he said to himself. ‘Who would have thought that Merrit was a married man, an injured husband into the bargain? Lost his heart to a barmaid, I suppose. What fools men are!’
With the curtains drawn, the room looked smaller. The cold white light of the petrol-gas seemed to banish the menace of the dark. Gideon took up a copy of the Transport Review and began to read.
The hand of the clock on the mantelpiece pointed to twenty-past six.
Tap, tap! The knocking was not on the door, but on the glass of the French-window.
He got up and carefully drew the curtain aside.
‘Why, Marion!’ he exclaimed, as he unloosed the fastenings, ‘you gave me quite a start. Whatever made you come in through the garden?
Mrs Gideon stepped into the room, her eyes blinking in the dazzling light. She was a tall woman, twenty years younger than her husband, a very beautiful woman, as she stood with the rain on her black hair, her cheeks glowing from the kiss of wind and rain.
‘Stuffy, as usual,’ she said, ‘with all the windows shut. I took the short cut across the fells. The Dunswick tradespeople are hopeless. I’ve pottered about there for hours. It would have been far simpler to bring down everything we required in the car.’
‘Well, take your cloak off, and come and get warm.’ Gideon stirred up the fire, and his wife sat down on the cushioned fender. There was no need to alarm her now by telling her what had happened.
‘There, give me the poker,’ she said. ‘You only succeed in smothering whatever flame there is.’
She stirred the embers into a blaze, and then crossing the room threw herself into the biggest of the three easy chairs.
‘The prospects for tomorrow don’t look over good,’ she said at last. ‘I wish you would telephone to the Maxwells, and find out what they expect us to do. Alice said something about our meeting them for lunch at the top of the Scarsgill Beck. You might ring them up, Leslie.’
Gideon walked over to the telephone, and taking down the directory, began to turn over the pages. The faintest of sounds caused him to look round suddenly; his nerves were all on edge.
Mrs Gideon had risen from her seat; her face was white, dead white. There was a knock at the door.
The door opened. ‘Dr Pender to see you, sir,’ said Merrit.
Mrs Gideon gave a laugh, and something hard and metallic dropped from her hand to the floor.
Gideon, his fingers still holding the telephone receiver, knew what it was, knew what had happened, rather what was about to have happened.
‘Good evening, Mr Gideon,’ said the doctor; ‘you look remarkably cool and self-possessed for a murdered man. All the same you must have had an anxious half-hour. A good slice of life crammed in between six and six-thirty, eh?’
‘I’m glad to see you, anyway, doctor; the atmosphere was getting rather tense. In fact Mrs Gideon was prepared to shoot at anyone when you opened the door. She adds mark
smanship, you know, to her many accomplishments.’
‘And a very useful one, too. It has been a time of strain, Mrs Gideon, but you must pull yourself together.’
Gideon took from the cupboard a decanter and glasses. With a steady hand he poured out a glass of wine and walked over to the chair where his wife lay huddled. She was crying now.
‘Come,’ he said shortly. ‘Drink this and then go and lie down. I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself. I want a few words with Pender in private. You had better try and forget all this.’
With an effort Mrs Gideon pulled herself together. She gulped down the wine and, with a few words of excuse to Pender, left the room.
Gideon crossed over from the fireplace and dropped into one of the easy chairs. It was not the chair his wife had occupied. The doctor picked up the revolver and withdrew the cartridges.
‘The danger is past,’ he said, ‘if there ever was any danger. But there is no knowing what may happen when these are left about. You had no visitors then?’
‘Not a soul,’ replied Gideon wearily.
‘The whole thing was obviously a practical joke, conceived in atrocious taste. That is the worst side of it. It has cost us all half an hour of anxiety. But I’m afraid I must be off. Young Brownlow, the keeper’s son, is down with pneumonia. Only married last week, poor chap. Goodnight, Mr Gideon. You and Mrs Gideon will be laughing over this tomorrow.’
‘Goodnight, doctor. I’m sorry to have brought you out on a fool’s errand.’
He lay back in his chair, staring at the glowing embers. ‘Half an hour’s anxiety,’ he said, ‘laughing over this tomorrow! She’s taken my life, all right, she’s taken my life.’
BLINDS
THEY HAD finished their dinner of bread and butter, jam, and tea, and were washing up; Mrs Scott, stout and red-armed, with sleeves tucked up to the elbow, handed the crockery to Lizzie, who stood, cloth in hand, before the fire, trying to get warm.
The Double Eye Page 11
