Meanwhile John Neville remained shut close in his own room, with the constable at the door.
The inquest was held at half-past twelve next day in the library.
The Coroner, a large, red-faced man, with a very affable manner, had got to his work promptly.
The jury “viewed the body” steadily, stolidly, with a kind of morose delectation in the grim spectacle.
In some unaccountable way Mr. Beck constituted himself a master of the ceremonies, a kind of assessor to the court.
“You had best take the gun down,” he said to the Coroner as they were leaving the room.
“Certainly, certainly,” replied the Coroner.
“And the water-bottle,” added Mr. Beck.
“There is no suspicion of poison, is there?”
“It’s best not to take anything for granted,” replied Mr. Beck sententiously.
“By all means if you think so,” replied the obsequious Coroner. “Constable, take that water-bottle down with you.”
The large room was filled with people of the neighborhood, mostly farmers from the Berkly estate and small shopkeepers from the neighboring village.
A table had been wheeled to the top of the room for the Coroner, with a seat at it for the ubiquitous local newspaper correspondent. A double row of chairs was set at the right hand of the table for the jury.
The jury had just returned from viewing the body when the crunch of wheels and hoofs was heard on the gravel of the drive, and a two-horse phaeton pulled up sharp at the entrance.
A moment later there came into the room a handsome, soldier-like man, with a girl clinging to his arm, whom he supported with tender, protecting fondness that was very touching. The girl s face was pale, but wonderfully sweet and winsome; cheeks with the faint, pure flush of the wild rose, and eyes like a wild fawn’s.
No need to tell Mr. Beck that here were Colonel Peyton and his daughter. He saw the look—shy, piteous, loving—that the girl gave John Neville as she passed close to the table where he sat with his head buried in his hands; and the detective’s face darkened for a moment with a stern purpose, but the next moment it resumed its customary look of goodnature and good-humor.
The gardener, the gamekeeper, and the butler were briefly examined by the Coroner, and rather clumsily cross-examined by Mr. Waggles, the solicitor whom Eric had thoughtfully secured for his cousin’s defense.
As the case against John Neville gradually darkened into grim certainty, the girl in the far corner of the room grew white as a lily, and would have fallen but for her father’s support.
“Does Mr. John Neville offer himself for examination?” said the Coroner, as he finished writing the last words of the butler’s deposition describing the quarrel of the night before.
“No, sir,” said Mr. Waggles. “I appear for Mr. John Neville, the accused, and we reserve our defense.”
“I really have nothing to say that hasn’t been already said,” added John Neville quietly.
“Mr. Neville,” said Mr. Waggles pompously, “I must ask you to leave yourself entirely in my hands.”
“Eric Neville!” called out the Coroner. “This is the last witness, I think.”
Eric stepped in front of the table and took the Bible in his hand. He was pale, but quiet and composed, and there was an unaffected grief in the look of his dark eyes and in the tone of his soft voice that touched every heart—except one.
He told his story shortly and clearly. It was quite plain that he was most anxious to shield his cousin. But in spite of this, perhaps because of this, the evidence went horribly against John Neville.
The answers to questions criminating his cousin had to be literally dragged from him by the Coroner.
With manifest reluctance he described the quarrel at dinner the night before.
“Was your cousin very angry?” the Coroner asked.
“He would not be human if he were not angry at the language used.”
“What did he say?”
“I cannot remember all he said.”
“Did he say to your uncle: Well, you will not live forever?’ No answer.
“Come, Mr. Neville, remember you are sworn to tell the truth.”
In an almost inaudible whisper came the words: “He did.”
“I’m sorry to pain you, but I must do my duty.
“When you heard the shot you ran straight to your uncle’s room, about fifty yards, I believe?”
“About that.”
“Whom did you find there bending over the dead man?”
“My cousin. I am bound to say he appeared in the deepest grief.”
“But you saw no one else?”
“No.”
“Your cousin is, I believe, the heir to Squire Neville’s property; the owner I should say now?”
“I believe so.”
“That will do; you can stand down.”
This interchange of question and answer, each one of which seemed to fit the rope tighter and tighter round John Neville’s neck, was listened to with hushed eagerness by the room full of people.
There was a long, deep drawing-in of breath when it ended. The suspense seemed over, but not the excitement.
Mr. Beck rose as Eric turned from the table, quite as a matter of course, to question him.
“You say you believe your cousin was your uncle’s heir—don’t you know it?”
Then Mr. Waggles found his voice.
“Really, sir,” he broke out, addressing the Coroner, “I must protest. This is grossly irregular. This person is not a professional gentleman. He represents no one. He has no locus standi in court at all.
No one knew better than Mr. Beck that technically he had no title to open his lips; but his look of quiet assurance, his calm assumption of unmistakable right, carried the day with the Coroner.
“Mr. Beck,” he said, “has, I understand been brought down specially from London to take charge of this case, and I certainly shall not stop him in any question he may desire to ask.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Mr. Beck, in the tone of a man whose clear right has been allowed. Then again to the witness: “Didn’t you know John Neville was next heir to Berkly Manor?”
“I know it, of course.”
“And if John Neville is hanged you will be the owner?” Everyone was startled at the frank brutality of the question so blandly asked. Mr. Waggles bobbed up and down excitedly: but Eric answered, calmly as ever—”That’s very coarsely and cruelly put.”
“But it’s true?”
“Yes, it’s true.”
“We will pass from that. When you came into the room after the murder, did you examine the gun?”
“I stretched out my hand to take it, but my cousin stopped me. I must be allowed to add that I believe he was actuated, as he said, by a desire to keep everything in the room untouched. He locked the door and carried off the key. I was not in the room afterwards.”
“Did you look closely at the gun?”
“Not particularly.”
“Did you notice that both barrels were at half cock?”
“No.”
“Did you notice that there was no cap on the nipple of the right barrel that had just been fired?”
“Certainly not.”
“That is to say you did not notice it?”
“Yes.”
“Did you notice a little burnt line traced a short distance on the wood of the stock towards the right nipple?”
“No.”
Mr. Beck put the gun into his hand.
“Look close. Do you notice it now?”
“I see it now for the first time.”
“You cannot account for it, I suppose?”
“No.”
“Sure?”
“Quite sure.”
All present followed this strange, and apparently purposeless, cross-examination with breathless interest, groping vainly for its meaning.
The answers were given calmly and clearly, but those that looked closely saw that Eric
’s nether lip quivered, and it was only by a strong effort of will that he held his calmness.
Through the blandness of Mr. Beck’s voice and manner a subtle suggestion of hostility made itself felt, very trying to the nerves of the witness.
“We will pass from that,” said Mr. Beck again. “When you went into your uncle’s room before the shot why did you take a book from the shelf and put it on the table?”
“I really cannot remember anything about it.”
“Why did you take the water-bottle from the window and stand it on the book?”
“I wanted a drink.”
“But there was none of the water drunk.”
“Then I suppose it was to take it out of the strong sun.”
“But you set it in the strong sun on the table?”
“Really I cannot remember those trivialities.” His self-control was breaking down at last.
“Then we will pass from that,” said Mr. Beck a third time. He took the little scraps of paper with the burnt holes through them from his waistcoat pocket, and handed them to the witness.
“Do you know anything about these?”
There was a pause of a second. Eric’s lips tightened as if with a sudden spasm of pain. But the answer came clearly enough—
“Nothing whatever.”
“Do you ever amuse yourself with a burning glass?”
This seeming simple question was snapped suddenly at the witness like a pistol-shot.
“Really, really,” Mr. Waggles broke out, “this is mere trifling with the Court.”
“That question does certainly seem a little irrelevant, Mr. Beck,” mildly remonstrated the Coroner.
“Look at the witness, sir,” retorted Mr. Beck sternly. “He does not think it irrelevant.”
Every eye in court was turned on Eric’s face and fixed there.
All color had fled from his cheeks and lips; his mouth had fallen open, and he stared at Mr. Beck with eyes of abject terror.
Mr. Beck went on remorselessly: “Did you ever amuse yourself with a burning glass?”
. No answer.
“Do you know that a water-bottle like this makes a capital burning glass?”
Still no answer.
“Do you know that a burning glass has been used before now to touch off a cannon or fire a gun?”
Then a voice broke from Eric at last, as it seemed in defiance of his will; a voice unlike his own—loud, harsh, hardly articulate; such a voice might have been heard in the torture chamber in the old days when the strain on the rack grew unbearable.
“You devilish bloodhound!” he shouted. “Curse you, curse you, you’ve caught me! I confess it—I was the murderer!” He fell on the ground in a fit.
“And you made the sun your accomplice!” remarked Mr. Beck, placid as ever.
Out of This World by Peter Godfrey (1917-1992)
Peter Godfrey wrote so many short stories that even he didn’t have a complete record of where and when they were all published. Many of these stories were of crime and mystery, and in Rolf Le Roux he created one of the most thoughtful and intelligent detectives. The cases he investigates include a number so bizarre and impossible that only the most ingenious of solutions will suffice. Godfrey’s stories have long been favorites with magazine and anthology editors, but surprisingly only one volume of Le Roux’s cases has ever appeared, Death Under the Table, published only in Godfrey ‘s native South Africa in 1954 and now so scarce as to be virtually unobtainable. From that collection we present for the first time in the United States in its original form one of Oom Rolfs most challenging cases.
... One of the major attractions of a visit to Cape Town, is a trip to the summit of Table Mountain by aerial cableway. From the upper station of glorious vistas of magnificent scenery, stretching for miles in every direction, delight the eye of the beholder... The lower station is readily accessible, being served by a feeder bus from the Kloof Nek terminus.
—Contemporary Guide Book
AND that day, the last day of March, was the same as all the others. After the test run at 9:30 a.m. the passengers began to arrive, and every half-hour the driver in his cabin at the top of Table Mountain started the cableway in operation. The car at the upper station descended, and the lower car ascended. Passengers came up and passengers went down, gawking at the magnificent panorama over the head of the blasé conductor in each car.
No accelerations, decelerations or stoppages. Seven minutes to complete the journey. Seven minutes for those at the lower station to reach the top of the mountain, the same seven minutes for those at the top to get down. A normal day, like all the other days.
And all day the cars went up and down, and the engineer on the upper station chatted with the driver and checked his instruments and read and smoked. And the driver chatted with the engineer and sometimes with a conductor who happened to be on the top at the time, and he operated the motor, and read.
In the restaurant on the summit the proprietress worked and chatted and sold curios and buttered scones and made tea and coffee. In the box-office at the lower station the station-master sold his tickets, and chatted with the conductor who happened to be down at the time, and drank tea.
But, imperceptibly, the sun was crawling across the sky. At 5:30 p.m. the electric hooter moaned its warning that the last trip of the day was commencing, and into the upper car came the straggling sightseers, the engineer came, the proprietress of the restaurant, and, of course, the conductor. Then two bells rang, and they were on their way.
For the space of seven minutes there was nobody on top of the mountain except the driver and the Native laborer. Then the ascending car brought the conductor who would also spend the night on the summit.
The two white men did not smile or chat or joke; but this, too, was normal. They did not like each other. The Native also kept to himself.
And the sun extinguished itself in the ocean, and the lights of the city far below winked brazenly at the softer pinpoints in the sky.
The men at the top of the mountain ate their evening meal in silence, and then one went to bed with a book, but the other walked out to look at the stars. He found the planet for which he was searching, and while he watched it his thoughts circled his mind.
He thought of what he had told the others—of the Being from that planet whom he could see and talk to, but who was invisible to the other men. He wondered if he had done the right thing, talking about the Being; he wondered whether the listeners were beginning to believe.
And then he had other thoughts.
After a long while he went back to the upper station and undressed and climbed into bed. As he had climbed into bed on countless occasions in the past. The last action of a normal day. But tomorrow . . .
And the night grew blacker and then less black, the lights of heaven faded first, and then the lights of the city. The east changed color. The sun rose.
Brander, the station-master at the lower station, came into the room which housed the landing platform, and peered myopically up along the giant stretch of steel rope. The old Native, Piet, was sweeping out the car which had remained overnight at the lower station—the right-hand car. He said: “Dag, Baas Brander,” and let his eyes follow the white man’s along the span of the cable.
“Dag, Piet,” said Brander.
Two thousand feet above, the upper station looked like a doll’s house, perched on the edge of the cliff. The outlines of Table Mountain stood deep-etched by the morning sun. On the flat top of the elevation there was no sign of cloud—the tablecloth, as people in Cape Town call it—and there was no stirring of the air.
Brander thought: “Good weather. No South-easter. We will be operating all day.”
And he thought: “Here on the lower station you are on earth, and if you are on the upper station you are also on earth, but going from one to the other along that steel wire, you are neither on earth nor in heaven. You are between. You go from earth to earth, but while you journey you are out of this world.”
And then he thought: “When you journey to Mars it must be like that, only there is no lower station and no upper station and no cable.”
He mumbled: “Praise the Lord.”
Piet started sweeping again, carefully poking the broom edgeways into the corners of the car. He saw Brander looking at him, and grinned. “Baas Dimble is the engineer to-day,” he said. “The car must be very clean.”
“That’s right, Piet,” said Brander. “It would be better if Baas Dimble found nothing to complain about here at the lower station. Make a good job. You still have twenty minutes.”
In the upper station the driver, Clobber, settled himself in a chair in his cabin and opened the latest issue of Planet Epics. He just about had time, he reckoned, to finish the story “Vengeance on Venus” before the test run at 9:30.
Line by line his eyes swallowed words, phrases and sentences. He was just at the critical point when the earthman hero and his gamma-ray robot had been cornered by the evil Venerian Swamp-slugs, when he felt eyes behind him. Without looking he knew it was Heston who had come in, and he had an annoying mental image of thin lips contorting in a sardonic smile.
Only, when he turned, Heston’s face was as serious as always. “Did I interrupt you?” he asked.
“Oh go to hell,” said Clobber. He marked the place in his book and put it down. He asked: “Well?”
“I just wanted to talk to you,” said Heston.
“Or pull my leg about the science fiction I read? I tell you, Heston, I’m getting pretty fed up with your attitude. I can take a joke as well as anybody, but the way you keep on about this man from Mars—well, it’s getting a little too thick. I read the stuff because I like it, see—and I’m not the only one who does. This stunt of yours may have been funny to start with, but I’m damned if it’s funny now. Cut it out, do you hear?”
Heston looked hurt.
“I don’t know why you keep thinking I’m joking,” he said. “I’m not smiling, am I? I know it sounds insane, but you must believe me because it’s true. I thought you’d understand, just because you do read science fiction. Gha does exist. I can see him and talk to him even though you can’t.” Clobber said: “Oh, my God!”
Death Locked In Page 18
