The House Of Cain

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “If you want help, call me,” he commanded fiercely. “If only I could see! Oh God! If only I could see!”

  “Hush! It will be all right, dear. I’ll get rid of him quickly,” she replied bravely; and, catching his head between her hands, kissed him passionately and left him.

  Closing the bedroom door, she passed through along the sitting-room, replacing the cigarette in her mouth before unlocking the outer door. Anchor strolled in, the cheroot clenched between his teeth, a smile of indescribable evil hovering about his thin lips.

  “Good morning!” he said coolly, closing the door behind him. “Really I must apologize for intruding at such an hour; but our quiet life has suddenly boiled up into melodrama, so acceptable to the ‘gods’ and faintly applauded by the critical stalls. Have you heard the shooting?”

  “Yes. What does it mean?”

  She stood, a beautiful and gracious woman, in her becoming dressing-gown, which accentuated the soft curves of her figure and cried her femininity at him. Over each shoulder hung a rope of hair, glinting as antique copper in the light. Through narrowed eyelids Anchor regarded her. Had his spotted soul not already belonged to Satan, he would willingly have sold it for love of such a woman. Yet his voice was steady when he replied in his most casual drawl:

  “It would seem that the Sherwoods have grossly abused our hospitality. I gather from the commotion that Brother Montague is engaged in shooting my guests, if they in their righteous wrath have not already .shot him. As Brother

  Martin would be worse than useless in such a situation, I was beginning to wonder, Austiline, if he had sought refuge here and you in your goodness of heart had taken him in.”

  “Here!” she echoed.

  Removing the cheroot from his mouth, he bowed sardonically. Then, with sinister pleasantness, he said:

  “Forgive me my thoughts, I pray you. However, I must express surprise at your newly acquired habit of cigarette-smoking. And indulgence so early in the morning, too! I observe that you smoke ‘Three Circles’ cigarettes. The marks are so distinctive. If I recollect aright, Martin Sherwood also favours that particular brand. Where did you say you had concealed him?”

  “He––he is not here,” she faltered, the baleful glitter of his eyes breaking down her coolness, her courage.

  “Permit me to compliment you on your poor lying,” he said softly. “I hate a brazen liar. When I reflect that you are my promised bride, my lovely Austiline, I feel that my honour is gravely affected by finding a man in your apartments at this time of the morning.” Then, in a flash, his suave smile vanished. His dulcet voice became a snarl. “Where is this blind fool? Tell me––quick!”

  “He––he––no, you shall not!” she cried unsteadily, when he tried to pass her. She backing, he followed her, his agate eyes boring into hers, the fury of the baffled animal gathering into and distorting his fine face. Thus she brought up against her bedroom door, unconsciously betraying Martin’s whereabouts, her staring, horror-filled eyes like those of a woman whose baby is threatened by the emissaries of Herod.

  “Move aside!” he ordered.

  “Never!”

  “So! Then you must be taught to obey.”

  A steely hand gripped her bare arm. He pulled her forcibly towards him, and she, in a last despairing effort to protect the blind man, struck him on the mouth with all her strength. The blow sent him backward a pace, and she was dragged after him. Again she struck, and then screamed at the demoniac look blazing from his eyes.

  Martin Sherwood heard distinctly every word spoken beyond the shut door. Consternation and fear for Austiline gripped him with icy fingers. The sound of Austiline’s blow fell on his straining ears as a douche of cold water, and, unable any longer to remain inactive, he stepped from the curtain on hearing her second blow.

  With his arms outstretched, his fingers working as though searching for Anchor’s throat, he stumbled over a chair that sent him crashing to the floor. Yet, unconscious of any hurt, he scrambled to his feet and set off on a wild, hopeless search for the door, his sense of hearing now blunted by a terrible fear for the safety of his beloved. His knees meeting the edge of the bed, he sprawled into it with pathetic comicality. Off that he rolled to run full tilt into a glass panelled wardrobe, his hands missing it, his face coming violently against the plate-glass.

  The impenetrable darkness of his world was filled with invisible objects barring his every step. The bed, the dressing-table, the octagonal book-rack, the chairs and other furniture, assumed life, taking on the malevolent spite of mocking enemies leagued together to frustrate him.

  Austiline’s scream halted him at the head of the bed. For the first time since he had left the curtain he realized the absurdity of the over-eagerness which stunned his hearing, the all-important sense of his remaining four.

  His hands met a small occasional table, and, tipping this up, he grasped it by one spidery leg. He knew now the position of the door, from which came sounds of a man’s fierce breathing and a woman’s sharp, panting sobs. Cautiously now, all his will-power urgently directed to steady him, Martin slowly crossed the room and found the door-handle.

  A jerk and he had flung wide the door, and he, a blind man, whose only weapon was a frail occasional table, set out to battle with a man armed with an automatic pistol, enjoying perfect vision, and as ruthless as the combined inmates of all hell.

  At his appearance, his clothes torn, his face bleeding from the collision with the wardrobe, Austiline, clinging like a limpet to the maddened millionaire, shrieked and screamed out:

  “Monty! Monty! Come quickly, Monty!”

  “Monty, you vixen! Monty’s shot to pieces!” Anchor gasped triumphantly.

  Her gown was torn to ribbons. Anchor’s face streamed blood where it had been lacerated by her finger-nails. Gone was Austiline the beautiful, the joyous, the tender. Here instead was woman as she has been throughout the ages, as first she was when she fought against the beasts who would consume her, and against man who would club her into submissiveness. Martin, the blind and helpless Martin, was her child, whom the primordial woman in her fought to protect.

  And towards this swaying, struggling pair lurched Martin Sherwood––gentle, sympathetic, lovable Martin––a new creation and yet the same. The quiet, dignified editor of The Daily Tribune was no more. From him civilization was shed. The blackness before his eyes was ribbed by red streaks. He was possessed with an awful, overpowering desire to kill the man who defiled his woman by his touch. The complications of circumstances had evoked even in him the terrible impulse that makes the murderer.

  And then suddenly he paused. Like nausea realization came, remembrance of his utter, pitiable helplessness. For to strike haphazard with his table would be madness indeed, since it was an even chance that he would hit his beloved. His mouth sagged and tears sprang-into his sightless eyes.

  Helpless! What a word! “Sight! Sight! Please, please God, give me sight!” he wailed.

  His cry was followed by another scream from Austiline on being flung back by Anchor, who, having torn himself from her weakening hands, ran to the blind man. Primitive hate, primitive lust was so overpowering that the millionaire forgot the weapon provided by lethal science with which to kill with ease. He was mad to strike, to kill with his naked hands. Deliberately he measured the distance, and then struck at the defenceless man with all the power of his shoulder-muscles, backed by all his weight.

  The blow caught Martin exactly between the eyes, sent him flying backwards like a ninepin. Dazed by the terrific impact, the blind man lay stretched on his back, still as death, with the ex-rubber king standing over him, laughing with maniacal shrillness. His hand dived into a pocket, gripped the butt of the automatic pistol, drew it out.

  And then, with the strength of ten men, Austiline threw herself upon his arm.

  Still laughing, he turned on her, and tried to wrench himself free. For an instant they faced each other, her fair skin smeared and fouled by the blood from his face
, her hair a flaming cloud. Swiftly she bent and sank her teeth into the hand holding the weapon. His laughter changed to a howl of agony. The pistol fell to the floor. With his left fist he struck her a cruel blow beneath the ear; but the distance was too short, his aim too uncertain for the blow to be effective.

  Neither of them saw Martin stir. Neither did they see his eyes open, and then close with visible pain. The blind man sat up with a hand covering his eyes and the purple bruise between them. Although red-hot irons were gouging into his brain, Martin cried out, a great vibrating cry of overwhelming joy.

  Light! He could see the light––soft, glowing, radiant light. Through his fingers, partially obscured by what appeared to be a maze of whirling light particles, he witnessed the struggle taking place, but a few yards from him, with a sudden surge of conscious power.

  “Hold on, Austiline!” he shouted. Slowly he attempted to rise. The effort brought on giddiness which almost made him vomit. The second attempt succeeded. Rolling over on his side he flung out his arm to assist his rising, when his hand touched Anchor’s pistol. Slowly and painfully he got up on his feet, his legs trembling violently, the floor and the combatants seeming to him to rise and fall as the deck of a ship at sea. Then came a calm. The floor became steady. The mist dulling his brain vanished. Looking through his fingers still, for the light––the glorious new-found light––burned his eyes, he stumbled up to Anchor then bending Austiline over in a back-breaking grip. Viciously he jammed the muzzle of the weapon against Anchor’s neck.

  “Throw up your hands, you cowardly swine!”

  At the touch of metal, at the sound of Martin’s voice, as cold and as hard as the pistol, the millionaire’s hands lifted. Very slowly he stood up; slowly, too, he turned and gazed with deadened, lack-lustre eyes down the barrel of his own weapon. He was like a man whose limbs are doomed to move but a fraction of an inch at a time.

  In Martin’s eyes he saw reflected vision. He did not wonder how Martin had come to see. He knew only that he could see.

  Suddenly the door was flung open from without.

  “Monty! Oh Monty! Come quick!” cried Austiline from the floor.

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  CLOUDS ROLL AWAY

  DETECTIVE-SERGEANT OAKES, of the Victorian Police, should he ever write his memoirs, doubtless will have many gruesome’ sights to record; yet, up to that time, the scene of that passage was of all he had encountered the most terrible.

  He said afterwards that it was not the vision of two dead men and three huge hounds forming a rampart from wall to wall which filled the picture; but the great figure of one man, who appeared as if he had passed through a sausage machine, sitting in a pool of his own blood, and calmly reloading an automatic pistol.

  And then the quietly asked question, asked with that irrepressible twinkle of the grey-blue eyes: “What do you think of my private battle?”

  “Ye Gods!” the detective-sergeant whispered. “A private battle!”

  “M’yes. Would have been a lively affair had it been a public one, wouldn’t it?”

  “It would, if the public consisted of Monty Sherwoods,” Oakes agreed. “Are you wounded badly?”

  “A few scratches,” the big man admitted slowly, his eyes now lacked lustre, his head nodding. “You might tear up a few sheets and things. I’m leaking a lot of juice, and friend Anchor is still in particular need of my services.”

  “Lane and Mallowing––where are they?” “Mallowing sleeps, I hope, on his little bed. I tied him down on it. Lane is comforting a smashed wrist.”

  “Humph! Keep an eye open for Lane. I’ll not be a moment.”

  The detective-sergeant disappeared within Madeline Fox’s room, to dart out almost instantly laden with bed-sheets and pillow-slips. Tearing these into strips, he said in his old-time drawl:

  “Who, do you think, is moving about in Mabel Hogan’s room?”

  With an effort Monty rallied his senses.

  “It can’t be Lane,” he said. “Ah! I know. That, probably, will be my son.”

  “Your son?”

  “My adopted son, to be precise. Mabel Hogan gave him to me.”

  “Oh!” Oakes said, understanding not at all what Monty was talking about. “Let’s have your shirt off, or what’s left of it. Send Lane a, messenger if he appears.”

  They heard a chair being dragged to Mabel’s door. The sounds of the dead woman’s child clambering upon it diverted their minds from themselves. Monty felt an unwonted lassitude; the detective felt as in a dream. Oakes marvelled that a man with Monty’s wounds could live, let alone joke. His ministrations were quite primitive: a surgeon would have shuddered to see Oakes “plugging”––it is the only word––the long, deep, open furrow across Monty’s side with wads of unsterilized sheeting, wads kept in place by swathe upon swathe of rough bandages.

  Into the passage stumbled little Bubbles, his great blue eyes blinking in the light, his yellow hair in sore need of brushing. For a moment he surveyed the massive bulk of Monty lying on his chest, one hand still gripping the pistol, with Oakes working over him surrounded by yards of ribboned sheets.

  The big man groaned. Should Lane open fire now, well might he hit the child. And then the boy ran to him, sat down to be more on a level with his face, and cooed:

  “Mine daddy! ’Tis mine daddy!”

  Monty was kissed, and the moist wonderful kiss drove back the strange darkness below his eyes and vanquished the giddiness.

  “You come a little beside me, Bubbles,” he said coaxingly. “I want to see up the passage, in case Mr. Lane comes to look for us.”

  “Lane! Mis’r Lane!” echoed Bubbles uncomprehendingly.

  “Yep. Monsoor Lane, if you like. Now, don’t touch the cannon. It’s hot.”

  Oakes had just secured the bandages round Monty’s torso with safety-pins he had snatched from a tray on Madeline’s dressing-table, when Monty’s pistol cracked with nerve-shattering suddenness. “Carry on,” Monty drawled. “It’s only Lane. Can’t you hear his gentle whispers? He’s got to the hall now.”

  “Did you drop him?”

  “No; I walloped him in the left arm. He’s out of action now.” And then, as an after-thought: “Didn’t want to kill him, anyhow. I’m rather curious to know how far the hangman will drop a man of his weight. Never mind the shoulder. Just shove my shirt on again. We’re losing too much time.”

  “It’s in a hell of a mess, Monty,” the detective-sergeant said doubtfully.

  “No matter. As Lane is now harmless, slip along to the dining-room and get me a drink, will you? Look out for Anchor.”

  Ignoring the moans coming from the fat man lying in the dark hall, the detective brought a decanter of whisky and a glass. It was a tumbler glass.

  “Say when!” he commanded.

  Monty shut his eyes. When he took the glass it was full.

  “Bott1ed beer is more in my line,” he spluttered, when he had drained the glass. “Never did like reptile preservative.” Clinging to Oakes he managed to gain his feet, adding grimly: “Now for the beloved Anchor!”

  “Here! wait a minute. Where are you going?”

  “Down among the dead men,” mocked the giant.

  The thin, keen face of the detective had lost entirely its bland mask of vacuity. The terrible realities of the situation were too strong for facial make-believe.

  “Stop your foolery, Monty,” he said. “I’m serious.”

  “Aren’t you aware of the underground rooms?” the big man demanded, the wall supporting him, his free hand now holding the screwdriver which had been in his jacket pocket. Seeing the puzzled look in the other’s eyes, he blamed himself for thinking that the detective-sergeant was over-cautious. He saw understanding dawning upon Oakes.

  “So that was where they took you two fellows, was it?” he exclaimed. “Anchor kept me talking at the dinner-table, so I did not see what they did with you. I’ve been hunting for you outside for two solid hours in the damned rain. How do you get to
these underground rooms?”

  Monty smiled. He felt only a little stronger from the stimulant, yet he smiled.

  “No, you don’t,” he said reprovingly. “Don’t forget I’m rather good at bluff-poker. Anchor is my meat. You go a-hunting Lane.”

  Just then the fat man roared from the hall.

  “Hey! Sherwood!” he called.

  “Well?”

  “I chuck in the sponge. I’m bleedin’ like a stuck pig.”

  “Come and see the glorious white flag flying,” Monty told him; and, while Lane staggered along the passage towards them, he said to Oakes: “Now, don’t you go butting into my private affairs. You look after Lane and my son.”

  He passed the fat man holding out his broken limbs. He made the length of the passage with the wall for support. At the end he turned to see Oakes engaged in bandaging Lane. He called back:

  “Don’t let Bubbles follow me yet. When you’ve fixed Lane, come along quick. You’ll find the door to below behind the tapestry here in the hall.”

  Monty heard Bubbles crying frantically to be allowed to accompany him; heard, too, the detective-sergeant swear vividly and almost snarl about having to double the parts of hospital nurse and mother’s help.

  Whilst he had the passage wall for support the giant was able to keep his feet; but, as soon as he left it to cross the hall to the tapestry, the recurrent giddiness engendered by the weakness that had come over him forced him to his hands and knees. To his iron will alone was his progress due. With pistol in mouth, the torch in one pocket, and the screwdriver clenched in one hand, the big man at last gained the panel-door.

  Anxious not to allow Oakes to catch him up before he dealt with Anchor, Monty worked feverishly at withdrawing the screws. When he had them out and the panel-door slid back, his hands and the floor, now lighted by the electric-bulb over the steps, appeared as though they were deep in a sea of ink.

  Looking down the steps, vertigo seized him. The steps heaved and swayed in an alarming manner. Like Bubbles getting off a bed, Monty slid down legs first. He was thankful that the millionaire did not meet him just then. He could imagine his pleasant greeting, accompanied by a ruthless shot. At the foot of the steps he tried hard to stand, but failed. During this effort he heard Austiline screaming for him to come quickly, and knew then exactly where Anchor was.