by G. Roy McRae
He had a gross white face that appeared to be carefully attended, and very finely pencilled eyebrows that had a satanic uplift; an extremely strong nose and jaw, and lips that were a red, twitching line. A monocle gleamed in his right eye, and those eyes were as bright as a snake’s themselves, holding the heavy-lidded droop of mastery.
Such was Professor Appleby, a monstrous figure of ebony and white in his dinner suit, as he wrestled under the soft-shaded lamp with the Haje spitting snake.
There sounded all at once a slight hiss. The Haje’s long body wriggled and coiled sinuously, so that its black and white diamond markings seemed to blur. A glass vessel fell to the carpet, knocked over by the snake in its struggles, and Professor Appleby’s monocle dropped on its black cord as he smiled grimly.
He had forgotten for a moment that Doctor Portal had arranged to call that evening on Eleanor, his wife—forgotten it in the fascination of the strange experiment he had been conducting.
The Haje, a fierce species of African cobra, had just exercised its remarkable and disconcerting habit of ejecting poison from its mouth to a considerable distance, and the professor had collected the discharge and had drawn the cobra’s fangs. It was now completely harmless, its poison-spitting propensities stopped for all time.
The professor dropped into a chair, watching the snake’s convulsions a moment, while he wiped his white hands fastidiously with a handkerchief.
There were tiny beads of perspiration on his forehead. For all his coolness he had known the experiment to be a dangerous one.
It was such experiments as this that had gained for Professor Appleby a reputation entirely enviable in the world of science and research. He was a noted expert in poisons and a pathologist of world-wide repute. Such ability—in the eyes of the world, at least—condoned a personal reputation that was somewhat dubious.
If the consensus of opinion was that Professor Appleby was the most brilliant scientist of his day, it was also freely rumoured that he had paid the penalty of genius. The dividing line between genius and insanity is a very thin one, and Professor Appleby was very much on the borderline: he had a cruel and sinister side to his character which could scarcely be called normal.
There were rumours current of strange habits he had acquired during his long sojourn in the East. Gossip has many votaries in an English country village, and Professor Appleby’s house, the Lodge, discreetly retired though it was, behind a long avenue of trees, was the object of much curiosity and an astonishing penetrative insight on the part of the villagers.
‘How he ever married her. I don’t know’—this referred to the gracious woman with hair of golden-brown and large, pathetic brown eyes who was occasionally to be seen flitting through the village with flushed face averted as though she knew she were an object of pity. Local opinion was unanimous about Eleanor Appleby. Two years before she had been a girl of breathless beauty; now it was evident that she walked with fear. She had been induced by the persuasions of her mother and her friends to accept the brilliant Professor Appleby as suitor—and now she was paying the cost of her husband’s erratic genius.
There was a great deal more gossip. Stories of his cruelty, and of his preference for the society of other women. How these got about in the village it is difficult to tell, for Professor Appleby was careful to throw a barricade of secrecy around the Lodge. His menage consisted of two domestics, a white-haired cook whose frightened manner and consistent head-shaking was the answer to any curious question about life at the Lodge, an old gardener and handy man who for some reason of his own had the silence of the sphinx in his tongue, and Vera, the house parlourmaid. Vera? Well, Vera, too, may have had her own reasons for not talking.
Yet rumour had got about, and Professor Appleby was conscious of it. He was sensitive about it, too, sensitive as a man who has some secret vice. As he stood back from the snake which was now twisting to the carpet, a sudden savagery flitted across his gross, white face. It was quickly eradicated. Indeed, he crossed the carpet, softly as a cat, and looked at his own reflection in a mirror, screwed his monocle in his eye and wagged a white forefinger warningly at himself.
No one must see it. No one must guess.
He turned away from the mirror again, and tried to capture elusive memories of an astonishing outburst he had made at a medical board in London a week before. What had he done—what had he said? Really he ought not to do these things. He must keep a closer guard over himself.
He thrust his hands deep in the pockets of his trousers and stood with feet apart, his chin sunk as he stared with glittering eyes at the cobra.
Suddenly he started.
Through the microphone concealed in one of the dummy books had come distinctly the sound of a knock at the front door of the Lodge, then faintly the sounds of the maid’s footsteps and the opening of the door. Then voices; a man’s deep and hearty, and a woman’s confused low tones.
Professor Appleby’s brows drew together, and somehow the faint contortion gave the heavy white face with its bright eyes a terribly sinister expression. The professor had that type of gross face that many exceedingly clever men possess; to watch its fleeting expressions provided a fascinating, if rather frightening study.
He listened. It was evident that those in the hall were taking care not to be overheard, for their voices sounded in undertone to their footsteps moving towards the drawing-room. The microphone made of their conversation a mere confused buzz, and only now and then did a word sound with clarity.
Professor Appleby knew that his wife and Doctor Alec Portal were talking together in the drawing-room.
He caught snatches through the microphone, chiefly in the man’s voice.
‘… You must not … then leave him … For your own sake I beg of you, Eleanor.’
The listening professor smiled beneath frowning brows. Quickly he picked up the writhing, harmless cobra and stowed it away in the wickerwork basket, then once more wiping his hands in his handkerchief, he crossed the carpet, lithe and buoyant to an astonishing degree in a man of such heavy build.
Softly traversing the passage between the study and the drawing-room, he opened the door suddenly, and the two inside the room, seated on a settee near the window, looked up startled to see him regarding them from the threshold.
In the woman his presence caused instant and dire confusion. Eleanor Appleby snatched away the delicately moulded hand that Doctor Portal had been holding whilst in pursuance of his professional duties he felt her pulse, and that same hand went like a fluttering bird to her heart. She paled—it was pitiable that swift pallor that drained her face of every vestige of colour—and her dilated eyes stared at her husband whilst she trembled.
Doctor Alec Portal looked swiftly from Professor Appleby to the beautiful, stricken creature on the settee beside him, and a frown knit his brows as he sprang to his feet.
Across the empty space of the room the two men measured glances. Doctor Alec Portal’s level-gray eyes did not waver, though in those few seconds he knew that rumour was right about Professor Appleby.
His eyes were restless, unnaturally bright under the frowning brows; his mouth twitched ever so slightly. He held himself well in check, of course, but the cruel glow that showed in his eyes as he looked at Eleanor could not belong to a quite normal man.
It was Doctor Alec Portal who spoke first.
‘Professor Appleby, I believe?’ he said in icy tones.
These two had crossed each other’s path many times, yet had never spoken. In public Professor Appleby was an extremely dignified and even ponderous man, and scarcely likely to take notice of a country medico.
Alec Portal, however, looked far different from the traditional village doctor. He had bought the country practice at Farncombe merely as a diversion from his wealth and because medicine appealed to him. Earlier in life he had selected the army as a career, and he bore the stamp of it unquestionably.
Hardly yet in his forties, he stood some six feet in his socks, with a f
air, tanned and clean-cut face that could be unbelievably boyish and handsome, and at times implacably stern.
Stern he appeared now as Professor Appleby crossed the room towards him. It was quite obvious from the professor’s attitude, the sneering smile upon his lips, that he was going to commit one of those breaches of good taste for which he was becoming notorious.
‘Every one in Farncombe knows that I am Professor Appleby, I think,’ he said with icy contempt. ‘And also that my wife is—well, mine.’
Doctor Alec Portal flushed.
He could not mistake the implied allusion. It was, in fact, coldly brutal, and he heard a little gasp from the settee. Professor Appleby was regarding him with a provocative and sneering smile, and Doctor Portal controlled his rising anger with difficulty.
‘That is exactly my point,’ he said harshly. ‘I am Doctor Alec Portal, as you know, and I am in attendance upon Mrs Appleby in a medical capacity. I am glad to have the opportunity of seeing you tonight, professor, for I wish to warn you that your wife is far from well.’
Professor Appleby’s eyebrows shot up.
‘Indeed,’ he said suavely, ‘that is news to me. I have qualifications as a medical man myself, and I should have said that Mrs Appleby is enjoying the best of health. Still—’ he crossed the carpet, and took his wife’s hand, feeling her pulse with a judicial air.
His back was half-turned to Alec Portal, but, indeed, the young doctor was not exercising any special vigilance for the moment, and therefore he did not observe the cruel pressure of Professor Appleby’s strong fingers upon his wife’s arm.
Alec Portal was caught up in a sudden strange wonder. As the professor had crossed the room Eleanor Appleby had cast a swift glance of appeal to him. And for a breathless moment a galvanic force that Doctor Portal had never before experienced and did not understand, swept through him.
He knew that he was trembling a little. He believed it was through the tensity of the situation, for he was sure that a demon raged in the breast of this man whose intellectual achievements had amazed the scientific world. A demon of merciless cruelty, urging him, driving him to outrageous acts of subtle torture.
And yet—what was this wild thrill that raged through him as he stared at Eleanor Appleby? It was as if he had suddenly awakened to something new and wonderful.
Her eyes were cast down, and she was trembling violently, and her childish face was pitiful. Yet, perhaps because of her extreme pallor, she looked as fresh and sweet as a dew-drenched rose at dawn. Alec Portal continued to stare at her. That brute’s wife, he told himself! And with the soft lamplight pouring on her flawless face and brown-gold hair she looked a very dainty and pretty little wife.
So pretty, indeed, as her lashes trembled against her smooth, pale cheeks that a voice whispered madly within him of things he had never dreamed.
All at once a little gasp broke from her. She looked up at the man who held her wrists so cruelly; her eyes lit with anguish.
‘Oh, please—please stop!’ she whispered.
Doctor Alec Portal heard it. He started forward, his handsome face working convulsively. But at the same moment Professor Appleby released his wife, and turned. There was sardonic amusement, and something else unfathomable, lurking in the gleaming eyes that mockingly challenged the doctor’s.
‘I must thank you for your solicitude,’ he drawled, ‘but I find my wife quite well. In any case, I think I should prefer myself to choose her medical attendant if she were ill—one, say, who is not quite so impetuous, and who understands better the etiquette of his profession.’
Aflame with anger, Doctor Portal was on the point of making some hasty retort, but checked himself in time. There was something besides his own personal feelings to be considered. This girl—for she was little more—was being driven to breaking point.
His eyes, narrowed to shining slits, blazed at the cold, sneering face.
‘I warn you, sir, that you may have a very serious matter to answer for,’ he said between clenched teeth. ‘Mrs Appleby needs rest and change. She is near to nervous prostration, and must take a holiday. It is the worst case of nerves I have ever encountered.’
Professor Appleby drew himself up. His smooth, white face lost its sneering smile and became terrible.
For a moment he glared at the young doctor, and his eyes held the burden of his storming and reviling soul.
‘Nerves, eh?’ he grated, like a bug spitting venom, ‘Doctor, from my own observations, I should say it was a case of the heart.’
He walked to the door and flung it open. For all that he was holding it under control, his rage was staggering.
‘Get out,’ he said thickly. ‘D’you hear? Get out! Or, by the Lord Harry, there’ll be a case of horsewhipping for the villagers to gossip again. And please have the decency to leave my wife alone in future. And don’t come near my house again—understand.’
Alec Portal stared at him hard.
Not since his schoolboy days had he felt such an overwhelming, primitive impulse to punish another human being. He would dearly have liked to have wiped the disdain from that gross face with a thudding left. But in the end he shrugged and gathered up his ulster and cap. He was in an impossible position, and the only thing he could do was to leave with dignity.
Bestowing a formal little bow upon Eleanor, who sat with eyes cast down, shamed, he strode past the malevolent figure of Professor Appleby at the door and went from the house.
But as he opened the front door, he heard the sound of a stifled sob, and he looked back, startled, questioning. She was in there with that brute, crying. Should he go back? Should he kill the husband?
His heart was filled with a cold, murderous rage. He took a grip of himself, and was astonished. What was the matter with him? Was he himself tonight?
He closed the door, and strode away into the gathering dusk, pulling his coat collar up and his broad-visored cap down. He was almost afraid of himself, afraid of his own thoughts and desires. Something primitive and lawless had woke to life in Doctor Alec Portal, who had always thought himself so cold.
He walked quickly, trying to shake off his thoughts. One thing was obvious. He must never go near the house that contained Professor Appleby’s wife again. Passion and love had been awakened in his deep strong nature at last. And it was love for another man’s wife!
Even now he fought against a wild impulse to turn back. All his chivalry urged him to protect her from that brute. But with a resolute gritting of his teeth he strode on.
His eyes were bleak as they penetrated the gathering dusk.
‘Heavens,’ he muttered; ‘it’s a funny old world!’
Doctor Alec Portal had scarce closed the front door behind him when Professor Appleby returned to the drawing-room. Outwardly he was calm and collected. His gleaming monocle was screwed in his right eye, and he tried to restrain the twitching of his lips.
Eleanor, his wife, was still sitting on the settee, racked by a tempest of half-stifled sobs.
He watched her from the doorway with a sneering smile.
Her beauty no longer moved him. Indeed, beauty in all living things impelled in him an awful, mad lust to destroy. That was the kink in this brilliant scientist’s brain. He had been known to sit for hours plucking the petals from one choice bloom after another. As a boy, one of his absorbing hobbies had been the collection of butterflies and birds’ eggs, and he had plundered nests ruthlessly and taken a peculiar delight in the destruction of Nature’s most beautiful creatures.
Thus it was with his wooing of Eleanor.
From the first, her beauty and peculiar charm had exercised a fatal fascination for him. He desired her as he had wanted the butterfly when a boy—to pin down and destroy. He had never been the lover. And on the very day of their marriage had come frightful disillusion for Eleanor Appleby.
She had married not a man, but a fiend who was capable of exercising the most cunning and subtle forms of cruelty.
Whether it was from knowl
edge of the law’s remorselessness, or his own desire to play with his victim, Professor Appleby had adopted a gradual process of destruction. His constant spying on her, his taunts, his subtle and hideous little cruelties, all were tearing at Eleanor Appleby’s nerves. Visibly she had lost her fragrant charm, and was listless, apathetic, like a drooping flower. But even she had not known how near she was to nervous exhaustion until recently, and then in a panic she had sent for Doctor Alec Portal.
Professor Appleby threw back his head in a mirthless, almost silent laugh.
He felt queerly elated—pleased. Something seemed to snap in his brain, and the result of it was that he felt as a man does who has tossed off a bumper of champagne to which he is unaccustomed. When he let himself go there were compensations to this queer kink in his brain. He knew he was not normal, but it was a very pleasant state.
He commenced to lash her with his tongue.
‘So this is what you do!’ he said in that thin, precise tone with which he addressed a medical board. ‘You, whom I thought were a faithful wife—you to whom I have given the best in me. To think that you are a light-o’-love, Eleanor …’
He had chosen the words with devilish cunning. She started as though fire had touched her, and looked up.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said with his thin, mirthless smile. ‘I heard it, even in my room. He was urging you to go away—to leave me—’
With a faint moan she put up her hand as if to stay the cruel words. But he stepped forward and dashed it aside, glowering down at her.
‘Say something,’ he commanded with brutal violence. ‘What is that man to you?’
She was trembling violently.
‘I—I—you don’t understand—’
She got no further. His white hands went out, gripping her neck and shoulder. Against all her resistance she was swung gently, powerfully this way and that. There was a softness in that great strength, but she knew it could shake the life out of her, crush her with but little effort.
