Finger of Fate

by Sapper

  “A man who did me a good turn a few weeks ago,” said the owner of the house, shortly. “Name of Denton. Arrived only half an hour ago.”

  He moved away to introduce the newcomer, and the Actor turned to Bob Seymour.

  “One wonders,” he remarked, “whether it would be indiscreet to offer Mr Denton a part in my new play. Nothing much to say. He merely drinks and eats. In effect, a publican of unprepossessing aspect. One wonders – so suitable.”

  He placed his empty glass on the table and drifted charmingly away towards his hostess; leaving Bob Seymour smiling gently. Undoubtedly a most suitable part for Mr Denton.

  And then, quite suddenly, the smile died away. Bill Brabazon, who was standing near the fireplace, had turned round and come face to face with the newcomer. For a moment or two they stared at one another – a deadly loathing on their faces; then with ostentatious rudeness Denton turned his back and walked away.

  “My God! Bob,” muttered Bill, coming up to Seymour. “How on earth did that swine-emperor get here?”

  His jaw was grim and set, his eyes gleaming with rage; and the hand that poured out the cocktail shook a little.

  “What’s the matter, Bill?” said Seymour, quietly. “For Heaven’s sake, don’t make a scene, old man!”

  “Matter!” choked Bill Brabazon. “Matter! Why–”

  But any further revelations were checked by the announcement of dinner, and the party went in informally. To his delight, Bob Seymour found himself next to Ruth, and the little scene he had just witnessed passed from his mind. It was not until they were half-way through the meal that it was recalled to him by Ruth herself.

  “Who is that dreadful-looking man talking to Delia Morrison?” she whispered.

  “Denton is his name,” replied Seymour, and every vestige of colour left her face.

  “Denton,” she muttered. “Good Heavens! it can’t be the same.” She glanced round the table till she found her brother, who was answering the animated remarks of his partner with morose monosyllables. “Has Bill–”

  “Bill has,” returned Seymour, grimly. “And he’s whispered to me on the subject. What’s the trouble?”

  “They had the most fearful row – over a girl,” she explained, a little breathlessly. “Two or three months ago. I know they had a fight, and Bill got a black eye. But he broke that other brute’s jaw.”

  “Holy smoke!” muttered Seymour. “The meeting strikes the casual observer as being, to put it mildly, embarrassing. Do you know how the row started?”

  “Only vaguely,” she answered. “That man Denton got some girl into trouble, and then left her in the lurch – refused to help her at all. A poor girl – daughter of someone who had been in Bill’s platoon. And he came to Bill.”

  “I see,” said Seymour, grimly. “I see. Bill would.”

  “Of course he would!” she cried. “Why, of course. Just the same as you would.”

  “I suppose that isn’t pretty conclusive?” he said, with a grin. “As a third point, I mean.”

  But Ruth Brabazon had turned to the Celebrated Actor on her other side. He had already said, “My dear young lady,” five times without avail, and he was Very Celebrated.

  Neglected for the moment by both his neighbours, Bob proceeded to study the gentleman whose sudden arrival seemed so inopportune. He was a coarse-looking specimen, and already his face was flushed with the amount of wine he had drunk. Every now and then his eyes sought Bill Brabazon vindictively, and Seymour frowned as he saw it. Denton belonged to a type he had met before, and it struck him there was every promise of trouble before the evening was out. When men of Denton’s calibre get into the condition of “drink-taken”, such trifles as the presence of other guests in the house do not deter them from being offensive. And Bill Brabazon, though far too well-bred to seek a quarrel in such surroundings, was also far too hot-tempered to take any deliberate insult lying down.

  Suddenly a coarse, overloud laugh from Denton sounded above the general conversation, and Ruth Brabazon looked round quickly.

  “Ugh! what a horrible man!” she whispered to Bob. “How I hate him!”

  “I don’t believe a word of it,” he was saying, harshly. “Fraud by knaves for fools. For those manifestations that have been seen there is some material cause. Generally transparent trickery.” He laughed – again, sneeringly.

  For a second or two there was an uncomfortable silence. It was not so much what the man had said, as the vulgar, ill-bred manner in which he had said it, and Sir Robert hastily intervened to relieve the tension.

  “Ghosts?” he remarked. “As impossible a subject to argue about as religion or politics. Incidentally, you know.” he continued, addressing the table at large, “there’s a room in this house round which a novelist might weave quite a good ghost story.”

  “Tell us, Sir Robert.” A general chorus assailed him, and he smiled.

  “I’m not a novelist,” he said, “though for what it’s worth I’ll tell you about it. The room is one in the new wing which I used to use as a smoking-room. It was the part built on to the house by my predecessor – a gentleman, from all accounts, of peculiar temperament. He had spent all his life travelling to obscure places of the world; and I don’t know if it was liver or what, but his chief claim to notoriety when he did finally settle down appears to have been an intense hatred of his fellow-men. There are some very strange stories of the things which used to go on in this house, where he lived the life of an absolute recluse, with one old man to look after him. He died about forty years ago.”

  Sir Robert paused and sipped his champagne.

  “However, to continue. In this smoking-room in the new wing, there is an inscription written in the most amazing jumble of letters by the window. It is written on the wall, and every form of hieroglyphic is used. You get a letter in Arabic, then one of Chinese, then an ordinary English one, and perhaps a German. Well, to cut a long story short, I took the trouble one day to copy it out, and replaced the foreign letters – there are one or two Greek letters as well – by their corresponding English ones. I had to get somebody else to help me over the Chinese and Arabic, but the result was, at any rate, sense. It proved to be a little jingling rhyme, and it ran as follows: –

  ‘When ’tis hot, shun this spot.

  When ’tis rain, come again.

  When ’tis day, all serene.

  When ’tis night, death is green.’”

  Sir Robert glanced round the table with a smile.

  “There was no doubt who had written this bit of doggerel, as the wing was actually built by my predecessor – and I certainly didn’t. That’s a pretty good foundation to build a ghost story on, isn’t it?”

  “But have you ever seen anything?” inquired one of the guests.

  “Not a thing,” laughed his host. “But” – he paused mysteriously – “I’ve smelt something. And that’s the reason why I don’t use the room any more.

  “It was a very hot night – hotter even than this evening. There was thunder about – incidentally, I shouldn’t be surprised if we had a storm before tomorrow – and I was sitting in the room after dinner reading the paper. All of a sudden I became aware of a strange and most unpleasant smell: a sort of fetid, musty, rank smell, like you get sometimes when you open up an old vault. And at the same moment I noticed that the paper I held in my hand had gone a most peculiar green colour and I could no longer see the print clearly. It seemed to have got darker suddenly, and the smell became so bad that it made me feel quite faint.

  “I walked over to the door and left the room meaning to get a lamp. Then something detained me, and I didn’t go back for an hour or so. When I did the smell was still there, though so faint that one could hardly notice it. Also the paper was quite white again.” He laughed genially. “And that’s the family ghost; a poor thing, but our own. I’ll have to get someone to take it in hand and bring it up-to-date.”

  “But surely you don’t think there is any connection between this smell a
nd the inscription?” cried Denton.

  “I advance no theory at all.” Sir Robert smiled genially. “All I can tell you is that there is an inscription, and that the colour green is mentioned in it. It seemed to me most certainly that my paper went green, though it is even more certain that I did not die. Also there is at times in this room this rather unpleasant smell. I told you it was a poor thing in the ghost line.”

  The conversation became general, and Ruth Brabazon turned to Bob, who was thoughtfully staring at his plate.

  “Why so preoccupied, Major Seymour?”

  “A most interesting yarn,” he remarked, coming out of his reverie. “Have a salted almond, before I finish the lot.”

  3

  To have two hot-tempered men who loathe one another with a bitter loathing in a house-party is not conducive to its happiness. And when one of them is an outsider of the first water, slightly under the influence of alcohol, the situation becomes even more precarious. For some time after dinner was over Bill Brabazon avoided Denton as unostentatiously as he could, though it was plain to Bob Seymour and Ruth that he was finding it increasingly difficult to control his temper. By ten o’clock it was obvious, even to those guests who knew nothing about the men’s previous relations, that there was trouble brewing; and Sir Robert, who had been told the facts of the case by Bob, was at his wits’ end.

  “If only I’d known,” he said, irritably. “If only someone had told me. I know Denton is a sweep, but he did me a very good turn in the City the other day, and, without thinking, I asked him to come and shoot some time. And when he suggested coming now, I couldn’t in all decency get out of it. I hope to Heaven there won’t be a row.”

  “If there’s going to be, Sir Robert, you can’t prevent it,” said Seymour. “I’m sure Bill will do all he can to avoid one.”

  “I know he will,” answered his host. “But there are limits, and that man Denton is one of ’em. I wish I’d never met the blighter.”

  “Come and have a game of billiards, anyway,” said the other. “It’s no use worrying about it. If it comes, it comes.”

  When they had been playing about twenty minutes, Ruth Brabazon and Delia Morrison joined them, the billiard-room being, as they affirmed, the coolest room in the house.

  “We’ll have rain soon,” said Sir Robert, bringing off a fine losing hazard off the red. “That’ll clear the air.”

  And shortly afterwards his prophecy proved true. Heavy drops began to patter down on the glass skylight, and the girls heaved a sigh of relief.

  “Thank goodness,” gasped Ruth. “I couldn’t have stood–” She broke off abruptly and stared at the door, which had just opened to admit her brother. “Bill,” she cried, “what’s the matter?”

  Bob Seymour looked up quickly at her words; then he rested his cue against the table. Something very obviously was the matter. Bill Brabazon, his tie undone, with a crumpled shirt, and a cut under his eye on the cheek-bone, came into the room and closed the door.

  “I must apologise, Sir Robert,” he said, quietly, “for what has happened. It’s a rotten thing to have to admit in another man’s house, but the fault was not entirely mine. I’ve had the most damnable row with that fellow Denton – incidentally he was half-drunk – and I’ve laid him out. An unpardonable thing to do to one of your guests, but – well – I’m not particularly slow-tempered, and I couldn’t help it. He went on and on and on – asking for trouble: and finally he got it.”

  “Damnation!” Sir Robert replaced his cue in the rack. “When did it happen, Bill?”

  “About half an hour ago. I’ve been outside since. Meaning to avoid him I went to the smoking-room in the new wing, and I found him there examining that inscription by the window. I couldn’t get away – without running away. I suppose I ought to have.”

  An uncomfortable silence settled on the room, which was broken at length by Sir Robert.

  “Where is the fellow now, Bill?”

  “I haven’t seen him – not since I socked him one on the jaw. I’m deucedly sorry about it,” he continued, miserably, “and I feel the most awful sweep, but–”

  He stopped suddenly as the door was flung open and the Celebrated Actor rushed in. The magnificent repose which usually stamped his features was gone: it was an agitated and frightened man who stood by the billiard table, pouring out his somewhat incoherent story. And as his meaning became clear Bill Brabazon grew white and leaned against the mantelpiece for support.

  Dead – Denton dead! That was the salient fact that stood out from the Actor’s disjointed sentences.

  “To examine the inscription,” he was saying. “I went in to examine it – and there – by the window…”

  “He can’t be dead,” said Bill, harshly. “He’s laid out, that’s all.”

  “Quick! Which is the room?” Bob Seymour’s steady voice served to pull everyone together. “There’s no good standing here talking–”

  In silence they crossed the hall, and went along the passage to the new wing.

  “Here we are,” said Sir Robert, nervously. “This is the door.”

  The room was in darkness and in the air there hung a rank, fetid smell. The window was open, and outside the rain was lashing down with tropical violence. Bob Seymour fumbled in his pocket for a match; then he turned up the lamp and lit it. Just for a moment he stared at it in surprise, then Ruth, from the doorway, gave a little stifled scream.

  “Look,” she whispered. “By the window–”

  A man was lying across the window-sill, with his legs inside the room and his head and shoulders outside.

  “Good Heavens,” muttered Sir Robert, touching the body with a shaking hand, “I suppose – I suppose – he is dead?”

  But Seymour apparently failed to hear the remark.

  “Do you notice this extraordinary smell?” he said at length.

  “Damn the smell,” said his host, irritably. “Give me a hand with this poor fellow.”

  Seymour pulled himself together and stepped forward as the other bent down to take hold of the sagging legs.

  “Leave him alone, Sir Robert,” he said, quickly. “You must leave the body till the police come. We’ll just see that he’s dead, and then–”

  He picked up an electric torch from the table and leant out of the window. And after a while he straightened up again with a little shudder.

  It was not a pretty sight. In the light of the torch the face seemed almost black, and the two arms, limp and twisted, sprawled in the sodden earth of the flower-bed. The man was quite dead, and they both stepped back into the middle of the smoking-room with obvious relief.

  “Well,” said Brabazon, “is he–?”

  “Yes – he’s dead,” said Seymour, gravely.

  “But it’s impossible,” cried the boy, wildly. “Why, that blow I gave him couldn’t have – have killed the man.”

  “Nevertheless he’s dead,” said Seymour, staring at the motionless body, thoughtfully. Then his eyes narrowed, and he bent once more over the dead man. Ruth, sobbing hysterically, was trying to comfort her brother, while the rest of the house-party had collected near the door, talking in low, agitated whispers.

  “Bob – Bob,” cried Bill Brabazon, suddenly, “I’ve just remembered. I couldn’t have done it when I laid him out. I told you I was walking up and down the lawn. Well, the light from this room was streaming out, and I remember seeing his shadow in the middle of the window. He must have been standing up. The mark of the window-sash was clear on the lawn.”

  Seymour glanced at him thoughtfully. “But the light was out, Bill. How do you account for that?”

  “It wasn’t,” said the other, positively. “Not then. It must have gone out later.”

  “We’ll have to send for the police, Sir Robert,” said Seymour, laying a reassuring hand on the boy’s arm. “Tell them everything when they come.”

  “I’ve got nothing to hide,” said the youngster, hoarsely. “I swear to Heaven I didn’t do that.”

&n
bsp; “We’d better go,” cried Sir Robert. “Leave everything as it is. I’ll ring the police up.”

  With quick, nervous steps he left the room, followed by his guests, until only Seymour was left standing by the window with its dreadful occupant. For a full minute he stood there, while the rain still lashed down outside, sniffing as he had done when he first entered. And, at length, with a slight frown on his face, as if some elusive memory escaped him, he followed the others from the room, first turning out the light and then locking the door.

  4

  It was half an hour before the police came, in the shape of Inspector Grayson and a constable. During that time the rain had stopped for a period of about twenty minutes; only to come on again just before a ring announced their arrival.

  The house-party were moving aimlessly about in little scattered groups, obsessed with the dreadful tragedy. In the billiard-room Ruth sat with her brother in a sort of stunned silence; only Bob Seymour seemed unaffected by the general strain. Perhaps it was because, in a life such as his, death by violence was no new spectacle; perhaps it was that there was something he could not understand.

  Who had blown the light out? That was the crux. Blown – not turned. The Celebrated Actor was very positive that the light had not been on when he first entered the room. It might have been the wind, but there was no wind. A point of detail – one. And then the smell – that strange, fetid smell. It touched a chord of memory, but try as he would he could not place it.

  His mind started on another line. If the boy, in his rage, had struck the dead man a fatal blow, how had the body got into such a position? It would have been lying on the floor.

  “Weak heart,” he argued. “Hot night – gasping for breath – rushed to window – collapsed. That’s what they’d say.”

  He frowned thoughtfully; on the face of it quite plausible. Not only plausible – quite possible.

  “Major Seymour!” Ruth’s voice beside him made him look up. “What can we do? Poor old Bill’s nearly off his head.”