If any one had pointed out to him that an Englishman would not think it fair play to drug a man deliberately, Logotheti would have smiled and would have replied by asking whether it was fair play to accuse an innocent man of murder, a retort which would only become unanswerable if it could be proved that Van Torp was suspected unjustly. But to this objection, again, the Greek would have replied that he had been brought up in Constantinople, where they did things in that way; and that, except for the trifling obstacle of the law, there was no particular reason for not strangling Mr. Feist with the English equivalent for a bowstring, since he had printed a disagreeable story about Miss Donne, and was, besides, a very offensive sort of person in appearance and manner. There had always been a certain directness about Logotheti’s view of man’s rights.
He went to see Mr. Feist every day at three o’clock, in the most kind way possible, made himself as agreeable as he could, and gave him cigarettes with a good deal of opium in them. He also presented Feist with a pretty little asbestos lamp which was constructed to purify the air, and had a really wonderful capacity for absorbing the rather peculiar odour of the cigarettes. Dr. Bream always made his round in the morning, and the men nurses he employed to take care of his patients either did not notice anything unusual, or supposed that Logotheti smoked some ‘outlandish Turkish stuff,’ and, because he was a privileged person, they said nothing about it. As he had brought the patient to the establishment to be cured, it was really not to be supposed that he would supply him with forbidden narcotics.
Now, to a man who is poisoned with drink and is suddenly deprived of it, opium is from the beginning as delightful as it is nauseous to most healthy people when they first taste it; and during the next four or five days, while Feist appeared to be improving faster than might have been expected, he was in reality acquiring such a craving for his daily dose of smoke that it would soon be acute suffering to be deprived of it; and this was what Logotheti wished. He would have supplied him with brandy if he had not been sure that the contraband would be discovered and stopped by the doctor; but opium, in the hands of one who knows exactly how it is used, is very much harder to detect, unless the doctor sees the smoker when he is under the influence of the drug, while the pupils of the eye are unnaturally contracted and the face is relaxed in that expression of beatitude which only the great narcotics can produce — the state which Baudelaire called the Artificial Paradise.
During these daily visits Logotheti became very confidential; that is to say, he exercised all his ingenuity in the attempt to make Feist talk about himself. But he was not very successful. Broken as the man was, his characteristic reticence was scarcely at all relaxed, and it was quite impossible to get beyond the barrier. One day Logotheti gave him a cigarette more than usual, as an experiment, but he went to sleep almost immediately, sitting up in his chair. The opium, as a moderate substitute for liquor, temporarily restored the habitual tone of his system and revived his natural self-control, and Logotheti soon gave up the idea of extracting any secret from him in a moment of garrulous expansion.
There was the other way, which was now prepared, and the Greek had learned enough about his victim to justify him in using it. The cypher expert, who had been at work on Feist’s diary, had now completed his key and brought Logotheti the translation. He was a rather shabby little man, a penman employed to do occasional odd jobs about the Foreign Office, such as engrossing documents and the like, by which he earned from eighteenpence to half-a-crown an hour, according to the style of penmanship required, and he was well known in the criminal courts as an expert on handwriting in forgery cases.
He brought his work to Logotheti, who at once asked for the long entry concerning the night of the explosion. The expert turned to it and read it aloud. It was a statement of the circumstances to which Feist was prepared to swear, and which have been summed up in a previous chapter. Van Torp was not mentioned by name in the diary, but was referred to as ‘he’; the other entries in the journal, however, fully proved that Van Torp was meant, even if Logotheti had felt any doubt of it.
The expert informed him, however, that the entry was not the original one, which had apparently been much shorter, and had been obliterated in the ordinary way with a solution of chloride of lime. Here and there very pale traces of the previous writing were faintly visible, but there was not enough to give the sense of what was gone. This proved that the ink had not been long dry when it had been removed, as the expert explained. It was very hard to destroy old writing so completely that neither heat nor chemicals would bring it out again. Therefore Feist must have decided to change the entry soon after he had made it, and probably on the next day. The expert had not found any other page which had been similarly treated. The shabby little man looked at Logotheti, and Logotheti looked at him, and both nodded; and the Greek paid him generously for his work.
It was clear that Feist had meant to aid his own memory, and had rather clumsily tampered with his diary in order to make it agree with the evidence he intended to give, rather than meaning to produce the notes in court. What Logotheti meant to find out was what the man himself really knew and what he had first written down; that, and some other things. In conversation, Logotheti had asked him to describe the panic at the theatre, and Cordova’s singing in the dark, but Feist’s answers had been anything but interesting.
‘You can’t remember much about that kind of thing,’ he had said in his drawling way, ‘because there isn’t much to remember. There was a crash and the lights went out, and people fought their way to the doors in the dark till there was a general squash; then Madame Cordova began to sing, and that kind of calmed things down till the lights went up again. That’s about all I remember.’
His recollections did not at all agree with what he had entered in his diary; but though Logotheti tried a second time two days later, Feist repeated the same story with absolute verbal accuracy. The Greek asked him if he had known ‘that poor Miss Bamberger who died of shock.’ Feist blew out a cloud of drugged tobacco smoke before he answered, with one of his disagreeable smiles, that he had known her pretty well, for he had been her father’s private secretary. He explained that he had given up the place because he had come into some money. Mr. Bamberger was ‘a very pleasant gentleman,’ Feist declared, and poor Miss Bamberger had been a ‘superb dresser and a first-class conversationalist, and was a severe loss to her friends and admirers.’ Though Logotheti, who was only a Greek, did not understand every word of this panegyric, he perceived that it was intended for the highest praise. He said he should like to know Mr. Bamberger, and was sorry that he had not known Miss Bamberger, who had been engaged to marry Mr. Van Torp, as every one had heard.
He thought he saw a difference in Feist’s expression, but was not sure of it. The pale, unhealthy, and yet absurdly youthful face was not naturally mobile, and the almost colourless eyes always had rather a fixed and staring look. Logotheti was aware of a new meaning in them rather than of a distinct change. He accordingly went on to say that he had heard poor Miss Bamberger spoken of as heartless, and he brought out the word so unexpectedly that Feist looked sharply at him.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘some people certainly thought so. I daresay she was. It don’t matter much, now she’s dead, anyway.’
‘She paid for it, poor girl,’ answered Logotheti very deliberately. ‘They say she was murdered.’
The change in Feist’s face was now unmistakable. There was a drawing down of the corners of the mouth, and a lowering of the lids that meant something, and the unhealthy complexion took a greyish shade. Logotheti was too wise to watch his intended victim, and leaned back in a careless attitude, gazing out of the window at the bright creeper on the opposite wall.
‘I’ve heard it suggested,’ said Mr. Feist rather thickly, out of a perfect storm of drugged smoke.
It came out of his ugly nostrils, it blew out of his mouth, it seemed to issue even from his ears and eyes.
‘I suppose we shall never know the trut
h,’ said Logotheti in an idle tone, and not seeming to look at his companion. ‘Mr. Griggs — do you remember Mr. Griggs, the author, at the Turkish Embassy, where we first met? Tall old fellow, sad-looking, bony, hard; you remember him, don’t you?’
‘Why, yes,’ drawled Feist, emitting more smoke, ‘I know him quite well.’
‘He found blood on his hands after he had carried her. Had you not heard that? I wondered whether you saw her that evening. Did you?’
‘I saw her from a distance in the box with her friends,’ answered Feist steadily.
‘Did you see her afterwards?’
The direct question came suddenly, and the strained look in Feist’s face became more intense. Logotheti fancied he understood very well what was passing in the young man’s mind; he intended to swear in court that he had seen Van Torp drag the girl to the place where her body was afterwards found, and if he now denied this, the Greek, who was probably Van Torp’s friend, might appear as a witness and narrate the present conversation; and though this would not necessarily invalidate the evidence, it might weaken it in the opinion of the jury. Feist had of course suspected that Logotheti had some object in forcing him to undergo a cure, and this suspicion had been confirmed by the opium cigarettes, which he would have refused after the first time if he had possessed the strength of mind to do so.
While Logotheti watched him, three small drops of perspiration appeared high up on his forehead, just where the parting of his thin light hair began; for he felt that he must make up his mind what to say, and several seconds had already elapsed since the question.
‘As a matter of fact,’ he said at last, with an evident effort, ‘I did catch sight of Miss Bamberger later.’
He had been aware of the moisture on his forehead, and had hoped that Logotheti would not notice it, but the drops now gathered and rolled down, so that he was obliged to take out his handkerchief.
‘It’s getting quite hot,’ he said, by way of explanation.
‘Yes,’ answered Logotheti, humouring him, ‘the room is warm. You must have been one of the last people who saw Miss Bamberger alive,’ he added. ‘Was she trying to get out?’
‘I suppose so.’
Logotheti pretended to laugh a little.
‘You must have been quite sure when you saw her,’ he said.
Feist was in a very overwrought condition by this time, and Logotheti reflected that if his nerve did not improve he would make a bad impression on a jury.
‘Now I’ll tell you the truth,’ he said rather desperately.
‘By all means!’ And Logotheti prepared to hear and remember accurately the falsehood which would probably follow immediately on such a statement.
But he was disappointed.
‘The truth is,’ said Feist, ‘I don’t care much to talk about this affair at present. I can’t explain now, but you’ll understand one of these days, and you’ll say I was right.’
‘Oh, I see!’
Logotheti smiled and held out his case, for Feist had finished the first cigarette. He refused another, however, to the other’s surprise.
‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘but I guess I won’t smoke any more of those. I believe they get on to my nerves.’
‘Do you really not wish me to bring you any more of them?’ asked Logotheti, affecting a sort of surprised concern. ‘Do you think they hurt you?’
‘I do. That’s exactly what I mean. I’m much obliged, all the same, but I’m going to give them up, just like that.’
‘Very well,’ Logotheti answered. ‘I promise not to bring any more. I think you are very wise to make the resolution, if you really think they hurt you — though I don’t see why they should.’
Like most weak people who make good resolutions, Mr. Feist did not realise what he was doing. He understood horribly well, forty-eight hours later, when he was dragging himself at his tormentor’s feet, entreating the charity of half a cigarette, of one teaspoonful of liquor, of anything, though it were deadly poison, that could rest his agonised nerves for a single hour, for ten minutes, for an instant, offering his life and soul for it, parching for it, burning, sweating, trembling, vibrating with horror, and sick with fear for the want of it.
For Logotheti was an Oriental and had lived in Constantinople; and he knew what opium does, and what a man will do to get it, and that neither passion of love, nor bond of affection, nor fear of man or God, nor of death and damnation, will stand against that awful craving when the poison is within reach.
CHAPTER XVII
THE SOCIETY PAPERS printed a paragraph which said that Lord Creedmore and Countess Leven were going to have a week-end party at Craythew, and the list of guests included the names of Mr. Van Torp and Señorita da Cordova, ‘Monsieur Konstantinos Logotheti’ and Mr. Paul Griggs, after those of a number of overpoweringly smart people.
Lady Maud’s brothers saw the paragraph, and the one who was in the Grenadier Guards asked the one who was in the Blues if ‘the Governor was going in for zoology or lion-taming in his old age’; but the brother in the Blues said it was ‘Maud who liked freaks of nature, and Greeks, and things, because they were so amusing to photograph.’
At all events, Lady Maud had studiously left out her brothers and sisters in making up the Craythew party, a larger one than had been assembled there for many years; it was so large indeed that the ‘freaks’ would not have been prominent figures at all, even if they had been such unusual persons as the young man in the Blues imagined them.
For though Lord Creedmore was not a rich peer, Craythew was a fine old place, and could put up at least thirty guests without crowding them and without causing that most uncomfortable condition of things in which people run over each other from morning to night during week-end parties in the season, when there is no hunting or shooting to keep the men out all day. The house itself was two or three times as big as Mr. Van Torp’s at Oxley Paddox. It had its hall, its long drawing-room for dancing, its library, its breakfast-room and its morning-room, its billiard-room, sitting-room, and smoking-room, like many another big English country house; but it had also a picture gallery, the library was an historical collection that filled three good-sized rooms, and it was completed by one which had always been called the study, beyond which there were two little dwelling-rooms, at the end of the wing, where the librarian had lived when there had been one. For the old lord had been a bachelor and a book lover, but the present master of the house, who was tremendously energetic and practical, took care of the books himself. Now and then, when the house was almost full, a guest was lodged in the former librarian’s small apartment, and on the present occasion Paul Griggs was to be put there, on the ground that he was a man of letters and must be glad to be near books, and also because he could not be supposed to be afraid of Lady Letitia Foxwell’s ghost, which was believed to have spent the nights in the library for the last hundred and fifty years, more or less, ever since the unhappy young girl had hanged herself there in the time of George the Second, on the eve of her wedding day.
The ancient house stood more than a mile from the high road, near the further end of such a park as is rarely to be seen, even in beautiful Derbyshire, for the Foxwells had always loved their trees, as good Englishmen should, and had taken care of them. There were ancient oaks there, descended by less than four tree-generations from Druid times; all down the long drive the great elms threw their boughs skywards; there the solemn beeches grew, the gentler ash, and the lime; there the yews spread out their branches, and here and there the cedar of Lebanon, patriarch of all trees that bear cones, reared his royal crown above the rest; in and out, too, amongst the great boulders that strewed the park, the sharp-leaved holly stood out boldly, and the exquisite white thorn, all in flower, shot up to three and four times a man’s height; below, the heather grew close and green to blossom in the summer-time; and in the deeper, lonelier places the blackthorn and hoe ran wild, and the dog-rose in wild confusion; the alder and the gorse too, the honeysuckle and ivy, climbed up over
rocks and stems; you might see a laurel now and then, and bilberry bushes by thousands, and bracken everywhere in an endless profusion of rich, dark-green lace.
Squirrels there were, dashing across the open glades and running up the smooth beeches and chestnut trees, as quick as light, and rabbits, dodging in and out amongst the ferns, and just showing the snow-white patch under their little tails as they disappeared, and now and again the lordly deer stepping daintily and leisurely through the deep fern; all these lived in the wonderful depths of Craythew Park, and of birds there was no end. There were game birds and song birds, from the handsome pheasants to the modest little partridges, the royalists and the puritans of the woods, from the love-lorn wood-pigeon, cooing in the tall firs, to the thrush and the blackbird, making long hops as they quartered the ground for grubs; and the robin, the linnet, and little Jenny Wren all lived there in riotous plenty of worms and snails; and nearer to the great house the starlings and jackdaws shot down in a great hurry from the holes in old trees where they had their nests, and many of them came rushing from their headquarters in the ruined tower by the stream to waddle about the open lawns in their ungainly fashion, vain because they were not like swallows, but could really walk when they chose, though they did it rather badly. And where the woods ended they were lined with rhododendrons, and lilacs, and laburnum. There are even bigger parks in England than Craythew, but there is none more beautiful, none richer in all sweet and good things that live, none more musical with song of birds, not one that more deeply breathes the world’s oldest poetry.
Lady Maud went out on foot that afternoon and met Van Torp in the drive, half a mile from the house. He came in his motor car with Miss More and Ida, who was to go back after tea. It was by no means the first time that they had been at Craythew; the little girl loved nature, and understood by intuition much that would have escaped a normal child. It was her greatest delight to come over in the motor and spend two or three hours in the park, and when none of the family were in the country she was always free to come and go, with Miss More, as she pleased.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1222
