Hildegarde slipped past her into the pantry.
“Oh, my dear, if you’re counting on James—I hate to disappoint you of course, but I am afraid your James is out of it. No use to count that he will come and save you. He is quite out of it. And presently the Staling policeman, that lump of a Gibbs, will find him all smashed up in a ditch, and poor Colonel Pomeroy’s beautiful new Rolls all smashed up too. No, no, my dear, dead men tell no tales.”
Sally stood against the wall. She looked piteously at Henri, and heard him say, “It’s true, Sally.” She saw him take something out of his pocket and come towards her. The ground moved under her feet. She knew she was going to faint, but through her faintness she was aware of the heavy, sickly smell of chloroform.
Henri’s arm came about her hard and held her up. Something pressed against her nose, her mouth. The chloroform drowned all.
XXXIV
“It is a pity about Sally,” said Henri Niemeyer. He had just straightened up after laying her down upon the cold flagstones of the butler’s pantry. He spoke in a quiet, meditative tone, and if, as was possible, he wished to annoy Hildegarde Sylvester, he certainly succeeded.
She stood in front of the baize door with her hands in the pockets of a short black leather coat, a bizarre, arresting figure in the candle-light. A black beret hid her hair. Eyebrows plucked to an upward slanting line, black eyes enhanced by make-up, and lips the colour of orange-peel accentuated the irregularities of a face which, if it lacked beauty, certainly did not lack intelligence. She looked at Henri in a cold fury and said,
“You say that to me—a pity about Sally? And why?”
Henri laughed. He had a singularly charming laugh.
“Oh, my dear Hildegarde—need you ask? She has three thousand a year which will go to Ambrose. How much pleasanter to marry her and have it come to me. No risk, no trouble with the law, a charming wife, and three thousand a year. Naturally I say it is a pity.”
“You will have your share,” said Hildegarde.
He acquiesced lightly.
“Oh, yes—a share of Sally’s three thousand, and also a share of Jocko’s. It will not be too bad. But still—” he heaved a sigh—“you must allow me my regrets.”
Hildegarde beat with her hand on the baize door.
“And will you indulge them until Jocko comes back? You should have got him first. I tell you there is no time to be lost. It must be all over before Ambrose comes. He is like you—there is a soft place in him for Sally. He will not have her hurt. She is not to suffer. He is not to see what must be done. He is not to know too much.” She laughed harshly. “You know Ambrose—he must have her money, and he will stand by, but someone else must do the dirty work—you and I, par exemple.” Her tone changed abruptly. “And now you will get on with your share of it!” She stood away from the baize door and flung it open. “Hurry, my friend! He is down there.”
Henri smiled.
“I am to go down into the cellars and leave you here with Sally whom you love so much? Oh, no, my dear, I think not. You might—well, we will not say what you might do. You have an old score against her, but you will not settle it—here.” He spoke with sudden briskness. “Oh, no, I have a much better plan, and so simple. It is you who will go down into the cellars. Our dear Jocko will search them all. He is very much bitten with this idea that he will find something, and he will search. There are three among those cellars which have a bolt on the outside of the door, as you will remember—two of them old, and one which I put on myself—in case. Well, into one of these Jocko will certainly go, and as soon as he is in, voila—you shoot the bolt and we have him safe. He will not break the door—I will swear to that. It will not be the first time those cellars have been useful. Oh, my dear Hildegarde, you really need not take the trouble to look at me like that. When I say that I will not leave you here with Sally, it is finished. And if you think there is need to hurry, well then, my dear, get a move on!”
Without another word she turned from him, pushed open the old oak door, and ran down the cellar steps.
Sitting on the corner of the table and swinging a careless leg, Henri looked down at Sally West. She might have been dead already. She was pale enough, and he had laid her out straight, as they lay the dead. She was bareheaded, her hair very black about the pallor of her face, her eyes half closed, the green invisible behind black lashes, one arm across her breast, the other straight beside her, her mouth relaxed and a little open like that of a sleeping child. How old was Sally—twenty? She looked much younger than that, much younger. Yes, it was a pity about Sally—a great pity.
He jumped down from the table as Ambrose Sylvester came into the room.
XXXV
Sally came back to the sound of voices. She had been dreaming a vague, confused dream in which she, and James, and Henri, and Ambrose, and Hildegarde were all running down Pedlar’s Hill with a mad lorry snorting behind them. It was a very alarming dream, but for some reason it did not alarm her. About half way down the hill her feet left the road and took her gently up an invisible slope of the air. She held James’s hand, and they rose together, while the lorry rushed past below. She knew just where it would swerve and go over the cliff.
She came a little way out of her dream and heard the voices—Hildegarde’s voice. It said,
“We will go up now. There has been enough time lost already.”
The dream came up like a wave and drew Sally back. She drowned for a moment, and saw a picture of herself a long way off lying dead on a desolate road. It was cold there.…
She began to come back again. There was something cold under her head. Someone was talking—Ambrose. She opened her eyes and saw him bending over her. He said,
“Sally—you’re not dead—you can’t be dead! Sally!”
Sally sat up. She had really had very little chloroform. She was fainting before the pad came down over her nose and mouth. She felt giddy and queer, and every now and then her mind swung back into the dream. But she would not really go off again now. She propped herself with one hand on the rough stone floor. She was in the pantry. That was why there was this smell of oil. The stove was on the other side of the table.
Ambrose was getting up from his knees as if her movement had startled him. Perhaps he had really thought that she was dead. She wondered painfully whether he would mind. His voice came again.
“Sally—are you all right?”
Sally heard her own voice say “Yes.”
And then Ambrose was helping her to a chair. It was the chair in which she had sat at their council of war. She leaned her arms upon the table and rested her head upon them. The room seemed to be shaking, rocking. Ambrose was talking. She could hear his voice, but the words went by her. And then his hand was on her shoulder, shaking her.
“Sally—wake up! You are not listening—and you must listen. I can’t bear it if you don’t listen, and there’s no time—there’s no time.”
Sally lifted her head and stared at him. She said,
“I’m giddy. What is it, Ambrose?”
“You’ve got to listen. I told you—that night at Daphne’s—but you wouldn’t listen to me then. You’ve got to listen to me now—before they come back. There won’t be any more time after that.” He spoke in a low, uneven voice, the words hurrying, halting, tumbling over one another.
Sally said wearily, “What do you want to say?”
He had pulled up a chair, and sat across the corner of the table from her, leaning towards her with a hand still resting on her shoulder. His extravagant tawny hair was dishevelled, his brilliant eyes more brilliant than ever. Even to Sally’s dizzy gaze there was a wildness about his look. Perhaps it steadied her. She felt fear, and the courage which controls it.
He went on speaking in the same way.
“There’s so much to say, and so little time to say it, because there’s got to be an accident. It’s all arranged. Hildegarde has arranged it all. You see, Jocko won’t leave things alone. He and that fellow Elliot,
they keep interfering and butting in, and it’s too dangerous. You shouldn’t have got mixed up with them, and I might have got you off. But I don’t know—Hildegarde doesn’t like you, and then there’s the money. So there will have to be an accident, but I’ll make them give you some more chloroform first. I don’t want you to be hurt. It will be a car accident, you see, and the car will be smashed and the three of you will be killed. It is Hildegarde’s idea. She has very clever ideas, but I oughtn’t to have married her—she doesn’t really understand me. I ought to have married you. She always says that three thousand a year wouldn’t have been enough, but it would—with you. I could have got rid of Cray’s End. It has always cost too much.” His hand dropped from her shoulder, and he repeated the last two words in a deeply tragic tone—“Too much.”
Sally’s mind began to work again. She thought, “He’s mad. Or is it acting? He loves acting.”
Ambrose Sylvester went on.
“I want to tell you why I married her. You thought it was because of her money, but she hasn’t got any. She hadn’t a penny.”
Sally sat up.
“What are you talking about?”
“Hildegarde. She hadn’t any money. I didn’t marry her for her money. I married her because she would have ruined me if I hadn’t.”
Sally thought, “That’s true. He means that.” She said,
“How?”
He groaned.
“Sally, I am telling you everything. You don’t know what a relief it is to tell you. She knew something. She knows—a lot of things. She could have ruined me. I had to marry her. I couldn’t face it.”
“Was it the books?” said Sally. “You didn’t write them—did you? They were Tim Merrivale’s. Was that what Hildegarde knew?”
“She could have proved it,” said Ambrose. “She had a letter of Tim’s. It was about Links in the Chain. I don’t know how she got hold of it. I thought I had burnt them all.”
Sally was appalled. It is one thing to guess, and another to know. She said,
“A letter to you?”
“About Links in the Chain—about getting it published. I don’t know how she got hold of it. I thought I had burnt everything.”
She said, “I see—”
“So I had to marry her. You see that, don’t you? The money just poured away. And then there was no more coming in, and I had to have money—I’d got into the way of it. Once you’ve got into the way of things you can’t go back. Though mark you, Sally, I tried—you’ve got to believe that. You see, I’d used all Tim’s stuff by then, but I didn’t give up without a struggle. I wrote a book of my own, but the publishers wouldn’t have it—they said it would ruin me. So what could I do? We’d got to have money.”
“What did you do?” asked Sally.
He pushed back his chair and got up.
“How you say that—as cool as if it was all about nothing! Are you made of ice? Don’t you care that I had to sell my soul because those damned publishers made a ring against me?”
Sally looked at him fixedly.
“How did you sell your soul, Ambrose?”
He began to walk up and down in the room talking all the time.
“I tell you I had to do it. We had to have money. I wasn’t the only one she could have ruined. I don’t know how she knew the things, but she did know them. Things like that can be bought and sold. Hildegarde knew how, and you see, we went everywhere, she, and I, and Henri, and if you go everywhere, you hear everything. But it isn’t enough to know—you’ve got to have proof. And that’s where Hildegarde was so clever—she had her spies, her jackals, and they saw to it that there was proof. And she paid well. You can afford to pay well when you rake in thousands. Rich people, powerful people, highly placed people—there’s nothing they won’t pay to keep themselves out of the mud.”
Sally was fainting pale. She had to moisten her dry lips two or three times before she could speak, and then it was to say a single word.
“Blackmail?”
He went striding past her to the door and thrust at it with his hand and came striding back. The banged door rebounded and remained a hand’s-breadth open.
“What does it matter, what you call it?” said Ambrose Sylvester. “We had to have the money, I tell you.”
“No, it isn’t the name that matters,” said Sally. “Did you make a lot of money, Ambrose?”
He flung himself back into the chair again. His hands were shaking.
“Do you think I liked it? And there was the risk. If you push people too far, they stop caring about the mud, or about anything. I know, because I’ve felt like that. I came very near to shooting myself the night before I was married.” He groaned. “I’d better have done it.”
Sally nodded.
“I don’t know why you’re telling me all this.” But in her heart she knew. It was because she was as good as dead already, and dead men tell no tales.
He said, “I must tell someone, and it doesn’t matter—now. Besides, I want you to understand. You see, Clementa found out.”
Sally said, “Yes.”
He looked up sharply.
“Did she tell you? Hildegarde said she did. She’s always right. I expect that’s why I hate her. You see, Clementa used to get out of bed and walk about the house at night. Everyone thought she was bedridden, but she wasn’t, and one night the nurse caught her. So then we knew what had happened to the book.”
Sally shivered.
“What book?”
He dropped his voice.
“It was Hildegarde’s book. She wrote everything down in it—the people she got the money from, what they paid, and why they were paying it. I always said it was madness to write things down like that, but she said she couldn’t keep it all in her head. There were dates, and names, and places, and the names of the people from whom the information came, and what she paid them for it. She couldn’t say I didn’t warn her. I always said it was too ruinous, but she swore it was all right. She kept it in a very secret place. Nobody could have found it if he didn’t know the secret. But one day it was gone—Sally, I nearly shot myself that day. But we never thought about Clementa. We thought it was one of the servants.… And we waited, and we waited. You don’t know what it’s like waiting for the roof to fall in. And then we found out about Clementa, and we knew she’d got it, but she wouldn’t speak. Hildegarde tried to make her, but she just laughed at her—and died. And Hildegarde swore Clementa had told you, and she wanted you put out of the way, but I wouldn’t have it. And then at Holbrunn—you remember Holbrunn?”
“Yes,” said Sally in a very low voice, “I remember Holbrunn.”
“There was a letter for Jocko—from Clementa—and he got it at breakfast with all of us there—and you stopped him when he began to read it aloud. Well, after that I couldn’t hold out any longer—against Hildegarde. She was quite right, you know. We couldn’t possibly have let Jock read that letter and get away with it—it wasn’t possible. But the accident didn’t come off. That is to say it came off, but he wasn’t killed. It would have been too dangerous to try again then, and the fall had made him forget—he didn’t remember anything about the letter. So Hildegarde let him go back to India. She always hated Jocko, and the money would have been useful, but it was safer to let him go. She saw that.”
Sally’s lip curled a little. She wasn’t feeling afraid any longer. There didn’t seem to be room for it. What she felt was a vivid horror, a vivid interest, a kind of quivering excitement.
Ambrose Sylvester pushed his chair back.
“It was Henri’s idea that he might marry you.”
“Kind of Henri,” murmured Sally drily.
“Oh, no—he was fond of you—and there was your three thousand a year. But Hildegarde was against it from the first. She wanted you and Jocko right out of the way, because then all the money would have come to us, and with six thousand a year we could have got along. You see, the other business was too risky—I always told her so—and if we’d had your t
hree thousand a year and Jocko’s, we could have given it up and settled down, and that would have been a great relief to me, because it was getting on my nerves.” He leaned forward with a sudden movement and caught her hand in his. “Sally—say you understand! You don’t say anything—you sit there like a block of ice. What has happened to you? You used not to be cold like this. You used to be warm and sweet. Oh, Sally, you were so sweet when I used to kiss you!”
Sally’s hand lay heavy in his—like a dead hand. She said in an even voice,
“You weren’t planning to murder me then, Ambrose. It does make a difference to one’s feelings, you know.”
He let go of her and drew back. They looked at each other. Sally kept her head high and her eyes steady. She thought, “How wild he looks. He is mad. He couldn’t talk like that if he was sane. Hildegarde’s bad, and he’s mad, and we’ve all come to the end. I suppose Jocko’s dead. I should like to see James again.…”
The silence went on between them. The dreadful word murder seemed to have stopped all the other words which might have been said.
In the silence Sally began to hear something—something so faint and far away that she would never have heard it at all if every other sound had not been stopped. It was in itself hardly a sound, but it went on endlessly, steadily, regularly, like the throb of an engine or the ticking of a clock, only it wasn’t either of these things. And all at once Sally knew what it was. “Jocko’s shut into one of the cellars, and he’s kicking at the door.” Something rushed in upon her with an intoxicating force—joy—hope. With the road broken off before her and her own foot touching the brink, this half-heard sound had brought her back. If Jocko was alive, life was worth fighting for. If Jocko was alive and she could get to him, they might have a fighting chance together.
Ambrose Sylvester’s voice broke in. He said her name, “Sally!” and then again, “Sally!” in a hurt, pleading voice.
She understood that she was being accused, reproached. Ambrose had been enjoying his confession—wallowing in it. He had been bang in the middle of the stage with the limelight full upon him, and instead of taking her cue and playing out her appointed part she had imported a note of cruel satire and quite ruined his big scene. She understood all this very well, and in a remote corner of her mind something wept. She said quite briskly,
Run! Page 20
