The Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK™, Vol. 1: Henry S. Whitehead

by Henry S. Whitehead

  “It is indeed very good of you,” returned Dacre, nodding his head. Then, with a wry and rueful smile: “I do not see that there is anything that anybody can do! I suppose you know something of the situation. I am to marry the Lady Evelyn Haversham in a month’s time. I have, I suppose, made a complete fool of myself, at least for practical purposes. As a matter of plain fact, there has been, really, nothing—nothing, that is, seriously to trouble one’s conscience. But then, I’ll not trouble to excuse myself. I am merely stating the facts. To put the matter plainly, this Goddard has me where he wants me—a very clever bit of work on his part. Here are the freeholds of every bit of property I own, piled up in front of me on this desk. He’s coming for them this morning—eleven—should be here now. That’s the price of his silence about the apparent situation, you see. ‘The Princess Lillia’ is his wife, it appears.”

  “But,” Rand put in, briskly, “how about this?” Once more he indicated the pistol. The young man’s face flushed a dull red.

  “That was for him,” he said quietly, “and afterwards”—he spread his hands in a hopeless gesture—“for me.”

  “But, why, why?” urged Rand, leaning forward in his chair, his lean, ascetic face eager, his eyes burning with intensity. “Tell me—why resort to such a means?”

  “Because,” returned Sir Harry Dacre, “there would be nothing left. On the one hand, if I were to refuse Goddard’s terms, he would bring out the whole ugly business. Oh, they’re clever: a case in court, one of those ruinous things, and an action for alienation of his wife’s affections; a divorce case, with me as the villain-person. On the other hand—don’t you see?—I’m flatly ruined. These papers convey everything I own to him in return for the release which lies here ready for him to sign. Even with the release signed and in my possession I could not go on with the marriage. I’d be, literally, a pauper. It is, well, one of those things that one does not, cannot, do.”

  “Let me see the release,” said Rand, and rose, his hand outstretched. He glanced through it, rapidly, nodding his head, and returned it to its place on the desk. “There is little time,” he continued. “Will you do precisely as I say?”

  “Yes,” said Sir Harry Dacre laconically, but I could see no appearance of hope on his face.

  “Go through with it precisely as arranged,” said Rand.

  A rap fell on the door, and it was opened slightly.

  “Mr. Leighton Goddard,” announced the butler, and I saw Rand stiffen in his chair. The look of hopeless despair deepened in the lined face of the young man behind the desk. He had, I surmised, as he had reasoned out this sordid affair, come to the last act. The curtain was about to fall....

  The man who now entered radiated personality. He was tall, within half an inch or so of Rand’s height, and Rand is two inches over six feet. There was a suggestion of richness about him, sartorial richness, an aura of something oriental which came into that Anglo-Saxon room with him. One could not put a finger on anything wrong in his really impeccable appearance. Bond Street was written upon his perfect morning coat; but I would have guessed, I think, almost instinctively, that his name was not really Goddard, even if no one had suggested that to me. He glanced about the room, very much self-possessed, and with an air almost proprietary, out of shining, sloe-black eyes set in a face of vaguely Asiatic cast: a suggestion of olive under the pale skin of the night-club habitué; a certain undue height of the cheekbones.

  “Now, this isn’t according to agreement, Dacre!” He addressed his host in a slightly bantering tone, almost genially, indeed; a tone underneath which I could feel depths of annoyance; of a poisonous, threatening malice. He had stopped between Rand and me.

  “We merely dropped in,” said Rand, in a flat voice, and Goddard glanced around at him out of the corner of his eye. Dacre picked up the hint. “This is Mr. Gerald Canevin, the writer,” said he, and I rose and nodded to Goddard. As I did so I caught Rand’s eye, with warning in it. I thought I grasped his meaning. If he had formulated any definite plan for dealing with this ugly situation there had been no time to warn me of it before Goddard’s rather abrupt arrival, several minutes late for his appointment. I did some very rapid thinking, came to a conclusion, and spoke quietly to Goddard in a tone of voice that was intentionally somewhat slow and deliberate.

  “This is Mr. Rand,” said I; and Rand flashed me a quick, commending look of relief. He did not want Goddard to know his true identity. That had been my conclusion from his warning look. Fortunately, I had struck the nail on the head that time. The two men nodded coolly to each other, and it seemed to me that suspicion loomed and smoldered in those oriental eyes.

  Dacre came to the front.

  “We can get our business over very easily,” said Dacre at this point. “Here are the things you want, and here is the place to sign.” He stood up behind the desk, holding a sheaf of legal looking documents.

  Goddard walked firmly over to the desk, took across it the papers out of Dacre’s hand, glanced through them rapidly, nodded as he checked each mentally, and at last relaxing his tensely held body thrust them, all together, into the inside pocket of his morning coat. He smiled quickly, as though satisfied, took a step nearer the desk, stooped over, and, still standing, reached for a pen and scrawled his name on the paper Dacre indicated.

  This done, he straightened up, though still retaining his slightly stooping position, and turned away from the desk. I was watching him narrowly, and so, too, I knew, was Rand. Triumphant satisfaction was writ large on his unpleasant face. But that look was quickly dissipated. He turned away from the desk at last, and met Rand facing him, Dacre’s pistol pointed straight at his heart. I, standing now behind Goddard, could look straight into Rand’s face, and I do not care ever to have to look into such an expression of rigid determination and complete, utter self-confidence behind any weapon pointed in my direction.

  “You will take those deeds out of your pocket, Wertheimer,” said Rand, in a deadly, cold, quiet voice, “and drop them on the floor. Then you will go out of here without any further parley. Otherwise I shall take them from you; if necessary, kill you as you stand there; arrange the matter with Downing Street this afternoon, and so rid the world of a very annoying scoundrel. I am the Earl of Carruth. I came here without Dacre’s knowledge, to deal with this situation. What you have to decide, rather quickly, is whether you will go on living on what you have already stolen, without this of Dacre’s, or whether you will put me to the inconvenience of—removing you.”

  From my position I could not, of course, see Goddard’s—or Wertheimer’s—face. But I did observe the telltale hunching of a shoulder, and cried out in time to warn Rand. But Rand needed no warning, as it happened. He met the rush of the big man with his disengaged hand, now a fist, and Wertheimer, catching that iron fist on the precise point of the chin, slithered to the floor, entirely harmless for the time being.

  Rand looked down at the sprawled body, then walked over to the desk and laid the automatic pistol down on the place from which he had picked it up. Then, returning to the prostrate Wertheimer, he knelt beside him and removed the packet of deeds from the man’s pocket. He rose, returned to the desk, and handed them to young Dacre, who, during the few seconds occupied by all these occurrences, had remained standing, silent and collected, behind his desk.

  “The transaction, of course, was illegal,” remarked Rand, looking down at the crumpled torso of Wertheimer. “You need have no compunction whatever, Dacre, my dear fellow, in retaining the release which he signed. ‘Goddard’ is not his name, of course. But I imagine that fact would have no bearing upon the efficacy of the release. He has gone under that name and is thoroughly identified with it here in London, Sir John Scott informs me, for the past four or five years. You heard me call him ‘Wertheimer,’ but even that is not his real name. He is a Turk, and his right name is Abdulla Khan ben Majpat. However, he was a German spy during the War, and in Berlin he is very well known as ‘Wertheimer.’ I think I may say that y
ou are now quite free from the complication which was distressing you.”

  It was a very subdued Goddard-Wertheimer-ben Majpat who left the house a quarter of an hour later, after a few crisply spoken words of warning from Rand. And it was a correspondingly jubilant young man who besieged Rand with his reiterated thanks. Sir Harry Dacre was, indeed, almost beside himself. In the stimulating grip of a tremendous reaction such as he had just experienced, a man’s every-day composure is apt to go to the winds. This unexpected release from his overpowering difficulties which Rand’s intervention had brought about had, for the time being, caused Sir Harry Dacre to seem like a different person. There had not been any statements in the newspapers of sufficiently definite nature to injure his cause with his future wife or with his future father-in-law, the austere Lord Roxton, and now, as Rand took care to assure him, there would be no further press comment. The situation seemed entirely cleared up.

  Young Dacre, looking years younger, with the lines of harassment and care almost visibly fading out of his face under the stimulation of his new freedom and the natural resiliency of his youth, would be quite all right again after a proper night’s rest. He confessed to us that it was the best part of a week since he had so much as slept. His gratitude knew no bounds. It was almost effusive and really very touching. He pressed us to remain for luncheon. This we declined, but we could not very well refuse his request that we should have a Scotch and soda with him. While this refreshment was being brought by the butler, Rand stepped around to the other side of the desk and picked up a framed photograph which stood upon it.

  “And who, if I may venture to ask, is this?” he inquired.

  “It was my mother’s sister, the Lady Mary Grosvenor,” said young Dacre. “You may remember her, perhaps. It was she, you know, who organized the Red Cross at the beginning of the War. I was only a little chap of seven or eight then.” He took the photograph from Rand and stood looking at it with an expression of the deepest affection.

  “A wonderful woman!” he added, “and the best friend I ever had, Lord Carruth. She took me into her house here when I was a tiny little youngster. My own mother died when I was four. The house came to me in her will, eight years later. Dear Aunt Mary—her kindness and goodness never failed. She took me, a rather forlorn little creature, I dare say, into her care. She found time to do everything for me. She was a woman of manifold interests and activities, as you may remember, Lord Carruth, and even high in the counsels of the great, the affairs of the Empire. Cabinet members, even the Prime Minister himself, sought her advice, kept her occupied with all kinds of difficult tasks. In spite of all these engagements, she was, as I have said, and in all ways, a mother to me—yes, more than a mother. I naturally revered her.”

  Young Sir Harry Dacre paused, sitting there in his office-library, with his guests to whom he was thus opening his heart with sudden, wistful seriousness. When he spoke again it was in a much quieter tone than that of the little panegyric he had just ended.

  “Do you know,” said he, “I—I thank God that the dear soul was at least spared any knowledge of this—this dreadful affair which is—I can hardly realize, gentlemen, that it is over, done, a thing of the past.”

  Again he paused, sat for a moment very quietly in a natural silence which neither Rand nor I desired to break.

  Then, in a hushed tone, his words coming slowly and very reverently, he spoke again.

  “And if,” he began, as though concluding a thought already partly uttered, “—if she has been enabled to see it all—from her place in Paradise, as one might say—she is rejoicing now, and thanking you. She would have moved Heaven and earth to help me.”

  Then, as I looked into the face of Sir Harry Dacre, I saw a slow flush mounting upon it. That curious sense of shame which seems common to every Englishman who allows himself to show others something of his inmost feeling, had overtaken the young man. He resumed his discourse in an entirely different and rather restrained tone.

  “But that, of course, is impossible,” said he. “I hope that I have not made myself ridiculous. Naturally I should know better than to bore you in this way. Reasonable people should not allow themselves to be moved by such old sentimentality. And, I—I was educated Modern Side.”

  “I do not think we are bored by what you have said,” remarked Rand, quietly, and added nothing to that.

  Dacre paused, rose, and replaced on the desk the framed photograph which he had been holding and looking at while he spoke. As yet, except from the back, I had not had a view of it. Returning to where we were seated, Dacre took a chair between Carruth and me.

  “Curious!” exclaimed our host, breaking a brief silence. “I mean to say, my aunt, there, was very active in the War, you know. As a matter of fact, she visited every front, and never received as much as a scratch! People used to say that she seemed to bear a charmed life. Then, back home here in England, driving one afternoon through Wolverhampton in her old town-car—it was just two days before the Armistice, in 1918—I was just twelve at the time—a bomb from a raiding German airplane took her, poor lady; and along with her old Baines, her footman—been with her thirty-four years—and the chauffeur. Killed all three, snuffed ‘em right out, and there wasn’t enough of the old Napier town-car left to identify it! The way things happen...”

  Carruth nodded, sympathetically. It was plain that young Dacre had been much moved by his recital. He must have had an extraordinarily high regard for the splendid woman who had mothered him. At this moment Dacre’s butler appeared with a tray and bottles, ice, tall glasses and siphons of carbonated water.

  While he was arranging these on a table, I walked over to the desk and took up the large framed photograph.

  There, in the uniform of the British Red Cross, looked out at me the splendid face of a middle-aged lady, the face of a true aristocrat, of one born to command. It was kindly, though possessing a firm, almost a stern, expression, the look of one who would never give up.

  I replaced the photograph, my hands shaking. I turned about quickly and walked across the room.

  I wanted rather urgently to be quite close to living, breathing human beings like Carruth and our host—fellow-men, creatures of common, everyday flesh and blood. I stood there among them, between Rand and Dacre, and almost touching the urbane butler as he prepared our Scotch and soda with admirable professional deftness. I confess that I wanted something else, besides that sense of human companionship which had come upon me so compellingly that I had found my hands shaking as I set the framed photograph back into its original place on Sir Harry Dacre’s desk.

  Yes—I wanted that high, cool, iced tumbler of Scotch whiskey and soda the butler was handing me.

  I barely waited, indeed, until the others had been served to raise it to my lips, to take a great, hasty drink which emptied the glass halfway to its bottom.

  For—I had seen that photograph of Dacre’s aunt, the Lady Mary Grosvenor, that firm gentlewoman who had, in the goodness of her noble heart, stolen precious time from the counsels of a great Empire to comfort a pathetic little motherless child; who would have moved Heaven and earth; a woman who would never give up....

  “…old Baines, her footman—been with her thirty-four years...

  “...killed all three, snuffed ‘em right out...

  “...not enough of the old Napier town-car left to identify it....” And I had looked at that photograph.

  I finished my Scotch and soda and set my glass down on the butler’s silver tray. I drew in a deep breath. I was coming back satisfactorily to something like normal.

  I raised my eyes and looked over at Rand. It had just occurred to me that he, too, was now aware of the identity of the lady who had sent us here in that old Napier with the two perfectly trained servants in its driving seat, to save Sir Harry Dacre. Rand had seen the photograph, too, well before I had picked it up and looked at it.

  I found quite as usual the facial expression of the man who had held the Indian Empire together resolutely f
or twenty years—the man who had learned that iron composure facing courageously all forms of death and worse-than-death in the far, primitive places of the earth, places where transcendent evil goes hand in hand with ancient civilizations.

  Even as I looked, James Rand, Lord Carruth, was turning to our host and addressed him in his firm, courteous, even voice:

  “I take it that—with Mr. Canevin to corroborate what I would say, speaking as an eye-witness—you would accept my word of honor—would you not, Dacre?”

  Young Dacre stared at him, almost gulped with surprise when he replied to so unusual a question:

  “Of course, Lord Carruth; certainly, sir. Your word of honor—Mr. Canevin to corroborate! Of course such a thing would not be necessary, sir. Good Heavens! Of course, I’d believe anything you chose to say, sir, like the Gospel itself.”

  “Well, then,” said Rand, smiling gravely, “if it is agreeable to Mr. Canevin, I think we shall change our minds and remain to luncheon with you. There is something I think you should know, and the period of luncheon will just give us time to tell you the circumstances behind our arrival here at about the right time for our business this morning.”

  Rand looked over at me, and I nodded, eagerly.

  “Splendid!” said Sir Harry Dacre, rising alertly and ringing the bell for the butler. “I had, of course, been awfully keen to know about that. Hardly cared to ask, you know.”

  “My reason for suggesting that we tell you,” said Rand gravely, “goes rather deeper than merely satisfying a very reasonable curiosity. If by doing so we can accomplish what I have in mind, it will be, my dear fellow, a more important service in your behalf than ridding you of that Wertheimer.” The butler came in and our host ordered the places set. Then, very soberly, he inquired: