“I am sorry to have inflicted mine upon you,” I retorted, “but I seem to have had very little to say in the matter.”
To my surprise, his eyes twinkled a little.
“None whatever. I slung you across my shoulders like a sack of coal and carried you to my boat. Quite like a primitive man of the Stone Age.”
“But for a different reason,” I put in.
He flushed this time, a deep burning blush. The tan of his face was suffused.
“But you haven’t told me how you came to be wandering about so conveniently for me?” I said hastily, to cover his confusion.
“I couldn’t sleep. I was restless—disturbed—had the feeling something was going to happen. In the end I took the boat and came ashore and tramped down towards the Falls. I was just at the head of the palm gully when I heard you scream.”
“Why didn’t you get help from the hotel instead of carting me all the way here?” I asked.
He flushed again.
“I suppose it seems an unpardonable liberty to you—but I don’t think that even now you realize your danger! You think I should have informed your friends? Pretty friends, who allowed you to be decoyed out to death. No, I swore to myself that I’d take better care of you than anyone else could. Not a soul comes to this island. I got old Batani, whom I cured of a fever once, to come and look after you. She’s loyal. She’ll never say a word. I could keep you here for months and no one would ever know.”
I could keep you here for months and no one would ever know! How some words please one!
“You did quite right,” I said quietly. “And I shall not send word to anyone. A day or so more anxiety doesn’t make much difference. It’s not as though they were my own people. They’re only acquaintances really—even Suzanne. And whoever wrote that note must have known—a great deal! It was not the work of an outsider.”
I managed to mention the note this time without blushing at all.
“If you would be guided by me—” he said, hesitating.
“I don’t expect I shall be,” I answered candidly. “But there’s no harm in hearing.”
“Do you always do what you like, Miss Beddingfeld?”
“Usually,” I replied cautiously. To anyone else I would have said “Always.”
“I pity your husband,” he said unexpectedly.
“You needn’t,” I retorted. “I shouldn’t dream of marrying anyone unless I was madly in love with him. And of course there is really nothing a woman enjoys so much as doing all the things she doesn’t like for the sake of someone she does like. And the more self-willed she is, the more she likes it.”
“I’m afraid I disagree with you. The boot is on the other leg as a rule.” He spoke with a slight sneer.
“Exactly,” I cried eagerly. “And that’s why there are so many unhappy marriages. It’s all the fault of the men. Either they give way to their women—and then the women despise them—or else they are utterly selfish, insist on their own way and never say ‘thank you.’ Successful husbands make their wives do just what they want, and then make a frightful fuss of them for doing it. Women like to be mastered, but they hate not to have their sacrifices appreciated. On the other hand, men don’t really appreciate women who are nice to them all the time. When I am married, I shall be a devil most of the time, but every now and then, when my husband least expects it, I shall show him what a perfect angel I can be.”
Harry laughed outright.
“What a cat-and-dog life you will lead!”
“Lovers always fight,” I assured him. “Because they don’t understand each other. And by the time they do understand each other they aren’t in love any more.”
“Does the reverse hold true? Are people who fight each other always lovers?”
“I—I don’t know,” I said, momentarily confused.
He turned away to the fireplace.
“Like some more soup?” he asked in a casual tone.
“Yes, please. I’m so hungry that I would eat a hippopotamus.”
“That’s good.”
He busied himself with the fire, I watched.
“When I can get off the couch, I’ll cook for you,” I promised.
“I don’t suppose you know anything about cooking.”
“I can warm up things out of tins as well as you can,” I retorted, pointing to a row of tins on the mantelpiece.
“Touché,” he said and laughed.
His whole face changed when he laughed. It became boyish, happy—a different personality.
I enjoyed my soup. As I ate it I reminded him that he had not, after all, tendered me his advice.
“Ah, yes, what I was going to say was this. If I were you I would stay quietly perdu here until you are quite strong again. Your enemies will believe you dead. They will hardly be surprised at not finding the body. It would have been dashed to pieces on the rocks and carried down with the torrent.”
I shivered.
“Once you are completely restored to health, you can journey quietly on to Beira and get a boat to take you back to England.”
“That would be very tame,” I objected scornfully.
“There speaks a foolish schoolgirl.”
“I’m not a foolish schoolgirl,” I cried indignantly. “I’m a woman.”
He looked at me with an expression I could not fathom, as I sat up flushed and excited.
“God help me, so you are,” he muttered and went abruptly out.
My recovery was rapid. The two injuries I had sustained were a knock on the head and a badly wrenched arm. The latter was the most serious and, to begin with, my rescuer had believed it to be actually broken. A careful examination, however, convinced him that it was not so, and although it was very painful I was recovering the use of it quite quickly.
It was a strange time. We were cut off from the world, alone together as Adam and Eve might have been—but with what a difference! Old Batani hovered about, counting no more than a dog might have done. I insisted on doing the cooking, or as much of it as I could manage with one arm. Harry was out a good part of the time, but we spent long hours together lying out in the shade of the palms, talking and quarrelling—discussing everything under high heaven, quarrelling and making it up again. We bickered a good deal, but there grew up between us a real and lasting comradeship such as I could never have believed possible. That—and something else.
The time was drawing near, I knew it, when I should be well enough to leave, and I realized it with a heavy heart. Was he going to let me go? Without a word? Without a sign? He had fits of silence, long moody intervals, moments when he would spring up and tramp off by himself. One evening the crisis came. We had finished our simple meal and were sitting in the doorway of the hut. The sun was sinking.
Hairpins were necessities of life with which Harry had not been able to provide me, and my hair, straight and black, hung to my knees. I sat, my chin on my hands, lost in meditation. I felt rather than saw Harry looking at me.
“You look like a witch, Anne,” he said at last, and there was something in his voice that had never been there before.
He reached out his hand and just touched my hair. I shivered. Suddenly he sprang up with an oath.
“You must leave here tomorrow, do you hear?” he cried. “I—I can’t bear any more. I’m only a man after all. You must go, Anne. You must. You’re not a fool. You know yourself that this can’t go on.”
“I suppose not,” I said slowly. “But—it’s been happy, hasn’t it?”
“Happy? It’s been hell!”
“As bad as that!”
“What do you torment me for? Why are you mocking at me? Why do you say that—laughing into your hair?”
“I wasn’t laughing. And I’m not mocking. If you want me to go, I’ll go. But if you want me to stay—I’ll stay.”
“Not that!” he cried vehemently. “Not that. Don’t tempt me, Anne. Do you realize what I am? A criminal twice over. A man hunted down. They know me here as Harry Parker�
�they think I’ve been away on a trek up country, but any day they may put two and two together—and then the blow will fall. You’re so young, Anne, and so beautiful—with the kind of beauty that sends men mad. All the world’s before you—love, life, everything. Mine’s behind me—scorched, spoiled, with a taste of bitter ashes.”
“If you don’t want me—”
“You know I want you. You know that I’d give my soul to pick you up in my arms and keep you here, hidden away from the world, forever and ever. And you’re tempting me, Anne. You, with your long witch’s hair, and your eyes that are golden and brown and green and never stop laughing even when your mouth is grave. But I’ll save you from yourself and from me. You shall go tonight. You shall go to Beira—”
“I’m not going to Beira,” I interrupted.
“You are. You shall go to Beira if I have to take you there myself and throw you on to the boat. What do you think I’m made of ? Do you think I’ll wake up night after night, fearing they’ve got you? One can’t go on counting on miracles happening. You must go back to England, Anne—and—and marry and be happy.”
“With a steady man who’ll give me a good home!”
“Better that than—utter disaster.”
“And what of you?”
His face grew grim and set.
“I’ve got my work ready to hand. Don’t ask what it is. You can guess, I dare say. But I’ll tell you this—I’ll clear my name, or die in the attempt, and I’ll choke the life out of the damned scoundrel who did his best to murder you the other night.”
“We must be fair,” I said. “He didn’t actually push me over.”
“He’d no need to. His plan was cleverer than that. I went up to the path afterwards. Everything looked all right, but by the marks on the ground I saw that the stones which outline the path had been taken up and put down again in a slightly different place. There are tall bushes growing just over the edge. He’d balanced the outside stones on them, so that you’d think you were still on the path when in reality you were stepping into nothingness. God help him if I lay my hands upon him!”
He paused a minute and then said, in a totally different tone:
“We’ve never spoken of these things, Anne, have we? But the time’s come. I want you to hear the whole story—from the beginning.”
“If it hurts you to go over the past, don’t tell me,” I said in a low voice.
“But I want you to know. I never thought I should speak of that part of my life to anyone. Funny, isn’t it, the tricks Fate plays?”
He was silent for a minute or two. The sun had set, and the velvety darkness of the African night was enveloping us like a mantle.
“Some of it I know,” I said gently.
“What do you know?”
“I know that your real name is Harry Lucas.”
Still he hesitated—not looking at me, but staring straight out in front of him. I had no clue as to what was passing in his mind, but at last he jerked his head forward as though acquiescing in some unspoken decision of his own, and began his story.
Twenty-six
“You are right. My real name is Harry Lucas. My father was a retired soldier who came out to farm in Rhodesia. He died when I was in my second year at Cambridge.”
“Were you fond of him?” I asked suddenly.
“I—don’t know.”
Then he flushed and went on with sudden vehemence:
“Why do I say that? I did love my father. We said bitter things to each other the last time I saw him, and we had many rows over my wildness and my debts, but I cared for the old man. I know how much now—when it’s too late,” he continued more quietly. “It was at Cambridge that I met the other fellow—”
“Young Eardsley?”
“Yes—young Eardsley. His father, as you know, was one of South Africa’s most prominent men. We drifted together at once, my friend and I. We had our love of South Africa in common and we both had a taste for the untrodden places of the world. After he left Cambridge, Eardsley had a final quarrel with his father. The old man had paid his debts twice, he refused to do so again. There was a bitter scene between them. Sir Laurence declared himself at the end of his patience—he would do no more for his son. He must stand on his own legs for a while. The result was, as you know, that those two young men went off to South America together, prospecting for diamonds. I’m not going into that now, but we had a wonderful time out there. Hardships in plenty, you understand, but it was a good life—a hand-to-mouth scramble for existence far from the beaten track—and, my God that’s the place to know a friend. There was a bond forged between us two out there that only death could have broken. Well, as Colonel Race told you, our efforts were crowned with success. We found a second Kimberley in the heart of the British Guiana jungles. I can’t tell you our elation. It wasn’t so much the actual value in money of the find—you see, Eardsley was used to money, and he knew that when his father died he would be a millionaire, and Lucas had always been poor and was used to it. No, it was the sheer delight of discovery.”
He paused, and then added, almost apologetically.
“You don’t mind my telling it this way, do you? As though I wasn’t in it at all. It seems like that now when I look back and see those two boys. I almost forget that one of them was—Harry Rayburn.”
“Tell it any way you like,” I said, and he went on:
“We came to Kimberley—very cock-a-hoop over our find. We brought a magnificent selection of diamonds with us to submit to the experts. And then—in the hotel at Kimberley—we met her—”
I stiffened a little, and the hand that rested on the doorpost clenched itself involuntarily.
“Anita Grünberg—that was her name. She was an actress. Quite young and very beautiful. She was South African born, but her mother was a Hungarian, I believe. There was some sort of mystery about her, and that, of course, heightened her attraction for two boys home from the wilds. She must have had an easy task. We both fell for her right away, and we both took it hard. It was the first shadow that had ever come between us—but even then it didn’t weaken our friendship. Each of us, I honestly believe, was willing to stand aside for the other to go in and win. But that wasn’t her game. Sometimes, afterwards, I wondered why it hadn’t been, for Sir Laurence Eardsley’s only son was quite a parti. But the truth of it was that she was married—to a sorter in De Beers—though nobody knew of it. She pretended enormous interest in our discovery, and we told her all about it and even showed her the diamonds. Delilah—that’s what she should have been called—and she played her part well!
“The De Beers robbery was discovered, and like a thunderclap the police came down upon us. They seized our diamonds. We only laughed at first—the whole thing was so absurd. And then the diamonds were produced in court—and without question they were the stones stolen from De Beers. Anita Grünberg had disappeared. She had effected the substitution neatly enough, and our story that these were not the stones originally in our possession was laughed to scorn.
“Sir Laurence Eardsley had enormous influence. He succeeded in getting the case dismissed—but it left two young men ruined and disgraced to face the world with the stigma of thief attached to their name, and it pretty well broke the old fellow’s heart. He had one bitter interview with his son in which he heaped upon him every reproach imaginable. He had done what he could to save the family name, but from that day on his son was his son no longer. He cast him off utterly. And the boy, like the proud young fool that he was, remained silent, disdaining to protest his innocence in the face of his father’s disbelief. He came out furious from the interview—his friend was waiting for him. A week later, war was declared. The two friends enlisted together. You know what happened. The best pal a man ever had was killed, partly through his own mad recklessness in rushing into unnecessary danger. He died with his name tarnished. . . .
“I swear to you, Anne, that it was mainly on his account that I was so bitter against that woman. It had gone deeper w
ith him than with me. I had been madly in love with her for the moment—I even think that I frightened her sometimes—but with him it was a quieter and deeper feeling. She had been the very centre of his universe—and her betrayal of him tore up the very roots of life. The blow stunned him and left him paralysed.”
Harry paused. After a minute or two he went on:
“As you know, I was reported ‘Missing, presumed killed.’ I never troubled to correct the mistake. I took the name of Parker and came to this island, which I knew of old. At the beginning of the War I had had ambitious hopes of proving my innocence, but now all that spirit seemed dead. All I felt was, ‘What’s the good?’ My pal was dead, neither he nor I had any living relations who would care. I was supposed to be dead too; let it remain at that. I led a peaceful existence here, neither happy nor unhappy—numbed of all feeling. I see now, though I did not realize it at the time, that that was partly the effect of the War.
“And then one day something occurred to wake me right up again. I was taking a party of people in my boat on a trip up the river, and I was standing at the landing stage, helping them in, when one of the men uttered a startled exclamation. It focused my attention on him. He was a small, thin man with a beard, and he was staring at me for all he was worth as though I was a ghost. So powerful was his emotion that it awakened my curiosity. I made inquiries about him at the hotel and learned that his name was Carton, that he came from Kimberley, and that he was a diamond-sorter employed by De Beers. In a minute all the old sense of wrong surged over me again. I left the island and went to Kimberley.
“I could find out little more about him, however. In the end, I decided that I must force an interview. I took my revolver with me. In the brief glimpse I had had of him, I had realized that he was a physical coward. No sooner were we face to face than I recognized that he was afraid of me. I soon forced him to tell me all he knew. He had engineered part of the robbery and Anita Grünberg was his wife. He had once caught sight of both of us when we were dining with her at the hotel, and, having read that I was killed, my appearance in the flesh at the Falls had startled him badly. He and Anita had married quite young, but she had soon drifted away from him. She had got in with a bad lot, he told me—and it was then for the first time that I heard of the ‘Colonel.’ Carton himself had never been mixed up in anything except this one affair—so he solemnly assured me, and I was inclined to believe him. He was emphatically not of the stuff of which successful criminals are made.
The Man in the Brown Suit Page 17
