by Grant Allen
Warren Relf sat still in constrained silence. For Elsie’s sake, he would allow no quarrel to arise with this madman, flown with insolence and wine. He saw at once what had happened: Massinger was drunk with luck and champagne. But he would avoid the consequences. He would change carriages when they stopped on the frontier at Ventimiglia.
The bid for an angry repartee had failed. So Hugh tried again; for he would quarrel. “A great many murders take place on this line,” he remarked casually, once more in the air. “It’s a dangerous thing, they tell me, for a winner at Monte Carlo to go home alone in a carriage by himself with one other passenger.”
Still Warren Relf held his peace, undrawn.
Hugh tried a third time. He went on to himself in a musing monologue. “Any man who travels anywhere by thousand pounds; eleven thousand pounds sterling. I’ve got the money now about me. There it is, you see, in French bank-notes. A very large sum. Eleven thousand pounds sterling.”
Still Warren said nothing, biting his lip hard, but with an abstracted air looked out of the window. Hugh was working himself up into a state of frantic excitement now, though well suppressed. Fate had delivered his enemy plump into his hands, and he meant to make the very best use of his splendid opportunity.
“A fool in Paris once called in a barber,” he went on quietly, with a studious outer air of calm determination, “and ordered him, for a joke, to shave him at once, with a pistol lying before him on the dressing-table. ‘If your hand slips and you cut my skin,’ the fool said, Til blow your brains out’ To his surprise, the barber began without a word of reply, and shaved him clean with the utmost coolness. When he’d finished, the patient paid down ten pounds, and asked the fellow how he’d managed to keep his hand from trembling. ‘Oh,’ said the barber, ‘easy enough: it didn’t matter the least in the world to me. I thought you were mad. If my hand had slipped, I knew what to do; I’d have cut your throat without one moment’s hesitation, before you had time to reach out for your pistol. I’d say it was an accident; and any jury in all Paris would, without a doubt, at once have acquitted me.’ The story’s illustrative. I hope, Mr. Relf, you see its applicability?”
“I do not,” Warren answered, surprised at last into answering back, and with an uneasy feeling that Massinger was developing dangerous lunacy. “But I must beg you will have the goodness not to address your conversation to me any farther.”
“The application of my remark,” Hugh went on to himself, groping with his hand in his pocket for his revolver, and withdrawing it again as soon as he felt quite reassured that the deadly weapon was safely there, “ought at once to be obvious to the meanest understanding. There are some occasions where homicide is so natural that everybody jumps at once to a particular conclusion. Observe my argument. It concerns you closely. Many murders have taken place on this line murders of heavy winners at Monte Carlo. Many travelers have committed murderous assaults on the persons of winners with large sums of money about them. Now follow me closely. I give you fair warning. If a winner with eleven thousand pounds in his pocket were to get by accident into a carriage with one other person, and a quarrel were by chance to arise between them, and the winner in self-defense were to fire at and kill that other person do you think any jury in all the world would convict him for protecting his life from the aggressor? No, indeed, my good sir! In such a case, the other person’s life would be wholly at the offended winner’s mercy. Do you follow my thought? Do you understand me now? Aha, I expected so! Warren Relf, I’ve got you in my power. I can shoot you like a dog; I can do as I like with you.”
With a sudden start, Warren Relf woke up all at once to a consciousness of the real and near danger that thus unexpectedly and closely confronted him. It was all true; and all possible! Hugh was mad or maddened at least with play and drink: he deliberately meant to take his enemy’s life, and trust to the authorities accepting his plausible story that he was forced to do so in self-defense or in defense of his money.
“You blackguard!” the painter cried, as the truth came home to him in all its naked ugliness, facing Hugh in his righteous indignation like a lion. “How dare you venture on such a cowardly scheme? How dare you concoct such a vile plot? How dare you confess to me you mean to put it into execution?”
“I’m a gentleman,” Hugh answered, smiling across at him still with a hideous smile of pure drunken devilry, and fingering once more the revolver in his pocket. “I’ll shoot no man without due explanation and reason given. I’ll tell you why. You’ve tried to keep Elsie out of my way all these long years for your own vile and designing purposes to beguile and entrap that innocent girl into marrying you such a creature as you are; and by your base machinations you’ve succeeded at last in gaining her consent to your wretched advances. How she was so lost to all sense of shame and self-respectshe, a Massinger on her mother’s side as to give her consent such a degrading engagement, I can’t imagine. But yot extorted it somehow by alternate threats and cringing, I suppose by scolding her and cajoling her by lies and by slanders by frightening her and libeling me till the poor terrified girl, tortured out of her wits, decided to accept you, at last, out of pure weariness. A man would be ashamed, I say, to act as you have done; but a thing like you pah there it revolts me even to talk to you!”
Warren Relf s face was livid crimson with fiery indignation; but he would not do this drunken madman the honor of contradicting or arguing with him. Elsie to him was far too sacred and holy a subject to brawl over with a half-tipsy fool in a public conveyance. He clutched his hands hard and kept his temper; he preferred to sit still and take no outer notice.
Hugh mistook his enforced calm for cowardice and panic. “Aha!” he cried again, “so you see, my fine friend, you’ve been found out! You’ve been exposed and discredited. You’ve got no defense for your mean secretiveness. Going and hiding away a poor terrified, friendless, homeless girl from her only relations and natural protectors working upon her feelings by your base vile tricks setting your own wretched womankind to bully and badger her by day and by night, till she gives her consent at last out of pure disgust and weariness, no doubt to your miserable proposals. The sin and the shame of it! But you forgot you had a man to deal with as well! You’re brought to book now. I’ve found you out in the nick of time, and I mean to take the natural and proper advantage of my fortunate discovery. Listen here to me, now you infernal sneak; before I shoot you, I propose to make you know my plans. I shall have my legitimate triumph out of you first. I shall tell you all; and then, you coward I’ll shoot you like a dog, and nobody on earth will ever be one penny the wiser.”
Warren saw the man had fairly reached the final stage of dangerous lunacy. He was simply raving with success and excitement. His blood was up, and he meant murder. But the painter fortunately kept his head cool. He didn’t attempt to disarm or disable him as yet; he waited to see whether Hugh had or had not a pistol in hl pocket. Perhaps Hugh, with still deeper cunning, was only trying to egg him on into a vain quarrel, that he might disgrace him in the end by a horribly plausible and vindictive charge of attempted robbery.
“I’ve won eleven thousand pounds,” Hugh went on distinctly, with marked emphasis, in short sharp sentences. “My wife’s dead, and I’ve inherited Whitestrand. I mean to marry Elsie Challoner. I can keep her now as she ought to be kept; I can make her the wife of a man of property. You alone stand in my way. And I mean to shoot you, just to get rid of you offhand. Sit still there and listen: don’t budge an inch or, by Heaven, I’ll fire at once and blow your brains out. Lift hand or foot and you’re a dead man. Warren Relf, I mean to shoot you. No good praying and cringing for your life, like the coward that you are, for I won’t listen. Even if you were to renounce your miserable claim to my Elsie this moment, I wouldn’t spare you; I’d shoot you still. You shall be punished for your presumption a creature like you; and when you’re dead and buried, I shall marry Elsie. Think of me, you cringing miserable cur when you’re dead and gone, enjoying myself forever with Els
ie. Yes, I mean to make you drink it, down to the very dregs. Hear me out. You shall die like a dog; and I shall marry Elsie.”
Warren Relf’s eye was fixed upon him hard, watching him close, as a cat watches, ready to spring, by an open mousehole. This dangerous madman must be disarmed at all hazards, the moment he showed his deadly weapon. For Elsie’s sake, he would gladly have spared him that final exposure. But the man, in his insolent drunken bravado, made parley useless and mercy impossible. It was a life-and-death struggle between them now. Warren must disarm him; nothing else was feasible.
As he watched and waited, Hugh dived with his hand into his pocket for his revolver, and drew it forth, exultant, with maniac eagerness. For a single second, he brandished it, loaded, in Warren’s face, laughing aloud i his drunken joy; then he pointed it straight with deadly resolve at the painter’s forehead.
CHAPTER XLIX.
THE UNFORESEEN.
Quick as lightning, Relf leaped upon his frantic assailant, and with one powerful arm, stiffened like an iron bar, dashed down the upraised hand, and the revolver in its grasp, with all his might, toward the floor of the carriage. A desperate struggle ensued in that narrow compartment. The two men, indeed, were just evenly matched. Warren Relf, strong from his yachting experience, with sinewy limbs and much exercised by constant outdoor occupation, fought hard in sheer force of thew and muscle, with the consciousness that therein lay his one chance of saving Elsie from still further misery. Hugh Massinger, on the other hand, well knit and wiry, now mad with mingled excitement and drink, grappled wildly with his adversary in the fierce strength of pure adventitious nervous energy. The man’s whole being seemed to pour itself forth with a rush in one franctic outburst of insane vigor. He gripped the revolver with his utmost force, and endeavored to wrench it, in spite of Warren’s strong hand, from his enemy’s grasp, and to turn it by sheer power of wrist and arm once more upon Elsie’s new lover. “Blackguard!” he cried, through his clenched teeth, as he fought tooth and nail with frenzied struggles against his powerful opponent. “You shan’t get off. You shall never have her. If I hang for you now, I’ll kill you where you stand. I’ve always hated you. And in the end I mean to do for you.” With a terrible effort, Warren wrested the loaded revolver at last from his trembling hands. Hugh battled for it savagely like a wild beast in a life-and-cleath struggle. Every chamber had a cartridge jammed home in its recess. To fight for the deadly weapon would be downright madness. If it went off by accident somebody would be wounded; the ball might even go through the woodwork into the adjoining compartments. Without one moment’s hesitation Warren raised the fatal thing aloft in his hand high above his head. The window on the seaward side was luckily open. As he swung it, Hugh leaped up once more and tried to snatch the loaded pistol afresh from his opponent’s fingers; but the painter was too quick for him; before he could drag down that uplifted arm with his whole weight flung upon the iron biceps, Warren Relf had whirled the disputed prize round his head and flung it in an arch far out to sea through the open window. The railway runs on a ledge of rock overhanging the bay. It fell with a splash into the deep blue water. Hugh Massinger, thus helplessly balked for the moment of his expected revenge, sprang madly on his foe in a wild assault, with teeth and nails and throttling ringers, as a wounded tiger springs in its vindictive death-throes on the broad flanks of an - infuriated elephant.
Next instant they were plunging in the deep arch of a tunnel, and continued their horrible hand-to-hand battle for several minutes in utter darkness. Rolling and grappling in gloom together, they rose and fell, now one man on top and now the other, round after round, like a couple of angry wrestlers. The train rushed out into the light once more and plunged a second time into a still blacker tunnel. But still they fought and tore one another fiercely. All the way from Monte Carlo to the frontier, indeed, the line alternates between bold ledges that just overhang the deep blue bays and tunnels that pierce with their dark archways the intervening headlands. When they emerged a second time upon the light of day, Hugh Massinger had his hands tight pressed in a convulsive grasp upon Warren Relf’s throat; and Warren Relf, purple and black in the face, was tearing them away with horrible contortions of arms and legs, and striving to defend himself by brute force from the would-be murderer’s close-gripped clutches.
“Aha!” Hugh cried, as he held his enemy down on the seat with a gurgle in his throat, “I have you now. I’ve got you; I’ve done for you. You shall choke for your insolence! You shall choke you shall choke for it.”
With an awful rally for dear life, Warren Relf leaped up and turned the tables once more upon his overspent opponent. Seizing Hugh round the waist in his powerful arms, in an access of despair, he flung him from him as one might fling a child, with all his store of gathered energy If only he could hold the man at bay till they reached Mentone, help would come the porters would see and would try to secure him. He had no time to think in the hurry of the moment that even so all the world would believe he himself was the aggressor, and Hugh Massinger, with that great roll of notes stowed away in his pocket, was the injured innocent. Fighting instinctively for life alone, he flung his mad assailant right across the carriage with his utmost force. Hugh staggered and fell against the door of the compartment; his head struck sharp against the inner brass handle. With a loud cry, the would-be murderer dropped helpless on the floor. Warren saw his temple was bleeding profusely. He seemed quite stunned stunned or dead? His face, which but a moment before had glowed livid red, grew pale as death with a horrible suddenness. Warren leaned over him, flushed with excitement, and hot with that terrible wildbeast-like struggle. Was the man feigning, or was he really killed? O heavens, would they say he, Warren, had murdered him?
In a moment the full horror of the situation came over him.
He felt Hugh’s pulse: it was scarcely beating. He peered into his eyes: they were glazed and senseless. He couldn’t tell if the man were dead or alive; but he stood aghast now with equal awe at either horrible and unspeakable predicament. Only four minutes or so more till Mentone! What time to decide how to act in the interval? O dear heaven, those accusing, tell-tale bank-notes! Those lying bank-notes, with their mute false witness against his real intentions! If Hugh was dead, who would ever believe he had not tried to rob and murder him? Whatever came of it, he must try to recover Hugh from his dead-faint at all hazards. Water, water! Oh, what would he not give for one glass of water! He essayed to bind up the wound on the head with his own handkerchief. It was all of no avail: the wound went bleeding steadily on. It went bleeding on; that looked as though Hugh were still alive, or if Hugh were dead, they would take him for a murderer!
Four minutes only till they reached Mentone; but oh, what an eternity of doubt and terror! In one single vivid panoramic picture, the whole awfulness of his situation burst full upon him. He saw it all-all, just as it would happen What other interpretation could the outside world by any possibility set upon the circumstances? A winner at Monte Carlo, returning home to San Remo with a vast sum in bank-notes concealed about his person gets into a carriage alone with a fellow-countryman of his acquaintance, to whom he would naturally at once confide the fact of his luck and his large winnings. He is found dead or dying in the train at the next station, his coat torn after a frantic struggle, and the carriage bearing every possible sign of a desperate fight for life between aggressor and defender. His revolver gone, his head broken, his arms black with numerous bruises, who could doubt that he had fought hard for his life and his money, and succumbed at last by slow degrees to the most brutal violence? Who would ever believe the cock-and-bull story which alone Warren Relf could set up in self-justification? How absurd to pretend that the man with the money was the real aggressor, and that the man with none acted only in pure self-defense, without the slightest intention of seriously injuring his wild assailant! An accident, indeed! No jury on earth would accept such an incredible line of defense. It was palpably past all reasonable belief to any one but himself an
d Hugh Massinger on the very face of it.
And then, a still more ghastly scene rose clear before his eyes, with the vividness and rapidity of a great crisis. At such supreme moments, indeed, we do not think in words or logical phrases at all; we see things unrolled in vast perspective as a living tableau of events before us; we feel and realize past, present, and future in incredible lightning-like flashes and whirls of some internal sense; our consciousness ceases to be bound and cabined by the narrow limits of space and time: a single second suffices for us to know and recognize at a glance what in other phases it would take us a whole hour deliberately to represent by analytic stages to our mental vision. Warren Relf, alone in that cramped compartment with Hugh Massinger, or Hugh Massinger’s corpse he knew not which beheld in his mind’s eye in a graphic picture a court of justice, installed and inaugurated: advocates pleading his case in vain: a juge cT instruction cross-questioning him mercilessly with French persistence on ever)’ detail of the supposed assault: a jury of stolid bourgeois listening with saturnine incredulity in every line of their faces to his improbable explanations a delay a verdict a sentence of death; and behind all Elsie, Elsie, Elsie, Elsie.
Therein lay the bitterest sting of the whole tragedy. That Elsie should ever come to know he had been forced by circumstances, however imperious, into laying violent hands on Hugh Massinger, was in itself more than his native equanimity could possibly endure. What would Elsie say? That was his one distinct personal thought. How could he ever bring himself even to explain the simple truth to her? He shrank from the idea with a deadly loathing. She must never know Hugh had tried to murder him and for her as the prize. She must never know he had been compelled in self-defense to fling Hugh from his throat, and unwillingly to inflict that awful wound for death or otherwise upon his bleeding forehead.
