"Come up-stairs," said Zeal. "We are liable to interruption here."
"Have they put you up decently?" asked Gwynne, with his mind"s surface.
"The house is rather full."
"I shall leave by the seven-o"clock train, and it must be three now. I have no intention of going to bed."
"Is that wise? You look pretty seedy, old man. You haven"t had a hemorrhage?" He almost choked as he brought the word out, and yet he was not in the least surprised when Zeal replied, tonelessly, "I had forgotten I ever had a chest;" for his mind was vibrating with a telepathic message which his wits attacked fiercely and without avail.
As they entered his room he pushed his cousin into an easy-chair and turned up the lamp on the writing-table. Then he planted his feet on the hearth-rug with a blind instinct to die standing.
"Fire away, for G.o.d"s sake," he said. "Something has happened. You know you can count on me, whatever it is."
Zeal, who was sitting stiffly forward, his hands gripping the arms of his chair, laughed dryly. "You will be the chief sufferer. The others don"t count."
"Has my grandfather speculated once too often? Are we gone completely smash?" Gwynne was rapidly a.s.suring himself that he was now prepared for the worst, that nothing should knock the props from under him again, that it was the sight of Zeal"s face that had upset him; he was not one to collapse before the stiff blows of life.
"It is likely. Anyhow, if he lives long enough he"ll make a mess of what is left." He raised his head slowly, and once more Gwynne, as he met those terrible haunted eyes, felt as Adam may have felt when he was being bundled towards the exit of Eden. He braced himself unconsciously, and after Zeal"s next words did not relax his body, although his lips turned white and stiff.
"I am going to kill myself some time to-day," said Zeal, in a voice so emotionless that Gwynne wondered idly if all his capacity for expression had gone to his eyes. "I should have done it several hours earlier, but I felt that I owed you an explanation. You can pa.s.s it on to my grandfather when the time comes."
He paused a moment, and then he too seemed to brace himself.
"I killed Brathland," he said.
Gwynne moistened his lips. "Poor old Zeal," he muttered. "It must be a horrid sensation--"
"To be a murderer? I can a.s.sure you it is."
Gwynne"s mind seemed to darken until only one luminous point confronted it, the visible tormented soul of his kinsman. He walked over to the table and mixed two tumblers of whiskey-and-soda, wondering why he had not thought of it before. They drank without haste, and then Gwynne took the chair opposite Zeal"s.
"Tell me all about it," he said.
"Brathland and I had not been friends for some years. He was a bounder, and an a.s.s in the bargain. I never, even when we were on speaking terms, made any particular effort to hide what I thought of him--it wasn"t worth while. Of course, with every mother firing her girls at his head, and the flatterers and toadies from whom a prospective duke cannot escape if he would, he had an opinion of himself that would have made me the object of his particular rancor, even if I hadn"t cut him out with three different women that couldn"t marry either of us. When I got the verdict that I must pull up or go under, he chose that particular moment to take up with Stella Starr, the only woman I ever cared a pin for.
Somehow, he got wind of my condition, and knowing that I would prefer to retire as gracefully as possible, it struck him as the refinement of vengeance to make a laughing-stock of me when I was no longer in a condition to play the game out; to advertise me as a worn-out rake for whom the world of Stella Starrs had no further use. We never spoke again until Friday night."
He paused, then mixed and drank another whiskey-and-soda, lit a cigarette, and resumed.
"I had objected to his being let into the mine, which Vanneck"s agent and private letters had persuaded the rest of us would make our fortunes; but I was helpless, for he was not only Vanneck"s cousin, but his brother is out in Africa and also interested in the mine. I therefore consented to attend the dinner at which the whole business was to be discussed, fully intending to treat him as I should any stranger to whom I had just been introduced.
"At first all went well enough. We had the private dining-room and smoking-room on the second floor at the Club, the dinner was excellent, and Brathland, although nearly opposite me, behaved as decently as he always did when sober. It was champagne that let loose the bounder in him, and that was one reason I always so thoroughly despised him: the man that is not a gentleman when he is drunk has no right to be alive at all.
"We were not long discussing the mine threadbare, for we did not know enough about it to enlarge into any picturesque details, and the agent, who had seen each of us separately, was not present. Raglin read a personal letter from Vanneck, and Brathland another from d.i.c.k. Then, the subject being exhausted long before we reached the end of dinner, we drifted off to other topics; and went into the smoking-room with the coffee.
"It was at least six years since I had tasted anything stronger than whiskey-and-water, and what devil entered into me that night to drink a quart of champagne, and liqueurs, and pour port and brandy on top, the devil himself only knows. Perhaps the old familiar sight of a lot of good fellows; most likely the vanity of forcing Brathland to believe that he beheld a rival as vigorous and dangerous as of old--I had gained ten pounds and was looking and feeling particularly fit. At all events the mess affected me as alcohol never had done in even my salet days, and although my thoughts seemed to be moving in a crystal procession, I became slowly obsessed with the desire to kill Brathland; whose face, chalky white, as it always was when he was drunk--and he always got drunk on less than any one else--filled me with a fury of disgust and hatred. My mind kept a.s.suring this thing that straddled it that I had not the least intention of making an a.s.s of myself; and that procession of thought, in order to support its confidence, entered into an argument with my conscience, which was in a corner and looked like a codfish standing on its tail and grinning impotently. A jig of words escaped from the mouth of the codfish: copy-book maxims, Bible admonitions, the commandments, legal statutes; all in one hideous mess that annoyed me so I slipped out, went up to my room, and pocketed a pistol. That logical procession of thought in my mind a.s.sured me that this unusual move at a friendly business dinner was merely in the way of self-protection, for Brathland had once been heard to say that he wished we were both cow-boys on an American ranch so that he could put a bullet into me without taking the consequences--he never had a brain above shilling shockers. My thoughts, as they visibly combined and recombined in the crystal vault of my skull, a.s.serted confidently that he had been reading such stuff lately, and that, ten to one, he had a pistol in his pocket.
"When I returned Brathland was standing by the hearth, supporting himself by the chimney-piece. The rest were lying about in long chairs, smoking, and drinking whiskey-and-sodas. They were all sober enough, and Brathland looked the more of a beast by contrast.
"I took a chair opposite him and ordered my thoughts to arrange themselves in phrases that should pierce his mental hide and wither the very roots of his self-esteem--his vanity was the one big thing about him. But he took his doom into his own hands and built it up like a house of cards.
""How does it feel to be drunk once more?" he asked, with his d.a.m.nable sneer. "It makes you look less of a hypochondriac, anyhow. "Granny Zeal"--that"s what the girls call you."
""If they do I"ve no doubt you taught them," I replied, in tones as low as his own. Several men were seated not far off, but neither of us hung out a storm signal.
""I did," he said. "Not but that I had had revenge enough. I had made you ridiculous--you with your d.a.m.ned superior airs--like that infant phenomenon cousin of yours who is making the family a.s.s of himself over Julia Kaye--"
"Those were his last words. I pulled the pistol and fired straight into his abdomen--knew I couldn"t miss him there.
"G.o.d! what a commotion there was. He doubled up with a yell--just like him. The men fairly bounded out of their chairs. There were two waiters in the room--just come in with Apollinaris. Raglin slammed the doors to, and, while Ormond and Hethrington laid Brathland out on a sofa, asked the servants if they would hold their tongues until it was known whether he would die or not. They a.s.sented readily enough, knowing how d.a.m.ned well worth their while it was. Then he went off for a surgeon--didn"t dare telephone--went straight for a young fellow named Ballast he happened to know, and asked him if he would probe for a bullet and call it appendicitis, for a thousand pounds. Apparently there was no time wasted in argument, for he returned in half an hour with his man. The surgeon probed for the bullet, but without success. Then he bandaged Brathland, had him carried up to Raglin"s room, and sent for a nurse that he could trust.
"We all regathered in the smoking-room, shut the waiters in the dining-room, and talked the matter over. By this time I was more hideously sober than I ever had been in my life. What they thought of me I neither knew nor cared, and it is doubtful if they knew themselves; their one thought was to keep the matter from getting out and dragging the Club into a scandal; and of course Raglin was equally keen on sheltering the family, whether Brathland lived or died. Anyhow, I fancy they would have stood by me, for if we have no other virtue we do stand by each other.
"Practically the only question was the amount to be paid in blackmail, for every trace of the affair had been removed; even the smell of antiseptics and ether had gone. We finally called the waiters in and offered them four hundred each for their silence, or in the case of Brathland"s death--the surgeon held out hopes--a thousand. They coolly replied they would take a thousand apiece before noon on the following day, and ten thousand each in case of death. We--or rather Raglin and one or two others--jawed for an hour; but the wretches never yielded an inch. They had us on the hip and were not likely to be put off by any amount of eloquence. Of course we caved in and G.o.d knows what amount of future blackmail the Club is in for. Then there was the thousand for the surgeon, and the nurse would expect a thousand more. Of course I made myself responsible for the entire amount. Raglin insisted for a time upon going halves--blood may be blood, but he had despised Bratty as much as I ever did--but of course I would not hear of it.
"The next afternoon the surgeon probed again, and Brathland died under the ether. The wound after probing looked sufficiently like an ordinary incision to deceive any one. Raglin and Harold Lorcutt--who, of course, was told the truth--naturally had the body sealed up in lead before taking it north. The old duke and the women of the family are in a fair way to know nothing."
He paused abruptly and lifted his eyes once more to Gwynne"s, bursting into a laugh that sounded like the crackling of fire under dry leaves.
"Lovely story, ain"t it?"
But Gwynne made no reply. His mind, released, was working abnormally, and his face was as livid as his cousin"s had been.
Zeal rose. The narrative had excited him out of his apathy and physical exhaustion, the confession shaken the rigidity from his mind. He planted himself on the hearth-rug with an air that approached nonchalance. His thin clever face had a burning spot on either cheek, his sunken eyes were no longer haunted, but brilliant and staring; his thin high nose and fine hands twitched slightly, as if his nerves were enjoying a too sudden release.
"Heavenly sensation--to be a murderer. What beastly names things have and how we are obsessed by them! The word rings in my brain night and day--I haven"t slept three hours since it happened, and I never had the remotest hope that he would live. It"s the second time in my life I"ve been up against a cold ugly fact that stands by itself in a region where rhetoric doesn"t enter. I believe I could tolerate the situation if I"d done it in cold blood, if I"d thought it out, determined to gratify my hatred of the man; if, in short, the deed had been the offspring of my intelligence, for which I have always had a considerable respect. But to have been under the control of a Thing, like any navvy, to be a criminal without the consent of my will--
"I don"t know that that fact alone would make life insupportable. But there are other and sufficient reasons. I shall never get the hideous sight of Brathland as he doubled up, and his horrid gurgling shriek, out of my mind this side of the grave. And I am practically cleaned out. You know how much I have left of my mother"s property! It barely covers what I paid out to-day. There isn"t a penny for the girls. They will be dependent on Strathland--as I should be if I lived; a position for which I have as little relish as for that of a murderer on the loose. And should I ever be really safe? If this stinking quartet takes it into its head to levy annual blackmail, where is the money coming from? I won"t have the others let in while I"m alive. If it did come to that--and of course it would--I"d get out anyhow, so I may as well go now and save myself further horrors. Besides, with all our precautions, we may have overlooked some significant detail, there may have been an eavesdropper, the undertakers may have had their suspicions--for all I know I may be arrested to-morrow--well, Jack, what would you do in my place?"
Gwynne shook himself and stood up. "I don"t know. I have been feeling as if I had killed Bratty myself. But I cannot imagine myself committing suicide--talk about ugly words! In the first place I don"t think that one crime is any reason for committing another, and in the second--"
"It is cowardly! You don"t suppose that old standby slipped my mind, do you? Well, I am a coward. There you have my dispa.s.sionate opinion of myself. I don"t see myself in the prisoner"s dock, in the graceful act of dangling from the end of a rope; or, if the judge was inclined to have pity on the family, of dying in a prison hospital. Even if I trumped up the necessary fort.i.tude I should be a blacker villain than I am to bring disgrace upon my five poor girls and the woman that has promised to marry me, to say nothing of Vicky and yourself. Nor, on the other hand, do I see myself skulking in some hole abroad with the hue and cry after me. I have just as little appet.i.te for the role of the haunted man in comparative security. Well, what would you do yourself?"
Gwynne shuddered. His own eyes were hunted. "How, in G.o.d"s name, can any man tell what he would do until he is in the same hole? I should like to think that I would speak out and take the consequences. There is little danger of your swinging, and as for imprisonment--one way or another you"ve got to answer for your crime, and it seems to me that the honest thing is to accept the penalty of the law you live under."
"Well, it doesn"t to me," said Zeal, coolly, and lighting another cigarette. "I asked the question merely out of curiosity, as the workings of your mind always interest me. But I have quite made up my own mind. The only reason I hesitated a moment--to be exact, it was half a day--was on your account. Of course I know what my death will mean to you."
"It was for that reason I was almost coward enough not to remonstrate."
Gwynne scratched a match several times before he succeeded in getting a light. "Nevertheless, I meant it."
"Don"t doubt it. And I am sorry--it is about the only regret I shall take with me, that and some remorse on account of the girls. I suppose Strathland will throw them a bone each--"
"I will look out for them. But you are not bent on this horror!" he burst out. Wild plans of drugging his cousin, of locking him up, chased through his mind, and at the same time he was sick with the certainty of his own impotence. He knew his cousin, and he had the sensation that an illuminated scroll of fate dangled before his eyes.
Zeal nodded. His excitement, his fears, had left him. He felt something of the swagger in calm peculiar to the condemned in their final hour, that last great rally of the nerves to feed the fires of courage. He finished his cigarette and flung himself on the sofa.
"Wake me at twenty to seven, will you?" he asked. "I have ordered the trap."