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‘You haven’t decided yet how long you’ll stay in Linwood?’
‘Some weeks, at any rate, I hope. Good-night.’
‘You coming my way, Colonel?’ Barrington asked, as the hall door opened to let them out into the foggy dampness of the November night.
‘I’m at the Riverside,’ Gore replied. ‘Just across the way.’
‘Oh.’
Barrington turned to his host.
‘Good-night, doctor. I shall run in and see you tomorrow or next day. I’ve been sleeping a lot better since I cut tobacco right out. But I still get those nasty twinges …’
Melhuish nodded gravely.
‘Come and see me. I hope you’ll find Mrs Barrington’s earache better when you get back. Please tell her how sorry we were that she was unable to come.’
‘I will. Good-night.’
‘Good-night.’
The two departing guests sauntered side by side for a few yards, chatting desultorily until their paths diverged—Gore’s towards the hotel, the lights of whose upper windows were visible through the branches of the trees in the Green, his companion’s along the deserted vista of Aberdeen Place, at the end of which the Corinthian façade of the club rose palely in the glare of the arc-lamps in the Mall.
‘My old heart’s worrying me a bit,’ Barrington explained. ‘I’ve had to cut out most of the joys of life—temporarily, at any rate.’
Gore murmured sympathetically.
‘Bad luck. You’re in good hands, though.’
‘Melhuish’s? None better. You a bridge player?’
‘Incurable.’
‘Then I expect I shall run into you at the club.’
‘I expect so. Remember me to your wife, won’t you? She and I are very old friends.’
‘Indeed? She’ll be delighted so see you any afternoon you care to run in. Hatfield Place—Number 27. Don’t forget.’
‘Twenty-seven. Many thanks. Good-night.’
‘Good-night, Colonel.’
The two parallel rows of tall houses which formed Aberdeen Place and Selkirk Place respectively faced one another, at the distance of a long stone’s-throw, across the Green—a pleasant strip of ornamental garden enclosed by railings for the exclusive use of residents, and running the entire length from Albemarle Hill at the western end to the Mall at the eastern. For convenience’ sake two transverse passages of roadway divided the Green into three detached sections, roughly equal in length. Gore’s path from the Melhuish’s house to the back entrance to the Riverside Hotel—the front entrance was in Albemarle Hill, overlooking the river—lay along one of these two cross passages, and when he had parted from his fellow-guest, therefore, a very few steps interposed between him and Barrington the railings of the middle section of the Green and the shrubs and trees which formed, inside the railings, the ornamental border of the garden. Happening to glance backwards, however, for no more particular reason than that his ears had informed him that the retreating sound of his late companion’s footsteps on the pathway had ceased abruptly, he caught a glimpse of Barrington halted beneath a lamp, facing another man—taller, and wearing a light-coloured raincoat—the sound of whose voice, raised, it seemed to Gore angrily, reached his ears indistinctly during the instant for which he slackened pace to look back. Afterwards he recalled that in that brief instant he had wondered a little from where that taller, raincoated figure had emerged; since, while he had lingered chatting with Barrington not a soul had been in sight in Aberdeen Place against the glare of the Mall. He was to recall, too, that something in the build and size of the second man had suggested Cecil Arndale vaguely—but just how vaguely or how accurately he was afterwards quite unable to weigh. These particular speculations, to which at the moment he attached no importance of any kind, were destined subsequently to assume one of very serious concern to him. For, in fact, as it proved, that hurried, careless, backward view of Barrington, partially blocked out by the laurels, yet unmistakable, was the last he was to see of him alive.
He went on his way, turning left-hand as he reached the roadway of Selkirk Place, which terminated in a cul-de-sac at the pillared gates admitting to the grounds of the Riverside. Beside the gates a three-storied red-brick building, comprising a retail-bar on the ground floor with some living-rooms used by the staff above, formed the rear of the hotel, connected with the main block facing the river by the annexe in which Gore’s suite lay. The bar, a discreetly-managed, quiet little place, unexpected in that exclusive residential quarter of the suburb, catered principally, Gore surmised, for a regular little clientèle of chauffeurs and coachmen from Selkirk Lane. The lane which branched off northwards from Selkirk Place at its doors was bordered by stables, most of them now converted into garages, and provided, no doubt, a considerable number of such customers.
But at that hour the bar had long closed its doors for the night; the wan illumination of an arc-lamp suspended above its portals accentuated its effect of cold inhospitality. One window of the seven that looked up Selkirk Place was still, however, lighted up. A shadow moved across the yellow blind as he passed—possibly the shadow of the tawny-haired Hebe who presided over the bar, and of whom Gore had caught glimpses as she went to and fro across the annexe between her domain and the main building of the hotel. Rather a pretty little thing, he had noticed, if somewhat excessively embellished; not too severe, either, to refuse a smile in return to his ‘Good-morning’ or ‘Good-afternoon.’ Betty, he had gathered, was her name—Betty Rodney. Rather a pretty name. He yawned, crossed the grounds, and was admitted into the annexe by the night porter.
‘I want to get a couple of letters off in half an hour or so,’ he said, when the man had roused his sitting-room fire, ‘if you’ll leave the door into the gardens open for me, I’ll stroll up myself and drop them into the box in Selkirk Place, when I’ve written them.’
Left alone, he manufactured himself a modest whisky-and-soda and seated himself to compose with its aid and that of a very terrible pipe, applications for two vacant positions for either of which, it seemed to him, he might hope to be considered as eligible as the next fellow. One was the secretaryship to a small London club devoted to the consolation of the Very Poor of the Services; the other the secretaryship of a golf club in Hampshire. A cheerful fire glowed and crackled soothingly; there was no other sound to disturb his efforts at ingratiating composition. Presently he finished his drink, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, refilled it, and slewed round in his chair to regard the fire-irons thoughtfully. On the uppermost page of his writing block the words—
‘RIVERSIDE, HOTEL,
‘LINWOOD, WESTMOUTH.
‘Nov. 6, 1922.
‘GENTLEMEN,—’
lay reproachful and forgotten.
‘If the door is shut, go away. I may not be able to manage tonight. I will ring you up tomorrow at eleven if not.’
That was what she had said, furtively, nervously, under cover of the clumsiest interest in the chrysanthemums. And Barrington, as cool and cocksure as be-dam, had said, ‘It will be open.’
What door? When was it to open? What the devil did it mean?
What the devil could it mean? Was it possible that, in her own house—under her husband’s very nose, Pickles—the Pickles whose image, idealised, no doubt, in parts, yet always extraordinarily vivid, had cheered him and bucked him up and made him feel a bit better in even the darkest hours of the past nine years—was it possible that she was playing the rotten, silly old game—carrying on with that sleek-headed— Gore’s private surmise used at that point an epithet of Anglo-Saxon vigour which it instantly deprecated. No. The thing was incredible.
Incredible—unthinkable. A bit of a flirtation, perhaps—perhaps not even that. He drew a breath of relief to find his loyalty to the Pickles of the old days still staunch enough to hold her clear in the face of any suspicion, however insidious.
Straight as a die she had always been—in everything. It wasn’t possible that she could have changed—could have become one of those treacherous, loathsome little cats whose exploits filled the papers nowadays. There was some quite simple explanation of that remark of hers about the door. There must be. It was pretty rotten of him to have believed anything else for a moment, he told himself—the sort of thing one might expect from some half-baked young cub eager to sniff out filth in every corner. He turned, rather peevishly, in his chair, took up his pen, dipped it in ink, and resumed his correspondence with determination.
The son, the grandson, and the great-grandson of soldiers, he had found himself at his father’s death a subaltern in his father’s old regiment, with exactly two hundred a year in addition to his pay. To most people, since the average income of the men in the Westshires was some ten times that amount, such a position would have appeared embarrassing. He had contrived, however, to endure it with fortitude, aided by a practically imperturbable smile, a useful dexterity in all sports and pastimes beloved of youth, and a quite special brilliancy as a polo-player—an amusement which he had pursued, unavoidably, on other people’s ponies for the greater part, but to the great glory of the Westshires. In the year 1912–13, the year in which he had obtained his company, he had been, with one unpublished reservation, as blithe and contented a young man as was to be discovered in the length of the Army List. The reservation was Miss Barbara Letchworth—better known to her intimates as Pickles. But of that fact Wick Gore took very great pains to ensure that neither she nor anyone else should have the slightest inkling. To the day in 1913, when he went out to drink three cups of tea and eat eleven sandwiches and take a cheerful farewell of Miss Letchworth—then one-and-twenty or thereabouts and horribly sweet in cool, fluffy, summer things—preparatory to his departure to India, that extremely intelligent young woman had no faintest suspicion that night and morn for three whole years past he had cursed, for her sake, the day on which he had been born—born, at all events, to two hundred a year in addition to his pay.
From India the battalion had gone, very abruptly, to France in 1914. In the course of the following four years Pickles had written quite a number of charming letters to Captain, Major, and Lieutenant-Colonel Gore successively, accompanied by superior brands of cigarettes and sundry strange garments, each of which he had worn solemnly at least once. A year on the Rhine had completed his military career. Chance had thrown in his way an offer to form a member of an expedition to Central Africa; he had accepted the offer eagerly, sent in his papers, and disappeared for two years. A pleasant twelve months in Rhodesia, where his book—the record of the expedition’s adventures and discoveries—had been written, had induced him to consider seriously the project of settling there permanently.
But at that point a childless and long-widowed aunt had chosen to die and leave for distribution amongst a horde of nephews and nieces a very considerable portion of the money which her husband had extracted from a small colliery in the north. Gore’s share in this good fortune, long despaired of, had amounted on final examination, to an income of three hundred and fifty pounds a year. Two days after his forty-second birthday he had landed in England, spent a week interviewing solicitors and tailors and such things, and, bored to extinction by a London which seemed to him entirely populated by Jews, had fled westwards in search of such of his kith and kin as still survived.
The Riverside Hotel had commended itself to him as a headquarters for various reasons. Its advantages for that purpose had been in no way discounted by the fact that the entrance to the very comfortable private suite with which the management provided him lay within just one minute’s walk from a certain hall door in Aberdeen Place which bore the plate of Dr Sidney Melhuish.
On the very afternoon of his arrival in Linwood, as he returned along Aberdeen Place to the hotel, he had caught a glimpse of a slim figure in moleskins as it disappeared through that hall door. A quite amusing acceleration of his heart-beat had been perceptible for some moments. The same amusing symptom had manifested itself when next morning he had rung up Mrs Melhuish from the Riverside and heard, for the first time for nine years, her voice say, ‘Yes?’ He had found the operation of breathing troublesome for an instant—an instant so long that she had added: ‘Who is speaking, please?’ Quite amusing. Especially in view of her placidity when at length—after nine years—he had replied, a little curtly, ‘Gore.’
There had been a silence, and then a calm, unsurprised ‘Gracious. Why, you said you were going to stay in Rhodesia for ever and ever.’
And then:
‘I’m so sorry. But my husband has just come in for lunch. I must fly. Can you ring me up this evening … about seven? I shall be—’
And then, of course, after nine years, the exchange had cut off.
But her invitation to dinner had made up a good deal for that first flat disappointment.
‘Do come early, like a dear,’ she had said. ‘We want to have you to ourselves for a few minutes. Sidney is pining to meet you. You’ll love him. He’s just the darlingest old thing in the world.’
He recalled now exactly the inflection of her voice as she had said that—
With fresh determination he dipped his pen once more in ink and after the word ‘Gentlemen’ wrote the words, ‘I beg to apply—’
It was then five minutes to one.
It was twenty-five minutes past one when he stamped his two letters. He slipped into an overcoat, and let himself out into the chill clamminess of the fog. The pillar-box for which he was bound lay half-way along Selkirk Place, a couple of hundred yards from the back entrance to the Riverside. At the gates he paused for a moment to light a cigarette, and observed that the window above the bar was still illuminated. As his eyes rested on it, the yellow blind was drawn a little aside, and someone feminine—the tawny-haired Miss Betty Rodney, he presumed—was visible for a moment, peeping down at him.
No doubt Miss Rodney’s attention had been attracted by the halting of his footsteps beneath her window at that hour. He went on his way towards the pillar-box, reflecting, perhaps not entirely originally, that in general and in particular women were curious things.
CHAPTER III (#u27eb795b-f308-58e6-9316-a4e44c7b6774)
MRS MELHUISH had switched off all the lights in the drawing-room save two beside the fireplace when her husband re-entered the room, and was lingering, he perceived, merely to say good-night. She turned at his entrance, smiling through a little yawn.
‘Well … what do you think of Wick? Quite a dear, isn’t he?’
Melhuish nodded.
‘I like Gore very much indeed,’ he said sincerely. ‘I wish that we could have provided a rather more amusing evening for him.’
‘It was not exactly a giddy party,’ Mrs Melhuish confessed. ‘However, we’ll get something a little brighter for him next time. Are you sitting up, dear? I hope not, after your wretched night last night. I heard you coming in at a quarter-past four … bad boy.’
‘A hæmorrhage case … one of Mrs Ashley’s maids.’
‘Oh.’
There was a little pause. He wondered if tonight again she would contrive to evade the good-night kiss which was for both of them, now, an ordeal dreaded and avoided when avoidance was with even a pretence of decency possible. But he stood between her and the door. Tonight no escape was possible; the ignominious, hateful farce of their day must terminate in that elaborately casual contact of her cheek with his, cold as ice, burning like hell’s fire. He read the pitiable hesitation in her eyes, yet, even in his pity of it, would not spare her or himself. His cold scrutiny rested mercilessly on her face until it was raised to his.
‘Good-night, Sidney.’
‘Good-night.’
‘You are quite pleased with everything? Sir James’s congratulations upon my cook were really quite embarrassing.’
‘Everything was admirable—as it always is.’
She swept him a little mocking curtsey, and was gone.
He stood where she had left him until he heard her bedroom door close remotely, then glanced at his watch and moved to the fire, to stand before it, considering. Five minutes to twelve. How long would he wait tonight?
It had been a little before one when he had heard her go downstairs that night—the Monday night of the preceding week—that seemed to him countless centuries ago. The hour of meeting had been altered for Friday night to a quarter-past one. At least a whole hour lay before him—a whole hour to watch drag by, minute after minute, listening in the darkness, writhing in self-contempt, aware that beyond the wall that separated her room from his, she, too, was waiting and watching and listening in the darkness—hating him because, on his account, she must lie there for that never-ending hour before she could safely creep down the stairs. Yes, he reflected grimly, at moments she must hate him. Hate him because she feared him, because he stood in the way of her pleasure, because he was what he was—her husband. That thought still appeared to him ludicrous, though for a whole week now he had known beyond all doubt the amazing truth of her treachery to him. Even at the end of that week of devastating certainty he was still unable to look at her face without stupefied wonder at its self-control. It seemed impossible that a spirit so courageous as hers, so defiant of obstacles, so intolerant of pretence, could conceal a bitter hatred so smoothly. And yet … what hatred could be imagined more bitter than that of a woman for a man who stood between her and the man of her—
Of her … what?
Desire … Passion …? His soul laughed at the bare thought of the words in connection with her. Caprice? A prettier word—probably a more appropriate one. At heart he guessed and dreaded a stronger and more dangerous driving-force than these behind her betrayal of him—a craving for the things he himself had proved incapable of giving her—the gaiety and grace and thousand dancing, laughing sympathies of youth. From the very beginning she had teased him on the score of a seriousness which, he was himself well aware, was prone to heaviness. From the very beginning he had seen that inevitably his professional work must separate them—seclude him from great tracts of her life, as it must seclude her from the principal business of his. Youth for Sidney Melhuish had been a phase of single-minded purpose and strenuous preparation for its achievement. Youthfulness he had laid aside deliberately at the threshold of a career which for him, over and above the possibilities of material advancement, was a mission—a consecration to the grimmest, most desperate of crusades against the most ruthless and invincible of enemies. Gaiety and grace were for those others, he had told himself, who neither saw nor heard nor heeded … until they had need of him and his kind. He had envied them a little at odd moments—pitied them a little—wondered at them a little—been always much too busy to feel the need of attempting to imitate their decorativeness. The attempt in any case would have been, he knew, a futile one. His lips twisted wryly now as, staring down into the fire, he recalled his wife’s efforts, in the first tentative days of her life with him, to teach him to dance—
She had striven, too, to teach his mind to dance, he knew, in those first days—striven to infuse him with some tinge of the agreeable ephemeral interests which were the life of the set from which he had isolated her temporarily during their brief engagement, but which, he had quickly perceived, would always remain her tribe and her world. But he neither shot nor fished nor hunted. Theatres and novels held for him the faintest of appeals. The allusive tittle-tattle of her friends—light-hearted young people of both sexes possessed of an abundance of money and of leisure, who visibly resented his silent seriousness—bored him. At the end of a year his wife had frankly confessed him, as a social ornament, hopeless.
‘I do believe, Sidney,’ she had said one afternoon, when his unexpected intrusion from the consulting-room had dispersed one of her bridge-parties precipitately, ‘that the only purpose for which you believe human beings are provided with tongues is as an aid to medical diagnosis. Do you know that for seven minutes you stood here, in your wife’s drawing-room, without speaking, or even attempting to speak, one single word? I timed you by the clock.’
‘Well,’ he had urged, ‘they wanted to go on playing bridge.’
‘No. They had stopped—when you came into the room.’
‘Well, why did they stop when I came into the room?’
‘Because they all think you disapprove of women playing bridge in the afternoon.’
‘I do,’ he had said simply.
At that she had laughed until her eyes had streamed tears. But there had been no more afternoon bridge-parties at 33, Aberdeen Place. That incident, he supposed, had marked in all probability the definite point at which she had admitted to herself that her marriage had been a mistake …
That had been two years ago. Had this business with Barrington been going on then, for two whole years—unsuspected for all that time—so unsuspected that in the end they had thought it safe enough to risk these meetings at night in the dining-room of his house. A serious risk—since she must have realised that at any moment a telephone-call might awaken him and bring him downstairs to discover them. But no doubt they had long grown to believe that there was no risk whatever—no need for even the most elementary precaution against surprise.
How many nights had they met so before that Monday night of the preceding week on which, by the merest of chances, their secret had been revealed to him? The tyre of a belated taxi-cab had happened to burst just outside the house, and the report had awakened him—to hear, a few moments later, the door of his wife’s room open softly and her footsteps steal past his door. Minute after minute he had waited, at first drowsily, then with surprise, until at length uneasiness had induced him to go downstairs in search of her. Fortunately, his slippers had made no noise on the thick carpet, for they had come out of the dining-room as he reached the drawing-room landing. A man’s voice, unrecognised at first, had brought him to abrupt halt.
‘Friday, then. Same hour?’
‘A quarter past one,’ his wife’s voice had answered cautiously. ‘A quarter to is too early.’
The man had laughed.
‘Your dear hubby has forbidden me late hours, you know. Bad for dicky hearts. However—’
He had recognised the voice then. Barrington. While he had stood in stupefaction the hall door had been shut stealthily. In an instant his momentary fury had chilled to ice. The brain and nerves that had never failed him had recovered their aplomb, had decided upon the simplest, surest road to vengeance. He had turned and crept barefooted back to his bedroom—to lie awake till dawn, perfecting his plan, devising means against all possible mischance.
And yet his plan had miscarried. On Friday night Barrington had come tiptoeing along Aberdeen Place at the appointed hour, clearly visible from the upper front windows of the house to eyes that watched for his coming. He had come up to the hall door, but had gone away again almost immediately, pulling the door to behind him cautiously—it had been left ajar for him, evidently. No footsteps had crept from the adjoining bedroom. There had certainly been no meeting that night.
Nor on the next, nor on any of the following nights—unless one had taken place last night during his absence on the case to which he had been called out a little before two o’clock in the morning. Six nights of fruitless waiting, of coldly-raging fury that listened in the darkness until the silence of the house was as the roar of thunder. There was no certainty that he would come tonight, either—that he would come for a month of nights. No matter. On the night on which he did come he would pay for all those others …
Clegg’s respectfully reproachful cough behind him roused him from his thoughts. He bade the man good-night and went upstairs slowly to his room. Did the servants know? Had they, too, grinned and leered at him all that time behind his back for a poor blind simpleton? Probably. In Clegg’s eyes, too, he told himself now—too late—he had detected the question that had lurked in his mistress’s. ‘Does he suspect? Does he know?’
Patience. His turn to laugh would come—if not tonight, one night.
For a little while he moved about his room, making the noises for which her ears listened. He caught a glimpse of his face in a mirror as he switched off the lights—absorbed, the eyes narrowed, nose and lips pinched, a crease between the eyebrows—a tell-tale face, the face of a watching, waiting sneak. He swore viciously beneath his breath, and in the darkness began to tear off his clothes. Damn them—let them go their way. They should not pull him down with them.
He groped for his pyjamas, and remembered then that the night before the cord had slipped through at one end and that in his impatience with it when he had returned in the small hours of the morning he had pulled it right through and tied it about his waist on the outside. But it had been restored, he found, to its proper place—almost certainly by her hands. The same misadventure had befallen him on his honeymoon, one night in Venice. He remembered the adoration with which he had watched her little fingers rescue the errant tape with a hairpin, deftly …
He seated himself on the bed with smarting eyes and strangled throat. Was it—could it be too late? Was nothing left of the dream? Had he lost her utterly? Impossible—impossible—impossible. He didn’t—he couldn’t believe it. In the morning, before she went downstairs, he would go into her room and face the thing with her—holding her hands—smiling at her—her friend and confidant. Even if she loved this other man—he could bear to know that, he told himself, if she did not conceal it from him—even if she loved him, they would face the difficulty together—talk it over—calmly and wisely. Somehow the trouble would pass, if they faced it together …
Presently, shivering in the damp air that came in through the open windows, he got into bed. But the sirens were busy now on the river, as boat after boat hooted its slow way down the tortuous, narrow channel on the tide. He lay there, wide-awake, listening to them, wondering if she, too, heard them.
He had not heard the door of her room open, nor any sound of her passage across the landing—merely the creak of a stair—a stair, it seemed to him, of the second flight from the landing. The tiny noise, almost imperceptible, awaited for so many nights, stopped his heart for a beat. The guile that had once more all but eluded his vigilance shocked him violently, hardened his mood to stone again. What stealthy pains must have gone to the noiseless opening of her door, the crossing of the landing, the descent of the stairs, step by step—until that small, dreaded sound had brought her to abrupt halt, listening with straining ears to discover if it had betrayed her. How had she learned this minute, patient cunning? How had she concealed it from him?
He was out of bed now. When he had opened the door and listened for a moment, he switched on a light and dressed himself in the clothes which lay always in readiness against a night-call. His long fingers adjusted his collar and tie with the careful neatness with which they performed the task every morning. He smiled sardonically at the thought that without his collar and tie, a husband, however injured, started at a disadvantage if his wife’s lover happened to wear one at the moment of dénouement.
He felt no anger now, none of those vague, futile emotions which were the stock-in-trade of the wronged husbands of convention. His mind held but one thought, one desire—the successful accomplishment of that entry of absolute surprise. He switched off the light again and went softly down the stairs.
On the drawing-room landing he paused to lean over and look down into the hall. The subdued radiance of the light in the fanlight, left on always at night, showed him the lower portion of the dining-room door. As he had expected, the door was shut, though already, at the distance of two flights of stairs, the subdued murmur of voices was audible through it. He went down another flight, with increased caution, and on the first landing—that outside the morning-room—came in view of the dimly-lighted hall. To his amazement he saw, standing just inside the open hall door, Cecil Arndale.
He halted, dumbfounded. Was it possible that he had been mistaken? Had it been Arndale’s voice which he had heard that Monday night? Had it been Arndale whom he had seen come and go on Friday in the moonlight? No. There was no likeness whatever between the voices of the two men—no likeness whatever between their figures—no possibility of such a mistake. Besides, at that moment, a man’s voice was speaking in the dining-room. Arndale obviously could hear that voice too. He was listening to it, his eyes fixed on the dining-room door, so intently that not even for a moment had they turned towards the darkness of the staircase. For that moment of surprised surmise, Melhuish made no movement forward or back. The maddest, most ludicrous of conjectures had flashed into his mind. Was it possible that there were two of them—and that somehow they had both come on the same night?
