Kitabı oku: «Room Number 3, and Other Detective Stories», sayfa 21

"'It was a memorable occasion,'" the lawyer read on, with stoical impassiveness. "'There was not a brother lacking. Luke, and Hudson, and William, and Hector, and Eustace's boys, as well as Eustace himself; Janet too, and Salmon's Lemuel, and Barbara's son, who, even if his mother had gone the way of all flesh, had so trained her black brood in the love of the things of this world that I scarcely missed her when I looked about among you all for the eight sturdy brothers and sisters who had joined in one clasp and one oath under the eye of a true-hearted immigrant, our father. What I did miss was one true eye lifted to my glance; but I did not show that I missed it. And so our peace was made, and we separated, you to wait for your inheritance, and I for the death which was to secure it to you. For when the cup passed round that night you each dropped into it a tear of repentance, and tears make bitter drinking. I sickened as I quaffed, and was never myself again, as you know. Do you understand me, you cruel, crafty ones?'"

Did they not! Heads quaking, throats gasping, teeth chattering – no longer sitting – all risen, all looking with wild eyes for the door – was it not apparent that they understood, and only waited for one more word to break away and flee the accursed house?

But that word lingered. Old Smead had now grown pale himself, and read with difficulty the lines which were to end this frightful scene. As I saw the red gleam of terror shine out from his small eyes, I wondered if he had been but the blind tool of his implacable client, and was as ignorant as those before him of what was to follow this heavy arraignment. The dread with which he finally proceeded was too marked for me to doubt the truth of this surmise. This is what he found himself forced to read:

"'There was a bottle reserved for me. It had a green label on it – '"

A shriek from every one there and a hurried look up and down at the bottles standing on the table.

"'A green label,'" the lawyer repeated, "'and it made a goodly appearance as it was set down before me. But you had no liking for wine with a green label on the bottle. One by one you refused it, and when I rose to quaff my final glass alone, every eye before me fell and did not lift again until the glass was drained. I did not notice this then, but I see it all now, just as I hear again the excuses you gave for not filling your glasses as the bottle went round. One had drunk enough; one suffered from qualms brought on by an unaccustomed indulgence in oysters; one felt that wine good enough for me was too good for him, and so on, and so on. Not one to show frank eyes and drink with me as I was ready to drink with him! Why? Because one and all of you knew what was in that cup, and would not risk an inheritance so nearly within your grasp.'"

"Lies! lies!" again shrieked the raucous voice of Luke, smothered by terror; while oaths, shouts, imprecations, rang out in horrid tumult from one end of the table to the other, till the lawyer's face, over which a startling change was rapidly passing, drew the whole crowd forward again in awful fascination, till they clung, speechless, arm in arm, shoulder propping shoulder, while he gasped out in dismay equal to their own these last fatal words:

"'That was at your board, my brothers; now you are at mine. You have eaten my viands, drunk of my cup; and now, through the mouth of the one man who has been true to me because therein lies his advantage, I offer you a final glass. Will you drink it? I drank yours. By that old-time oath which binds us to share each other's fortune, I ask you to share this cup with me. You will not?'"

"No, no, no!" shouted one after another.

"'Then,'" the inexorable voice went on, a voice which to these miserable souls was no longer that of the lawyer, but an issue from the grave they had themselves dug for Anthony Westonhaugh, "'know that your abstinence comes too late; that you have already drunk the toast destined to end your lives. The bottle which you must have missed from that board of yours has been offered you again. A label is easily changed, and – Luke, John, Hector, I know you all so well – that bottle has been greedily emptied by you; and while I, who sipped sparingly, lived three weeks, you, who have drunk deep, have not three hours before you, possibly not three minutes.'"

Oh, the wail of those lost souls as this last sentence issued in a final pant of horror from the lawyer's quaking lips! Shrieks – howls – prayers for mercy – groans deep enough to make the hair rise – and curses, at sound of which I shut my ears in horror, only to open them again in dread, as, with one simultaneous impulse, they flung themselves upon the lawyer, who, foreseeing this rush, had backed up against the wall.

He tried to stem the tide.

"I knew nothing of the poisoning," he protested. "That was not my reason for declining to drink. I wished to preserve my senses – to carry out my client's wishes. As God lives, I did not know he meant to carry his revenge so far. Mercy! mer – "

But the hands which clutched him were the hands of murderers, and the lawyer's puny figure could not stand up against the avalanche of human terror, relentless fury, and mad vengeance which now rolled in upon it. As I bounded to his relief he turned his ghastly face upon me. But the way between us was blocked, and I was preparing myself to see him sink before my eyes when an unearthly shriek rose from behind us, and every living soul in that mass of struggling humanity paused, set and staring, with stiffened limbs and eyes fixed, not on him, not on me, but on one of their own number – the only woman amongst them, Janet Clapsaddle – who, with clutching hands clawing her breast, was reeling in solitary agony in her place beside the board. As they looked she fell, and lay with upturned face and staring eyes, in whose glassy depths the ill-fated ones who watched her could see mirrored their own impending doom.

It was an awful moment. A groan, in which was concentrated the despair of seven miserable souls, rose from that petrified band; then, man by man, they separated and fell back, showing on each weak or wicked face the particular passion which had driven them into crime and made them the victims of this wholesale revenge. There had been some sort of bond between them till the vision of death rose before each shrinking soul. Shoulder to shoulder in crime, they fell apart as their doom approached, and rushing, shrieking, each man for himself, they one and all sought to escape by doors, windows, or any outlet which promised release from this fatal spot. One rushed by me – I do not know which one – and I felt as if a flame from hell had licked me, his breath was so hot and the moans he uttered so like the curses we imagine to blister the lips of the lost. None of them saw me; they did not even detect the sliding form of the lawyer crawling away before them to some place of egress of which they had no knowledge; and, convinced that in this scene of death I could play no part worthy of her who awaited me, I too rushed away, and, seeking my old path through the cellar, sought her side, where she still crouched in patient waiting against the dismal wall.

IV
THE FINAL SHOCK

Her baby had fallen asleep. I knew this by the faint, low sweetness of her croon; and, shuddering with the horrors I had witnessed – horrors which acquired a double force from the contrast presented by the peace of this quiet spot and the hallowing influence of the sleeping infant – I threw myself down in the darkness at her feet, gasping out:

"Oh, thank God and your uncle's seeming harshness that you have escaped the doom which has overtaken those others! You and your babe are still alive; while they – "

"What of them? What has happened to them? You are breathless, trembling; you have brought no bread – "

"No, no. Food in this house means death. Your relatives gave food and wine to your uncle at a supper; he, though now in his grave, has returned the same to them. There was a bottle – "

I stopped, appalled. A shriek, muffled by distance but quivering with the same note of death I had heard before, had gone up again from the other side of the wall against which we were leaning.

"Oh!" she gasped, "and my father was at that supper! my father, who died last night cursing the day he was born! We are an accursed race! I have known it all my life. Perhaps that was why I mistook passion for love. And my baby – O God, have mercy! God, have mercy!"

The plaintiveness of that cry, the awesomeness of what I had seen – of what was going on at that moment almost within the reach of our arms – the darkness, the desolation of our two souls, affected me as I had never been affected in my whole life before. In the concentrated experience of the last two hours I seemed to have lived years under this woman's eyes; to know her as I did my own heart; to love her as I did my own soul. No growth of feeling ever brought the ecstasy of that moment's inspiration. With no sense of doing anything strange, with no fear of being misunderstood, I reached out my hand, and, touching hers where it lay clasped about her infant, I said:

"We are two poor wayfarers. A rough road loses half its difficulties when trodden by two. Shall we, then, fare on together – you, I, and the little child?"

She gave a sob; there was sorrow, longing, grief, hope in its thrilling, low sound. As I recognised the latter emotion I drew her to my breast. The child did not separate us.

"We shall be happy," I murmured, and her sigh seemed to answer a delicious "Yes," when suddenly there came a shock to the partition against which we leaned, and, starting from my clasp, she cried:

"Our duty is in there. Shall we think of ourselves, or even of each other, while these men, all relatives of mine, are dying on the other side of this wall?"

Seizing my hand, she dragged me to the trap; but here I took the lead and helped her down the ladder. When I had her safely on the floor at the foot she passed in front of me again; but once up the steps and in front of the kitchen door I thrust her behind me, for one glance into the room beyond had convinced me it was no place for her.

But she would not be held back. She crowded forward beside me, and together we looked upon the wreck within. It was a never-to-be-forgotten scene. The demon that was in those men had driven them to demolish furniture, dishes, everything. In one heap lay what, an hour before, had been an inviting board surrounded by rollicking and greedy guests. But it was not upon this overthrow we stopped to look. It was upon something that mingled with it, dominated it, and made of this chaos only a setting to awful death. Janet's face, in all its natural hideousness and depravity, looked up from the floor beside this heap; and farther on, lay the twisted figure of him they called Hector, with something more than the seams of greedy longing round his wide-staring eyes and icy temples. Two in this room! and on the threshold of the one beyond a moaning third, who sank into eternal silence as we approached; and before the fireplace in the great room a horrible crescent that had once been aged Luke, upon whom we had no sooner turned our backs than we caught glimpses here and there of other prostrate forms which moved once under our eyes and then moved no more.

One only still stood upright, and he was the man whose obtrusive figure and sordid expression had so revolted me in the beginning. There was no colour now in his flabby and heavily fallen cheeks. The eyes, in whose false sheen I had seen so much of evil, were glazed now, and his big and burly frame shook the door it pressed against. He was staring at a small slip of paper he held, and, from his anxious looks, appeared to miss something which neither of us had power to supply. It was a spectacle to make devils rejoice and mortals fly aghast. But Eunice had a spirit like an angel, and, drawing near him, she said:

"Is there anything I can do for you, Cousin John?"

He started, looked at her with the same blank gaze he had hitherto cast at the wall, then some words formed on his working lips, and we heard:

"I cannot reckon; I was never good at figures. But if Luke is gone, and William, and Hector, and Barbara's boy, and Janet, how much does that leave for me?"

He was answered almost the moment he spoke, but it was by other tongues, and in another world than this. As his body fell forward I tore open the door before which he had been standing, and, lifting the almost fainting Eunice in my arms, I carried her out into the night. As I did so I caught a final glimpse of the pictured face I had found it so hard to understand a couple of hours before. I understood it now.

A surprise awaited us as we turned toward the gate. The mist had lifted, and a keen but not unpleasant wind was driving from the north. Borne on it we heard voices. The village had emptied itself, probably at the alarm given by the lawyer, and it was these good men and women whose approach we heard. As we had nothing to fear from them we went forward to meet them. As we did so three crouching figures rose from some bushes we passed and ran scurrying before us through the gateway. They were the late-comers who had shown such despair at being shut out from this fatal house, and who probably were not yet acquainted with the doom they had escaped.

There were lanterns in the hands of some of the men who now approached. As we stopped before them these lanterns were held up, and by the light they gave we saw, first, the lawyer's frightened face, then the visages of two men who seemed to be persons of some authority.

"What news?" faltered the lawyer, seeing by our faces that we knew the worst.

"Bad," I returned; "the poison had lost none of its virulence by being mixed so long with the wine."

"How many?" asked the man on his right anxiously.

"Eight," was my solemn reply.

"There were but eight," faltered the lawyer; "that means, then, all?"

"All," I repeated.

A murmur of horror rose, swelled, then died out in tumult as the crowd swept on past us.

For a moment we stood watching these people; saw them pause before the door we had left open behind us, then rush in, leaving a wail of terror on the shuddering midnight air. When all was quiet again, Eunice laid her hand upon my arm.

"Where shall we go?" she asked despairingly. "I do not know of a house that will open to me."

The answer to her question came from other lips than mine.

"I do not know one that will not," spoke up a voice behind our backs. "Your withdrawal from the circle of heirs did not take from you your rightful claim to an inheritance which, according to your uncle's will, could be forfeited only by a failure to arrive at the place of distribution within the hour set by the testator. As I see the matter now, this appeal to the honesty of the persons so collected was a test by which my unhappy client strove to save from the general fate such members of his miserable family as fully recognised their sin and were truly repentant."

It was Lawyer Smead. He had lingered behind the others to tell her this. She was, then, no outcast, but rich, very rich; how rich I dared not acknowledge to myself, lest a remembrance of the man who was the last to perish in that house of death should return to make this calculation hateful. It was a blow which struck deep – deeper than any either of us had sustained that night. As we came to realise it, I stepped slowly back, leaving her standing erect and tall in the middle of the roadway, with her baby in her arms. But not for long; soon she was close at my side murmuring softly:

"Two wayfarers still! Only, the road will be more difficult and the need of companionship greater. Shall we fare on together, you, I – and the little child?"