Chapter V: March 11th, 1929

‘The Office’ gave me two months’ leave—‘for the purpose of attending to private affairs.’ That was on February 25th. Upon the following day I disappeared: and forty-eight hours later I was in touch with Perowne. He had no idea, of course. But I was in touch . . . waiting. . . .

I found him at Barcelona, engaged on some Government job. What the job was I don’t know, but it left him plenty of time—to take two people about in his great big car. They were French, these two, and pretty rich. The girl was young and handsome, with a dangerously short upper lip and masses of fine red hair. When Perowne took them out, she sat in front with him, her husband and the chauffeur sitting behind. . . . The husband stuck it until five days ago. Then they left for Valencia, they said, he and his wife . . . going by road.

That night I took the lady’s name in vain.

I wired from Pampeluna—I had a big car, too—suggesting Perowne should come. He came. I fancy his vanity was tickled. I may be wrong. But I think he liked the idea of the husband chuckling to think that he’d thrown him off the track, while the wife was giving him the tip that they’d taken another road.

A maid at Pampeluna did the rest. At least, she gave him a message, when all the rest of the staff denied the very existence of the lady with the short upper lip and the masses of fine red hair.

The message bade Perowne take the north-east road. This leads into the mountains and is but little travelled till April is old. He took the road the next day, and he took it alone. His chauffeur had supped with me the night before—holding a very short spoon. . . .

I saw him coming when he was miles away, driving like fury along the elegant road that swept and curled and thrust like some stately serpent up and up into bleak places, where, even beneath the sunshine, spring seemed very distant and the monstrous silence of the depths on either hand turned the trickle of running water into the rush of a sluice.

When he was two miles off, I knocked out my pipe. Then I adjusted my goggles and entered my car.

I drove slowly to meet him on one of the bends. The corner was blind, but he cut it—I knew he would. He found me full in his path on my proper side. He tried to get through, but I squeezed him and crammed him into the ditch. . . .

I let him talk for a minute, while I moved on and turned my wheels into a bank. Then I locked the switch and got out of the car.

As I came up he let out at me in French.

“How long have you been driving?”

I answered in English.

“Ten or twelve years,” I said.

“Had many accidents?”

“None. And you?”

He stared.

“Let me give you a tip,” he said. “When you’re driving a car, don’t stick too close to your rights. It’s not much good to be able to shout ‘You’re wrong’ when they’re pickin’ what’s left of the wind screen out of your brain.”

“That’s a true enough saying,” said I, “and here’s another. If you shout for trouble, don’t squeal when your prayer is heard,” and, with that, I took out tobacco and started to fill a pipe.

For a moment he looked like thunder. Then he flung out a laugh.

“I see you’re one of the Die-Hards. I confess I never drive with a Bible under my arm. But there you are.” He rose and peered at the ditch. “Another two inches of your precious slice of the way, and I should have been all right.”

“Four,” said I, and pointed to a scar in the road. “That was your safety crease. With a wheel on that, I knew you were bound to go.”

Perowne stared at the scar. It might have been cut with a punch. As a matter of fact, it had. Presently he looked at me. I pressed my tobacco home and stared at the sky.

Perowne got out of his car and looked at her tracks. Then he picked up a stick and did some measuring. . . .

“You’re right,” said he. “Right to an eighth of an inch.”

“I know,” said I. “I measured your car last night.”

For a moment he never moved. Then he took out cigarettes, lighted one carefully and leaned against the door with a foot on the step.

“So I was wrong,” he said softly. “You do know how to drive.”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Maybe,” said I, watching his right arm move. “I took your pistol, too,” I added carelessly.

For a moment or two he almost lost control. Then he took a deep breath.

“Well,” he sighed, “you’re thorough. I’ll give you that. And my chauffeur? I suppose I owe his failure to the same virtue.”

“You do,” said I. “And the message.”

“Dear, dear,” said he. “Not the telegram, too?”

“The telegram, too,” said I.

“Well, I’m damned,” said he, crossing his legs. “You do work hard, don’t you?” With half-closed eyes, he let the smoke make its way out of his mouth. “Glorious view from here. . . . That why you brought me?”

“In a way,” said I. “It’s quite a good place to—to see the sun go down.”

Perowne shot me a glance.

“No doubt,” he said shortly. “But—I’m afraid I can’t wait so long. And now tell me your game, and I’ll see if I care to play. Which is it—blackmail or murder?”

“It’s not blackmail,” said I, and took off my goggles.

“Hullo,” said Perowne. “If it isn’t old What’s-his-name!”

The thrust was shrewd. Almost I lost my temper. To pretend that she’d meant so little that her name was out of his mind. . . .

Instead—

“Some names sting the tongue,” I said quietly.

He lifted his head and looked at the cold blue sky.

“True,” he said. “And the brush of some lips the mouth.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” said I.

“Tell me,” he said, frowning. “Did she go back to you?”

“She did,” said I: “to die.”

“I thought she would,” said Perowne.

“Forgive me,” said I. “You thought she wouldn’t dare.” He started. “You used her love for me to bind her feet. That’s how you held her, you rotten loose-lipped thief. . . trading on her devotion to another man. . . . And then at the last, poor lady, she called her bully’s bluff, stared Blackmail out of countenance, and came back.”

The fellow’s face was livid: his eyes like swords. For a moment he stood trembling, with fists clenched. Then he seemed to think better of his valour and, clapping his hands behind him, threw himself back with a jerk against the spare wheel.

“And now you’re out for blood?” he burst out presently.

I knocked out my pipe.

“Some years ago,” I said. “I was in Macedonia. Up in the mountains, I remember, there was an old churchyard, quite full of graves.” I looked about me. “The place was not unlike this. . . . And every grave had been opened—to release the spirits of the dead. It was a local superstition. Now, what do you think lived _and grew fat_. . . . in that churchyard?”

There was a long silence.

At length I leaned forward.

“Snakes, Perowne, snakes. Snakes that traded on devotion . . . turned piteous piety to their own ends . . . used women’s love for their husbands to fill their bellies . . . battened upon the dead . . . And you ask if I’m out for blood. What do you think?”

“Think?” said he. “Why, I think you’re very confident.”

“I confess it,” said I. “I’m a poacher to-day. But you should watch your preserves.”

He stared at the edge of the road and into the depths beyond. Then he tilted his chin and scanned the grandeur of Navarre—all mountains and sudden valleys and again mountains like footstools to mountains greater than they, so that the world seemed nothing but a black sea of breakers foam-crested, petrified.

“You’re sore, of course,” he mused. “It’s a way relicts have. . . . But why have you left it so long?”

“I thought she was happy,” I said. “It never occurred to me that the man was born who could treat such a lady ill. But it seems you struck her, Perowne.”

He cried out at that, but the blood was in my head and I shouted him down.

“More,” I raved, “more. You jeered at her grief . . . . . . mocked at her misery . . . twisted those delicate arms . . . cursed her for weeping because it spoiled your sleep . . . bullied my dying girl . . . My God! My God!” I bowed my head and covered my eyes with my hands. “Don’t think she told me,” I muttered. “She never gave you away. But——”

As I lifted my head, the spare wheel caught me full in the face.

I went down like a log, with the wheel on the top of me. I never remember feeling so shaken up. I wasn’t exactly unconscious but things were distorted—unreal.

I saw Perowne seize a kit-bag and drop it into the ditch. I saw him slip into the car and I heard her start. I saw her begin to move . . . lurch . . . pitch to and fro. I saw the pitches grow longer—more pronounced. I began to get quite interested, wondering at every failure whether he’ld get her out at the next attempt. All the time his engine kept storming like an angry fiend. . . .

Suddenly my brain cleared, and I realized that he was like to be gone and leave me sitting in the road with a wheel in my lap.

I heaved the wheel off my legs and leapt for the luggage-grid, as the car shot back. Its off hind wheel went over the spare with a couple of jerks that nearly threw me off. Then he clapped her into first, bumped over the spare wheel again and flung up the pass all out. . . .

Perhaps for the very first time in all his life Perowne had lost his nerve. I thought he had, and the moment I saw him I knew. And the knowledge did me more good than the wind in my face. The man was not sitting: he was crouched—with his shoulders up to his ears. His one idea was to get away from that spot. The silence, perhaps. . . .

He never saw me climb up over the hood or settle myself on the seat behind his back. But I did. As a matter of fact, I sat there a minute or two—to get my breath and recover—before I put him wise.

Strangely enough, my touch seemed to bring his confidence back.

He gave one whoop. . . . Then he threw back his head and laughed up into my eyes.

“You do work hard,” he said. “I thought you were done.”

The road was falling now for a long half-mile.

I stretched out a hand and switched his engine off.

He cursed me for that. Then he stamped on the clutch.

“I’ll take you to find her in hell,” he cried, and headed straight for the brink.

I clapped my hands on his and wrenched the wheel about.

For a second I thought we were over. . . . Then the car swung back to the crown of the road.

Again he swerved to the off, and I wrenched her back.

All the time the car was gathering speed.

I had the strength, but he had the position. We swayed and swung and swerved all over the road, fighting and raving like madmen to get the upper hand. Twice I went for the brake, but each time, before I could reach it, I had to catch at the wheel. I crushed his fingers, and he screamed and spat in my face.

We were doing fifty now, and a curve was coming. The man wasn’t born that could take it without brakes. Perowne saw it, too, and laughed.

“Behold our spring-board,” he said.

I seized his neck and jammed his face between the spokes of the wheel.

“Now turn it,” said I.

Then I applied the brakes. . . .

When the car came to rest, I let him lift his head.

Then I put my hands under his chin and looked into his eyes.

“You’ll never see her,” I said. “She’s up in heaven.”

He smiled.

“With the rest of the _demi-monde_!”

I began to bend him back.

“Where there aren’t any bullies,” I said. “She had her hell upon earth.”

“I devilish nearly won,” said he.

“You did,” said I. “But you made one bad mistake.”

“Why, what was that?” said he.

“You lost your nerve.”

He struggled at that, and I bent him back again.

“This won’t help her,” he blurted, panting.

“The more’s the pity,” said I. “But it’ll help me and it’ll make the world cleaner.”

Again I bent him back, till his eyes were starting and his back curved like a bow.

“For God’s sake, end it,” he whimpered.

“Ask in her name,” said I.

“For . . . her . . . sake.”

I broke his back.

Then I turned the wheels to the edge and started the engine up. . . .

The car came to rest finally about six hundred feet below the road—a battered blazing wreck.

For a moment I watched her burn, and, being human and very much in love with my dead wife, felt better than I had felt for many a month.

That was three days ago.

To-morrow morning I shall report for duty.