Chapter VIII: Part III: The Garret (3)

Then a detached sentence from one of the books I had read in the museum sprang up in my mind, and I started a little. The sentence was to the effect that a man who leaps into water always removes his hat before doing so. I did not remember that I had taken my own hat off, but there it lay, on the parapet, at my elbow.

Then, "Well, it will do to cover some other poor devil's head," murmured that tired Jeffries, "Get it over, and send that conscienceless young scamp to hell with _your_ blood on his head. Somebody always pays, you know."

I removed my coat.

But that tired Jeffries never spoke unanswered, and these words were answerable. To make a hole in the water from sheer weariness was one thing, but to destroy myself to compass another's damnation was quite a different one. The other Jeffries spoke.

"Why should you kill yourself for his sin? Each man must bear his own. Nay, it is not committed yet and will not be if you are strong and play the man. Are you going to fold your hands and allow Evie...."

And at the thought of Evie I felt my sluggish blood creep again.

"You live in a practical world--be practical," continued that satanic James Herbert. "Prevention is better than cure. Even could he be punished afterwards, how much better off would _she_ be ... _then_? What right have you to bring this horror on her? He's selfish, ignorant, cruel--it would be dreadful at the best; but ... oh, think, man! Think of her now ... and to-morrow!"

"You only want her yourself," growled the other.

"You do--but that's not your motive!" cried the first. "You've overlooked all he's done to you--but this isn't to you! Coward--if you allow it! You won't allow it--to kill him would be better than to allow it.... Come; what time is it? She'll be preparing for bed by the time you get there."

I put on my hat and coat again.

This was my first stage.

The second began with my approach to Woburn Place.

The sitting-room with the pink-shaded lamp lay at the front of the house, but Evie and her aunt slept at the back. The sitting-room was in darkness as I passed. I took a side street, and then a back cartway used by tradesmen. A high wall was in front of me, but by stepping back I could see the hinder part of the row--landing windows, bathroom windows, tiny conservatories, bedrooms--various oblongs at different levels, some blinded, some with lamps, many in darkness. Behind me was a mews, with horses that moved their feet in their litter and dragged at chains from time to time.

The tradesmen's entrances were unnumbered, and I do not know whether I hit on the right house; but that did not matter. I have mentioned my uncommon powers of mental visualisation, and these sufficed me. I fixed my eyes on a window; it might or might not have been Evie's; but to all intents and purposes it was. Somebody was retiring there, and the blind was lowered.

I saw no hand, no shadow on the blind. Only the light went out suddenly, and from the sound the blind made as it went up I judged it to be a spring blind. A piano had begun to play somewhere, but save for that all was silent.

It was the last of her single days.

To-morrow.

My heart was hideously alive again. What! Fold my hands--drown--and Evie as she still was up there.

Soft and terrible ejaculations began to break from my lips.

"Ah, would he? Would he? He would, would he?"

A clock struck half-past eleven.

This was my second stage.

I will begin the third at the moment when I pushed gently at the gate over the whitewashed area near the Foundling Hospital.

His light still showed over the leads, but the basement was in darkness. Evidently Jane had gone to bed. I felt in my pocket for his latchkey, mounted the three steps, and with infinite softness put the key into the lock and turned it. The door opened noiselessly, and I prevented the click as I closed it again by letting the little brass knob gently back with my thumb. Then silently I began to mount his stairs, passing on the way the locked box that had been put into my charge. I reached the top. The first sound I had made since entering the house was my tap at Archie's door.

"Come in!" his tenor voice called from behind the door.

I entered.

At first he did not seem more than ordinarily surprised to see me; it was only after a moment that the oddness struck him.

"Hallo!" he began, in natural though not altogether cordial tones.... Then, "Hallo! I thought you were in Bedford by this time."

"Missed my train," I said.

He stared mistrustfully....

He had been preparing for bed. He had removed his collar and tie, and his red waistcoat was unbuttoned. Through the chink of his bedroom door I saw the light of his second lamp.

In his surprise at seeing me back again, he had half risen from his arm-chair. He remained, his hands on the arms of it, neither sitting nor standing, as he asked suddenly, "Who let you in?"

"Myself," I answered, in an even tone. "A little unceremonious, perhaps, but I knew Jane had gone to bed and didn't want to fetch you down. The fact is, I've found your latchkey."

"You've found my latchkey!"

"In my coat pocket. Don't ask me how it got there. Our two coats were hanging together one night, but even then I don't quite see.... Here it is anyway."

I put it on the table.

"That's a rum 'un," he said, slowly sitting down in his chair again, but keeping his eyes on mine. "So you came back to give it me?"

"I came back to give it you. Besides," my eyes were on his slender bare neck, "since I was coming back--I thought I'd like another word with you before----" I paused.

For a moment I could not understand the readiness with which he took up the thing I had not said. His lips had compressed a little.

"Ah! Again?" he said, with a little kindling in his eyes.

"'Again'?" Then I saw. He had seen Miss Angela during the last hour, and she had doubtless spoken of my own call on her. "Yes, again," I answered.

That third stage had a curious close. That close was nothing less than the reunification of those two halves of the Giant to the fabulous splitting into two of whom I have likened my mental state. They came together again, these two halves, as the two forces come together that make the thunder clap ... but of this in a moment.

After several moments of increasingly rapid talk, we were both standing, he defiantly with one hand on the edge of the mantelpiece, I at the other end of the hearth. He had risen a moment before at certain words of mine, as if to inform me that our interview was over. Once I had seen his eyes move towards the place where the bell-rope should have been, but that lay, a red woollen heap, on the floor behind me, and he would have had to pass me in order to get into his bedroom. He had found an appearance of forcefulness in the use of violent words.

"Why, damn your impudence!" he blustered. "Look here, my good man! If you suppose I'm going to be talked to like this by you or anybody else----"

"Then deny the fact," I said for the fifth time.

"I'll not deny or anything else till I know what right----"

"I know it comes late, but I've spoken of it before."

"Yes--sneaking behind my back!" he said hotly, probably again remembering his recent conversation with Miss Angela.

"To your face."

"Yes--and if it hadn't been for something else I should have told you then what an interfering devil you were!"

"Merridew," I said slowly, "it's the last time."

He sneered.

"I'm glad of that--and confound you for a meddler!" he cried. "If that's all you came for, get out, and I'll get somebody else to look after my trunk!"

We were silent for a space, and in that space I heard the voice of that human Jeffries, almost pitifully seeking still to save him. "Give him every chance," sobbed that Jeffries, "he's only a weakling--you could crush him mentally as you could physically--it would be little better than infanticide--try him again--show him that red thing on the floor--and that carved thing on the door."

But now Archie in his turn seemed to have become divided. He had suddenly turned white. But an habitual pertness still persisted in his tongue. I don't think this had any relation whatever to the physical peril he seemed at last to have realised he was in. I stood over him huge and black as Fate.... "Spare him if you can," that generous bloodthirsty devil in me muttered quickly.

"Merridew," I said heavily, "you'll disappear to-morrow morning ... _or_----"

"Shall I?" he bragged falteringly....

"And you won't come back. I shall stay here to-night and put you into the train myself."

"Then you'll have to sleep in the bath--and you should know by this time how small that is," came from his lips.

And yet it came only from his lips. His terrified heart had no part in it. His only chance now was to have screamed aloud.

But he did not scream. Instead, he stooped swiftly, caught up the poker, and struck at my head with it.

It was then that the thunder-clap came, and that I was James Herbert Jeffries, whole, and a murderer. Swiftly as Archie and I came together the halves of that Giant came together. Instinctively I had guarded my head, perhaps realising--I cannot say--that a single drop of blood might mean for me precisely what I intended to do to him; but it mattered little whether blood blinded my eyes or not. Another redness gorged me, and then, my mind became whitely blind. As colours are lost on a disc that revolves, so all my plans and preparations spun and mingled. All was there, yet nothing was there. For an instant my visual memories of that pleasant, dimity-papered apartment stood separate; my own old experiences and new divinations also stood separate; I saw ahead, three or four minutes ahead, his struggles in my great arms, my left arm about his ankles, my right hand over his mouth, the red of the woollen bell-rope against his white neck ... and then all wheeled hideously together....

I was upon him, smothering him with my bulk, and wondering even as I bore him backwards to the door whether I myself was bleeding....

* * * * *

The fourth stage was characterised throughout by an extraordinary quietness. There was the light sound of the turning of paper in it, for I had to search in a pile of old books and papers for his shorthand pad and to make sure I had the right one--I had to take from my breast pocket another sheet of paper and to glance at that also to make sure that it also was the right one--and then I had to approach the bedroom door and to drop this into his pocket....

But before I did any of these things I tiptoed to the mirror over the mantelpiece in order to see whether I bled.

I did not. My left eye was of a dull red, but not with blood, and I could deal with that. As a preparation for dealing with it I emptied at a draught the brandy flask he had prepared for his journey on the morrow.

Softly as a cat I continued to move about.

Then I had to remember which of his stairs creaked to the tread. They were the fourth and the tenth from the first landing; I knew that as well as I knew my own name; and yet for a time I really could not remember the numbers.

The room was quiet as a grave as I gave a final glance round at the displayed Evidence....

Then behind his Queen Anne grate a cricket began to sing.

Nobody saw me leave the house. I had to bring his latchkey away. Without it the latch would have clicked as I closed the door from the outside.

Then I crossed Mecklenburgh Square and walked towards King's Cross.

A quarter of an hour later an apparently very drunken man of uncommon stature lurched heavily through the swing doors of my public-house and fell full length on the floor in the middle of a knot of drinkers. A barman dived quickly under the flap of the counter, with an "Outside!" rushed towards me. I was hauled to my feet. I had a hand over one eye.

"_'E's_ copped the brewer all right!" a cheerful voice sounded in my ear. "Just smell 'im! Must ha' been drinking it straight out o' the cask."

"'Ere--'old 'ard--ain't it your lodger?" somebody else said suddenly.

"Is it? Lumme, so it is! Look at 'is eye!"

"Ain't 'alf a mouse!"

"'Ere, 'elp me up with 'im the back way, Jim--Lord! 'e weighs a ton! I've never known 'im 'ave a drink 'ere, but there, they get it at one place if they don't at another."

Then somebody bawled to me:

"Look out--don't blow your nose--you'll 'ave your eye up if you do!"

But I wanted my eye "up." Up it came instantly, large as an egg, and there was a laugh.

"Well, 'e won't brag much about where 'e got _that_!" somebody said.

And they helped me up to my red-and-green-lighted room.

* * * * *

They say somebody always pays. Well, this my story. It is a long time ago, and nobody has paid yet. Nor, as far as I can see, is it likely that anybody ever will. There is only one detail that I have not been able properly to attend to, and even that has attended to itself--for of course Kitty Windus fled because she realised that I was in love with Evie. I could hardly expect her to stay after that.

No: nobody has paid. Nobody ever will.

THE END

Notes for "In accordance with the evidence" by Oliver Onions

Italic text is denoted by _underscore_ and bold text by =equal sign=.

Page 32--a word was unreadable and was best guessed as (pretence).

Inconsistant hyphenation and spelling are kept as in the original.

Mr and Mr. were kept as in the original.

End of Project Gutenberg's In Accordance with the Evidence, by Oliver Onions