A LIE THAT IS HALF A TRUTH
I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt.
GENESIS.
Trent lay as he had fallen, with his head on the fender, in a pool
of blood which slowly enlarged itself and sopped into the carpet.
The sharp edge had fractured his skull. He was stone dead, beyond
possibility of doubt, yet both men by a common instinct knelt down and
tried to loosen his collar. The heavy head tumbled sideways, against
Denis's arm. He sprang up and retreated, with a violent shudder.
"Poor beggar! Poor beggar!" said Gardiner under his breath. "I never
saw anything so ghastly in my life! This thing's like a razor." He ran
his finger down the edge of the fender. "Good Lord! what an appalling
business! Well, I suppose the first thing is to have in the doctor; he
can't do any good, of course, but still--Luckily there's one actually
staying in the house. Ring the bell, do you mind, Denis? Or, wait a
bit, I don't want the maids poking round; I'll go myself."
He was half-way to the door when Denis seized his arm.
"Stop a minute, Harry. Think."
"What's the use of waiting? May as well get it over!"
"No; but think--think! Can't you see what this means?"
His agitation was contagious. "I can see it's going to be very awkward
with the house full of visitors, but it's not the time to think of
that, is it? What the devil are you driving at?"
"You killed him," said Denis baldly.
"I did not!"
"You did. It's manslaughter, if not murder. It might mean hanging, and
it'll pretty certainly mean prison."
"Prison!"
Every trace of color went out of Gardiner's face. In the momentary
pause some one tapped at the door.
Gardiner wrenched himself free, and Denis sprang to shut out the
intruder; but he was too late. The door, left unlatched by Miss Marvin,
slid open at a touch. There stood Mrs. Trent, in her long muffling
cloak and veil; she had come in quest of her husband.
Denis tried ineffectually to block out the view of the room, the lamp
on the floor, the dead man, and Gardiner.
"You--you mustn't come in, Mrs. Trent. Your husband's had a sort of
seizure--"
She said nothing, only plucked at his arm, struggling against it,
her eyes, her whole being concentrated on the figure on the floor.
Suddenly diving under the barrier, she fled to his side and sank
down, a mere swirl of draperies. Denis, distracted, stooped over her.
"Don't--don't!" he said. "Let us fetch a doctor--perhaps he's only
fainted--"
"Fainted!" She raised her tragic little head; her eyes, ranging round
the room, met and fixed on Gardiner. "He's been murdered!" she cried
out. "Murdered--and you did it, you!"
The imaginative man is at the mercy of his nerves; there is always an
unsound link in his courage, liable to snap at any unexpected strain.
It is a question of sheer luck whether he finds out his weakness and
is able to take precautions beforehand. The unimaginative man never
understands this. To Denis's infinite dismay, Gardiner simply backed
into the corner, throwing up his arm as if to ward a blow. Denis
himself cried out the first denial that rose to his lips.
"Mrs. Trent, it was an accident, I give you my word it was!"
"It was murder," she contradicted swiftly, her young voice gathering
depth and force, scorn and anguish, her outstretched finger quivering.
"He did it, he killed him, I read it in his eyes. Oh, he was all I had
in the world, and you've taken him away! Oh, what shall I do--what
shall I do?"
"Harry! Say something--tell her it's a mistake!"
"He can't!" cried the girl. "Look, look at him cowering there!
Murderer! He daren't face me--he can't deny it!"
Less of his own will than because Denis's hands were on his shoulders,
Gardiner slowly turned. He looked hang-dog. "I didn't do it!" he
muttered, his eyes on the ground. "You heard what my friend said--it
was an accident!" And then more loudly, gaining confidence: "I swear
I never laid a finger on him--did I, Denis? I would have said so
before--I would have explained at once, if I'd taken in what you were
saying."
"You didn't lay a finger on him?" Mrs. Trent laughed out, a queer
high note of triumph. "Ah--but you killed him all the same! I know!
I can prove it! What I have here--Besides, look, look at his darling
face--Oh, Guy!" The name broke from her in a great tremulous convulsive
sob. She put out her hands blindly, clutching the edge of the table.
"Oh, what is it? Oh, oh, it hurts!--I'm frightened--Louisa!"
"Great heavens! Ring the bell, Denis--quick!"
Denis nearly brought down the bell-rope. The next minutes were all
confusion. People gathered like flies: the boots, Miss Marvin,
half-a-dozen frightened servants, at last Mrs. Trent's elderly maid.
She threw up her hands in horror, but she wasted no time on the dead
man; her concern was all for her mistress. "Come away, Miss Dot dear,
come! 'Tain't fit for you here!" The girl, shaken now by terrifying
sobs, suffered herself to be led away; their steps died out down the
passage.
Meanwhile the doctor had arrived, a brusque and dapper little man,
hastily fetched in from the terrace. Gardiner, who was everywhere at
once, arranging everything, cleared the room for him to make his
examination, leaving only Denis, Miss Marvin, and himself.
"Fracture of the base of the skull. No, I couldn't have done anything
even if I'd been on the spot; must have been practically instantaneous.
Slipped, you say, did he? H'm!" He bent to sniff at the dead man's
lips. "Where was he standing?"
Gardiner reconstructed the scene, exact in every detail save one. "He
came across to the table, to fill his glass, I suppose, and seemed to
lose his balance--his feet flew up in the air. We didn't think anything
of it, did we, Denis? It was the most ordinary tumble."
"Didn't strike against anything in falling, did he?"
"No; he went flat on his back, as you do on a slide."
"Sure? Well, how do you account for that, then?"
He pointed to a tiny star of blood on the dead man's forehead. Gardiner
looked as he felt, nonplussed.
"I can't account for it."
"You can't, hey? Your friend, then--he any idea?"
"No," said Denis from the window, without turning round. There was an
uncomfortable pause.
"What's all this mess of glass about?" asked Miss Marvin, who was
listening with all her intelligent ears.
"I don't know--yes, I do, though; Major Trent had been having a whisky
and soda, and dropped the tumbler as he fell. I remember hearing it
smash."
"There you are, then, sir. A bit flew up and hit him. There's nothing
cuts worse than broken glass, and the splinters they'll fly anywhere,
they're that light and frivolous things. Why, I've nearly had my own
eye out, falling up the pantry steps with a tray in my arms! That's
what done it, you may depend."
Thus Miss Marvin, practical and positive. Little Dr. Scott nodded
assent.
"H'm, yes; might have been that. The fellow was half tipsy, of course.
No need to tell his wife so, but he smells like a pot-house. She seems
to take it pretty queerly, by the way, from the glimpse I had of her,"
he added, bending his bright and piercing eyes on Gardiner. "Has a
special grudge against you, hey?"
"She accused me downright of murdering him at first," said the young
man soberly. "Heaven knows why, for I'd never set eyes on either of
them before. I hope she won't keep it up; it's rather a serious thing
to have laid to one's charge. But I suppose I'd better take no notice;
women in her state of health often take queer fancies into their heads,
don't they?"
"Hey? Is that so? Poor child, poor child! I hope we shan't have any
further trouble with her. It's a bad piece of work altogether," he
added, getting up and dusting his knees. "You know, of course, that the
body mustn't be moved till the police have seen it. You've sent for
them, I suppose?"
"No, I haven't."
"You haven't? What are you staring for? Have to be an inquest, won't
there? Can't give the certificate without it, can I?" snapped the
little man; and then, lowering his voice out of respect for the dead:
"You and your long-legged friend over there, who looks as if he'd be
the better for a nip of sal volatile, you'll have to give evidence. Any
one would think you'd never heard of an inquest before!"
"Of course. I was an ass not to think of it, but you see it's awkward
for me, with the house full of people. However, that can't be helped.
I'll telephone at once. Yes, what is it?"
Mrs. Trent's maid, at the door, had a very grave face.
"Can the doctor please come at once, sir? My mistress is taken ill."
The two men were left alone. Denis, who had been standing at the open
window all this time, with his back to the room, turned round now
to see Gardiner on his knees, hunting over the floor. "What are you
doing?" he asked, breaking his long silence.
"Looking for my chisel. I don't think I'll leave that for the police to
find."
The little doctor's jibe about sal volatile had not been baseless.
Denis, though in his youth he had been through a frontier campaign
which should have cured him of such weakness, looked and felt rather
sick. Gardiner was less sensitive. He pursued his search without
qualms. Denis watched him.
"What are you goin' to say to the police when they do come?"
"What you said to Mrs. Trent. You began it, Denis."
"You'll have to give evidence on oath at the inquest."
"That won't trouble my conscience."
"I suppose they'll call me as well."
"Safe to," assented Gardiner. Denis said nothing. The younger man,
looking up, asked with a certain hardihood: "Are you going to give me
away?"
"I won't if I can help it."
"By which you mean--?"
"If I'm asked right out, Did you throw the chisel at him? I'll have
to say Yes; but short of that I'll do all I can to get you out of the
scrape. I'd have been in it myself if I'd been standin' where you were."
"Only you'd have owned up at once, whereas I'm not going to," said
Gardiner, with a short laugh. "I might have known you couldn't tell a
lie, Denis. Here, I can't find this confounded thing. Where the devil
can it have got to?"
Denis, putting his qualms in his pocket, went down on his knees and
joined in the search. They looked all over the room, in every corner.
"I should say it must be underneath him," said Gardiner, with a
reflective glance at the body, "but I don't know that I exactly want to
look and see."
Denis with an uncontrollable shudder got up and retreated to the window.
"How can you talk like this? You make me sick!"
"My good Denis, I don't feel like a murderer before the corpse of his
victim, if that's what you're driving at! I deny that I was in the
least to blame. Anybody with a spark of decent feeling must have done
what I did. If he broke his head, poor brute, that wasn't my fault;
it's what you might call the act of God. I'm not going to prison, if I
can help it, for a crime I haven't committed. In the meantime, I want
my chisel."
"Well, it's not--where you suggest," said Denis with an effort, "for I
remember seeing it after he fell."
"You did? Then it must be here somewhere!"
But it was not.
"What the devil can have come to it?" said Gardiner, biting his
mustache, and betraying his agitation by his language; for he did not
usually swear.
"Mrs. Trent was kneelin' over that side."
"What, do you think she's got it up her sleeve? But in that case why
didn't she bring it out and denounce me? Here, you'd better have a peg,
Denis, you look as though you wanted one. What the deuce should she
carry it away with her for?"
"I don't know; but it struck me she had something on the tip of her
tongue to say just before she collapsed. Perhaps she meant to produce
it, and then felt too sick."
There was a short silence. Denis sipped the whisky which his friend had
forced on him. It was not so much Trent's death which had upset him, as
Gardiner's failure, and the part which it forced him to play. He hated
any contact with deception.
"Well, this is a sweet prospect," said Gardiner, with another short
laugh. "Mrs. Trent, and you--let's hope the coroner won't ask awkward
questions! Come on out now; it's no use hunting for a thing that isn't
there. I'll lock up the room and summon the minions of the law."
"I wish you'd own up."
"Oh, confound you for a prig, Denis! I can't go back on what I've said,
can I? It might perhaps have been better if I'd done it at first, but
I'm committed to it now. I must just go on and trust to luck. It was
you began it; don't you forget that!"