The Locked Room
It was no great coincidence that we should have been speaking of Edgar
Nettleton that night. Uvo Delavoye was full of him just then, and I had
the man on my mind for other reasons. Besides, I had to talk to Uvo
about something, since he was down with a quinsy caught from the perfect
sanitation in advertised vogue on the Estate, and could hardly open his
own mouth. And perhaps I had to talk to somebody about the unpleasant
duty hanging over me in connection with this fellow Nettleton, who had
taken his house about the same time as Colonel Cheffins and his gang,
had made up to Delavoye over that affair, and was himself almost as
undesirable a tenant from my point of view.
"I know he's a friend of yours, and I haven't come to curse him to your
face," I had been saying. "But if you would just tell Nettleton, when
you see him again, that we're in dead earnest this time, you might be
doing both him and us a service. I sent him a final demand yesterday; if
he doesn't pay up within the week, my orders are to distrain without
further notice. Muskett's furious about the whole thing. He blames me
for ever having truck with such a fellow in the first instance. But when
a man has been science beak in a public school--and _such_ a school--it
sounds good enough for Witching Hill, doesn't it? Who would have thought
he'd had the sack? Public-school masters don't often get it."
"They've got to do something pretty desperate first, I fancy," whispered
Uvo, with a gleam in his sunken eyes. He had not denied the fact. I felt
encouraged to elaborate my grievance against Edgar Nettleton.
"Besides, I had his banker's reference. That was all right; yet we had
trouble to get our very first rent, more trouble over the second, and
this time there's going to be a devil of a row. I shouldn't wonder if
Nettleton had a bill of sale over every stick. I know he's owing all the
tradesmen. He may be a very clever chap, and all that, but I can't help
saying that he strikes me as a bit of a wrong 'un, Uvo."
Of course I had not started with the intention of saying quite so much.
But the brunt of the unpleasantness was falling on my shoulders; and the
fellow had made friends with my friend, whose shoes he was not fit to
black. Uvo, moreover, was still according me a patient, interested
hearing, as he lay like a bright-eyed log in his bed at the top of No.
7. Altogether it was not in my allowance of human nature to lose such an
opportunity of showing him his new friend in his true colours.
"He _is_ clever," whispered Uvo, as though that was the bond between
them. "He knows something about everything, and he's a wonderful
carpenter and mechanic. You must really see the burglar-trap that he
concocted after the scare. If another Cheffins paid him a visit, he'd
put his foot in it with a vengeance."
"It would be six of one and very nearly half a dozen of the other," said
I with hardihood. "Set a Nettleton to catch a Cheffins, as you might
say, Uvo!"
But he only smiled, as though he would not have hesitated to say it in
fun. "Of course you're only joking, Gilly, but I could quite understand
it if you weren't. There's no vice in old Nettleton, let alone crime;
but there's a chuckle-headed irresponsibility that might almost let him
in for either before he knew it. He never does seem to know what he's
doing, and I'm sure he never worries about anything he's once done. If
he did, he'd have gone further afield from the scene of his downfall, or
else taken rooms in town instead of a red elephant of a house that he
evidently can't afford. As a tenant, I quite agree that he is hopeless."
"If only he hadn't come here!" I grumbled. "What on earth can have
brought him to Witching Hill, of all places?"
Uvo's eyes were dancing in the light of the reading gas-lamp, with the
smelly tube, which had been connected up with his bedroom bracket.
"Of course," he whispered, "you wouldn't admit for a moment that it
might be the call of the soil, and all there's in it, Gilly?"
"No, I wouldn't; but I'll tell you one thing," I exclaimed, as it struck
me for the first time: "the man you describe is not the man to trust
with all those morbid superstitions of yours! I know he enters into
them, because you told me he did, and I know how much you wanted to find
some one who would. But so much the worse for you both, if he's the kind
you say he is. An idle man, too, and apparently alone in the world! I
don't envy you if Nettleton really does come under the influence of your
old man of the soil, and plays down to him!"
"My dear Gilly, this is a great concession," whispered Uvo, on his elbow
with surprise.
"I don't mean it for one," said I sturdily. "I only mean the influence
of your own conception of your old man and his powers. I disbelieve in
him and them as much as ever, but I don't disbelieve in your ability to
make both exist in some weaker mind than your own. And where they do
catch on, remember, those wild ideas of yours may always get the upper
hand. It isn't everybody who can think the things you do, Uvo, and never
look like doing 'em!"
"I don't agree with you a bit, Gilly. I never believe those blithering
blighters who attribute their crimes to the bad example of some criminal
hero of the magazines or of the stage. Villain-worship doesn't carry you
to that length unless you're a bit of a villain in the first instance."
"But suppose you are?" I argued, almost before I saw the point that I
was making. "Suppose you have as few scruples, principles, 'pangs and
fears'--call them what you like--as this fellow Nettleton. Suppose
you're full of fire of sorts, but also as irresponsible and
chuckle-headed as you yourself say he is. Well, then, _I_ say, it's
taking responsibility for two to go pumping your theories into as
sensitive an engine as all that!"
Uvo clapped his thin hands softly as there came a knock at the door.
"Well, he's a practical man, Gilly, I must admit, so let's leave it at
that. Come in! What is it, Jane?"
"The servant from Mr. Nettleton's, sir, wants to see Mr. Gillon," said
the maid.
I began by explaining why this scarcely comes into the category of
Witching Hill coincidences. Yet it was rather startling at the time, and
Uvo Delavoye looked as though his evil ancestor had materialised at the
foot of the bed.
"All right, Jane! Mr. Gillon will be down directly."
It was the first time his voice had risen to more than a whisper, and it
was shaky. The maid seemed to catch some echo of an alarm already
communicated to herself, and faintly sounded in her own announcement.
"Sarah seems very anxious to see you, sir," she ventured, turning to me,
and then withdrew in some embarrassment.
I rose to follow. Sarah was almost as great a character as her master,
and I for one liked her the better of the two. She was a simple,
faithful, incompetent old body, who once told me that she had known Mr.
Nettleton, man and boy, most of his life, but without betraying a page
of his past. She had come with him to Witching Hill Road as
cook-general. There had been a succession of auxiliary servants who had
never in any instance outstayed their month. The last of them had left
precipitately, threatening a summons, to the scandal of the neighbours;
but beyond that fact the matter had been hushed up, and even I only knew
that Sarah was now practically single-handed through her coming to me
about a charwoman. I thought I ought to see her at once, but Uvo
detained me with an almost piteous face.
"Do wait a moment! Of course it's probably nothing at all; but you've
given me an idea that certainly never crossed my mind before. I won't
say you've put the fear of God on me, Gilly, but you have put me in
rather a funk about old Nettleton! He is a rum 'un--I must admit it. If
he should have done anything that could possibly be traced to ... all
that.... I'll never open my mouth about it again."
"Oh, bless your life, it's only more servant troubles," I reassured him.
"I shouldn't wonder if old Sarah herself finds him more than she can
stick. They do say he assaulted that last girl, so that she could hardly
limp into her cab!"
Uvo rolled his head on the pillow.
"It wasn't an assault, Gilly. I know what happened to her. But I must
know what's happened to old Sarah, or to Nettleton himself. Will you
promise to come back and tell me?"
"Certainly."
"Then off you go, my dear fellow, and I'll hang on to my soul till you
get back. You may have to go along with her, if he's been doing anything
very mad. Take my key, and tell them downstairs not to lock you out."
Sarah was waiting for me on the front-door mat, but she refused to make
any communication before we left the house. She really was what she
herself would have described as an elderly party, though it is doubtful
whether even Sarah would have considered the epithet appropriate to her
years. She certainly wore a rather jaunty bonnet on her walks abroad. It
had a garish plume that nodded violently with her funny old head, and
simply danced with mystery as she signified the utter impossibility of
speech within reach of other ears.
"I'm very sorry to trouble you, sir, very," said the old lady, as she
trotted beside me up Mulcaster Park. "But I never did know such a thing
to 'appen before, and I don't like it, sir, not at all I don't, I'm
sure."
"But what has happened, Sarah?"
As a witness Sarah would not have been a success; she believed in
beginning her story very far back, in following it into every by-way and
blind alley of immaterial fact, in reporting every scrap of dialogue
that she could remember or improvise, and in eschewing the oblique
oration as an unworthy economy of time and breath. If interrupted, she
would invariably answer a question that had not been asked, and on
getting up to any real point she would shy at it like a fractious old
steed. It was then impossible to spur her on, and we had to retrace much
ground at her pleasure. The _ípsíssíma verba_ of this innocent creature
are therefore frankly unprintable. But towards the top of Mulcaster Park
I did make out that a number of pointless speeches, delivered by Mr.
Nettleton at his lunch, had culminated in the announcement that he was
going to the theatre that night.
"The theatre!" I cried. "I thought he never even went up to town?"
I had gathered that from Delavoye, and Sarah confirmed it with much
embroidery. I was also told his reasons for making such a sudden
exception, and as given by Sarah they were certainly not convincing.
"Then he's in the theatre now, or ought to be?" I suggested; for it was
then just after nine o'clock.
"Ah, that's where it is, sir!" said Sarah, weightily. "He _ought_ to be,
as you say, sir. But he's locked his lib'ry, and there's a light under
the door, and I can't get no answer, not though I knock, knock, knock,
till I'm tired of knocking!"
I now ascertained that Sarah also had been given money to make a night
of it, in her case at the Parish Hall, where one of the church
entertainments was going on. Sarah made mention of every item on the
programme, as far as she had heard it out. But then it seemed she had
become anxious about her kitchen fire, which she had been ordered to
keep up for elaborate reasons connected with the master's bath. There
had been no fire in the lib'ry that day; it was late in February, but
exceptionally mild for the time of year. She knew her master sometimes
left his lib'ry locked, after that what happened the last
house-parlourmaid, and serve people right for going where they had no
business. She could not say that he had left it locked on this occasion;
she only knew it was so now, and a light under the door, though he had
gone away in broad daylight.
This room, in which Nettleton certainly kept his books, but also his
carpenter's bench, test-tubes and retorts, and a rack of stoppered
bottles, was the one at the back leading into the garden. It was meant
for the drawing-room in this particular type of house, was of
considerable size, but only divided from the kitchen by a jerry-built
wall. Sarah could not say that she had heard a sound in the
lib'ry--though she often did hear master, as she was setting there of a
evening--since he went away without his tea. Of course she had not
noticed the light under the door till after dark; not, in fact, till she
came back from her entertainment. No; she had not thought of going into
the room to draw the curtains. The less she went in there, without
orders, the better, Sarah always thought. And yet, when she trotted in
front of me through her kitchen and scullery, and so round to the French
windows of the sealed chamber, we found them closely shuttered, as they
must have been left early in the afternoon, unless Nettleton had
returned from his theatre and locked himself in.
It was with rather too vivid a recollection of the finding of Abercromby
Royle, in a corresponding room in Mulcaster Park, that I went on to my
office for an assortment of keys.
"Now, Sarah, you stand sentinel at the gate," I said on my return. "If
Mr. Nettleton should come back while I'm busy, keep him in conversation
while I slip out through your kitchen. I don't much like my job, Sarah,
but neither do I think for a moment that there's anything wrong."
Yet there was a really bright layer of light under the door in which I
now tried key after key, while the old body relieved me of her presence
in order to keep a rather unwilling eye up the road.
At last a key fitted, turned, and the door was open for me to enter if I
dared; and never shall I forget the scene that presented itself when I
did.
The room was unoccupied. That was one thing. Neither the quick nor the
dead lay in wait for me this time. A mere glance explored every corner;
the scanty furniture was that of a joiner's shop and a laboratory in
one; all the library to be seen was a couple of standing bookcases, not
nearly full. But my eyes were rooted in horror to the floor. It also was
bare, in the sense that there was no carpet, though a rug or two had
been roughly folded and piled on the carpenter's bench. In their place,
from skirting-board to skirting-board, the floor was ankle-deep in
shavings. And among the shavings, like so many lighthouses in a yellow
sea, burnt four or five fat ecclesiastical candles. They were not in
candlesticks; at first I thought that they were mounted merely in their
own grease. But Nettleton had run no such risk of one toppling before
its time. Their innocent little flames were within an inch or so of the
shavings--one was nearer still--but before I could probe the simple
secret of the vile device, there was a rustle at my elbow, and there
stood Sarah with her nodding plume.
"Well, I never did!" she exclaimed in a scandalised whisper. "Trying to
set fire to the 'ouse--oh, fie!"
The grotesque inadequacy of these comments, taken in conjunction with
her comparative composure, made me suspect for one wild moment that
Sarah herself was an accomplice in the horrible design. She grasped it
at a glance, much quicker than I had done, and it seemed to shock her
very much less. I snatched up one of the candles--they were pinned in
place with black-headed toilet pins--and I lit the gas with it before
stalking through the shavings and setting a careful foot upon the rest
in turn.
When I had extinguished the last of them, I turned to find my innocent
old suspect snivelling on the threshold, and nodding her gay plume more
emphatically than ever.
"'Ow awful!" she ejaculated in hushed tones. "Madness, I call it.
Setting fire to a nice 'ouse like this! But there, he's been getting
queer for a long time. I've often said so--to myself, you know, sir--I
wouldn't say it to nobody else. That burgular business was the
beginning."
"Well, Sarah," I said, "he's got so queer that we must think what's to
be done, and think quickly, and do it double-quick! But I shall be
obliged if you'll stick to your excellent rule of not talking to
outsiders. We've had scenes enough at Witching Hill, without this
getting about."
"Oh! I shan't say a word, sir," said Sarah, solemnly. "Even pore Mr.
Nettleton, he shall never know from _me_ how I found him out!"
I could hardly believe my ears. "Good God, woman! Do you dream of
spending another night under this maniac's roof?"
"Why, of course I do, sir," cried old Sarah, bridling. "Who's to look
after him, if I go away and leave him, I should like to know? The very
idea!"
"I'll see that he's looked after," said I, grimly, and went and bolted
the front door, lest he should return before I had decided on my
tactics.
In the few seconds that my back was turned, Sarah seemed to have
acquired yet another new and novel point of view. I found the old
heroine almost gloating over her master's dreadful handiwork.
"Well, there, I never did see anything so artful! Him at his theatre, to
come home and look on at the fire, and me at my concert, safe and sound
as if I was at church! Oh, he'd see to that, sir; he wouldn't've done it
if he 'adn't've arranged to put me out of 'arm's way. That's Mr.
Nettleton, every inch. Not that I say it was a right thing to do, sir,
even with the 'ouse empty as it is. But what can you expect when a pore
gentleman goes out of 'is 'ead? There's not many would care what
'appened to nobody else! But the artfulness of 'im: in another minute
the whole 'ouse might've been blazing like a bonfire! Well, there, you
do 'ear of such things, and now we know 'ow they 'appen."
To this extraordinary tune, with many such variations, I was meanwhile
making up my mind. The first necessity was to place the intrepid old
fool really out of harm's way, and the next was to save the house if
possible, but also and at all costs the good name of the Witching Hill
Estate. We had had one suicide, and it had not been hushed up quite as
successfully as some of us flattered ourselves at the time; one case of
gross intemperance, most scandalous while it lasted, and one gang of
burglars actually established on the Estate. People were beginning to
talk about us as it was; a case of attempted arson, even if the
incendiary were proved a criminal lunatic, might be the end of us as a
flourishing concern. It is true that I had no stake in the Company whose
servant I was; but one does not follow the dullest avocation for three
years without taking a certain interest of another kind. At any rate I
intended the secret of this locked room to remain as much a secret as I
could keep it, and this gave me an immediate leverage over Sarah. Unless
she took herself off before her master returned, I assured her I would
have him sent, not to an asylum, but to the felon's cell which I
described as the proper place for him. I was not so sure in my own mind
that I meant him to go to one or the other. But this was the bargain
that I proposed to Sarah.
It came out that she had friends, in the shape of a labouring brother
and his wife and family, whom I strongly suspected of having migrated on
purpose to keep in touch with Sarah's kitchen, no further away than the
Village. I succeeded in packing the old thing off in that direction,
after making her lock her door at the top of the house. Previously I had
removed the marks of my boot from the extinguished candles, and had left
the locked room locked once more and in total darkness. Sarah and I
quitted the house together before ten o'clock.
"I'll see that your master doesn't do himself any damage to-night,"
were my last words to her. "He'll think the candles have been blown out
by a draught under the door--which really wouldn't catch them till they
burnt quite low--and that you are asleep in your bed at the top of the
house. You've left everything as though you were; and that alone, as you
yourself have pointed out, is enough to guarantee his not trying it on
again to-night. You see, the fire was timed to break out before you left
your entertainment, as it would have done if you'd seen the programme
through. Tell your people that Mr. Nettleton's away for the night, and
you've gone and locked yourself out by mistake. Above all, don't come
back, unless you want to give the whole show away; he'd know at once
that you'd discovered everything, and even your life wouldn't be safe
for another minute. Unless you promise, Sarah, I'll just wait for him
myself--with a policeman!"
My reasoning was cogent enough for that simple mind; on the other hand,
the word of such an obviously faithful soul was better than the bond of
most; and altogether it was with considerable satisfaction that I heard
old Sarah trot off into the night, and then myself ran every yard of the
way back to the Delavoyes' house.
Up to this point, as I still think, I had done better than many might
have done in my place. But for my promise to Uvo, and the fact that he
was even then lying waiting for me to redeem it, I would not have rushed
to a sick man with my tale. Yet I must say that I was thankful I had no
other choice, as matters stood. And I will even own that I had formed no
definite plans beyond the point at which Uvo, having heard all, was to
give me the benefit of his sound judgment in any definite dilemma.
To my sorrow he took the whole thing in an absolutely different way from
any that I had anticipated. He took it terribly to heart. I had entirely
forgotten the gist of our conversation before I left him; he had been
thinking of nothing else. The thing that I had expected to thrill him to
the marrow, that would have done nothing else at any other time, simply
harrowed him after what it seemed that I had said three-quarters of an
hour before. Whatever I had said was overlaid in my mind, for the
moment, by all that I had since seen and heard. But Uvo Delavoye might
have been brooding over every syllable.
"You said you wouldn't envy me," he cried, huskily, "if poor old
Nettleton fell under the influence in his turn. You spoke as if it was
_my_ influence; it isn't, but it may be that I'm a sort of medium for
its transmission! Sole agent, eh, Gilly? My God, that's an awful
thought, but you gave it me just now and I sha'n't get shot of it in a
hurry! None of these beastly things happened before _I_ came here--I,
the legitimate son of this infernal soil! I'm the lightning-conductor,
I'm the middleman in every deal!"
"My dear Uvo, we've no time for all that," I said. He had started up in
bed, painfully excited and distressed, and I began to fear that I might
have my work cut out to keep him there. "We agreed to differ about that
long ago," I reminded him.
"It's only another way of putting what you said just now," he answered.
"You said you did believe in my power of infecting another fellow with
my ideas; you spoke of my responsibility if the other fellow put them
into practice; and now he's done this hideous thing, had done it even
when we were talking!"
"He hasn't done it yet, and I mean to know the reason if he ever does,"
said I, perhaps with rather more confidence than I really felt. I went
on to outline my various notions of prevention. Uvo found no comfort in
any of them.
"You can't trust him alone there for the night, after this, Gilly! He'll
pull it off, Sarah or no Sarah, if you do. And if you send him either to
prison or an asylum--but _you_ won't be sending him! That's just it,
Gilly. He'll have been sent by me!"
It was a case of the devil quoting scripture, but I was obliged to tell
Uvo, as though I had found it out for myself, that criminals and
criminal lunatics were not made that way. Villain-worshippers did not go
to such lengths unless they had the seeds of madness or of crime already
in them. Uvo could not repudiate his own thesis, but he said that if
that were so he had watered those seeds in a way that made him the
worst of the two. There was no arguing with him, no taking his part
against this ruthless self-criticism. He owned that in Nettleton he had
found a sympathetic listener at last, that he had poured the whole virus
of his ideas into those willing ears, and now here was the result. He
threatened to get up and dress, and to stagger into the breach with me
or instead of me. No need to recount our contest on that point. I
prevailed by undertaking to do any mortal thing he liked, as long as he
lay where he was with that quinsy.
"Then save the fellow somehow, Gilly," he cried, "only don't you go near
Nettleton to-night! He obviously isn't safe; take the other risk
instead. Since the old soul's out of the house, let him set fire to it
if he likes; that's better than his murdering you on the spot. Then we
must get him quietly examined, without letting him know that we know
anything at all; and if a private attendant's all he wants, I swear I'm
his man. It's about the least I can do for him, and it would give me a
job in life at last!"
I did not smile at my dear old lad. I gave him the assurance his
generosity required, and I meant to carry it out, subject to a plan of
my own for watching Nettleton's house all night. But all my proposals
suffered a proverbial fate within ten minutes, when I was about to pass
the still dark house, and was suddenly confronted by Nettleton himself,
leaning over the gate as though in wait for me.
And here I feel an almost apologetic sense of the inadequacy of
Nettleton's personality to the part that he was playing that night; for
there was nothing terrifying about him, nothing sinister or grotesque.
The outward man was flabbily restless and ineffective, distinguished
from the herd by no stronger features than a goatee beard and the light,
quick, instantaneously responsive eye of an uncannily intelligent child.
And no more than a child did I fear him; man to man, I could have
twisted his arm out of its socket, or felled him like an ox with one
blow from mine. So I thought to myself, the very moment I stopped to
speak to him; and perhaps, by so thinking, recognised some subtler
quality, and confessed a subtle fear.
"I was looking for my old servant," said Nettleton, after a civil
greeting. "She's not come in yet."
"Oh! hasn't she?" I answered, and I liked the ring of my own voice even
less than his.
"Anyhow I can't make her hear, and the old fool's left her door locked,"
said Nettleton.
"That's a bad plan," said I, not to score a silly point, but simply
because I had to say something with conviction. It was a mistake.
Nettleton peered at me by the light from the nearest lamp-post.
"Have you seen anything of her?" he asked suspiciously.
"Yes!" I answered, in obedience to the same necessity of temperament.
"Well?" he cried.
"Well, she seemed nervous about something, and I believe she has gone to
her own people for the night."
We stood without speaking for nearly a minute. A soft step came marching
round the asphalt curve, throwing a bright beam now upon its indigo
surface, and now over the fussy fronts of the red houses, as a child
plays with a bit of looking-glass in the sun. "Good-night, officer,"
said Nettleton as the step and the light passed on. And I caught myself
thinking what an improvement the asphalt was in Witching Hill Road, and
how we did want it in Mulcaster Park.
"We can't talk out here, and I wish to explain about this wretched
rent," said Nettleton. "Come in--or are you nervous too?"
I gave the gate a push, and he had to lead the way. I should not have
been so anxious to see a real child in front of me. But Nettleton turned
his back with an absence of hesitation that reassured me as to his own
suspicions, and indeed none were to be gleaned from his unthoughtful
countenance when he had lit up his hall without waiting for me to shut
the front door. At that I did shut it, and accepted his invitation to
smoke a pipe in his den; for I thought I could see exactly how it was.
Nettleton, having found his candles out and his servant flown, having
even guessed that I knew something and perhaps suspected more, was
about to show me my mistake by taking me into the very room where the
conflagration had been laid for lighting. Of course I should see no
signs of it, and would presently depart at peace with a tenant whose
worst crime was his unpunctuality over the rent. Nothing could suit me
better. It would show that the house really was safe for the night,
while it would give time for due consideration, and for any amount of
conferences with Uvo Delavoye.
So I congratulated myself as I followed Nettleton into the room that had
been locked; of course it was unlocked now that he was at home, but it
was still in perfect darkness as I myself had left it. The shavings
rustled about our ankles; but no doubt he would think there was nothing
suspicious about the shavings in themselves. Yet there was one
difference, perceptible at once and in the dark. There was a smell that
I thought might have been there before, but unnoticed by Sarah and me in
our excitement. It was a strong smell, however, and it reminded me of
toy steamers and of picnic teas.
"One moment, and I'll light the gas. We're getting in each other's way,"
said Nettleton. I moved instinctively, in obedience to a light touch on
the arm, and I heard him fumbling in the dark behind me. Then I let out
the yell of a lifetime. I am not ashamed of it to this day. I had
received a lifetime's dose of agony and amazement.
My right foot had gone through the floor, gone into the jaws of some
frightful monster that bit it to the bone above the ankle!
"Why, what's the matter?" cried Nettleton, but not from the part of the
room where I had heard him fumbling, neither had he yet struck a light.
"You know, you blackguard!" I roared, with a few worse words than that.
"I'll sort you for this, you see if I don't! Strike a light and let me
loose this instant! It's taking my foot off, I tell you!"
"Dear, dear!" he exclaimed, striking a match at once. "Why, if you
haven't gone and got into my best burglar-trap!"
He stood regarding me from a safe distance, with a sly pale smile, and
the wax vesta held on high. I dropped my eyes to my tortured leg: a
couple of boards had opened downward on hinges, and I could see the
rusty teeth of an ancient man-trap embedded in my trousers, and my
trousers already darkening as though with ink, where the pierced cloth
pressed into quivering flesh and bone.
"It's the very same thing that happened to that last maid of mine,"
continued Nettleton. "I shouldn't wonder if you'd never seen a trap like
that before. There aren't so many of 'em, even in museums. I picked this
one up in Wardour Street; but it was my own idea to set it like that,
and I went and quite forgot I'd left it ready for the night!"
That was the most obvious lie. He had set the thing somehow when he had
pretended to be going to light the gas. But I did not tell him so. I did
not open my mouth--in speech. I heard him out in a dumb horror; for he
had stooped, and was lighting the candles one by one.
They were all where they had always been, except one that I must have
kicked over on entering. Nettleton looked at that candle wistfully, and
then at me, with a maniacally sly shake of the head; for it lay within
my reach, but out of his; and it lay in a pool, beneath glistening
shavings, for the whole room was swimming in the stuff that stank.
The lighting of the candles--in my brain as well as on the floor--had
one interesting effect. It stopped my excruciating pain for several
moments. We stood looking at each other across the little low lights,
like Gullivers towering over Lilliputian lamp-posts; that is, he stood,
well out of arm's-length, while I leant with all my weight on one bent
knee. Suddenly he gleamed and slapped his thigh.
"Why, I do believe you thought I was going to set fire to the house!" he
cried.
"I knew you were."
"No--but now?"
"Yes--now--I see it in your damned face!"
"Really, Mr. Gillon!" exclaimed Nettleton, with a shake of his cracked
head. "I hadn't thought of such a thing. But I am in a difficulty. The
gas is on your side of the room, just out of your reach. So is the
control of the very unpleasant arrangement that's got you by the heel.
Is it the ankle? Oh! I'm sorry; but it's no use your looking round. I
only meant the trap-door control; the trap itself has to be taken out
before you can set it again, and it's a job even with the proper lever.
After what's happened and the language you've been using, Mr. Gillon,
I'm afraid I don't care to trust myself within reach of your very
powerful arms, either to light the gas or to meddle with my little
monster."
"See here," I said through the teeth that I had set against my pain.
"You're as mad as a hatter; that's the only excuse for you----"
"Thank you!" he snapped in. "Then it won't be the worse for me if I _do_
give you a taste of hell before your death and--cremation!"
"I'm sorry for you," I went on, partly because I did not know that the
insane call for more tact than the sane, and partly because I was far
from sure which this man was, but had resolved in any case to appeal
with all my might to his self-interest. "I'm sorry for anybody who loses
his wits, but sorriest for those who get them back again and have to pay
for what they did when they weren't themselves. You go mad and commit a
murder, but you're dead sane when they hang you! That seems to me about
the toughest luck a man could have, but it looks very like being your
own."
"Which of these four candles do you back to win?" inquired Nettleton,
looking at them and not at me. "I put my money on the one nearest you,
and I back this one here for a place."
"Two people know all about this, I may tell you," said I with more
effect. Nettleton looked up. "Uvo Delavoye's one, and your old Sarah's
the other."
"That be blowed for a yarn!" he answered, after a singularly lucid
interval, if he was not lucid all the time. "I think I see you walking
into a trap like this if you knew it was here!"
"It's the truth!" I blustered, feeling to my horror that the truth had
not rung true.
"All right! Then you deserve all you get for coming into another man's
house----"
"When your servant came for me, and when we found out together that you
were trying to burn it down?"
I was doing my best to reason with him now, but he was my master, sane
or crazy. His cleverness was diabolical. He took the new point out of my
mouth. "Yes--for going away and standing by to see me do it!" he cried.
"But that's not the only crow I've got to pluck with you, young fellow,
and the other jacks-in-office behind you. Must pay your dirty
extortionate rent, must I? Very last absolutely final application, was
it? Going to put a man in possession, are you? Very nice--very good!
You're in possession yourself, my lad, and I wish you joy of your job!"
He made for the door, hugging the wall with unnecessary caution, leaving
a bookcase tottering as an emblem of his respect. But at the door he
recovered both his courage and his humour.
"I always meant to give him a warm reception," he cried--"and by God
you're going to get one!"
He opened the door--made me a grotesque salute--and it was all that I
could do to keep a horrified face till he was gone. Never had I thought
him mad enough to leave me before he was obliged. Yet the front door
closed softly in its turn; now I was alone in the house, and could have
clapped my hands with joy. I plunged them into my pockets instead, took
out the small shot of my possessions, and fired them at the candles,
even to my watch. But my hand had shaken. I was balanced on one leg and
suffering torments from the other. The four flames burnt undimmed. Then
I stripped to the waist, made four bundles of coat and waistcoat, shirt
and vest. It was impossible to miss with these. As I flung the fourth,
darkness descended like a kiss from heaven--and a loud laugh broke
through the door.
Nettleton came creeping in along the wall, lit the candles one by one,
and said he was indebted to me for doing exactly what he thought I
would, and throwing away my own last means of meddling with his
arrangements!
I went mad myself. I turned for an appreciable time into the madder man
of the two; the railing and the raving were all on my side. They are
not the least horrible thing that I remember. But I got through that
stage, thank God! I like to think that one always must if there is time.
There was time, and to spare, in my case. And there were those four calm
candles waiting for me to behave myself, burning away as though they had
never been out, one almost down to the shavings now, all four in their
last half-inch, yet without another flicker between them of irresolution
or remorse, true ecclesiastical candles to the end!
I had spat at them till my mouth was like an ash-pit; but there they
burnt, corpse candles for the living who was worse than dead, mocking me
with their four charmed flames. But mockery was nothing to me now.
Nettleton had killed the nerve that mockery touches. When I shouted he
gave me leave to go on till I was black in the face; nobody would hear
me through the front of the house, and perhaps I remembered the heavy
shutters he had made for the French windows at the time of the burglar
scare? He went round to see if he could hear me through them, and he
came back rubbing his hands. But now I took no more notice of his
taunts. The last and cruellest was at the very flecks of blood on floor
and shavings, flung far as froth in my demented efforts to tear either
my foot from the trap or myself limb from limb.... And I had only sworn
at him in my terrible preoccupation.
"No, that's where _you're_ going, old cock!" he had answered. "And by
the way, Gillon, when you get there I wish you'd ask for your friend
Delavoye's old man of the soil; tell him his mantle's descended on good
shoulders, will you? Tell him he's not the only pebble on the shores of
Styx!"
That gave me something else to think about towards the end; but I had no
longer any doubt about the man's inveterate insanity. His pale eyes had
rolled and lightened with unstable fires. There had been something
inconsecutive even in his taunts. Consistent only in keeping out of my
way, he had explained himself once when I was trying to picture the
wrath to come upon him, in the felon's dock, in the condemned cell, on
the drop itself. It was only fools who looked forward or back, said
Edgar Nettleton.
And I, who have done a little of both all my life, like most ordinary
mortals, as I look back to the hour which I had every reason to
recognise as my last on earth, the one redeeming memory is that of the
complete calm which did ultimately oust my undignified despair. It may
have been in answer to the prayers I uttered in the end instead of
curses; that is more than man can say. I only know that I was not merely
calm at the last, but immensely interested in what Nettleton would have
called the winning candle. It burnt down to the last thin disk of
grease, shining like a worn florin in the jungle of shavings that seemed
to lean upon the flame and yet did not catch. Then the wick fell over,
the last quarter-inch of it, and I thought that candle had done its
worst. Head and heart almost burst with hope. No! the agony was not to
be prolonged to the next candle, or the next but one. The very end of
the first wick had done the business in falling over. I had forgotten
that strong smell and the pools now drying on the floor.
It began in a thin blue spoonful of flame, that scooped up the worn
grease coin, grew into a saucerful of violet edged with orange, and in
ten or twenty seconds had the whole jungle of shavings in a blaze. But
it was a violet blaze. It was not like ordinary fire. It was more like
the thin blue waves that washed over the rocks of white asbestos in so
many of our tenants' grates. And like a wave it passed over the surface
of the floor, without eating into the wood.
There were no hangings in the room. The incendiary had relied entirely
on his woodwork, and within a minute the floor was a sea of violet
flames with red crests. There was one island. I had stooped after
Nettleton left me for the last time, and swept the shavings clear of me
on all sides, garnering as many as possible into the hole in the floor
where the trap had been set, and drying the floor within reach as well
as I could with the bare hand. There was this island, perhaps the size
of a hearth-rug; and I cannot say that I was ever any hotter than I
should have been on such a rug before a roaring fire.
But this fire did not roar, though it surged over the rest of the floor
in its blue billows and its red-hot crests, flowing under the
carpenter's bench as the sea flows under a pier. And the floor was not
on fire; the fire was on the floor; and it was dying down! It was dying
down before my starting eyes. Where the violet wave receded, it left
little more mark than the waves of the sea leave on the sands. It was
only the fiery crests that lingered, and crackled, and turned black and
my senses left me before I saw the reason, or more than the first
blinding ray of hope!
* * * * *
It was not Uvo Delavoye, and it was not Sarah, who was standing over me
when I awoke to the physical agony on which that of the mind had acted
lately as a perfect anodyne. It was the Delavoyes' doctor. Uvo had sent
for him in the middle of the night, telling his poor people he felt much
worse--having indeed a higher temperature--but being in reality only
unbearably anxious about Nettleton and me. He wanted to know what
Nettleton was doing. He wanted to be sure that I was safe in my bed. If
his sister had not been nursing him, he would have made a third madman
by crawling out to satisfy himself; as it was, he had sent for the
doctor and told him all. And the doctor had not only come himself, but
had knocked up his partner on the way, as they were both tenants on the
Estate.
They might have been utter strangers to me that night, and for a little
time after. Nor was it in accordance with their orders that I got to
know things as soon as I did. That was where Uvo Delavoye did come in,
and with him his mother's new cook, Sarah, in the bonnet with the
nodding plume--just as she had been to see her pore old master.
"It's a beautiful mad-'ouse," said Sarah, with a moist twinkle in her
funny old eye. "I only 'ope he won't want to burn it down!"
"_I_ only hope you're keeping his effort to yourselves," said I. "It'll
do the Estate no good, if it gets out, after all the other things that
have been happening here."
"Trust us and the doctors!" said Uvo. "We're all in the same boat,
Gilly, and your old Muskett's the only other soul who knows. By the
way"--his glance had deepened--"both they and Sarah think it must have
been coming on for a long time."
"I'm quite sure it 'as," said Sarah, earnestly. "I never did 'ear such
things as Mr. Nettleton used to say to me, or to hisself, it didn't seem
to matter who it was. But of course it wasn't for me to go about
repeating them."
I saw Uvo's mouth twitching, for some reason, and I changed the subject
to the miraculous preservation of the house in Witching Hill Road. The
doctors had assured me that the very floor, which my own eyes had beheld
a sea of blazing spirit, was scarcely so much as charred. And Uvo
Delavoye confirmed the statement.
"It wasn't such a deep sea as you thought, Gilly. But it was the spirit
that saved the show, and that's just where our poor friend overshot the
mark. Spirit burns itself, not the thing you put it on. It's like the
brandy and the Christmas pudding. Those shavings would have been far
more dangerous by themselves, but drenched in methylated spirit they
burnt like a wick, which of course hardly burns at all."
"_My_ methylated!" Sarah chimed in. "He must have found it when he was
looking for me all over my kitchens, pore gentleman, and me at my
brother's all the time! I'd just took a gallon from Draytons' Stores,
because you get it ever so much cheaper by the gallon, Mr. Hugo. I must
remember to tell your ma."