A Pleasant Chat With a Murderer
I awoke so much refreshed and free from pain that I must have slept for
many hours. Belleville was pinching my shoulder. His black-visaged face
was curiously bilious-looking, and puffy purple hollows underhung his
eyes.
"You didn't sleep thus on the banks of the Nile," he muttered, with a
sick man's frown. "You were wakeful enough then. One would think you
had been drugged."
"Indeed," said I. "But I had need to be wakeful then."
"Who set on the light," he demanded. "I swear I left you in dark. Who
has been here?"
"Your Arab," I replied. "He swept out the room and gave me a drink.
Then he climbed into the sarcophagus yonder, and unless he went away
while I slept, there you'll find him."
The rascal looked perfectly astounded. "My Arab!" he repeated, staring
sharply into my eyes. Then of a sudden he turned and simply rushed over
to the big lead coffin. Stooping over the edge, he peeped into the
interior and seemed to be shifting something with his hands. His back
was all I saw, but it moved to and fro, and he strained on tiptoe. When
he stood up his face was scarlet and his eyes were troubled. "Swept the
room, you said, and gave you a drink?" he muttered half to himself.
With that he took to examining the floor, crawling on hands and knees.
His peregrinations took him behind me, and what he did there or found
there I do not know; but he rapped out an oath and I heard him pacing
up and down, swearing in an angry undertone. So five minutes passed,
then he stalked into my view and showed me a very troubled and a very
angry countenance.
"You asked my Arab for a drink?" he cried.
"I did," said I.
"In English?"
"What else?"
"Did he answer you?"
"In the kindliest fashion possible. He assuaged my thirst."
"Blast him!" cried Belleville, all of a tremble with rage. "The villain
has been tricking me. Like enough I've loosed a force I'll yet have to
reckon with."
"I don't comprehend," said I.
"Nor need you," he rapped back. "Shut your mouth till I address you or
I'll cut your prying tongue out." The rascal was beside himself, that
was evident. And since I was quite at his mercy I thought it best to
do his bidding. He clapped a hand to his head and rushed once more to
the sarcophagus. He glared over the edge for a minute, then turned and
flung out his arms. "For two pins I'd do it now," he gasped. "Cut him
to pieces and burn the parts. It's doubtful if I'll ever get more good
out of him. But if I do that I'll kill the chance. And yet he's played
me false already. Been laughing in his sleeve at me! But no--he can't
have meant hurt or he'd have freed the prisoner. As easy that as fetch
him a drink. No doubt he was asked. Yet he's not to be trusted now,
that is evident. I'll have to gaol him, too. Let's see!"
He crossed the room and caught hold of the lid of the sarcophagus; but
do what he could he was unable to shift it. I regarded his efforts
with a deal of secret amusement. He emerged from the struggle panting
and with disordered dress, and his temper in a molten glow. But he was
not beaten. Leaving the lid alone, he wheeled a big lounge over to the
sarcophagus and, tipping it on edge, heaved it up athwart the mouth.
Then he piled everything of weight he could find atop of the lounge and
soon he had built up a pyramid which would have taken a Hercules to
shift, if shut up in the sarcophagus beneath. It was then that I began
to feel I had been a notable fool in telling Belleville anything about
the "Arab." But it was little use crying over spilt milk.
His labours over, the rascal sank into a chair before me, and began
fanning his hot face with a piece of cardboard.
"Now for our business," he presently observed. "You've probably come to
some decision, Pinsent. I wait to hear it."
"Well," I said, "the thing is in a nutshell. You've promised me nothing
but a choice of deaths. I may be a fool, but I like life so well that I
prefer a lingering sort to any other, however painless."
"You're a fool," he answered shortly, and pouted out his loose thick
lips beyond his beard, so that he seemed to have the snout of a hairy
pig. "You don't know what a pleasure it will be to me to torture you,"
he continued. "I'll make you suffer like the damned before you die."
"I don't doubt your will; it's your ability which is in question," I
said, as coolly as I was able. "You may think you have me laid here
very nicely by the heels, Dr. Belleville, and so you have in seeming.
But you're not the only man who has a knowledge of the old magic arts
of ancient Egypt. I tell you to your face that I possess a charm no
whit less potent than the one you found the secret of in yonder tomb.
And if you force me to use it, why, I shall use it. Now put that in
your pipe and smoke it."
He stood up at once, greatly surprised, much incredulous, but also a
little troubled and dubious, as I could see.
"You think you can bluff me?" he snarled. But I _had_ bluffed him. I
could read it in his eyes.
I answered him with nothing but a smile.
He assumed a sneer. His eyes glinted. He put his hand in his pocket and
produced a revolver. He cocked the weapon and put it to my temple.
"Well, you've challenged me," he jeered. "In just one minute I'll blow
your brains out. Your charm is now in question!"
For a few seconds a dark haze of blind terror shut off my power of
vision. I felt the villain meant to do what he had threatened. His
nerves had been shaken by what I had said to him about the Arab--though
why, I could not fathom--and my challenge, although the merest bluff,
had completed their disorder. He was in a spell of panic and it had
swept his reason and his resolution to the winds. He intended to kill
me in order to restore his own sense of security, and at once. And I
was impotent to prevent him. He was counting aloud, "One, two, three,
four." He had got up to fifteen before I even partially awoke out of my
trance of craven fear. But in the next five seconds I had lived a whole
series of lifetimes and I had received an inspiration born of wrath and
hate and desperate necessity.
"Look in my eyes," I shrieked at him. "And listen if you want to live."
He looked at me. I put the strength of my existence into my gaze, and
I felt a strange, wild thrill of exultation as I saw his eyes dilate
encountering the glance I threw at him.
"My death means yours," I hissed. "My monitor stands over you. You'll
be shrivelled as by lightning. We'll go together to the throne of
God! Now shoot if you will and damn your soul for all eternity!
Shoot--shoot!"
But Dr. Belleville did not shoot. His hand fell to his side. He
staggered back, staring at me open-mouthed until the chair arrested
him. I saw my advantage and pressed it home.
"Stop!" I shouted. "As you value your dirty life. Stop! Stand still and
do not turn your head. One movement and we both die. I don't want to
die for a dog like you."
He stood like a frozen image. Holding his glance with mine, I began to
mutter in a sing-song way a string of meaningless Egyptian phrases.
Then the more powerfully to impress the superstitious fool-scoundrel,
all of a sudden I uttered a loud heart-rending groan and allowed my
head to fall over on the strap that encircled and sustained my neck.
But though I only affected to swoon, the frightful amount of will
force and nervous energy I had expended in the crisis had induced
a consequential lassitude so enthralling that I came very near to
fainting in reality. And, indeed, it is quite likely that I lost my
senses for a time. Soon, however, I felt water sprinkled on my face and
slowly I raised my head. "A drink!" I gasped.
A glass was pressed to my lips. I drank thirstily and opened my eyes.
Belleville, white-faced but composed now and gloomily frowning, was my
minister.
"I make you my compliments," he said in cold, slow, even tones. "You
have a quick wit and a nerve of iron. I am glad, because they saved
me from a folly. You would cease to be of use to me dead, curse you,
though I wish you carrion, and will make you worm food before I am much
older."
"You'll not live to repent it," I replied. "I've bound your fate with
mine by ties no mortal can unsolve."
"Enough of that rubbish," he retorted harshly. "You cannot haze me
twice. You could not have at all if I had stopped to think or been
quite well. But I'm liverish and out of sorts to-day--the result of
staying up all night nursing Ottley."
"You'll see when the time comes--if you have the courage," I responded
in an acrid tone. "You cannot scare me, Belleville, because you cannot
harm me without hurting yourself--and in your deeps of heart, you
rogue, you know it."
He burst out laughing, but there was a note of nervousness in his
mocking mirth that pleased me passing well.
"Pah!" he said at last. "Would you sit there trussed up like a chooky
skewered for the table if you had the power you pretend?"
"Idiot!" I snapped. "Can electricity unbuckle straps without machinery?
Yet it can splinter rocks without an effort and without assistance."
"Ah!" said he, "ah! So you pretend----"
"Try me!" I interrupted.
"Not I," cried he. "I've encountered so many wonders lately that I'm
now beginning to regard what I of old considered the impossible as the
most likely thing of all to happen. I don't believe you, Pinsent, but
neither do I disbelieve you. Therefore, acting on the kindly hint you
dropped, I'll take all sane precautions. Au revoir."
He marched to the door, passed out and disappeared. I chewed the bitter
cud of thought for some hours. Meanwhile I grew desperately hungry, ay,
and thirsty, too. There came a time when I would have given the last of
my possessions for a beef-steak and a jug of water. And, oh! how tired
I was of my position. The blood gradually ceased to circulate properly
through all my parts. My hands became purple. My legs went to sleep. My
limbs were on a rack of pins and needles and even breathing hurt me.
I did my best by straining at the bonds at intervals to promote the
arterial flow and stop the agony of muscular irritation. But it was a
poor best, and I sank welcomely at length into a benumbed lethargic
state near akin to stupor, from which I knew I could wake to anguish by
the merest movement.
As near as I can guess twelve hours had uncoiled their lethal folds
before my infernal captor returned to the laboratory. One instant I
was sharply sensible and suffering most damnably. The rogue looked
positively sick and he smelt like a gin palace. He had evidently drunk
a deal of spirit, but he was not the least intoxicated. "It is over!"
he cried and threw himself into a chair.
"What?" I questioned.
"Ottley is dead," said he, "and I am glad of it, all said and done,
though I worked like a galley slave to keep him by me. He was a fine
cloak for my doings, but he grew wearisome--the fractious old fool--at
times. And I'm not sure I'd bring him back now--were I able."
"And Miss Ottley?"
"A pretty scene!" He shrugged his shoulders, then grimaced and
whistled. "I'm her father's murderer, it seems!" He stretched out
his arms and yawned. "But she's not responsible, poor thing--grief
demented. The two consulting physicians heartily sympathised with
me. They knew how I had worked, you see, and Sir Philip Lang himself
suggested morphia. They've signed a paper giving me control of
her--under their directions I'm trustee of the estate under the will
besides. Lang thinks she may recover--ultimately, but it is evident
that she must be confined. She raved of mummies, and spirits, and dead
men come to life from the sleep of ages, and so forth. It impressed
Lang, vastly. He tapped his sage old head and muttered 'Too much
learning.' He has a fad that woman's brains are nurtured best on pap,
and I had the tact to humour him. Oh! I'm a devilish clever fellow,
Pinsent. What do you think?"
"There is little doubt of it," I said politely, very politely, indeed,
for I wished to get as much information from him as I could and also
something to eat and drink. "With your brains you might do anything.
I suspect I have hitherto misjudged you. Still, I wonder that you are
not an archbishop. It seems to me the Church would give you the proper
cloak you need to exercise your talents in."
"Gad!" he cried. "There's point in that remark. But between ourselves,
Pinsent, I aim at higher game than spiritual power."
"Temporal," I suggested.
"The highest," he answered, sitting up. "And what's to prevent me?" he
asked defiantly. "No man's life is safe from me."
I was puzzled. "You'd not make yourself eligible for kingship by
killing kings," I said.
"Kingship be damned," he sneered. "My father was an earl's bastard, but
as for me, I'm a pure democrat. No, no, I'm going to abolish royalty.
It has served its turn."
"But where do you come in?"
"The pleasure of the game is mine, the knowledge and the ecstasy of
power unlimited to make and break."
"Oh! oh! my tiger, having tasted blood already, once at least, the
thirst grows on you."
"Once at least--bah!" he jeered, grinning like a fiend.
"Pardon my ignorance," I entreated. "Who was your latest victim."
"Navarro," he answered, grinning still. "The scamp is a true
clairvoyant and had to be shut up. He leaped from London Bridge the
night you came here and stepped like a poor rabbit into the trap I laid
for you."
"Well," said I, in tones husky with throat dryness and apparent
admiration, "that makes two--Weldon and Navarro?"
"There is a third still," he answered, fairly snapping at the bait. "My
old grandfather, the Earl of Havelock."
"And why did you murder him?"
"For his snobbish refusal to receive me as his kin ten years ago."
"Might one ask how?"
"It's a story to entertain," he answered, licking his lips. "He was
over eighty, but he'd kept all his faculties, else ther'd been no joy
in killing him. A week since, I went to him invisible, entering the
house with my blood cousin, now the Earl, soon after midnight returning
from a carousal. He did not see me, of course, and I took care not to
let him hear. But little care was needed, the degenerate was filthy
drunk. It was easy to find the old earl's room, the young man got
so sober passing it. The door was unlocked, too, so I had no trouble
first and last. I went over to the old chap's bed and looked at him
and laughed to see. He slept with his mouth wide and his toothless
gums were hideously funny. His teeth were in a glass of H2O beside the
bed. I pulled his nose to waken him, having first turned on the lights
full. Then I played the ghost of my dead father. 'Your hour is come,'
says I. 'I'm the spirit of your bastard son come to warn you.' He shook
all over, palsied with fear. 'No--no--no,' he gasped, 'I'm not fit to
die.' 'You're not fit to live,' I whispered, stern as fate. 'How have
you treated the son of your bastard son? Have you been kind to him and
helped him in the world.' 'Mercy, mercy!' he whined. 'I know I have
been remiss, but give one more chance--another year--a week--a day--and
I'll do my duty. I'll bar the entail, I'll give him all.'
"'Wretch!' I hissed--and sat me on his chest. It was heaven sweet to
hear his stifled moans. He did not struggle at all. And my only regret
was it was so soon over. He broke a vessel and smothered in his own
blood. The papers announced next day that he had died of the syncope of
senility peacefully while sleeping. Ha, ha, ha!"
I echoed the heartless villain's laugh, croaking out guffaws. The sound
irritated him. "Stop that raucous row!" he ordered.
"Then stop telling me funny stories, or else give me something to
drink!" I snapped.
He sprang afoot at once. "Lord!" he cried, "I'm not proposing to starve
you to death. Why the deuce did you not remind me? You've been--let's
see--sixty hours without food."
"Sixty!" I gasped. "Impossible."
"It's a fact," he said, and stalked out of the room. But he returned
within a few minutes carrying a tray set with cold meats and wine
which he set on a little table and wheeled before me. Then he freed my
right hand and stood over me with a revolver while I ate. But I could
not eat at once, for the good reason that my arm was paralyzed, and
minutes passed before I could make use of it. Even then it pained like
a raw scald. But I suppressed a reference to its condition and at the
earliest instant cleared the board in the fashion of a famished wolf.
Afterwards he bound me up again, standing behind me to do it, out
of respect for my strength, no doubt. Then he put up his pistol and
resumed his chair.
"Upon my soul, I enjoy a chat with you," he assured me. "You see,
I have no one else to confide in"--here he grinned--"and there's a
peculiar pleasure in unbosoming to a helpless enemy."
"The pleasure is mutual," I protested courteously. "No other man has
given me such mental pabulum."
He closed one eye in a very vulgar manner, "Confess you expire with
curiosity to hear more of my beautiful fiancée--the woman you love!"
"The more readily," I responded, "because I know you'll be delighted to
taunt me with the satisfaction of that same curiosity."
"Ah!" said he. "You are a foeman worthy of my steel. My heart warms
with hate for you; respectful hate." He took out a silver pocket flask
of spirit and filled the cup.
At this he began to sip, eyeing me the while with secret delight at my
carefully repressed impatience. But he was too anxious to torture me
directly to keep me waiting long.
"She's in a drugged sleep this moment," he announced. "I'll keep her
like that till after the funeral."
"That's unlike you," I remarked. "It's almost kind."
"Pish!" said he, "I can't afford to let her out of my control even for
a moment."
"So?"
"So."
"But you will have to let her see her relatives, eh?"
"Fortunately she hasn't one blood relation in England. Her mother was
an Australian, a Victorian farmer's daughter, and Ottley took good care
not to marry the family. She has never even seen one of her mother's
people."
"But her father's?"
"She is just as fortunately placed, from my point of view, in this
regard. Ottley was the only son. And although I believe there is an old
maiden aunt twice removed knocking round somewhere in Wales, I'm not
afraid of her. She's bed-ridden and a pensioner. As I'm trustee of the
estate she'll do what I tell her and stay where she is or I'll know the
reason why."
"I'm sure you will," I agreed with pious fervour.
"The Fates seem to have deliberately conspired to assist me in every
possible way," continued Belleville. "The only real woman friend Miss
Ottley had, Lady Helen Hubbard, has gone to South America with her
husband, and the only man friend who might have helped her sits in that
chair. There is not another soul in England who has either the shadow
of a right or interest to question my treatment. I'm her sole trustee
and as well as that her legal guardian, for although she is over age
she does not come into control of her fortune until she is twenty-seven
unless she marries in the meanwhile."
"You propose, of course, that she shall marry you. When?"
"Oh, in a few days' time. It will naturally be a secret marriage
in order to save scandal. But I'm determined it shall take place
immediately."
"And afterwards--how will you treat her?" I had hard work to grind this
question out.
Belleville gave a nasty laugh. "That depends on herself," he answered.
"If she is a dutiful, docile wife she will have little cause to
grumble."
"And--if not?"
"You know me and ask that?" he cried. Then he laughed again, stood up
and shook himself. "I'm going to indulge in a nice comfortable sleep,"
he said. "You may not know it, Pinsent, but it's almost midnight. Take
my advice and go to by-by, too! Pleasant dreams to you and au revoir."
He went out gaping with yawns, but he turned out the lights as he went,
and once more darkness enfolded me.