IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT.
“Say, Dering, it ain’t twelve o’clock yet. You’ll give me half an hour
in the billiard-room before going to roost?”
Percy Osmond was the speaker. He was getting out of the brougham which
had brought the three gentlemen back from Pincote, where they had been
dining. His voice was thick, and his gait unsteady. It was evident that
he had been indulging too freely in Squire Culpepper’s old port.
“You’ve surely had enough billiards for one night,” said Lionel,
good-humouredly. “I should have thought that the thrashing you gave
young Cope would have satisfied you till to-morrow morning.”
“I want to thrash you as I thrashed him.”
“You shall thrash me as much as you like in the morning.”
“This is what they call country hospitality!” said Osmond, turning to
Kester. “Condemned to go to bed at eleven-thirty, like so many virtuous
peasants in an opera. No more brandy, no more cigars, no more
billiards. Nothing but everlasting bed. How very good we are in the
country!”
Kester laughed. “I told you that you would soon grow tired of the rural
districts,” he said.
“The rural districts themselves are all very nice and proper. I’ve
nothing to say against them,” said Mr. Osmond, as he sat down
deliberately on the stairs, for they were all in the house by this
time. “It’s the people who live in them that I complain of. To send
your guests to bed at eleven-thirty against their will, and to decline
a simple game of billiards with one of them because you’re afraid to
acknowledge that he’s the better player of the two—can this be your old
English hospitality?”
“My dear Osmond, I will play you a game of billiards with pleasure, if
your mind is so set on it,” said Lionel. “I had no idea that you were
so entêté in the matter. Come along. I dare say the lamps are still
alight.”
“Spoken like a nobleman,” said Osmond, with tipsy gravity. “I accept
your apology. Just order up some brandy and seltzer, there’s a good
fellow. St. George, you’ll come and mark for us?”
“With pleasure,” said Kester. “I’ll join you in two minutes.” He left
them at the top of the stairs, they going towards the billiard-room. He
was anxious to know whether Pierre had got back from London.
Yes, there sat Pierre in the dressing-room, quiet, watchful, and alert
as ever. “Everything gone off all right?” said Mr. St. George.
“Everything has gone off quite right, sir,” said Pierre.
“There will be no hitch as regards the telegram to-morrow morning, eh?”
“None whatever, sir.”
“You need not sit up for me.”
“Very well, sir.”
“And yet—on second thoughts—you had perhaps better do so.”
“Yes, sir.”
Kester took off his dress-coat, put on an old shooting-jacket and a
smoking-cap, and then went off to the billiard-room.
“Monsieur St. George means mischief to-night,” said Pierre, smiling to
himself, and rubbing his hands slowly. “It is not very often I see that
light in his eye. When I do see it, I know it means no good to
somebody.”
Kester found the two men chalking their cues. A servant was mixing a
tumbler of brandy-and-seltzer for Osmond.
“I’ll play you one game, a hundred up,” said Osmond, as soon as the
servant had left the room; “and I’ll back my own play for ten pounds.”
“You know that I never bet,” said Lionel.
“I wouldn’t give the snuff of a candle for a fellow who hasn’t the
pluck to back his own play, or his own opinion,” said Osmond, with a
sneer.
“I don’t mind taking you,” said Kester, quickly.
“Done!” said Osmond.
Lionel could not repress a movement of annoyance.
Both he and Osmond were good billiard-players, but he was the better of
the two.
This however was a point which Osmond, who was proud of his ability
with the cue, would never concede. With Lionel billiard-playing was an
easy, natural gift; with Osmond it was the result of intense study and
application.
With the former it seemed the easiest thing in the world to play
well—with the latter one of the most difficult. They had played much
together during Osmond’s visit to Park Newton, but Osmond could never
lose with equanimity. He became disagreeable and quarrelsome the moment
the game began to go against him, and, rather than have a scene under
his own roof, Lionel would often play carelessly and allow his opponent
to win game after game. Such had been his intention in the present case
till Kester foolishly accepted Osmond’s bet. After that, to have lost
the game would have been to lose Kester’s money also; and, foolish as
was the bet, Lionel did not feel disposed to let Osmond benefit by it.
Besides, to win Osmond’s money was to touch him in his only vulnerable
point, and it seemed to Lionel that he fully deserved to be made to
smart.
The game began and went on with varying success. Osmond had drank far
too much wine to play well, and Lionel, in a mood of utter
indifference, missed stroke after stroke in a way that made Kester
groan inwardly with vexation. Lionel, in truth, was disgusted with
himself and disgusted with his opponent. “I’d far sooner follow the
plough all my life on Gatehouse Farm, than be condemned to associate
very much with men like this one,” he said to himself. “And yet the
world calls him a gentleman.”
“Call the game, St. George,” cried Osmond, in his most insolent tone.
“Seventy-five—fifty-two, and your royal highness to play,” said Kester.
“None of your sneers,” said Osmond. “Seventy-five—fifty-two, eh?—Well,
put me on three more—and three more—very carefully. A miss, by Jove!
Ought to have had that middle pocket.”
“Fifty-two—eighty-one,” called St. George. “How does your ten pounds
look now, eh?” asked Osmond, with a chuckle.
“Not very rosy, I must confess,” said Kester, with a shrug of his
shoulders, and an appealing glance at his cousin.
“I hope you are prepared to pay up if you lose,” said Osmond,
insolently.
Kester started to his feet, but Lionel laid a hand on his shoulder.
“The game is not lost yet, Mr. Osmond,” he said, coldly, but
courteously.
“I guess it’s in a dying state as far as you’re concerned,” said
Osmond, coughing his little effeminate cough.
Lionel played and made a brilliant break of thirty.
“Eighty-one—eighty-two,” called Kester, and there was a triumphant ring
in his voice as he did so.
Osmond, white with the rage he could not hide, said nothing. He laid
down his cigar, chalked his cue carefully, played, and missed.
“Just like my luck!” he cried, with an oath. “Dering, you might give a
fellow something decent to smoke,” he added, as he flung his cigar into
the grate.
“The cigars are good ones. I smoke them myself,” said Lionel, quietly.
“Anyhow, they are not fit to offer to a gentleman,”
“I did not offer them to a gentleman. _You_ helped yourself.”
“Of course I did,” he answered, not comprehending the irony of Lionel’s
remark. “And deuced bad smokes they are.”
Lionel played and ran his score up to ninety-eight.
“Two more will make you game,” said Kester.
“Two more would not have made him game if he hadn’t played with my ball
instead of his own,” said Osmond, his lips livid with rage.
“I have not played with your ball instead of my own, Mr. Osmond.”
“I repeat that you have. After the second cannon in your last break,
you played with the wrong ball. You cannoned again, and then resumed
play with your own ball.”
“You are mistaken—indeed you are,” said Lionel, earnestly.
“Oh, of course!” sneered Osmond. “It’s not to be expected that you
would say anything else.”
“Did you see the stroke, Kester?” appealed Lionel.
“Certainly I did. You played with your own ball and not with Mr.
Osmond’s.”
“Of course, Kester is bound to back up all we say! Our bankrupt
relation can’t afford to do otherwise. He has ten pounds on the game,
and——”
“By Heaven, Osmond!” burst out Mr. St. George. Lionel again laid his
hand on his cousin’s shoulder.
“Mr. Osmond is my guest,” he said, impressively. “In a moment of temper
he has made use of certain expressions which he will be the first to
regret to-morrow. Let us look upon the game as a drawn one, and, if
need be, discuss it fully over breakfast in the morning.”
“You have an uncommonly nice way of slipping out of a difficulty,
Dering, I must confess. But it won’t wash with me. The moment I find a
man’s not acting on the square, I brand him before the world as a cheat
and a blackleg.”
“Your language is very strong, Mr. Osmond.”
“Not stronger than the case demands.”
“I assure you again, on my word of honour, that you are mistaken in
saying that I played with the wrong ball.”
“And I assure you, on _my_ word of honour, that I am not mistaken.”
“Even granting for a moment that, in mistake, I did play the wrong
ball, you cannot suppose that I would knowingly attempt to cheat you
for the sake of a paltry ten pounds.”
“But I can and do suppose it,” said Osmond, vehemently. “The fact of
your being a rich man has nothing to do with it. I have known a marquis
cheat at cards for the sake of half a sovereign. Why shouldn’t you try
to cheat me out of ten pounds?”
“Your experience of the world, Mr. Osmond, seems to have been a very
unfortunate one,” said Lionel, coldly.
“Perhaps it has, and perhaps it hasn’t,” said Osmond, savagely. “Anyhow
it has taught me to be on the look-out for rogues.”
“Osmond, are you mad, or drunk, or both?” cried Kester.
“A little of both,” said Lionel, sternly. “If he were not under my
roof, I would horsewhip him till he went down on his knees and
proclaimed himself the liar and bully he really is.”
Osmond was in the act of lifting a glass of brandy-and-seltzer to his
lips as Lionel spoke. He waited, without drinking, till Lionel had
done. “You called me a liar, did you?” he said. “Then, take that!” and
as he spoke, he flung the remaining contents of the glass into Lionel’s
face, and sent the glass itself crashing to the other side of the room.
Another instant and Dering’s terrible fingers were closed round
Osmond’s throat. This last insult was more than he could bear. His
self-control was flung to the winds. Osmond’s nerveless frame quivered
and shook helplessly in the strong man’s grasp. He was as powerless to
help himself as any child would have been. His eyes were starting from
his head, and his face beginning to turn livid, when Kester started
forward.
“Don’t choke him, Li,” he said. “Don’t kill the beggar quite.”
“You mean, contemptible hound!” said Dering, as he loosened his grasp
and flung Osmond away: who staggered and fell to the ground, gasping
for breath, and hardly knowing for the moment what had befallen him.
With a few wild gasps and a tug or two at his cravat, he seemed to
partially recover himself. Raising himself on his left elbow, he put
his right hand deep down inside his waistcoat, and from some secret
pocket there he drew out what looked like a toy pistol, but which was a
deadly weapon enough in competent hands. Before either Kester or Lionel
knew what he was about, he had taken pointblank aim at the latter, and
fired. But drink had made his hand unsteady, and the bullet intended
for Lionel’s brain passed harmlessly through his hair, and lodged in
the panelling behind.
Kester sprang at him, wrenched the pistol from his hand, and flung it
to the other end of the room. As he did so, the thought passed through
his mind: “If that bullet had only been aimed two inches lower, what a
difference it would have made to me!” “Osmond, are you going to turn
assassin?” he said. “You must come with me.” He helped him up from the
ground, took his right arm firmly within his, and led him towards the
door.
“That is the way we serve those who insult us out in the West,” said
Osmond. “Only: for once, I missed my aim. But I’ll fight it out with
him to-morrow, anyhow he likes.”
“To-morrow we will settle our little differences as gentlemen of honour
should settle such things,” said Kester, soothingly. And with these
words he led him from the room.
Lionel sank back on a chair, sick, weary, and disgusted; and so sat
without moving till Kester came back, some ten minutes later.
“What have you done with Osmond?” he said.
“I have given him in charge of my man, who won’t leave him till he has
seen him safely in bed. He would insist on having more brandy. In ten
minutes he will be sleeping the sleep of the drunken.”
Lionel rose with a look of pain, and pressed one hand to the side of
his head.
“Got one of your bad head aches?” asked Kester.
“Yes: about the worst that I ever remember to have had.”
“Is their no cure for them?”
“None but patience.”
“But, surely, they may be alleviated?”
“I have tried remedies without end, but to no purpose.”
“Will you let me make you up a mixture from a prescription of my own? I
have all the materials at hand. If I make it up, will you promise to
take it? I don’t say that it will cure your headache, but I do believe
that it will give you relief.”
There was a strangely anxious, almost haggard look on his face as he
spoke thus, and yet his eyes were never once bent on Lionel. He had
picked up one of the cues, and seemed to be busily examining it. When
he had done speaking, he waited for his cousin’s answer with parted
lips, in a sort of breathless hush.
Lionel laughed a rather dismal laugh.
“Well, if you have any faith in your mixture, I don’t mind trying it,”
he said. “It can’t make the pain worse, and there is just a faint
chance that it may ease it a bit—or that I may fancy that it does,
which is pretty much the same thing.”
The cue dropped from Kester’s fingers and rattled on the floor. “What
was that?” he said, suddenly, looking round with a shiver. “I could
have sworn that somebody touched me on the shoulder.”
“There is no one here but ourselves,” said Lionel, languidly. The pain
was almost more than he could bear up against.
Kester recovered his equanimity after an impatient “Pish” at his folly,
and the two men went slowly out of the billiard-room together. Outside
the door Kester whispered in his cousin’s ear, “I will go and fetch the
mixture, and be back again in two minutes.” Lionel nodded, and Kester
was gone.
“Why need he have whispered to me?” asked Lionel of himself. “There was
no one to overhear him. There’s something queer about him to-night. A
little touch of the blues, perhaps; and yet he never seems to drink
very hard.”
Lionel went off to his rooms—a bedroom and sitting-room en suite, next
to the rooms occupied by Osmond. He took off his coat and tie, and
unbuttoned his waistcoat, and then sat down with his feet on the
fender, waiting for Kester.
Lionel Dering had been troubled with occasional headaches of a very
distressing kind ever since he could remember any thing, and he had
quite made up his mind that he must be so troubled till the end of the
chapter. He had no faith in his cousin’s proposed remedy, but he would
take it simply to oblige Kester.
Kester was not long away. He entered the room presently, carrying a
small silver tankard in his hand.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I feel for this night’s work,” said Lionel.
“What have you done that you should feel sorry for?” asked Kester, as
he put down the tankard on the table.
“I ought to have left the billiard-room instead of flying at poor
little Osmond in the brutal way I did. He was half drunk to-night, and
didn’t know what he was about. He would have apologised in the morning,
and then everything would have come right.”
“Considering the provocation you received I think that you acted
throughout with the greatest forbearance. Osmond, to say the least of
it, is not worthy of any serious consideration.”
“But you will see him in the morning, won’t you, and act as peacemaker
between us, if it be possible to do so?”
“Certainly, if you wish it.”
“I do wish it. The brawl was an utterly disreputable piece of business.
I ought not to have let my temper overmaster me. I ought, under no
circumstances, to have forgotten that Percy Osmond was my guest.”
“Well, never mind all that now. We can discuss the affair fully in the
morning. See, I have brought you the mixture I spoke of for your head.
I think you will find that it will do you good.”
He held out the tankard as he spoke. His pale face looked paler than
ever to-night—his black moustache blacker than ever; but his restless
eyes seemed to fix themselves anywhere rather than on his cousin’s
face. Lionel took the tankard from Kester’s hand, and drank off the
contents at a draught. Then he wiped his lips with his pocket
handkerchief, and having no coat on, he stuffed the handkerchief
carelessly under his braces for the time being.
“And now I’ll leave you to sweet slumber and happy dreams,” said
Kester, as he took back the empty tankard. “Your head will be better by
morning, I do not doubt. Good night.”
“Good night,” responded Lionel, languidly, from his chair by the fire.
Kester went softly out, and closed the door lightly behind him.
Ten minutes passed away, and then Lionel awoke with a start to find
that he had unconsciously fallen into a doze over the fire. The pain in
his head certainly seemed a little better already. But when he rose to
his feet, he found that he could hardly stand. His limbs seemed too
weak to support him, and he was overcome with a dull heavy drowsiness
such as he had never felt before. The room and everything in it began
to rock slowly up and down like the cabin of a ship at sea. There were
only two candles on the table, but Lionel seemed to see a dozen.
Sleep—sleep of the deepest—seemed to be numbing both his heart and his
brain. Consciousness was fast leaving him. He staggered rather than
walked to the couch on the opposite side of the room. He reached it. He
had just sense enough left to fling himself on it, and then he
remembered nothing more.
He remembered nothing more till he awoke next morning. It was broad
daylight when he opened his eyes. He had to gather his wits together
and to think for a minute or two before he could call to mind how and
why it was that he found himself lying there, on his dressing-room
couch, instead of in his bed as usual. Then all the events of the
evening flashed across his mind in a moment: the quarrel in the
billiard-room; the pistol-shot; the pain in his head; the draught given
him by his cousin, and the strange effect it had upon him. “It must
have been a very powerful narcotic,” said Lionel to himself. “But, at
all events, it has cured my headache.”
By turning his head he could see the timepiece on the bureau. It was
nine o’clock, an hour and a half past his usual time for rising. But,
late as it was, he felt a strange disinclination for getting up. He
felt as if he could lie there all day without moving. His mind was
perfectly clear; the pain had left his head; but his limbs seemed
heavy, useless, inert. He would stay there for just ten minutes longer,
he said to himself, and then he would positively get up. Kester would
be waiting breakfast for him, and he was anxious to know how Osmond was
this morning, and what recollection he retained of the fracas
overnight.
But Osmond was up already. He could hear him moving about the next
room. So far all was well. But what would be the result of their
quarrel? Osmond must leave Park Newton, and at once. No other course
was—— Now that he listened more particularly, he could hear the
footsteps of more than one person in the next room—of more than two—of
several. And there were footsteps in the corridor, passing to and fro
as if in a hurry. There was a whispering, too, as if close outside his
door; then the hurried muttering of many voices in Osmond’s room; then
the clash of two doors far away in the opposite wing of the house.
What could it all mean? Was Osmond ill? Or was he simply having his
luggage packed, with the view of leaving for London by the forenoon
train? Lionel sprang to his feet without another moment’s delay. The
sudden change of position made him dizzy. He pressed his fingers over
both his eyes for a moment or two while he recovered himself. Again
there was a noise of whispering in the corridor outside. Lionel made a
step or two forward towards the door, and then came to a dead
stop—horror-stricken by something which he now saw for the first time.
The pocket-handkerchief which he had stuffed carelessly under his
braces overnight had fallen to the ground when he sprang from the
couch. As he stooped to pick it up, he saw that it was stained with
blood. But whose blood? It could not be his own—there was nothing the
matter with him. But if not his, whose?
Now that he looked at himself more closely, there were crimson streaks
on the front of his shirt where the handkerchief had rested against
it—and on his wristbands there were other streaks of the same ominous
colour.
He had picked up the handkerchief, and was gazing at it in a sort of
maze of dread and perplexity, when there came a sudden imperative
knocking at his dressing-room door. Next moment the door was opened,
and, lifting up his bewildered eyes, Lionel saw clustered in the
doorway the frightened faces of five or six of his own servants.
“What is the matter?” he asked, and his voice sounded strangely
unfamiliar both to himself and others.
“Oh, if you please, sir—Mr. Osmond—the gentleman in the next room!”
gasped Pearce the butler.
“What is the matter with Mr. Osmond?”
“He has been murdered in the dead of night!”
Lionel caught at the edge of a table for support. His brain reeled—all
the pulses of his being seemed to stand still in awful dread.
“Murdered! Percy Osmond murdered!” He breathed the words rather than
spoke them aloud. Then for the first time he saw that all those
frightened eyes clustered in the doorway were fixed, not on him, but on
the terrible token which he was still holding in his hand. He dropped
it with a shudders and strode forward towards the door. They all shrank
back as though he were stricken with the plague.
“Great Heaven! they cannot suspect that I have done the deed!” he
whispered to himself. “We must see to this at once,” he said aloud.
No one spoke. There was a dead, ominous silence. The crimson stains on
his shirt were visible, and every eye was now fixed on them. Lionel
paused for a moment at the threshold to gather nerve.
As he stood thus, Pierre Janvard came quickly out of Osmond’s room,
carrying some small article between the thumb and finger of his right
hand. His face was paler than usual, and his half-closed eyes had a
sort of feline expression in them which was not pleasant to look upon.
“If you please, sir, is this your property?” he said, addressing
himself to Lionel, and displaying a small jet stud set in filigree
gold.
Lionel’s fingers went up instinctively to his shirt front in search of
the missing stud.
“Yes, that is my property,” he said. “Where did you find it?”
“I found it just now, sir, clutched in the hand of Mr. Percy Osmond,
who lies murdered in the next room.”