Rex Lander was smiling as he drove through the rain, for it seemed to
him that a great trouble had passed from his mind. The solution of all
his difficulties had appeared miraculously. He did not hurry, the end
was sure now and the woman who had completely occupied his mind for
four years, whose portraits by the hundred he had secretly treasured,
whose face he had watched, to whose voice he had listened night after
night, until she had become an obsession that excluded all other
thoughts and fancies, was his!
He had hated his sometime friend since the day Tab had made mock of his
adoration. He had loathed him when the incredible fact had been proved
beyond doubting, that Tab had stolen into the girl’s heart, and had won
her in his absence.
He never doubted that with his great wealth, Ursula Ardfern was his
wife for the asking. He had planned his life on this supposition.
Wealth! The possession of great power, the ability to bestow upon the
object of his choice all that human vanity or human weakness could
desire.
Tab was dead now, he thought complacently, and his confession was
ashes. He regretted the impulse which had made him write. He had had
no intention of doing that when he brought Tab to Mayfield, and he was
rather puzzled at his own stupidity. It was a mad thing to do. Mad? He
frowned. He was not mad. It was very sane to desire a woman of Ursula
Ardfern’s grace and beauty. It was sane enough to want money and to
go to extremes to obtain what he wanted. Throughout all the ages men
had killed others that their position might be enhanced. They were not
madmen. And he was not mad. He had a definite plan, and madmen do not
have definite plans.
Ursula would this night consent to marry him, and would be glad, if
she refused, to consider her decision. He would be her accepted lover
before he left the house, and the thought took his breath away.
“Am I mad?” he asked aloud, as he parked his car in the side turning
where Carver had almost found it once.
Madmen did not take such elaborate precautions. Madmen did not remember
that by some mischance her servant might telephone for the police, nor
carry in their pockets a weighted cord to throw over the telephone wire
and bring it down. They did not even buy the cord of such and such a
length, so much to bind Tab Holland, so much to break the wire and buy
just sufficient for the purpose.
“I am not mad,” said Rex Lander, as he went in through the gate.
The house was in darkness; no lights glowed from the upper window where
she was sleeping.
He had made a very careful reconnaissance of the house, and knew its
vulnerable points. He opened the casement window of the drawing-room,
and had stepped softly inside the room before, in ordinary
circumstances, a servant could have answered his ring at the door.
He was in her room! Her sitting-room! It held the very charm of her
presence, and he would have been content to sit here, absorbing the
atmosphere which she lent to everything she touched, dreaming dreams
as he had dreamt so often in the night watches at Doughty Street, at
his office, when he should have been working, in the solitary walk
home from the theatre, after he had been listening entranced to her
wonderful voice.
He took from his pocket a large electric torch and flashed it round. On
the little cottage piano was a bowl of roses; reverently he drew one
out, nipped off its stalk, and threaded it tenderly in his buttonhole.
Her hand had placed it there. She had taken it from the garden, kissed
it perhaps--he bent his head, and his lips touched the velvety petals.
The door was not locked. He was in the hall, the wide-flagged hall. In
the corner was a grandfather’s clock that ticked sedately.
Her room was in the front of the house: he knew he could not miss it,
but must stand on the landing in an ecstasy of anticipation. He put
down his torch upon the settee, took off his coat and mechanically
smoothed his hair. Then he tip-toed forward. His hand was on the knob
of the door when an arm came round his neck, a lithe sinewy arm that
strangled the cry which rose in his throat.
Such was the man’s strength, that he lifted his assailant bodily from
the ground, and twisting, would have flung him down, but Yeh Ling’s leg
gripped his, and then Rex Lander wrenched his hands free and dived for
his pocket. Yeh Ling saw the gleam of the automatic.
“Sorry,” he breathed.
It seemed to Rex Lander that he felt a momentary spasm of pain in his
left side.
“You!” he gurgled. He coughed deeply once, and Yeh Ling eased him down
to the settee.
The Chinaman stood, his head bent forward, listening. No sound but the
“clac-cloc, clac-cloc” from the hall below. He lifted Lander’s eyelid’s
and touched the ball of the eye gently. The man was dead.
Yeh Ling pulled a blue silk handkerchief from his sleeve and wiped
the perspiration from his face and eyes, replacing the handkerchief
carefully. Then, bending down, he brought the limp arm of Lander
about his neck, and with a jerk, lifted him to his shoulder. Slowly,
painfully, he passed down the stairs with his burden. At the foot of
the stairs he was compelled to lay the man down. He tried to find a
chair, but without success. Sitting on the floor by the side of his
victim, Yeh Ling recovered his breath, and getting up noiselessly,
opened the door wide.
Black as the night was, there was sufficient light to distinguish
objects faintly. He could not hoist the man again; he could only drag
him across the hall. He knocked over a chair in the process, but
fortunately it fell on the carpet and made no sound. Into the garden,
along the paved path, out into the road.
Yeh Ling’s breath came in a thin whistle. He had to stop again to
recover himself. He made another effort to lift the body and was
partially successful. He staggered up the road, his knees giving way
under him, but his will dominated, and when he reached a safe distance
from the house, he put his burden down and went in search of Lander’s
car. This he found with no trouble: it was unlikely that he should
fail, for he had seen the man arrive. He started the engine and brought
the car backward along the road until it was level with the Thing. Then
he got down and hoisted it into the back of the car, and covering it
with a coat he found, lit a cigarette, put on the lights, and drove
slowly along the road toward Storford.
Half-a-mile from where his new house was situated, he turned off
the lights, and covered the remainder of the distance without their
assistance. Drawing his car up close to a hedge, he gathered the limp
figure on his shoulder, and tramped across the muddy ground until
he came to the uprights that supported the cement vats. There was a
flicker of lightning on the horizon. Yeh Ling could see in that flash
(even if he had not known), that no progress had been made in the
construction of his Pillar of Grateful Memories: the tub-like molds
stood in place, the steel core, like an attenuated tree-trunk, leaned
and swayed in the gale drunkenly.
After much seeking, he found the end of a rope fastened to one of the
cross pieces of the platform, and this he tied about the Thing’s waist,
and went to the windlass. A growl of thunder, a more prolonged quiver
and splash of blue light. Looking up, Yeh Ling saw a bundle suspended
in mid-air, and took another turn of the wheel.
The wind was blowing fiercely, sending that limp weight at the rope’s
end swaying to and fro, and Yeh Ling peered up, striving to follow
its every movement. Presently came another flash and another, and yet
another. The body had swung over the edge of the mould. Yeh Ling
released the primitive brake, and the body dropped. From his breast
pocket he took the torch that he had found on the settee and flashed a
light up at the wooden mould. Yes. The Thing had disappeared.
There was a ladder against the wooden casing, and he climbed up, found
another ladder inside, and descended the eight feet which intervened
between the mould and the top of the hardening concrete beneath.
Without loosening the rope, he dragged the body to its feet, and with
quick, strong hands, lashed it to the steel core, winding the rope
round and round. Presently he cut and knotted the binding, and climbed
up again to the top of the wood-work, looking down in an effort to
see the sagging figure. The lightning was now incessant, the thunder
growing in intensity. He saw, and was satisfied. Pulling up the inside
ladder, he dropped over, and in a few moments was himself back on
ground level.
And now he made a search. He had to find the rope which controlled the
shoot, and he discovered it at last. Pulling it gingerly, he heard the
rush of the viscid concrete as it flowed down the shoot into the mould.
He pulled the sluice gate wider yet, and heard the “swish, swish” of
the flood as it gained in volume. After a while he released the rope,
found a shovel, and climbed up the ladder again. The concrete had
nearly reached the top of the mould. There was no sign of Rex Lander.
Plying the tool, he levelled down the uneven surface of the cement, and
descended for the last time.
The storm was local and passing, but if it had been the most
cataclysmic disturbance of nature, Yeh Ling would not have noticed. He
sat on the running-board of Lander’s car, wet to the skin, his hands
raw and bleeding, every bone aching, and he smoked a cigarette and
thought. So thinking, he heard the roar of an oncoming car, and ran to
the cover of the hedge. It passed in a flash.
“I cannot afford to wait,” said Yeh Ling.
He got into the car and drove off, avoiding Storford village, and
taking instead, a road which led by the river. Here he stopped and got
off, keeping his engines running. With his hands he released the clutch
and the car tumbled down the bank into the black water. Then Yeh Ling
went back for his own rattling machine.
When day was breaking, Yeh Ling lay in a hot scented bath in his
apartment overlooking Reed Street. His hands, free from the water, held
a thin selection of Browning’s poems; he was reading Pippa Passes.