The Question of the Dead Alive
Colonel Darling's courage had never been questioned. But physical
courage is one thing and moral courage is another--very much another;
and it was physical courage in which Darling was strong.
It was beyond question that he could face overwhelming odds in the field
without "batting an eye-lash," as the saying goes. He had proved that
time and time again. Yet from unhappy wedlock he had fled like a craven
wolf and sought surcease in the bottle.
This should have spoken his type of weakness for all to hear. But his
fellow officers were deaf to the truth, forbearing to view the situation
from the only right and real standpoint, though the condition was
undeniably plain.
For the tidings brought by Mayhan the colonel was not in the least
prepared. Again moral courage was demanded, and again he exhibited the
white feather. To Mayhan's faith in his commanding officer the
exhibition was an astonishing setback. Darling had been bowled over by a
mere name.
Others, too, had heard and witnessed with much the same amazement. It
was very clear to them all that Colonel Darling had been thrown into a
white funk by the mere mention of the odd word "Nibbetts."
They could get it from no other angle, and they could reconcile it with
nothing they knew of their man. In view of subsequent events, their
attitude at this moment is important.
Darling was quite five minutes in pulling himself together. Then he
caught the doubt in Mayhan's eyes, and his first impulse was to
explain--or try to. But on second thought, realizing that there was
nothing for him to say, he ordered whisky and soda and held his peace.
And no man asked a question.
The clock pointed to five to eleven. At ten past Colonel Darling left
the club and walked to the hotel, which was less than a quarter of a
mile away. But there his cowardice caught him again, and he paused at
the gate of the compound.
The broad, shaded roadway was deserted, so that what followed went
unobserved. Back and forth, torn by indecision, he irritably and
fearsomely paced. For the uplift of his flagging, flaccid will he seemed
likely to require either the Archimedean lever or the Archimedean screw.
Fifteen awful minutes dragged torturously by before, in sheer
desperation, he entered the hotel and faced the clerk in charge, his
card in his hand.
"Send that to the Visc--" he began, only to pull himself up with a sharp
jolt.
The clerk in charge, not overburdened with wits, failed to catch the
significance of the abbreviation. He only stared and waited.
"Send that to Mr. Mayhan's patient," corrected the colonel, the sweat
beading on brow and chin, and turned to pace the floor as he had paced
the roadway.
The wait, though seemingly interminable, ended too quickly for his
wish, and his rap on the door of Mr. Scripps's room was hesitant and
feeble.
There came in answer an inarticulate rumble, and an instant later across
ten yards of floor space he gazed on the confronting Nibbetts, and
paused, speechless. But the confronting Nibbetts--the nickname by which
the Viscount Kneedrock had been best known to relatives and close
friends--was eminently more composed.
"I am indeed deeply honored," he said and bowed stiffly. The irony of
his tone was withering.
Darling, fighting himself for words, advanced a step or two. Then: "I
should never have known you," he ventured unfortunately.
The other laughed with a hoarse, grim bitterness.
"No?" he queried. "How odd!" And his caller colored to his eyebrows.
"Would you care to sit down?" the viscount continued, pushing a chair
forward with his uninjured right hand. The left, bandaged, was supported
by a sling. "It may help you to some self-possession."
But Colonel Darling, irritated, shook his head.
"I sha'n't detain you," he said. "But--I--you see--you see, I had to
make sure. I should never have believed, otherwise."
"You're quite sure you believe now?"
"Quite. Still, I can't understand. I would have sworn--"
"You did swear," Kneedrock interrupted. "That was the devil of it."
The colonel's lip twitched under his mustache.
"I never had a doubt," he averred. "I--I am unspeakably sorry."
"Much good that does. Still, it's no end decent that you should say so.
Yet, on the whole, I fancy you got rather the worst of it. Will you sit
down to oblige me? I've something I'd like to say to you."
Jack Darling, wretched as never before in his wretched life, slid limply
into the chair that waited.
"Can't I offer you something?" asked Kneedrock, his hand on the bell.
In spite of his pride and because of his misery the colonel accepted.
Certainly the viscount's was the more commanding presence. He seemed to
have taken the situation in hand at once. Darling was still the reverse
of composed. His eyelids twitched and his lips quivered.
The two men were nearly of an age. If there was any advantage here it,
too, was on the side of Kneedrock, who had just turned forty-four. But
in general appearance the colonel contrasted strongly for the better.
He was especially well groomed, whereas Nibbetts was at once leonine,
rugged, and nearly shabby. His tawny hair and beard were ragged and
uncared for. He gave the impression of having been out of the world in
which such things mattered. And this was true.
Having dispensed his hospitality, he reverted to his sneer. He was still
standing when he said:
"I assume Mrs. Darling never showed you my letter of six years ago."
His voice aroused the officer, who was in a reverie.
"Your--your letter?" he queried uncertainly.
"My letter from Zanzibar, in which I said I was starting for the world's
end."
"Yes, I saw that."
"And still you refused to believe? How often our wishes guide our
reason."
Something of resentment, of indignation, struck a light in Darling's
pale eyes, but his voice held to a monotone.
"I couldn't. I--" He hesitated, took a handkerchief from his pocket, and
wiped his perspiring brow. "You see, I--I didn't know your hand,
and--well, the signature might have been any one's. It was, if I
remember, your Christian name only."
"You mean you suspected that Nina was playing you a trick?"
"I--I didn't say so."
"Others saw it, I suppose? Others that knew me? Those that did know my
hand?"
"Yes, I fancy they did. I heard the question discussed."
"What question?"
"The question of the miracle. The question of the dead alive."
Kneedrock's lip curled and his huge shoulders stretched their sinews.
"Huh!" he grunted. "After all, it didn't matter. You'd already married
her. You'd already begun to reap tares."
Now the pale eyes of Darling flashed ominously. "You've no right to say
that," he said shortly with irritation.
"I'm not alone in saying it," returned the honorable viscount calmly.
"I've heard it in the islands of the south seas. You didn't fancy it
was a secret, I hope?"
Colonel Darling was silent.
"She's led you a pretty dance, I dare say."
Still Colonel Darling was silent.
"I understood, too, that the worm had turned? Pray pardon the simile."
Colonel Darling being still silent, Kneedrock smiled.
"I was fool enough to come all the way back here with the idea of
punishing you," he pursued. "But I've changed my mind about that. You're
getting punishment enough, that's plain. So I am going to thank you
instead. I know now what was spared me. Darling, you have my sympathy;
you have really."
Darling got suddenly to his feet. "Damn your sympathy!" he cried. "I
don't know what you've heard. But I do know it isn't true."
And at that the viscount laughed. "I haven't heard anything," he
retorted. "I've seen. And I'm like you--I believe what my eyes tell me.
Your eyes told you I was butchered to death at Spion Kop, and you
couldn't be convinced I wasn't until you saw me here to-night
resurrected. You wouldn't take my written word, and I can't take your
spoken word. The evidence to the contrary is too strong."
The colonel was again silent. He lifted his glass and drained it.
"I'm glad you called," Kneedrock continued. "Not that I needed any
further conviction, but--"
"Further conviction?" Darling broke in. "I thought--"
"That you were yourself the only conviction. Oh, no. I knew before you
came. I saw before you came. I had already made up my mind to go back
without seeing you."
Darling gazed at him in mingled amazement and perplexity.
"I--I don't understand," he faltered. "You--you've seen Nina, perhaps?"
"I've seen Nina."
"And it was she who told you?"
"She hasn't spoken to me. I am going away without so much as a word from
her or to her."
The colonel's perplexity waxed greater. "Will you kindly tell me what
under Heaven you're driving at? It's all a riddle to me--a damned--"
"I'll not tell you another word," the other answered. "You must know all
I do--and more, I dare say. Why should I add anything to the bare fact
that I know where the fault lies, and that it is not in you?"
"Because you've said too much to leave it where it is," Darling
insisted. "You must say it. You must say what you saw, and where and
when you saw it."
But then Kneedrock laughed again in his grim, bitter fashion.
"You're not my superior officer here, remember," he came back. "I obey
no commands but my own; and I refuse to submit to dictation."
The red flag of anger overspread Darling's visage.
"I infer that you have been spying," he charged.
"You may infer what you please--even that if it gives you any
satisfaction. I shall not presume to dictate to you, either."
At that instant the bandaged hand protruded by chance a bit beyond its
sling, and Darling's gaze rested upon it.
"I begin to see," he said more calmly.
The other noted the look and caught the inference. "Oh, this!" he
exclaimed, holding it up. "Rather nasty."
"How did you get it?" asked the colonel boldly.
"Man-eater," was the answer. "Vicious beast!"
"You've been in the jungle, then?"
Kneedrock calmly began refilling his pipe. "Didn't Mayhan tell you?" he
queried.
"Not a word."
"Ah! Yes, I've been in the jungle, and I stumbled on a she-tiger's
lair." It was not intentional, but the manner of the speech gave it a
significance aside from the phrasing.
Darling was standing by a table, and as he dropped his eyes musingly
they rested on a small object that lay beside the tray of decanters and
glasses. In an instant he was holding it up.
"May I have this?" he asked. It was a .45-caliber bullet, and the blood
on it was still damp.
"No," refused Kneedrock flatly.
"I fancied not," rejoined the colonel. "You're keeping it as a souvenir,
I suppose."
"I'm keeping it as evidence," the viscount said, lighting his pipe.
* * * * *
Later that night Jack Darling did an utterly unheard of thing. He
knocked loudly on the door of his wife's bed-chamber and demanded
admittance.
Nina, who had not yet fallen asleep, sat up in alarm, gathered herself
together with an effort, and then, strangely enough, admitted her
husband without protest. And if there can be a comparison in unheard of
things, this was still more utterly unheard of.
She had turned up the reading-lamp, which, being shaded and its glow
directed toward a limited area, did little more than make the general
darkness of the room visible. Then she sat down on the bed's edge within
the glow's circumference and waited.
Jack Darling didn't sit down. He stood in the shadow biting the ends of
his mustache, his hands behind him, and his gaze, which was fixed on
Nina, narrowed. She felt in her heart that something momentous was about
to transpire; and it would be idle to say she was without suspicion of
the underlying cause. For the report brought her by young Andrews had
fallen far short of either satisfying or giving adequate relief to her
anxieties.
Still she was not prepared for her husband's first and deliberately
spoken sentence, which was:
"I have just come from Harry Kneedrock."
Nina wanted to scream then, but she couldn't. Her breath came too short.
And she needed every bit of breath she could draw, because her heart had
grown suddenly big in her breast and was pounding fearfully.
She felt, too, that if she opened her mouth it must pop out. It was only
by breathing rapidly and keeping her lips tight-closed that she kept it
in.
"He arrived in Umballa this evening early," Jack Darling pursued. "He
saw you and got an ugly shot in the hand from--this."
He held something up which caught and reflected all the diffused light
that had stolen outside the illuminated circle; and she saw it was the
Andrews automatic. Still she couldn't have spoken had death threatened
her for her silence.
"I found it in the drawing-room. Its magazine lacks a single cartridge.
I've talked to Jowar, and everything fits. But there's something that
Kneedrock won't say and that Jowar doesn't know. So I've come to you for
it, and you'll tell me. You must."
He waited a moment for her to say something, but she was still mute. Her
eyes were all pupils. They appeared like two black holes in a face
devoid of any tint of color, for her lips were blanched and her lifted
brows were hidden behind her drooping hair.
"I must know what it was that Kneedrock saw," he pressed.
Her hands were gripping the mattress on either side of her--gripping it
until her finger-nails doubled and then broke.
"And I must know why he was shot at," he added.
And then Nina, who had been doubling all the while, broke, too. Before
Darling could reach her she pitched forward, a hunched heap on the
floor.