PART III

THE GARRET

I

Poor, fussy, well-meaning Kitty had done it--had done it all

unwittingly. In telling her vaguely where I lived I had left the number

of my house unspecified, and when a letter had come for me to the

Business College on an evening when I had announced my intention of

being away, she, inspired by the urgency of my affairs, had got a

directory and readdressed the letter to me at Rixon Tebb & Masters'. It

was a letter from the firm into whose service I hoped soon to enter, and

I examined the flap of the envelope carefully when finally it did come

into my hands. Polwhele (I have little doubt it was he) had steamed it

open, read it and closed it again.

This time all I could get out of Gayns, whom I once more approached, was

that Rixon Tebb & Masters' had no use for an employee whose mind was

already elsewhere.

It was true that the sack from Rixon Tebb & Masters' was not now a

matter of the first importance. That was not the thunderbolt. Scanty as

my wages were I had still saved up nearly three pounds out of them;

and, as the letter that Polwhele had tampered with contained the news

that I might hold myself in readiness to begin my new work a month from

that date, the sum was enough to tide me over. But the letter had a

postscript. This was a merely formal intimation that it was assumed that

I could produce the usual references of steadiness, reliability and so

forth. I myself never dreamed that I should be denied them.

I was denied them, however, by Polwhele.

"But--but," I stammered, aghast.

Polwhele referred me to my real employers, the Agency. I gave him a long

and gradually lowering stare.

"Do you mean----" I began slowly.

"I mean what I say," he snapped; and as he turned away he added in a

lower voice, "You ain't surprised, are you?"

And, remembering how I had seen him with his fingers in Mr Masters'

waste-paper basket, I could not say I was.

Again I sought Gayns. This time the cashier flew into a passion.

"Confound you!" he cried. "You're more trouble than all the rest of them

put together! What is it now? A character? Oh yes, you can have a

character! I'd advise you not to show it to anybody, though! First

leaving us--then coming back--then days off--then dickering with other

firms! Go to Polwhele--go to the Agency--go to hell!"

I left Rixon Tebb & Masters' without references.

Without references my new firm refused to have anything whatever to do

with me.

I come now to the deepest slough of my poverty.

It was early in the month of June that I was thrown out of work, with

thirty-five shillings in my pocket. The drizzling winter had given place

to a glorious early summer, and the days increased in heat until they

became torrid. Men walked Piccadilly at night in evening dress, with

their light dust-coats thrown over their arms; and ragged urchins hailed

the appearance of watercarts with whoops of joy and danced barelegged in

the refreshing puddles behind them. Horses wore straw bonnets, out of

which their ears stuck ludicrously up; in whole districts the water

supply began to be cut off at certain hours of the day; the pitiless sun

gave every street the appearance of a hard, hot snapshot; and, as the

heat got on people's nerves, the cries of children at play became

intolerably strident.

My corner at King's Cross was well-nigh insupportable. Why the quantity

of torn paper in the gutters should redouble the moment the sun begins

to glare on London I do not know, unless it be that the fried fish and

ready-cooked provision businesses suddenly boom; and certainly the

refuse in which I frequently walked ankle-deep was mostly heavy with

grease. Even had I been able to afford it, my "pull-up" had now become

such a stove that I do not think I could have entered it. I dined, or

rather supped, late at night, at one of the coffee-stalls where the

electric trams now sweep round from Gray's Inn Road to St Pancras

Station; and I breakfasted (my only other meal) on bread and the water I

drew from my tap on the landing before it was cut off. The council

didn't save much in my case by cutting the supply off. I filled every

vessel I could lay my hands on early in the morning. As Miss Causton had

once said, one must be clean, and Archie, whose bath I could now have

passed my days in, was seldom to be found in his rooms near the

Foundling Hospital now.

For three weeks I trudged the streets looking for work; and then a bit

of luck befell me. The new "professor" at the college broke down under

the heat; it was not desired to give up the Friday evening

advertisement-writing class; and I daresay my anomalous standing at the

place, something between student and pathetic high-and-dry

"institution," was the cause of its being offered to me. I got five

shillings for the evening, and that five shillings kept me for five

days. I discovered that I need not pay my rent. The first week I missed

doing this I made a shamefaced apology to my landlord, the publican,

and discovered that he was not a bad sort. It was too hot to worry about

trifles, he said, and so set himself a precedent that cost him pretty

dearly until, long afterwards, I saw to it that he was not the loser for

having harboured me during that time.

Wherever I sought work my inability to produce a character damned me;

and on the other hand I was not a Discharged Prisoner. Two or three

times I was taken on casually, once as a packer at a large furniture

emporium, once at a stocktaking for bankruptcy purposes, and once (I

forget how I tumbled into this) I spent a whole day locked in an upper

room of a town hall, counting the voting-papers in some borough or

vestry election--a lucrative ten-shilling job. This was before I got,

and retained for some weeks (until I had the Corps of Commissionaires

down on me), the post of hall porter at the offices of a sporting paper.

I will tell you about that presently. You will see that I am making all

the haste I can to have done with this horrible time.

Among other things, the general deterioration in my appearance had

forced me to tell Kitty Windus that I was out of work. But I had made

light of it, saying that, on the whole, it was rather a good thing, as I

needed some sort of a spur; but I daresay Alf and Frank had said the

same thing many a time. Presently my former boastings, about the great

things I was shortly going to do, had committed me to the lie that I

had at last found employment. It was my week's stocktaking that I told

this particular lie about, and Kitty never knew when that temporary job

came to an end. Nor, poor girl, did I tell her what she had done when

she had forwarded that letter to Rixon Tebb & Masters'. It would become

me ill to say that she stuck to me because it was myself or nothing for

her; already I had begun to dread that it would be no easy matter to get

rid of her when I might find it necessary to do so: and many a time, as

my despair grew upon me, sweeping all personal reluctances and physical

repugnances aside, I threw pride to the winds, and ate, in her

sitting-room in Percy Street, the only food I had tasted during the

day--becoming an Alf or a Frank in very fact.

For--perhaps this was partly the effect of the unrelenting heat--her

insipid coquetries had begun to exasperate me more and more. I became

increasingly petulant when I was commanded to "tiss eentie finger" and

to look into the little scalene triangles of her eyes and say that I

loved her. Presently, I am afraid, I began to cause her many tears. We

wrangled frequently. I was "near," I was "close," I did not treat her as

other engaged girls were treated, I never took her anywhere except for a

bus ride, or to a cheap theatre once in a blue moon.

Then one day, without warning, she brought it up against me that I had

"given her the slip" that afternoon on Wimbledon Common.

Of this I was technically so innocent, but morally so entirely guilty,

that I broke out into anger, and there was a scene.

"I know some girls are younger and prettier than I am," she broke out,

with unbridled temper, "but you _did_ ask me to marry you after all."

"So I did," I admitted, in a tone that made her flame.

"Yes," she cried shrilly. "And not only that--I've seen you looking at

Louie Causton too."

"Oh?" I said, noting with relief that her jealousy was not specially of

Evie. "Well, there are one or two pleasing points about her."

"And she was the only one you danced with at the party."

"Before I asked you to marry me?"

"And me--you've never _once_ taken me to a dance, though I've _seen_

Rachel Levey offer you tickets."

"Perhaps you've seen me look at Miss Levey too?"

"And you never spoke to me, and sat behind the books with Louie."

"Well, there only remains one other suggestion for you to make."

And so on. It was degrading in the extreme. But I was sufficiently

punished for it later, when she lay with her head on my breast, sobbing

out phrases of contrition for her vindictive temper and supplication for

pardon.

All, all gone now was the hour of exaltation in which I had heard the

nightingale sing and had felt my glowing girl's breast heaving against

my own. I was a hungry, desperate man, living a life against which I

knew I should not be able to bear up indefinitely, and already glancing

into the public-house as I entered by my side door and beginning to

wonder whether they were not wiser than I who made use of the anodyne of

drink. Why not drink, and forget for at least an hour? And one night,

meeting Mackie again, and having eaten little, I did succumb, and for

the first time in my life got drunk. I got drunk at his expense. He had

heard the news of Louie Causton, and wanted to talk about it. I, like a

cur, let him.... I broke away from him at last, but not until my

loosened tongue had said I know not what.

My relation with Evie during this time is difficult to define. She never

quite put me back again into the place I had occupied before that

Saturday when we had heard the nightingale together, but newer

preoccupations overlay this relation. Archie now had money (I never knew

quite how much) at his command; but he still showed no sign of putting

it to the use Miss Angela, if not I, had expected--that of entering

into a formal engagement with Evie. Miss Angela found excuses for this

out of her own imagination--that his father had only lately died, and so

on; but I could have set her right even then. I knew how things were

drifting. From the little I remembered of my talk with Mackie, Archie

had found in his coming into money quite another opportunity. What might

have facilitated his marriage with Evie actually delayed it. He was

getting rid of his money in Leicester Square again.

So Evie's name was associated with his, and yet there was no plighting

between them, and Evie swayed, now happy but with a fear, now

despairing, but not hopelessly so. There was no trouble she could have

brought openly to me even had she wished, but nevertheless she often

turned to me significantly full of silence. She, Kitty and I often

walked homewards together through the sweltering streets, and when Evie

had left us Kitty would speak her mind freely about Archie Merridew.

"He's one of the Jewness Dorey now!" she exclaimed one evening, taking

the phrase, I don't doubt, from one of her "better class" novels. "And

it's no good saying it's got nothing to do with us! I think _you_ ought

to give him a talking-to!"

This was in the typewriting-room of the college, within ten minutes of

the close of an advertisement-writing evening.

"What can I say to him?" I asked. "It's no business of mine." She little

knew how much I had made it my business.

"Oh, that's just like a man!" she said impatiently, all aglow with the

_esprit de sexe_. "The poor child's moping and fretting, and you say

it's no business of yours! Of course it's the business of _all_ her

friends!"

"Of all her women friends, maybe," I answered. "Well, if that's so, why

don't you and Miss Angela have a talk about it?"

"As if we hadn't--twenty!" she cried. "You and your bright ideas. It

isn't fair--it _isn't_ fair to Evie!"

"But what is it you hope for?" I asked.

She stared. "Why, that he'll marry her, of course!"

"Quite so. But I don't mean that. I mean, do you and Miss Angela think

you can bring any pressure to bear?"

"Yes, I do--young idiot!" she broke out. "He ought to be ashamed of

himself!"

And I didn't doubt that a certain amount of pressure might be brought to

bear. If it was made less trouble for Archie to marry than not to marry,

he would probably marry. He had not manhood enough, if it was clearly

shown that marriage was expected of him, to hold out. And I knew how

those marriages turned out.... I meditated.

"But," I objected, "why meddle? You know what a marriage of that kind

would be! You see what he is anyway!"

But here I had touched Kitty's limitation. For her, as for her novels,

marriage was the end of the story. If joybells closed it nothing after

that mattered, and the look she gave me was a personal confirmation.

"But," she went on presently, "you could help, Jeff. We women can't talk

to him--though he's not getting very many smiles from _me_ just now!"

I smiled. "You're an unscrupulous crew," I remarked.

"Will you see him?"

"Well--I won't say I won't."

"But _will_ you?"

"Perhaps--if I see a fitting opportunity."

"A fitting. Look!" Her voice dropped. Evie had just come into the

typewriting-room on her way to wash her hands before leaving. "I'll tell

you what," Kitty said quickly; "you go along with her now. See if it

isn't as I say. Then tell me whether you won't give that little idiot a

dressing-down at once."

She had quite forgotten that twinge of jealousy that had been the cause

of our recent scene. If she hadn't, the more honour to her sense of sex

comradeship. It was about this time that I was beginning quite

frequently to forget that our relation was that of lovers, and as long

as I could forget that, she had pathetic little magnanimities that I

even admired.

"All right, if you wish it," I said.

So for once Evie's society was absolutely thrust upon me.

That night she was all that Kitty had said--plunged in despondency. She

was, of course, "in love with" Archie, but that after all is only a

generic expression. Even love comes down to cases, and I think that in

her case, even then, she was wondering whether, had things happened a

little differently, she might not have been equally "in love" with

somebody else. Of that I myself had never a doubt. With Archie's money,

or even a decent job, I would have flouted the whole world in my

triumphant security that I could make her mine. And I should do so yet.

Though for the present my power might go a-begging, I vowed that it

should yet be taken and richly paid for. The dark and solid houses were

less solid than that something I knew to be within myself, that makes

and unmakes houses and streets and towns and lands.... But gently,

gently; I was not out of the mire yet; by-and-by would be time enough

for these boastings; things must go on as they were for a little while

longer.

So though I did not speak a word to her that night that bore directly on

the case as Kitty understood it, I did more. I did--I know this

now--make her feel that, glooms and delights apart, she had in me an

affectionate friend to whom she would not come with troubles in vain. I

have been told, and am inclined to believe it, that I have this power

with women.

And her eyes were soft with friendship as I left her.

"Good night, Jeff," she said fondly, as I took her hand. "I do like

being with you sometimes."

And that night, as I lay half suffocated in the room I did not even pay

rent for, the words rang like a chime in my head until the morning

noises marked the beginning of another torrid day.

* * * * *

The commissionaire's job I spoke of I got in an odd way. I got it

through the combination of my unusual size with unusual strength. I was

walking along Fleet Street that day when a horse fell, and I, with

others, helped to raise it again. When we had finished, a man at my

elbow spoke both casually and penetratingly.

"That was as good as anything I've seen for weeks," he said. "Have you

had much practice in holding a whole horse up while the others fasten

the buckles?"

I laughed. I had certainly had the heavy end of the job, but "Not quite

that," I said.

He gave me a scrutinising look. "Out o' work?" it seemed to say; but he

did not speak the words.

"Here, come and have a drink," he said.

His name was Pettinger. He was a sporting journalist, and so a judge of

"form" and "condition." I was not in the best of either, but I must have

struck him as having "the makings" of I don't quite know what. He gave

me a drink, which I didn't want, and a plate of sandwiches, which I did

want rather badly; and he also gave me, as I say, this commissionaire's

job. Pettinger is a friend of mine to this day; and since he is a simple

and lovable animal of a fellow (he fully concurs in this description of

himself) he is the only man I can bear to speak much to about that time

when, clad in a sky-blue uniform, I kept the door of his newspaper

office, touching my cap to proprietors, and being jocularly prodded by

sportsmen and journalists, as if I had been an ox at Smithfield Show.

II

It was about this time that Archie Merridew's light was once more

beginning to show regularly, evening after evening, over the leads of

his top floor near the Foundling Hospital. This was after a period of

months during which his abode had been in complete darkness. But as his

visits to the college had become infrequent, and as I did not know what

he might be up to, I had kept away.

When, some little after my commission from Kitty, I did look him up

again, it was by no means that I might deliver Kitty's message. I went,

rather, as a matter of attention to detail. There were certain things I

could not afford not to know, and, more important, there were certain

appearances I could not afford not to keep up. Nevertheless I did not

dream with what consequences my visit of that evening would presently be

fraught.

I was in a state of great nervous irritability before I went. The

weather still continued almost insupportably hot, and to my other

discomforts had been added a new perturbation that worked on me none the

less that in all probability it was quite groundless. The evening papers

had started a scare about "low-flash oil"; my red and green room was

little cooler than a furnace; and I had lately begun to glance at my

cheap lamp from time to time as if it had been a bomb. I mention this

merely as an indication of the state to which I was becoming reduced. I

thought of that lamp, I remember, as I walked from the college to

Archie's rooms that night and half hoped in my peevishness that the

thing had exploded in my absence.

It was only ten o'clock, but Archie was already in bed. He wore blue

silk pyjamas and on a small table by the side of his bed stood a

medicine bottle and a siphon; but when I asked him whether he was ill

that he had need of these last he made light of them. It was this

beastly weather, he said, and perhaps the beastly weather also accounted

for his drinking the milk that Jane presently brought up in a sealed

bottle. When Jane had gone, Archie, with an attempt at his old disarming

impertinence, turned to me and said, "Well--how's the blue uniform,

Jeff?"

Ah! He knew of that!

"Didn't think I'd heard, did you?" he grinned. "Well, I only did hear

yesterday. Nothing to be ashamed of, old chap. I know one of your

fellows, you know----"

I too knew the sub-editor whose name he mentioned. He was something of a

bird of the night too. Already the fact that Archie knew of my

occupation had set me swiftly revolving the new dispositions I should

certainly have to make in my relation to Kitty and Evie.

"Ah, yes," I said. "I shouldn't attempt to drink with the sub-editor of

a sporting paper if I were you. You've been trying, I expect," I added,

looking suspiciously at him. He seemed drawn and ill. He never had any

stamina.

"Sha'n't tell tales out of school," he replied, with another weak

attempt at his old facetiousness. "Well, how's the fair Kitty?"

Ill as he was, I could have boxed his ears for the tone of it, but I

answered his question, and he grinned again.

"Rare good sort," he said appreciatively. "Give us a splash of that

soda, and pass those cigarettes, Jeff...." Then, lighting a cigarette,

"Look here, you old scoundrel," he said, "I've got a crow to pluck with

you! Guess what it is?"

I could not.

"Well," he leered. "I saw Mackie the other night."

You will remember what had happened the last time I myself had seen

Mackie.

"So there!" he triumphed, after some recital or other that had for its

point my single fit of intoxication. "_Now_ what about it, you old

humbug?" he demanded.

I knew I must keep my face and smile. I did not know why I must do these

things, but I did them, looking at him and noticing again how sallow and

changed he was. Then I looked about the room, mentally commenting on the

evidences of the patrimony that had done him so little good--his new

dressing-gown, his silver-topped bottles, and a new travelling-case,

these things thrown anyhow among his older belongings. One of the newer

objects I held in my hand; it was the gold cigarette case I had passed

him; and I gazed smiling at it as he went on.

"Yes," he told me, with humorous accusation; "Mackie told me all about

it--ha ha ha! What price the old puritan Jeff now? Eh? Sad dog, sad

dog!"

I replied, quite calmly, that the dissipations of commissionaires were

limited by their circumstances.

"And what the devil are you doing being a commissionaire?" he demanded.

"I'll tell you what it was, Jeff," he continued familiarly, "that

failure in Method seems to me to have broken you all up. What the

dickens made you fail?"

I was conscious of an interior stirring of hate. What, indeed, had made

me fail!

"Oh, over-confidence, I suppose," I answered lightly.

And he continued to talk.

At last I rose and said good-night. He raised himself on one elbow in

order to shake hands.

"Come in again and see a chap soon," he said. "It's hellish slow up here

all alone."

I was already at the door, but I turned abruptly.

"What do you mean?" I said. "Do you mean you're laid up? You said you

weren't."

But he only gave a confused little laugh. "Eh? Laid up? Of course not!

Can't a chap turn in early once in a while?"

"'Once in a while'?... But you said----"

"That you might come in and see me? Well, do. No harm in that, is there?

Say I'm going slow for a bit, that's all," he added.

I agreed with him that to "go slow" for a bit was a course he might with

advantage have adopted some time ago, and, though considerably puzzled,

I turned slowly away.

My lamp, I discovered when I reached my dwelling again, had not exploded

in my absence; but I did not light it. This was not, of course, through

any actual fear; it was merely part of my general nervous condition. I

remember, as still further explaining that condition, that I had passed

a Board School that day as the children had poured out for their morning

recess of a quarter of an hour; I have said how more than commonly

strident the heat seemed to make all noises; and at the sudden outburst

of the children I had broken into a copious flood of perspiration. I was

not much steadier now. Pushing the lamp aside I flung up my window as

high as it would go, drew out my old string-mended chair, and, sitting

down, began to stare at the "_Sarcey's Fluid_" advertisement across the

way.

The rippling of its incandescents had a trick that always fascinated and

irritated me intensely. Before the last letter of the first word was an

apostrophe, but its single bright spot always appeared out of its proper

order. S--A--R--, and so on, the thing ran, but the whole legend was

complete before that apostrophe started into its place. I used sometimes

to watch as if I hoped the whole mechanism might suddenly alter, but, of

course, it never did. I began to watch it again that night, while my

ceiling and the wall above my bed became red and green, red and green,

red and green....

I am afraid that what I am now about to say I shall have to ask you to

take on trust. I have no evidence to offer of a phenomenon that, I am

told, is shared by madness and genius alike. Nor will I trouble you

either with any talk of prevision or of inner certitude, nor with the

gradually deepening brooding that led up to this phenomenon--the

brooding over the countless slights and slurs and rubs I had suffered

from Archie Merridew's reckless and ignorant tongue ever since I have

known him--my appearance, my private affairs, the side-splitting joke of

Jeffries being in love. I will pass straight to the sudden and complete

illumination that, as I sat there, so irradiated my intelligence that I

wondered why it had come to me now, an hour later, and not then, the

moment I had seen him lying at that extraordinarily early hour in bed.

It came, this flash of illumination, in exactly the same manner as the

changing of the electrograph before my eyes--and, as you will see in a

moment, with the same bloody apostrophe. And with its coming my room was

not more suffused with the crimson glare than my mind suddenly was with

the same morbid and flaming and dangerous hue.

_I had suddenly realised what was really the matter with Archie._

Let me now tell you the kind of man I have sometimes, though possibly

mistakenly, supposed myself to be.

He has aspired, that man, I have sometimes supposed myself to be, to the

stars; but his feet have also known the burning bottom of the pit. His

heart has been lifted up until sometimes, through eyes drowned with

tears, he has had his poor and fragmentary glimpse of a larger

Fatherhood than earth knows; but he has also exchanged intelligence

with the devil. His heart has flowered with loves and charities; but

that same heart has also been a rock with a toad in it. He was born in

heaven, but has lodged in hell. So in him, according as he has been

used, have opposites met.

And yet, as I say, I may be wrong in supposing that I am this man.

Yet the man who, in my red and green room that night, leaped up from his

chair, and with a bursting, ringing cry shook his hand on high, was not

the James Herbert Jeffries who now writes this feverish shorthand. He

who writes the shorthand was not the same James Herbert Jeffries who

stood, with those violent dyes flooding his face, vowing that if that

sick young buyer of infected merchandise dreamed for one instant of

doing that which it was sought to make him do, and which apparently he

was ready to do, he should pay for it with the last thing he had to

give. That James Herbert Jeffries was plunged in that hour into a place

of stench and infernal brightness that God forbid was ever his destined

abode.

I cried aloud, shaking my fist up at my cracked and blackened ceiling:

"_Though Christ died for man in vain ... let him but think of it ... let

him ... let him ... and I...._"

After that I passed into a curious state of mind. You have heard how I

make, when I can, anger serviceable to me, but here was an anger past my

bringing into control. Yet, as ordinarily I plan calmly, so was I calm

up to a certain point now. The result of these two things was that my

brain worked like a worn and cranky machine, sometimes doing more than

it ought, sometimes less; sometimes jerking startlingly ahead, sometimes

refusing to work at all. And as there was thus no continuity in my

thought, and as my recollections are curiously associated with that

changing red and green that now for the first time seems to me to have

run through my story like a fateful burden of jealousy and blood, I will

set down such isolated reflections as rise of themselves out of the

jumble of my mind.

* * * * *

_Crime_ (I realise that the word leaps with some suddenness into these

pages) has suffered more at the hands of criminals than it has at the

hands of justice. There are few perfect crimes. Most of them are

accidental, the mere explosion of momentary passion. And that is well,

for the world wants few masterpieces in that sort. I have not read De

Quincey's essay on the subject, nor ever shall now; but if crime is to

be considered as an artistic medium, it is the only medium in which

bungling is better worth to the world than competence. Other arts one

prefers to see superlatively practised or not at all; but it is only of

the bungled crime that man can endure to think.

* * * * *

The ordinary criminal begins at the wrong end. Dull fellow that he is he

does not recognise that his first task must be the creation of an

attitude of mind. Or if a glimmering of this does cross his inflamed

consciousness, he thinks that it is the attitude of his own mind that is

of the first consequence. That is why he suffers either the retribution

of justice or the visitings of his own conscience. In either of these

cases his act is unsuccessfully committed. He pays in common with his

victim.

* * * * *

It is not the injured man who knows the full quality of hate. It is the

one who injures. The injurer has no refuge from his own transgression;

he has him whom he has injured constantly upon his mind--perhaps upon

his soul. Another is the lord of his peace of mind. Thus it is

peculiarly the wronged man's part to pardon, but when the wronged man

would not pardon, but would avenge for another's sake?

* * * * *

Could Archie be given a mind more sensitive than a stone? Could his weak

and spongy nature be hardened to a point of view? Could such an

attitude be created in him that what otherwise would have been an

assault would take on the stern justice of a punishment? Can any dull or

egotistical mind be either punished or rewarded? Ultimately, can the God

who created it do anything save quench it again? Wickedness may be

vanquished at the last, but Ignorance----? And Conceit----?

* * * * *

But bah! Probably he was not even thinking of it. Perhaps he was even

now seeking a way out. Well, I would help him. Ten words to him in

private.... Faugh!

So _that_ was it.... And the world allows it! Could he be proved to be

merely insane at the time of his marriage the world would not allow it;

a mental insufficiency beyond his control would be a bar; but this

other, that he had deliberately sought, would be allowed. And Evie....

* * * * *

That bloody apostrophe again!...

* * * * *

The criminal forgets too much in the moment of action. It is a sort of

stage fright. Rehearsed perfectly, however.... Not that the thing is not

admittedly difficult. A button, a fingerprint, a drop of blood, the

resources of the laboratory, the microscope, the spectroscope--oh yes,

it cannot be said that there is not a deal to watch. And a memory, a

chance association years afterwards, an attack of debility rendering the

eyes subject to deceits--any one of these things may at any moment throw

him into the hands of the law as a fate more merciful than that which he

has not been clever enough to forestall within himself. Yes, there is

much to consider; but then, as all the world knows, masterpieces of

crime or what not, are difficult of accomplishment.

Ten words, then, on the morrow, and he would never dare....

* * * * *

But bah! I was not even sure! He _could_ not be contemplating it, and I

was vile to think it.... Still, prudence. I must make sure. Till then,

nothing--not even these thoughts that ticked as if out of a tape-machine

from my brain. To-morrow....

* * * * *

Yet, ah! I was sure for all that!

* * * * *

This red and green, this red and green!

* * * * *

These are such fragments of it all as I can remember. I don't know how

long they occupied me. I had begun to trace with my fingers little

patterns on the deal top of my table, patterns that sometimes had a

meaning for me, sometimes not, but that always had a meaning for Archie

Merridew if he thought ... if he as much as thought....

Then the red and green advertisement was switched off suddenly. Only a

rhomb of dim gaslight on my ceiling remained....

But I still sat in the darkness, my brain taking those backward and

forward jerks, and my lips muttering, though without sound, that if he

dreamed ... if he as much as dreamed....

III

It was a "record" even for myself to get the sack twice in one week, but

that now befell me. They gave me no notice at the newspaper office, but

they were decent, and I had a fortnight's wages in lieu of it. Pettinger

especially showed himself my friend.

"It's rough on you," he said, "but I really don't see that anybody's to

blame.... Look here, I'll tell you what we'll do. Go down to my place at

Bedford; I'll telephone them you're coming; and you can do what there is

to do in my garden for a week or two until something turns up. You won't

mind working under the old chap I've got there? Right. Off you go.

You've got your money, haven't you?"

"I shall have to come up for Friday evening; I've a class," I said.

"Well, have a change till then. You look as if you need it. Catch the

twelve-fifty, and I'll telephone them now."

So I took off my sky-blue uniform and wondered, as I folded it neatly

and laid it aside, where they were going to find the next man it would

fit.

This was at half-past ten in the morning, so that I had some hours to

spare. Ten minutes, if I could catch him, would suffice for all I had to

say to Archie Merridew, and, as he was not an early riser, and had told

me that he was not spending his days in bed, I hoped to find him before

he went out. But as the Business College lay on the way I determined to

call there first. I walked up Chancery Lane into Holborn.

But he had not arrived at the college when I got there, and I did not

wait for him. I had walked home with him often enough to know his

unvarying route, and I set off for his place half expecting to meet him

on the way. But I did not meet him, so I knocked at the brass knocker of

his ivy-green door.

Jane told me he had only that moment gone out.

"To the college?" I asked.

Jane thought so, but was not sure.

"If I don't see him I'll call again," I said. "Tell him, will you?"

I returned to the Business College, and there waited, talking to Kitty,

who had just arrived.

Kitty seemed extremely embarrassed that morning, and of course I guessed

the reason. She had heard of the sky-blue uniform, doubtless through

Archie. (For two nights I had not seen her.) I was none the less sure of

this that she did not mention the circumstance directly; nor did she

comment on my being at liberty at that unusual hour of the morning.

Presently she said:

"I don't think he'll come this morning now. He may this afternoon."

"I can't wait till the afternoon," I said, glancing at the little clock

on the mantelpiece of the type-writing-room--the little clock that had

given the "Ting" that had startled me so on the day of the examination

in Method.

"Is it anything I can tell him?"

That, of course, was quite out of the question. "I'll see if he's back

home yet," I replied.

Then Kitty's uneasiness and curiosity got the better of her delicacy

about the sky-blue uniform. She looked fixedly at her thin wrists and

her fingers gave little touches to the lace about them as she spoke.

"Jeff," she said timorously, "I don't know whether you know what--what

they're saying about you--I'm sure it's a hideous lie, but--but it's

upset me frightfully----" She stopped abruptly, and seemed even then to

wish she had not spoken.

"You seem very easily upset nowadays," I said shortly, quite ready to

quarrel if needs be.

But she ignored my tone. "You know they're saying--everybody's

saying--all the people here, I mean."

"What?" I demanded.

But her courage failed her. She stopped the fiddling at her wrists,

and, giving me a long look said, "You know I love you, Jeff, whatever

happens----"

It was what I had begun to fear--that there would be no shaking her off.

She was far, far too faithful.

"I see," I said slowly. "I know what you mean.... Well, it was quite

true. I _was_ a commissionaire--until an hour ago. They've sacked me....

I suppose Archie told you?"

"Girl-faced little wretch! But, Jeff----"

I took her up. "Well, it's that that I want to see him about. But as

regards you and me--if you want it to make a difference----"

It was a plain offer to release her, but I don't think she understood it

as that. Indeed, her manner puzzled me entirely. It was eager,

shrinking, wistful and apprehensive all at once, and she appeared to be

trying to shake off something--something preposterous. Well, that

sky-blue uniform had been preposterous enough.

"It shall make a difference--if you wish," I offered again proudly.

"No," she murmured, apparently understanding this time, and busy with

her lace again.

Then I entered into I know not what fantastic explanation of the curious

fact that a man with the world in his grasp should have chosen to touch

his cap to editors and proprietors. She tried to look as if she

believed me, but it was plain that she didn't in the least. Once or

twice she tried to interrupt me, but my patience was quickly running

out.

"So you see how it was," I said at last, dropping my voice as Weston,

the secretary-bird passed. "It was no business of his, and I want to

know what he's got to say about it. You can tell him so if you like."

Again that inexplicable look of timorousness came into her small eyes.

"You _mean_ the commissionaire's job, of course?" she said.

"I mean the commissionaire's job," I replied.

That, I thought with satisfaction, would cover my real reason for

wishing to see Archie as well as anything else.

Weston passed again, and gave me a look. That look struck me. It was

just such a look as a policeman might give a loiterer whom he suspects,

yet against whom he has no charge; and I felt my colour mount a little.

That tattling little animal! Little he cared, as long as he had his

joke, that my five shillings was put in jeopardy. For a business college

that styles itself advertisement writer "professor" naturally doesn't

want commissionaires on its staff, and I saw my second dismissal looming

ahead.

Then, with a new and cautious idea in my head, I turned to Kitty again.

"On second thoughts," I said, "_don't_ say anything to Archie about my

wanting an explanation. I'll settle with him. After all, it was bound to

come sooner or later. It doesn't much matter. I'll see to it.... Well,

I'm off. Good-bye, dear. I don't think I shall be able to see you again

till Friday."

And I left her, nodded to Weston, and passed out.

I daresay you guess what my new and cautious idea was. I had something

of the last privacy to say to Archie; it was just as well that I should

have the cloak of comparatively trivial personal remonstrance to cover

it; but this was only part of it. The truth was that my brain had

suddenly taken another of those startling leaps forward. In some

conceivable last event (I was not planning one, you understand; it was

merely that my mind was working somewhere ahead, independently and

beyond my control) it might be necessary that I should have _no_

personal quarrel with him. In such an event none must suppose that our

relation had been other than amicable. Yet I should be overdoing this

(purely anticipatory) prudence to pass over the episode of the sky-blue

uniform entirely. The thing was, or might become, a matter of nicely

measured proportions. Already I was making the slight private affront

serve my turn; presently I might want to make the pardon of that affront

serve my turn also. This kind of thing is what I mean by the creation

of an attitude of mind and "attention to detail."

I made one more attempt to find Archie as I walked to St Pancras, but he

was still not at home. Then I had to run for my train.

I worked in Pettinger's garden that week, carrying water, wheeling

barrows, and filling baskets with fruit as I passed between the canes.

Pettinger was away for two nights, but on the third evening he came up

to me as I was pushing a heavy roller over the lawn and began to talk. I

think he began for the sake of a pleasant word or two, but something I

said seemed to engage his interest, an hour or more passed, and then, as

the phlox and canterbury bells began to glimmer in the twilight, he

suddenly said, "Leave this and come inside--we can talk comfortably

there."

We went in. I shall never forget that night. It was made memorable by

the fact that master and gardener talked till two o'clock in the

morning.

"Well, Jeffries," he said at last, with a sleepy yawn, "you're an

extraordinary chap. I'm afraid you've made rather a lot of work for me

this last hour or two."

"How so?" I asked.

"Well, I was going to try to get you a job something like your last, but

you're a difficult man to find a job for. I won't ask you whether you

know you're extraordinary; of course you know you are; and I'm going,

if I can, to give you a chance--a real chance--not like that

other--those cut-throats--what's their name."

I had told him about Rixon Tebb & Masters' and the rest of it.

"I've a bit of a pull here and there," he went on sleepily. "There's the

'Freight and Ballast Company'--I know a couple of their men--but we'll

talk about that in the morning. I'm off to bed. Hope they've made you

comfortable?"

It does not come within the scope of my present tale to speak of my

later rapid rise; but I may say now that I owed my chance to Pettinger

and to the berth he got me, with the coming of winter, in the offices of

the "F. B. C."

I remained in his house all that week; then, on the Friday evening, I

took a return ticket to town in order to attend my class.

I had not been half-an-hour in the college that evening before I was

aware that something had happened. Archie Merridew was not there, but

Evie was, and so was Kitty Windus. I went through my work as usual, and

then, at half-past nine, sought Kitty. It was she who told me the news.

"You've not heard, have you?" she asked, with a glance towards the

senior students' room, through which Evie had just passed. Again she

was, in some manner I could not understand, eager, reserved,

apprehensive and fidgety all at once.

"Heard what?" I asked.

"About Evie. It's come off. She and Archie are properly engaged."

From that moment dated a division of me into two separate men, of which

I shall have more to say presently.

"Oh?" I replied, with complete calm. "That's good news indeed! Wait here

a minute--I'll speak to her--don't go, for I want to see you."

I met Evie returning with her towel and celluloid box of soap. She too

was excited, so excited that she would have passed me, but I thought I

understood that. I stopped her.

"Well, Evie?" I said, smiling.

She waited, painfully full, I couldn't help thinking, of emotion.

"It was you who congratulated me before," I said. "It's my turn now, I

hear."

She looked at me and away again, and again at me and away.

"Thank you, Mr Jeffries," she said, beginning to make little pointings

of her foot this way and that on the floor.

I spoke very gently. "Jeff--or Mr Jeffries if you prefer it--wishes you

nothing but happiness, Evie," I said.

"Oh, thank you," she said, with increasing perturbation, "thank you

very much indeed--thank you really--Jeff."

It was odd in the extreme. She gave me the reluctant "Jeff," and somehow

I wished she hadn't, it came with such difficulty. Something, I was

convinced, lay behind it. I did not expect her in the circumstances to

be quite collected, but her manner was--I don't know how else to

describe it--almost that of a child who has pleaded with authority for

permission to bestow one final charity on an undesirable associate....

What! I thought, she also ashamed to know a commissionaire!

"When are you going to be married?" I asked, after an awkward pause.

"Quite soon," she replied, equally awkward. "As soon as I can get my

things ready." She stopped.

"I suppose Archie's coming here for you--to-night, I mean?"

"No--he's got a man to see--a friend--in Store Street, I think."

"Then may I walk along with you?"

She seemed to have feared the question. "Oh," she said quickly, "if you

don't mind--I've something awfully private to say to Kitty--she and I

have arranged to go on together."

("Not wanted," I said to myself.) Aloud, "Well, I hope you'll be happy,

Evie," I added.

"Thank you," she said again, lifting curiously appealing eyes for a

moment.

I turned abruptly from her, and sought Kitty, who was still waiting. I

had picked up a sudden suspicion, and wished to confirm it.

"Ready?" I said, in a tone as matter of fact as I could assume.

Again she began to flutter. I couldn't understand what had come over the

whole college.

"I'm sorry, Jeff," she began, with rapid effusiveness. "If I'd only

known you wanted--but I've got to go somewhere."

I knew that, Evie had just told me.

"Woburn Place, you mean?"

"No, dear--somewhere else--quite different."

"Really?" I said, incredulously smiling and frowning both at once.

"Of course! How funny you are!"

I looked searchingly down into her eyes.

"I think _you're_ funny," I said slowly.

"You really must excuse me, Jeff--if you'd only let me know."

But I had had enough of this. Gently but irresistibly I took her arm.

"Come along, Kitty," I said quietly. "I particularly want to talk to

you."

She quailed, but still hung back.

"Very well," I said. "Will you tell me where you're going?"

She was obstinately silent.

"You're going with Evie, of course?"

I knew by the little rush with which she spoke that she was telling the

truth and was relieved to be able to do so. "Oh no!" she said. "I'm

going quite alone, quite alone--honour, Jeff!"

"Evie's not going with you--to Store Street or wherever it is?"

She stiffened. "I don't know what you mean by Store Street, and I think

you've got Evie on the brain," she said.

What the devil ailed them all?

And why had Evie said she was going with Kitty?

As abruptly as I turned away from the one I now turned away from the

other.

The next moment: "Er--'Jeffries!" I Heard.

It was Weston with my five shillings. I turned.

"Oh, Jeffries! I'm sorry to say--glad in one sense of course--that

Professor Hitchcock will be taking the class again next Friday. The

college wishes--wishes to thank you for stopping the gap as you have

done. It's been most obliging of you."

I said something--I was glad Hitchcock was better, I said.

"Yes--er--he's quite well again now--quite on his feet again," said the

secretary-bird. "And--er--Jeffries--I'm exceedingly sorry, but I've a

rather unpleasant duty to perform."

I was utterly mystified. "What is it now?" I demanded almost roughly.

"It's that the Board is of opinion--has come to the conclusion--that

consisting as we do of younger students than yourself--it would be of

advantage--perhaps of advantage to you too if--if----"

I helped him out. "If I don't come again?"

"I wished to break it gently to you--but that _is_ the substance of it,"

he stammered.

Curious....

"Thank you, Weston," I said. "I quite understand. Will you please tell

them that I didn't ask for any explanation?"

Exceedingly curious....

"Yes, yes, yes," he murmured sympathetically.

"Now," I said to myself some minutes later, as I descended the stairs,

"it only requires Miss Angela to turn me down."

I walked to Woburn Place, and there asked a Swiss boy if I might see

Miss Angela. Archie's friend Mr Shoto passed me as I waited in the hall,

but I did not speak to him. After some minutes the Swiss boy returned.

His answer was what I expected. Miss Soames had a nervous headache, and

asked to be excused from seeing me.

And all, I thought with amazement as I turned away, because for a week

or two I had worn a sky-blue uniform!

IV

That division of me into two men that I have said dated from the time

when Kitty told me of Evie's engagement to Archie Merridew was, in a

sense, no new thing. I had felt it in some measure before, when I had

deliberately avoided Archie that I might give my anger its head and had

smiled in his face again when the fit had worked itself out. I had

striven, too, to stand between him and the black rages he and my general

circumstances had provoked.

But no sooner had the words, that Evie was now definitely engaged, come

from Kitty's lips than I knew this division to be complete and

irrevocable. Even did he withdraw in time he had still contemplated it;

and in my soul I did not now believe he would withdraw. "The Devil was

sick, the Devil a Saint would be." And I knew at last who his friend in

Store Street was. A name, seen on a medicine bottle in his room, had

leaped into my memory. His "friend" was some obscure practitioner of a

doctor.

So I now became as the Giant in the story, who was so exquisitely cloven

from head to middle by the magic blade that he did not feel the wound

that was his death. "Cut, then!" he laughed. "Shake yourself," he was

told. And he fell in twain.

A shake, and I too should fall in twain.

I will now tell you how I got that shake.

Thinking over my sudden ostracism in Pettinger's house that night I only

became more and more mystified. That the Business College should no

longer require me I could understand--for snobbery plays a terrible part

in business. That Kitty had reproached me for my lack of trust in her

about my commissionaire's post was also easily to be accounted for. Miss

Angela might in truth have had a headache and have begged to be excused

from receiving me. But that Evie should turn against me was

inexplicable. It contradicted every tradition of her upbringing. My

being forced into a humble, but not ignoble, occupation could never have

made this difference in her. If anything in the whole business could be

taken as a certainty, that could. And so the more I thought about it the

more sure I became that, though I myself might conceal my real reason

for wishing to see Archie Merridew by giving out that I merely wanted to

remonstrate with him about his chattering, others were using that very

giving-out as a screen for something I was in total ignorance of.

Kitty's timorousness returned to me; I believed now that she had

actually been trying to tell me something else, whatever it was; and so

I tossed and turned on my pillow, vainly racking my brain.

I finally decided to have it out with both Kitty and Archie on the

morrow.

I went up to town the next morning, and walked straight to the Business

College. I did not wish, after what I had been told the night before, to

go up, so I found an office boy on one of the lower floors and sent him

up with word that somebody would like to see Miss Windus. Then I waited,

just inside the Holburn entrance.

In a few minutes she came down, hatted and gloved. Her face looked old;

her eyes were dull, and almost closed--with weeping, I was instantly

sure; and she touched my sleeve almost as if she feared I might shake

her hand off again.

"I thought it would be you," she said, in a dull voice. "Let's have a

walk. I've something to say."

We walked without speaking along Holborn, and presently turned into the

little courtyard of Staple's Inn. We sat down on the bench that

surrounds the tree in the middle.

She had broken into speech almost before we sat down. It was as if she

feared that if she did not get it out at once she would not speak at

all. She was intensely agitated.

"Jeff," she said, "I've wronged you--cruelly and basely."

I did not smile at the melodramatic little phrase. I had not the ghost

of an idea what she meant, but that something was impending I was

already aware.

"I saw you didn't know last night," she went on. "This morning?"

It was a question. "I'm no wiser this morning," I said.

"You asked me where I was going last night."

"I did."

"Can you guess why when--when I tell you it was to Louie Causton's?"

I shook my head.

"Even then I cannot guess."

Then she began to tremble. She grasped the edge of the seat with her

hand so that I should not see how she shook.

"Jeff," she said, in a low voice, "if you never want to see me again--I

can't blame you if you don't--not after this."

I waited.

"Not that I shouldn't always, always love you. It will be my

punishment--I shall have to bear it."

Still I waited.

"Yesterday it was you who offered it--now it's me--it will serve me

right."

I thought she would never go on. "You mean our engagement, of course?" I

said.

"Yes," she gulped.

"Why?" I asked suddenly.

"Because--because of what I've been beast enough to believe of you,

Jeff."

"And that is----"

As I again waited for her to speak I looked round the courtyard. A clerk

was at work in a first-floor window, and he caught my eye and looked

away again. In another window an office boy stood with a pen in his

mouth, turning the pages of a ledger. Then, after a while, and very

disjointedly, Kitty went on:

"They said you said it yourself, and I--at first I didn't--but then I

believed it. I know I was beastly about it once before--then we

quarrelled--but I didn't mean what I said then--believe me, I didn't....

And," she went on, "I didn't know who--who--it was.... She never told

me--you know what I mean.... I hate myself--now. I suppose I'm

jealous--the green-eyed monster, Jeff--but they did say it--said you'd

as much as said so yourself--and----"

I was beginning to get impatient with her rambling.

I said "And what?" but I don't think she heard me.

"So that's why I went to Louie herself--to ask her--right out----"

All at once I felt it coming.

"Well?"

But suddenly she buried her face in her hands, and her thin shoulders

shook. Again I saw the clerk watching....

"Oh!" she moaned. "Can you ever, _ever_ forgive me?"

"For----"

"For ever thinking that you and Louie--that you and Louie----"

She lifted her piteous eyes to mine.

* * * * *

I think it was then that the Giant shook himself and fell in twain. He

has been more or less roughly cobbled together since, and the halves rub

on somehow side by side, but to this day the one man in me faints for

the great sweet things of Life, while the other has the devil ever at

his elbow.

* * * * *

The whole courtyard had swung round; I actually seemed, with my physical

eye, to see it for some moments out of the vertical. Then it righted

again, and the whole mystery of the previous evening dissolved in light.

"You and Louie--you and Louie----"

Yet again the courtyard seemed to lean and slide sideways for a moment;

then I flung a blazing searchlight back across my memory.

Louie Causton's super-subtle mask. "So long since I saw a man, my

dear--the Baboon?--oh, I should know which way to turn _then_!"

My half-admissions to Archie when he had tried with such persistency to

get out of me who it was I was in love with.

Her failure to return to the college, that alone had thrown me into

Kitty's arms rather than into her own.

That something, God knows what, that I might have said to Mackie when,

after having eaten nothing, I had drunk with him.

Kitty's own desperate possessiveness and jealousy.

All these things fell into place as the coloured granules fall when the

kaleidoscope is given a turn. I had been accused of being Miss Causton's

lover!

As I remain that divided Giant henceforward until the end of my tale, I

will divide my name also, and tell you of a colloquy that began within

me between these two men--the honest, human, enraged Jeffries, and that

other, whom I will call James Herbert, at whose elbow stood the devil.

"Ah!" choked Jeffries, flaming red.

"Quietly, quietly!" whispered his interlocutor.

"That's Merridew again!" choked the other.

"Quietly--keep your face--there's a clerk in that window watching you!"

"The whole world may see me--let me go and find him!" It was as if this

Jeffries struggled to break away there and then.

"No, no--sit still--leave it to me, and keep your face before this

weeping woman--_I_ was born where they understand these things!"

And after a hellish minute--the voice of that one prevailed.

I turned to Kitty.

"Good gracious!" I remember I said, with an air almost of amused

incredulity. "Why, who on earth told you that ridiculous tale?"

The one who came from the place where they understand these things was

right. Kitty looked up. At first she seemed unable to believe her

ears--unable to believe that I could treat the monstrous thing with

amused disdain. Then, as she slowly realised, her face shone. She gave a

quick glad cry.

"Jeff!"

"What, dear?" I said, smiling.

She choked. "Oh ... my good, big man!"

("Laugh now," the wicked one prompted; and I laughed.)

"Good heavens, what a tale!... Who told you? Archie? Just you see if I

don't tweak that young man's ears!"

In her infinite relief the poor woman broke down utterly. She shook with

the mingled gratitude and humiliation of my pardon.

"Louie Causton!" I scoffed. "You actually asked her that? Why, how she

must have laughed!"

"Oh--you're wonderful, Jeff!" Kitty adored me.

"Oh," I replied, quickly recollecting myself, "don't think I'm not

angry! I'll give that young man a jacket-dusting! He shall have a

wedding present from me he'll remember, I promise you! Why, of all the

mean tricks!..."

I went on. Presently Kitty had found me so wonderful that once more she

could even toy a little with a peril.

"Louie wouldn't tell me ... who ... she said she'd die first...." she

half sobbed by-and-by.

I looked into her little puffed eyes. "Then," I said, smiling, "you've

only the word of a not very trustworthy woman for it that after all ...

eh?"

A saint could hardly have cheapened the worshipping look she gave me.

"So," I resumed presently, "that was what ailed you all last night, when

I was thinking all the time it was my uniform?"

"Yes--I tried hard to tell you, Jeff----"

"And does Archie really believe this tale himself, or is it just one of

his little pleasantries?"

She didn't know.

"Is he at the college this morning?"

"Yes."

"Good. Will you send him down to me if I walk back with you? I think we

won't lose any time over this."

"And you'll give him a really severe talking-to?" she asked eagerly.

"I will," I promised. "Come----"

Twenty minutes later I was again in the doorway of the Business College,

waiting for Archie to descend.

And as I waited I reflected how well-nigh irrevocably I had tied myself

up with Kitty now. I think that up to then she would have stuck to me

even had this of Miss Causton been true; but now she would never, never

let me go. Perhaps I may here mention the plan I had at first had for

getting rid of her when I should require her no longer. I had based that

plan on the fascination the "compromising situation" of her favourite

novels always had for her. I never knew anyone so self-conscious about

her defencelessness, and I had worked it out that I had only to propose

my own chamber for an assignation and she would conceive herself to be

looking into the bright face of danger indeed. All peril and all romance

would lie for her in her setting foot on the lowest of my stairs....

And doubtless one glance at that naked room of mine (I had pawned even

my oil-stove) would, I had estimated, drive her away in instant and

horrified fright.... I had not been above planning this.

But now she would never, never leave her big, wonderful man.

Yes. I had fettered myself fairly completely.

Holborn was noisy that morning, and between the sound of passing

vehicles and Archie's own light tread I was not aware of his presence

until he spoke. Instantly I saw that he thought he knew why I had come

and had resolved to take one bull at least by the horns.

"I say, Jeff," he began at once, with embarrassed sincerity--a sincere

desire, that is, to be out of the mess he had landed himself in,

"Kitty's just told me. I know--I know you must be beastly angry with

me--quite right too--I'm awfully sorry and--and ashamed. It was caddish.

But I really didn't mean anything, and--and--and I thought you as much

as said it yourself, you know----"

I judged it best not to speak just yet. I stood looking at him.

"You're an awfully good sort," he went on, conciliatingly, "but--but--I

really thought you _were_ a bit sweet on her (that was all I

meant)--that time--you know--before I knew it was really Kitty. I

simply said to Mackie--he watched you too at the party--I admit I was

'on' a bit, and never thought it would end like this----"

Then I spoke. "You mean you didn't think it would end in my getting the

sack and being cut by everybody I know except yourself and Mackie? How

did you think it would end, then?"

He jumped eagerly at a chance, ready to promise anything.

"I'll see that's all right, old boy--and Hitchcock _was_ coming back

anyway, you know--you only had the job while he was away----"

"Oh!" I said, with a nasty laugh. "And in your opinion that's all?...

What about my character?" I demanded suddenly. "Eh?"

"I know," he said, with hanging head. "It was rotten of me--but I was

'on'--I really was. And your character's all right, Jeff, with anybody

who knows you--they know what a first-rate sort you are----"

"Thank you," I said stiffly. "And what about--the partner in my guilt?"

"Oh, _her_!" the little animal said, as if _she_ could be left quite out

of the question. Then apparently he felt the stirring of returning

rectitude. "Well, Jeff, I have apologised.... I don't see what more I

can do, except of course to see you all right...."

I noted the birth of the attitude I wished to create. I began to appear

to let him down by gradual degrees.

Exactly how much of it was appearance you see. I abhorred the little

wretch. And his renewed apologies, promises, explanations!... He had

been "on" he had "simply said" to Mackie; I "should have lost my job

soon in any case"; and "he'd see I was all right!" ... That was all his

sense of a hideous slander! And his almost rebellious "Well, I have

apologised." Good heavens, he would be putting _me_ in the wrong

presently!... Every muscle in my body was straining to be at him.

But that, I knew, would never, never do.

Presently I turned once more to him. All this, after all, was not in the

least what I had come to talk to him about. It was only a screen.

"Very, well," I said at last. "What's done's done. We'll leave that for

the present. Now there's something else I want to say to you. Do you

know what it is?"

"How should I know?" he said, relieved that the subject was turned.

"Think...."

When Kitty had come down to see me an hour before she had done so in her

hat and coat. She had had her confession to make, and had, I fancied,

done me even in her attire the courtesy of hinting humbly that she was

entirely at my disposal. But Archie evidently thought that our

difference could be arranged in a five minutes' talk sandwiched in

between two lessons. He had not even put his hat on. He stood, a small

fair figure, red-waistcoated, brass-buttoned, hands in his pockets,

leaning against the name-board of the tenants of the various floors of

the building, while I, with one hand against the board, hung over him

like a huge angel of good and evil, bidding him think.

"Think," I said again.

He suddenly realised what I meant. I could no more hold his eyes than I

could have held those of a chidden dog. They cringed, evaded, even dared

short defiances.

"Think," I said once more.

All at once he said, "I don't know what you mean."

"Then," I said, "I shall have to tell you."

* * * * *

"So," I concluded some minutes later, "do you think you are--doing

right--to marry?"

* * * * *

We still stood, he with his back to the name-board, I with my hand

against it, almost enveloping him with my physical presence. And now, no

detail of my arraignment spared, I had at last caught his eye. Even

before he spoke my heart gave a savage leap. Already his soft and spongy

nature had begun to be hardened to that attitude I needed.

"Oh!" he said.... Then, proudly, "But this is interference."

"You think," I repeated slowly, "that you have the right to get

married?"

His very admission was a defiance of me. "I know I've been rather a

rotter," he blustered.

Once more I repeated monotonously:

"You still think, after what I've just said, that you have the

right----"

"I think," he broke out, "that if you looked after your own girl and

left me to look after mine it would be better. I'm frightfully sorry

about the other thing, of course, but--dash it all!----"

Our long exchange of looks said the rest, and it was not my fault if he

didn't understand what his refusal to heed me would involve. Some people

never understand, and cry afterwards, "You never told me that!" as if

one man had the right to demand of another that he should speak the

uttermost word. I cannot see that there is any such right. For such as

these there is no uttermost word. Elias and the Prophets cannot make

them understand. Though one rose from the dead to tell them they would

not believe. The God who made them as they are cannot make Himself known

to them--He can only destroy them again. They go out into the night in

their ignorance, and for them there is no resurrection in knowledge....

Therefore if the uttermost word will not enlighten them, why speak it?

Weakness lies in that word. Because it is weak. Art leaves it unspoken,

and the Seer, having spoken it, comes down from Sinai no more. Only by a

withholding from it does man achieve. Making three parts greater than

the whole, he does not put forth to the last. He will not return

bankrupt to heaven. The unuttered utterance is his credential, to be

restored to the Bestower of it.

Therefore I did not, at that time, tell Archie Merridew that if he

married I should slay him. But all, all else was in my eyes for his

taking.

Then our gaze severed.

As I dropped my hand from the wall the devil frisked in me again. I had

warned him, and had my own safety to consider now. Without attention to

detail you can accomplish nothing in this world, and a thing is

bunglingly done when you yourself suffer the consequences of it.

Whatever I might do, I intended to suffer no consequences.

"Well, Archie," I said, as a man speaks who washes his hands of

something, "I've told you what I think about it. There's no doubt it is,

as you say, an interference, but I think it's justified, and so I'll say

no more.... And now, about that other: I need hardly say that I expect

you to make things all right for me again."

"I will--I really will, Jeff," he promised at once.

"You see," I amplified, while the devil in me frisked, "leaving my

reputation out of the question, it's beastly inconvenient. For instance,

I'm badly in need of some shorthand practice, and I certainly don't

intend to go up these stairs again until I'm rehabilitated."

He leaped at the chance of a reparation that would cost him little. "Oh,

that's easy," he said. "Of course your own place--I mean, why not use

mine, as you used to?"

"Oh," I objected, "I can't very well use your place when you're not

there."

"I'm going to be there most of the time now," he replied. "Perhaps you

think I'm off on the skite again, but I'm not." ("The Devil was sick,"

thought I again.) "I'm dead off all that now--straight. I do wish you'd

come!"

"But," I said (while that imp in me positively capered), "you'll be

awfully busy--with other things. I hear you're to be married at

once----"

"Not too busy for that, old man," he assured me. "Do come!"

"Well, I'll see," I promised.

Half-an-hour later I was sitting in the British Museum reading-room with

a stock of books on Medical Jurisprudence before me. Those two spirits

within me were whispering again--plotting, machinating, discussing

common ground of action. I had not yet resolved to take any action; but

I had resolved, and firmly, that if action was to be taken I myself was

not going to be caught unawares.

V

It was true that Archie was busy. His "skite" had cost him a good deal

of money, and he intended to make good some of the loss by economising

on his marriage. With this end in view he had determined that his

honeymoon and his summer holiday should be run into one, and had fixed,

or Evie had fixed for him, a day towards the end of August for his

wedding. He was going to Jersey, for the sake of the breath of the sea

(I fancy that in this he was following Store Street advice); and he

intended on his return to go into rooms until he should have had time to

look round for a house.

His personal preparations were extensive. Ten porters and carmen a day

called at the house near the Foundling Hospital, delivering purchases,

and his upper floor was heaped up with bags, boxes, drawers taken from

their cases and laid upon the floor, brown paper, cardboard boxes, new

clothing. And one day--I won't set down the date--he lost his latchkey

in the muddle. He did not know that he lost it as a result of my own

close studies in the reading-room of the British Museum.

"Can't find the blessed thing anywhere!" he grumbled. "I took it off

the bunch to slip into the pocket of my evening waistcoat--you can't

carry a bunch of keys about in your evening clothes--and I can't think

where the devil I put it!... Well, I shall have to ask Jane for

another."

It was also a consequence of my deeply private studies that about the

same time I had an accident with the hook of his bedroom door. The night

being sultry, I had removed my coat, and hung it on his hook, over one

of his, and, somehow, in going through the pockets of the undermost coat

in search of the key, he had several times twisted the collar-tab by

which my own garment hung. In taking my coat down again a little later I

used some force; I used so much force that I fetched the whole hook

down, leaving a small piece out of the wood of the door, and, Archie,

busy emptying a drawer, remarked that to put it up again would be

something for the next tenant to do.

"Oh no--better leave the place as you found it," I said. "You go

on--I'll attend to it."

"Well, I don't know where you're going to find the screw-drivers--with

my latchkey, I suppose," he remarked.

But I knew where the screw-driver was. I found it, and put the hook up

securely again, a couple of inches below its old place.

I also carried constantly in my pocket, ready for use at any moment, a

written page of notepaper, the compilation of which had cost me a good

deal of thought in the reading-room.

Yet I must make perfectly clear to you that these and twenty other

things that had the appearance of preparations committed me to nothing.

They were merely part of the prudent course of making ready, not for the

best that might happen, but for the worst; and that the worst might be

avoided I plotted at the same time with almost extravagant care. For all

this last, however, the effective human mind works as it were in

separate compartments of the job to be done, and there was no denying

that this was or might become a job. I treated it as a job. And as a job

it cost me no more qualms and tremors than the cool preparation for an

examination in Method might have done. I did not turn pale when I read

in a book of forensic medicine that when one man slays another he

commonly uses far too much violence; I merely noted the fact, and

reminded myself of it from time to time, to be perfect in my (I still

hoped superfluous) lesson. I did not blench when I learned that,

judicial executions apart, ninety-nine per cent. of hangings were

suicidal, so that, certain other precautions being observed, a

presumption could be made preponderatingly probable. I merely turned my

attention to the qualifying precautions. And as for that sheet of paper

I carried--well, young men have killed themselves for less reason, and

seldom for greater. Indeed, to die by his own hand might be the final

virtuous act in which he took his farewell of the world. I would--still

in the last event, you understand--allow him that empty semblance of

virtue. Whether he needed it in heaven or not, I needed it on earth.

And (I am still talking purely hypothetically) I now recognise that I

had prepared our respective mental attitudes with instinctive skill.

That clever fiend within me had seen to that before I had become awake

to that fiend's existence. By about the--till say a fortnight before the

day fixed for his wedding--none could have told that I had the shadow of

a grudge against him. He had made, for his slander of myself, a sort of

semi-public apology--that is to say, he had mumbled a few words in the

presence of Weston and the Principal of the College; but by that time

the question of slander had been already so far from me that I had

hardly had to affect an equanimity of manner. Without any effort

whatever I had hit the necessary degree of magnanimity to a nicety, and

there had been an end of that. I was free to return to the college

again. This now mattered little since we were within a few days of the

end of the summer term, and it was proposed to have, not a breaking-up

party on the premises, but a boating-picnic at Richmond.

That I was in love with Evie Soames none knew. Did they? Could they? She

was engaged to Archie, I to Kitty Windus; but I examined it again, to

make sure.... No, no suspicion of jealousy could attach to me; none

would think of a _crime passionel_.... And was it jealousy? Was it a

_crime passionel_? I do not think you can say it was. True, I intended

in the teeth of all the world to marry Evie Soames, just as I intended

one day to be rich and to make my inherent power felt; but there would

have been other ways than murder of accomplishing that. I should have

found a way.... No; he had the best reason in the world for what I was

so carefully planning for him. To me none whatever could be attributed.

My preparations (for the worst, of course) would be complete when I had

made use of that paper I carried in my pocket.

It was one evening less than a week before the day of his wedding that I

chose for the completion of these preparations, and I had walked with

him as far as his home. There, with a good-night, I was artfully passing

on when he himself detained me.

"Aren't you coming up for a bit?" he said. He had been monstrously

hospitable since I had taken him to task about the slander. I had

reckoned on this.

"No," I replied, "I must get some shorthand practice--I'm off home."

"Oh, come in," he urged, taking my arm. "I sha'n't get much either this

few weeks--come in, and we'll have an hour together at speed. Come

on--I've got some books you may as well have--I sha'n't want two sets."

He meant he wouldn't want Evie's text-books as well as his own. I had

not been able to afford books for my studies, and so had had to make use

of those belonging to the college. This was the nearest he had come

since my accusation to speaking about Evie and himself together.

I went up to his rooms for a speed practice in Pitman's Shorthand.

"Here are the books," he said, when he got in. "Better put 'em where

you'll have your hand on 'em--once you lose sight of a thing in this

mess you can say good-bye to it. That blessed latchkey of mine hasn't

turned up yet. Well, shall we get work over first and then talk a bit?"

He swept aside with his arm a heap of new shirts and collars and

tissue-paper, took a writing-pad from the drawer of his table, and then

looked round for something from which to read aloud. I produced from my

pocket a newspaper, which I tossed over to him. I also had cleared a

portion of the table for myself and was sharpening a pencil. My pad lay

before me. He was taking his watch from the guard.

"Do I read first?" he asked, opening the newspaper. "Right-oh. Say when

you're ready."

I drew up my chair. "Right," I said.

And in his rapid, clear, high-pitched voice he began to read.

It was the speech of some politician or other he read, and my pencil

flew over the paper, swiftly taking down. Page after page I wrote, and I

had almost forgotten that I was engaged on anything more than an

ordinary exercise when suddenly he called "Time!" I stopped, and took a

long breath.

"Now transcribe," he said. "You'll find paper under those gloves."

"No," I said. "You take down now. Saves time. Transcribing's the slow

part, and we can both be doing that together."

"All right," he said, passing over the paper and making ready.

"Right? Go," I said.

And I began in my turn to read.

He had given me a continuous speech, but I gave him the Police Column.

"Big Blaze in Bermondsey: Suspected Arson," I gave him. ("That chap'll

get a couple of years for that," he interdicted). And then I passed to

"Alleged Bucket-shop Frauds." I had already got my paper from my

breast-pocket, that paper I had compiled in the reading-room of the

British Museum....

"--bail being granted in two sums of L500," I concluded the bucket-shop

paragraph and went on without pause:--

"PATHETIC CONFESSION"

"At Marlborough Street yesterday Rose Baxter, 24, seamstress,

living in Osnaburgh Street, was charged before Mr Siddeley with

a determined attempt to commit suicide by hanging herself in a

shed adjoining her dwelling, the property of Messrs Wright,

Knapton & Co. The beginning of the case was reported in _The

Argus_ of 24th June. Inspector Woodhead read aloud a letter

purporting to be in the prisoner's handwriting, from which we

take the following."

("Cheerful subjects you choose, I must say," commented Archie, _sotto

voce_.)

"'Dearest mother, I cannot face the disgrace. I hope you will

forgive me for the trouble I am bringing on you. I have put it

off as long as possible, hoping things would get better, but

there is only one end to it."

("Kid, eh?" murmured Archie, writing.)

"'I trust God will forgive me. I am not afraid to die, I am

afraid to live and face it. I cannot do E. this wrong. Please,

dear mother, think of me as I used to be. I have tried and

tried, but it is all no good, and I am better out of the world.

Give my love to everybody, and try, dear mother, to forgive

me.'"

"Time!"

Archie leaned back in his chair.

"Phew! Was that five minutes? Seemed short," he said. "Just a breather

before we transcribe." He lighted a cigarette. "I say, Jeff: do you know

any dealer who gives a decent price for second-hand clothes? I've heaps

here I sha'n't want any more."

I had small use for such a dealer. "You might try Lamb's Conduit

Street," I said. "I've bought clothes there."

"Silly ass----I didn't mean that!" He was now monstrously careful of my

feelings.

"Say when you're ready to transcribe," I said, pushing across a wad of

paper.

"All right, let's get it over. I'll race you! Ready?"

We plunged into our longhand transcription.

"Ah!" I said, twenty minutes later. "Beat you, Archie!"

He was racing through his last paragraph. "Not by much, you haven't," he

said, and then, following our practice with exercises at the college,

"No you haven't--you haven't signed--hooray!" he cried, dashing in his

signature and looking at his watch. "Thirty-two minutes--pretty smart,

what?"

An hour later I left, with his exercise as well as my own slipped

between the leaves of Smillie's "Balance of Trade"--one of the

text-books he had given me.

My hypothetical case was now completely prepared.

* * * * *

And now I spared no effort to save him. When it is yours to slay or to

spare, you have in a sense slain even in sparing, for a life has been

yours, even as Archie Merridew's life lay in the folds of that signed

sheet of paper.

I carried that signed paper in my breast pocket on the day of the

breaking-up party to Richmond. It had not been my intention to go to

this picnic, for the sufficient reason that I was penniless _pas le

sou_--but once more Kitty, to whom I had told some tale or other about

pressing work, had broken out upon me.

"Oh yes--of course--I might have known!" she had cried, doubtless

knowing that "pressure of work" tale of old from Frank and Alf. "Oh

yes--it was quite enough that I should set my heart on it and I might

have known you'd be busy or something! Busy!"

Her scornful little laugh had set me tingling: I--busy! But I had

already seen that I should have to go. It had only remained for me to

climb down to the level of Frank and Alf in the easiest possible way.

"Don't carry on like that, Kitty," I had said shortly. "It isn't so much

the work; the fact is I'd like to go; but I can't very well ask them to

pay me for the work before it's done, and the fact is I've rather

miscalculated this week. It will be all right next week, of course."

"Oh, if that's it," she had said, her hand going as naturally to her

pocket as if she had inherited the gesture as she had inherited her

features or her name.

So I had accepted her purse, having accepted only meals before, and Alf

and Frank and I were of a marrow.

The paper was in my breast pocket as we walked down to the stages to

hire our boats. We were a largish party, but except for those in the

boat in which I presently found myself--Evie, Kitty and Archie

Merridew--I have no very clear recollection of who was there. I took one

oar, Evie the other, Archie was not exercising himself physically; and

he lay back in the steering seat with Kitty. It was hot; I should have

liked to remove my coat; but I dreaded to part myself even by a yard

from that paper. As it was my movements caused it to work up a little in

my inside pocket; I saw a corner of it at the opening of the coat; it

had the appearance of wishing to take a peep at Archie; and by-and-by

Archie asked me why I didn't take my coat off.

"Not clean shirt day, eh, Jeff?" he laughed, with the recollection of

numerous brown-paper parcels in his eyes.

He himself was taking extreme care of a pair of spotless flannels, and

at one stage of the afternoon, I forget when, that suddenly struck me as

almost funny enough to shriek aloud at--his care for his flannel bags

and carelessness about everything else. It struck me as--I use the words

quite literally--devilishly funny. It fascinated me, so that I could not

keep from watching him. My eyes wandered from time to time to the other

boats of our party and of other parties, moving on the shining river,

but they always returned in less than a minute to him, irresistibly

drawn. This _galgenhumor_ almost mastered me as the paper again crept up

to take another peep at him as he lolled, this time with Evie by his

side, for Kitty had taken the other oar. It needed so little, so little

imagination to look forward and see, strung out into the future, the

results of that irrefutable Evidence in my pocket--the inquest at which

I should not even be called as a witness--the funeral I need attend only

as a mourner--the shock--the hushing up--and the certainty of everybody

that they knew all about it! It was all horribly, horribly perfect....

A picnic? Oh yes, this was a picnic....

"_Do_ take your coat off, Jeff--you'll be so much more comfortable--why,

you're streaming!" This came from Kitty, who had the air of publicly

possessing me, though only partly by reason of having paid for me, I

think.

"Oh, I'm quite all right--really quite comfortable," I replied.

And then I thought of Evie, and that horrible humour rolled away from

me. Evie. What about her? She spoke even then.

"Jeff's doing _all_ the work," she said. "I'm sure Kitty and I could

manage the boat quite well."

"Better stay as we are," I replied. "Archie and I wouldn't trim."

Yes, what about Evie?

Well, for her it was only a choice of sacrifices. The choice was not of

my determining; I put that responsibility on him. There was still time;

I would save him if I could; that was settled; but further than that I

would not go. Should she fail to survive the shock it would be he, not I

who had killed her. Better that, however....

If you can see what else I could have done, tell me. I am willing to

learn.

And so we went up the river, and drew in under a bank for tea, and then

went ashore for a walk, I with Kitty, he with Evie, and so back to the

boat again. I do not remember quite how the time went. I know that the

sun went down in a flush of rose, and that Japanese lanterns appeared on

the water and in the water in long smooth reflections, and that parties

were singing and playing banjos in the twilight. I could not have sat by

Evie--it really would have put the boat out of trim--and so I had not to

sit by Kitty either. She and I pulled again; Archie and Evie in the

stern seat were hardly distinguishable; and Archie, who had been

singing, was quiet again.

And I must have succeeded in keeping that dreadful mirth of mine to

myself, for Kitty had noticed nothing. She stood by my side in the

crowded station afterwards, murmuring to me how lovely it had been.

That is all I remember about that picnic.

Nor have I any reason for not telling you the truth about this. I am

concealing neither the man nor the devil in me. For many years I have

been almost entirely untroubled by it all, and I make even this slight

qualification only because during the last month I have had feelings,

not of remorse, but of something that is better described as a sort of

backward curiosity. Perhaps it is a little more even than that, for a

certain measure of admiration is not entirely absent from it. Don't

misunderstand me, however. That tincture of admiration is not so strong

that I cannot rest unless somebody admires my cleverness with me.

Nothing irresistibly urges me to give myself away. But I have felt a

little that backward pull of a man's own acts. I do not know, though

practically it has not come near me, why men revisit places. I do not

revisit that house near the Foundling Hospital--yet I do write this

shorthand carefully locking my door before I begin and committing it to

the most private recess of my cabinet as I complete each instalment....

Yet other compunction, if this be compunction, have I none. I am rich, I

am serving my age by a more arduous grappling with its economic problems

than any of my contemporaries, I could have had Pepper's knighthood had

I wished for it, and I have been married this long time to Evie

Soames.... No, on the whole I do not believe in melodramatic

retributions. No shadowy shape of a fair-haired and red-waistcoated

figure glides at my elbow or steps with me into my brougham, and when I

close my eyes at night I do not see as on a painted curtain that

dimity-papered, lamp-lighted upper chamber of his. I do not start at

sudden sounds, nor fear to be left alone in my library when it grows

late. I play with my clean-born children. Evie is happy with me. And I

even have Miss Angela in a cleft stick--for, when things go well, she is

my gentle and much-loved maiden aunt by marriage, but when they go

across she is my mother-in-law, who would stare incredulously at any who

might hint that my brain could plot a horror and my two hands execute

it.

And yet I write this, and sometimes waste an hour in wondering why, all

of a sudden, Kitty Windus threw me over without giving a reason, and,

when I went for one, had left her rooms in Percy Street and gone

goodness knows where.

But bah! They are wrong who say that for every crime somebody has to

pay. They speak from hearsay. I do not speak from hearsay. To my own

knowledge one crime has been committed for which nobody has paid and

nobody ever will.

Well, things are as they are ... and so I will make an end.

My desperate struggles to save Archie Merridew included an interview

that I had positively to force from Miss Angela. I had to force it for

the reason that, though I was now theoretically exculpated from the

charge under which I had lain, slander always sticks, and some of it

still stuck with Miss Soames in spite of her efforts to forget it. That,

I think, was the reason why she saw me in the dining-room at Woburn

Place instead of in her own sitting-room, where, I knew, Evie was.

There, among the empty chairs, toying with Mr. Shoto's napkin-ring and

putting it down again as I remembered whose it was, and then

unconsciously taking it up again, I told her in such terms as I could

find how matters stood. She nodded from time to time.

Again it was not my fault if she failed to understand. She did, I now

know, fail, and failed the more hopelessly that she thought she did

understand. Many, many thick wrappings lie between placid Aunt Angela

and the stark realities of Life.

"I see perfectly," she said, when I had made that statement that would

have appalled any but herself. "It was exactly the same with George. (I

was once--engaged--to a man called George.) George put a precisely

similar case quite plainly before me. _He_ was consumptive, or rather

his poor father was, and they do say it skips a generation--poor

George!"

I shook my head, but she only sighed with gentle content. She did not

really miss George.

"But," she went on, while my eyes wandered to the corner by the

sideboard where Archie had had his conversation with Mr Shoto about the

Yoshiwara, "I shouldn't have refused him for that. (I did refuse him,

and I heard afterwards that for weeks he ate scarcely anything at all.)

It was something quite different that came between us--I've never told

even Evie what the real reason was."

I interrupted her. "Are you sure, Miss Soames, that you've quite

understood my real reason?" (More plainly I dared not speak, lest later

there should be a chink in my own armour.)

"Oh yes!" she purred lightly. "Old woman as I am, I _quite_ understand!

As you say ... 'the children.' ..." Then, forgetting her attitude for a

moment, she became playfully roguish. "Of course, it isn't as if you

weren't in love with Miss Windus, and so in a sense feel it more nearly.

You know how _you_ would feel about it. I only say this that you may see

that I _quite_ understand these things do make a difference--eh?"

"But when I solemnly assure you that that has nothing whatever to do

with it."

She adjusted the Indian shawl coquettishly about her shoulders.

"Ah, that's what you think! Come, Mr Jeffries you're positively

ungallant! As if I was so old that I'd forgotten! And not only George

either! I hope you won't be offended, Mr Jeffries, if I tell you that I

suspect--I suspect--that in this I know you better than you know

yourself!"

Against that phrase there is no argument. Some people do not and cannot

see. And again I did not think Miss Angela had the right to extract from

me the uttermost word. I was aware that the very possession of that

awful weapon of mine was dangerous; merely to have it might be to use

it; but the question is one of your resolve, and I was fully resolved.

My job had to be done, or (as I still dared in certain moments to hope)

not to be done; but if it was to be done, it was going to be done

thoroughly. My neck was not going into a noose because of other people's

blindness. It was of no use talking to Miss Angela.

And that being so, I abandoned my attempt with her. I smiled.

"Well, perhaps you're right," I said. "When one is in love oneself, and

looking forward--well, perhaps it does bring it home to one. Perhaps it

makes one a little of a busybody. So," I concluded, "I hope you won't

exaggerate what I've been saying."

And a few minutes' further talk of things she had actually seen for

herself in Archie--such things as his slight intemperance on the night

of the birthday-party--made me quite safe with Miss Angela also.

To Kitty I was able to say even less than this. Indeed, she now detested

Archie so thoroughly that I was scarcely able to say anything at all.

And, looking back with all the care I am master of, I cannot see that

anything I did say could have been the cause of that extraordinary

breaking off with me without a word.

To Evie I said nothing at all.

There remained one more attempt with himself.

The time I chose for this was fixed by the exigencies of all the

circumstances. I would have wrestled with him for the whole of the two

days that remained before his wedding, but his own absence for a day

precluded this. And as during that day I sought him in vain, I thought,

very wearily, that he must now take his chance. Therefore, when it came

to the very last day, the day before his wedding, I recognised that that

also gave a perfect touch to the Evidence. The _very_ eve of his

wedding.

_Several_ evenings before would somehow have been less plausible.

As I walked to his rooms that night I carried with me three things.

Under my arm was my old brown-paper parcel--for to make a final use of

his bath had seemed to me the most natural excuse for my calling on him.

In my breast pocket I carried that piece of paper that was to be the

Evidence to the world. And in another pocket I had his latch-key, for

which I foresaw a use later in the evening.

I knocked at his door a little after eight, and Jane admitted me. She

gave a familiar look at the parcel that contained my shirt, and also

said something about a box Mr Merridew was leaving behind for the care

of which he wanted me to be responsible. I passed this box on the first

landing. It was locked, but only half addressed--Archie had not yet

secured the rooms to which he would return with Evie. But he had not yet

said anything about the box to me.

I found him walking about his rooms, taking last peeps into empty

drawers to see whether there was anything he had forgotten. His packing

was finished, and he kept stopping in his prowl to throw another handful

of old letters on to the smouldering heap in his old Queen Anne teapot

of a grate. A little pile of these condemned letters still remained by

the side of his perforated brass fender.

"Hallo!" he cried as I entered. "Just give a squint round, will you, and

tell me if there's anything so big I can't see it. And I say: I've left

a box downstairs; I wonder if you'd look after it for me? I've told

Jane."

"Right!" I said. "Bath ready?"

"All ready. By Jove! how letters do accumulate! You go and scrub

yourself, while I polish this lot off."

I went into his bathroom.

But I did not make use of his bath. Somehow I could not bring myself to

it. I only wanted the bath to be known as my motive for calling. So I

filled it, stood by it for a number of minutes, and then ran the water

off again. I took the same brown-paper parcel with me into his

sitting-room that I had brought out.

I did not stay long after that. I was coming back. At nine I rose.

"What, are you off?" he said. "I must say you take what you want and

clear off pretty quick! Supper'll be up presently."

"A last stag-party?" I said. "I'm afraid you'll have to have it without

me. I've got to get to Bedford yet. So," I added, "I shall have to wish

you--you know--get it over now."

"Oh, don't put on so much blessed ceremony!" he said. "It isn't as if

you weren't going to see me again!"

It wasn't.

"Oh, about that box," I said. "Better call Jane, and tell me in her

presence."

"Well, if you _will_ leave me to eat my last bachelor supper alone. But

I should have had to clear out myself just after. Got to have a word

with Aunt Angela--she let's me call her that now."

He moved towards the door.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

"To call Jane," he replied. "Bell's busted now--time I cleared out of

here--whole place is coming to pieces.... Jane! Ja--ne!" he shouted down

the well of the stairs.

Then as Jane didn't hear he descended to the floor below.

His old red woollen bell-rope lay in a heap on the floor. That also had

happened as a result of my studies in the British Museum. I busied

myself with it.... By the time he had returned I had made it quite ready

and was gazing thoughtfully into his fireplace.

I went downstairs with Jane, who herself closed the door behind me. I

gave her a very express good-night.

* * * * *

The remainder of that evening I can divide into four distinct stages,

and I will adopt that course, taking them numerically.

The first stage was one of an almost overwhelming lassitude. I had an

hour and a half and more to kill, and this lassitude came upon me

suddenly as I walked slowly in the direction of Cheapside. I was in its

power before I recognised its dangers. The man of action had suddenly

sunk into abeyance with me, and, now that all was ready, all interest

in my job had departed from me. The drudgery of actual performance was

all at once beyond my powers. I could have gone on planning--I wished

there had been more to plan--but now to carry out....

I collapsed suddenly.

Why (I asked myself wearily) trouble after all! Why trouble about

anything? Life was short, yet already too long; its activities

overlauded, its glories contemptibly little; why waste it in

striving--nay, why live it all? Thirty years of it had brought me

nothing; whatever another thirty years might bring me I should have to

leave, and what would it matter after that whether I left much or

little? Nay, were there really an Infinite Mercy to be "squared," it was

perhaps better to cast myself before it helpless, naked, and without

profit of my life. Why not end it all now? Why not kill, not Archie, but

myself?

I turned with bowed head down the Minories, and something within

me--I think it was that honest and beaten and bloody-minded

Jeffries--whispered "The River!"

Presently I stood not far from the Tower, looking over a parapet into

the dark water.

Yes, the river would settle it, that was the real way out. No more

Agency clerkships and red-and-green-lighted apartments and sham

betrothals on the other side of that parapet. And no more heartrending

strivings to be free of the circumstances into which the world

malignantly thrust me back the moment I raised my head. Striving? I

realised all my striving in the past--Rixon Tebb & Masters', the Method

examination, my commissionaireship, the wanton slander, my late

perfected plan--and the thought that the years to come might be but

repetitions of all this hit me like a hammer. I could not face it.

Then a detached sentence from one of the books I had read in the museum

sprang up in my mind, and I started a little. The sentence was to the

effect that a man who leaps into water always removes his hat before

doing so. I did not remember that I had taken my own hat off, but there

it lay, on the parapet, at my elbow.

Then, "Well, it will do to cover some other poor devil's head," murmured

that tired Jeffries, "Get it over, and send that conscienceless young

scamp to hell with _your_ blood on his head. Somebody always pays, you

know."

I removed my coat.

But that tired Jeffries never spoke unanswered, and these words were

answerable. To make a hole in the water from sheer weariness was one

thing, but to destroy myself to compass another's damnation was quite a

different one. The other Jeffries spoke.

"Why should you kill yourself for his sin? Each man must bear his own.

Nay, it is not committed yet and will not be if you are strong and play

the man. Are you going to fold your hands and allow Evie...."

And at the thought of Evie I felt my sluggish blood creep again.

"You live in a practical world--be practical," continued that satanic

James Herbert. "Prevention is better than cure. Even could he be

punished afterwards, how much better off would _she_ be ... _then_? What

right have you to bring this horror on her? He's selfish, ignorant,

cruel--it would be dreadful at the best; but ... oh, think, man! Think

of her now ... and to-morrow!"

"You only want her yourself," growled the other.

"You do--but that's not your motive!" cried the first. "You've

overlooked all he's done to you--but this isn't to you! Coward--if you

allow it! You won't allow it--to kill him would be better than to allow

it.... Come; what time is it? She'll be preparing for bed by the time

you get there."

I put on my hat and coat again.

This was my first stage.

The second began with my approach to Woburn Place.

The sitting-room with the pink-shaded lamp lay at the front of the

house, but Evie and her aunt slept at the back. The sitting-room was in

darkness as I passed. I took a side street, and then a back cartway used

by tradesmen. A high wall was in front of me, but by stepping back I

could see the hinder part of the row--landing windows, bathroom windows,

tiny conservatories, bedrooms--various oblongs at different levels, some

blinded, some with lamps, many in darkness. Behind me was a mews, with

horses that moved their feet in their litter and dragged at chains from

time to time.

The tradesmen's entrances were unnumbered, and I do not know whether I

hit on the right house; but that did not matter. I have mentioned my

uncommon powers of mental visualisation, and these sufficed me. I fixed

my eyes on a window; it might or might not have been Evie's; but to all

intents and purposes it was. Somebody was retiring there, and the blind

was lowered.

I saw no hand, no shadow on the blind. Only the light went out suddenly,

and from the sound the blind made as it went up I judged it to be a

spring blind. A piano had begun to play somewhere, but save for that

all was silent.

It was the last of her single days.

To-morrow.

My heart was hideously alive again. What! Fold my hands--drown--and Evie

as she still was up there.

Soft and terrible ejaculations began to break from my lips.

"Ah, would he? Would he? He would, would he?"

A clock struck half-past eleven.

This was my second stage.

I will begin the third at the moment when I pushed gently at the gate

over the whitewashed area near the Foundling Hospital.

His light still showed over the leads, but the basement was in darkness.

Evidently Jane had gone to bed. I felt in my pocket for his latchkey,

mounted the three steps, and with infinite softness put the key into the

lock and turned it. The door opened noiselessly, and I prevented the

click as I closed it again by letting the little brass knob gently back

with my thumb. Then silently I began to mount his stairs, passing on the

way the locked box that had been put into my charge. I reached the top.

The first sound I had made since entering the house was my tap at

Archie's door.

"Come in!" his tenor voice called from behind the door.

I entered.

At first he did not seem more than ordinarily surprised to see me; it

was only after a moment that the oddness struck him.

"Hallo!" he began, in natural though not altogether cordial tones....

Then, "Hallo! I thought you were in Bedford by this time."

"Missed my train," I said.

He stared mistrustfully....

He had been preparing for bed. He had removed his collar and tie, and

his red waistcoat was unbuttoned. Through the chink of his bedroom door

I saw the light of his second lamp.

In his surprise at seeing me back again, he had half risen from his

arm-chair. He remained, his hands on the arms of it, neither sitting nor

standing, as he asked suddenly, "Who let you in?"

"Myself," I answered, in an even tone. "A little unceremonious, perhaps,

but I knew Jane had gone to bed and didn't want to fetch you down. The

fact is, I've found your latchkey."

"You've found my latchkey!"

"In my coat pocket. Don't ask me how it got there. Our two coats were

hanging together one night, but even then I don't quite see.... Here it

is anyway."

I put it on the table.

"That's a rum 'un," he said, slowly sitting down in his chair again,

but keeping his eyes on mine. "So you came back to give it me?"

"I came back to give it you. Besides," my eyes were on his slender bare

neck, "since I was coming back--I thought I'd like another word with you

before----" I paused.

For a moment I could not understand the readiness with which he took up

the thing I had not said. His lips had compressed a little.

"Ah! Again?" he said, with a little kindling in his eyes.

"'Again'?" Then I saw. He had seen Miss Angela during the last hour, and

she had doubtless spoken of my own call on her. "Yes, again," I

answered.

That third stage had a curious close. That close was nothing less than

the reunification of those two halves of the Giant to the fabulous

splitting into two of whom I have likened my mental state. They came

together again, these two halves, as the two forces come together that

make the thunder clap ... but of this in a moment.

After several moments of increasingly rapid talk, we were both standing,

he defiantly with one hand on the edge of the mantelpiece, I at the

other end of the hearth. He had risen a moment before at certain words

of mine, as if to inform me that our interview was over. Once I had seen

his eyes move towards the place where the bell-rope should have been,

but that lay, a red woollen heap, on the floor behind me, and he would

have had to pass me in order to get into his bedroom. He had found an

appearance of forcefulness in the use of violent words.

"Why, damn your impudence!" he blustered. "Look here, my good man! If

you suppose I'm going to be talked to like this by you or anybody

else----"

"Then deny the fact," I said for the fifth time.

"I'll not deny or anything else till I know what right----"

"I know it comes late, but I've spoken of it before."

"Yes--sneaking behind my back!" he said hotly, probably again

remembering his recent conversation with Miss Angela.

"To your face."

"Yes--and if it hadn't been for something else I should have told you

then what an interfering devil you were!"

"Merridew," I said slowly, "it's the last time."

He sneered.

"I'm glad of that--and confound you for a meddler!" he cried. "If that's

all you came for, get out, and I'll get somebody else to look after my

trunk!"

We were silent for a space, and in that space I heard the voice of that

human Jeffries, almost pitifully seeking still to save him. "Give him

every chance," sobbed that Jeffries, "he's only a weakling--you could

crush him mentally as you could physically--it would be little better

than infanticide--try him again--show him that red thing on the

floor--and that carved thing on the door."

But now Archie in his turn seemed to have become divided. He had

suddenly turned white. But an habitual pertness still persisted in his

tongue. I don't think this had any relation whatever to the physical

peril he seemed at last to have realised he was in. I stood over him

huge and black as Fate.... "Spare him if you can," that generous

bloodthirsty devil in me muttered quickly.

"Merridew," I said heavily, "you'll disappear to-morrow morning ...

_or_----"

"Shall I?" he bragged falteringly....

"And you won't come back. I shall stay here to-night and put you into

the train myself."

"Then you'll have to sleep in the bath--and you should know by this time

how small that is," came from his lips.

And yet it came only from his lips. His terrified heart had no part in

it. His only chance now was to have screamed aloud.

But he did not scream. Instead, he stooped swiftly, caught up the

poker, and struck at my head with it.

It was then that the thunder-clap came, and that I was James Herbert

Jeffries, whole, and a murderer. Swiftly as Archie and I came together

the halves of that Giant came together. Instinctively I had guarded my

head, perhaps realising--I cannot say--that a single drop of blood might

mean for me precisely what I intended to do to him; but it mattered

little whether blood blinded my eyes or not. Another redness gorged me,

and then, my mind became whitely blind. As colours are lost on a disc

that revolves, so all my plans and preparations spun and mingled. All

was there, yet nothing was there. For an instant my visual memories of

that pleasant, dimity-papered apartment stood separate; my own old

experiences and new divinations also stood separate; I saw ahead, three

or four minutes ahead, his struggles in my great arms, my left arm about

his ankles, my right hand over his mouth, the red of the woollen

bell-rope against his white neck ... and then all wheeled hideously

together....

I was upon him, smothering him with my bulk, and wondering even as I

bore him backwards to the door whether I myself was bleeding....

* * * * *

The fourth stage was characterised throughout by an extraordinary

quietness. There was the light sound of the turning of paper in it, for

I had to search in a pile of old books and papers for his shorthand pad

and to make sure I had the right one--I had to take from my breast

pocket another sheet of paper and to glance at that also to make sure

that it also was the right one--and then I had to approach the bedroom

door and to drop this into his pocket....

But before I did any of these things I tiptoed to the mirror over the

mantelpiece in order to see whether I bled.

I did not. My left eye was of a dull red, but not with blood, and I

could deal with that. As a preparation for dealing with it I emptied at

a draught the brandy flask he had prepared for his journey on the

morrow.

Softly as a cat I continued to move about.

Then I had to remember which of his stairs creaked to the tread. They

were the fourth and the tenth from the first landing; I knew that as

well as I knew my own name; and yet for a time I really could not

remember the numbers.

The room was quiet as a grave as I gave a final glance round at the

displayed Evidence....

Then behind his Queen Anne grate a cricket began to sing.

Nobody saw me leave the house. I had to bring his latchkey away.

Without it the latch would have clicked as I closed the door from the

outside.

Then I crossed Mecklenburgh Square and walked towards King's Cross.

A quarter of an hour later an apparently very drunken man of uncommon

stature lurched heavily through the swing doors of my public-house and

fell full length on the floor in the middle of a knot of drinkers. A

barman dived quickly under the flap of the counter, with an "Outside!"

rushed towards me. I was hauled to my feet. I had a hand over one eye.

"_'E's_ copped the brewer all right!" a cheerful voice sounded in my

ear. "Just smell 'im! Must ha' been drinking it straight out o' the

cask."

"'Ere--'old 'ard--ain't it your lodger?" somebody else said suddenly.

"Is it? Lumme, so it is! Look at 'is eye!"

"Ain't 'alf a mouse!"

"'Ere, 'elp me up with 'im the back way, Jim--Lord! 'e weighs a ton!

I've never known 'im 'ave a drink 'ere, but there, they get it at one

place if they don't at another."

Then somebody bawled to me:

"Look out--don't blow your nose--you'll 'ave your eye up if you do!"

But I wanted my eye "up." Up it came instantly, large as an egg, and

there was a laugh.

"Well, 'e won't brag much about where 'e got _that_!" somebody said.

And they helped me up to my red-and-green-lighted room.

* * * * *

They say somebody always pays. Well, this my story. It is a long time

ago, and nobody has paid yet. Nor, as far as I can see, is it likely

that anybody ever will. There is only one detail that I have not been

able properly to attend to, and even that has attended to itself--for of

course Kitty Windus fled because she realised that I was in love with

Evie. I could hardly expect her to stay after that.

No: nobody has paid. Nobody ever will.

THE END

Notes for "In accordance with the evidence" by Oliver Onions

Italic text is denoted by _underscore_ and bold text by =equal sign=.

Page 32--a word was unreadable and was best guessed as (pretence).

Inconsistant hyphenation and spelling are kept as in the original.

Mr and Mr. were kept as in the original.

End of Project Gutenberg's In Accordance with the Evidence, by Oliver Onions