THE COMPACT
So petrified was Theydon by coming face to face with the last person
breathing whom he expected to meet in that room, that he stumbled over a
small chair which lay directly between him and his hostess. At any other
time the gaucherie would have annoyed him exceedingly; in the existing
circumstances, no more fortunate incident could have happened, since it
brought Evelyn Forbes herself unwittingly to the rescue.
"I have spoken twenty times about chairs being left in that absurd
position," she cried, as their hands met, "but you know how
wooden-headed servants are. They will not learn to discriminate. People
often sit in that very place of an afternoon, because any one seated
just there sees the Canaletto on the opposite wall in the best light.
When the lamps are on, the reason for the chair simply ceases to exist,
and it becomes a trap for the unwary. You are by no means the first who
has been caught in it."
Theydon realized, with a species of irritation, that the girl was
discoursing volubly about the offending chair merely in order to
extricate an apparently shy and tongue-tied young man from a morass of
his own creation.
That an author of some note should not only behave like a country
bumpkin, but actually seem to need encouragement so that he should "feel
at home" in a London drawing room, was a fact so ridiculous that it
spurred his bemused wits into something approaching their normal
activity.
"I have not the excuse of the Canaletto," he said, compelling a pleasant
smile, "but may I plead an even more distracting vision? I came here
expecting to meet an elderly gentleman of the class which flippant
Americans describe as 'high-brow,' and I am suddenly brought face to
face with a Romney 'portrait of a lady' in real life. Is it likely that
such an insignificant object as a chair, and a small one at that, would
succeed in catching my eye?"
Evelyn Forbes laughed, with a joyous mingling of surprise and relief.
Most certainly, Mr. Theydon's manner of speech differed vastly from the
disconcerting expression of positive bewilderment, if not actual fright,
which marred his entrance.
"Do I really resemble a Romney? Which one?" she cried.
"An admitted masterpiece."
"Ah, but people who pay compliments deserve to be put on the rack. I
insist on a definition."
"Lady Hamilton as Joan of Arc."
He drew the bow at random, and was gratified to see that his hearer was
puzzled.
"I don't know that particular picture," she said, "but I cannot imagine
any model less adapted to the subject."
"Romney immortalized the best qualities of both," he answered promptly.
"Please, may I look at the Canaletto which indirectly waylaid me?"
She turned to cross the room, but stopped and faced him again with a
suddenness that argued an impulsive temperament.
"Now, I remember," she said. "Dad told me you had written novels and
some essays. Have you ever really seen Romney's portrait of Lady
Hamilton as Joan of Arc?"
Those fine eyes of hers pierced him with a glance of such candid inquiry
that he cast pretence to the winds.
"No," he said.
"Then you just invented the comparison as an excuse for colliding with
the chair?"
"Yes. At the same time I throw myself on the mercy of the court."
"It was rather clever of you."
He laughed, and their eyes met, at very close range.
"May I share the joke?" said a voice, and Theydon knew, before he
turned, that the man he had last seen disappearing around the corner of
Innesmore Mansions in a heavy rainstorm was in the room.
"Why did you tell me that Mr. Theydon was a serious scientific person?"
cried the girl. "He is anything but that. He can talk nonsense quite
admirably."
"So can a great many serious scientific persons, Evelyn. Glad to see
you, Mr. Theydon. Professor Scarth's letter paved the way for something
more than a formal meeting, so I thought you wouldn't mind giving us an
evening. My wife is not in town. She is a martyr to hay fever, and has
to fly from London to the sea early in May to escape. If caught here in
June nothing can save her. Tonight, as it happens, you're our only
guest, but my daughter is going to a musicale at Lady de Winton's after
dinner, so you and I will be free to soar into the empyrean through a
blaze of tobacco smoke."
Standing there, in that delightful drawing room, made welcome by a man
like Forbes, and admitted to a degree of charming intimacy by a girl
like Forbes's daughter, Theydon tried to believe that his meeting with
those ill-omened detectives at Waterloo Station was, in some sort, a
figment of the imagination.
But he was instantly and effectually brought back to a dour sense of
reality by Evelyn Forbes's next words. She, by chance, looked at Theydon
just as she had looked at him the previous night.
"Were you at Daly's Theater last night?" she inquired suddenly.
"Yes," he said. Then, finding there was no help for it, he went on:----
"You and I have hit on the same discovery, Miss Forbes. We three stood
together at the exit. I was waiting for a taxi, and saw you get into
your car. Now you know just why I fell over the chair."
Forbes glanced up quickly.
"Don't tell me Tomlinson forgot to move that infernal chair again!" he
cried. "Really, I must get rid either of our butler or the Canaletto,
yet I prize both."
"Don't blame Tomlinson, Dad," laughed the girl. "If Mr. Theydon hadn't
made an unconventional entry we would have talked about the weather, or
something equally stupid."
At that moment Tomlinson himself, imperturbable and portly, announced
that dinner was served. The three descended the stairs, chatting lightly
about the musical comedy witnessed overnight. It was no new revelation
to Theydon that truth should prove stranger than fiction, but the trite
phrase was fast assuming a fresh and sinister personal significance. He
believed, and not without good reason, that no man living had ever
undergone an experience comparable with his present adventure.
When he left that house he was going straight to two officers of the law
whose bounden duty it would become to call upon Mr. Forbes for a full
and true explanation of his visit to Mrs. Lester--provided, that is, he
(Theydon) told them what he knew. Talk about a death's-head grinning at
a feast! At that bright dinner-table he was a prey to keener emotion
than ever shook a Borgia entertaining one whom he meant to poison.
In sheer self-defense he talked with an animation he seldom displayed.
Evelyn was evidently much taken by him, and, fired by her manifest
interest, he indulged in fantastic paradox and wild flights of fancy.
Seemingly his exuberance stimulated Forbes, himself a well-informed and
epigrammatic talker.
An hour sped all too soon. The girl rose with a sigh.
"It's too bad that I should have to go," she said. "I shall be bored
stiff at Lady de Winton's. But I can't get out of it except by telling a
positive fib over the telephone. Dad, next time you ask Mr. Theydon to
dinner, please let me know in good time, and neither of you will be rid
of me so easily."
She shook hands with Theydon. While she was giving her father a parting
kiss the guest moved to the door and held it open. As she passed out she
smiled and her eyes said plainly:
"I like you. Come again soon."
Then she was gone and the pleasant room lost some of its glow and color.
"Don't sit down again, Theydon," said Forbes, rising. "We'll have coffee
brought to my den. What is your favorite liqueur--or shall we tell
Tomlinson to send along that decanter of port? It's a first-rate wine.
Another glass won't hurt you, or me, for that matter."
Theydon had hardly dared to touch the champagne supplied during the
meal. Abstemious at all times, because he found that wine or spirits
interfered with his capacity for work, he felt that a clear head and
steady nerves were called for that night more than any other night in
his life. Following the lead given by his host, therefore, he elected
for the port.
"You are right, too," said Forbes. "You remember Dr. Johnson's dictum:
'Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a
hero must drink brandy'? Tonight, not aspiring to the heroic, we'll
stick to port."
"It is a curious fact that on my return from Brooklands today I took a
glass of brandy," confessed Theydon. "I seldom, if ever, drink any
intoxicant before dining, but I needed a stimulant of a sort, and some
unknown tissue in me cried aloud for brandy."
He hoped vaguely that the comment would lead to something more explicit,
and thus bring him, without undue emphasis, so to speak, to the one
topic on which he was now resolved to obtain a decisive statement from
the man chiefly concerned before he faced the representatives of
Scotland Yard.
But Forbes, motioning to an easy chair in a well-appointed library, and
flinging himself into another, gave heed only to the one
word--Brooklands.
"Did you fly?" he asked.
"No. I was soaking in theory, not practice."
"Ah, theory. It would, indeed, seem to be true that folded away in some
convolution of our brain are the faculties of the fish and the bird.
Those latent powers are expanding daily. The submarine has already gone
far beyond the practical achievement of aerial craft. But why, in the
name of humanity, should every such development of man's almost
immeasurable resources be dedicated to warlike purposes? I am sick at
heart when I hear the first question put in these days to each inventor:
'Can you enable us to kill more of our fellowmen than we can kill with
existing appliances?' Is it a new engine, a new amalgam of metals, a new
explosive, a new field of electrical energy, one hears the same
vulture's cry--'How many, how far, how safely can we slay?' I regard
this lust for destruction as contemptible. It is a strange and
ignominious feature of modern life. Forgive me, Mr. Theydon, if I speak
strongly on this matter. The men who spread the bounds of science today
are, nominally, at any rate, Christians. They tell of peace and goodwill
to all, yet prepare unceasingly for some awful Armageddon.[*] We teach
Christ's gospel in pulpit and schoolhouse, strive to express it in our
laws, obey it in our lives and social relations, yet we are armed to the
teeth and ever arming, adding strength to the plates of our warships and
distance to the range of our guns, constantly riveting and welding and
forging monsters which shall shatter men and cities and States."
[*] This story was written before the outbreak of war in 1914.]
It was not the younger man now who talked brilliantly and forcibly.
Theydon, frankly abandoning the effort to twist the conversation to that
enigma which, the more he saw and heard of Forbes the more incredible it
became, listened enthralled to one who spoke with the conviction and
earnestness of a prophet.
"Don't imagine that I am framing an indictment against Christianity,"
went on Forbes passionately. "The Sermon on the Mount inspires all that
is great and noble in our everyday existence, all that is eternally
beautiful in our dreams of the future. But why this din of war, this
smoke of arsenals, this marching and drilling of the world's youth?
Nature's law appears to have two simple clauses. It enforces a principle
in the struggle for existence, a test in the survival of the fittest.
Great heavens, are not these enough, without having our ears deafened by
powder and drumming? That is why I am devoting a good deal of time and
no small amount of money to an international crusade against the warlike
idea, and I see no reason why a beginning should not be made with the
airship and the airplane. We are too late with the submarine, but,
before the golden hour passes, let us stop the navigation of the air
from forming part of the equipment of murder. Surely it can be done.
England and the United States, Italy, France and the rest of Europe--the
founts of civilization--can write the edict, with all the blazonry of
their glorious histories to illuminate the page--There shall be no war
in the air!'"
Theydon was carried away in spite of himself.
"You believe that the airship might develop along the unemotional lines
of the parcel post?" he inquired.
Forbes laughed.
"Exactly," he said. "I like your simile. No one suggests that we Britons
should endeavor to destroy our hated rivals by sending bombs through the
mails. Why, then, in the name of common sense, should the first--I might
almost say the only use of which the airship is commonly supposed
capable--be that of destruction? Don't you see the instant result of a
war-limiting ordinance of the kind I advocate? Suppose the peoples and
the rulers declared in their wisdom that soldiers and war material
should be contraband of the air--and suppose that airships do become
vehicles of practical utility--what a farce would soon be all the grim
fortresses, the guns, the giant steel structures now designed as
floating hells! Humanity has yet time to declare that the flying machine
shall be as harmless and serviceable as the penny post. I believe it can
be done. Come now, Mr. Theydon, I think you've caught on to my
scheme--will you help?"
Help! Here was a man expounding a new evangel, which might, indeed, be
visionary and impracticable, but was none the less essentially noble and
Christian in spirit, yet Theydon was debating whether or not he should
give testimony which would bring to that very room a couple of
detectives whose first questions would make clear to Forbes that he was
suspected of blood-guiltiness!
The notion was so utterly repellent that Theydon sighed deeply; his host
not unnaturally looked surprised.
"Of course, such a revolutionary idea strikes you as outside the pale of
common sense," he began, but the younger man stayed him with a gesture.
Here was an opportunity that must not be allowed to pass. No matter what
the cost--if he never saw Evelyn Forbes or her father again--he must
dispel the waking nightmare which held him in such an abnormal condition
of uncertainty and foreboding.
"Now that your daughter is gone I may venture to speak plainly," he
said. "I told you that, I felt the need of a brandy and soda at
Waterloo. As a matter of fact, I did not leave the Brooklands track
until six o'clock, and, as Innesmore Mansions, where I live, lie north,
and I was due here at 7:30, I had my man meet me at the station with a
suitcase, meaning to change my clothes in the dressing room there, and
come straight here. Guess my astonishment when I found Bates--Bates is
the name of my factotum--in the company of two strangers, whom he
introduced as representing the Criminal Investigation Department."
He paused. He had brought in his own address skilfully enough, and kept
his voice sufficiently under control that no tremor betrayed a knowledge
of Forbes's vital interest in any mention of that one block of flats
among the multitude.
Now, for the first time, Innesmore Mansions figured as his abode, the
correspondence which led to the dinner having centered in his club. But
not a flicker of eyelid nor twitch of mobile lips showed the slightest
concern on Forbes's part. Rather did he display at once a well-bred
astonishment on hearing Theydon's concluding words.
"Do you mean detectives from Scotland Yard?" he cried.
"Yes."
Forbes smiled, and commenced filling a pipe.
"Evidently they did not want you as a principal," he said.
His tone was genial, but slightly guarded. Theydon realized that this
man of great wealth and high social position had reminded himself that
his guest, though armed with the best of credentials, was quite unknown
to him otherwise, and that, perhaps, he had acted unwisely in inviting a
stranger to his house without making some preliminary inquiry. This
reversal of their roles was a conceit so ludicrous that Theydon smiled
too.
At any rate, he meant now to pursue an unpleasing task, and have done
with it.
"No," he said slowly. "It seems that I am the worst sort of witness in a
murder case. I may have heard, I may even have seen, the person
suspected of committing the crime, or, if that is going too far, the
person whom the police have good reason to regard as the last who saw
the poor victim alive and in ordinary conditions. But my testimony, such
as it is, is so slight and inconclusive that, of itself, no one could
hang a cat on it."
"Good gracious! That sounds interesting, though you have my sympathy. It
must be rather distressing to be mixed up in such an affair, even
indirectly."
Forbes struck precisely the right note of friendly inquiry. He wished to
hear more, and was at the same time relieved to find that Professor
Scarth had not introduced a notorious malefactor in the guise of a young
writer seeking material for an article on airships!
Theydon could have laughed aloud at this comedy of errors, but the fact
that at any moment it might develop into a tragedy exercises a wholesome
restraint.
"I happen to live at No. 18 Innesmore Mansions," he said. "Opposite--on
the same floor, I mean--lives, or did live, a Mrs. Lester. I do not--"
"Are you telling me that a Mrs. Lester of No. 17 Innesmore Mansions is
dead--has been murdered?"
Forbes's voice rang out vibrant, incisive. His ordinarily pale face had
blanched, and his deep-set eyes blazed with the fire of some fierce
emotion, but, beyond the slight elevation of tone and the change of
expression, he revealed to Theydon's quietly watchful scrutiny no sign
of the terror or distress which an evildoer might be expected to show on
learning that the law's vengeance was already shadowing him, even in so
remote a way as was indicated by the presence under his roof of a
witness regarded by the police as an important one.
"Yes!" stammered Theydon, quite taken aback by his companion's
vehemence. "Do you--know the lady? If so--I am sorry--I spoke so
unguardedly--"
"Good heavens, man, don't apologize for that! I am not a child or
weakling, that I should flinch in horror from one of life's dramatic
surprises! But, are you sure of what you are saying? Mrs. Lester
murdered! When?"
"About midnight last night, the doctor believes. That is what Bates told
me. I was so shaken on hearing his news, which was confirmed by the two
detectives, that I really gave little heed to details.... She was
strangled--a peculiarly atrocious thing where an attractive and ladylike
woman is concerned. I have never spoken to her, but have met her at odd
times on the stairs. I was immeasurably shocked, I assure you. In fact,
I was on the point of telegraphing an excuse to you for this evening,
but the Chief Inspector--Winter, I think his name is--said it would
suffice for his purpose if I met him at my flat about eleven o'clock, as
he was engaged on other inquiries which would occupy the intervening
hours."
"But if the news of this dastardly crime only reached you tonight at
Waterloo Station, and you have no personal acquaintance with Mrs.
Lester, what evidence can you give that will assist the police?"
"Mrs. Lester received a visitor last night, an incident so unusual that
I, who heard him arrive, and Bates, who was in my sitting room when we
both heard him depart, commented on the strangeness of it. That, I
suppose, is the reason why I am in request by Scotland Yard."
"You say 'him.' How did you know it was a man? Did you see him?"
"Er--that was impossible. We were in my flat, behind its closed door.
Bates and I deduced his sex from the sound of his footsteps."
Again Theydon nearly stammered. Events had certainly turned in the most
amazing way. Instead of carrying himself almost in the manner of a
judge, he was figuring rather as an unwilling witness in the hands of a
skilled and merciless cross-examining counsel.
"Did the police officers supply any theory of motive for the crime? Was
this poor woman killed for the sake of her few trinkets?"
By this time Theydon was stung into a species of revolt. It was he, not
Forbes, who should be snapping out searching questions.
"I regret to say that my nerves were not sufficiently under control at
Waterloo that I should listen carefully to each word," he said, almost
stiffly. "Bates had picked up such information as was available; but he,
though an ex-sergeant in the Army, was so upset as to be hardly
coherent. When I meet the detectives in the course of another hour I
shall probably gather something definite and reliable in the way of
details."
Forbes laid the pipe which he had filled but not lighted on the table.
He poured out a glass of port and drank it.
"Try that," he said, pushing the decanter toward Theydon. "They cannot
trouble you greatly. You have so little to tell."
"No, thanks. Nothing more for me tonight until the Scotland Yard men
have cleared out."
Forbes rose as he spoke and strode the length of the room and back with
the air of a man debating some weighty and difficult point.
"Mr. Theydon," he said, at last, halting in front of the younger man and
gazing down at him with a direct intensity that was highly embarrassing
to one who had good cause to connect him with the actual crime. "I want
you to do me a favor--a great favor. It was in my mind at first to ask
you to permit me to go with you to Innesmore Mansions, and to be present
during the interview with the detectives. But a man in my position must
be circumspect. It would, perhaps, be unwise to appear too openly
interested. I don't mind telling you in confidence that I have known
Mrs. Lester many years. The shock of her death, severe as it must have
been to you, is slight as compared with my own sorrow and dismay. More
than that I dare not say until better informed. I remember now hearing
the newsboys shouting their ghoulish news, and I saw contents bills
making large type display of 'Murder of a lady,' but little did I
imagine that the victim was one whom--one whose loss I shall deplore....
Are you on the telephone?"
"Yes," said Theydon, thoroughly mystified anew by the announcement that
Forbes had even contemplated, or so much as hinted at, the astounding
imprudence of visiting Innesmore Mansions that night.
"Ring me up when the detectives have gone. I shall esteem your
assistance during this crisis as a real service."
For the life of him, Theydon could not frame the protest which ought to
have been made without delay and without hesitation.
"Yes," he said. "I'll do that. You can trust me absolutely."
Thus was he committed to secrecy. That promise sealed his lips.