WHY HE KILLED HIM
Something in the speaker's face, in his voice, his air, prompted the
girl to make a suggestion.
"You are tired. Won't you act on the advice which you gave me. Won't
you sit down and rest?"
He shook his head.
"I admit I'm tired; I've been tired for quite a while, yet, I can
manage to keep on, and, like you, I doubt if I'd be rested by trying
to sit still. How the storm has come up; we were lucky to get here in
time. I'm afraid it's spoilt the procession of boats; they were
forming just as I was starting in search of you. What with the noise
the rain makes clattering on the roof--I hope there's nothing on it to
spoil; and the wind among the trees, and the rending thunder-claps, I
shall soon have to speak louder if I want you to hear me."
"You need not. I shall hear every word you say, even though the noise
grows greater."
Throughout they had been standing by the table, which occupied the
centre of the cabin, almost within a foot of each other. Her girlish
figure erect, and, as he put it, a little stiff; her hands at her
sides, her head erect upon her pretty neck, her eyes fixed on his
face. He, with his broad shoulders, and a trick of stooping which
detracted from his unusual height; his right hand resting on the
table, his left used now and then to point his words; his queer face,
with its suggestion of whimsical humour blended with what she now saw
was a look of pain. The man had appealed to her when, from behind the
sheltering draperies, she had seen him first; now he appealed to her
still more. Although he was so much the elder, she had an odd feeling
that she would like to comfort him. At the moment he appeared to be
unconscious of her gaze, but held his head a little on one side, as if
he were listening for something, in the hurly-burly of the storm.
Then, with a gesture which suggested weariness more than ever, he
turned and looked her again in the face, drawing himself, with what
seemed to be an effort, a little straighter.
"George Emmett? Oh yes, I was coming to George Emmett." He did not
seem to be in any hurry to go on with him; she waiting in silence with
what seemed understanding of his mood. When he went on it was more
slowly than before; as if his thoughts were hardly in sympathy with
his words; as if, indeed, he were deliberately trying to find words
which only gave imperfect expression to his thoughts. "George Emmett
was not a person whom one would care to offer as a fair example of
humanity. It's easy to say that we should speak no ill of the dead;
but it's not easy to speak well of George Emmett; and I have to speak
of him. His lines ran more or less parallel with mine for a good many
years; and I never knew him forget himself sufficiently to do anything
of which he had any cause to be proud. Miss Gilbert, he was not a nice
man."
"I know he wasn't."
"Then you did know him?"
"Of course I knew him; you know I did."
"Do I? I'm not sure what I know on that point; later, I may come to
you for information. At least, it seems, you knew him well enough to
be aware that he was not, in all respects, a nice man."
"Indeed! He was like a nightmare to me from the first moment I saw
him. As I grew to know him better I don't know if I hated or feared
him more."
"You seem to have reproduced your mother's feelings towards George
Emmett."
"Did my mother know him?"
"To her sorrow. He chose to think himself in love with her--he did
choose, now and then, to think himself in love." Dorothy recalled the
fashion of his wooing her; and shuddered. "Because she preferred your
father--who, compared to him, was as Hyperion to a satyr--he chose to
consider himself aggrieved; and when George Emmett had a grievance he
invested it, and drew the interest, and waited for a time when he
could realise at a thumping profit. He was a bad friend; but a worse
enemy. When your mother declined his advances he promised her that he
would make her smart for it; she herself told me of his promise. He
kept his word. He spoilt her life, and your father's also."
"But how? You told me just now it was because they quarrelled."
"He was the provocative influence. When your father was a young man he
owed George Emmett money; nearly everyone who came in contact with
Emmett did owe him money; even your mother. He used his influence with
your father to breed in his mind suspicion of your mother; which would
not have been an easy thing to do had not your mother, in her hatred
of the man, actually gone out of her way to help him. It was a case of
two simpletons and a blackguard--they were like putty in his hands.
It's a long and a tangled tale; but the end was as I've told you.
Emmett's grievance against your mother didn't die with her. It lived
on. For years, financially, your father was always more or less in his
toils; and Emmett never lost an opportunity of fostering in him the
feeling of resentment at what he supposed was your mother's treachery;
it was as if someone had been continually dropping an irritant on an
open sore; the result was a festering horror. At last, even your
father realised that the thing had become past bearing. He did what,
if he had been another man, he might have done years before: he
strained every nerve--such nerves as he had left--to rid himself of
the incubus. And he succeeded. And though, when all was done, he was
practically a beggar, his freedom was cheap even at the price which he
had paid. The odd thing was that, scarcely was he beggared, when
Fortune, in one of her most fantastic moods, tossed wealth into his
hands--so that he was a rich man when he died. I was abroad at the
time of his death; but, as soon as I heard the news, I hurried home. I
found his will; I found his fortune; I found that he had left the
whole conduct of affairs in my hands; and, also, for the first time I
learned your address. I had never known it before; he was the only
person who had known it. I believe it was the only secret he ever
kept; and, for keeping it, I find it hard to forgive him even now. Had
I only been acquainted with your whereabouts I should have
communicated with you, both at regular and irregular intervals. I
should have asked you to regard me as a deputy father."
"I could not have done that, ever."
"No; I suppose you couldn't." But he meant one thing; and, in her
heart, she meant another. He went on: "So soon as I did know your
address I tore off by the very next boat and train to see you. I can
give you no idea of what were my feelings of amazement when the good
ladies at the convent told me that you had gone."
"But didn't you know that I had gone?"
"Didn't I know that you had gone! Did I know that the heavens had
fallen! I have had some curious moments in my life; but I verily
believe that the one in which I learnt that you had left the convent
with Mr George Emmett was the most singular of them all."
"But had he no right to take me away?"
"Right! That--that--we must not speak ill of the dead, so I will
say--that gentleman!"
"But he said he was my guardian."
"So those ladies told me. If the dead have any knowledge of what takes
place in this world, I wonder what your father's feelings were when he
became informed of his assumption of that--delicate office; I should
think he nearly jumped out of his grave. Especially as he must have
been conscious that the fault was again his own. Emmett was within
easy distance of the place at which your father died. He got there
before I did; and he gained access to your father's papers.
Fortunately he was interrupted before, as was supposed, he had an
opportunity to work any material mischief; but not, apparently, before
he had obtained at least two pieces of information. I have no doubt
that he found out how much money your father had left; obviously,
also, your address; and on that information he promptly acted. He
never lacked audacity; but when he carried you off in that fashion his
courage must surely have been at its highest." For the first time the
speaker showed signs of restlessness; beginning to move about the
cabin as if constrained to find relief for his feelings in motion of
some sort. "The most astounding part of it was, that he had duped
those innocent females with a completeness which was bewildering; no
one had the dimmest notion where he had gone, with you; he had left no
tracks behind him. A man with an unknown motor car, who knows the
highways and byways of Europe better than some people know their back
gardens, is not always an easy object to trace. I got wind of him
again and again; but I believe some occult sense warned him of my
pursuit; more than once it was as if he had slipped through my
fingers; till at last I could get no news of him at all. It was as if
he had vanished into space. So far I had chased him singlehanded;
feeling that this was an account which I should like to settle with
him singlehanded; but, in the end, I retired, beaten; resolved to
employ those resources of civilisation which, hitherto, I had
slighted; and, on the very day on which I had finally so resolved, I
found him." The man was working himself into a state of excitement
which was communicating itself to his listener; as was plain from the
strained eagerness with which she was hanging on his every word. "You
remember Billson?"
"Oh yes, I remember Billson; I shall not easily forget him."
"I also remembered Billson--luckily. I had been visiting a friend when
I saw, outside a tavern door, a motor car, with a chauffeur standing
by it whom I seemed to recognise. For a second I hesitated; then I had
it; it was Billson, Emmett's chauffeur. At the same instant he
recognised me and, scrambling into the car, would have been off if I
hadn't stopped him. The fellow had been drinking."
"It seemed to me that he always had."
"Like his master."
"The master used to get more horribly drunk than the man."
"Pleasant society for you to be alone in."
"It wasn't--nice."
The word came from her with a little gasp; which, as he noticed it,
seemed to increase Arnecliffe's restlessness.
"I couldn't get anything out of him at first. It was only when I made
it quite clear that if he didn't tell me what I wanted to know I
should hand him over to the nearest policeman that he began to tell me
things, for some of which I could have twisted his neck off his
shoulders, then and there, only I refrained. Finally, he informed me
that his master's address, for at least that night, was 'The Bolton
Arms Hotel,' Newcaster. As to whether or not you were in his company
he professed ignorance, and, possibly, he did not know. Within
half-an-hour I was being borne as fast as an express could carry me to
Newcaster. It was latish in the evening when I got there. When I
reached 'The Bolton Arms' they told me Mr Emmett was dining. I said to
the waiter that my name was Gilbert. I hardly know why; I had a sort
of hazy idea that he would come rushing down to see what Gilbert it
could possibly be. Then I called the waiter back, and, scribbling 'A
messenger from Harry Gilbert' on a scrap of paper, sent him up with
that instead. When Emmett came down he was inclined to bluster, but
the house was crowded. Many of those who were there I fancy knew him,
either by sight or reputation. He was quick enough at appreciating the
odds on any given event; he saw that here was a case in which bluster
wouldn't pay. He took me upstairs to his private sitting-room; we
found it empty. I had a notion that finding it empty was a surprise to
him. The dinner-table was laid for two; I had a strong feeling that he
had expected to find whoever it was he had been dining with still at
table; that the discovery of his, or her, absence came upon him with
something of a shock. I asked him with whom he had been dining. He
said with his wife. 'Your wife!' I cried. He laughed, and said that he
was perhaps a little in front of events in speaking of her as his
wife; but that she ought to be his wife; and that, if she behaved
herself, before long she should be. She came of a bad stock, he added,
and his treatment of her entirely depended on her own behaviour.
Knowing that he had been tearing about Europe with you; thinking of
what Billson had told me; his suggestiveness, his words, his tone, his
manner, these things were pretty hard to bear. Oh, I'll go into a
court of justice, and admit that I'd have liked to have taken him by
the throat and have choked the life out of him then and there. I asked
him where you were. He looked me up and down, evidently inquiring of
himself how much I knew, and then said that you were in safe-keeping
hundreds of miles from Newcaster."
"But I was there, in the room!"
Mr Arnecliffe stared.
"There, in the room? But how could that have been possible?"
She explained. He stared still more.
"Did he know?"
"I couldn't say; it was not easy to tell what he knew. I wondered
then, and I've wondered since."
"Then you heard all that was said?"
"I heard, without understanding. You've no idea what a state of mind I
was in; I was more than half out of my wits. I don't remember a single
word either of you said; you might have been talking in a foreign
tongue. I didn't seem to hear your words then. You see, I didn't know
who you were; I didn't even know who he was, except that he said he
was my guardian; that I seemed wholly at his mercy; and that I was in
mortal terror of him. All that you have said about my father, and
mother, and everything is strange to me. In that room at 'The Bolton
Arms' I was the most ignorant, helpless, friendless, miserable
creature in the world!"
"What had taken place between you?"
"He wanted me to marry him; he had wanted to before. He said I should
have to marry him, and it seemed to me I should, and I would rather
have died."
"You saw what took place, if you didn't hear?"
"Oh yes, I saw; and--and----"
"That was the worst?"
"No, no; that is not what I was going to say; nor was that what I
felt. I didn't know who you were; I didn't know what your quarrelling
with him was about; yet, I felt that you were my friend."
"By what instinct?"
"I can hardly tell you; I suppose it was an instinct of
self-preservation. You see, I was half paralysed with fear; all my
remaining senses were bound up in the desire to escape from him--that
was the only thing for which I cared--to escape."
"Then you did not hear what was the actual provocation?"
"No; I think I heard you say he was a thief; but I am not sure; even
that may have been only in imagination."
"I did say he was a thief. He was trying to steal your money; he had
stolen you; he had stolen many things in his time; he was a thief many
times over. But I said more than that." He paused; again his mouth was
twisted by that whimsical smile. "All these things which I am saying
to you I should not say--at least, in such a shape--were it not that,
placed as I am, I must take the fullest advantage of the only
opportunity which is ever likely to offer. You and I are meeting for
the first time and the last; we shall never see each other again."
"Why?"
Again the pause, and the smile.
"In courts of justice, out of England, sentimental reasons sometimes
prevail; but, in England, no. The stronger the motive, the greater the
crime. As when you and I bid each other, presently, good-bye I shall
entrust myself to the safe-keeping of our excellent police, it is not
unlikely that, in the book which contains my story, the last page is
practically finished, and that the colophon is all that remains to be
added." She was still; but not with the stillness which signifies
acquiescence. He went on: "I say this in order that you may understand
why it is that I think it desirable that you should be placed in
possession of certain facts which you ought to know; even though I may
have to do it with what seems brutal brusqueness. That, also, is why
I'm anxious to take advantage of the only chance which I am ever
likely to have to assure you that I did not do what I did without what
seemed to me then, and seems to me still, to be sufficient
provocation. He made a certain definite, hideous statement regarding
your mother, and regarding you; and when I warned him to be careful,
and withdraw it, he said that, so far from withdrawing it, he would
proclaim it publicly wherever he went; and because, knowing the man, I
believed that he would do so I killed him."
"I should not have blamed you if you had done so; I think I would have
done it myself if I had dared; but--you didn't kill him."