“No,” I shouted. “I neither smelt anything in the dark nor saw anything
in the light, except that red lunatic charging at me.”
“He was only preserving his illusion,” Tarlyon said mildly. “Didn’t you
see, in that second of light, the open desk just by us, beside the
door?”
“I saw nothing but Antony, but quite enough of him.”
“Pity. If you had seen the desk, you would have seen a telephone
overturned on it, the receiver hanging down, and a revolver on the
floor.”
This was getting serious. I struck a match and examined Tarlyon’s face.
He was not smiling.
“Fact,” he assured me. “You would have seen the desk just as it was
after Roger Poole had shot himself at it.”
“You don’t mean----”
“I mean, old boy, that Antony has gone and put everything back exactly
as he last saw it in Roger’s library. Roger, Roger’s wife, Antony and
another fellow were in the dining-room. The telephone-bell rang in the
library and Roger went to answer it, telling Antony to come with him. He
didn’t turn on the light in the library. The telephone told Roger that
the police were after him. And the two in the dining-room heard Roger
telling Antony what he thought of him as a man and brother, then they
heard a shot; and when they got to the door and switched on the light,
they saw Roger dead at the desk and Antony standing where he was
standing to-night. Antony went out by the window into the garden--and he
has reconstructed the scene exactly as he last saw it, even to a dummy
telephone and a revolver! In fact, everything is there except Roger.
Silly, isn’t it?”
Silly was not the word. “But why, why?”
“That’s what I want to find out,” said Tarlyon. “Antony is playing some
sort of a game with himself, and he’s frightening himself to death in
doing it. He always was a superstitious ass. Giants usually are,
somehow--perhaps because, having nothing physical to fear, they fear the
psychic. I’ll bet he goes into that library every night at the same
time--Roger shot himself at about twenty-five past eleven, by the way.
Poor old Antony!”
“But what was all that nonsense about the smell?” I asked.
Tarlyon did not answer. At last he said:
“Did you ever hear, Ralph, the theory that if Judas Iscariot had not
come after Jesus he might have done all that Jesus did? But as he found
he could not because he was too late, he was doomed to crime. In a sort
of far-fetched way it was the same way with Roger and Antony. The
tragedy of those two brothers has something absurdly, fantastically
reasonable about it. You see, Roger was a year older and did all that
Antony wanted to do, the fine and brilliant things, while poor Antony
could do nothing but make a fool of himself, which he did only too well.
Antony would have been a man of many accomplishments, for he’s no fool,
but for the fact that Roger was before him--so Antony thought. And Roger
loved Antony, while Antony hated and admired and feared Roger. And at
last, somehow or another, he managed to betray Roger. No one knows what
that last moment held for those two--no one knows what lay behind the
insults that Roger heaped on Antony at that final moment. For they were
overheard, you know, by Roger’s wife and the man who was dining there.
But something seems to have stuck in Antony’s mind and grown very big
with years. I’m rather concerned for the poor devil, Ralph. He’s still
afraid of his elder brother. Or perhaps he feels that Roger left
something unsaid which he must hear, and so he wants to re-create him.”
It was as the taxi stopped at my door that Tarlyon cried out as though
he had made a discovery: “Good God, of course!”
“Of course what?”
“Smoke, you fool! It _was_ smoke!”
V
What was our surprise, on entering the dining-room some minutes after
nine o’clock the next evening--for Antony dined late--to see the table
laid for four! And then a lady came in--a tall, dark young lady, a
strange and unusual lady with a flash of very white teeth for a smile
and a gardenia alight on the wing of her sleek black hair! I am afraid
Tarlyon and I must have seemed very rude, for we were so surprised that
we stared. The white teeth flashed at us. We bowed.
“My wife,” said Antony. We bowed again. She was the sort of woman one
bowed to. Antony’s wife!
“Diavalen,” said Antony abruptly, “this is Lord Tarlyon and Mr. Trevor.”
Diavalen--Lady Poole!--said nothing. With that wonderful trick of
flashing those wonderful teeth she didn’t need to say anything.
“She’s a Creole,” said Antony, as we sat at the table. He said it as he
might have said that she was an orange. Those white teeth flashed at me,
and I smiled back, feeling an ass. There didn’t seem much to say about
her being a Creole....
I don’t know how Tarlyon felt about it, but it took me some time to get
my wind. “My wife,” says Antony! Never a word nor a sign about being
married--to that glorious, dark, alien creature with the flashing teeth
and sleek black hair! Diavalen the Creole! Just like Red Antony to marry
a Creole called Diavalen and then spring her on to you with a “my wife.”
I remembered Antony once saying, years and years ago: “Never give away
gratuitous information, old boy.” But there are limits. And one of them
is to have a wife with flashing teeth, a gardenia in her hair, and a
name like Diavalen, and then throw her in with the soup.
Red Antony was never what you might call a good host: not, particularly,
at the beginning of dinner. To-night he was morose. But Tarlyon
talked--to Lady Poole. It would take more than a lovely Creole to baffle
Tarlyon. He seemed to have inside information as to what were the
subjects best calculated to excite interest in a Creole married to a
morose English baronet with ginger hair. Diavalen did not talk. But one
did not realise that she wasn’t talking, for she was wonderfully
expressive with her smiling, flashing, teeth. She seemed to have
discovered the art of using teeth for something besides eating.
As Tarlyon talked to her she turned her face towards him, and of this I
took advantage to stare at her face bit by bit. The perfection of that
face was a challenge to a right-thinking man. “It is too small,” I
thought. But it was not too small. “It is too white,” I thought. But it
was not too white. For quite a long time I could not wrench my eyes away
from those flashing teeth and scarlet curling lips--they fascinated me.
Her face was white, the gardenia in her hair looked almost yellow beside
the whiteness of Diavalen’s face; and I thought to myself that that
white complexion was a considerable achievement, for I was sure her skin
underneath was faintly, deliciously brown. It was a small face. It was a
decoration, enchanting and unreal. And in the decoration were painted
in luminous paint two large black eyes; the eyelashes swept over them,
often she half closed them--they were very lazy black eyes; and deep in
them there was a sheen, as of a reflection of distant fire. I did not
like the lady’s eyes very much, I don’t know why. But as to that sleek
black hair in which lay a gardenia like a light in silken darkness--you
felt that you simply must run your hand over that hair to see if it was
as beautifully sleek and silky as it looked, and you wouldn’t have
minded betting that it was. She was the most strangely lovely woman I
have ever seen. And she was the most silent.
Even Tarlyon was at last baffled by the silence of Diavalen. A silence
fell. The teeth flashed at me, and I was just about to say something to
her when Antony’s voice hit the drum of my ear and I dropped my fork.
“I shouldn’t trouble,” said Antony. “She’s dumb.”
That is why I dropped my fork. The servant picked it up and gave me
another. I made a considerable business of it, and then I ate furiously.
Red Antony, vile Antony! I didn’t look at Tarlyon. He was furious, I
knew. He was a man who did not take a very liberal view of jokes like
that. But the worst of Antony was that he didn’t care what view any one
took; he just said the first thing that came into his great red head.
If the dinner, which was excellent as to food and wine, had been a frost
before, it was, naturally, not a howling success after that. The only
thing to do was to pretend that Antony had not spoken. It seemed too
silly to say to the lovely Creole: “Oh, I’m _so_ sorry!” Poor Diavalen!
But I couldn’t pretend, I simply could not find anything to say which
didn’t need an answer. Just try being suddenly planted with a dumb woman
and see if conversation flows naturally from you.
Tarlyon and Antony talked about English heavyweight boxers. Antony was
himself a super-heavyweight and seemed to have a poor opinion of English
heavyweights. He wanted to know whether their weight was calculated by
the noise they made on being smitten to the ground in the first round.
He said that he was tired of opening a newspaper only to read of the
domestic history of Famous British Boxers and of seeing photographs of
the wives, mothers and children of Famous British Boxers. He said that
the whole idea of the press was to impress on the public how gentle,
amiable and loving Famous British Boxers were in the home. He pointed
out that the whole trouble lay in the fact that Famous British Boxers
were too damned gentle, amiable, and loving in the ring. In fact,
Antony, having put the lid on his wife, had woken up.
Then, at last, Diavalen rose, and we rose. I rushed to the door and held
it open. Her teeth flashed at Tarlyon, and he bowed like a courtier. As
she passed Antony, he said, “Good night, Diavalen,” but he said it as
though he didn’t care whether her night was good or bad. As she passed
Antony she gave him a look out of her large, black eyes. I was glad I
did not know what that look said, but I was sure that Antony deserved
it. “Good-night, Lady Poole,” I said; teeth flashed at me, a touch of
pleasant scent hovered faintly, and Diavalen was gone.
“Heavens, she’s lovely!” I whispered, as I joined them at the table.
Tarlyon’s fingers played with the stem of his port-glass.
“Would you mind explaining, Antony,” he asked dangerously, “why you
chose that infamous way of telling us that your wife was--well, not
quite like the rest of us?” There was, I agreed, something blasphemous
about the ghastly word “dumb” in relation to that lovely creature.
Red Antony leant back in his chair and dug his hands deep in his
pockets, so that his white shirt-front stuck out like the breast-plate
of a warrior. He looked bored.
“Favourite trick of hers,” he explained morosely. “Always tries to act
as though she wasn’t dumb. If you had to live with that silly pretence
it would get on your nerves, I can tell you. She does it very well, I
admit. Takes a pride in it--making a fool of other people, I call it. On
board ship from New York she put it over quite a number of people for a
day or two. Lord, it would have got on any one’s nerves, the way she
grinned and grinned and showed her teeth! Why not be honest and say
one’s dumb and be done with it? Or let me say it! There’s no crime in
being dumb, especially with a beautiful face like that. But she won’t
see it, she must smile and flash her teeth--she’s got a repertoire of
grins that would astonish a movie star; and she’s so proud of them that
even if she could speak she wouldn’t. And sometimes all that grinning
and toothwork gets me so raw that I could put back my head and howl--and
she knows it. Sorry I offended you, George. But I’m nervy these days.
I’m raw--_raw_!” He shouted that last word at us with a thump on the
table; and raw he looked, with the eyes blazing out of him, and his once
huge, once red, once jolly face shrunk to a mockery of itself, with the
skin drawn tight across his jaws and hollow in the cheeks.
Tarlyon picked up a liqueur-glass which the thump had upset. “Sorry
about your unhappy marriage, Antony,” he said, “but, you know, it takes
a Napoleon to marry a beautiful Creole. How did it happen?”
“How?” And Antony laughed; at least he made a noise which was perhaps
intended to sound like laughter. “How? Because she made it happen--how
else? D’you think because she’s dumb that she hasn’t got more
fascination than a thousand women rolled together? Those eyes? Met eyes
like that before, George? If hell has a face its eyes will be like that.
I _had_ to marry her.... In Mexico where I went after the Armistice. I
suppose you fellows remember that I went to Mexico three years before
the war. I was in love with the girl who became Roger’s
wife--inevitable, wasn’t it, that the only woman I ever loved should
fall to Roger? He didn’t do it on purpose, of course--it just happened.
So I went to Mexico, to try to do something which Roger could not do
before me. Last chance kind of thing, you know----” The rain of words
faded out of him. He had moved considerably from the subject of
Diavalen, but who could hold a haunted face like that to a subject? I
wished I could, for I didn’t want him to run amok about Roger. There was
something--well, indecent, in talking about a man dead nine years or
more as though he were alive and still wanting to “put it across” Antony
at every turn. I wished Tarlyon would say something, but he was silent,
his fingers fiddling with the stem of his port-glass. Antony was
drinking next to nothing; round about his coffee-cup were at least six
quarter-smoked cigarettes, and now he began to maul a cigar. I never saw
him smoke that cigar.
“In Mexico,” Antony said softly, “I found oil. It was very good oil, as
Roger said later, but there wasn’t much of it. My luck again! But I made
Roger share it this time. You remember how I reappeared in England?
Through that window over there, while Roger was giving a big
dinner-party, sitting where I’m sitting now. You were here, George.
Roger and I made it up before the lot of you--after a silence of years.
Entirely on my side, the quarrel--Roger always loved me. We made it up,
you remember, George? I wanted, you see, to plant Roger with that oil.
Cascan Oil--it sounded like a big thing at the time. That was the last
big dinner-party Roger ever gave. He was unhappy at home--some love
misunderstanding--and he took to me, Roger did. He went head over heels
into that bucket-shop. Of course he soon saw through me and my oil--the
man wasn’t born who could take Roger in--but he let the company go on.
He wanted to see how far _I’d_ go. Giving me my head, you know. He had
packets of money in reserve, and thought he could put the thing right
any moment. But he got reckless--watching me and wondering how far I’d
go. Roger had always loved me ever since we were children--he never
thought of me but as a naughty baby with a bee in my red head about him.
I could see all the time he was wondering how far I _dared_ go. And he
was unhappy at home, poor Roger; he and his wife somehow couldn’t get
their particular ways of loving each other to work well together. So he
had nothing to do but get reckless and chuckle over the naughty baby. I
went the limit. The bucket-shop crashed on Roger’s head. He tried to
pull up, chucked his money in, and other people’s, but it wouldn’t save
it. Clear case of dirty work. A greasy bubble, Cascan Oil. Left a nasty
mess when it burst. And all the papers signed in Roger’s name. Telephone
rang in the next room while we were in here. I was sitting where you
are, Trevor. Roger looks at me with a kind of crooked smile. ‘Come with
me,’ he says, and I went. Into that room, the library. Roger didn’t
trouble to switch on the light; the telephone was on the desk beside the
door. The police were after him, said the man on the telephone--the
police after Sir Roger Poole, Bart, M.P., and all the rest of it!
‘Listen,’ says Roger. And I listened while he told me a few things about
myself. ‘A poor husk of a man,’ he called me. ‘A graveyard of a brother
you are,’ he said. ‘And the epitaph on your grave will be _Dolor Ira_,’
he said, for Roger was a great Latin scholar and could lash out bits of
Tacitus as easily as a parson might give you the Bible. I thought he was
going to shoot me, I was ready for it--but he’d shot himself. Roger
loved me, you know----”
“Then why the hell,” Tarlyon blazed out, “did you take this cursed
house?”
Antony mauled his cigar.
“Because,” he said with a grin, “it just happened that way. It was fate
to find it empty--a fine, large house like this at a low rent while all
England was yelling for houses. But I might not have taken it if
Diavalen had been against it----”
“Oh,” said Tarlyon to that.
Antony looked at his wrist-watch, and jumped up in a mighty hurry.
“God, the time’s gone! Excuse me a moment.”
“We will not!” cried Tarlyon, and had his back against the library door
almost before you saw him leave the table.
But Antony walked his way to the library door without a word.
“Don’t, old Antony, don’t!” Tarlyon begged.
“Out of my way!” said Antony. He said it as though he was thinking of
something else, which was Antony’s most dangerous way of saying
anything.
Now Red Antony was a giant, and irresponsible at that. The two of us
couldn’t have held him from that library door. Tarlyon let him pass with
a wicked word, and has regretted it ever since. Antony slammed the door
behind him, and we heard the twist of the key.
Without a word to me Tarlyon was at the French window; opened it, and
disappeared. I stayed. I was extremely uncomfortable in that mad-house,
you understand. Perhaps two minutes passed, perhaps ten. Where the devil
was Tarlyon? And then I heard through the library door the thud of
something falling. And then in there a window smashed, a sharp smash. I
measured my distance from that door and crashed my shoulder at it, and
fell into the library on top of the panel.
“Light,” said Tarlyon’s voice. I switched it on. On the floor between us
was a heap of a man face downwards, with the back of a red head
half-screwed under an outstretched arm. And there was red on the back of
Tarlyon’s hand where he had put it through the window.
We knelt each side of Red Antony, and turned him over.
“Dead,” I said.
“Not he!” said Tarlyon. “He’s fainted--from fright.” But he knew as well
as I did that Antony was dead--from fright. The huge bulk was as limp as
a half-filled sack as we lifted it a little. Antony’s eyes were wide
open, and they were like the eyes of a child that has just been
thrashed.
“He’s been shot,” I said suddenly.
“There was no noise,” said Tarlyon, but he looked at me. There had been
no noise, but there was the faint, acrid taste of pistol-smoke in the
air. It’s unmistakable, that faint, acrid smell of a revolver just
spent. But Antony had not been shot.
“It wasn’t an illusion, then!” Tarlyon whispered softly. “That smell ...
of Roger’s revolver! And it’s killed Antony in the end!”
I stared down at the poor haunted face. And then I heard Tarlyon
whisper. “My God!” And again: “My God--look at that!” But I did not
look. I knew he was staring over my shoulder, and I was afraid to look.
I was afraid of what I would see. And then I twisted my head over my
shoulder, towards the far end of the room, where there was a little door
from the hall. And I saw the thing sitting squat in the corner, the
black thing with white teeth flashing in a white face and a gardenia in
her hair. In the palm of one hand was a little golden bowl, and from
this bowl floated up a wisp of smoke, just a wisp of smoke against the
blackness of her dress, and this was the faint, acrid smell of a spent
bullet. And Diavalen was laughing--the dumb woman was laughing with all
the glory of ivory teeth and scarlet lips.... We left the thing to its
joke. We went out by the window, and did not remember our hats and
sticks.