Part 3 — THE GARRET (continued 2)

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

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.