Murder in the Night. Arthur Gask

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ morning' in the hall should hardly, sometimes for weeks and weeks on end, have been aware of his existence. He was a quiet secretive-looking man, about thirty, and always went about with a thick stick and with his coat buttoned high up to his chin. He must have lodged with us quite six months before I even got to know his name, but I gathered accidentally from Mrs. Bratt that he had asked all about me soon after he came, and had appeared quite interested, so she said, in all the details she had been able to supply them.

      Contrary to his appearance, however, he was not an uncommunicative man in his spare time, and I had some very interesting talks with him about his profession. He was very enthusiastic about crime, and held strong views that everyone was bursting with criminal propensities that only required encouragement and opportunity to come out.

      "None of us can ever tell," he would say mysteriously, "the undiscovered criminals that we rub shoulders with every day. The innocent looking man that we sit down next to in the train, for aught we know, may have just come fresh from some ferocious murder. Perhaps he has just hidden a body to rot in some forgotten cellar, or in the thickets of some dark wood. Perhaps, for all we can tell, he may now be living on the proceeds of robbery and violence, and, even as we sit beside him, may be planning the details of some further crime. The young woman who brings us our meal at the restaurant where we go to dinner may have been at home a secret poisoner, and somewhere may have a six-foot grave to her credit in some quiet suburban cemetery. The man who collects our tickets at the station barrier may have broken into some mansion in his spare time, in years gone by, and perhaps have married and set up house upon the proceeds of his robbery. The assistant who serves us with groceries at the store may be a secret and persistent embezzler of his master's goods; the postman who brings us our letters may sneak postal orders from time to time, and the very deacon who collects the offertory from us at the church or chapel may pilfer undiscovered, when chance comes his way. Crime is everywhere," he would wind up emphatically, "and not one-thousandth part of it falls within the meshes of the Law."

      Sometimes he stared so hard at me, and was so pointed and sweeping in his accusations, that I got quite uncomfortable and took to wondering exactly what particular crime he was suspecting me of.

      He would never tell me of the cases he was engaged upon, but he nearly always seemed to have something to do, and at times was away for weeks and weeks together. Mrs. Bratt told me he was very highly thought of at headquarters.

      The other lodger, Captain Barker, was a friend of mine, and I may add, the only friend I had. I had got to know him first in quite a casual sort of way. He was an old chap, well over sixty, and he had been with Mrs. Bratt some years before I came to lodge with her. He lived a lonely life, all by himself, and never had any friends or callers, so Mrs. Bratt said, at any time. At first, he never took the slightest notice of me when I met him in the hall, and for a long time never condescended even to say 'Good evening' or 'Good morning.' But one night he was suddenly taken ill with some kind of fit and I helped Mrs. Bratt to lift him into bed before the doctor came. He was so bad at the time that I didn't think he knew I was helping, but when he got better, as he did in about three weeks, he asked me to come into his room, and from that evening dated a friendship that lasted until he died.

      He was a queer old chap, and so crippled after his seizure as to be almost unable to move about. As far as I remember he never left his rooms, and his only recreations were a daily consumption of a surprising amount of cheap brandy, and his games of chess with me.

      I had rather fancied myself as a chess player until I met him. For some years I had been always top-dog at the little institute of our chapel, and had also studied the game for countless hours from various chess handbooks at the library. Consequently, I was decidedly a hard nut to crack, and our minister, who was a Melbourne University man, and had played in club tournaments and no end of matches, used often to say that I was one of the best players he had ever met.

      I remember so well my first game with Captain Barker. His sitting-room was full of curiosities and odd things that he had collected from all parts of the world on his voyages, and he had been limping awkwardly round to explain them to me. I noticed a set of queer-colored chess-men in a cabinet, and asked him casually if he ever played. He stopped abruptly and snorted in a way that quite scared me for a moment. Then he asked me roughly if I would like to take him on.

      I complied at once, as a matter of courtesy, and sat down to the board with the intention of giving the old chap an easy time and beating him just as gently as I could.

      I thought I would just make a few simple moves and let the game take care of itself until the time justified me in giving him 'check,' and going off to bed. But I need not have worried myself over my politeness. He could beat me hollow. He was a consummate master of the game. He had me in difficulties in the first dozen moves, and play as I would, I found myself tight in the grip of an iron hand. He won easily, and we started a second game.

      This time I determined to give him no chance and, spurred by the humiliation of my first defeat, embarked on a sound, steady defence. But it was no good. He beat me just the same. He was all round a much better player than I, and the subtle sense of impending disaster that all chess players feel when the game begins to lean even a hair's breadth against them again came to me in the first dozen moves.

      I was greatly astonished at his play, because any one could plainly see he was not an educated man, and chess was certainly one of the last games I should have expected him to be fond of.

      We played often after that first evening, so often, indeed, that sometimes it became a real nuisance to me, and I wished we had never become friends. He would play on for hours and hours at night, and never seemed to want to leave off, keeping me out of bed until two and three in the morning. Now and then, on one plea or another, I wouldn't go near him for several days together, but he was always so very glad to see me when I did return that I used to reproach myself for my neglect and feel I had done him an injury.

      "Mr. Wacks," he would say—he was always scrupulously polite to me, except when the brandy had got hold of him, and then he commenced everything with a damn—"Mr. Wacks, you're a gentleman to keep company with an old sailor man, but I'll make you the finest chess player in Australia if you'll only learn."

      He certainly did, as after years have proved, make me an unusually resourceful player, and he was always urging me, when he got to know me well, to join the big Adelaide Chess Club, and take part in matches.

      I used always, however, to refuse, and excuse myself by saying I was too nervous to play with strangers, and when he was not feeling well or had been drinking heavily during the day my excuses would rouse him to an awful fit of temper.

      "You dirty little coward," he shouted to me once when we had been discussing the moves of some game that had been published in the local papers, and I had refused, as usual, to send a challenge to the captain of the local club, "you could beat them all if you dared, and had a spot of pluck in your lean, mingy body. I know how strong I am and I know your play, and you're not half a pawn behind me now. Good judges have told me—good judges, mind—that I am almost a genius at the game. Twenty years ago and there were few players that did not meet their match in me, and me—only a rough sailor man. Afraid of playing with strangers, eh? Why, many a time in strange ports round the Mediterranean have I sat down in little cafes to play with damned foreigners, who didn't know a word of any language but their own, and who could only roll their eyes and jabber 'We—we,' when I gave them mate on the move. But you—you've not a grain of pluck in you—you're a worm, sir, a worm," and he thumped and banged on the table so heavily that I thought every moment Mrs. Bratt would rush in to know what was happening, and what was the matter.

      Yes, the old man's friendship was a bit of a trial sometimes, and I often came to wish he had never spoken to me.

      I have said he was my only friend, but there was Lucy—Lucy Brickett. She was not exactly a friend, СКАЧАТЬ