The Deductions of Colonel Gore. Lynn Brock

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СКАЧАТЬ of the second flight from the landing. The tiny noise, almost imperceptible, awaited for so many nights, stopped his heart for a beat. The guile that had once more all but eluded his vigilance shocked him violently, hardened his mood to stone again. What stealthy pains must have gone to the noiseless opening of her door, the crossing of the landing, the descent of the stairs, step by step—until that small, dreaded sound had brought her to abrupt halt, listening with straining ears to discover if it had betrayed her. How had she learned this minute, patient cunning? How had she concealed it from him?

      He was out of bed now. When he had opened the door and listened for a moment, he switched on a light and dressed himself in the clothes which lay always in readiness against a night-call. His long fingers adjusted his collar and tie with the careful neatness with which they performed the task every morning. He smiled sardonically at the thought that without his collar and tie, a husband, however injured, started at a disadvantage if his wife’s lover happened to wear one at the moment of dénouement.

      He felt no anger now, none of those vague, futile emotions which were the stock-in-trade of the wronged husbands of convention. His mind held but one thought, one desire—the successful accomplishment of that entry of absolute surprise. He switched off the light again and went softly down the stairs.

      On the drawing-room landing he paused to lean over and look down into the hall. The subdued radiance of the light in the fanlight, left on always at night, showed him the lower portion of the dining-room door. As he had expected, the door was shut, though already, at the distance of two flights of stairs, the subdued murmur of voices was audible through it. He went down another flight, with increased caution, and on the first landing—that outside the morning-room—came in view of the dimly-lighted hall. To his amazement he saw, standing just inside the open hall door, Cecil Arndale.

      He halted, dumbfounded. Was it possible that he had been mistaken? Had it been Arndale’s voice which he had heard that Monday night? Had it been Arndale whom he had seen come and go on Friday in the moonlight? No. There was no likeness whatever between the voices of the two men—no likeness whatever between their figures—no possibility of such a mistake. Besides, at that moment, a man’s voice was speaking in the dining-room. Arndale obviously could hear that voice too. He was listening to it, his eyes fixed on the dining-room door, so intently that not even for a moment had they turned towards the darkness of the staircase. For that moment of surprised surmise, Melhuish made no movement forward or back. The maddest, most ludicrous of conjectures had flashed into his mind. Was it possible that there were two of them—and that somehow they had both come on the same night?

      ‘My God!’ his senses asked of themselves, ‘am I mad? Is this I who am standing here on this landing outside the morning-room thinking this thing?’

      He heard his throat produce a dry, inarticulate gasp—an attempt to call out Arndale’s name—as he began to descend the stairs towards him. At that moment, however, without having heard him, at all events without a glance towards him, Arndale went out, leaving the hall door ajar behind him. The murmur of the voices in the dining-room had risen abruptly in pitch. Almost instantly its door opened and Barrington came out into the hall.

      ‘Absolutely out of the question, my dear child, I assure you,’ he was saying, as he drew on a glove. ‘I’d do it if I could—for your sweet sake … But in times like these I simply can’t afford philanthropy. A thou. That’s the best I can do for you, my dear. Come—it’s well worth the money—a clean sheet—no skeleton in the closet to worry about, eh? Think how nice that would be to waken up to in the morning.’

      Melhuish had retreated stealthily the two or three steps which he had descended towards the hall, and stood flattened against the portière of the morning-room door, the glowing end of his cigarette concealed behind him. His wife had come out from the dining-room now, though, since she stood facing towards the hall door, he could not see her face. But her voice, when she spoke, contained a hard, desperate anger of which he could not have believed her even serenity capable.

      ‘What a scoundrel you are,’ she said contemptuously. ‘I wonder how many unfortunate women you have played this game with …’

      ‘Well’—Barrington shrugged smilingly—‘that is really beside the point, isn’t it. Think it over, my dear. I’m quite sure that if you think it over, calmly and without temper—temper, by the way, does not become you, little Babs. You look quite thirty-five tonight—’

      He paused abruptly, went to the hall door, opened it, looked out for a moment or two, closed the door almost to, and came back towards her.

      ‘Bit risky leaving that door ajar,’ he said easily. ‘The bobby on the beat might be curious enough to come in and have a look round. Awkward, that. Better have the hinges, or whatever it is that makes the row when you close it, attended to, hadn’t you, before our next midnight conference … Or better still, come across with that thou … and let us cut the midnight conferences right out.’

      ‘You promised—you gave me your solemn word that if I made you those four payments of a hundred and fifty, you would give me back my letters and the other things—’

      ‘I know. I know, my dear. Why remind me of my absurd impulsiveness. Forget what has been said—concentrate on the fact that what I say now is … a thou.’

      ‘You never meant to keep your promise then?’

      ‘Yes, yes, yes. Until I realised how foolishly impulsive I had been in asking for six hundred when I might have asked for ten.’

      ‘I see. And so it will go on, you think. You think you will always be able to bleed me—that I shall always be coward enough and fool enough to pay this blackmail?’

      ‘Hush, my dear child … Hush, hush.’

      ‘It is blackmail … nothing more or less … You are nothing more or less than a common blackmailer—a blackguard that preys on wretched, foolish women who—’

      He held up a hand, unruffled, smiling, yet menacing.

      ‘My darling child … what an ugly vocabulary you have acquired of late. No, no, no. Let us be polite. Let us not be melodramatic. Let us be quite sensible. Above all, let us not shout … at half-past one in the morning. Besides, we really have nothing more to say to one another, tonight. I feel that. I am very sensitive to such impressions. You require, I feel, time to reflect. Tomorrow—or perhaps next day—when you have thought things over quietly and sensibly, you will send me a good-tempered little message to say that—’

      ‘No,’ she cried vehemently, forgetting caution. ‘This is the end of it. I will have nothing more to do with you. I knew that you were a scoundrel—an unscrupulous blackguard. I know now that you are a liar and a cheat as well. I will have nothing more to do with you. Do your worst—I don’t care what it is. Nothing could be worse than what I have gone through already.’

      ‘Worse for yourself, you mean, my little Babs—don’t you? But what about poor hubby? What would poor straight-laced, stick-in-the-mud hubby say, suppose someone were spiteful enough to—’

      His suave, sneering voice was silenced abruptly. Mutely, savagely, she had struck him a swinging buffet on the mouth that had jerked his head back and sent him stumbling against the long oak settle at the opposite side of the hall.

      ‘Damn you, you little devil—you’ll pay for that.’

      He stooped to pick up his fallen hat, tossed it on to the settle, and turned then again to her threateningly. She made no attempt to retreat from him as he moved towards her, but stood against the wall beside СКАЧАТЬ