Tales of Men and Ghosts. Edith Wharton

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СКАЧАТЬ down plump, like a dead body—and at two o’clock I was back at my desk.”

      Granice stopped speaking and looked across the smoke-fumes at his listener; but Denver’s face remained inscrutable.

      At length he said: “Why did you want to tell me this?”

      The question startled Granice. He was about to explain, as he had explained to Ascham; but suddenly it occurred to him that if his motive had not seemed convincing to the lawyer it would carry much less weight with Denver. Both were successful men, and success does not understand the subtle agony of failure. Granice cast about for another reason.

      “Why, I—the thing haunts me … remorse, I suppose you’d call it …”

      Denver struck the ashes from his empty pipe.

      “Remorse? Bosh!” he said energetically.

      Granice’s heart sank. “You don’t believe in—remorse?”

      “Not an atom: in the man of action. The mere fact of your talking of remorse proves to me that you’re not the man to have planned and put through such a job.”

      Granice groaned. “Well—I lied to you about remorse. I’ve never felt any.”

      Denver’s lips tightened sceptically about his freshly-filled pipe. “What was your motive, then? You must have had one.”

      “I’ll tell you—” And Granice began again to rehearse the story of his failure, of his loathing for life. “Don’t say you don’t believe me this time … that this isn’t a real reason!” he stammered out piteously as he ended.

      Denver meditated. “No, I won’t say that. I’ve seen too many queer things. There’s always a reason for wanting to get out of life—the wonder is that we find so many for staying in!”

      Granice’s heart grew light. “Then you do believe me?” he faltered.

      “Believe that you’re sick of the job? Yes. And that you haven’t the nerve to pull the trigger? Oh, yes—that’s easy enough, too. But all that doesn’t make you a murderer—though I don’t say it proves you could never have been one.”

      “I have been one, Denver—I swear to you.”

      “Perhaps.” He meditated. “Just tell me one or two things.”

      “Oh, go ahead. You won’t stump me!” Granice heard himself say with a laugh.

      “Well—how did you make all those trial trips without exciting your sister’s curiosity? I knew your night habits pretty well at that time, remember. You were very seldom out late. Didn’t the change in your ways surprise her?”

      “No; because she was away at the time. She went to pay several visits in the country soon after we came back from Wrenfield, and was only in town for a night or two before—before I did the job.”

      “And that night she went to bed early with a headache?”

      “Yes—blinding. She didn’t know anything when she had that kind. And her room was at the back of the flat.”

      Denver again meditated. “And when you got back—she didn’t hear you? You got in without her knowing it?”

      “Yes. I went straight to my work—took it up at the word where I’d left off—why, Denver, don’t you remember?” Granice suddenly, passionately interjected.

      “Remember—?”

      “Yes; how you found me—when you looked in that morning, between two and three … your usual hour … ?”

      “Yes,” the editor nodded.

      Granice gave a short laugh. “In my old coat—with my pipe: looked as if I’d been working all night, didn’t I? Well, I hadn’t been in my chair ten minutes!”

      Denver uncrossed his legs and then crossed them again. “I didn’t know whether you remembered that.”

      “What?”

      “My coming in that particular night—or morning.”

      Granice swung round in his chair. “Why, man alive! That’s why I’m here now. Because it was you who spoke for me at the inquest, when they looked round to see what all the old man’s heirs had been doing that night—you who testified to having dropped in and found me at my desk as usual. … I thought that would appeal to your journalistic sense if nothing else would!”

      Denver smiled. “Oh, my journalistic sense is still susceptible enough—and the idea’s picturesque, I grant you: asking the man who proved your alibi to establish your guilt.”

      “That’s it—that’s it!” Granice’s laugh had a ring of triumph.

      “Well, but how about the other chap’s testimony—I mean that young doctor: what was his name? Ned Ranney. Don’t you remember my testifying that I’d met him at the elevated station, and told him I was on my way to smoke a pipe with you, and his saying: ‘All right; you’ll find him in. I passed the house two hours ago, and saw his shadow against the blind, as usual.’ And the lady with the toothache in the flat across the way: she corroborated his statement, you remember.”

      “Yes; I remember.”

      “Well, then?”

      “Simple enough. Before starting I rigged up a kind of mannikin with old coats and a cushion—something to cast a shadow on the blind. All you fellows were used to seeing my shadow there in the small hours—I counted on that, and knew you’d take any vague outline as mine.”

      “Simple enough, as you say. But the woman with the toothache saw the shadow move—you remember she said she saw you sink forward, as if you’d fallen asleep.”

      “Yes; and she was right. It did move. I suppose some extra-heavy dray must have jolted by the flimsy building—at any rate, something gave my mannikin a jar, and when I came back he had sunk forward, half over the table.”

      There was a long silence between the two men. Granice, with a throbbing heart, watched Denver refill his pipe. The editor, at any rate, did not sneer and flout him. After all, journalism gave a deeper insight than the law into the fantastic possibilities of life, prepared one better to allow for the incalculableness of human impulses.

      “Well?” Granice faltered out.

      Denver stood up with a shrug. “Look here, man—what’s wrong with you? Make a clean breast of it! Nerves gone to smash? I’d like to take you to see a chap I know—an ex-prize-fighter—who’s a wonder at pulling fellows in your state out of their hole—”

      “Oh, oh—” Granice broke in. He stood up also, and the two men eyed each other. “You don’t believe me, then?”

      “This yarn—how can I? There wasn’t a flaw in your alibi.”

      “But haven’t I filled it full of them now?”

      Denver СКАЧАТЬ