CHAPTER XI
At about eight o’clock that evening Fair, who had dined with Allyne and Travers at the club, reached his own door and, letting himself in, waited for their arrival in the small smoking-room on the first floor of the deserted and gloomy mansion. As he opened the street door he thought that he heard hasty footsteps on one of the upper stories, but soon he was able to rid himself of the unpleasant fancy, and sat quietly reading until his friends should come.
This they did in a very few minutes—considerably to his relief—and the three groped their way up the dark stairs and along the passage to the library, which room Fair told them was to be the scene of their conference. As they peered in at the door the black woodwork of the library made the gloom seem greater than in the passage, and as they hesitated Fair said: “Strike a match, will you, Travers?”
“Right you are—if I don’t break my neck first,” answered Travers, finally managing to get the match lighted and holding it high over his head.
“There we are,” said Fair. “Now I can find the electric light key.”
He found it and turned on the current, flooding the room with light. The sudden translation from total darkness to brilliant light, and the general feeling of mystery and stealth with which the house seemed to be filled, gave all of the men an uncomfortable sense of being engaged upon uncanny business.
“I feel like a cross between a burglar and a blooming ass,” said Allyne, to break the unbearable silence. “By Jove, Fair, my wealth is at your disposal, but I’ll be hanged if you can borrow much more of my nervous energy! What’s the beastly game, anyhow?”
“I do think,” added Travers, more seriously, “that we’ve followed you in the dark about as long as a decent regard for our feelings—as well as for your own interests—will permit. Seriously, old chap, I do not think we should allow you to go on in this way. Elucidate, like a good fellow.”
“On my honor, Dick,” replied Fair, speaking with great earnestness, “this is no fool’s errand that I have asked you and Allyne to undertake. It is the last favor that I shall ever ask you to do me. Sit down. I’ll go downstairs and see if I can’t scare up something to drink.”
“That’s the first rational thing you’ve said since yesterday,” said Allyne. “Go, by all means, old man, and make it brandy and soda.”
“Back in a moment,” answered Fair, disappearing.
“Honestly, Travers, what do you make of it?” asked Allyne when they were alone. “If it’s a joke he has carried it rather far. What is it?”
“Oh, Lord, I don’t know,” replied Travers wearily and with very genuine anxiety. “If it were any other man—but Fair is the coolest and sanest devil I ever knew. I don’t like this turn of affairs on my word. Money and women are the only two things that could bowl a chap over on his beam ends in this way, and Fair can show a clean slate under both of those heads—so I give it up. But I, for one, go no further.”
“Unless I am mistaken, his father or grandfather was mad,” whispered Allyne, pursing up his lips uncomfortingly; “but I never thought Maxwell dippy—that is, you know, not unusually so. He is devilish queer.”
“In England,” answered Travers, with a sneer, “everyone is thought mad who manifests any trace of originality. In the city they think Fair a bit off his head because he does everything that sacred British methods decry—and grows rich at it. And in society they think him singular because he has such a childish way of telling the truth. You and I know that he makes friends in society just as he makes money in the city. No, I don’t think Fair is mad—I wish to heaven I could think so.”
Allyne was striding up and down the room by this time, and when he next reached Travers he stopped and said: “Confound it, Travers, he can’t have done anything so rum as all this melodramatic rot would make one think. Give him credit for too good taste for that, at least.”
“Oh, never fear,” replied Travers, rising; “I’ve made up my mind. I’ll give him half an hour more. If he does not chuck this mystery and give us the key in plain English, I’ll report the case to his solicitor and medical man.”
“Here, too,” grunted Allyne, with a nervous shrug of his shoulders. “What a creepy, deuced idiotic thing to bring us up here tonight! The house feels like a tomb! By George, I wouldn’t stop here alone for the world. Did you see that man across the way when we came in? He watched us as if we were a gang of coiners. Lord! If they were to— What was that?”
Travers, also, had heard the noise, whatever it was, and both men turned nervously toward the door and listened. It was repeated, but faintly.
“It sounded like footsteps on the floor above,” said Travers.
“But Fair said there is nobody in the house,” answered Allyne, adding, with a return of his usual spirits: “I say, Travers, just run upstairs and have a look round, will you, that’s a good fellow?”
“You go,” replied Travers, smiling, but more in earnest than he would have cared to admit. “You are younger than I, and—but here’s Fair.”
Fair came in, carrying a tray on which were a number of decanters and glasses, which he placed on the table before he saw with surprise that the others were evidently acting under a strain of some sort.
“I say, old man, were you upstairs a moment ago?” asked Travers, with a disquietingly anxious look.
“Upstairs?” asked Fair, with growing uneasiness. “Why, no. I was below—ever since I left you. Why?”
“Nothing,” answered Travers, trying to throw a careless tone into his words. “Allyne thought he heard—There it is again!”
All three had heard it this time—and all belied with their eyes the smile which they forced to their lips.
“Wind in the chimney,” muttered Fair, disavowing all belief in his own words by going, not to the fireplace, but to the door to listen. “There is nobody in the house, anyway,” he added, still listening at the door.
“It sounded like bare feet—Ugh—give us a drop of brandy,” growled Allyne, pretending to more alarm than he really felt.
Fair returned to the table after closing the door into the passage, and pouring a stiff drink for each of them, said, with a laugh: “Here you go. That will hearten you up a bit, Allyne. Why, you look as though you expected to see a ghost. Never fear, old chap. Something much more substantial than spirits is at the bottom of this cheerful occasion.”
“There was a beastly sly fellow over the way when we came in,” said Allyne as he sat on the end of the table to drink. “Why the deuce did he watch us like that?”
“He probably wants me,” answered Fair seriously, “although he does not yet know that it is I he wants. We can ask him to escort me to jail as we go out of the house presently.”
Travers put down his glass with a bang, spilling the liquor, jumped up and swung around at Fair, thoroughly disgusted and exasperated.
“Really, Fair,” he began, “I’ve had about enough of this. Aren’t you pressing your little joke a bit too far? I was just saying to Allyne that I would give you half an hour. At the end of that time I——”
Again there was the sound of footsteps above their heads, and Travers stopped and all three looked toward the door as the steps seemed to come down the stairs. Fair was the first to regain composure.
“You give me half an hour,” he said to Travers, “but I shall require only ten minutes. Have a cigar, and—damn it, Allyne, let up, you know. Lock the door if you like, but for heaven’s sake quit your funk.”
“Thanks awfully,” retorted Allyne, locking the door so quickly that Fair and Travers laughed genuinely this time. “There! Now we are cozy, aren’t we just? A corpse and an undertaker and a hangman are all we want to complete our merry little party.”
“Shut up, Allyne!” shouted Travers, watching Fair’s face. “Now, Fair, for the love of sanity—what’s the answer?”
Fair poured out another drink for himself, and pushing the bottles toward Travers, threw himself full length upon a lounge. Puffing slowly at his fresh cigar, he began speaking with perfect composure:
“You fellows remember a Cuban by the name of Mendes—the man of whom I have often spoken to you, do you not? You know—Don Pablo Mendes—a great chess player?”
“Certainly—you spoke of him only yesterday. Friend of Lopez? Yes—well, what of him?” asked Travers, and Fair turned his head toward Allyne, who seemed to be listening for noises and not to him.
“I saw you speak to him one night at the opera,” said Allyne, without taking his eyes from the door. “Looked like a twin brother of the devil—diamonds, yellow fingers, hair oil, et cetera. Proceed, to wit, go on.”
“Yes, that’s the man,” answered Fair, and then leaning over to flick the ashes from his cigar into the hearth, he added, without the slightest excitement or emotion: “Well—I murdered him yesterday, you know.”
“You are drunk,” sweetly remarked Travers, with a look of infinite relief, as of course Fair now was admitting that he had been twigging them.
“Murdered him, eh?” grunted Allyne, executing a series of maneuvres that landed him on Fair’s chest. “Murdered a yellow cigarette twister, did you? What of that? Why, I strangled my grandmother last night.”
“By all that is holy,” Fair cried out hoarsely, “gentlemen, you sha’n’t go on in this way. If you will only allow me to tell my story, you will realize that I am a ruined man with death hanging over me, and, as my friends, I ask you to stand by me, to see that I face my fate and end my life in a way to prove that I was not altogether unworthy of two such friends. Will you do this?”
He turned his white, drawn face from one to the other beseechingly.
“Fair,” cried Travers, clutching his hand and speaking fast and like one who has passed beyond consternation into the very heart of abandonment, “if you are not mad, what does this mean? If you are in earnest—if this horrible thing is true—you know that Allyne and I would risk our lives to save yours, but why——?”
“Twenty times,” broke in Allyne, pushing Fair back into a seat. “We would risk twenty lives for you, old man; but if you have really rid the world of that unhung dog, why in the name of Mrs. Fair and the children, to say nothing of us and common sense, don’t you get away until we can get your defense in order? Forgive my fool tongue, old man, for, of course, I could not believe that this was anything but some new sort of game. Did the blackguard attack you? Don’t let the ugly business get on your nerves too much to let you see that this is no murder at all.”
“Yes,” put in Travers eagerly, groping through the dark to catch at any straw of hope or light. “And for God’s sake leave the country until your solicitor can prepare your case. Come, now, explain.”
“It’s a simple story,” began Fair more calmly now that he had got them to accept the situation. “The fool came here to extort blackmail—and I killed him. Mrs. Fair saw me, and, Travers, you saw my pistol, you remember—still warm and with one chamber discharged. The servants heard the shot. The man’s body is still in the house, and nothing remains but to give myself up to the police. Lopez knows the history of my relations with his friend, and he will be only too glad to testify that I had threatened to kill Mendes, against whom I had a long-standing grudge. The case against me is complete, you see, so I prefer to end it all by surrendering myself at once.”
“Not if we can stop you,” shouted Travers fiercely. “And as for the pistol—unless you go regularly off your head and tell them that I saw it, they will never know it. And, of course, you know, your wife’s testimony would not be taken against you, even if she should wish to give it.”
“But she is not my wife,” groaned Fair, looking up at him.
“What!” thundered Travers, significantly glancing at Allyne, who wheeled around to Fair and exclaimed: “Cæsar’s ghost! Look here, Fair, you are rubbing it in rather too deep, you know.”
“Oh, it will be a pretty story when it is told in the papers,” muttered Fair, his hands thrust deep in his pockets and his legs stretched out in front of him.
“Perhaps it will,” replied Travers, rising and going toward the door with his hat on, “but I don’t propose to hear you tell it. My God, man, you can’t expect us to hear it and then stand up and swear away your life! You’re mad. My duty is clear. Good night. Allyne, ring me up at the club in an hour. This is—” He did not finish the sentence, but hurried to the door, which he had reached when Fair spoke.
“All right, old man,” he said, without turning to Travers, “if you choose to desert. I have faced tight places before. I’m game now.”
“No, hang it, Fair,” answered Travers, coming back from the door and confronting Fair, “you know that I will not leave you; but why must you ask Allyne and me to learn all this—when we could otherwise swear to the fact of your being what we have always known you to be—yes, know you to be now—for, by gad, you can’t get me to believe you.”
“Hang the swearing,” said Allyne, trying to laugh. “If they get me on the witness stand, I’ll let them know what I think of greasy foreigners, and my views as to sending them where they belong. Go on, Fair, and tell us what they did next.”
“Then sit down, Travers, and hear me out,” replied Fair, filling the three glasses and regaining an air of quiet.
“Blaze away,” answered Travers, dropping into a chair with resignation. “At the bottom of a hole one can’t fall lower—so go on.”
“Have a drink, both of you, and we’ll get on,” said Fair, and all three sipped their drink in silence for some minutes. Then Fair said:
“Many years ago the noble woman whom you know as Mrs. Fair was married to the wretched man whom I killed yesterday. She afterward discovered that he had a living wife, and she, of course, therefore, found herself a nameless outcast. She appealed to me, and for two reasons I offered her the protection of my name. I had loved her some years before, and I inherited from my fathers a sort of morbid craving to sacrifice my life to a cause or purpose which the reason and the prudence of all normally minded men would discountenance.”
“Surely wedding such a glorious woman as Mrs. Fair was scarcely what one could look at as a sacrifice of one’s life,” protested Travers when Fair paused for a moment.
“She is indeed a queen, a priceless woman,” murmured Fair quietly, “but her children are not my children—she never became my wife. She has been a sacred vocation to me, and while men envied me the love of such a wife, I was really living the life of a celibate because of a mad, but inexorable, fixed idea. You fail to understand this? So do I. I only know that nothing in heaven or earth could have deterred me from assuming the position in which I have lived so long. This may be madness—but it is of the very essence of my being. And then I came to love another woman—and you may imagine what I suffered. But there was a satisfaction in it all which, of course, you men will be unable to comprehend. But, see the irony of fate. The only thing that made life possible has been dashed away from me. I lived supported by the thought that Janet and her children were saved from shame by my effacement, and now I must proclaim that they are not my flesh and blood, to shield them from the disgrace of being thought a murderer’s kin. Isn’t it horrible? But it is only fate’s swift way of damning me for what I had just been so weak as to decide to do. I was about to let my love—the gnawing hunger of a real life—have way. I had decided, on this very day, to proclaim my love for— Fellows, for God’s sake, never go back upon your destiny even if, as in my case, it should mean lifelong torture. After all, there may not be a hell after death, for there’s one on this side of the grave—and I am in it.”
He dropped his head on the edge of the table. Allyne, whose heart was like a child’s, could bear the sight of his agony no longer, and walked to the end of the room. Travers came over to Fair’s side and laid his hand on his head.
“This is the most stupendous thing I ever heard of, Fair,” he said; “and if there is such a thing as justice, you shall not suffer.”
“There is a thing called justice,” replied Fair, looking up, “and therefore I must die.”
“Not if you will allow us to save you from yourself,” cried Allyne, returning to them. “My soul, man, no case can be made out against you unless you make it yourself. Do let us act for you. Counsel must be secured at once. Come, come, I know the very man.”
“Presently, presently,” answered Fair. “I telegraphed Marshall, my solicitor, that we would call at his chambers tonight at ten. But before we go I want you two to have the case in detail. I promise to be governed by you and Marshall when you have all the facts. That’s reasonable.”
“Then there will be no difficulty, I promise you,” replied Allyne, with renewed good spirits. “Marshall has no romantic rubbish in his gray matter. Maxwell, you’re a disembodied ghost of some crusader who hasn’t heard that Adam and Eve left Paradise some time ago for good. I drink to you, Sir Altruist.”
“Thanks, old chap,” said Fair, with moistening eyes.
“By Jove, I feel better,” exclaimed Travers, stretching his arms and holding Fair by both shoulders. “I’d like to be worthy of you, Fair.”
“Oh, come, I say, Dick,” protested Fair. “In a few weeks it will be deucedly awkward to be asked if you were not a friend of mine.”
“We’ll see about that,” retorted Travers defiantly. “Now, the details.”
While they sat, Fair walked to and fro before them with folded arms.
“Well,” he began, “for five years I was happy in seeing Janet and her two boys safe under the shadow of my broken heart; but about a year ago Lopez came to me and told me that some disreputable Cuban acquaintances of his had learned poor Janet’s secret, and that a paltry hundred pounds would keep them quiet. I, of course, sent him about his business and reported the matter to the police. The Cubans quietly got hold of Janet—just how I was never quite sure—and played upon her love for her children until they extorted one sum after another from her without my knowledge. At last they demanded a sum so vast that the poor girl was compelled to appeal to me. I told her to ignore their letters, and had them shadowed by detectives. We discovered that Mendes himself was at the head of a gang whose plan was to get the secrets of rich families for blackmailing purposes, his private fortune having been gambled away on the Continent. More than once Lopez or Mendes has ruined a woman of standing, and while pretending to remain a devoted lover, has told the other, who would at once begin the extortion of hush money. Mendes came here yesterday—and I shot him like a dog. Now Lopez will show that I was the paramour of my victim’s wife, and that my crime followed naturally upon Mendes tracking his wife to my house, and there learning that I had palmed her off as my wife for years. Those are the facts. Complete, wouldn’t you say?”
Allyne, always more susceptible to all emotions than Travers, frankly looked the horror he felt as he began to realize the truly desperate situation in which Fair now was; but Travers, after thinking for a few moments in silence, spoke out bravely: “Confound it, man, isn’t it a principle of law that a man is innocent until proven guilty? Who knows that you killed the scoundrel? And if suspicion should be drawn toward you, why, then let them prove the charge if they can. And, anyhow, can’t you plead that you killed him while protecting Mrs. Fair? The blackguard’s character will make it difficult for Lopez to prove Mendes’s alleged relations with Janet. I’d be hanged if I’d be hanged just for the fun of it.”
“Ah, but my dear fellow,” returned Fair, arguing out his point in his customary cool way, “you forget. It is known that he came to this house. It is known that he did not leave it. His body, my dear friend—his corpse, you know, is a nasty bit of evidence that we can’t get rid of.”
“Do you mean to say,” answered Travers, face to face with the calm man, “do you mean to tell us that the—that the chap’s corpse, you know, was in the house last night while you and Janet were entertaining us? If you are the man you are, surely no woman at any rate could have stood that.”
“Ah, you don’t know her,” smiled Fair. “To save me—yes, to please me even, that woman would do anything—bear anything.”
“And she jolly well ought to,” put in Allyne, slapping Fair’s back, and then with a nervous look about the room: “I say, what did you do with the—with that infernal thing, you know?”
“With the body?” asked Fair, with entire freedom from excitement. “It is here yet.”
“Here?” cried Allyne angrily and sick with perplexity.
“In the house now?” asked Travers, scowling but not believing.
“Certainly,” replied Fair quietly. “What could I have done with it last night? You all came in within a few minutes of the deed. Yes, it is in the house—it is in this room now.”
“The devil you say!” exclaimed Allyne, facing about as if he feared that the dreadful thing was back of him somewhere.
“Rather a gruesome thing to joke about, isn’t it?” asked Travers sadly, and still utterly unable to believe what he heard.
“Horrible—but true,” answered Fair, with disconcerting calmness as he walked slowly over toward the chest by the fireplace, while Allyne and Travers watched him breathlessly. “It is here.”
He seemed to take an eternity to do whatever it was that he intended to do, but finally as he stood over the chest he said, looking from one to the other: “If a man ever had a more terrible guest under his roof than mine, I pity him. Look!”
As he said this he suddenly stooped and raised the lid of the chest. The two now thoroughly horrified men were standing on either side of him. They all peered, shuddering, into the chest. It was empty.
“Gone?” moaned Fair, for the first time betraying uncontrolled horror.
“That settles it,” shouted Travers, delirious with joy. “You see, you have been dreaming this whole cursed nightmare.”
Meanwhile Allyne was running about the room, swinging a chair over his head and shouting like a madman. Coming back to Fair he sang out with hysterical laughter: “Rest and quiet—rest—and qui—et, sir—that’s what we need. Ice on the head, hot water at the feet—and a month at sea. May I have the pleasure?” Before Fair could stop him he had waltzed him around the room. At last Fair broke away from him, and holding his hands to his splitting head, he brought them back to a full realization of the awful truth by the expression on his face.
“Hush!” he cried to Allyne. “For God’s sake, Allyne, stop it. I swear on my honor that I put it into this chest. It has been discovered by somebody and removed today. I sat up all night in this room, so that it must have been taken away today. Come. That’s the end. I might as well surrender without delay.”
“But wait, wait,” broke in Travers. “Who knew of it’s being here? Who could have discovered it? Now don’t be rash. Let us think before we act. How could it have been found? That is, if it ever was here.”
“Oh, there are a thousand ways in which it might have been found,” answered Fair, ignoring his unbelief.
“Did Mrs. Fair know about it?” asked Allyne, and was startled by the effect of his question.
Fair sprang up, thought for a moment, and then exclaimed: “By heaven, Allyne, that’s it. My God! Do you know what that means?” He clenched his hands and glared at them, stupefied with grief.
“It means,” said Travers, “that she has disposed of it. It means that your chances are a thousand-fold better than before.”
“No, no!” shrieked Fair. “It means—but no—she could not be so unspeakably unkind to the children as to try to prove that she killed him. No. I give it up, then. Come, come, I can’t bear this much longer. I must get the relief of surrendering myself. Come.”
“If you attempt to give yourself up, by gad, I’ll have you locked up for a dangerous lunatic,” said Travers, with strange new determination as he noticed how rapidly Fair was breaking. “I tell you, Fair, that— Hark! That was that beastly footstep again. I’m not a coward, but this— Hark!”
They listened with tense faces. Again the sound. And again.
“That was certainly a footstep—upstairs, too,” whispered Travers. “Come Fair, this is no place for you now. Allyne, if he refuses to come with us, help me to force him out of this hole. Hear me? Now come.”
Fair struggled away from their grasp and ran to the door, saying: “I will go with you, but I am going upstairs first—alone.”
“You are going to do nothing of the sort,” replied Travers, again grasping his arm and pulling him back.
“Don’t come with me, please,” pleaded Fair; “I’ll be only a minute.”
“Never fear,” answered Allyne at his other arm; “I wouldn’t go up there with anybody—but you are not going up, either. Out with him, Travers.”
“Yes, come, old man,” begged Travers earnestly. “Notify the police that thieves are in the house, call the fire brigade—anything, but don’t be a fool and expose yourself to you don’t know what danger. Come!”
They strained at him, and presently Fair gave in, saying: “Very well, it is getting a bit on my nerves, I confess. Go to the top of the stairs before I turn out the light. All ready? There.”
He turned out the light and felt his way to the stairs, down which Travers and Allyne preceded him, and the next moment they stepped out into the blessed coolness and relief of the street.
The instant that Fair turned out the light in the library a man stole quickly in from the adjoining study and groped his way to the chest in the total darkness. Just after the street door slammed two persons, who had been listening on the floor above the library, began whispering as they descended the stairs and approached that room.
Meanwhile Fair and his two friends called a cab and drove off eastward and soon were set down in the Strand near the law courts, proposing to make the remainder of their journey on foot.