The Luck of the Vails: A Novel

by E. F. Benson

"How do you do, Dr. Armytage?" she said. "Mr. Langham and I were, when you entered, talking about the same business as that on which you have come. Harry Vail, I must tell you, is a great friend of mine; he is staying with me now. Last night he told me the history of the past fortnight very fully. It will not therefore surprise you to learn that I came up to London to-day to see Mr. Langham."

"It does not surprise me in the least," he said. "I take it, then, that you wish me to speak before you. If that is so, I will send my hansom away."

He was back again immediately, and waited till the others had sat down, warming his hands at the fire, with his back turned to them. The silence, so to speak, was of his own making, and neither thought to interrupt it. Then, facing them, he spoke.

"There is no need, therefore," he began, as if continuing his private train of thought, "that I should speak at any length of what has already happened. Harry, I gather, has told you, Lady Oxted, of his three escapes; he has told you also of his quarrel with his friend here, and the reason of it."

There was something in this bald abruptness which pleased Lady Oxted. It looked genuine, but at the same time she made to herself the conscious reservation that it might be a piece of acting. If acting, it was a very decent performance. She gave a silent assent.

"You have asked me to speak before you," he went on, "but in doing so I am somewhat at a personal disadvantage. I have no reason to suppose that you trust me; indeed, there is no reason why you should. You know of me, probably, as an intimate friend of Mr. Francis, and when it appears that I am a traitor to him you naturally ask yourself if I am really so. But"—and he paused a moment—"but I do not think that this need much concern me. I am here to tell you in what manner Mr. Francis hopes to kill his nephew. It is our object, I take it, to prevent that."

There was something in his tone that smacked of the lecture, so dry and precise was it. But a clearer observer of him than either of his present audience, to whom the words he said were so much more just now than the man who said them, would have seen that an intense agitation quivered beneath the surface. The man was desperately in earnest about something.

"There is one more preliminary word," he went on. "We are dealing, so far as my observations go, with a man who is scarcely sane. In the psychology of crime we find that such patient, calculated attempts to take life are usually associated with something else that indicates cerebral disorder—some fixed idea, in short, of an insane character, which is usually the motive for the homicidal desire. That symptom is present here."

"The Luck!" exclaimed Lady Oxted.

"Precisely. The idea of owning the Luck possesses our—our patient. He believes that it brings its owner dangers possibly, and risks, but compensations of an overwhelming weight. He believes, I may tell you, that it will keep off death, perhaps indefinitely. And to an old man that is a consideration of some importance, especially if he has such an exuberant love of life as Mr. Francis has. On the other hand, we must remember that before the last outbreak, if we may call it such, Mr. Francis procured the death of a man who stood in no relation to the Luck. Yes, he shot young Harmsworth," he said slowly, looking at Lady Oxted, "for nothing more nor less than the insurance money. One may have doubts whether all crime of violent kind is not a form of insanity. But that particular form of insanity is punished with hanging."