Israel Rank

by Roy Horniman

Henry Gascoyne must be my next victim if I were not to play the coward and draw back, wasting so much good work already done. The very “if” that entered into my mind warned me that my nerve could not endure for ever. I had thought the preservation of nerve merely a question of self-control, but as I grew older I realised that there were many and complex human emotional developments in perpetual siege of that valuable attribute.

One thing at a time, and as it would not be advisable to try my luck with Miss Gascoyne just yet, I decided to devote myself to inquiring into the affairs of the Reverend Henry Gascoyne.

Each undertaking of the kind became more and more difficult to manage. An introduction to the Reverend Henry Gascoyne would tie my hands. My presence on the occasion of a third Gascoyne dying a tragic death might become the subject of remark, and once the hue and cry was raised evidence might accumulate rapidly enough, and, as is often the case, most unexpectedly. Even Ughtred Gascoyne’s death might become a support to suspicion, though there might never be any direct proof that I had had a hand in it. Indeed, it was prolonged reflection on this matter that made me realise that my nerve was not an impregnable fortress.

Still, I could not draw back. What duty is to many people my ambition was to me. It had to be gone through, though hell fire waited for me when it was attained. It was not that I was incapable of rehearsing the penalties of failure, but that I realised that if once I let my imagination loose among such possibilities chaos would ensue.

I took down Crockford’s and perused it. The Reverend Henry Gascoyne had been ordained at twenty-three. Evidently the valetudinarian rector was on his last legs at the time, and it had been advisable to have his successor in readiness. On going into the matter it turned out to be as I expected. After spending two years as curate of a smart West End church he had stepped into the living of Lye.

Lye was in Lincolnshire. If I wished to discover further particulars about my reverend cousin there appeared to be no other way than by going down to the village. I was not at the time quite as free as I had been formerly. Mr. Gascoyne had grown to expect me on Sundays, if not to lunch, to dinner, and I think he considered it as somewhat of a slight if I did not appear. I was looked upon as the son of the house, and he certainly had a right to expect something of a son’s duty in return for the uniform kindness he had shown me. Not that he was likely to display resentment at my going out of town for a day or two, but it would involve explanations, and explanations involved deception, and deception involved the danger of being found out. To say I was going to one place when I was going to another meant the possibility of being discovered, and so far I had kept singularly clear of petty deception.

I decided that some friends in a humble walk of life might be useful, and invented a family called Parsons, the name suggested by the quarry I was hunting. They had, I explained, been good to me when I was a poor lad at Clapham, and had now gone to live in the country. To avoid committing myself I wrote down every particular about them which I might be questioned on, and learned them off by heart. I introduced their name casually into the conversation at dinner at the Gascoynes’.

Yes, I told them, in replying to questioning, there was Mrs. Parsons and her son and a daughter. Mr. Parsons was dead. His son had always loved the country, and having inherited a small farm from an uncle, he and his mother and sister had gone to live on it. Was the daughter pretty? I did not know. I had not seen her for some years, and girls change so. The son was the same age as I was. No, we had not gone to the same school, and he did not know Grahame Hallward. Our acquaintance had come of our living near each other.

I changed the subject as soon as possible.

Soon after I found occasion to say that I had met young Parsons in London, and that he had asked me to go down and spend a few days at their farm near Norwich. I felt the whole thing to be lamentably clumsy. It would have been better to get to know someone near Mr. Gascoyne’s rectory, but it was done, and as soon as I had finished with the Parsons family I intended to ship them all off to Canada, where there are as many farms as the imagination can desire.