Книга - The Passing of Mr Quinn

The Passing of Mr Quinn
Mark Aldridge

G. Roy McRae


Reprinted for the first time in almost 90 years, this original novelisation of the very first Agatha Christie film is a unique record of the Queen of Crime’s movie debut and a bold attempt to turn one of her favourite short stories into a thrilling silent movie.Who poisoned the cruel and sinister Professor Appleby? Derek Capel, his neighbour, in love with the Professor’s wife, Eleanor? Vera, the house-parlourmaid, Appleby’s mistress? Or was it Eleanor Appleby herself? All three could be reasonably suspected of a motive which would prompt them to poison the most hateful villain who ever crossed the pages of fiction . . .The first ever Agatha Christie film was a 1928 black and white silent movie, loosely based on her first ‘Harley Quin’ story. Although no script or print of the film survives, this rare novelisation from the same year is a unique record of Christie’s first association with the motion picture industry – now in its remarkable tenth decade with the release of Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express.Reprinted for the first time in almost 90 years, this Detective Club edition includes an introduction by film and television historian Mark Aldridge, author of the authoritative Agatha Christie On Screen (2016), who reveals why the film’s harshest critic was Agatha Christie herself.







‘THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB is a clearing house for the best detective and mystery stories chosen for you by a select committee of experts. Only the most ingenious crime stories will be published under the THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB imprint. A special distinguishing stamp appears on the wrapper and title page of every THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB book—the Man with the Gun. Always look for the Man with the Gun when buying a Crime book.’

Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1929

Now the Man with the Gun is back in this series of COLLINS CRIME CLUB reprints, and with him the chance to experience the classic books that influenced the Golden Age of crime fiction.




THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB (#u9ded81f4-c022-56b7-8588-fa41e114bd9b)


E. C. BENTLEY • TRENT’S LAST CASE

E. C. BENTLEY • TRENT INTERVENES

E. C. BENTLEY & H. WARNER ALLEN • TRENT’S OWN CASE

ANTHONY BERKELEY • THE WYCHFORD POISONING CASE

ANTHONY BERKELEY • THE SILK STOCKING MURDERS

LYNN BROCK • NIGHTMARE

BERNARD CAPES • THE MYSTERY OF THE SKELETON KEY

AGATHA CHRISTIE • THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD

AGATHA CHRISTIE • THE BIG FOUR

HUGH CONWAY • CALLED BACK

HUGH CONWAY • DARK DAYS

EDMUND CRISPIN • THE CASE OF THE GILDED FLY

FREEMAN WILLS CROFTS • THE CASK

FREEMAN WILLS CROFTS • THE PONSON CASE

FREEMAN WILLS CROFTS • THE GROOTE PARK MURDER

FRANCIS DURBRIDGE • BEWARE OF JOHNNY WASHINGTON

J. JEFFERSON FARJEON • THE HOUSE OPPOSITE

RUDOLPH FISHER • THE CONJURE-MAN DIES

FRANK FROËST • THE GRELL MYSTERY

FRANK FROËST & GEORGE DILNOT • THE CRIME CLUB

ÉMILE GABORIAU • THE BLACKMAILERS

ANNA K. GREEN • THE LEAVENWORTH CASE

VERNON LODER • THE MYSTERY AT STOWE

PHILIP MACDONALD • THE RASP

PHILIP MACDONALD • THE NOOSE

PHILIP MACDONALD • MURDER GONE MAD

PHILIP MACDONALD • THE MAZE

NGAIO MARSH • THE NURSING HOME MURDER

R. A. V. MORRIS • THE LYTTLETON CASE

ARTHUR B. REEVE • THE ADVENTURESS

FRANK RICHARDSON • THE MAYFAIR MYSTERY

R. L. STEVENSON • DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE

EDGAR WALLACE • THE TERROR

ISRAEL ZANGWILL • THE PERFECT CRIME

FURTHER TITLES IN PREPARATION










Copyright (#u9ded81f4-c022-56b7-8588-fa41e114bd9b)







COLLINS CRIME CLUB

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain in The Novel Library by The London Book Co., an imprint of Wm Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1928

Novelisation © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1928

Introduction © Mark Aldridge 2017

Jacket design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1928, 2017

The publishers would like to thank Agatha Christie Ltd for their co-operation in the publication of this edition.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008243968

Ebook Edition © September 2017 ISBN: 9780008243975

Version: 2017-08-08


Table of Contents

Cover (#ua68d3987-638a-526c-a096-13d9ada9c43c)

The Detective Story Club (#u66442d16-965a-5f4c-9bf2-ab30a889faea)

Title Page (#u47b4f7e4-c296-52c9-83fb-88147b193785)

Copyright (#uf732f3ce-45bc-5dad-bdb5-62517d2f4ad6)

Introduction (#u412c2248-b9a7-512e-af73-d6d8f1fc4300)

The Passing of Mr Quinn (#u239f71fe-4fdd-584a-9954-2ef46b63994f)

Note (#u2e5a9ea6-5120-5a31-9bfa-ac8c80f0f4b1)



Chapter I (#ub3bac882-a9c0-568e-95ec-4258f2c77202)



Chapter II (#ufd2a906d-daa4-575d-91eb-139a72f941e8)



Chapter III (#u200fc11a-2ae3-5d12-b293-52a540f749f9)



Chapter IV (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter V (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter VI (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter VII (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter VIII (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter IX (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter X (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter XI (#litres_trial_promo)



Appendix (#litres_trial_promo)



Also Available (#litres_trial_promo)



About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




INTRODUCTION (#u9ded81f4-c022-56b7-8588-fa41e114bd9b)


OF the many publications that have been associated with (but not written by) Agatha Christie, The Passing of Mr Quinn is certainly one of the most curious—and, until now, one of the rarest. Originally published in 1928, the book is actually a novelisation of the silent film of the same title, which had been released the same year and was the very first screen adaptation of an Agatha Christie story. The film itself is now lost, along with its script, meaning that this tie-in publication is our best insight into this filmmaking first. The movie was publicised as an adaptation of Christie’s short story ‘The Passing of Mr Quinn’, which had introduced the charming but mysterious stranger Harley Quinn, a man whose sudden appearance motivates characters to untangle a mystery that has been hanging over them for many years.

The timeline for the story might initially seem to be reasonably straightforward: Agatha Christie’s original short mystery ‘The Passing of Mr Quinn’ was published in the March 1924 edition of The Grand Magazine before being adapted into the July 1928 film that used the same title. The film’s new interpretation of the mystery was then novelised as this book, The Passing of Mr Quinn, and Christie’s original short story was later published in April 1930 as the opening part of the short story collection The Mysterious Mr Quin, where it was renamed ‘The Coming of Mr Quin’, perhaps to differentiate it from the film and this novelisation. However, the development of this story is a little more complicated than this timeline may indicate.

One point is immediately obvious to those familiar with the original short story—the film and its novelisation diverge significantly from Christie’s narrative. In her original story, a mysterious death in the past is raised in a discussion amongst friends, who are spurred on by Quinn to make sense of the events. The film takes the same death as its starting point of the dramatisation, but after the main suspect is cleared it moves off in a wildly different direction as it emphasises the romantic relationship between two key characters and the appearance of a mysterious stranger.

In order to make sense of The Passing of Mr Quinn’s journey between media we need to begin by looking at its original magazine appearance in 1924. The first thing to note about this version is the title, which spells the titular character with two ‘n’s. This is consistent with the later film, but not with Christie’s book of the short stories, which established ‘Quin’ as the definitive spelling. The title of both the film (which is often misspelled in articles) and this novelisation is not an aberration, then, but a reproduction of the original character’s name as it had appeared in the first four stories in The Grand Magazine. In fact, it was only when The Story-teller magazine published the next six stories that the spelling changed from Mr Quinn. Debuting in the Christmas 1926 issue and appearing monthly under the general headline ‘The Magic of Mr Quin’, this ‘New series of brilliant mystery stories’ established Quin as Christie’s third serial character after Hercule Poirot and Tommy & Tuppence. (Miss Marple did not appear anywhere until December 1927.)

The title is not the only change that occurred between the original publication of the story and its later appearance in the book collection of Quin stories some six years later. The Grand Magazine’s original ‘The Passing of Mr Quinn’ is several hundred words shorter than the version that would eventually be published in the book as ‘The Coming of Mr Quin’, and it is clear that Christie substantially redrafted the mystery before handing it over to Collins for The Mysterious Mr Quin collection. Some sections, such as the beginning, are almost completely rewritten, while elsewhere smaller details change. For example, Christie aficionados may notice that Alex Portal from ‘The Coming of Mr Quin’ is named Alec in this 1928 novelisation, but this is in fact the original name of the character as printed in 1924. Elsewhere, Mr Satterthwaite ages from 57 in the original magazine to 62 in the collected short stories, while in terms of tone there is marginally more emphasis on Quinn’s qualities as a quiet manipulator in the original text.

A unique feature of The Grand Magazine story was the addition of line drawings to illustrate key moments, including the first visual representation of Mr Quinn. However, it strictly adheres to the text’s description of him being in ‘motoring clothes’, and as a consequence his attire of a sensible rain jacket and flat cap does make him seem rather less mysterious than the reader may otherwise have imagined.

It was therefore this original version of the debut Quinn story that was adapted by director and screenwriter Leslie Hiscott to form the basis of the film The Passing of Mr Quinn. The picture was made quickly and inexpensively at Twickenham Studios by Julius Hagen Productions for film distributor Argosy in order to satisfy new demands that a certain percentage of domestic film productions should, amongst other things, be based on a scenario by British writers. The Passing of Mr Quinn would be one of the first of many ‘quota quickies’, made specifically to satisfy the new regulations rather than as the result of any particular artistic or business desire for the title. In the event, the film of The Passing of Mr Quinn took only a few elements of the original short story to form the basis of its bizarre and somewhat illogical—but nevertheless entertaining—screenplay that would not only veer away from the original narrative but also completely reinvent the title character. To say more would ruin the surprise of the events as they unfold in the following book, but suffice to say there is little in common between the Mr Quinn of this story and Agatha Christie’s original character.

The film was given a relatively limited release, and was not well received. On the whole, critics found it overlong (at 100 minutes) and somewhat preposterous, with particular disdain

for the portrayal of Quinn himself by Vivian Baron. Nevertheless, some commentators found elements of the mystery intriguing and commended it for the interesting visual presentations of some scenes. However, the harshest critic was possibly Agatha Christie herself. The specific details of the agreement that allowed an adaption—and then a novelisation—of her story are lost to us, as no paperwork survives, but we can infer a great deal from the circumstantial evidence. For one thing, although this book’s title is the same as both the original short story and the film, the text renames Quinn once more, this time to ‘Quinny’, with a curious disclaimer at the beginning of the text requesting that readers understand that this is the same character as seen in the film. (It appears to have been a last-minute alteration, in that one instance of Quinn rather than Quinny survived unchanged in the text.)

We can assume that this further change of name was made in order to assuage Christie’s displeasure at the appearance of the book—from her own publishers, no less—although it did not prevent her name from being featured prominently on the dustjacket. Christie seems to have been unaware that she had signed away the rights to novelise the film. This annoyed her greatly and informed her later business dealings. When her agent, Edmund Cork, formulated a (later abandoned) deal with MGM in the 1930s to film some of her works, she was insistent that the contract should make it clear that, while the studio may make original mysteries for the screen featuring her characters, they were not to be novelised.

Nevertheless, such discomfort came too late for The Passing of Mr Quinn, and the novelisation was printed—although only once—as part of The Novel Library, an inexpensive collection of small-format books consisting mainly of reprints of well-known titles by the likes of H.G. Wells, Jack London and A.E.W. Mason, plus lesser-known books that had been turned into films. In the event, Christie’s displeasure seemed hardly worth the effort as both book and film of The Passing of Mr Quinn sank without a trace, although the picture was seen as far away as Australia.

The novelisation itself often feels like an Agatha Christie mystery as reimagined by someone with no real affinity for the intricacies of the genre. Instead, it firmly leads with melodrama above all else. As for the person who performed this reworking, there is little to say, as the credited author of the book, G. Roy McRae, has no other publications to their name and is almost certainly a pseudonym for a freelancer or staff writer—although we cannot dismiss the possibility that it was Leslie Hiscott, the film’s director and adapter, changing his name to avoid bearing the brunt of Christie’s ire.

Whoever the author was, they were less interested in nuance and character than Christie was, but showed a keen emphasis on the more salacious elements of murder, relationships and the impact of crime. Indeed, some elements (including Quinn himself) are suitably macabre for the increasingly horror-tinged popular movies of the time; one could imagine Lon Chaney playing the part as described. However, as a mystery, there are some clumsily executed changes of scenario and loose ends that Christie herself would never have allowed, while the introduction of such elements as an untraceable poison break the code of conventions adhered to by the major mystery writers of the era. The Passing of Mr Quinn provides the reader with an unpredictable journey through various scenarios and locations, changing genre along the way, until we reach the final act of the story having little understanding of what mystery we are trying to solve, although it’s hard not to be swept up in the drama of piecing together the story that links some unusual characters. In the end, according to contemporary accounts, the story’s resolution works rather better on the page than it did on the screen, and while The Passing of Mr Quinn is a curiosity, it is certainly an interesting one.

MARK ALDRIDGE

March 2017




THE PASSING OF MR QUINN (#u9ded81f4-c022-56b7-8588-fa41e114bd9b)


THE BOOK OF THE FILM BY G. ROY McRAE

This dramatic film thriller is adapted from a novel by Agatha Christie, the world’s greatest woman writer of detective stories. It provides a new and original type of thriller since three persons in the story could be reasonably suspected of a motive which would prompt them to poison the most hateful villain who ever crossed the pages of fiction. Who, then, poisoned the cruel and sinister Professor Appleby? Derek Capel, his neighbour, in love with the Professor’s wife, Eleanor? Vera, the house-parlourmaid, Appleby’s mistress? Or was it Eleanor Appleby herself? This is a story full of dramatic moments and thrilling suspense. It will keep you guessing until the final page.




NOTE (#u9ded81f4-c022-56b7-8588-fa41e114bd9b)


READERS are requested to note that Mr Quinny of this book is the same person as the Mr Quinn of the film.




CHAPTER I (#ulink_f7a01af4-a13f-5673-863f-19ddd7b9f7ce)


PROFESSOR APPLEBY listened.

He stood in the centre of his study, his hands in the pockets of his dinner jacket, and a curious half smile on his lips as he listened intently.

He heard nothing, for his house was silent as the grave.

If there had been any sound Professor Appleby would assuredly have heard it, for amongst the rows of valuable books that lined the walls of his study there were dummy books. Dummies that held microphones which could carry any sound made in any room of that house to its master in the centre study.

Professor Appleby alone had knowledge of this. His wife, Eleanor, was terrified of his omniscience of everything that went on in the house. She knew that she could not give an order to the servants without the professor knowing of it. It was one of Professor Appleby’s subtle means of cruelty, and it had contributed a great deal towards the state of nervous exhaustion to which she had become prostrated.

After listening for a moment or two Professor Appleby laughed softly. It was a precise, mirthless sound like the tinkle of ice in a glass.

Satisfied that, as yet, all was quiet in his house, he crossed the thick pile red carpet to the broad mahogany desk in the centre of his study. It was a study indicative of his tastes, for it was furnished with every luxury and refinement, yet it bristled with the bizzarre. The bookcases contained exquisite vellum-bound volumes, old editions, and strange works of foreign publishers. A glass-door cupboard on one side of the room held chemicals and test-tubes, giving the study the appearance of a laboratory, which was offset by the cushions which lay on chairs and settee, the soft-shaded lamp and the glowing radiator which gave the big room generous warmth.

On the carpet near the mahogany desk was a stout wickerwork basket. Professor Appleby, with a strange smile twitching his lips, bent over it, and untying a string lifted a lid. He straightened himself with a huge Haje snake coiling and wriggling in his arms and round his shoulders, and he laughed again softly.

It was a startling and repellant sight in that room of luxury and taste. The red curtains were drawn over the window to shut out the gathering dusk, and all was silent in the study save for the ticking of the clock and Professor Appleby’s long-repressed breath. It was a ticklish job he was doing.

After a few moments of manipulation with instruments from a case on the desk, Professor Appleby jerked erect, satisfied that his experiment was coming to a successful issue. The smile on his lips was scarcely pleasant.

Spite of his huge, elephantine figure there was a suggestion of pantherish power in Professor Appleby’s movements. Now once again he seized the snake with cruel, strong white fingers just below its head, and bent over it with an instrument in his other hand.

He had a gross white face that appeared to be carefully attended, and very finely pencilled eyebrows that had a satanic uplift; an extremely strong nose and jaw, and lips that were a red, twitching line. A monocle gleamed in his right eye, and those eyes were as bright as a snake’s themselves, holding the heavy-lidded droop of mastery.

Such was Professor Appleby, a monstrous figure of ebony and white in his dinner suit, as he wrestled under the soft-shaded lamp with the Haje spitting snake.

There sounded all at once a slight hiss. The Haje’s long body wriggled and coiled sinuously, so that its black and white diamond markings seemed to blur. A glass vessel fell to the carpet, knocked over by the snake in its struggles, and Professor Appleby’s monocle dropped on its black cord as he smiled grimly.

He had forgotten for a moment that Doctor Portal had arranged to call that evening on Eleanor, his wife—forgotten it in the fascination of the strange experiment he had been conducting.

The Haje, a fierce species of African cobra, had just exercised its remarkable and disconcerting habit of ejecting poison from its mouth to a considerable distance, and the professor had collected the discharge and had drawn the cobra’s fangs. It was now completely harmless, its poison-spitting propensities stopped for all time.

The professor dropped into a chair, watching the snake’s convulsions a moment, while he wiped his white hands fastidiously with a handkerchief.

There were tiny beads of perspiration on his forehead. For all his coolness he had known the experiment to be a dangerous one.

It was such experiments as this that had gained for Professor Appleby a reputation entirely enviable in the world of science and research. He was a noted expert in poisons and a pathologist of world-wide repute. Such ability—in the eyes of the world, at least—condoned a personal reputation that was somewhat dubious.

If the consensus of opinion was that Professor Appleby was the most brilliant scientist of his day, it was also freely rumoured that he had paid the penalty of genius. The dividing line between genius and insanity is a very thin one, and Professor Appleby was very much on the borderline: he had a cruel and sinister side to his character which could scarcely be called normal.

There were rumours current of strange habits he had acquired during his long sojourn in the East. Gossip has many votaries in an English country village, and Professor Appleby’s house, the Lodge, discreetly retired though it was, behind a long avenue of trees, was the object of much curiosity and an astonishing penetrative insight on the part of the villagers.

‘How he ever married her. I don’t know’—this referred to the gracious woman with hair of golden-brown and large, pathetic brown eyes who was occasionally to be seen flitting through the village with flushed face averted as though she knew she were an object of pity. Local opinion was unanimous about Eleanor Appleby. Two years before she had been a girl of breathless beauty; now it was evident that she walked with fear. She had been induced by the persuasions of her mother and her friends to accept the brilliant Professor Appleby as suitor—and now she was paying the cost of her husband’s erratic genius.

There was a great deal more gossip. Stories of his cruelty, and of his preference for the society of other women. How these got about in the village it is difficult to tell, for Professor Appleby was careful to throw a barricade of secrecy around the Lodge. His menage consisted of two domestics, a white-haired cook whose frightened manner and consistent head-shaking was the answer to any curious question about life at the Lodge, an old gardener and handy man who for some reason of his own had the silence of the sphinx in his tongue, and Vera, the house parlourmaid. Vera? Well, Vera, too, may have had her own reasons for not talking.

Yet rumour had got about, and Professor Appleby was conscious of it. He was sensitive about it, too, sensitive as a man who has some secret vice. As he stood back from the snake which was now twisting to the carpet, a sudden savagery flitted across his gross, white face. It was quickly eradicated. Indeed, he crossed the carpet, softly as a cat, and looked at his own reflection in a mirror, screwed his monocle in his eye and wagged a white forefinger warningly at himself.

No one must see it. No one must guess.

He turned away from the mirror again, and tried to capture elusive memories of an astonishing outburst he had made at a medical board in London a week before. What had he done—what had he said? Really he ought not to do these things. He must keep a closer guard over himself.

He thrust his hands deep in the pockets of his trousers and stood with feet apart, his chin sunk as he stared with glittering eyes at the cobra.

Suddenly he started.

Through the microphone concealed in one of the dummy books had come distinctly the sound of a knock at the front door of the Lodge, then faintly the sounds of the maid’s footsteps and the opening of the door. Then voices; a man’s deep and hearty, and a woman’s confused low tones.

Professor Appleby’s brows drew together, and somehow the faint contortion gave the heavy white face with its bright eyes a terribly sinister expression. The professor had that type of gross face that many exceedingly clever men possess; to watch its fleeting expressions provided a fascinating, if rather frightening study.

He listened. It was evident that those in the hall were taking care not to be overheard, for their voices sounded in undertone to their footsteps moving towards the drawing-room. The microphone made of their conversation a mere confused buzz, and only now and then did a word sound with clarity.

Professor Appleby knew that his wife and Doctor Alec Portal were talking together in the drawing-room.

He caught snatches through the microphone, chiefly in the man’s voice.

‘… You must not … then leave him … For your own sake I beg of you, Eleanor.’

The listening professor smiled beneath frowning brows. Quickly he picked up the writhing, harmless cobra and stowed it away in the wickerwork basket, then once more wiping his hands in his handkerchief, he crossed the carpet, lithe and buoyant to an astonishing degree in a man of such heavy build.

Softly traversing the passage between the study and the drawing-room, he opened the door suddenly, and the two inside the room, seated on a settee near the window, looked up startled to see him regarding them from the threshold.

In the woman his presence caused instant and dire confusion. Eleanor Appleby snatched away the delicately moulded hand that Doctor Portal had been holding whilst in pursuance of his professional duties he felt her pulse, and that same hand went like a fluttering bird to her heart. She paled—it was pitiable that swift pallor that drained her face of every vestige of colour—and her dilated eyes stared at her husband whilst she trembled.

Doctor Alec Portal looked swiftly from Professor Appleby to the beautiful, stricken creature on the settee beside him, and a frown knit his brows as he sprang to his feet.

Across the empty space of the room the two men measured glances. Doctor Alec Portal’s level-gray eyes did not waver, though in those few seconds he knew that rumour was right about Professor Appleby.

His eyes were restless, unnaturally bright under the frowning brows; his mouth twitched ever so slightly. He held himself well in check, of course, but the cruel glow that showed in his eyes as he looked at Eleanor could not belong to a quite normal man.

It was Doctor Alec Portal who spoke first.

‘Professor Appleby, I believe?’ he said in icy tones.

These two had crossed each other’s path many times, yet had never spoken. In public Professor Appleby was an extremely dignified and even ponderous man, and scarcely likely to take notice of a country medico.

Alec Portal, however, looked far different from the traditional village doctor. He had bought the country practice at Farncombe merely as a diversion from his wealth and because medicine appealed to him. Earlier in life he had selected the army as a career, and he bore the stamp of it unquestionably.

Hardly yet in his forties, he stood some six feet in his socks, with a fair, tanned and clean-cut face that could be unbelievably boyish and handsome, and at times implacably stern.

Stern he appeared now as Professor Appleby crossed the room towards him. It was quite obvious from the professor’s attitude, the sneering smile upon his lips, that he was going to commit one of those breaches of good taste for which he was becoming notorious.

‘Every one in Farncombe knows that I am Professor Appleby, I think,’ he said with icy contempt. ‘And also that my wife is—well, mine.’

Doctor Alec Portal flushed.

He could not mistake the implied allusion. It was, in fact, coldly brutal, and he heard a little gasp from the settee. Professor Appleby was regarding him with a provocative and sneering smile, and Doctor Portal controlled his rising anger with difficulty.

‘That is exactly my point,’ he said harshly. ‘I am Doctor Alec Portal, as you know, and I am in attendance upon Mrs Appleby in a medical capacity. I am glad to have the opportunity of seeing you tonight, professor, for I wish to warn you that your wife is far from well.’

Professor Appleby’s eyebrows shot up.

‘Indeed,’ he said suavely, ‘that is news to me. I have qualifications as a medical man myself, and I should have said that Mrs Appleby is enjoying the best of health. Still—’ he crossed the carpet, and took his wife’s hand, feeling her pulse with a judicial air.

His back was half-turned to Alec Portal, but, indeed, the young doctor was not exercising any special vigilance for the moment, and therefore he did not observe the cruel pressure of Professor Appleby’s strong fingers upon his wife’s arm.

Alec Portal was caught up in a sudden strange wonder. As the professor had crossed the room Eleanor Appleby had cast a swift glance of appeal to him. And for a breathless moment a galvanic force that Doctor Portal had never before experienced and did not understand, swept through him.

He knew that he was trembling a little. He believed it was through the tensity of the situation, for he was sure that a demon raged in the breast of this man whose intellectual achievements had amazed the scientific world. A demon of merciless cruelty, urging him, driving him to outrageous acts of subtle torture.

And yet—what was this wild thrill that raged through him as he stared at Eleanor Appleby? It was as if he had suddenly awakened to something new and wonderful.

Her eyes were cast down, and she was trembling violently, and her childish face was pitiful. Yet, perhaps because of her extreme pallor, she looked as fresh and sweet as a dew-drenched rose at dawn. Alec Portal continued to stare at her. That brute’s wife, he told himself! And with the soft lamplight pouring on her flawless face and brown-gold hair she looked a very dainty and pretty little wife.

So pretty, indeed, as her lashes trembled against her smooth, pale cheeks that a voice whispered madly within him of things he had never dreamed.

All at once a little gasp broke from her. She looked up at the man who held her wrists so cruelly; her eyes lit with anguish.

‘Oh, please—please stop!’ she whispered.

Doctor Alec Portal heard it. He started forward, his handsome face working convulsively. But at the same moment Professor Appleby released his wife, and turned. There was sardonic amusement, and something else unfathomable, lurking in the gleaming eyes that mockingly challenged the doctor’s.

‘I must thank you for your solicitude,’ he drawled, ‘but I find my wife quite well. In any case, I think I should prefer myself to choose her medical attendant if she were ill—one, say, who is not quite so impetuous, and who understands better the etiquette of his profession.’

Aflame with anger, Doctor Portal was on the point of making some hasty retort, but checked himself in time. There was something besides his own personal feelings to be considered. This girl—for she was little more—was being driven to breaking point.

His eyes, narrowed to shining slits, blazed at the cold, sneering face.

‘I warn you, sir, that you may have a very serious matter to answer for,’ he said between clenched teeth. ‘Mrs Appleby needs rest and change. She is near to nervous prostration, and must take a holiday. It is the worst case of nerves I have ever encountered.’

Professor Appleby drew himself up. His smooth, white face lost its sneering smile and became terrible.

For a moment he glared at the young doctor, and his eyes held the burden of his storming and reviling soul.

‘Nerves, eh?’ he grated, like a bug spitting venom, ‘Doctor, from my own observations, I should say it was a case of the heart.’

He walked to the door and flung it open. For all that he was holding it under control, his rage was staggering.

‘Get out,’ he said thickly. ‘D’you hear? Get out! Or, by the Lord Harry, there’ll be a case of horsewhipping for the villagers to gossip again. And please have the decency to leave my wife alone in future. And don’t come near my house again—understand.’

Alec Portal stared at him hard.

Not since his schoolboy days had he felt such an overwhelming, primitive impulse to punish another human being. He would dearly have liked to have wiped the disdain from that gross face with a thudding left. But in the end he shrugged and gathered up his ulster and cap. He was in an impossible position, and the only thing he could do was to leave with dignity.

Bestowing a formal little bow upon Eleanor, who sat with eyes cast down, shamed, he strode past the malevolent figure of Professor Appleby at the door and went from the house.

But as he opened the front door, he heard the sound of a stifled sob, and he looked back, startled, questioning. She was in there with that brute, crying. Should he go back? Should he kill the husband?

His heart was filled with a cold, murderous rage. He took a grip of himself, and was astonished. What was the matter with him? Was he himself tonight?

He closed the door, and strode away into the gathering dusk, pulling his coat collar up and his broad-visored cap down. He was almost afraid of himself, afraid of his own thoughts and desires. Something primitive and lawless had woke to life in Doctor Alec Portal, who had always thought himself so cold.

He walked quickly, trying to shake off his thoughts. One thing was obvious. He must never go near the house that contained Professor Appleby’s wife again. Passion and love had been awakened in his deep strong nature at last. And it was love for another man’s wife!

Even now he fought against a wild impulse to turn back. All his chivalry urged him to protect her from that brute. But with a resolute gritting of his teeth he strode on.

His eyes were bleak as they penetrated the gathering dusk.

‘Heavens,’ he muttered; ‘it’s a funny old world!’

Doctor Alec Portal had scarce closed the front door behind him when Professor Appleby returned to the drawing-room. Outwardly he was calm and collected. His gleaming monocle was screwed in his right eye, and he tried to restrain the twitching of his lips.

Eleanor, his wife, was still sitting on the settee, racked by a tempest of half-stifled sobs.

He watched her from the doorway with a sneering smile.

Her beauty no longer moved him. Indeed, beauty in all living things impelled in him an awful, mad lust to destroy. That was the kink in this brilliant scientist’s brain. He had been known to sit for hours plucking the petals from one choice bloom after another. As a boy, one of his absorbing hobbies had been the collection of butterflies and birds’ eggs, and he had plundered nests ruthlessly and taken a peculiar delight in the destruction of Nature’s most beautiful creatures.

Thus it was with his wooing of Eleanor.

From the first, her beauty and peculiar charm had exercised a fatal fascination for him. He desired her as he had wanted the butterfly when a boy—to pin down and destroy. He had never been the lover. And on the very day of their marriage had come frightful disillusion for Eleanor Appleby.

She had married not a man, but a fiend who was capable of exercising the most cunning and subtle forms of cruelty.

Whether it was from knowledge of the law’s remorselessness, or his own desire to play with his victim, Professor Appleby had adopted a gradual process of destruction. His constant spying on her, his taunts, his subtle and hideous little cruelties, all were tearing at Eleanor Appleby’s nerves. Visibly she had lost her fragrant charm, and was listless, apathetic, like a drooping flower. But even she had not known how near she was to nervous exhaustion until recently, and then in a panic she had sent for Doctor Alec Portal.

Professor Appleby threw back his head in a mirthless, almost silent laugh.

He felt queerly elated—pleased. Something seemed to snap in his brain, and the result of it was that he felt as a man does who has tossed off a bumper of champagne to which he is unaccustomed. When he let himself go there were compensations to this queer kink in his brain. He knew he was not normal, but it was a very pleasant state.

He commenced to lash her with his tongue.

‘So this is what you do!’ he said in that thin, precise tone with which he addressed a medical board. ‘You, whom I thought were a faithful wife—you to whom I have given the best in me. To think that you are a light-o’-love, Eleanor …’

He had chosen the words with devilish cunning. She started as though fire had touched her, and looked up.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said with his thin, mirthless smile. ‘I heard it, even in my room. He was urging you to go away—to leave me—’

With a faint moan she put up her hand as if to stay the cruel words. But he stepped forward and dashed it aside, glowering down at her.

‘Say something,’ he commanded with brutal violence. ‘What is that man to you?’

She was trembling violently.

‘I—I—you don’t understand—’

She got no further. His white hands went out, gripping her neck and shoulder. Against all her resistance she was swung gently, powerfully this way and that. There was a softness in that great strength, but she knew it could shake the life out of her, crush her with but little effort.

‘Listen,’ he said evenly and grimly. ‘The rest of the world lies outside this house. The house is mine, and so is everything in it,’ he added. For a fraction of a moment he stared at her, and in his glittering eyes she read what his words but thinly disguised.

She was shuddering violently at that look of sheer, animal gloating—it made her sick with terror.

He had changed now. And the metamorphosis in him was more frightening than any she had ever known. For he became the ardent wooer.

She almost cried out when he stretched out his arms. Then he caught her to him, and she was crushed against him in a savage embrace that nearly suffocated her. Again and again she tried to cry out, to push him away from her. But his lips were seeking hers.

His arms were around her, and the touch of her soft, girlish form suddenly seemed to set him afire with the desire for possession.

‘You witch!’ he said hoarsely. ‘You can’t get away from me now. You’re mine—mine, d’you hear?’

Sick with terror she nearly fainted. A low cry broke from her lips.

‘Oh, please … please … have mercy … If you have any chivalry in you have pity on me.’

But he only laughed at her.

‘Little wife; there’s something I want. You’re going to give it to me, or else—’ He stopped, but the words had purred out of his mouth with a cold terrific deliberation that frightened her more than anything that had yet happened.

White-faced, ashen, she stood against the wall, staring at him. Professor Appleby was lighting a cigarette coolly and deliberately.

‘Go to your room,’ he said. And then after a significant pause. ‘You understand?’

She gasped. And then all at once with a low cry of anguish she turned and darted from the room like a startled fawn.

After she had gone Professor Appleby laughed—his soft, mirthless laugh, and inhaled deeply of his cigarette. He sat down at the piano and played Rubinstein’s Melody in F softly, and with the touch of a master. An animal cruelty glowed from his eyes. He felt somehow that tonight the crisis would be reached. He had goaded his wife to the last pitch of desperation; a little more and her taut nerves would snap.

He was not sure that he wanted that. He preferred to play with her a little longer as a cat does with a mouse.

At last, with a little twisted smile on his lips, he rose from the piano, and softly closed the lid.

Treading like a cat he crossed the carpet, opened the door and mounted the stairs. In her room, Eleanor heard his stealthy footsteps along the corridor, and she looked up like a startled fawn. It was he! He was coming as he had said!

Her distress was pitiful, and she was in a state of bodily as well as mental torment; so much so that she was forced to hold her hand to her heart to stay the agony of its wild beating.

The soft footsteps came nearer. A vein throbbed madly in Eleanor Appleby’s temple as she crouched back on the bed, and looked up towards the door.

Then she saw his shadow, huge and grotesque, thrown from the illuminated passage into the bedroom, lit only by its tiny reading-lamp. Professor Appleby’s face and figure became framed in the doorway. Eleanor felt her senses swooning, and a little cry escaped her.

Professor Appleby laughed softly as his eyes devoured her crouching back on the bed. The light from the passage brought into relief her gleaming white arms and throat, the oval face with its expression of childish anguish. Professor Appleby stretched out a hand from the doorway, and its shadow leapt ahead, and seemed to make with twitching fingers at his wife’s throat.

The strain of it on her overwrought nerves was too much, A little shriek left her lips.

Professor Appleby echoed it with a soft laugh.

‘Very well, my dear,’ he said from the doorway. ‘The night is young yet. I will leave you to compose yourself.’

He withdrew, and walked softly down the passage polishing his monocle. This he screwed into his eye with a portentously solemn expression. As a matter of fact, dignity became Professor Appleby very well, and he was able to face the world with a very good countenance. His lapses from dignity were, therefore, all the more shocking, and when the insane light glowed from that heavy, intellectual face it provided a nightmare sight.

He strove to fight his enemy as he descended the stairs. A nerve twitched visibly at his temple. He told himself he was a celebrated figure. The taint of insanity! How ridiculous such a suspicion was in connection with himself! Only the previous day a daily newspaper had published a two-column eulogy on his brilliant research work.

He wrestled with his demons as he descended the stairs. Then all at once he gave a real start as he saw a neat figure in black kneeling at the foot of the stairs, ostensibly brushing the carpet.

Professor Appleby smiled beneath frowning brows. It was Vera. It fed his ego to think that he had paid for the black silk stockings that so enhanced the charm of the house parlourmaid’s figure … Though he wanted nothing more to do with her now. A scowl darkened on his face as he manœuvred to step past her.

The girl—she was comely, even pretty in a coarse way—looked up at him with a haggard face and a pathetic smile on her lips.

‘Sir!’

His momentary anger was gone, and he looked at her indulgently. Indeed for a moment a lambent flame shone in his eyes. She was a trim enough figure in her rather short black frock and white lace apron. Professor Appleby, who had carried on a vulgar intrigue with this woman, and had tired of her—forbidding her, indeed, to come near him, showed a little relenting now for the first time for weeks.

‘Well,’ he asked softly; ‘what is it you want—more money?’

The girl gained courage, and smiled at him coquettishly. She began to believe that she had not lost her hold on him after all, and her visions of what she might expect enlarged correspondingly. She knew that he hated his wife, and, indeed, she had helped him in many a subtle cruelty he had practised upon Eleanor Appleby. And now, tonight that he appeared to be in softer mood, she determined to make a bold bid for him, though secretly she was more than a little afraid of him.

‘It’s something very important I’ve got to tell you,’ she said, glancing at him archly. ‘You’ve been very cruel to poor little me these last few weeks. I’ve been afraid, but—oh, you must listen to me. You must.’

Professor Appleby smiled. His glance was like a cold little searchlight playing on her. His curiosity was roused. But she appealed only to his instincts of cruelty now. He had taken his pleasure with her, and she had no longer power to quicken his flaccid interest.

‘I shall be in the study,’ he said after a long pause. ‘Your mistress will not be down again, Vera.’

She nodded dumbly, afraid once more of the sinister side to this man, and Professor Appleby, screwing in his monocle, strolled first into the drawing-room, leaving the door open for a purpose of his own.

With cat-like tread he crossed over to the grand piano, whose sides gleamed sardonically, as if the instrument also enjoyed the cruel jest he contemplated. Lighting a fresh Turkish cigarette, he sat down at the stool, and his fingers caressed the ivory keys. Genius was in his touch, and his voice had uncanny powers of gymnastics. Melody throbbed through the room as he sang and played.

‘I know not, I care not, where Eden may be,

But I know

I’m in very good

Company.’

He laughed. The old, old song had been one that Eleanor’s mother used to sing, and it always brought the tears to his wife’s eyes when she heard it. For there is a memory in a song—memory and associations and passionate longing. And from his wife’s heart with that song he knew he could wring the bitter, bitter cry: ‘Mother, if only you could come back—come back!’

But she had no one in the world. She was merely his possession to do with as he liked.

Upstairs in her room, Eleanor heard the song with its sinister mockery, and something died in her heart for ever. Her pride, her most cherished possession, was beaten to the ground. She was frightened—frightened of being in this big house—frightened of being alone with him.

The tears were rolling down her cheeks, and she made no effort to repress them.

Then, at last, in a panic that he might come again, she climbed off the big downy bed.

Feverishly, desperately, she crossed to the telephone in her room. A silence had fallen in the drawing-room, and she knew her husband’s uncanny gift for discovering everything that went on in the house. But she must do it—she must! In a queer, fluttering voice she asked for a number. She hung up the receiver and sat still, the heart of her beating madly. Derek Capel. Queer that she should think of him now. But they had known each other since childhood, and Derek had said when she married that if ever she needed a friend …

The telephone bell rang stridently. She stared at it a moment, almost as if she expected an apparition to issue from its mouthpiece. Then with trembling hands she took the receiver again.

Derek Capel’s manservant answered the ’phone; and in answer to her low-voiced inquiry he informed her that his master was not in; he would not be back until later.

She replaced the receiver with a sense of utter, wild desolation.

Derek! He was so strong, so self-reliant. She needed someone. After a long moment she went to her writing-table, and feverishly scribbled a note to him.

‘Come round … some time tonight. Derek, you must. I’m frightened—frightened of him. I’ve got a feeling that something dreadful is going to happen tonight. My husband has—oh, I cannot tell you. He is a brute. He is not fit to live. If I had the courage I believe I would kill him myself.’

She folded up the letter in haste, and put it in an envelope and addressed it to Derek. If she hurried downstairs now she would catch the gardener, and he would take it and keep silent for a few shillings.

On tiptoe she sped down the stairs, the letter in her hand. The broad staircase turned rather abruptly to face Professor Appleby’s study door. She had expected the door to be closed as usual, but as she came round a blaze of light struck her like a blow.

It seemed to Eleanor Appleby then that her heart stopped beating.

For seated at the table with an ugly look on his white face was her husband, and kneeling at his side, pleading with him with tears in her eyes was a woman.




CHAPTER II (#ulink_a0488929-939c-5b7c-b116-a74c0bd0018c)


THE silence that had fallen a few minutes earlier in the house had been occasioned by the cessation of Professor Appleby’s playing, and his strolling into his study next door. He closed the door very carefully, and turned to find Vera, with flushed face, regarding him with an odd light of triumph in her brown eyes.

She crossed to him with a peculiar feline grace that had once attracted him, and placed her arms round his neck.

‘My dear—oh, my dear!’ she whispered. ‘I’ve wanted to see you alone—oh, so much. And you’ve kept me at arm’s length. You’ve been so cruel.’

He suffered her caresses, and his vanity was pleased by the mad heaving of her bosom against his shirt front. The girl was evidently distrait. Her eyes were unnaturally bright, and whereas, at their first wooing, she had given herself timidly, fearfully, she now sought for his caresses with wanton eagerness.

Professor Appleby did not at once repulse her: nevertheless there was a cruel glint in his eyes. He had brought her to the dust, and he was fully determined to deal the final blow.

Together they crossed to his desk, and the professor sat down, while she knelt beside him, talking to him excitedly and a little incoherently. Formerly she had been rather like the slave girl who suffers her master’s caresses in silence. But now her stress of mind—her very real need—engendered in her a new boldness.

‘You do love me a little—just a little?’ she said repeatedly. ‘Say you do. Hold me in your arms like you used to.’

Professor Appleby sat with broad, stooping shoulders, staring through his monocle, and wondering. It baffled his ingenuity to guess what she wanted from him.

He turned to her at last, and asked her point-blank.

The false gaiety dropped from her, and her hand went up instinctively to her bosom. Now that the crucial moment had come she was afraid. But she had to speak to him—she must.

‘It’s something very important, sir,’ she said, and her voice sounded like a voice in an empty cathedral. ‘If you don’t help me, I’ll—oh, it’ll be my ruin.’

Professor Appleby started.

Before he could speak the woman threw her arms around his neck and whispered something. It confirmed the professor’s suspicion, and he struggled to throw her arms from him, his face thunderous in its rage.

‘What! You dare to tell me it is I, you—you you—’ He stopped for a word. Rising to his feet he shook her off, and crossed savagely to the door. ‘Get out! Pack your things and get out, you wanton. Don’t let me see your face again.’

She faced him, and now she was a virago with flashing eyes and white-streaked face, albeit her voice was pitched low.

‘You made me what I am. You! You—no one else! Oh, yes; you pretend not to believe me. But will that doll-faced wife of yours believe? Will the world believe when they see your—’

He turned with a hiss, his hand upraised to check her, his face black as thunder.

She fell to whimpering, awed and frightened by his aspect.

After a pause Professor Appleby crossed to his chair again and slumped into it. The first thunder-struck surprise was giving way to ferocious cruelty. He’d make her suffer for it. She threw herself to her knees and clasped her arms round him, pleading, cajoling, bursting alternately into fresh sobs.

‘Won’t you—come away with me?’ she begged almost in a whisper. ‘I’ll work for you—slave for you all my life. I’ll do what that doll-faced wife of yours could never do; I’ll make you love me. It’s not money I want, it’s—’

He burst into a ferocious laugh at that, and shook her off.

‘It’s neither that you’ll get from me, my dear Vera,’ he said in his coldest tones. ‘Not a penny piece—nothing, except orders to quit at the end of the week.’

With a terrified gasp she looked at him.

And in his leering eyes she read the truth. He meant it, every word. She struggled to her feet and backed away, staring at him almost fearfully. This was the man to whom she had given herself. And he was as remorseless now in his hatred of her as he had been in his desire.

‘You—you can’t send me out with nothing,’ she whispered.

‘I can, and will,’ he said in his coldest tone. ‘You will leave at the end of the week with a week’s wages.’

‘But what shall I do?’ she gasped. ‘I can’t face the disgrace, I—’ And then suddenly rage transfigured her, and she stamped her foot.

‘You monster! You vile brute!’ she cried in low, tense tones. ‘I’d like to kill you. Oh, if only I could see you die before my eyes now—dying in agonies, I’d be satisfied. Such men as you shouldn’t be allowed to live. I—’

Her voice trailed off in a sob. There was a gathering storm in Professor Appleby’s eyes that caused her to quail a little. Then all at once he started, fancying he heard a sound in the passage, and holding up his hand to her, he crossed on tip-toe to the door.

As he peered out he fancied he heard a flurry of white disappearing up the staircase. He was not quite certain, and he tiptoed up them, but as he peered in his wife’s room he saw that she was in bed and apparently asleep.

Satisfied, he returned.

Down in his study Vera, the house parlourmaid, was glancing around her wildly. She was a little mad. All sorts of thoughts were seething in her head. She hated this man who had betrayed her—hated him with an intensity of feeling that knew no bounds. And in her veins flowed a little gipsy blood. A dangerous mixture. She was not the type of woman to suffer a wrong calmly.

Her eyes espied the medicine cabinet on the right side of the room, and she crossed to it with a rustle of her silk petticoat. There was one bottle on the highest shelf, a little, blue-black bottle marked ‘Poison,’ and her hand went out to it quickly.

Then she started as she heard Professor Appleby’s softly returning footsteps.

When he re-entered the room, she stood at the far end of the room, near the French windows, and near the little round mahogany table that held the professor’s wine decanters and a syphon of soda. Professor Appleby had made it a habit of taking a glass of port before retiring to bed.

Vera held her small useless lace apron to her eyes, and her form was shaking with dry, pent-up sobs. But Professor Appleby was in no mood for further hysterics. He crossed to her and grasped her shoulder in a cruel grip.

‘Leave this room,’ he said in a low voice of menace. She turned with one last defiance, and there was so much deadly earnestness in her tone that it might well have warned Professor Appleby.

‘All right; I’m going,’ she said stormily. ‘I never want to see you again, you monster. But depend upon it, you’ll be sorry. You’ll be sorry!’

Professor Appleby’s lips twitched in a sneering smile as he watched her go with shaking shoulders.

He sat down at his desk again, and for some time engrossed himself in work. He was preparing an important paper to be read at a conference a week hence. But though Professor Appleby did not guess it, forces over which he had no control were shaping to engulf him that night. He was never to read that paper at the medical conference.

Though everything was quiet, save for the ticking of the grandfather clock in Professor Appleby’s study, over the house there seemed to hang a brooding threat.

At a distance of little more than five miles away the stately old pile of Capel Manor reared itself against the night sky, its windows lighted and warm with red blinds.

In the drive outside the front door stood a giant Mercedes car, its engine purring almost silently. The owner of the Manor, Derek Capel, had returned home at nearly midnight, after one of his wild and reckless rides through the countryside, but since none of the servants, least of all Derek Capel himself, knew whether he should want the car again, it was left with its engines still running and its headlamps cutting swathes of light through the trees in the drive.

Derek Capel had entered the house briskly, as was his wont, drawing off gloves and coat, with a cheery word for the butler who had opened the door for him, and an ever ready smile on his dark handsome face.

Some people said that Derek Capel was too ready to smile these days. It was as though he were endeavouring to flout cruel Fate who had played so many capricious tricks with him.

Young, handsome, and well endowed with the riches of the world, life should have been pleasant enough for him. And indeed, it could not be said that he did not squeeze every ounce of pleasure from life. His daily and nightly programme was one whirl of gaiety. He was supposed to have attended a society dance in London that night, and he was still in evening dress. But he had long since left the reception hall, and climbed into his car, to drive it recklessly, restlessly through the night.

Women as a rule liked Derek Capel. He was young, eager, and he gave promise of being an ardent lover.

His utter recklessness allied to his jovial laugh and charming manners seemed to the opposite sex to be the concrete of that which is most elusive in life—Romance. And even discerning mothers, who looked upon Derek Capel as an eligible bachelor, did not forget that despite his apparent irresponsibility—say at Brooklands Racing Track, where he was a skilful, as well as a reckless driver—he always managed to emerge triumphant and laughing from his many adventures.

If he dabbled on the Stock Exchange the shares were sure to rise, and Derek Capel was sure to sell out at the right time. He was one of Fortune’s favourites.

Yet one would scarce have thought so on seeing him enter the hall of Capel Manor. He handed his hat, gloves and overcoat to the butler with a brisk little nod, but once having dismissed him he stood on the hearthrug fingering his short moustache, and into his face crept a haggard, weary look such as few people had seen there.

‘Gad!’ he murmured. ‘If only I could keep away from the place. If only I could forget!’

That was impossible and he knew it. Life had made of him a spoilt darling—and thwarted him of the one thing he desired above all others. Derek Capel, with a long line of imperious, head-strong ancestors behind him, men who had carved their paths to fame and fortune through all manner of adversities, was not the man to take disappointment lightly.

Indeed, he had taken his blow very hardly indeed.

He strode to the mantelpiece now, and took up a photograph. His dark, handsome eyes were haunted with pain as he gazed at the likeness of Eleanor Appleby.

They had been sweethearts as boy and girl. As he had grown up he had come to love her with that apparently brotherly camraderie that really disguises a very deep-rooted and passionate feeling. He had always understood that one day he should take his bride … And then had come the bombshell—her marriage to Professor Appleby.

Derek Capel’s teeth showed as a white bar in his tanned face, and for a moment the dancing butterfly of London ballrooms looked wolfish. ‘Curse the fellow!’ he raged. ‘Heaven knows what fiendish tricks he plays. Oh, I’ve seen ’em together! If I could only catch him treating her badly—’

It was then that there sounded a knock at the door, and the butler entered to announce that the gardener at the Lodge had called, and wished to see Mr Capel on a matter of great urgency. He bore a message, he said, from Mrs Appleby.

Derek could hardly restrain his eagerness. He had the aged gardener brought in, and almost snatched the note from him. When he had read it he had looked up, his lips moved voicelessly.

‘Come round … her husband!… Afraid!’

It was on him, too, that strange premonition of disaster, as he stared unseeingly before him for a moment. He was aware that he was trembling a little. His thoughts were like horses out of hand. They galloped away with him. And they were a strange mixture of murderous thoughts, and joyful ones—joyful that Eleanor should have sent to him for aid.

Suddenly he clenched his fists and turned away.

He wanted only a pretext to visit the Lodge, and that was easily supplied. Professor Appleby and he were neighbours, and he often visited there, though he seldom saw Eleanor. They had this much in common, that they both had a love for books, and in particular for rare volumes.

On Derek Capel’s last visit, Professor Appleby had expressed a great desire to see a rare first edition of a book on mediævel witchcraft and poisons which he possessed in his library. The younger man had almost forgotten the matter, but now he remembered it again, and thinking it would serve as an excuse for his midnight call, he hurried to get the book.

Snatching hat and coat from the butler, he flung himself recklessly in at the wheel, and sent the long, low Mercedes car travelling through the night like some incredibly swift dragon with its two lighted eyes.

He did not drive the car in through the gates of the Lodge, but drew her to a halt outside and got out with a curiously set face, his dark eyes glowing.

The bare wintry branches of the trees on either side of the drive seemed to stretch out despairing arms to one another as Derek Capel hastened up the drive. Somewhere an owl hooted dismally, and the sound tore at the man’s nerves. To him the house that sheltered Eleanor Appleby seemed a place of queer dread tonight, yet it lured him on, drew him unresistingly as if on a cord.

He rang the front-door bell, and was almost glad to see the bulky figure of Professor Appleby coming himself to answer it.

They kept up an appearance of neighbourly friendship, though Derek Capel was sensible of a latent suspicion, mingled with cunning amusement, in Professor Appleby’s eyes at times as he regarded him. The professor seemed delighted to cast Derek Capel and Eleanor together as much as possible, though he was always there to watch them. The younger man had no doubt but that Professor Appleby guessed his secret, and took a malicious enjoyment in taunting him.

Himself, Derek Capel, cherished a flaring hatred for the scientist. It was a hatred that almost frightened him by its violence. He conceived that even if Professor Appleby had not married Eleanor, they were born for mutual dislike. The astonishing part was that he dissembled his real feelings with a cunning that was alien to him. He pretended to a hearty good-fellowship with his neighbour.

… And all the time in his heart there was that bitter hatred that went hungry for revenge.

Professor Appleby’s white shirt front gleamed at him as the door opened. The great white face with its peculiarly bright eyes dropped the monocle, the eyebrows lifted in surprise, and the lips twitched with their hateful smile.

‘Why, it’s Capel! Come to give us a look-up on his midnight tear through the country.’

‘Frightfully sorry if I’m worrying you,’ said Derek Capel hastily. ‘I saw the light in your windows, so I thought I’d look in and see whether you were up. Fact is I’ve been carrying this book you wanted about with me in the car, and it’s just occurred to me.’

He held out the book, and his host immediately pounced on it. He turned over its binding, and in a new tone of cordiality invited his midnight guest into the study.

For a moment Professor Appleby was a different man. He was genuinely pleased with the volume Derek Capel had brought him, and he turned its leaves with the delicacy and care of the true bibliophile. It was a rare old volume.

All at once, however, Professor Appleby looked across at his visitor with hooded eyes.

‘But Eleanor would be charmed to see you,’ he said, with a vague note of mockery. ‘I believe she has retired to her room, but I am sure not yet to bed. We will ring and see whether she is disposed to grace our company with her presence.’

And with that twitching smile on his lips he crossed to the bell-push.

Vera, the house parlourmaid, answered the ring, her eyes red from crying. She scowled at her master’s urbane request, but vanished without a word. And in a few minutes Eleanor Appleby entered the study.

She came forward, smiling through her fear, and put out a cool little hand to Derek, looking entirely adorable and desirable in her gown of cream ninon and lace. The sight of her set Derek Capel afire, and in his smile and greeting as he took her hand there was a wealth of significance which did not escape the basilisk eyes of Professor Appleby.

Eleanor’s heart beat quicker with fear as she looked at her husband. Nothing escaped him. He was smiling now with that twitching of his lips as he looked down at the book, and there was something about his pretence at preoccupation that was very sinister.

‘Here it is,’ he said suddenly, in his slightly shrill voice. And his interest in the book was now very real. ‘It is, as I suspected, made up to my own formula. A poison that leaves no trace. I have it there,’ he went on in some excitement, pointing to the chemical cabinet. ‘You see!—In that little blue bottle! I have not experimented with it yet, but I am almost assured that it will prove to be what I claim.’

Involuntarily Eleanor Portal and Derek Capel exchanged glances.

Impelled by a fascination she could not understand or resist, Eleanor crossed to the medicine chest and reached out a delicate hand for the little blue-black bottle labelled ‘Poison,’ which stood there, and at which the professor had pointed.

Revulsion and attraction were pulling different ways with her. She had a shuddering impulse to throw up her arm across her forehead, to shield her gaze from that impish black bottle. And yet another thought came into her brain. If the worst came to the worst it would be—useful!

Professor Appleby was watching the play of emotion on her face closely, and suddenly as she was about to take the bottle he shot out an arm and grasped her wrist.

‘I don’t think,’ he said curtly, ‘that we’ll allow you to try any experiments with that bottle. They might have unfortunate results.’

She dropped her gaze, trembling violently.

Professor Appleby was, indeed, in one of his queer moods tonight, and electric tension hung in the air. But he was all urbanity as he turned once more to Derek Capel.

‘You must have a spot of something, old fellow, after your drive. What is it to be? Whisky, eh?’

‘Just a finger,’ agreed Derek nonchalantly.

But directly the professor’s back was turned to go for the drinks, Derek’s dark, handsome eyes sought and met Eleanor’s. He asked questions barely in a whisper. What happened? Had he ill-treated her? How could he help?

Impulsively Derek’s hand went out and found that of the woman he loved. She did not resist. Indeed, she clung to it. She was scarcely conscious of what she did; only knew that her heart was breaking with sorrow—and that Derek Capel was a very dear and old friend.

It was then, as they stood intimately near to one another, that Professor Appleby glanced in the mirror hanging against the wall—a mirror that reflected them both. A terrible savagery fleeted across his features, and there was a flash like summer lightning in his eyes.

He had suspected it. But the actual proof roused the raging beast in him.

He turned, and like a hawk from the wrist of the hunter, struck across the room, and seized his wife’s wrist in a grip of iron. She cried out at the pain of his grip, but he was brutally savage now, his thick underlip protruding as he thrust her towards the door.

‘Another lover, eh?’ he hissed as he pushed her past the curtains. ‘I’ll attend to him. Get up to your room.’

He watched her as she staggered rather than walked up the staircase, her slim shoulders shaking. At length, moistening his dry lips with the tip of his tongue, he strode back to the study.

Derek Capel was still there, standing near the shaded lamp. His arms were folded, and he appeared to be quite dispassionate. Professor Appleby, a monstrous glowering figure, came forward to the desk, and peered at him for a long moment as a mastiff might peer at a pup.

Derek Capel, faintly amused, returned his glance steadily and disdainfully.

At last Professor Appleby took up his wine glass, but paused to make remark.

‘Generally I would feel inclined to snap a man’s spine if he paid too much attention to my wife. But in this case it’s Eleanor who will pay.’ He rocked back on his heels with a tinny cackle. ‘You fool, Capel, you love her—but she’s mine. And tonight she’ll pay—pay—pay!’

Derek Capel snapped open his cigarette case, and lit one of the white tubes with a hand that was a trifle unsteady. The blue smoke streamed from his nostrils as he silently consumed the cigarette. He evidently badly needed the sedative. But he would not touch the whisky that had been poured out for him.

At last with his upper lip lifting in what was almost a silent snarl, he reached for his coat and hat, and slung the former over his arm, strolling towards the door. On the threshold he turned. ‘You cur, Appleby,’ he said, very quietly and contemptuously. ‘You cur! You’re not fit to have the care of a woman. I feel that you’re vile—one of the vilest things God made. Be very careful that it is not you who pays!’

He turned and strode from the room and the house, while Professor Appleby stared after him in gibbering rage.

‘My God!’ burst from the professor’s lips.

He seemed on the verge of apoplexy, and staggered towards a chair, sinking into it heavily. But after a time he became more calm, though it was a sinister calm.

A silence fell on the house, save for the ticking of the clock.

If Derek Capel wished to incite the professor to murder he could scarcely have gone about it in a more efficacious manner. With his heavy-lidded eyes bent on the ground Professor Appleby sat brooding.

His thoughts were all of the white, soft woman lying upstairs in bed, with the heart of her beating madly. He clenched and unclenched his hands, and at last got up and paced up and down the study. He saw the glass of port he had poured out, and lifting it, drained it off at a gulp.

A minute ticked away.

Heavens, what was it? He felt queer—bad! All at once he commenced panting hoarsely—breathing with difficulty. His head felt as if it were charged with cotton-wool on fire, and in his stomach was an awful pain.

Madly he tore at his collar, wrenched it from his neck. He could not breathe. Like a drunkard lurching towards an objective, he lurched towards an arm-chair. He wanted to cry out—to call for help, but he could not. His agony was immense, but mercifully it was short-lived. The death-rattle was already in his throat, and all was going black before him.

He fell heavily into the chair, and in doing so knocked a costly old Chinese vase from a pedestal nearby. It crashed just outside the fringe of the carpet in a thousand pieces—and the sound of it was like the last trump in that expectant house of dread. From the bedroom above came cries of alarm, and mingling with them were the terrible sobs that tore the throat of Professor Appleby in his last, short death agonies.

Eleanor Appleby in dressing-gown and slippers rushed into the room, followed by two frightened maids in their night attire, the old cook and housekeeper, who had managed Professor Appleby’s menage for a generation, and Vera, the house parlourmaid, who alone seemed to remain calm.

‘Why—what—good heavens!’ Eleanor exclaimed, staring with dilated eyes at the huddled figure of her husband in the arm-chair.

He managed to turn to her with glazed eyes half-opened, and dying, his hatred stabbed at her from those eyes.

‘I’ve been poisoned,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Poisoned by—by—’ his eyes wandered round the room, and fixed Vera and then Derek Capel, who had entered quietly.

He subsided in the arm-chair, his last breath spent in that accusation.

There was a pregnant pause, filled with the gasps of those in the room. The servants, for the most part, were petrified with fear. The old cook could not even wail. She was sucking in breath like a fish out of water, her ample bosom heaving spasmodically. Amongst the servants only Vera, the parlourmaid, remained calm, and there was a contemptuous curl to her lips that could hardly be deemed respectful in the presence of death.

Eleanor was trembling violently, and her childish face was pitiful.

‘Derek—hold me,’ she whispered. ‘I—I feel I’m going to faint.’

There were tiny beads of perspiration on Derek Capel’s brow. His face was pale beneath his tan, and quivering as he put an arm round her. He was hardly more collected than she, but he appeared to make a great effort.

‘It’s a great shock,’ he said in a low tone. ‘Er—if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll have a spot of something to pull me together.’

He made a movement towards the round mahogany table, and took up the port decanter. But as he did so his hand shook violently, and in his eyes—studiously averted from the decanter he had picked up—there was a look of stark fear.

Eleanor bit her white lips. She could have cried out as she saw him take out the stopper. He was pouring the liquid in a glass with a shaking hand that spilled a little of it on the carpet. And Vera, the house parlourmaid, was watching the procedure through narrowed lids.

Suddenly Eleanor Appleby’s body springs were released. With a little cry, half moan, she darted forward and took the decanter from him. He yielded it to her grasp like a child, and looked at her stupidly as she tried to smile at him—a twisted, agonised little smile that struggled like the sun against the clouds.

‘Don’t, Derek,’ she whispered. ‘Not that. You—I’m going to play the game through to the end.’

She seemed on the verge of fainting. And then all of a sudden she gave a little gasp.

‘Oh!’

There was a sound of a crash. The decanter had slipped from her nerveless fingers, and now it lay on the floor, its glass shattered in pieces, and the red port streamed over the carpet in a blood-like pool.

A silence fell.

Eleanor moved across the room with faltering steps, and then suddenly threw up her arms like a baffled swimmer and nearly collapsed on the floor. Just in time, however, the old gardener, George—he who had taken her message to Derek Capel that night—dashed forward from the curtained doorway and caught her, leading her to a chair.

There she lay inertly, her hands covering her face and short dry gasps coming from her lips. Her fair hair had become loose and flowed over her shoulders, enveloping her like a cloud.

Derek Capel had made no move to help her. He stared down at the red pool on the floor, and something like a sigh was forced from his lips. He set down the glass at length, which contained merely enough dregs to cover the bottom.

‘Well, we’d better ’phone the police, I suppose,’ he said, with a dry rattle in his throat.

His dark, strangely handsome face working convulsively he crossed to the telephone in the hall. In a few moments he was in communication with the local police station and giving them particulars of what had happened.

All this time, Vera, the house parlourmaid, was regarding her mistress with a curious intentness. A tiny smile twitched scornfully on her lips, and once or twice she nodded slightly as one who should say: ‘I know something about this, and I mean to tell it.’

Vera, indeed, was amazingly self-possessed for one who saw her illicit lover lying huddled in a chair with death’s cold touch upon his face. A lover, moreover, from whom she had expected certain things, and who had betrayed and spurned her. She might scarce have been expected to weep, yet a little natural agitation would not have been incongruous to the occasion.

And so the police found them when they arrived scarcely more than five minutes later at the Lodge. Chief Inspector Brent of the C.I.D. of Scotland Yard, whose home happened to be in this quiet Sussex village, had been at the local police station when the late night call came through, and so the case had the attention of one of the most alert and keenly analytical criminal brains in the country right from the commencement.

Chief Inspector Brent was one who never placed too great a discount on first impressions. As he strode into the study his narrowed eyes took in every detail of the tableau, and noted all the persons in it, their position and demeanour.

The two maidservants, exhausted from hysterical weeping, but still too frightened to come directly into the study, were hanging back with the old housekeeper behind the curtains that, half-drawn, separated the study from the hall. The old gardener, George, was with them, stolid as ever, but with a hint of defiance in his seamed face.

Chief Inspector Brent glanced at them, then at Vera, whose general air was one of suppressed excitement, triumph and malice. Her eyes were very bright, and malice was very apparent in them as she looked from the detective to her mistress.

Inspector Brent ruled out all the servants as being of little consequence in the matter, except Vera.

His swift survey of the scene stopped at Derek Capel, who had now assumed a nonchalant attitude, and was smoking a cigarette. ‘You rang up the station, sir,’ he said, rather as if stating a fact than asking a question.

Derek Capel nodded. ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘As you see, Professor Appleby has died—suddenly. It seemed to me to be a matter for the police.’

‘Quite right,’ said the inspector, smiling ironically and twisting his heavy moustache. ‘Ah, what’s that?’ he exclaimed. And as if noticing it for the first time, he crossed to the broken decanter and knelt beside the pool of wine on the carpet.

There was a queer tension—a silence. Every one except Eleanor Appleby craned forward as if noticing it, too, for the first time. That tell-tale decanter quite obviously contained the key to the riddle of Professor Appleby’s death.

‘I imagine that the professor was taking his nightcap of port when he—er—collapsed,’ Derek Capel said in a voice that sounded ragged somehow.

Inspector Brent slewed his head round to look at him, his face very keen.

‘The assumption being that he had some kind of fit, eh?’ he drawled, jerking erect. ‘Yes; that seems to fit the case.’ He took out his notebook, making entries and glancing at the professor, whose disordered hair and collar torn from the stud were eloquent of his death agonies; from the professor he looked repeatedly down at the broken decanter and the pool of wine that stained the carpet. Whatever his deductions may have been—and we can assume that Chief Inspector Brent was no fool—there was one in the room who was determined that he should not for a moment form a wrong impression as to how the decanter had been broken.

Vera plucked at his sleeve. The flags of colour had mounted to her cheeks, and her bosom was heaving madly. Her voice had acquired a shrill breathlessness.

‘He didn’t drop it himself—the professor. It was she that done it’—her finger flung out like a taunt, pointing at Eleanor, who looked like a weeping goddess in the arm-chair. ‘Yes, she broke the decanter and spilt the wine,’ concluded Vera with intense malice.

Chief Inspector Brent twirled his moustache and looked across at Professor Appleby’s wife. And a painful silence fell.




CHAPTER III (#ulink_e67e85f2-f07b-511e-933e-f418fccf8d5f)


IT was broken by the arrival of Doctor Alec Portal—for Capel had rung him up immediately after concluding his message to the police station. Doctor Portal came into the study with his bag, which he immediately set down on the table. As he drew off his gloves he looked round upon the study and its occupants, but without saying a word.

His brows were drawn, however, giving his face a hawk-like expression. He crossed over to the chair, and but a momentary examination of the dead man sufficed. He dropped a limp hand into Professor Appleby’s lap as he straightened himself.

‘There’s nothing we can do, of course,’ he said quietly as he looked over at Inspector Brent. ‘The cause of the death will have to be decided by post-mortem examination. His own doctor will attend to say whether he was subject to fits or not.’

‘Fits be hanged!’ exclaimed Inspector Brent in a quite unprofessional outburst. ‘He died when he was taking his drink before retiring. There appear to be strange circumstances in this case, and I am afraid I must detain the company present while I ask questions of each.’

Chief Inspector Brent himself could not have explained what had jolted him out of his usual suave manner. But he almost glared at the doctor, who for his part confronted him with clean-cut face, very set, and eyes narrowed to shining slits. No doubt the atmosphere in the room was very tense—electric with excitement—and in such an atmosphere mental telepathy exercises its uncanny workings. Chief Inspector Brent had already decided that he had a line of investigation to follow, and it would entail a rather lengthy and no doubt painful interrogation of Eleanor Appleby.

Doctor Alec Portal guessed all this. He knew what was in the Yard man’s thoughts, and he was aflame with anger. He happened to know more of the affairs of this strange house than did Inspector Brent—he knew, for instance, that Professor Appleby had been very, very near the borderline of insanity, and that he was just the man to kill himself. But murder! That was a terrible word to use in connection with the beautiful girl-wife who sat tortured in the chair.

With her fair hair loose, and her dressing-gown scarce concealing her beautifully moulded figure under the frothy, lacy night-gown, she stirred his senses oddly even then.

‘I don’t think it would be wise to detain Mrs Appleby tonight,’ the doctor said stiffly. ‘As her medical adviser I have been in attendance upon her, and I know that she is in a considerably overwrought state. Tonight’s events may bring a climax unless she has rest. She can make a statement if she cares, but I must object to any form of Third Degree.’

The distinguished Yard chief looked at him sharply and resentfully.

‘A very ill-considered remark, doctor,’ he said sternly. ‘You may, on reflection, care to withdraw it.’

Doctor Portal bowed.

‘I withdraw and apologise,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Nevertheless this lady has been near to a nervous breakdown for some time, and I must beg of you to consider her feelings as much as possible. She has suffered a great deal.’





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