CHAPTER ONE

THE RAIN, as much as anything, thought the distinguished guest. His hostess was Mrs Frederick Christien. She was restless, uneasy.

This happened a little before midnight on the evening of Tuesday, May 22. An intermittent spring rain, which had been general along the Atlantic coast during most of the day, now turned abruptly into a sharp downpour. The drops spat and rattled on the windows. Mrs Christien moved from her chair, thrashed the fire a bit, scowled nervously at the clock, went to the windows and pecked at their curtains with a finger, then sighed and resigned herself to sitting in her chair again. The clock ticked heavily and the fire popped without warning, and the woman’s husband never came home.

“Distracting,” murmured the distinguished guest. “Sorry,” said Mrs Christien, because she was neglecting the guest, whose distinction was superlative. By way of apology, she smiled and told him, “Strange he hasn’t telephoned. He always rings by eleven, if there’s any...Practically always.”

“Frightful weather,” decided the guest. “Devilish.”

“Weather wouldn’t keep him from telephoning.”

“Of course not. How right you are.”

“He hasn’t been well. I really don’t think he ought to let business keep him in town at night. He works so hard.”

“Ah.”

“If you’d tell him not to, I’m sure it would help. He really listens to you. I’m worried about him. You might do something with him. I’d be terribly grateful.”

“Ah,” said his lordship, nodding his venerable head in vague acquiescence and sucking the flame of a match into his pipe and looking politely sleepy, all in one complicated demonstration.

He sat sprawled on the sofa before the fire, and filled most of the space about the hearth like a fallen oak tree. He was the very ancient and benevolent Geoffrey Bennett, Lord Broghville, as institutional to look at as a life insurance company, but incognito, and choosing to call himself simply Mr. G. Bennett during this visit to America. Frederick Christien was a friend. More than that, Christien was the kind of friend that Bennett was pleased to visit for a pleasantly swollen weekend, from Friday to Wednesday. Christien had this comfortable house in Southampton on Long Island, and Bennett sprawled in it nursing his pipe to noisy health. Mrs Christien fidgeted about the room again, until Bennett was driven to complain, “Oh, my dear Paula! Clock is three minutes fast. Fire does awfully well. Stop thrusting things at it. Do sit down, ah, good girl, that’s it! Drink something or smoke something, relieve the anxiety. I think I shall tell you a story.”

“To take my mind off my troubles?”

“Precisely.”

“I’ll listen, if I can,” she said. She was quite obviously listening to something else, the sound of the rain, and for the expected swish of tires on the wet drive outside.

“No matter. Put away that wretched poker. As for the story, deplorable silly thing, concerning the Great War. And your husband. How I met him, you might say. This, my dear Paula, occurs in Macedonia, horrid place. Dare say I’m not at my best, telling stories, but I really can’t think of anything else to do under the circumstances.

Short of a game of draughts. Which would be intolerable. That is, you wouldn’t concentrate properly.”

Being talked to by Geoffrey Bennett in his gentler aspects, was like giving up your tattered mind to the care of some quietly omnipotent and benign celestial grand-hither. The voice did it. Low, precise, measured and gruff; easy on vowels but crisp with the consonants; authoritative, perfectly assured, parliamentary, military, but restrained for the occasion; it suited the size of him, and quite filled as much of the room as his body didn’t.

2.

It wasn’t much of a story.

“Hum. Macedonia, wretched place, don’t go there. Ah. Night much like this one. Rain; rain and the most frightful mud, and wind, and all the damn country quite as black as your best hat. Even the sky may have been mud, if nothing worse. Quite appalling. Silly, too, you know. There we stood, some two or three hundred of us, soldiers more or less, simply weak as garden slugs for want of food, yet provided by the enemy with a great store of it, more than we’d dreamed of for months. We had grim little fires, which tried to put themselves out as soon as we turned our backs. And we dared not think of eating. Captured Bulgarian food depot. Poisoned, of course. We’d tested a bit of tinned meat on one poor devil, who went at once into quivering convulsions in a most depressing way. There, as I say, we stood. Have you any questions?”

“No. Why?”

“To make sure you listen, my dear. Shall I go on?”

Paula Christien laughed a little, and nodded. She was young, younger than her husband, and very attractive. Ancient Mr. Bennett was gratified by the company of attractive ladies, and the smell of good sherry, but sherry was bad for his gout. Otherwise he probably wouldn’t have gone to all this bother.

“So, my dear, not having had food for three days, we languished. Starvation, as they say, stared us in the face. No railways. No roads. No people. Nothing, indeed, but miles of discouraging mud. Nothing ahead, and no base of supplies to retire upon. Dare say we would have experimented with those poisoned stores soon, if a—however, mustn’t spoil my story, eh? As I think I mentioned, we were pottering about with our nasty little fires, when my sentries brought in a fellow. Damn civilian fellow. Like a conjurer’s rabbit, popping out of that empty rain and mud. Tell me, do you know who it was?”

“No.”

“Come, my dear! You’d anticipate more, if you were paying close attention. It was your husband, Freddy Christien.”

“Oh.”

“I’m boring you. It is a dismal story, isn’t it? No matter. Christien was brought before me. He said, ‘How d’you do,’ and shook hands, and referred to the weather, and asked if I could let him have a horse. That wouldn’t do, you see, because we’d killed the horse and eaten him several days earlier. Then he said, ‘My lorry seems to be stuck fast in the mud about a mile down the hill. I saw your fires.’ I said, ‘Lorry? Astonishing. Incredible.’ Something like that. And he said, ‘One of these Fords, you know.’ Then, to keep the conversation going, I asked him what he had in the lorry. ‘Tinned spaghetti with tomato sauce,’ he said. ‘Ten gross of it.’ Tinned spaghetti. Not that I have a taste for it myself, but oysters and brown bread couldn’t have cheered us more. Preposterous, of course. The way he came out of the darkness. Yet I admired him at once, thought him a singular and superior fellow, for having come at all, even if it was by chance. Yattering about Fords, bringing us food, strolling along like one of the lesser gods wrapped up in a dreadful old mackintosh, and asking—what is it, my dear?”

“I—I thought I heard a motor. It’s nothing. Go on.”

“Watch out. Lest you fancy horrid faces at the windows. To go on. Of course we discovered later during that night, how the Bulgarian food depot had not been poisoned, and that our convulsive fellow had really been suffering heroically from dysentery for days. Nevertheless my affection for the miraculous Freddy will never die or dwindle, and rain more than anything will always—Ah! There it is!”

It was the telephone.

3.

Paula Christien leaped from her chair. Bennett stirred his enormous legs. By the time he had got to his feet, she was talking in the dark passage. He could hear through the open door.

“Yes, this is Mrs Christien talking...Who?...Oh, yes.” A peculiarly heavy silence followed, while someone talked at the other end of the line.

Answering again, Paula’s voice sounded frightened and desperate. She said, “Yes, I want to know. I must know. Please, I want to know where he is.”

Lengthy, inaudible reply.

“He isn’t—that is, he’s not dying?”

Inaudible reply, even more prolonged.

“Yes. Please, I can’t listen any more. I can’t stand here. I’m coming. Listen to me. You must get his own doctor, Harvey Fawke, Fifty-ninth and Park. You will get him?”

Inaudible assurances.

“I must hang up, please. I’m coming at once. Tell him I’m coming at once. Goodbye.”

Bennett stood beside her. A maidservant, listening, her eyes frightened, hovered on the stairs. Paula’s lips were white. She said, “No, I’m all right. They won’t tell me the truth. I have to go to New York.”

Bennett steadied her nevertheless. Another maid appeared, hovering uncertainly. Bennett put an end to the stricken flutter above, boomed at one maid for her to waken the chauffeur, at the other to come down for Paula. To Paula he said, “Of course. Steady. Now get your coat. Coming with you, my dear.”

She nodded her head, and climbed the stairs obediently. Halfway, she turned and asked, “I wonder if they were afraid to tell me? I wonder if he’s—?”

“Rot. Don’t talk. Get your coat.”

She obeyed.

Now the telephone was ringing again. Paula stopped as if to answer it, but Bennett forestalled her and answered it himself. An imperative brassy voice cried in his ear, “Hello? Hello? Morning Mail calling. Want to talk to Mrs Frederick Christien. Make it quick.”

Bennett lowered the telephone to smile reassuringly at Paula, to shake his head and hurry her on up to her room. She disappeared at the top of the stairs. Then Bennett said, “You can’t talk to Mrs Christien.”

“Well, who’s this?”

“Shan’t tell you.”

“We got a report here about Frederick Christien. Supposed to have tried to commit suicide. Hello? Can’t I get Mrs Christien on the line? Case of murder and attempted suicide, and we want—”

“Who was murdered?”

“Unidentified man. Hello? And we want to find out who—”

“No doubt,” said Bennett, hanging up. He put aside the telephone like an infected thing. He went to the bottom of the stairs. He demanded Hope, his own servant. Hope’s head immediately came into sight above.

“Hope, damn you? Ah, you’re there! Get my coat. Ah, you have it. Then get your own. We’re going to the city at once. Cigarettes, and a flask of brandy.”

Paula Christien with the two maids hurried down the stairs. The lights of the car, approaching hastily from the garage, flared along the windows. Hope came down. The telephone rang again.

Bennett ordered Hope, “Take Mrs Christien out to the car.” Buttoning his coat about him, he turned to the two astonished maids. “Damn the telephone! Don’t answer it! Understand? Keep away from it! Go away! Go to sleep! Go to bed!”

Then he climbed into the car after Mrs Christien. Hope sat with the chauffeur. The car sped down the wet drive. Behind them, dwindling, Bennett could hear the insistent crazy ringing of the telephone.

4.

Between rural Southampton and The Chelsea Project in New York City, lies almost the entire length of Long Island. The chauffeur, wearing cap, overcoat and boots over his rumpled hair and pajamas, did his best. Roads were slithery and obscure in the darkness, and the screen of whitish rain was like a cloud about the car. The two dark figures in the tonneau leaned and lurched and bumped without complaint.

Only once did Mrs Christien refer to her calamity. “I’ve been so worried. I knew he wasn’t well. It’s his heart, it must be his heart. They’ll call up his doctor, won’t they?”

Bennett cried, “Of course. Dash it, of course they will.”

Otherwise she talked for a time with ghastly cheerfulness and courage, to keep from showing her grievous anxiety. Then at last she subsided into lethargy, and gave up pretense. She cried a little, soundlessly, and clung tightly to one of Bennett’s great hands like a child bewildered in universal catastrophe.

Bennett, not very clever at comforting unhappy women, felt glad of the silence. He thought of the call from the newspaper. He had no patience with vague alarm and similar disorderly conditions of the mind. He considered what he knew, therefore, and concluded promptly that the sudden trouble looked like a very nasty mess, with which, for Freddy Christien’s sake, he might be expected to cope. Though he hoped not. Somebody (Mr. Hugh Martinsop in his Biography of a Vice-Regent) had once written of Broghville’s particular virtue that he “confronted the scholar’s problems with the forthrightness of a soldier, and the problems of government or war with the penetration of a subtle scholar.” This august reputation let him in for a great many unpleasant things.

It is better, in fact, to explain his position completely, and at once. Lord Broghville, or Mr. Geoffrey Bennett if you prefer, ruled during these years as a kind of king (by special arrangement with the League of Nations) over the contentious Pamin Island group, which rise out of the Indian Ocean far east of the coast of Tanganyika, and some way north of Madagascar. He was probably the only indisputably absolute monarch in the world. And this visit to America was his first relief from the responsibility of government in eleven years.

Bennett was very old; in his seventies, at least. He stood extremely tall and impressive to look upon, though slightly stooped now with age. He seemed at once both slender and powerful, active and mighty. He comported himself in a manner curiously mixed-brusque, commanding, courtly and fastidious together. He had remarkably sharp eyes beneath white thickets of hair. He affected a few mannerisms, one most notably: he would confront you with a blank and ironic smile, and perhaps trifling gossip about minor Edwardian celebrities, as if he were dreaming to himself about a glamorous past. Well he might, if he liked. But you would be badly fooled if you were taken in by it.

Internationally distinguished and prominent as he was, though, he had avoided (up till Tuesday night) all extravagant publicity during his visit. This was less because he liked to be haughty and aloof, more because he found useless ceremony a bleeding bother. The State Department had to have him in mind, of course. New York’s Civic Committee was stewing up something suitable for him. His Embassy had taken precautions, and made the usual arrangements. A Secret Service man had’ been attached to his retinue. But until this Tuesday night, he had remained a dignitary almost in the abstract, noted in the newspapers but not publicly cheered or showered with ticker tape, and permitted a decent amount of privacy.

These explanations are made in the hope that Broghville will be acquitted of being the irresponsible and fatuous booby certain newspapers took vicious pleasure in painting him.

Now the strange little bells that ring in the depths of the Theological Seminary were sounding one o’clock, and Mrs Christien (pathetically, it seemed to the uncomfortable Bennett) was putting on a brave face and fresh powder as the limousine swerved south on Ninth Avenue. Paula squared her shoulders. Bennett thought it a ruddy shame, a ruddy shame, something must be done about it; because the sight of young women having to be brave made his spine prickle.

5.

They started down Ninth Avenue to Eighteenth Street. The Chelsea Project at this hour stood ghostly above them, dark and unsubstantial in appearance. The steep Moore House looked wildly improbable. In the street, a single furtive taxi slopped along in the rain, and a single cheerless pedestrian crawled beneath his wet umbrella. Above the El tracks and towards the North, a gigantic ruddy glare, a steamy furnace glow, filled the sky over distant Times Square. Chelsea Opera House loomed to their left, with its dark and shapeless bulk stained like satin in the storm.

Paula told the chauffeur, “Stop at the stage door on Ninth Avenue. I think the door on Eighteenth Street must be locked by now.”

Nothing was as it should be. The car stopped. They got a first sniff of the air of calamity and official power that had intruded on the place; the smell of damp uniforms and cheerful policemen, wet rubbers and soggy cigars. Bennett recognized it. A policeman, who had lumbered out of the shelter of the dark doorway and waved with his night-stick for them not to leave the car, ducked his wet head into the tonneau through the door the chauffeur had opened. The policeman waggled his night-stick towards Eighteenth Street.

“No, ma’m, you can’t get in this way now. I got to send everybody around the corner. Yes ma’m, if you talk to the sergeant around there he’ll tell you anything you want to know. I ain’t supposed to say anything. Now look out with your hand, ma’m, and I’ll shut the door...”

Mrs Christien bit her lips. The car swung in the direction the policeman had pointed, then east along the curbing of Eighteenth to a small door of stainless steel, the entrance to the business offices of the Opera House. Several nondescript men huddled here. They turned white faces towards the car. Handmaidens of disaster, they signified the worst. Reporters. Hunching their shoulders against the rain, they descended on-the car. Like a gleaming sea lion among penguins, a large policeman waddled after them and good-naturedly pushed them aside. He took his turn at thrusting an inquiring head into the tonneau.

“Yes, ma’m?”

“I’m Mrs Christien. I—”

“Christien? Yes, ma’m.” A stir. “You’re to go right up, Mrs Christien. Step back, boys. Mind the wet, lady...”

Perhaps the sergeant had taken a drink to fortify himself against the weather, and as a result exuded respectful amiability and the scent of cloves like some kind of leaky balloon. He seemed to think Bennett was Mrs Christien’s father. “Going up with her, mister? Kind of look after her, eh? Bad night for us old fellows to be out, eh? Come along now, and I’ll take you up.”

Through the reporters and past a battery of blank staring eyes in a small lobby, they were led to an elevator. This took them to an upper floor. They walked down a silent corridor to the door of the theatre’s infirmary. Here a solemn, friendly little doctor in dinner dress met them. He warned them to be quiet.

“Mrs Christien, I’m very glad. He’s awake now, for a few moments. Come in quickly. Nothing to excite him, and no talk. He may drop off again at once. Just ease his mind as much as possible, and come away at once if I tell you to.”

Doctor and wife went softly through an inner door, and shut it after them. While it was open, Bennett had a glimpse of a man in a white bed, the white face motionless on a pillow. Christien in health looked something like Calvin Coolidge in a puckish, gleeful mood. Now he looked like a hollow wax effigy.

Bennett waited. He saw that he was in the central room of the infirmary, elaborately equipped for surgery. An obvious policeman in plain clothes stood against an opposite wall, watching the sick man’s door and smoking a cigarette. Bennett scowled, and thought.

The door opened again,, and the doctor came out. He answered Bennett’s stare with a flickering grim smile. Bennett attached the man by his arm, and drew him to an end of the room, as far from the door and the policeman as possible. He talked very softly.

“Very ill, I take it. How ill?”

The doctor shook his head and whispered, “Critically.”

“Will he live?”

“Live? We hope so, don’t we? It’s hard to say.”

“Conscious?”

“For a moment. Lucid enough, too. He’s talking to his wife.”

“You’re Fawke, his usual man, I presume?”

“Yes. I’ve known him for ten years or more.”

“Quite so. What happened to him?”

The doctor shrugged. “A great many things. Mostly what you’d call a weak heart, and strychnine. He used strychnine to stimulate it. Not on my advice, believe me!”

“No, of course not. Could it have been suicide?” Fawke made a wry face, shrugged, and resorted to a cigarette. Blowing out smoke, he confessed, “Damned if I know. Who are you, by the way? Related?”

Bennett said, “No. Not at all. A friend.”

“He’ll need one,” murmured the doctor, after looking shrewdly at Bennett from his boots to his white hair. “Look here, sir; if Christien lives, he won’t be able to help himself for a very long time, and it will be up to his friends to do something. You know Christien pretty well? Do you think he’d kill himself?”

“Incredible rot, sir!”

“Yes. I’d better tell you, I think. I knew Christien, and I knew there was danger of a collapse. He had a habit of using up his physical reserves. He lived on his willpower, he burned himself out; lots of men do it. I warned him years ago. And I think I expected something like this. His wife was afraid of it, too.”

“Quite.”

“Occasionally he felt trouble coming. His heart, mostly. He used strychnine to tide him over. Then he came to me about it, and paid no attention to what I told him because he hadn’t time to bother. Well, tonight he suffered some extreme shock or strain, something I haven’t had time to find out about. He felt his heart kicking up. He carried strychnine with him, and he took it. Too much. He collapsed at once. You understand, this is my opinion, putting suicide entirely out of consideration? Very well. Now he’s lying in there, in the worst possible shape; strychnine poisoning, a strained heart, and something like general exhaustion, with an open invitation to any old complication that comes along. Frankly, I suggest his affairs be put in shape as quickly as possible.”

“Why did you say he needs a friend? His affairs?”

“No. Something else. Look here: when a man encounters sudden trouble, and promptly takes a dangerous dose of strychnine, he’s bound to be suspected of suicide. You know what rotten minds people have. And if they think it’s suicide, they think naturally that the man was up to something peculiar and found himself at the end of his rope. We know he wasn’t. But a hundred friends who admired him yesterday will be so-so about him tomorrow. I’m telling you this for a reason. A police inspector named Tussard believes Christien tried to kill himself. He’s been down here talking to me. I didn’t get anywhere with him.”

“What name?”

“Tussard.”

“Ah? Tussard. Where is he?”

“Down the hall a few doors, I suppose. Where the trouble happened.”

“Indeed. If Christien lives how long will he be incapable?”

“I can’t say. Weeks at least, I should guess, before he’ll be any use to himself. Possibly a month. When he drops off now, he’ll be unconscious for a very long time. These few lucid moments are the result of the strychnine.”

Bennett was thoughtful. He stood looking down at the doctor. The policeman had become absorbed in whittling his finger-nails with a crude pocket knife. At last Bennett said, “Christien must live, you know. Quite competent, are you?”

The doctor bristled (unaccustomed, perhaps, to being challenged like a new schoolboy by a gruff master) and smiled uncomfortably, and at the same time, managed to shrug his shoulders deprecatingly. “Come, come, no offense! Dare say you are,” Bennett told him. “How am I to know you’re competent if I don’t ask you? No occasion for huff. No. Ah, the door. Paula coming out. Leave us, like a good chap, will you?”

Paula, with strained face and stricken eyes, looked up at Bennett. The doctor disappeared into Christien’s room. The policeman grew uneasy, like a tethered horse. Bennett awkwardly put out an arm to support the woman, and made brusque, reassuring growls in his throat.

She said, “He fell—asleep. The nurse made me come away.”

“Quite natural, my dear.”

“Will you do something, Geoffrey? You’ve got to. Somebody’s got to.”

“My dear child, you must not let this—”

“You didn’t see him, Geoffrey. You didn’t hear him. It’s—terrible!”

“Quite.”

“Some man was killed.”

“Devilish.”

“They think he did it Why should they think that?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. Come, shall we walk a bit?” Ignoring the policeman, they walked slowly back and forth across the infirmary. Paula took a cigarette from Bennett. He said, “Damn nice of you not to cry. Tell me what he said.”

“He’s dreadfully sick, Geoffrey. He couldn’t say much. He said he went out on the terrace. The terrace outside his office, I suppose. He stumbled over a dead man in the dark. He didn’t know what it was at first, in the dark, and then he felt—felt his heart going, and took some of his strychnine tablets. That was all.”

“All?”

“He doesn’t remember anything more. He closed his eyes again. He doesn’t know about—about him.” She bent her head towards the policeman. “The nurse told me they think Fred killed that man, and then tried to commit suicide. Oh, Geoffrey, it’s so horribly wrong! He couldn’t—”

“No, to be sure.”

“We’ve got to do something, Geoffrey.”

“We shall. His solicitors, first. Who are they?”

“His lawyer? Asbach; it’s a firm, Green, Asbach and Croly. I could see him, I suppose, but...” She hesitated doubtfully.

“Ah, but! You don’t think well of him?”

“I do. But I don’t know, he’d be so slow—and we ought to do something now, tonight, and—Oh, what can I do, Geoffrey!”

“Stay at Freddy’s side. The beaming eye, my dear. The cheery smile. Your hat’s awry, you know. Much better. Go keep watch with the nurse, there’s a good girl.”

“You will do something for him, Geoffrey?”

“Quite.”

“I’m glad you came with me, and—”

“Rubbish. I want a word with the doctor. Go away. And don’t worry.”

Paula was propelled smoothly into Christien’s room, and the doctor beckoned out. Bennett spoke briskly.

“This Tussard. How can I find him?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know how this place is laid out.”

“No matter. You will stay with Christien?”

“Yes.”

“Keep them—“ he nodded towards the policeman “—away from him. And from her, if possible. You understand?”

“Yes. I’m going to move him to my hospital.”

“Good.”

The doctor went back to his patient. The policeman, even more like a cab-horse, turned suspicious and disillusioned eyes on Bennett, then on the tips of his own boots. Bennett saw dangers, and far implications, like a countryside in a flash of lightning. Questions to be asked, delicate steps to be taken. A dead man stumbled on in the dark. The newspaper telephoning to Southampton.

He put on his hat, and mentally girded his loins, and stalked off determinedly into the bright, new passages of that exquisite white elephant of the theatrical world—the great Chelsea Opera House and Academy of Music, otherwise known as the Chelsac Theatre.