1
The affair was given no opportunity to slide, even for a few hours. Next morning, before the house was properly astir, that is to say, before the guests had turned out to the customary late breakfast, Ralph Feltham rode over on a very fine bay mare. I wondered cynically whom he had bled for that. A man who could afford to own such a beast was not the penniless adventurer I remembered. Nor could Eleanor alone have supplied him with sufficient funds to warrant such luxury. It was ten years since I had seen the fellow, but he had worn well. Beside him, I was bound to confess that Dennis was a pretty poor stick. Ralph had always had the advantage of commanding height, good shoulders, a fencer’s hips and flanks. He had, too, the good looks of most of the male Felthams, and instantly I realised all the good points a woman would discover in the man. On the whole, despite the years of dissipation and reckless folly, his appearance had improved. He had what Dennis manifestly had not, the stamp of wide and spirited experience. He had matured, perhaps, but he had also mellowed. In place of the impudent assurance or the bluff insolence for which I looked was a quality of cool-headed resolution that could not fail to be impressive.
But if I was impressed, Nunn wasn’t. He was upstairs when Ralph arrived, and he kept his visitor waiting some minutes, during which he and I kept up a desultory conversation. But if it was desultory it was, to my mind, profoundly disturbing. Ralph walked lightly round the hall, pausing beneath family portraits that he astonishingly resembled; his riding-kit emphasised all his good points; his hair was as thick and black as ever; he had trimmed his moustache to the merest toothbrush. He hadn’t, as I had half-expected, run to fat. Those fierce, disconcerting black eyes, that he got from his West Country mother, flickered like a butterfly’s tongue, gathering up every treasured detail of that hall’s beauty. He had been brought up here; I had only spent isolated periods in the house, and I always felt a guest. To him it was home. In spite of the lapse of years, that was evidently the way in which he regarded it, as he touched with a thoughtful hand the moulding on the walls, caressed the old, carved newel-post, stood at the narrow windows to observe the distant enchanted view, while he waited for Nunn to come down to him.
“Odd how these places get you,” he murmured to me. “I’ve hardly been here in fifteen years. The present tenant positively discourages my visits, but I feel as if I’d scarcely ever left its roof. One of these days I’ll be back here—with Hilary. A man has to cut loose some time, dig in his roots. It’ll be good to be back.” He drifted into a jumble of anecdote and legend about the place; the fellow was amazingly plausible. I forgot his errand as I listened. No wonder he’d been able to do much as he pleased as he knocked about the earth. And according to his own account he’d had a royal time. I was genuinely surprised when Nunn’s voice interrupted the conversation.
I saw Ralph stiffen a bit at the sight of him. He couldn’t forget that, whatever his record, he was a Feltham of Feltham Abbey and this squat, uncompromising little fellow had started life at half-a-crown a week.
“I asked for Eleanor,” he said, coldly.
“My wife is unable to see you. She has deputed me… I take it, it’s a matter of considerable urgency. You know my views as to your presence in this house.”
If he had wanted to insult Ralph he couldn’t have chosen a better opening. I thought myself it was rather galling for the fellow, considering the place did actually belong to him.
“If I didn’t know them, you couldn’t conceivably blame yourself for lack of emphasis,” said Ralph, colouring with rage. “Well, I’ve only come for Hilary. I’ll go after that. But before long we shall both come back—here. Not even you will be able to keep us out.”
“You’re scarcely serious?”
“Certainly I am. Do you suppose I would come out here to meet the kind of reception experience has taught me I may expect from you for a trifle? Hilary told you, I take it.”
“Hilary was scarcely in a state to talk of anything reasonable last night. She’d obviously passed through a very severe ordeal.”
“You don’t spare your enemies, do you? I’m to take it that you’re opposed to the match?”
“My ward is engaged to another man.”
“But she won’t marry him. If she didn’t marry me, I doubt if she’d marry him. She’s recognised that mistake already.”
“You have grounds, no doubt, for your statement…”
“Fellow’s too old.”
“Not more than a couple of years older than yourself, I believe.”
“In every possible way, including years, he’s too old a man for her. These Civil Servants age quickly. And besides, he’s not her type.”
“Nor are you, I believe, hers.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. She’s not one of those women who must go all out for security, any more than I’m that type of man.”
“Possibly not. Still, in a marriage it’s necessary for one side at all events to have a little sense, and a grain of conscience.”
“You don’t credit her with either?”
“Married to you, her life would be a disaster. She needs a very different type of man to save her from her own foolishness. However, that’s all rather beside the point. There is and can be no suggestion of my ward marrying you.”
“Because I’ve led what you might call a racketty life? So have most men, if it comes to that. Or is there some additional objection?”
I was surprised at the amount of control Ralph was displaying. For, though he had his temper in check now, he was strongly moved, and had been strongly provoked.
“Is it really necessary to pursue the matter further? Yesterday’s behaviour alone would justify any man in refusing to listen to you. Didn’t it occur to you how her reputation would suffer if it became known that she’d bamboozled her future husband in order to meet you on the sly?”
“As I’m proposing to become her future husband, I should hardly suppose that matters. And how else did you expect her to meet me? You’ve resolutely refused to let us meet openly. You’ve closed your doors to me. She can’t even go out by herself, without that long Irish fellow tagging after her.”
“That seems natural enough in the circumstances.”
“It may be, but when she’s my wife he’d better steer clear of my house.”
“When…?”
“And why not? Do you think you’ll stop me? I’ve had all the things I meant to get so far, and I’ve paid whatever price was stuck down on the label. Oh, yes, you’re remembering the Laurine scandal, the fuss there was over that diamond business in South Africa, yes, and half a dozen other things, no doubt. But there’s one point you seem to have forgotten, and that is that in each case I wanted something and meant to get it, and in each case I did. When you want a thing or a woman beyond law and convention and what other men think, you’ve as good as got your way.”
“And you’ve forgotten something, too. In none of those other cases have I been in your way. There’s another reason why you can’t in any circumstances marry Hilary. Have you forgotten what you are? I’d rather hear you acknowledge that you were guilty of that harlot’s murder than know, as I do, that you’ve even sunk to blackmail.” (So Eleanor had told him.)
Ralph laughed. “You can’t frighten me with words. Oh yes, blackmail sounds ugly, but what is it that you haven’t done yourself, if we get down to brass tacks? Just taking advantage of the folly or the weakness of your adversaries. How did you build up a big business like yours? By keeping your weather-eye open, and profiting by the lapses of other people. You were more intelligent, no doubt, but if your opponents never made a slip and you didn’t take advantage of it, you wouldn’t be where you are now. And when you make money, and pots of it, by those means, no one calls you a potential criminal. Oh, don’t make any mistake about it. I’ve seen this kind of legal ramp go on in every city in Europe—and in the U.S.A. and Australia and every other place where men meet together and try and outpace one another’s fortunes. You see it on the Stock Exchange, and you see it in business, and you see how every man uses every scrap of information he can get about his neighbour’s concerns that may be helpful to him—and are you going to try and pretend to me that you’re so squeamish that you don’t make use of such information? Of course you do; and make money out of it, too. And so do I. You can rebuke that kind of thing, if you like, but don’t forget that we’re in the same boat.”
That gives you some notion of the fellow’s ingenuity and his method of argument. I was trying to decide whether he really meant all that or whether it was pure bluff, when he turned suddenly, saying, “I suppose it’s no use my asking for Hilary? But I’ll get her all the same.”
“I doubt it,” said Nunn, drily. “Though I acknowledge that, at the last, it’s an affair you’ll settle between yourselves.”
“I don’t imagine I shall find this fancy-man of hers much difficulty.”
“And after him, there’s Mr. Freyne.”
If they had been scoring, that would have been a goal to Nunn.
Ralph was galvanised into sudden activity. “Freyne here?”
“He is. He’s a guest of mine.”
He didn’t mean to spare Ralph any more than he had spared Hilary last night. But now Ralph didn’t seem to notice.
“Of all the… And he thinks he’s going to marry Hilary? He would. He’s a damned obstinate beggar, too.”
A door above our heads opened and Dennis came out on to the wide gallery. He looked, owing to the construction of the house, slighter and shorter than he actually was, more like a shadow from the ghosts of the past than a creature of bone and sinew.
Ralph took a step forward. “Mr. Dennis?”
Dennis bowed.
“I have been trying to persuade Sir James that Hilary has broken off her engagement, and is, instead, going to marry me.”
“It hadn’t occurred to you to try and persuade me of that fact, first?”
Ralph tapped his boot with his switch. His voice was pleasantly insolent. “As a matter of fact, it hadn’t.”
“It’s these strategical blunders that ruin more potential generals than you outsiders would ever believe.”
Ralph scowled. “Since you’ve raised the point, may I ask you to accept my assurance that Hilary is not going to marry you?”
“I’m a civil servant, I’m afraid. It’s a stiff training. One of the first things we learn is not to accept unofficial information.” He bowed again and went back to his room. He hadn’t turned a hair.
“What the devil did Hilary see in that chap?” asked Ralph, genuinely puzzled. “He’ll be bald before they’ve been married five years. And I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if he wore paper cuffs in his working hours. Cool devil, too. Casually smoking a cigarette as if he hadn’t a care in the world.”
“Oh,” I said, “they teach you that in the Civil Service, too.”
Nunn rang for a servant, and I walked down to the gate with Ralph. I don’t know why I did it; I don’t like the fellow, and I’ve never trusted him. But all the same he was the owner of the place and every stick and stone there recognised him. He said lightly, as he loosed his mare, “You might try and hammer it into Dennis’s thick head that he’s wasting powder carrying on this argument. I wonder if he’d be so keen to marry Hilary if he knew as much as I do. Feltham did sell his side, you know. Oh yes, he did. I’ve got papers to prove it. And anyway, I always thought he had. The race isn’t stable; you’ll admit that, even where Hilary’s concerned. I fancy Eleanor knows the truth, too. It was a rotten pill for her to swallow. Not that I care. If every relative Hilary had had gone over to the other side, lock, stock and barrel, it wouldn’t have made any difference to me. You may not believe it, Tony, but I am in earnest about that girl. I can’t live without her, and I don’t propose to try. What’s done is done; there’s time ahead, and that’s for her and me. I’m only using this weapon because I must. As for Dennis, there are plenty of sensible women with suburban minds and economical ideas for Sunday supper who’ll suit him to a T.”
He nodded to me and rode off, smiling as though he hadn’t a care in the world.
2
I came back to find Dennis, Nunn, Jeremy and Mrs. Ross gathered in the hall, discussing Hilary.
“I think the best thing would be to let her marry him,” Mrs. Ross was saying. “She wants to reform him. Most women want to reform some man, and it’s better for it to be their own husband than someone else’s. They’re so liable to be misunderstood, these reformers. That’s how martyrs began. Besides, it won’t matter what we say. That young woman proposes to paddle her own canoe.”
“You’d better keep an eye on her, if you want her,” Nunn remarked briefly to Dennis. “Or she’ll cut along and elope with the beggar.”
“But why should she?” Mrs. Ross asked. “She could go openly. After all, you can’t make a woman marry any particular man in these days.”
“Still, she’d have some difficult obstacles to overcome,” Dennis suggested.
“Such as?”
“Well, there is me. I should be opposed to it, you know.”
Nunn’s voice thrust into the conversation like the horn of an animal. “And what could you do?”
Dennis turned, half-smiling. “Well, even Hilary for all her enterprise, c-couldn’t make much of a marriage with a c-corpse.”
We were all startled; even Nunn lost some of his habitual composure.
“A corpse. My dear fellow, talk sense. You can’t go about murdering men who happen to interfere with your domestic plans.”
Dennis assured him earnestly, “I’ve never k-killed a man unnecessarily in my life.”
“Well, you can drop any plans you may have formulated about murdering people in my house.”
He went out, and his sister went with him. The three of us stared at one another.
The door opened again and Hilary came in. She looked excited and breathless. “Has Ralph been here?” she asked.
“Yes, and gone again.”
“Didn’t he ask to see me?”
“That was one reason for calling.”
“What was the other?”
“To ask me to publish a denial of our engagement.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That my middle name’s George Washington.”
“But, Arthur, it’s true. I—I’m not engaged to you any more. I told you so last night.”
“If it takes two to make a marriage, it takes two to break it off.”
“You mean, you wouldn’t release me. But you must. You’re not that sort of man. And I must marry Ralph.”
“Why?”
She hesitated, looking at him imploringly, but Dennis didn’t spare her. “It’s all right; we’re your bodyguard, and believe that three heads are better than one. Go on.”
Hilary looked at me. “You know what Ralph knows about my father, don’t you?”
“I know it’s a lie.”
She shook her head. “I daresay some of it’s a lie, but some of it’s true. And anyway, it isn’t really so much what’s true that matters, as what you can make people believe. And I won’t have anyone believe that about my father. And anyway,” she added, unconvincingly, “there’s Eleanor and James. A scandal like this would break up their lives.”
“I don’t see any reason for being insulting to your host,” said Dennis. “Nunn isn’t the kind of man who allows his life to collapse so easily. Now suppose you tell us the rest.”
“The rest?” She looked at him, startled.
“Yes, the true reason why you’re contemplating marriage with your cousin. Oh, I know all the reasons you’ve given us; they may be true, but it’s poppycock that you’d marry a man you detested for any of them. I may not have known you as long as the others, but I know quite a lot about you. Well?”
I couldn’t see what the fellow was driving at. I looked at Jeremy; his face was as white as paper, and his eyes were fixed on Hilary. For a minute she didn’t speak, then she said in a dead, hopeless voice, “How did you find out, Arthur? Oh, it’s true, there is something, I don’t understand myself what it is altogether. But he does attract me, as you don’t, as nobody else I’ve ever met does. Even while I know the sort of man he is, he attracts me. There’s some curse, perhaps, that touches all the Felthams; you know, there’s a legend that none of them is happy. I don’t feel I could marry you, Arthur, or any ordinary person, now. In a way, I shouldn’t think it fair, not only because of father but because of us as a family. It’s different for Ralph and me. We’re tarred with the same brush. Whatever the secret is, we’re both in it. It comes of being Felthams. Do you understand?”
Her face was so ravaged that I was appalled. She seemed to have changed in an instant, undergone some frightful initiation into horror. But to my amazement Dennis only said, “It’s all right, Hilary. I know exactly what you mean.” I noticed that this morning his stammer was scarcely apparent. I felt less certain of the position myself; I’d never seen our courageous, high-spirited Hilary look like this. And I thought she really did believe in the existence of some mysterious curse linking her with her infamous cousin.
“It’s Feltham,” said Dennis, briefly, when she had gone again. “He’s magnetic. I knew that when I first met him. Oh, he has undoubted charm of a kind, but I don’t propose to allow him to exercise it, not on Hilary. He’s a queer chap, you know. If we lived in the ages of faith we should say he was devil-possessed. Nowadays we’ve done away with the devil and replaced him by complexes and inhibitions. Though dear knows what inhibitions Feltham’s ever allowed himself.”
“You seem to know a lot about him,” said Jeremy. “Is this your first experience of him?”
“Oh, no.” Dennis looked surprised. “I doubt if he remembers me, but I was doing Secret Service work during the war and I ran across him then. He’d go anywhere, do anything; didn’t know the meaning of fear. He might have worked marvels for us but he wasn’t reliable. But he was so damned plausible he could have pulled off anything. Why, any other man who had done what he did would have been put up against a wall and shot at dawn. It isn’t just his looks or his manner or his record. It’s a gift, like painting or music. Either a man has the seed of it, or he hasn’t. And Feltham has. You can see for yourselves how he’s captivated Hilary. And she’s not a soft school-girl as a rule.”
“What’s to be done?” I asked. “It seems to me that as long as the fellow’s above the earth she’ll be unsafe. Even if, as you pointed out, she were married to you, that wouldn’t necessarily be a guarantee…”
“Precisely,” said Dennis, with so much meaning that we both stopped dead. “Anyway,” he continued, in his cool, unhurried voice, “the fellow ought to be put out of the way. He’s a public danger. I gather you’ve both seen Philpotts. You do know what the position is down here?”
We agreed that we had. “Then shall we put our cards on the table? I’m here to try and discover who the Spider really is. It’s a magnificent chance, looked at officially, because for the first time we’re on the spot before the end of the story. Up till now we’ve had to begin after the death; this time we’re going to prevent it, and in so doing spot the criminal.”
“Is he Ralph Feltham?” asked Jeremy bluntly.
“It’s no use going at it like a bull at a five-barred gate. I don’t want to get hold of one principal and let the gang generally go. I want to scotch this thing for good and all. You may think me sentimental, but I tell you there are nights when I can’t sleep, thinking of that crowd at work, and the havoc they’ve produced, and the worse havoc they have in mind.”
“I don’t want to be offensive,” said Jeremy, “and I only ask in order to get the position perfectly clear. But your engagement to Hilary—is that part of an official campaign or something totally apart?”
“Totally apart. I admit I would strain a good many nerves to run this fiend to earth, but getting a girl to give herself away and then politely restoring her to the shelf, with a ‘Thank you so much. That’ll be all for to-day,’ is too much even for me. No, as you suggest, my engagement is quite outside the official sphere.”
“I only thought it might clear the air a little if it hadn’t been,” Jeremy explained. “And it would have simplified things all round.”
“For yourself?”
“Yes. If I could think of you as that sort of cad, think how much more pleasure I should experience in robbing you of Hilary. Whereas I shall probably suffer hideous pangs of conscience, if you really need her…” He smiled one-sidedly. But Dennis didn’t seem embarrassed.
“Charming of you, I’m sure. And very handsomely put. Like the parent who chastises his child to the tune of This hurts me much more than you, A thing I simply hate to do.
But to come back to Feltham. If he’s in earnest about Hilary, as I think he is, the sooner he’s put out of the way the better. Of course, there mustn’t be any scandal. It mustn’t look like suicide. Still less must it look like murder. It must be an accident, with nothing whatsoever to connect it with this house. Remember, Nunn is a big man locally, and we owe it to him, as his guests, not to get him tied up in anything discreditable. He’ll be in the Lords one of these days, and he won’t want to take his seat with the flavour of murder attaching to his name.”
“Have you forgotten that Keith here is a lawyer?” Jeremy asked, honestly scandalised by Dennis’s cool assertions. “And lawyers, like actors, are professionals first and human beings second, and a long way second, too.” He turned to me in some anxiety. “If Dennis should prove to be in earnest, Tony, remember this conversation is without prejudice.”
Dennis got off the table where he had been sitting. “It wouldn’t matter,” he murmured in his soft Irish voice. “I’m not such a fool that I should leave anything to chance. I wasn’t in the Secret Service for nothing.”
“It’s difficult to believe you’re serious,” I said.
“I’m serious enough. But, as I assured Nunn this morning, I’ve never in my life killed a man unnecessarily. I’ll tell you this, though. There’ll be a good many hearts beating more easily all over the world when Ralph Feltham is in his grave. And even if that weren’t true, and this was the only household he could damage, I should do the same. He isn’t going to smash up Hilary’s life, believe me.”
He went out through the French windows into the dreary garden, where the first snowdrops were beginning to prick up in the stone bath beyond the library windows. Jeremy whistled.
“We seem to have our work cut out,” he observed. “One of us had better keep an eye on Hilary and the other on that chap. At the end of this adventure we ought to be qualified for first-rate nursemaids. By the way, does your fountain-pen write?”
“I expect so. Why?”
“Because I want to borrow one. I don’t think Dennis is the sort of chap to beat much about the bush, and the papers will pay handsomely for a really lurid biography of a man like Ralph. And me knowing more than most, it might be my chance to make a touch. So long.”
And he followed Dennis through the French windows.