THERE was a wet, dun-coloured blanket of fog over London. In the taxi which bore him from Victoria to his house in Knightsbridge, Anthony Ruthven Gethryn shivered. There is no contrast more unpleasant than the suns of Southern Spain and a damp, bleak, fog-ridden London at a November tea-time.
The taxi was slow; slower even, it seemed to Anthony, than the fog’s opaqueness justified. He sat and shivered and used bad language beneath his breath. In his ulster pocket, the fingers of his right hand played rustlingly with the telegram which had brought about his return. Again he wondered—as he had been wondering for the past forty-eight hours—what lay behind this telegram.
The taxi jarred to a cracking standstill. The muffled driver left his seat, opened the door and thrust in a dim head.
‘This the ’ouse, sir?’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Should be. But I can’t see the numbers rightly. Not in this!’ His sniff was eloquent of his feelings upon fogs.
Anthony peered; nodded, pulled his coat about him and clambered out, bent double. On the pavement he stretched his long body to its full height and stamped frozen feet. He passed coins.
‘Thank’ee, sir,’ said the driver. There was a warmth in his voice which told that even fog may bring its compensation.
Anthony turned in at his gate. Over his shoulder he said, ‘I’ll send out to help you with those bags.’
He went up the flagged path and the steps at the head of them. Even as his hand began searching for the keys the door before him opened. He said:
‘Hullo, White. Skip out and see to that luggage, will you? Where’s your mistress?’
White did not answer; there was no need. White went out to the baggage.
In the hall Anthony’s wife was in Anthony’s arms. When she spoke, she said, a little breathlessly:
‘But, my dear. You’re twelve hours before I expected you. It’s …’
Anthony smiled. ‘Isn’t it? But I’m like that.’ He took her by the elbow and turned her towards the door through which, a moment ago, she had come.
With his first step, she halted. She said, dropping her voice:
‘Not in there, dear. Not yet.’ She led the way down the hall and into the drawing-room.
His back to a fire which blazed and crackled and deliciously burned his spine, he put a hand to a pocket and brought out the telegram and waved it.
‘And now,’ he said, ‘p’r’aps you’ll explain, ma’am.’
Lucia dropped into a chair. She crossed her legs, left over right, and with the bronze-coloured shoe of the left foot beat a little devil’s tattoo in the air.
At the small foot her husband looked down. A smile twisted his mouth. He said:
‘And that means you’re mistrusting your judgment.’
Lucia sat up. ‘I’m not!’ she said indignantly. ‘I had to bring you back. But … but …’
‘But you don’t know where to start.’ Anthony smoothed the flimsy paper of the telegram out between his fingers. ‘And I shouldn’t think so. Not only d’you jerk me back from a land fit to be lived in, but instead of yourself you send me this.’ He crackled the telegram. ‘Cancel your passage properly?’ He crossed to her chair and perched his length upon its arm.
She looked up at him. Her eyes were very soft. She said:
‘You are a darling, you know … Now let me tell you. It’s …’
‘In the library,’ said Anthony. ‘Yes? What is it?’
Lucia showed the tip of a red tongue. ‘All right, Zancig. It’s a woman.’ She turned suddenly in her chair. Both slender hands came up from her lap and rested upon his knee. Her tone changed. All lightness went from it. It grew deeper than its usual lovely deepness. She said:
‘It’s a woman. She wants help. She wants help more than any woman’s ever wanted help before. And there’s just one person who can help her.’ The white fingers tightened on her husband’s knee. ‘And that’s you, Anthony.’
A small silence fell. Anthony’s green eyes looked down into the velvet darkness of his wife’s. He said at last:
‘It’s me, is it. Well, if you say so … Where do we start?’
The fingers squeezed gratefully. She said:
‘Have you read any papers in Spain? English ones, I mean.’
‘The only time I ever read English papers,’ said Anthony, ‘is when I’m not in England. I have.’
‘And did you see anything about the Bronson case?’
Anthony frowned. ‘Bronson? Bronson?… Bron … Oh, yes. Dave Bronson, you mean. The ex-pug who did in a gamekeeper or something. Some months ago. No, I didn’t see anything. Was there?’
Lucia’s dark head was nodded. ‘There was. Not awfully prominent, it wasn’t. What it was was the report of Bronson’s appeal. Which was what d’you call it—disallowed, anyhow.’
‘Rejected,’ said Anthony. ‘And in there’—he nodded in the direction of the library—‘is, I gather, either Mother or Mrs Bronson or both.’
‘It’s the wife,’ Lucia said. Her voice was very low again, and with its management she seemed to find difficulty. Anthony, looking down, saw that there glittered in each eye a shining tear.
He put an arm about her shoulders and held her. But he said:
‘Anything else to report?’
There was a little movement against his shoulder as once more the head nodded. After a pause, she spoke again. She said:
‘Yes. There’s been a petition for a reprieve. Signed by thousands of people. I forget how many; but thousands. And that’s no good. It’s been refused by the Home Secretary. And … and … he’ll be hanged in five days. Five days. Five days! Unless …’
On the last word, her voice broke. Anthony felt that real weeping and much was on the way. Of purpose he grew gently brutal. He said:
‘Unless someone does a miracle, you mean?’
‘You,’ said Lucia, struggling to keep back tears.
‘Not my line,’ said Anthony, watching her covertly.
‘The most wonderful thing,’ Lucia quoted, ‘about miracles is that they sometimes happen … You’ve got to make one happen.’ Her voice was under control again.
Anthony shrugged. ‘Have I now? You know, a bodkin’s far likelier to let a dromedary slip through it than a Home Secretary is to change his mind. And is it right to take a quick death from a man and give him a living one? That’s what a twenty-year stretch must be, you know. Again, beginning to remember a little about the case, I’m not so sure one ought to want to get Bronson off. It was a messy, treacherous behind-your-back sort of job, wasn’t it? I …’
He broke off suddenly. His eyes widened in astonishment. His wife had sprung to her feet. She was facing him now, her great eyes blazing with a light which seemed blent of anger and laughter and anxiety.
‘You fool, darling!’ she said. ‘You darling fool!’
Anthony passed a hand across his forehead. ‘Quite,’ he said. ‘Quite. Most probably. But exactly why?’
She almost stamped. ‘Because,’ she said, ‘you sit there—there you sit—you sit there and think and listen and talk, all the time I’m telling you something; and you haven’t even begun to understand. Not begun to …’
‘If I haven’t,’ Anthony said, ‘I certainly don’t.’
‘You haven’t understood the main point. The only point. The point that’s the tragedy; the point that’s turning that woman’s life not into ordinary, everyday horror and pain but into something so much worse that there aren’t any words for it. I wonder she isn’t mad. I should be …’
Anthony clasped head with hands. He rocked himself to and fro. He moaned:
‘Point, woman, point. If you don’t get to it soon I …’
His wife came close to him. She said:
‘The point is that Bronson did not kill Blackatter. Now!’
Anthony sat upright with a jerk. He stared for a moment. He said:
‘Didn’t he, though? Who says? Not the Law, or anyone with weight, or he wouldn’t be where he is.’
Lucia came closer still. She set her hands upon his shoulders. She said—and again her voice was different:
‘Don’t laugh. There was only one person who said so. She’s in there, waiting for you. Two people say so now, and I’m the second. Do something for me, dear. Be the third if you can … Will you come now?’
Anthony, silent, rose. Together, they walked across the long room to the door.
The library, a square, book-lined room whose height was emphasised by the crowded shelves which covered its walls from ceiling to floor, was lit only by a shaded lamp upon the central writing-table and the red, flickering luminosity of the log-fire.
Anthony, Lucia at his side, paused just within the door. The change from brightness to this illuminated dark took for a moment his eyes by storm. He frowned his sight into submission, and just as clarity of vision came, there came too, to his ears, Lucia’s voice. It said:
‘My husband is here, Mrs Bronson. Quicker than I thought he could possibly be … Anthony, this is Mrs Bronson … I think I’ll leave you together …’
There was a little rustle beside Anthony, and the ghost of a scented breeze. And then the click-clock of the heavy door’s closing.
Anthony went forward. To meet him there came, rising from a low chair by the crimson fireside, a tall shape. A hand came out. A long hand and strong, which clasped his with a strength which would have been surprising in many men, but which itself, when felt, was in no way like a man’s; and this despite the muscularity of the grip and the roughness—the slight but undoubted roughness—of the skin.
He found himself shaking hands with a woman whose eyes were nearer to being upon a true level with his own than any feminine eyes which in the passage of his adult lifetime he could remember. Even in this half-darkness those eyes impressed upon him not only their intrinsic beauty but an impression of strength and … and … in his own mind he groped for the word … of oddity; of queerness. But of an oddity and a queerness which had nothing to do with irrationality. Rather a difference like the difference between the eyes of a woman and a Maeve. He said, suddenly:
‘D’you mind, Mrs Bronson, if we have more light?’ He turned at the inclination of her head and walked back to the door and pressed one of the switches beside it.
The big bowl-shade hung from the ceiling’s centre sprang into soft radiance. The room expanded, gained shape; lost mysterious corners and imagination-giving sudden blanknesses; took on a mellow matter-of-factness.
Almost immediately beneath the light the woman stood. Anthony came back towards her. His idle-seeming eyes were busy. He saw her now.
His first feeling was of checked breathing. He was always to remember that. Only two other women in his life—and Lucia was one—had ever done this to him, and from far different causes. As he drew close to this woman now, his mind searched for a word to fit her. ‘Magnificent’ came first—and remained to oust the others which came crowding. He never found a better, and yet that never satisfied him.
She was very tall, but her height, for her, was neither overpowering nor grotesque. She was built upon the grand scale, but the grandeur was simple and restrained. There was about her stillness some great urgency; it was as if, not needing voice, the whole woman spoke to him; cried out—not weakly but from one strength to another strength—for aid.
She was hatless, and now, as without speaking he set her chair for her and she sank back into it again, he saw that her hair was of that pale yet vital burnished gold which is purely Scandinavian. He said, wishing to hear her speak:
‘It’s useless to offer sympathy, Mrs Bronson. Whether or not I can offer anything else remains to be seen.’ He smiled at her; a friendly smile which lightened, almost astonishingly, his dark, lean, rather sardonic face. ‘It’s you to move,’ he said.
She replied at once. Her voice was low, and perfectly under control. Yet there was about it a kind of hard, metallic clarity which he would have wagered was not there when she was free from strain. She said:
‘My husband is in prison. He has been tried for murder. He has been convicted. He has—what do you call it?—appealed, and this appeal has been rejected. People—ten thousand people—have signed their names on a Petition. This Petition has been rejected by the Authorities. Today is Thursday. On the day after next Monday’—she drew in her breath with a little gasping hiss, immediately controlled—‘he will be hanged … unless something is done. They tell me there is nothing to be done.’ She broke off here, abruptly. The silence seemed to hold a lingering echo of that controlled, vibrant voice, with its armour of hardness and its definite but unplaceable foreignness.
Anthony became astonished at himself and his own emotions; for he found himself speaking merely for the sake of breaking silence. He said:
‘They seem to be right. If, of course, we could find any way of casting doubt …’
He ceased speech. With a single, soundless movement, the woman had risen. He found her standing over him as he lay back in the deep, leather chair. He rose himself and stood to face her. On a level, her eyes of blue fire blazed into his. He saw that, motionless as she seemed, the whole of her was shaking. She said, in a voice so low that barely did it carry to his ears, yet so pregnant with force that every word buried itself like a soft-nosed bullet in his brain:
‘Colonel Gethryn, there is only one thing that is to be done. Dan did not kill Blackatter. If there can be found, before … before … before the morning after next Monday morning, the man who did kill, then …’ Her voice ceased; a gesture finished her speech.
Anthony, as straight as she and as rigid, said softly:
‘You say your husband did not kill the man Blackatter. You know?’
‘I know,’ said the woman. There seemed no emphasis on the words. There was no raising of that low, hard voice. But Anthony nodded. He said:
‘I see. And you have no thought as to who the killer really was?’
‘None,’ said the woman.
‘It was not,’ said Anthony, ‘yourself?’
‘No,’ replied the woman.
The tension, instead of tightening, eased at that. For a moment there flickered across that mouth of hers which, thought Anthony, when not set to still its trembling, must be a beautiful mouth, the wan ghost of a smile.
Anthony smiled too. A grave smile, but a smile. He said:
‘Sit down again, won’t you?’
She sat. He remained standing. He stood, hands thrust deep into his pockets, looking into the redness of the fire beyond it. In his mind logic was receiving its death blow from instinct.
The woman spoke. She said:
‘You have believed me, that I know Dan did not.’
It was a statement, this, more than a question. But Anthony said:
‘I believed you. And I shan’t change.’ A sudden smile twisted the corners of his mouth. He became more like himself. ‘But why,’ he said, ‘I believe, I couldn’t tell you. Don’t know myself …’
‘It is the strength of my believing,’ said the woman.
‘And,’ said Anthony to himself, ‘of yourself …’
So Anthony once more found himself out in the yellow fog, jolting through it in a crawling taxi. Experience told him that, in fogs, the slowest cab is quicker than one’s own car. Up to Hyde Park Corner crawled the lurching little motor, and into St James’s Park and across it, and up Bridge Street and round the corner into Scotland Yard.
Up many flights of stone stairs climbed Anthony and knocked upon a door and, getting no answer, walked through this and across a small room to another door. At this he tapped. A murmur ceased; a voice bade him enter. He pushed his head round the door’s edge and looked.
‘Busy?’ he said. ‘I can wait.’
‘Good Lord!’ said Mr Egbert Lucas. ‘Look who’s here! Come in, man, come in!’
Anthony entered. ‘Hullo,’ he said to all. ‘Lucas, how are you? And you, Pike?’
‘Worn,’ Lucas said. ‘Worn.’ His smile was cheerful, even affectionate; his grooming as careful as ever.
The lantern-shaped face of Chief Detective-Inspector Arnold Pike creased with his wide smile. He said:
‘I’m very well, sir. How are you, sir?’
‘Full of fog,’ said Anthony, lighting a cigarette. ‘I’d forgotten what fogs tasted like. I could have borne not to ’ve remembered. I’m also in a bad temper—so I want to worry you all. I …’
Lucas exhibited alarm. He looked at Pike; at his superior Pike looked back, expressionless. Lucas said:
‘Gethryn; if you as much as mention the name of Smethwick to me, I’ll …’
Anthony grinned. ‘Don’t know him,’ he said. ‘Don’t want to. What I do want is this.’ He told them what he wanted.
Pike pursed his lips as if at any moment he might so far forget himself in an Assistant Commissioner’s room as to whistle. Lucas sat back in his chair and scratched his head.
‘All the stuff we’ve got,’ he said slowly, quoting Anthony’s words, ‘about the Bronson case … Sure you mean Bronson?’
Anthony looked at him.
‘I see,’ said Lucas. ‘You do mean Bronson. Well, well. It was all done by the County Police, but we should have copies of their stuff.’ He looked at Pike.
‘We have, sir,’ Pike said. He seemed as if he were about to speak further, but suddenly closed his mouth—so tightly that his lips disappeared.
Lucas was looking at him. Lucas said:
‘Very discreet, Pike, I’m sure. Gethryn, he wants to ask questions but won’t. I will, though. What is all this?’
Anthony put back his head and blew a cloud of smoke ceilingwards. ‘Only,’ he said, ‘that Bronson didn’t kill Blackatter.’
The two policemen looked at him. In silence for a moment. Then the silence was broken; for, this time, Pike did whistle; a long low note, forced out of him by astonishment. Lucas, still staring at Anthony, twice opened his mouth to speak, twice changed his mind, and at last said:
‘Good God!’
‘You think,’ said Anthony, ‘that I’m mad. And so does Pike. Before we go any further, I may as well tell you, quite dispassionately, that you’re probably right.’
‘But what …’ began Lucas.
‘You’ve been away, haven’t you, sir?’ Pike spoke with the eagerness of a man who believes that inspiration has shown him, in a flash, the true solution of a problem.
Anthony brought his eyes back from the ceiling at this. He looked first at Lucas, still scratching his head; then at Pike, still eager. He laughed.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘But you’re both funny. Yes, Pike, I have been away. But I know Bronson’s position all right.’
Lucas snorted. ‘Position. Hardly a position, is it? I mean, he’s breathing and eating, and all that; but no man so near the gallows can be called alive.’
‘That,’ said Anthony, ‘is the trouble. What’s the one thing that could save him from the nine o’clock walk?’
‘Nothing,’ said Lucas. ‘Man’s dead to all intents and purposes. And quite right, too. Nasty, messy, treacherous job that was. And not a shadow of doubt about it. Eh, Pike?’
But Pike pursed his lips, and a worried frown drew his eyes together. They looked, these eyes, at Anthony.
Lucas exploded. ‘Good Lord, man! Just because Colonel Gethryn comes in here trying to pull our legs …’
‘I wasn’t,’ Anthony interrupted. ‘That’s too easy, Lucas. I was serious. See it wet and dry.’
Lucas was obstinate. ‘My dear man, you can’t be. Not you, of all people. There never was a clearer case. Never. Why, Bronson left his card all over the place! It took only the County Police twenty-four hours to get him inside. It’s all too …’ He broke off suddenly, and sat up with a jerk, gazing at Anthony with sudden intentness. ‘Unless,’ he said slowly, ‘unless … you’ve hit on something that never …’
Again Anthony interrupted. ‘I haven’t. But I want to. I want to badly. Look here, let’s get this straight. I’ll tell you how mad I am, and then you needn’t worry your heads with me any more. I’ve been away. Instead of my wife joining me, she sent me a cable which told me to come back. So I came back. I found, this afternoon, that with my wife was Bronson’s wife. Foolishly enough, my wife had allowed the woman to persuade her of Bronson’s innocence. I didn’t scoff aloud, being an intelligent husband, but I scoffed all right. I then had half an hour with Mrs Bronson. And now I’m not scoffing any more. I’m having half an hour with you, being convinced myself—’
He got up and crossed to Lucas’s table and dropped his cigarette stub into Lucas’s ashtray. ‘And that,’ he said, ‘is the true and rightful history of my madness. Very sad, you know. Decline of a great intelligence. But there it is. Now d’you think, peaceably to rid yourself of the raving guest, you could let me have that dossier?’
There was a silence. Lucas looked at Anthony; Pike looked at Anthony; Anthony looked at the steel-engraving over Lucas’s head. Lucas was the first to speak. He said:
‘Tell me this, Gethryn. What was it Mrs Bronson told you that gave you this conviction?’
‘Easy,’ said Anthony. ‘She told me, with her voice, that she knew Bronson hadn’t done it. She told me, with herself, that if she believed this, this was so.’
Lucas lay back in his chair. He made a little helpless gesture with his hands. ‘May Jupiter,’ he said, ‘aid me! I need aid.’
Pike said nothing. He looked still at Anthony, and his right hand rubbed at his smooth, almost rectangular jaw.
Lucas tried again. He said, his tone pleading:
‘What is this, Gethryn? Damn it, if it was anyone but you I’d just laugh or send for a doctor. But … but …’ Again he made that helpless gesture.
Anthony took his eyes from the picture. He smiled suddenly and said:
‘I’m worrying you. And it’s a shame. But you mustn’t be worried. I’ve told you everything. Nothing up my sleeve nor concealed beneath the ’anging covers.’ He got to his feet with a movement, for him, curiously jerky. He began to pace up and down between window and door. ‘The best thing for you people,’ he said, ‘is to give me the papers I want and forget all about me until you hear of my certification … Why worry your heads?’
At Pike Lucas glanced, shrugging his shoulders. Pike said, looking at Anthony:
‘Speaking for myself, sir … and possibly for Mr Lucas’—Lucas nodded with a sort of wearied agreement—‘we’re worrying our heads because it’s you, sir. As Mr Lucas said just now, if anybody else …’ He shrugged, and his shoulders spoke his contempt. ‘But with you, sir, it’s different. We’ve got into a kind of way up here, as you might say, of thinking you can’t be wrong. Not even if you were to try …’
Lucas sat up. ‘Good, Pike! That is it. Since the Hoode show and then the Lines-Bower business, you’ve got us on velvet. You’re a sort of ju-ju.’ He almost groaned, shifting uneasily in his chair. ‘I wouldn’t mind so much if you’d anything to base this preposterous belief of yours on. You see, if you had, we might come in with you. Give you an official blessing, anyhow; but as it is we can’t—how could we? We’re Bobbies here, not mediums! And what’s giving me a pain in the tummy’s the truly dreadful thought: suppose, by some appalling coincidence, A. R. Gethryn was right! It’d come out, you know, that the Police had done nothing. You wouldn’t say so, but it’d come out. And it wouldn’t be a bit of use telling ’em you just had a hunch and that we’re not here to back hunches …’ His voice trailed off, a little querulously, into silence. Perhaps he had realised that he was complaining without exactly knowing what his complaint was.
Anthony ceased his pacing. He halted in front of the table, so that he directly faced Lucas, and at Lucas he stared, smiling.
‘The trouble with you,’ he said, ‘is that you’re too much of a man to be The Perfect Bureaucrat and too nearly The Perfect Bureaucrat to be a man. You want, you know, jam on both sides of the pancake. You want to be out of this if I am mad, and in it if my apparent madness should turn out to a sort of super-sanity.’ His smiled robbed his words of any but the mildest sting.
Lucas glared for a moment, then suddenly laughed. ‘You’re an irritating devil!’ he said ruefully … ‘Well, I’ll let you have the Bronson file. But more I can’t do.’
‘Nobody,’ Anthony murmured, ‘asked you, sir, she said.’
Lucas looked at Pike. ‘Could the file be got at now?’
Pike nodded and was gone. Anthony and Lucas smoked and chatted. But the pleasant small-talk of Lucas was a trifle wandering; and the eye of Lucas, though obviously against its owner’s will, was not free from a worried, speculative look. Anthony, noticing this look, interrupted suddenly his own discourse upon the less oily type of Spanish cookery. He said:
‘You don’t trust me, you know. And it occurs to me that there is one small fact I’ve not mentioned …’
‘Ah!’ Lucas sat up at once. His fingers drummed upon his blotting-pad. ‘Yes? Yes?’
‘Just,’ said Anthony, ‘that it wasn’t the idea of her Dan’s killing a man that Mrs Bronson scouted. It was that her Dan should kill a man that way—by stealth and treachery, from behind—that was what made her know this was no work of Dan’s.’
‘Oh!’ Lucas’s tone was flat again. Once more he sank back into his chair. ‘Oh—ah. Yes. Quite. What almost any hitherto happily married wife ’d say, isn’t it?’
Anthony replied with another question. ‘Ever met Mrs Bronson? Ever seen her even?’
Lucas nodded, with a little less apathy in his manner. ‘Yes. She’s been here. Magnificent creature …’ His tone changed. ‘But they all come here, you know. Poor devils. What they hope from it, God knows!’
‘If,’ said Anthony, ‘you’ve met the woman and talked with the woman and yet see no significance in what I’ve just told you she said, there’s nothing more for me to say.’
Lucas once more sat upright. His open hand came down with a slap on the table-top. ‘Look here, Gethryn,’ he began; then ceased abruptly as a knock came upon the door and, hard upon the knock’s heels, Pike.
Under his left arm Pike bore a bulky foolscap envelope from the open end of which protruded the edges of an orange-hued folder. He came to Anthony and presented this burden. He smiled as he handed it over, but his glittering brown eyes were sharp with a curiosity at once avid and restrained. He said:
‘That’s the lot, sir.’ And turned to Lucas as if awaiting orders.
Lucas lifted his eyes. ‘Thanks,’ he said. He glanced at the small clock upon his desk. ‘Better be getting off, hadn’t you? Don’t want to miss that train. If you do, something might turn up to stop you again.’ He said to Anthony: ‘Pike’s got leave. And about time, too. Hasn’t had a holiday for two years. Pike, buzz off!’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Pike. But he stood a moment after the words had left his mouth. He looked down—a trick he had when thinking deeply—at the very polished toe-caps of his very shiny boots; but after a moment, with a visible jerk, pulled himself away from whatever thought had held him. He said:
‘Very good, sir. Thank you. I’ll say goodbye, sir.’ He turned to Anthony. ‘And goodbye to you, sir … And … and … good luck.’ The door closed, softly but crisply, behind him.
Lucas looked at it. He laughed a laugh which was half snort. ‘Good luck indeed!’ he said. ‘Pike’s got you and your marvels on the brain, Gethryn. Since the Lines-Bower show he’s damn near deified you.’
Anthony stood up, the bulky envelope held firm beneath one arm. He said:
‘Pike’s too good a man to do any deifying … So long, Lucas, and thank you.’ He tapped the envelope. ‘These’ll be safe. And don’t you worry. If I were you I should think I was mad, too. I do now.’
The door closed behind him. Lucas was left alone. He sat in his chair and stared at nothing and chewed an unlighted cigarette until the sting of wet, stringy tobacco on his tongue brought him to himself.
The dark, shapely head of Lucia Gethryn looked round the edge of his study door at her husband. He sat astraddle upon a small chair and gazed down over its back and his folded arms at the carpet.
Lucia followed her head. ‘I thought,’ she said, going to him and laying a hand upon his arm, ‘that you weren’t ever going to stop using the telephone. And your coffee got cold. And you didn’t have any port. I’ve told White to bring …’
‘What I want to know,’ said Anthony, ‘is how in the name of the Seven-fingered Septuagesima an ex-bruiser got a woman like that woman …’
Lucia crossed to the writing table and upon it perched herself. She said:
‘I knew that would make you wonder. It did me. There’s a good story behind it, I should think. She adores him, you know …’
Anthony raised his head. ‘Make it “loves”. It means more, and it’s what she does … Know her beginnings?’
The dark head nodded. ‘Just a little. She’s told me one or two things. She’s a Dane. Her father was Captain of a sailing-ship. She was at sea with him from when she was a baby until he died. After his death she couldn’t get to sea any more. She said that at one time she thought she’d go mad with being on land. And then she met Dan. And she hasn’t worried about the sea any more.’
‘Curioser,’ said Anthony, ‘and curioser. One should meet Dan, I feel.’
‘Probably,’ said Lucia softly, ‘Dan isn’t Dan except to her.’
Anthony raised his chin from his hands. He lifted his head again and looked at his wife. He said:
‘Sentimental. But very probably true … I’ll tell you what D. Bronson, ex-pug, is though. I have, as you know, been telephoning. The receiver is still hot upon my ear. I have telephoned to old Lansmoor and to Betty Partridge and to two old friends of mine called Spiky Skinner and Flatty Wilson. And also to Myerbeer. And to Dick Dybar …’
‘Please!’ Lucia said. ‘Stop the roll-call. Except for Lord Lansmoor, I don’t know even the names … And who’s Betty Partridge?’
‘Betty,’ said Anthony, ‘is no bird, except for the name. Betty was once the best heavy-weight in this country. But he would try to train on beer. He’s now the hall-porter at the Senior Imperial. Spiky Skinner and Flatty Wilson are the best seconds in the country; they also happened to be in the first platoon I ever had. Myerbeer’s the man who runs the Olympic Sporting Club and Dybar’s that friend of Archie’s who’s lost more money promoting fights than his father made printing Bibles. Point of contact with A. R. Gethryn—Daniel Bronson. I knew they’d all know a lot about Bronson; but they were even more obliging—they all knew him. Even Dybar.’
‘But what …’ began Lucia; then, ‘sorry, darling.’
‘Granted,’ said Anthony, ‘no sooner than asked. I was checking the opinion of Mrs Bronson. You can say it didn’t need checking, and probably you’d be right. But check it I did. No dissentients.’ He put his chin again upon his folded arms.
Lucia looked down at the head of her husband. She waited, but he did not speak. She leaned forward then and between finger and thumb took as much of his hair as was convenient. She pulled, and the silence was sharply broken.
‘That,’ she said, ‘is for being a Master Mind. Explain. What were there no dissentients about; exactly?’
Anthony rubbed at his scalp. ‘What else, woman, than the character of D. Bronson in relation to the killing of Blackatter? That woman said to me this afternoon: ‘Dan might kill, but he wouldn’t kill like that!’ Blackatter was shot, you know, at close range, through the back of the head. The telephone has just said to me, in six voices and six different ways, that it seems incredible, not only that D. Bronson should kill like that, but that D. Bronson should kill at all.’
‘Oh!’ said Lucia. ‘But she would be right, you know. I mean, if she says he “might kill”, he might.’
‘Very true,’ said Anthony, ‘but nothing to do with the case. Several tra-las. What we have got—put in its lowest terms of value—is confirmation of the great unlikelihood of Bronson’s killing a man behind his back …’ He fell silent.
There came a knock at the door, and after it White bearing a tray upon which were a coffee-cup, two wine-glasses, and a decanter. Lucia moved from the writing-table. But Anthony sat motionless, his head upon his crossed arms, his half-closed eyes looking down, over the chair-back, at the carpet.
White went. To Anthony his wife brought coffee. He did not move until she touched his shoulder. Then, absently, he straightened his body, took the cup and drained it and, almost in one movement, gave it back to her. Back went his arms along the chair-rail, and down again upon those arms went his head.
Lucia poured port. One glass she picked up and held out towards her husband. His eyes cannot have been really closed, for his hand came up and his fingers closed about the glass’s stem and took it from her.
He drank. With a sudden movement he straightened his body and, reaching out a long arm, set down the half-empty glass, with a little smack upon the writing-table’s edge. He said, with an explosiveness most foreign to him:
‘It’s idiocy! It’s damned, fat-headed, raving foolishness! It’s worse than that, it’s waste of time! And it’s cruel to that woman!’ He got to his feet and began to walk up and down the long room. With anxious, wide eyes Lucia watched him. She waited for him to speak again, but he paced in fiery silence. She said at last:
‘What … what … d’you mean that …’
He interrupted her. He halted to face her. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets. He said:
‘I mean that it’s hopeless. I mean that I ought to be shot for not having said so from the beginning and gone on saying so. Read that!’ He flung out an arm, pointing. Lucia’s eyes followed the finger; brought their gaze to rest upon a bulging, rusty-orange-coloured folder which lay upon the writing-table.
‘In that,’ said Anthony, ‘is the case against Bronson. It’s a cast-iron case. And Bronson’s been tried; and Bronson’s appealed; and Bronson’s had a very strong petition for him put up. And he was found guilty, and his appeal didn’t work; and his petition’s been turned down. And he’s going to be hanged in a hundred or so hours from now …’
Lucia stood now, close to him, facing him, her lovely head thrown back a little so that her eyes could meet his. She put up a hand to her throat. She said, in a low voice which gave evidence of her difficulty in producing it:
‘You mean … you mean to say, after all you’ve said … you mean to say that you … Oh, Anthony!’
He looked down at her. His eyes softened. He said:
‘I mean that not even Gabriel could get the man off. See: there’s one way, and one way only, to get that man off. And that’s to produce, within four days from this minute, utterly conclusive proof that not he, but some definite other person, killed Blackatter. Understand? Look what you’re asking, you women! You’re asking that now, months after the thing was done, when even witnesses’ memories are getting hazy and any scent there might’ve been at the time’s vanished long ago—you’re asking that now, within less than a week, a man’s to dig up a murderer who in the first place covered himself so well that no one got even a hint of his existence. It’s Merlin you want, Unlimited …’
He broke off. For Lucia was smiling at him; smiling that particular one of her smiles which always had, and always would, make him catch his breath a little at its beauty. Smiling, she was! Yet, a moment ago, when she had jumped up to face him, she had been tense and white and her eyes had been dark pools of anxiety. She said softly:
‘All right, dear. All right. I’m sorry. I didn’t understand. D’you know, I thought—just for a minute—I thought you were going to say that you wouldn’t even try. I am a fool sometimes.’
Anthony looked at her. ‘Sure you weren’t right the first time? Because, you know, you were.’
She shook her head, with a slow, decisive mockery. ‘Don’t tell me!’ she said. ‘You went off the deep end because you knew you were going to try but you were frightened—and are frightened—horribly frightened, that you mayn’t succeed. And that’s right, whatever you say! Isn’t it?’
Anthony kissed her. ‘If there’s anything,’ he said, ‘more annoying than a woman who knows she’s right, it’s a woman who is.’ He reached out and plucked from the table the orange-coloured dossier. ‘Here, you take this and go to bed and read it. I want to think.’
Lucia took the folder gingerly. ‘But think about what, dear? I mean’—her brow puckered—‘where are you to start thinking?’
‘That,’ said Anthony, ‘is what I’ve got to think about.’
The little cell was suddenly full. The Warden looked down at the man who sat upon the edge of the small and narrow bed. The two warders were at attention; the man who had come with the Warden hovered loosely in the background. The Warden said:
‘It’s late, Bronson. But I’d given you my word I’d let you know, so soon as I had official notice, about the Petition. I’m sorry, Bronson; the Home Secretary has notified the Petitioners that he cannot make any recommendation to the King.’
The Warden’s voice was soft, and deep and rounded. It seemed to roll murmurously round this room which was a box of stone.
The man who sat upon the bed’s edge looked up. He nodded apathetically. His great shoulders were drooped, and his head seemed sunken between them. He said:
‘Thank you, sir.’ His voice was low, lower even than the Warden’s, but it was rough. There seemed to be harsh, uneven edges to it.
The Warden looked down at the speaker. He seemed about to say something; checked himself; turned on his heel. The warders stiffened. The man in the background opened the cell door. Within its frame the Warden turned. He said:
‘Is there anything I can do for you, Bronson?’
The man on the bed did not look up. But his head, down between those great shoulders, moved slowly from side to side.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Good night, Bronson,’ said the Warden.
From the prisoner’s down-bent head came the beginnings of an answering ‘Good night’; but only the beginnings. It was as if, halfway through the familiar words, he realised, possibly for the first time in his life, their meaning.
‘Good …’ he began. ‘Ha!’
The one deep note of the little laugh seemed to break itself against the close walls so that discordant pieces of it went on jingling inside the listeners’ heads long after the sound had died.