Hugo Part 20

He sprang back to the door of the dressing-room by which he had so unsuspectingly entered.

'What a fool you are to fall into a trap so simple! No; don't try to get away. You can't. That door is locked now. And, moreover, I have a revolver here, and also a pair of handcuffs, which I shall use if I have any trouble with you.'

Ravengar gazed at his captor, irresolute. His clean-shaven upper lip seemed longer than ever, and his short gray beard and gray locks gave him an appearance of sanctimony which not even his sinister eyes could destroy. Then he sat down on a chair.

'I should like to know--' he began, trying to speak steadily.

'You would like to know,' Hugo took him up, 'why I am here alive, instead of being in that vault, suffocated. It was a pretty dodge of yours to get me down there. You counted on my curiosity about the Tudor mystery. You felt sure I should yield to the temptation. And I did yield. You were right. I was prepared to commit a breach of faith in order to satisfy that curiosity. No sooner was the door closed on me by that scoundrel Brown, and I found the vault not Polycarp's vault at all, than I knew to a certainty that you were at the bottom of the affair. So easy to make out afterwards that it was an accident! So easy to spirit Brown away! So easy to explain everything! Why, Ravengar, you intended to murder me! I saw the whole scheme in a flash. You have corrupted many of my servants to-day. But you didn't corrupt all of them. And because you didn't, because you couldn't, I am alive. You would like to know how I got out. But you will never know, Ravengar. You will die without knowing.'

Ravengar put his hands in his pockets.

'I can only a.s.sume that you are going mad, Owen,' said he. 'I have long guessed that you were. Nothing else will explain this extraordinary action of yours towards me.'

'You act well,' replied Hugo, sitting down and eyeing Ravengar critically. 'You act well. But you gave the whole show away by the tone in which you swore two minutes ago. If there is anyone mad in this room, it is yourself. Your schemes show that queer mixture of amazing ingenuity and amazing folly which is characteristic of madmen. Let us hope you are mad, at any rate.'

'My schemes!' sneered Ravengar. 'You might at least tell the madman what his schemes are.'

Hugo laughed.

'You must have been maturing the day's business quite a long time, my boyhood's companion, my floater of public companies, my pearl of financiers. Yes, decidedly parts of it were wonderfully ingenious. To sow the place with pickpockets, to get at my cashiers, my commissionaires, and my servers. To subst.i.tute your own false shopwalkers for the genuine article. To arrange for the arrest of important customers on preposterous charges of theft. To lock up a hundred women in a gallery till they nearly died. To have my best and most advertised bargains removed in the night. To deprive the restaurants of food, and to employ women to turn them upside down. To produce, as you contrived to do, a general air of pandemonium, and to ruin the discipline of over three thousand of the best-trained employes in England. All this, and much else which I do not mention, was devilish clever in its conception, and the execution of it commands my unqualified admiration. Especially having regard to the fact that you contrived not to arouse my suspicions. I may tell you that certain strange incidents which occurred in my establishment during the autumn did indeed lead me vaguely to suspect that you were at work against me, but you were sufficiently smart to put me off the track again. Let me add that until this afternoon I did not perceive that your purchase of a controlling share in the _Evening Herald_ was only a portion of a mightier plan.'

'Really, Owen--'

'Don't waste your breath in denials. You will have none at all presently, like Bentley.'

'Bentley?' repeated Ravengar, with a slight movement.

'Yes; but we will come to Bentley in a few minutes. I have enlarged to you on your own cleverness. I must enlarge to you on your folly. What folly! What was the end of all this to be, Ravengar? I have tried to put myself in your place, and to follow your thoughts. You hate me. You think I robbed you of a fortune, and that I helped to rob you of a woman. You wished to buy my business, and add it to the roll of your companies. And I deprived you of that triumph. Your hatred of me grew and grew. Leading a solitary and narrow life, you allowed it to develop into a species of monomania. I had come out on top once too often for your peace of mind. In your opinion the world was too small to hold both of us. Accordingly, you evolved your terrific campaign. My business was to be seriously damaged. And I was to be murdered. And then you were to get the concern cheap from my executors, and to float me dead since you could not float me living. What folly, Ravengar! What stupendous folly!

Even if the fanciful and grotesque scheme had succeeded as far as my death, it could not have succeeded beyond that point.'

'I don't know what you are chattering about, Owen, but you look as if you expected me to ask, "Why?" Anything to oblige you. Why?'

'You would have known the reason had you lived long enough to read the provisions of my will,' said Hugo.

'I see,' said Ravengar.

'You do,' said Hugo. 'You see, you hear, you breathe, but Bentley doesn't. Bentley has killed himself.' (Ravengar started.) 'So that if you have not my blood on your conscience, you have his. You tempted him; he fell ... and he has repented. Admit that you tempted him!'

Ravengar smiled superiorly. And then Hugo sprang forward in a sudden overmastering pa.s.sion.

'Hate breeds hate,' he cried, 'and I have learnt from you how to hate.

Admit that you have tried to ruin and to murder me, or, by G--! I will kill you sooner than I intended.'

He had no weapon in his hands; the revolver was in a drawer; but nevertheless Ravengar shrank from those menacing hands.

'Look here, Hugo--'

'Will you admit it? Or shall I have to--'

Their wills met in a supreme conflict.

'Oh, very well, then,' muttered Ravengar.

The conflict was over.

Hugo returned to his chair.

'Miserable cur!' he exclaimed. 'You were afraid of me. I knew I could frighten you. I would have liked to be able to admire something more than your ingenuity. Ravengar, I do believe I could have forgiven your attempt to murder me if it had not included an attempt to dishonour me at the same time. There is something simple and grand about a straightforward murder--I shall prove to you soon that I do not always regard murder as a crime--but to murder a man amid circ.u.mstances of shame, to finish him off while making him look a fool--that is the act of a--of a Ravengar.'

Ravengar yawned and glanced at his watch.

'It's nearly my dinner-time,' said he.

Again Hugo sprang forward, and, s.n.a.t.c.hing at the watch, tore it and the chain from Ravengar's waistcoat, dashed them to the floor, and stamped on them. He was amazed, and he was also delighted, at his own fury. The l.u.s.t of destruction had got hold of him.

'a.s.s!' he murmured, suddenly lowering his voice. 'Can't you guess what I mean to do?'

'I cannot,' Ravengar stammered.

'I mean to put you to the same test to which you put me. You arranged that I should spend twenty-two hours in a vault without ventilation. At the end of five hours I was by no means dead. I might have survived the twenty-two. But, frankly, I don't fancy I should. And I don't fancy you will. In fact, I'm convinced that you won't.'

'Indeed!' said Ravengar uncertainly.

'You think this scene is not real,' Hugo continued. 'You think it can't be real. You refuse to credit the fact that this time to-morrow you will be dead. You refuse to admit to yourself that I am in earnest--deadly, fatal earnest.'

'Upon my soul!' Ravengar burst out, standing, 'I believe you are.'

'Good,' said Hugo. 'You are waking up, positively. You are getting accustomed to the unpleasant prospect of not dying in your bed surrounded by inconsolable dependants.'

'Hugo,' Ravengar began persuasively, 'you must be aware that all these suspicions of yours are a figment of your excited brain. You must be aware that I never meant to murder you.'

'My dear fellow,' Hugo replied with calm bitterness, '_I_ don't intend to murder _you_. I intend merely to put you in that vault. Your death will be an accidental consequence, as mine would have been. And why should you not die? Can you give me a single good reason why you should continue to live? What good are you doing on the earth? Are you making anyone happy? Are you making yourself happy? That spark of vitality which const.i.tutes your soul has chanced on an unfortunate incarnation.

Suppose that I release it, and give it a fresh opportunity, shall I not be acting worthily? For you must agree that murder in the strict sense is an impossible thing. The immortal cannot die. Vital energy cannot be destroyed. All that the murderer does is to end one incarnation and begin another.'

'So that is your theory!'

'Was it not yours, when you got me deposited in the vault?' Hugo demanded with ferocious irony. 'I am bound to believe that it was. The common outcry against murder (as it is called) can have no weight with enlightened persons like you and me, Ravengar.'

'Perhaps not,' said Ravengar, summoning his powers of self-control. 'But the common outcry against murder is apt to be very inconvenient for the person who chooses, as you put it, to end one incarnation and begin another. Has it not struck you, Owen, that inquiries would be made for me, that my death would be certain to be discovered, and that ultimately you would suffer the penalty?'

'My arrangements for the future are far more complete than yours could have been in regard to me,' Hugo answered smoothly. 'You betrayed some clumsiness. I shall profit by your mistakes. No one will see you go into the Safe Deposit except myself and a man whom I can trust. No one at all except myself will see you go into the vault. I can manage the operation alone. A little chloroform will quieten you for a time. The vault once closed will not be opened during my lifetime, unless at four o'clock to-morrow night I hear you knocking on the door. Of course, inquiries will be made, but they will be futile. People often simply disappear.

You will simply disappear.'

The clock struck six.

'And your conscience?' Ravengar muttered.

'It's soon well under control. Besides, I shall be doing the human race, and especially the investing part of the human race, a very good turn.'