The Crime and the Criminal Part 20

"You're sure that you're not joking?"

"Some men joke most when they are most in earnest. Perhaps I am one of them."

"Who was it?"

"A little girl I knew."

"A girl? My gracious! When was it?"

"Sunday evening."

He turned to me with a sort of gasp.

"Was it near Three Bridges Station?"

"Within half a mile."

"My G.o.d! It's in the paper! Townsend, what have you done?"

"It is in the paper, is it? May I ask what is in the paper?"

"They've found the body." He sprang from the chair.

"Reggie, I wish that I had died before you did this thing, and before ever I heard of that accursed club."

"That is rather good, from you--the club having been a suggestion of your own."

"I had been on the drink, hadn't I? I was mad. I swear, before the living G.o.d, that I never dreamed that you fellows would take the thing up in bitter earnest."

"My dear Archie, respect the proprieties, if you respect nothing else--not quite that sort of language, if you please." He stared at me and laughed--a queer laugh it was. "You remember the rule which directs what course the members shall pursue towards a colleague who, for any cause, turns tail and rats. That also, I believe, was a suggestion of your own."

"Are you afraid that I shall turn tail and rat? You need have no fear.

That I shall never do, especially now. If we are to go to the devil, we'll all travel the same road. But there is one thing on which I do insist. I insist on your ceasing your connection with the Jardines."

"You insist?"

"I beseech you, then."

"I don't wish to say anything which may sound at all unkind, but don't you think, my dear Archie, that you are taking rather a liberty in intruding yourself into my affairs? The accident of our both being members of the same club gives you no warrant for anything of the kind.

It certainly gives you none which I am likely to recognise even in the faintest degree."

He began to pace about the bedroom like a caged wild cat. Presently he made an announcement:

"It strikes me that I had better go home."

"I trust that you will allow nothing which I have said to deprive me of the pleasure of your society, but perhaps it might do you good if you were to toddle home and take a pill."

"Good-day!" he shouted.

s.n.a.t.c.hing up his hat and stick from the couch, he banged out of the room without another word.

I don't mind owning--since, in these pages, at any rate, candour is the order of the day--that when Beaupre had gone I did not feel altogether up to concert pitch. Things were going contrary. The club did bid fair to be a bit of a failure. Although the suggestion, as I had said, had been Archie's, it was Pendarvon who had put it into shape.

I don't quite know how Archie first came to think of the thing. Some of us had been playing poker in his rooms. Pendarvon had been losing. He began to tell us about a story which he had been reading in which there was a suicide club. He said that he had half a mind to start such a club himself. Archie at once suggested that he should go one better; instead of a suicide, let him make it a murder club. Let the members draw lots, and whoever drew the lot, instead of suicide let him go in for murder--for the Honour of the Club. Pendarvon took up the idea in a way which startled us. We had all been drinking; there and then drawing up a sort of rough outline of the club, he got us all to promise to join. There were to be thirteen members; the club was to meet once a month; lots were to be drawn; whoever drew the lot was to kill someone, not a member of the club, within the month. On this basis Pendarvon had actually got the thing into shape. We had had one meeting. The lot had fallen to me.

I can safely say that if I had had the slightest inkling that old Jardine was going to say what he had said I should have given Pendarvon's pretty little plaything the widest of wide berths. I might easily have succeeded in keeping Louise quiet by the use of some less drastic means; at any rate, until I was sure of Dora. On Sunday I had cared for nothing. The very next day I had something for which to care.

A golden future dangled before my eyes.

It was like the irony of fate.

Still the game might not be lost. I yet had time. I might, at any rate, make my hay and enjoy it while the sun was shining. To-morrow--whose to-morrow it was, or what weather it might bring, no man could tell. I would live out to-day.

I looked at the newspaper. It was as Archie had said; how funny that he should be touched by Dora! They had found the body--but that was nothing, if that was all--and it was all. I had not supposed for a moment that the body could stay hidden. It had all happened just as I expected. A platelayer, walking along the line, had seen something lying among the bushes--Louise. There was some sensational rubbish to catch the pennies of the mob, but the whole thing merely amounted to this, that Louise was found.

Queer stick, old Jardine! Fancy his having taken to me, after all! He was a keen judge of character; I have seldom met a keener, and, as he said, there was that in me which differentiates strength from weakness.

I had known, I had felt it, all along. I have, to begin with, the courage of the devil. Give me something of a chance, and my foot in the bottom niche, it should not be my fault if I did not reach the top of the pillar of fame.

The mischief was, my affairs were in a muddle. It was not money so much; I could manage for that, and, if things went as they ought to go, not impossibly Jardine would stand by me there. I had a shrewd suspicion, from the remarks which he had dropped, that he knew as much about my pecuniary position as he cared to know. It was other things, and one of those things was Lily Langdale. It is extraordinary how I always have managed to get myself mixed up with women. The teachings of my experience I should sum up in something like a bull--the best thing that can happen to a man is for him to be born s.e.xless.

While I was dressing Burton imparted a piece of information which brought me to a rapid resolution.

"Mrs. Langdale was here after you went out, sir. Made rather a noise.

Talked about stopping for your return."

"Did she?" That settled it.

I went straight off to Miss Lily. I was plain with her. She did not like it--she was equally plain with me. What home truths one does get from women! A woman in a temper is ten thousand times more candid than a man. But she had sense enough to understand that she could scarcely expect to score, on those lines, off me. I explained that what would be done for her depended upon how she behaved herself, but I did not explain that it depended much more upon Sir Haselton Jardine.

Lily's place was in the Hammersmith Road. As I was leaving it, something like calm having followed the storm--never, if you can help it, leave a woman in a rage, it is cruel--whom should I encounter but Mrs. Daniel J. Carruth, my acquaintance of the train. Very nice she looked, with a natty little toque on her clever head, and a fluffy fur thing round her throat. I have seen many uglier women ten years younger--yes, and as far as appearances went, further gone in the sere and yellow.

She came sailing up when she saw me.

"I hope, Mr. Townsend, that you are coming to give me a call, and that I am just getting home in time."

I was not going to give her a call. I had forgotten that the address she had given me was at West Kensington. Her very existence had escaped my memory. But when she asked me, why, I went.

A decent house she seemed to have, in a street at the back of St.

Paul's School. An old fellow was in the drawing-room when we got in. I say old, though I daresay he was not more than fifty. He reminded me, somehow, of some one I had seen somewhere before, and known intimately, as it seemed to me, but I could not for the life of me think whom. He was tall and thin, and stooped, though he looked as tough as leather and sinewy and strong. He was bald on the top of his head. What hair he had, and the fringe of whisker on his chin, was grey. He wore an undertaker's frock-coat, and in his open shirt-front was a diamond as big as a pea.

Mrs. Carruth introduced us.

"Mr. Townsend, this is an old friend of mine, Mr Haines."

The old chap did not stay long. I fancy he did not altogether relish my intrusion, or what he took to be such. When he had gone I told Mrs.

Carruth that he seemed to remind me of some one I had known.

"Is that so? One does sometimes fancy that one sees a resemblance. I think that in your case it is only fancy. Mr. Haines is an American, a Westerner. He has only recently arrived in England. He was my husband's friend for many years."