The Crime and the Criminal Part 22

We turned into a room on the right. The room was plainly furnished, the walls were painted red, a red carpet was on the floor. In the centre stood a good-sized oval-shaped mahogany table. Thirteen chairs were placed round it. In front of each was a decanter of brandy and a gla.s.s.

In front of one was a ma.n.u.script book, bound in crimson morocco, pens, ink, a crimson velvet bag, and a small heap of red cards, of the size and shape of ordinary playing-cards.

As Pendarvon had said, he and I, up to the present, had the place to ourselves. Cecil Pendarvon was fairly tall and fairly broad--the florid type of man. He had fair hair, fair beard, and light blue eyes. Your first impression of the man was that he was always laughing. When you came to study him a little closer you began to doubt if his laugh suggested merriment. I knew him well. I had come to understand that the more he laughed the worse it would be for some one.

He stood, stroking his long fair beard, laughing at me now.

"Pendarvon, I don't quite see what's the use of the counting, and the ornamental ringing, and all the rest of it outside the door."

"You mayn't see it now. One of these days you may. There may come a time when it will be advisable that we should know that the person at the door is not a member of the club."

"If you mean that one of these days we are likely to receive a visit from the police, you don't suppose that we should be able to keep them out, if they had made up their minds to enter. We should be trapped like rabbits in a warren."

"I think not. That door is of sheet iron. It is held in position by four steel bolts which run into a wall made of solid Portland cement.

By the time the police got through it we should be miles away."

I looked round the apartment.

"Is this room then not what it seems? Is there a hidden door?"

"There is not. But there is something quite as good. There is a fireplace."

"A fireplace?"

"And likewise a chimney, which is a chimney. When I took this place I had an eye to all the possibilities. Look here."

He went to the fireplace, a huge old-fashioned one, probably over six feet wide. The stove occupied not one-third of it. He stepped inside, I following. There was ample room for both of us. He pointed upwards.

"Stanchions, which will make excellent steps."

I saw that there were stanchions, rising one above the other, set in the side of the chimney.

"Where do they lead to?"

"Climb up twelve, put your hand out to the right, you will find a bolt.

Draw it, push, a door will open. Go through it, you will find yourself upon the roof."

"The roof, at night--I thank you!"

"The chimney-stack will be on your left, between you and a fall into the street. Keep it on your left, go straight forward--you will find yourself upon the edge."

"The edge! Of the roof? Pendarvon, my thanks increase!"

"If you feel for it on your right you will find a rail. This is the rail of a bridge which crosses from this house to one in the street behind. When I took this room I took that house. It will remain empty.

Cross the bridge. Close to your hand, on your left, you will find an iron ladder set straight against the wall. Descend it, you will land yourself on the flat roof of an outhouse. Within a foot of you, still to your left, there is a window. It will be always left unlatched. You have only to raise it, enter the empty house, strike a light, and walk downstairs into the street. To reach that particular house, in that particular street, by road, a policeman will have to walk two miles."

"How long is this bridge of yours?"

"Under twenty feet."

"And how wide?"

"Perhaps ten inches--it is a single plank. The rail by which you hold is firmly fixed and bolted at either end. What the whole arrangement was intended for originally is a puzzle I have not attempted to solve.

I heard of it. I thought it might suit us."

"Don't you think we ought to do what the firemen do--have a full dress rehearsal? I, for one, should hardly care to seek that path to safety without having had some practical experience of the peculiarities and perils of the way."

Pendarvon laughed.

"You fellows can have a rehearsal to-night, if you like--only you will get yourselves into a deuce of a mess. I don't guarantee that you will be able to keep yourselves clean. I only guarantee that that way, at a pinch, you will be able to save your necks."

As he finished speaking, the electric bell rang twice; there was a pause; then a single ring; another pause; then twice more. Pendarvon went to a gong which was suspended from the ceiling outside the room.

He struck it, not too loudly. A voice on the other side of the other door exclaimed--

"Gustave!"

As Pendarvon opened the door, he turned to me.

"Gustave Rudini."

It was Rudini--an undersized, ill-dressed little fellow, more like a waiter out of work than anything else I know. Pendarvon had had some difficulty in completing the tail of his thirteen. He had insisted that there must be thirteen members. In order to make up the number he had had to bring in three fellows who, to say the least of it, were not in society. Of these three Rudini was one. According to Pendarvon, he was a Swiss anarchist. Since he killed on principle, he was not likely to hesitate to kill for fun. His was not a pleasant personality. He addressed every one as "Citizen "--as he did me now.

"Well, citizen, the good work begins." I asked him what he meant. "Have you not seen about the bombs at Saragosa--that is what I call good reading."

I shuddered. I felt more than half disposed to knock the creature down.

Some demons had thrown bombs among a crowded audience at a theatre. No end of people had been killed and injured. The brute called the account of the affair good reading.

I suppose he read my feelings in my face. He stretched out his hands in front of him--with a snarl which was perhaps meant for a grin.

"Do you not agree with me, citizen, that it is good reading? If it comes to killing, why kill units instead of tens? It is only a little matter of arithmetical progression."

The next comer was a madman out and out. He was a religionist of a sect of which, I suspect, he was the first member and the last. He believed, it seemed, that death meant annihilation. Annihilation, to use a paradox, was all he lived for. But it had been revealed to him--I never heard by whom, or how--that he himself never could attain annihilation until he had killed some one, as it were, to clear the way. So he had joined the club, in order that his destiny might the sooner be fulfilled. His name was Shepherd--Henry Shepherd. He was a lanky, loosely-built man, with long iron grey hair, and sailors' eyes--eyes, that is, which were calm and deep. As he entered, he seated himself at table without uttering a word. He was the second of Pendarvon's gathered and garnered three.

The fellows now came hard upon each others' heels. Unless I was mistaken, they had for the most part, been quenching their thirst.

Their eyes shone; their speech was inclined to be erratic; about some of them there was a joviality which they had found in their gla.s.ses.

Teddy Hibbard, for one, was distinctly drunk. He came with Eugene Silvester, who was not much better. The pair staggered up to me.

Teddy tried to steady himself by a somewhat close attachment to Silvester's arm.

"I say, Reggie, old fellow, Eugene and I have been making up our minds whom we'll slaughter. Whom do you think we've decided on?"

"My dear Teddy, I haven't the faintest notion. Don't you think you'd better take a chair?"

"Thank you, old boy, I think I will." He took one just in time.

"We've decided on slaughtering the first chap we meet of the name of Jones--there are such a lot of them about, you know."

Archie Beaupre came across to me. He was among the last to arrive. He also had been drinking. But liquor did not affect him as it did Teddy Hibbard. He never lost his equilibrium. There never came a stammer into his speech. Nor, in Iago's sense, did it steal away his brains. When drink entered into Archie, the devil went with it. When he had drunk enough to stupefy an ordinary man, he was very near to genius. In that condition I have known him write lines which no poet need be ashamed to own; and I have known him do things which must have set all the imps of Satan chuckling.

As he advanced to me, a casual acquaintance might not have supposed that he had been exceeding in the slightest degree. But I knew better.

I knew it by something that was in his face, and in his eyes; by the ring that was in his voice, when he spoke; by the very way in which he clasped me by the hand.