The Mark Of Cain Part 13

Then he carefully examined the oranges, chose half a dozen of the best, and laid the others on a large dessert plate in the dining-room cupboard. One orange he ate, and left the skin on a plate on the table, in company with a biscuit or two.

When all this had been arranged to his mind, Mr. Cranley chose another orange, filled a winegla.s.s with the liquid in the phial, and then drew off a quant.i.ty in the little syringe. Then he very delicately and carefully punctured the skin of one of the oranges, and injected into the fruit the contents of the syringe. This operation he elaborately completed in the case of each of the six chosen oranges, and then tenderly polished their coats with a portion of the skin of the fruit he had eaten. That portion of the skin he consumed to dust in the fire; and, observing that a strong odor remained in the room, he deliberately turned on the unlighted gas for a few minutes. After this he opened the window, sealed his own seal in red wax on paper a great many times, finally burning the collection, and lit a large cigar, which he smoked through with every appearance of enjoyment. While engaged on this portion of his task, he helped himself frequently to sherry from the gla.s.s, first carefully rinsed, into which he had poured the liquid from the now unlabelled phial. Lastly he put the phial in his pocket with the little syringe, stored the six oranges, wrapped in delicate paper, within the basket, and closed the window.

Next he unlocked the door, and, without opening it, remarked in a sweet voice:

"Now, Alice, you may come in!"

The handle turned, and the housekeeper entered.

"How is Miss Burnside?" he asked, in the same silvery accents. (He had told Margaret that she had better be known by that name, for the present at least.)

"She is asleep. I hope she may never waken. What do you want with her?

Why are you keeping her in this house? What devil's brew have you been making that smells of gas and sherry and sealing-wax?"

"My dear girl," replied Mr. Cranley, "you put too many questions at once. As to your first pair of queries, my reasons for taking care of Miss Burnside are my own business, and do not concern you, as my housekeeper. As to the 'devil's brew' which you indicate in a style worthy rather of the ages of Faith and of Alchemy, than of an epoch of positive science, did you never taste sherry and sealing-wax? If you did not, that is one of the very few alcoholic combinations in which you have never, to my knowledge, attempted experiments. Is there any other matter on which I can enlighten an intelligent and respectful curiosity?"

The fair woman's blue eyes and white face seemed to glitter with anger, like a baleful lightning.

"I don't understand your chaff," she said, with a few ornamental epithets, which, in moments when she was deeply stirred, were apt to decorate her conversation.

"I grieve to be obscure," he answered; "_brevis esse laboro_, the old story. But, as you say Miss Burnside is sleeping, and as, when she wakens, she may be feverish, will you kindly carry these oranges and leave them on a plate by her bedside? They are Jaffa oranges, and finer fruit, Alice, my dear, I have seldom tasted! After that, go to Cavendish Square, and leave this note at the doctor's."

"Oh, nothing's too good for _her!_" growled the jealous woman, thinking of the fruit; to which he replied by offering her several of the oranges not used in his experiment.

Bearing these, she withdrew, throwing a spiteful glance and leaving the door unshut, so that her master distinctly heard her open Margaret's door, come out again, and finally leave the house.

"Now, I'll give her a quarter of an hour to waken," said Mr. Cranley, and he took from his pocket a fresh copy of the _Times_. He glanced rather anxiously at the second column of the outer sheet "Still advertising for him," he said to himself; and he then turned to the sporting news. His calmness was extraordinary, but natural in him; for the reaction of terror at the possible detection of his villainy had not yet come on. When he had read all that interested him in the _Times_, he looked hastily at his watch.

"Just twenty minutes gone," he said. "Time she wakened--and tried those Jaffa oranges."

Then he rose, went up stairs stealthily, paused a moment opposite Margaret's door, and entered the drawing-room. Apparently he did not find any of the chairs in the dining-room comfortable enough; for he chose a large and heavy _fauteuil_, took it up in his arms, and began to carry it out In the pa.s.sage, just opposite Margaret's chamber, he stumbled so heavily that he fell, and the weighty piece of furniture was dashed against the door of the sick-room, making a terrible noise. He picked it up, and retired silently to the dining-room.

"That would have wakened the dead," he whispered to himself, "and she is not dead--yet. She is certain to see the oranges, and take one of them, and then--"

The reflection did not seem to relieve him, as he sat, gnawing his mustache, in the chair he had brought down with him. Now the deed was being accomplished, even his craven heart awoke to a kind of criminal remorse. Now anxiety for the issue made him wish the act undone, or frustrated; now he asked himself if there were no more certain and less perilous way. So intent was his eagerness that a strange kind of lucidity possessed him. He felt as if he beheld and heard what was pa.s.sing in the chamber of sickness, which he had made a chamber of Death.

She has wakened--she has looked round--she has seen the poisoned fruit--she has blessed him for his kindness in bringing it--she has tasted the oranges--she has turned to sleep again--and the unrelenting venom is at its work!

Oh, strange forces that are about us, all inevitably acting, each in his hour and his place, each fulfilling his law without turning aside to the right hand or to the left! The rain-drop running down the pane, the star revolving round the sun of the furthest undiscoverable system, the grains of sand sliding from the grasp, the poison gnawing and burning the tissues--each seems to move in his inevitable path, obedient to an unrelenting will. Innocence, youth, beauty--that will spares them not.

The rock falls at its hour, whoever is under it. The deadly drug slays, though it be blended with the holy elements. It is a will that moves all things--_mens agitat molem_; and yet we can make that will a slave of our own, and turn this way and that the blind steadfast forces, to the accomplishment of our desires.

It was not, naturally, with these transcendental reflections that the intellect of Mr. Cranley was at this moment engaged. If he seemed actually to be present in Margaret's chamber, watching every movement and hearing every heart-beat of the girl he had doomed, his blue lips and livid face, from which he kept wiping the cold drops, did not therefore speak of late ruth, or the beginning of remorse.

It was entirely on his own security and chances of escaping detection that he was musing.

"Now it's done, it can't be undone," he said. "But is it so very safe, after all? The stuff is not beyond a.n.a.lysis, unluckily; but it's much more hard to detect this way, mixed with the orange-juice, than any other way. And then there's all the horrid fuss afterward. Even if there is not an inquest--as, of course, there won't be--they'll ask who the girl is, what the devil she was doing here. Perhaps they'll, some of them, recognize Alice: she has been too much before the public, confound her. It may not be very hard to lie through all these inquiries, perhaps."

And then he looked mechanically at his cold fingers, and bit his thumb-nail, and yawned.

"By gad! I wish I had not risked it," he said to himself; and his complexion was now of a curious faint blue, and his heart began to flutter painfully in a manner not strange in his experience. He sunk back in his chair, with his hands all thrilling and p.r.i.c.king to the finger-tips. He took a large silver flask from his pocket, but he could scarcely unscrew the stopper, and had to manage it with his teeth.

A long pull at the liquor restored him, and he began his round of reflections again.

"That French fellow who tried it this way in Scotland was found out," he said; "and--" He did not like, even in his mind, to add that the "French fellow, consequently, suffered the extreme penalty of the law. But then he was a fool, and boasted beforehand, and bungled it infernally. Still, it's not absolutely safe: the other plan I thought of first was better.

By gad! I wish I could be sure she had not taken the stuff. Perhaps she hasn't. Anyway, she must be asleep again now; and, besides, there are the other oranges to be subst.i.tuted for those left in the room, if she _has_ taken it. I _must_ go and see. I don't like the job."

He filled his pockets with five unpoisoned oranges, and the skin of a sixth, and so crept upstairs. His situation was, perhaps, rather novel.

With murder in his remorseless heart, he yet hoped against hope, out of his very poltroonery, that murder had not been done. At the girl's door he waited and listened, his face horribly agitated and shining wet. All was silent. His heart was sounding hoa.r.s.ely within him, like a dry pump: he heard it, so noisy and so distinct that he almost feared it might wake the sleeper. If only, after all, she had not touched the fruit!

Then he took the door-handle in his clammy grasp; he had to cover it with a handkerchief to get a firm hold. He turned discreetly, and the door was pushed open in perfect stillness, except for that dreadful husky thumping of his own heart. At this moment the postman's hard knock at the door nearly made him cry out aloud. Then he entered; a dreadful visitor, had anyone seen him. She did not see him; she was asleep, sound asleep; in the dirty brown twilight of a London winter day, he could make out that much. He did not dare draw close enough to observe her face minutely, or bend down and listen for her breath. And the oranges!

Eagerly he looked at them. There were only five of them. Surely--no! a sixth had fallen on the floor, where it was lying. With a great sigh of relief he picked up all the six oranges, put them in his pockets, and, as shrinkingly as he had come-yet shaking his hand at the girl, and cursing his own cowardice under his breath--he stole down stairs, opened the dining-room door, and advanced into the blind, empty dusk.

"Now I'll settle with you!" came a voice out of the dimness; and the start wrought so wildly on his nerves, excited to the utmost degree as they were, that he gave an inarticulate cry of alarm and despair. Was he trapped, and by whom?

In a moment he saw whence the voice came. It was only Alice Darling, in bonnet and cloak, and with a face flushed with something more than anger, that stood before him.

Not much used to shame, he was yet ashamed of his own alarm, and tried to dissemble it. He sat down at a writing-table facing her, and merely observed:

"Now that you have returned, Alice, will you kindly bring lights? I want to read."

"What were you doing up-stairs just now?" she snarled. "Why did you send me off to the doctor's, out of the way?"

"My good girl, I have again and again advised you to turn that invaluable curiosity of yours--curiosity, a quality which Mr. Matthew Arnold so justly views with high esteem--into wider and n.o.bler channels.

Disdain the merely personal; accept the calm facts of domestic life as you find them; approach the broader and less irritating problems of Sociology (pardon the term) or Metaphysics."

It was cruel to see the enjoyment he got out of teasing this woman by an ironical jargon which mystified her into madness. This time he went too far. With an inarticulate snarl of pa.s.sion she lifted a knife that lay on the dining-room table and made for him. But this time, being prepared, he was not alarmed; nay, he seemed to take leasure in the success of his plan of tormenting. The heavy escritoire at which he sat was a breastwork between him and the angry woman. He coolly opened a drawer; produced a revolver, and remarked:

"No; I did not ask for the carving-knife, Alice. I asked for lights; and you will be good enough to bring them. I am your master, you know, in every sense of the word; and you are aware that you had better both hold your tongue and keep your hands off me--and off drink. Fetch the lamp!"

She left the room cowed, like a beaten dog. She returned, set the lamp silently on the table, and was gone. Then he noticed a letter, which lay on the escritoire, and was addressed to him. It was a rather peculiar letter to look at, or rather the envelope was peculiar; for, though bordered with heavy black, it was stamped, where the seal should have been, with a strange device in gold and colors--a brown bun, in a glory of gilt rays.

"Mrs. St John Deloraine," he said, taking it up. "How in the world did _she_ find me out? Well, she is indeed a friend that sticketh closer than a brother--a deal closer than Surbiton, anyhow."

Lord Surbiton was the elder brother of Mr. Cranley, and bore the second t.i.tle of the family.

"I don't suppose there is another woman in London," he thought to himself, "that has not heard all about the row at the c.o.c.kpit, and that would write to me."

Then he tore the chromatic splendors of the device on the envelope, and read the following epistle:

"Early English Bunhouse,

"Chelsea, Friday. "My dear Mr. Cranley,

"Where are you hiding, or yachting, you wandering man? I can hear nothing of you from anyone--nothing _good_, and you know I never believe anything _else_. Do come and see me, at the old Bunhouse here, and tell me about _yourself_"

--("She _has_ heard," he muttered)

--"and help me in a little difficulty. Our housekeeper (you know we are strictly _blue ribbon--a cordon bleu_, I call her) has become engaged to a _plumber_, and she is leaving us. _Can_ you recommend me another? I know how interested you are (in spite of your wicked jokes) in our little enterprise. And we also want a girl, to be under the housekeeper, and keep the accounts. Surely you will come to see me, whether you can advise me or not.