Under One Flag Part 30

"Philip Avalon? My sister's son? What does he want with me?" He felt, with his fingers, the edge of the knife which he was holding. He asked aloud, in a voice which was more than sufficiently stern, "What do you want with me, sir?"

"I want to speak to you. Do you hear? Be quick and let me in!"

The speaker's tone was even more threatening than before; it was as if he defied disobedience. The shifty look in the Rev. Simon's eyes increased. Again he whispered to himself.

"It is nothing, only some fresh insolence, some new bee he has in his bonnet."

Then aloud, "You speak with sufficient arrogance, sir, as if the house were your own."

For response there came a storm of blows upon the panels of the door.

"By ----, if you don't open the door I'll break it in!"

Wheeling right round with a swift, crouching movement, the Rev. Simon ran towards the window. It seemed, for the moment, as if he meditated flight. He already had his hand upon the sash, to throw it open, when he changed his mind. He drew himself up, he thrust the knife back into his bosom; he strode towards the door with resolute, unflinching steps.

With unfaltering hand, turning the key in the lock, he flung the door wide open. His voice rang out in tones of authority.

"Philip Avalon, how dare you conduct yourself in such a fashion? Do you forget what day this is, and that I suffer no bawling intrusion to divert my thoughts from my ministrations at the altar?"

The rejoinder which came from the young man who, regardless of the Rev.

Simon's attempt to prevent his ingress, thrust his way into the room, was more forcible than civil.

"You villain! You d.a.m.ned villain!"

The Rev. Simon drew himself still straighter. His bearing, while it suggested horror and amazement, commanded reverence.

"Philip Avalon! I am the priest of G.o.d!"

"The priest of G.o.d!" In a fit of seemingly uncontrollable pa.s.sion, the young man struck the elder to the ground. "Lie there, you hound!"

For some seconds the Rev. Simon lay where he had fallen.

The young man who had used him with such scant ceremony was tall and broad. He had a fair beard, and was about thirty years of age. His dress was careless. He stood glaring down upon the clergyman with gleaming eyes. He seemed mastered by irresistible excitement.

The Inc.u.mbent of St Ursula's raised himself sufficiently from the floor to enable him to glance up at his a.s.sailant.

"You have laid the hands of violence not only upon a much older man than yourself, and one who is your own flesh and blood, but also upon a priest of G.o.d. It completes the measure of your crimes. Coward! as well as sinner!"

For a moment the young man remained speechless. When he did speak the words came rushing from him in a torrent.

"If you continue to play the hypocrite and to adopt that tone with me I'll go and I'll stand upon your doorstep, and I'll shout to the people--you hear them? They are already beside themselves with rage!"

As he spoke yells and execrations were borne from the street without into the room. "I'll shout to them, 'You want Tom the Tiger, the fiend in human shape who has butchered seven helpless women in your midst?

He's in here! He's my uncle, Simon Chasuble, the Inc.u.mbent of St Ursula's! I deliver him into your hands! Come in and use him as you will!' And they'll come in, come swarming, yelling, rushing in--men, women, children--and they'll tear you limb from limb, and will mete out on your vile body the punishment which, after all, will be less than it deserves!"

As he paused the young man stood with clenched fists and flaming looks, as if it was as much as he could do to keep himself from a repet.i.tion, in a much more emphatic form, of his previous a.s.sault.

The Rev. Simon rose to his feet gingerly. He withdrew himself, with commendable prudence, further from where Philip Avalon was standing.

The shifty look came back into his eyes. But his voice was firm.

"What wild words are these?"

"The words may be wild, but they are true ones. Since these hideous butcheries have been taking place in the surrounding slums and alleys a Vigilance Committee has been formed, with a view of a.s.sisting the police. I am a member. This morning I was out on my appointed beat. I saw someone coming down Rainbow Court. I drew back into the shadow, and I stood and I watched. It was you. You had on a rough black overcoat and a cloth cap, and though you were laughing to yourself you seemed desirous of avoiding observation. I wondered what you were doing there at that hour in such a guise. I hesitated a moment whether to follow you. Then I plunged into the court. Just where I had seen you standing I found a woman lying on the ground, dead--murdered--disembowelled; unmistakeably the handiwork of Tom the Tiger. I was so amazed, so horrified, so actually frightened, that for the life of me I could not think what I ought to do. I've been walking about London all night trying to make up my mind. And now I have come to ask you if there is in you sufficient of the man to give you courage to go at once and yield yourself to the police; if there isn't, I shall drag you."

"It's a lie!"

"What is a lie?"

"All that you have said is a lie. You always were a liar, Philip Avalon."

The nephew stared at his uncle. It seemed that he found it hard to believe that a man could be so shapen in iniquity.

"You can still speak to me like that, knowing that I know you. You certainly are, to me, a revelation of infinite possibilities in human nature. But I am not here to palter. Do you intend to surrender yourself, or am I to drag you to the police, or am I to call in the a.s.sistance of the people in the street? I give you a minute in which to decide."

The young man took out his watch. Layman and cleric eyed each other. As they did so the Rev. Simon's countenance was transfigured in a fashion which startled his nephew not a little. Before Philip Avalon had guessed his intention, the Inc.u.mbent of St Ursula's, hurrying past him, had locked the study door and pocketed the key. As he did so he broke into chuckling laughter. As his nephew surveyed him a glimmer of new light began to find its way into his brain.

"Man! what is the matter with you? What have you done?"

The Rev. Simon continued chuckling. Indeed, it seemed as if he would never stop. And there was something so unpleasant about his laughter that, considerably to his own surprise, Philip Avalon found himself giving way to shudder after shudder.

"Mad! stark mad!" he told himself. "And to think that none of us ever guessed it!"

Now that the fact was actually revealed he perceived, too late, what a lurid light it threw upon the puzzles of the past. As to the man's madness there could be no shred of doubt. He stood gibbering in front of him. And though Philip was very far from being, in any sense, an expert in mental pathology, he was acute enough to realise that an element of something horrible, of something altogether dangerous, differentiated this man's madness from that of the ordinary lunatic. As by the stroke of a magician's wand the clergyman had been transformed into a fiend. He held out his hand toward Philip, never ceasing to chuckle. Even his voice was changed; it had become an almost childish treble.

"Yes, I did it. I! I! Seven, Philip--seven harlots slain by my single hand! All England rings with it, yet no one guesses it was I!"

In the sudden horror of the situation the young man found it difficult to preserve his presence of mind. He endeavoured to collect his thoughts. He resolved to continue to speak with the voice of authority.

With some recollection of stories which he had read, or heard, of the power of the sane man's eye, he did his best to unflinchingly meet the madman's glance.

"Give me the key of the door, at once!"

"The key? Of the door? Oh, yes! Here is the key of the door."

The Rev. Simon produced from the bosom of his ca.s.sock what looked to Philip Avalon very like a surgeon's scalpel. The weapon gleamed ominously in the madman's hand. Involuntarily the young man shrank back. His uncle noticed the gesture. His chuckling increased. He held out the knife.

"Yes, Philip, this is the key of the door. It is with this key that I unlocked the gates of the chambers of death for the seven harlots." The madman's voice sank to a whisper, a whisper of a peculiarly penetrating kind. "Philip, the Lord came to me in a dream one night, and bade me go out among the armies of the wicked and kill! kill! kill! And I arose and cried, O Lord, I will do as thou biddest me! And I have begun. The tares are ripe unto the harvest, and I have my hand upon the sickle, and I'll not stay until the whole of the harvest is reaped and cast into the fire which never shall be quenched!"

Philip Avalon found that his uncle's manner and conversation was beginning to have on him an effect which he had often heard described, but which he had never before experienced, the effect of making his blood run cold. What was he to do? It seemed to him that to attempt to grapple with a homicidal madman, while he was in the possession of such a weapon, was not an adventure to be recommended. A thought occurred to him. He moved across the room. The madman immediately moved after him.

"What are you going to do? Stand still!"

Philip turned.

"I was merely about to ring for a gla.s.s of water."

The madman's suspicions were at once on the alert.

"A gla.s.s of water? What do you want with a gla.s.s of water? No! You sha'n't ring! you sha'n't!"

He brandished his weapon in a fashion which induced his nephew to take temporary refuge behind an arm-chair.