Part 17

And he said, despite himself, that he loved her. What was so strange was that, suddenly, he had ceased to feel like her husband, suddenly it seemed to him inconceivable that he had possessed her countless times. Inconceivable that he and she had been one, when now they were so apart! It had seemed so easy then to touch her--now, not a lifetime would surmount the barriers she had raised between them. He suddenly thought: “Good Lord, how lucky I’ve been in the past--and I never knew it!”

He was going to touch her, when like a blow on the face he realised that to touch her would be indecent. She was not his wife. Suddenly, absurdly, he thought of Soames Forsyte, of John Galsworthy. Hugh had always disliked Galsworthy for his creation of Forsyte, a man who could rape his wife.

Lamoir said suddenly: “There will be another chance later on....”

He leapt at that. “Later on? Lamoir, you mean you will come back?”

“No,” she said. “I didn’t mean that. I shall never come back.”

“You will,” he said between his teeth, and with a great effort of will he took her in his arms.

But afterwards she went away, and she never came back.

V

We were silent for a long time after Hugh had spoken of the way Lamoir had left him. And then he said: “Of course she was right. I did understand, later on. That is why I have made no attempt to see her these last nine years. Love, you see, has many masks. We slip on one or other of them, and we say, ‘This is love,’ but really it’s only a fraction of love. And a fraction of love can be the negation of love. Love is enormous and difficult. We must learn how to love, as we must learn how to play music. I did not know how. But I shall see Lamoir soon. I am going to Algeria next week. I have been wanting to go for a long time, but I must just wait another few days....”

“But, Hugh, why do you wait even one day?” I protested. “Lamoir is longing to see you, I know she is.”

“Yes. But I must wait four or five days or so. For a sort of anniversary. My idea, if you won’t laugh at me too much, is to see Playmate Place again, and then that will give me a clue as to how to deal with Lamoir when I see her in the flesh. I’m sure it will give me a clue. And I’m sure I shall see it again, in three or four days from to-day. I’d like to, immensely. Of course it won’t have changed one bit, but I wonder if Lamoir and I will have grown up. If we have, it will be rather a feat to climb that tree, won’t it? Or maybe the tree will have grown too, though it seemed huge enough at the time. You see, the thing seems to go in cycles of twenty years, more or less. I saw the garden for the first time on a June day in my ninth year. I met Lamoir for the first time on a June day, perhaps the same one, in my twenty-ninth year. And now I’m forty-nine, and the day falls in three or four or five days’ time. Either, I’m quite sure, I see that garden again on that day, or I see Lamoir herself, or....”

“Or?” I said. “Or what?”

“Well, God knows!” Hugh smiled, pulling at that stiff grey thing on his upper lip, and on the dawn of the fourth day from that night Hugh was found by one of the keepers of Hyde Park lying at the foot of a great tree near the Albert Gate, dead of a broken neck. At the inquest there was read out a letter from his wife’s lawyers, which had been delivered at Hugh’s house on the morning of his death and which he couldn’t, therefore, have read, saying that they had heard by wire from Algeria that his wife had died of heart-failure the day before.

X: THE GHOUL OF GOLDERS GREEN

I

It is fortunate that the affair should have happened to Mr. Ralph Wyndham Trevor and be told by him, for Mr. Trevor is a scholar of some authority. It is in a spirit of almost ominous premonition that he begins the tale, telling how he was walking slowly up Davies Street one night when he caught a cab. It need scarcely be said that Davies Street owes its name to that Mary Davies, the heiress, who married into the noble house of Grosvenor. That was years and years ago, of course, and is of no importance whatsoever now; but it may be of interest to students.

It was very late on a winter’s night, and Mr. Trevor was depressed, for he had that evening lost a great deal more than he could afford at the card game of auction bridge. Davies Street was deserted; and the moon and Mr. Trevor walked alone towards Berkeley Square. It was not the sort of moon that Mr. Trevor remembered having seen before. It was, indeed, the sort of moon one usually meets only in books or wine. Mr. Trevor was sober.

Nothing happened, Mr. Trevor affirms, for quite a while: he just walked; and, at that corner where Davies Street and Mount Street join together the better to become Berkeley Square, stayed his walking upon an idea that he would soothe his depression with the fumes of a cigarette. His cigarette-case, however, was empty. All London, says Mr. Trevor, appeared to be empty that night. Berkeley Square lay pallid and desolate: looking clear, not as though with moonlight, but with dead daylight; and never a voice to put life into the still streets, never a breeze to play with the bits of paper in the gutters or to sing among the dry boughs of the trees. Berkeley Square looked like nothing so much as an old stage property that no one had any use for. Mr. Trevor had no use at all for it; and became definitely antagonistic to it when a taxicab crawled wretchedly across the waste white expanse and the driver, a man in a Homburg hat of green plush, looked into his face with a beseeching look.

“Taxi, sir?” he said.

Mr. Trevor says that, not wanting to hurt the man’s feelings, he just looked another way.

“Nice night, sir,” said the driver miserably, “for a drive in an ’ackney-carriage.”

“I live,” said Mr. Trevor with restraint, “only a few doors off. So hackney-carriage to you.”

“No luck!” sighed the driver and accelerated madly away even as Mr. Trevor changed his mind, for would it not be an idea to drive to the nearest coffee-stall and buy some cigarettes? This, however, he was not to do, for there was no other reply to his repeated call of “Taxi!” but certain heavy blows on the silence of Davies Street behind him.

“Wanting a taxi, sir?” said a voice which could only belong to a policeman.

“Certainly not,” said Mr. Trevor bitterly. “I never want a taxi. But now and then a taxi-driver thrusts himself on me and pays me to be seen in his cab, just to give it a tone. Next question.”

“Ho!” said the policeman thoughtfully.

“I beg your pardon?” said Mr. Trevor.

“Ho!” said the policeman thoughtfully.

“The extent of your vocabulary,” said Mr. Trevor gloomily, “leads me to conclude that you must have been born a gentleman. Have you, in that case, a cigarette you could spare?”

“Gaspers,” said the policeman.

“Thank you,” said Mr. Trevor, rejecting them. “I am no stranger to ptomaine poisoning.”

“That’s funny,” said the policeman, “your saying that. I was just thinking of death.”

“Death?” said Mr. Trevor.

“You’ve said it,” said the policeman.

“I’ve said what?” said Mr. Trevor.

“Death,” said the policeman.

“Oh, death!” said Mr. Trevor. “I always say ‘death,’ constable. It’s my favourite word.”

“Ghoulish, I calls it, sir. Ghoulish, no less.”

“That entirely depends,” said Mr. Trevor, “on what you are talking about. In some things, ghoulish is as ghoulish does. In others, no.”

“You’ve said it,” said the policeman. “But ghoulish goes, in this ’ere affair. One after the other lying in their own blood, and not a sign as to who’s done it, not a sign!”

“Oh, come, constable! Tut-tut! Not even a thumb-mark in the blood?”

“I’m telling you,” said the policeman severely. “Corpses slit to ribbons all the way from ’Ampstead ’Eath to this ’ere Berkeley Square. And why? That’s what I asks myself. And why?”

“Of course,” said Mr. Trevor gaily, “there certainly have been a lot of murders lately. Ha-ha! But not, surely, as many as all that!”

“I’m coming to that,” said the policeman severely. “We don’t allow of the Press reporting more’n a quarter of them. No, sir. That’s wot it ’as come to, these larst few days. A more painful situation ’as rarely arisen in the hannals of British crime. The un’eard-of bestiality of the criminal may well baffle ordinary minds like yours and mine.”

“I don’t believe a word of it!” snapped Mr. Trevor.

“Ho, _you_ don’t!” said the policeman. “_You_ don’t!”

“That’s right,” said Mr. Trevor, “I don’t. Do you mean to stand there and tell me that I wouldn’t ’ave ’eard--I mean, have heard of this criminal if he had really existed?”

“You’re a gent,” said the policeman.

“You’ve said it,” said Mr. Trevor.

“And gents,” said the policeman, “know nothing. And what they do know is mouldy. Ever ’eard of Jack the Ripper?”

“Yes, I ’ave,” said Mr. Trevor bitterly.

“_H_ave is right, sir, if you’ll excuse me. Well, Jack’s death was never rightly proved, not it! So it might well be ’im at ’is old tricks again, even though ’e has been retired, in a manner of speaking, these forty years. Remorseless and hindiscriminate murder, swift and sure, was Jack’s line, if you remember, sir.”

“Before my time,” said Mr. Trevor gloomily.

“Well, Jack’s method was just to slit ’em up with a razor, frontwise and from south to north, and not a blessed word spoken. No one’s touched ’im yet, not for efficiency, but this new chap, ’e looks like catching Jack up. _And_ at Jack’s own game, razor and all. Makes a man fair sick, sir, to see the completed work. Just slits ’em up as clean as you or me might slit up a vealanam-pie. We was laying bets on ’im over at Vine Street only to-night, curious like to see whether ’e’d beat Jack’s record. But it’ll take some beating, I give you my word. Up to date this chap ’as only done in twelve in three weeks--not that that’s ’alf bad, seeing as how ’e’s new to the game, more or less.”

“Oh, rather, more or less!” said Mr. Trevor faintly. “Twelve! Good God--only twelve! But why--why don’t you catch the ghastly man?”

“Ho, why don’t we!” said the policeman. “Becos we don’t know ’ow, that’s why. Not us! It’s the little one-corpse men we’re good for, not these ’ere big artists. Look at Jack the Ripper--did we catch ’im? Did we? And look at Julian Raphael--did we catch ’im? I’m asking you.”

“I know you are,” said Mr. Trevor gratefully. “Thank you.”

“I don’t want your thanks,” said the policeman. “I’m just warning you.”

Mr. Trevor gasped: “Warning _me_!”

“You’ve said it,” said the policeman. “You don’t ought to be out alone at this time of night, an ’earty young chap like you. These twelve ’e’s already done in were all ’earty young chaps. ’E’s partial to ’em ’earty, I do believe. And social gents some of ’em was, too, with top-’ats to hand, just like you might be now, sir, coming ’ome from a smoking-concert. Jack the Ripper all over again, that’s wot I say. Except that this ’ere new corpse-fancier, ’e don’t seem to fancy women at all.”

“A chaps’ murderer, what!” said Mr. Trevor faintly. “Ha-ha! What?”

“You’ve said it,” said the policeman. “But you never know your luck, sir. And maybe as ’ow thirteen’s your lucky number.”

Mr. Trevor lays emphasis on the fact that throughout he treated the constable with the courtesy due from a gentleman to the law. He merely said: “Constable, I am now going home. I do not like you very much. You are an alarmist. And I hope that when you go to sleep to-night your ears swell so that when you wake up in the morning you will be able to fly straight to heaven and never be seen or heard of again. You and your razors and your thirteens!”

“Ho, they ain’t mine, far from it!” said the policeman, and even as he spoke a voice crashed upon the silence from the direction of Mount Street. The voice belonged to a tall figure in black and white, and on his head was a top-hat that shone under the pallid moon like a monstrous black jewel.

“That there,” said the policeman, “is a Noise.”

“He’s singing,” said Mr. Trevor.

“I’ll teach ’im singing!” said the policeman.

Sang the voice:

“_With an host of furious fancies,_ _Whereof I am commander,_ _With a burning spear_ _And a horse of air_ _To the wilderness I wander._”

“You will,” said the policeman. “Oh, you will!”

“_By a knight of ghosts and shadows_ _I summoned am to tourney_ _Ten leagues beyond_ _The wide world’s end--_ _Methinks it is no journey!_”

“Not to Vine Street, it isn’t,” said the policeman.

“Ho there!” cried the approaching voice. “Who dares interrupt my song!”

“Beau Maturin!” cried Mr. Trevor gladly. “It’s not you! Bravo, Beau Maturin! Sing, bless you, sing! For I am depressed.”

“_From Heaven’s Gate to Hampstead Heath_ _Young Bacchus and his crew_ _Came tumbling down, and o’er the town_ _Their bursting trumpets blew._”

“Fine big gent, your friend,” said the policeman thoughtfully.

“_And when they heard that happy word_ _Policemen leapt and ambled:_ _The busmen pranced, the maidens danced,_ _The men in bowlers gambolled._”

“Big!” said Mr. Trevor. “Big? Let me tell you, constable, that the last time Mr. Maturin hit Jack Dempsey, Dempsey bounced back from the floor so quick that he knocked Mr. Maturin out on the rebound.”

Mr. Trevor says that Beau Maturin came on through the night like an avenger through a wilderness, so little did he reck of cruel moons and rude policemen. Said he: “Good evening, Ralph. Good evening, constable. Lo, I am in wine!”

“You’ve said it,” said the policeman.

“Gently, my dear! Or,” said Mr. Maturin cordially, “I will dot you one, and look at it which way you like it is a far, far better thing to be in wine than in a hospital. Now, are there any good murders going to-night?”

“Going?” said the constable. “I’m ’ere to see there ain’t any coming. But I’ve just been telling this gent about some recent crises. Corpses slit to ribbons just as you or me might slit up a vealanam----”

“Don’t say that again!” snapped Mr. Trevor.

“By Heaven, what’s that?” sighed Mr. Maturin; and, following his intent eyes, they saw, a yard or so behind them on the pavement, a something that glittered in the moonlight. Mr. Trevor says that, without a thought for his own safety, he instantly took a step towards the thing, but that the policeman restrained him. It was Mr. Maturin who picked the thing up. The policeman whistled thoughtfully.

“A razor, let’s face it!” whispered Beau Maturin.

“_And_ sharp!” said the policeman, thoughtfully testing the glittering blade with the ball of his thumb.

Mr. Trevor says that he was never in his life less conscious of any feeling of excitement. He merely pointed out that he could swear there had been no razor there when he had come round the corner, and that, while he had stood there, no one had passed behind him.

“The chap that owns this razor,” said the policeman, emphasising each word with a gesture of the blade, “must ’ave slunk behind you and me as we stood ’ere talking and dropped it, maybe not finding it sharp enough for ’is purpose. What do you think, Mr. Maturin?”

But Mr. Maturin begged to be excused from thinking, protesting that men are in the hands of God and God is in the hands of women, so what the devil is there to think about?

Mr. Trevor says that the motive behind his remark at that moment, which was to the effect that he simply must have a drink, was merely that he was thirsty. A clock struck two.

“After hours,” said the policeman; and he seemed, Mr. Trevor thought, to grin evilly.

“What do they know of hours,” sighed Mr. Maturin, “who only Ciro’s know? Come, Ralph. My love, she jilted me but the other night. Therefore I will swim in wine, and thrice will I call upon her name when I am drowning. Constable, good-night to you.”

“Now I’ve warned you!” the policeman called after them. “Don’t go into any alleys or passages like Lansdowne Passage else you’ll be finding yourselves slit up like vealanam-pies.”

Maybe it was only the treacherous light of the moon, but Mr. Trevor fancied as he looked back that the policeman, where he stood thoughtfully fingering the shining blade, seemed to be grinning evilly at them.

II

They walked in silence, their steps ringing sharp on the bitter-chill air. The night in the sky was pale at the white disdain of the moon. It was Mr. Maturin who spoke at last, saying: “There’s too much talk of murder to-night. A man cannot go to bed on such crude talk. You know me, kid. Shall we go to _The Garden of My Grandmother_?”

At that moment a taxicab crawled across the moonlight; and the driver, a man in a Homburg hat of green plush, did not attempt to hide his pleasure at being able to satisfy the gentlemen’s request to take them to _The Garden of My Grandmother_.

Mr. Trevor says that he has rarely chanced upon a more unsatisfactory taxicab than that driven by the man in the Homburg hat of green plush. By closing one’s eyes one might perhaps have created an illusion of movement by reason of certain internal shrieks and commotions, but when one saw the slow procession of shops by the windows and the lamp-posts loitering by the curb, one was, as Beau Maturin pointed out, justified in believing that the hackney-cab in question was not going fast enough to outstrip a retired Czecho-Slovakian admiral in an egg-and-spoon race. Nor were they altogether surprised when the taxicab died on them in Conduit Street. The man in the Homburg hat of green plush jumped out and tried to restart the engine. He failed. The gentlemen within awaited the issue in silence. The silence, says Mr. Trevor, grew terrible. But the taxicab moved not, and the man in the Homburg hat of green plush began, in his agitation, thumping the carburetor with his clenched fist.

“No petrol,” he pleaded. “No petrol.”

Said Mr. Trevor to Mr. Maturin: “Let us go. Let us leave this man.”

“’Ere, my fare!” said the fellow.

“Your fare?” said Mr. Maturin with contracted brows. “What do you mean, ‘your fare’?”

“Bob on the meter,” said the wretch.

“My friend will pay,” said Mr. Maturin, and stalked away. Mr. Trevor says that, while retaining throughout the course of that miserable night his undoubted _flair_ for generosity, he could not but hold Beau Maturin’s high-handed disavowal of his responsibilities against him; and he was hurrying after him up Conduit Street, turning over such phrases as might best point the occasion and make Mr. Maturin ashamed of himself, when that pretty gentleman swung round sharply and said: “Ssh!”

But Mr. Trevor was disinclined to Ssh, maintaining that Mr. Maturin owed him ninepence.

“Ssh, you fool!” snapped Mr. Maturin; and Mr. Trevor had not obliged him for long before he discerned in the quietness of Conduit Street a small discordant noise, or rather, says Mr. Trevor, a series of small discordant noises.

“She’s crying, let’s face it,” whispered Mr. Maturin.

“She! Who?”

“Ssh!” snapped Mr. Maturin.

They were at that point in Conduit Street where a turn to the right will bring one into a fat little street which looks blind but isn’t, insomuch as close by the entrance to the Alpine Club Galleries there is a narrow passage or alley leading into Savile Row. Mr. Trevor says that the repugnance with which he at that moment looked towards the darkness of that passage or alley had less than nothing to do with the blood-thirsty policeman’s last words but was due merely to an antipathy he had entertained towards all passages or alleys ever since George Tarlyon had seen a ghost in one. Mr. Maturin and he stood for some minutes in the full light of the moon while, as though from the very heart of the opposite darkness, the lacerating tremors of weeping echoed about their ears.

“I can’t bear it!” said Beau Maturin. “Come along.” And he advanced towards the darkness, but Mr. Trevor said he would not, pleading foot trouble.

“Come,” said Beau Maturin, but Mr. Trevor said: “To-morrow, yes. But not to-night.”

Then did Beau Maturin advance alone into the darkness towards the passage or alley, and with one pounce the darkness stole his top-hat from the moon. Beau Maturin was invisible. The noise of weeping abated.

“Oi!” called Mr. Trevor. “Come back, you fool!”

“Ssh!” whispered the voice of Mr. Maturin.

Mr. Trevor said bitterly: “You’re swanking, that’s all!”

“It’s a girl!” whispered the voice of Mr. Maturin, whereupon Mr. Trevor, who yielded to no man in the chivalry of his address towards women, at once advanced, caught up Mr. Maturin and, without a thought for his own safety, was about to pass ahead of him when Beau Maturin had the bad taste to whisper “’Ware razors!” and thus again held the lead.

She who wept, now almost inaudibly, was a dark shape just within the passage. Her face, says Mr. Trevor, was not visible, yet her shadow had not those rather surprising contours which one generally associates with women who weep in the night.

“Madam,” began Mr. Maturin.

“Oh!” sobbed the gentle voice. “He is insulting me!”

Mr. Trevor lays some emphasis on the fact that throughout the course of that miserable night his manners were a pattern of courtliness. Thinking, however, that a young lady in a situation so lachrymose would react more favourably to a fatherly tone, he said:

“My child, we hope----”

“Ah!” sobbed the gentle voice. “Please go away, please! I am _not_ that sort!”

“Come, come!” said Mr. Maturin. “It is us whom you insult with a suspicion so disagreeable. My friend and I are not of the sort to commit ourselves to so low a process as that which is called, I believe, ‘picking up.’”

“We have, as a matter of fact, friends of our own,” said Mr. Trevor haughtily.

“Speaking generally,” said Mr. Maturin, “women like us. Time over again I have had to sacrifice my friendship with a man in order to retain his wife’s respect.”

“Ah, you are a man of honour!” sobbed the young lady.

“We are two men of honour,” said Mr. Trevor.

“And far,” said Mr. Maturin warmly, “from intending you any mischief, we merely thought, on hearing you weeping----”

“You _heard_ me, sir!”

“From Conduit Street,” said Mr. Trevor severely, whereupon Mr. Maturin lifted up his voice and sang:

“_From Conduit Street, from Conduit Street,_ _The street of ties and tailors:_ _From Conduit Street, from Conduit Street,_ _A shocking street for trousers_----”

“Oh!” sobbed the young lady. “Is this chivalry?”

“Trousers,” said Mr. Maturin, “are closely connected with chivalry, insomuch as he who commits chivalry without them is to be considered a rude fellow. But, child,” Mr. Maturin protested sincerely, “we addressed you only in the hope that we might be of some service in the extremity of your grief. I assure you that you can trust us, for since we are no longer soldiers rape and crime have ceased to attract us. However, you do not need us. We were wrong. We will go.”

“It was I who was wrong!” came the low voice; and Mr. Trevor says that only then did the young lady raise her face, when it was instantly as though the beauty of that small face sent the surrounding darkness scurrying away. Not, however, that Mr. Trevor was impressed altogether in the young lady’s favour. Her eyes, which were large, dark and charming, appeared to rest on handsome Beau Maturin with an intentness which Mr. Trevor can only describe as bold; while her disregard of his own presence might have hurt him had he, says Mr. Trevor, cared two pins for that kind of thing.

“You see, I have not eaten to-day,” the young lady told Beau Maturin, who cried: “But, then, we _can_ help you!”

“Ah, how do I know! Please,” the young lady began weeping again, and Mr. Trevor says that had he not hardened his heart he could not say what he might not have done. “Please, sirs, I simply do not know what to do! I am so unhappy, so alone--oh, but you cannot imagine! You are gentlemen?”

“Speaking for my friend,” said Mr. Maturin warmly, “he has been asked to resign from Buck’s Club only after repeated bankruptcies.”