Chapter 2

“Cousin Joseph sat in his usual seat, behind the darkened windows, his fat hands folded on his protuberant waistcoat, the last number of the _Churchman_ at his elbow, and near it, on a huge dish, a fat melon--the fattest melon I’d ever seen. As I looked at it I pictured the ecstasy of contemplation from which I must have roused him, and congratulated myself on finding him in such a mood, since I had made up my mind to ask him a favour. Then I noticed that his face, instead of looking as calm as an egg-shell, was distorted and whimpering--and without stopping to greet me he pointed passionately to the melon.

“‘Look at it, look at it--did you ever see such a beauty? Such firmness--roundness--such delicious smoothness to the touch?’ It was as if he had said ‘she’ instead of ‘it,’ and when he put out his senile hand and touched the melon I positively had to look the other way.

“Then he told me what had happened. The Italian under-gardener, who had been specially recommended for the melon-houses--though it was against my cousin’s principles to employ a Papist--had been assigned to the care of the monster: for it had revealed itself, early in its existence, as destined to become a monster, to surpass its plumpest, pulpiest sisters, carry off prizes at agricultural shows, and be photographed and celebrated in every gardening paper in the land. The Italian had done well--seemed to have a sense of responsibility. And that very morning he had been ordered to pick the melon, which was to be shown next day at the county fair, and to bring it in for Mr. Lenman to gaze on its blonde virginity. But in picking it, what had the damned scoundrelly Jesuit done but drop it--drop it crash on the sharp spout of a watering-pot, so that it received a deep gash in its firm pale rotundity, and was henceforth but a bruised, ruined, fallen melon?

“The old man’s rage was fearful in its impotence--he shook, spluttered and strangled with it. He had just had the Italian up and had sacked him on the spot, without wages or character--had threatened to have him arrested if he was ever caught prowling about Wrenfield. ‘By God, and I’ll do it--I’ll write to Washington--I’ll have the pauper scoundrel deported! I’ll show him what money can do!’ As likely as not there was some murderous Black-hand business under it--it would be found that the fellow was a member of a ‘gang.’ Those Italians would murder you for a quarter. He meant to have the police look into it... And then he grew frightened at his own excitement. ‘But I must calm myself,’ he said. He took his temperature, rang for his drops, and turned to the _Churchman_. He had been reading an article on Nestorianism when the melon was brought in. He asked me to go on with it, and I read to him for an hour, in the dim close room, with a fat fly buzzing stealthily about the fallen melon.

“All the while one phrase of the old man’s buzzed in my brain like the fly about the melon. ‘_I’ll show him what money can do!_’ Good heaven! If _I_ could but show the old man! If I could make him see his power of giving happiness as a new outlet for his monstrous egotism! I tried to tell him something about my situation and Kate’s--spoke of my ill-health, my unsuccessful drudgery, my longing to write, to make myself a name--I stammered out an entreaty for a loan. ‘I can guarantee to repay you, sir--I’ve a half-written play as security...’

“I shall never forget his glassy stare. His face had grown as smooth as an egg-shell again--his eyes peered over his fat cheeks like sentinels over a slippery rampart.

“‘A half-written play--a play of _yours_ as security?’ He looked at me almost fearfully, as if detecting the first symptoms of insanity. ‘Do you understand anything of business?’ he enquired mildly. I laughed and answered: ‘No, not much.’

“He leaned back with closed lids. ‘All this excitement has been too much for me,’ he said. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll prepare for my nap.’ And I stumbled out of the room, blindly, like the Italian.”

Granice moved away from the mantel-piece, and walked across to the tray set out with decanters and soda-water. He poured himself a tall glass of soda-water, emptied it, and glanced at Ascham’s dead cigar.

“Better light another,” he suggested.

The lawyer shook his head, and Granice went on with his tale. He told of his mounting obsession--how the murderous impulse had waked in him on the instant of his cousin’s refusal, and he had muttered to himself: “By God, if you won’t, I’ll make you.” He spoke more tranquilly as the narrative proceeded, as though his rage had died down once the resolve to act on it was taken. He applied his whole mind to the question of how the old man was to be “disposed of.” Suddenly he remembered the outcry: “Those Italians will murder you for a quarter!” But no definite project presented itself: he simply waited for an inspiration.

Granice and his sister moved to town a day or two after the incident of the melon. But the cousins, who had returned, kept them informed of the old man’s condition. One day, about three weeks later, Granice, on getting home, found Kate excited over a report from Wrenfield. The Italian had been there again--had somehow slipped into the house, made his way up to the library, and “used threatening language.” The house-keeper found cousin Joseph gasping, the whites of his eyes showing “something awful.” The doctor was sent for, and the attack warded off; and the police had ordered the Italian from the neighbourhood.

But cousin Joseph, thereafter, languished, had “nerves,” and lost his taste for toast and butter-milk. The doctor called in a colleague, and the consultation amused and excited the old man--he became once more an important figure. The medical men reassured the family--too completely!--and to the patient they recommended a more varied diet: advised him to take whatever “tempted him.” And so one day, tremulously, prayerfully, he decided on a tiny bit of melon. It was brought up with ceremony, and consumed in the presence of the house-keeper and a hovering cousin; and twenty minutes later he was dead...

“But you remember the circumstances,” Granice went on; “how suspicion turned at once on the Italian? In spite of the hint the police had given him he had been seen hanging about the house since ‘the scene.’ It was said that he had tender relations with the kitchen-maid, and the rest seemed easy to explain. But when they looked round to ask him for the explanation he was gone--gone clean out of sight. He had been ‘warned’ to leave Wrenfield, and he had taken the warning so to heart that no one ever laid eyes on him again.”

Granice paused. He had dropped into a chair opposite the lawyer’s, and he sat for a moment, his head thrown back, looking about the familiar room. Everything in it had grown grimacing and alien, and each strange insistent object seemed craning forward from its place to hear him.

“It was I who put the stuff in the melon,” he said. “And I don’t want you to think I’m sorry for it. This isn’t ‘remorse,’ understand. I’m glad the old skin-flint is dead--I’m glad the others have their money. But mine’s no use to me any more. My sister married miserably, and died. And I’ve never had what I wanted.”

Ascham continued to stare; then he said: “What on earth was your object, then?”

“Why, to _get_ what I wanted--what I fancied was in reach! I wanted change, rest, _life_, for both of us--wanted, above all, for myself, the chance to write! I travelled, got back my health, and came home to tie myself up to my work. And I’ve slaved at it steadily for ten years without reward--without the most distant hope of success! Nobody will look at my stuff. And now I’m fifty, and I’m beaten, and I know it.” His chin dropped forward on his breast. “I want to chuck the whole business,” he ended.

III

IT was after midnight when Ascham left.

His hand on Granice’s shoulder, as he turned to go--“District Attorney be hanged; see a doctor, see a doctor!” he had cried; and so, with an exaggerated laugh, had pulled on his coat and departed.

Granice turned back into the library. It had never occurred to him that Ascham would not believe his story. For three hours he had explained, elucidated, patiently and painfully gone over every detail--but without once breaking down the iron incredulity of the lawyer’s eye.

At first Ascham had feigned to be convinced--but that, as Granice now perceived, was simply to get him to expose himself, to entrap him into contradictions. And when the attempt failed, when Granice triumphantly met and refuted each disconcerting question, the lawyer dropped the mask suddenly, and said with a good-humoured laugh: “By Jove, Granice you’ll write a successful play yet. The way you’ve worked this all out is a marvel.”

Granice swung about furiously--that last sneer about the play inflamed him. Was all the world in a conspiracy to deride his failure?

“I did it, I did it,” he muttered sullenly, his rage spending itself against the impenetrable surface of the other’s mockery; and Ascham answered with a smile: “Ever read any of those books on hallucination? I’ve got a fairly good medico-legal library. I could send you one or two if you like...”

Left alone, Granice cowered down in the chair before his writing-table. He understood that Ascham thought him off his head.

“Good God--what if they all think me crazy?”

The horror of it broke out over him in a cold sweat--he sat there and shook, his eyes hidden in his icy hands. But gradually, as he began to rehearse his story for the thousandth time, he saw again how incontrovertible it was, and felt sure that any criminal lawyer would believe him.

“That’s the trouble--Ascham’s not a criminal lawyer. And then he’s a friend. What a fool I was to talk to a friend! Even if he did believe me, he’d never let me see it--his instinct would be to cover the whole thing up... But in that case--if he _did_ believe me--he might think it a kindness to get me shut up in an asylum...” Granice began to tremble again. “Good heaven! If he should bring in an expert--one of those damned alienists! Ascham and Pettilow can do anything--their word always goes. If Ascham drops a hint that I’d better be shut up, I’ll be in a strait-jacket by to-morrow! And he’d do it from the kindest motives--be quite right to do it if he thinks I’m a murderer!”

The vision froze him to his chair. He pressed his fists to his bursting temples and tried to think. For the first time he hoped that Ascham had not believed his story.

“But he did--he did! I can see it now--I noticed what a queer eye he cocked at me. Good God, what shall I do--what shall I do?”

He started up and looked at the clock. Half-past one. What if Ascham should think the case urgent, rout out an alienist, and come back with him? Granice jumped to his feet, and his sudden gesture brushed the morning paper from the table. Mechanically he stooped to pick it up, and the movement started a new train of association.

He sat down again, and reached for the telephone book in the rack by his chair.

“Give me three-o-ten ... yes.”

The new idea in his mind had revived his flagging energy. He would act--act at once. It was only by thus planning ahead, committing himself to some unavoidable line of conduct, that he could pull himself through the meaningless days. Each time he reached a fresh decision it was like coming out of a foggy weltering sea into a calm harbour with lights. One of the queerest phases of his long agony was the intense relief produced by these momentary lulls.

“That the office of the _Investigator?_ Yes? Give me Mr. Denver, please... Hallo, Denver... Yes, Hubert Granice. ... Just caught you? Going straight home? Can I come and see you ... yes, now ... have a talk? It’s rather urgent ... yes, might give you some first-rate ‘copy.’ ... All right!” He hung up the receiver with a laugh. It had been a happy thought to call up the editor of the _Investigator_--Robert Denver was the very man he needed...

Granice put out the lights in the library--it was odd how the automatic gestures persisted!--went into the hall, put on his hat and overcoat, and let himself out of the flat. In the hall, a sleepy elevator boy blinked at him and then dropped his head on his folded arms. Granice passed out into the street. At the corner of Fifth Avenue he hailed a crawling cab, and called out an up-town address. The long thoroughfare stretched before him, dim and deserted, like an ancient avenue of tombs. But from Denver’s house a friendly beam fell on the pavement; and as Granice sprang from his cab the editor’s electric turned the corner.

The two men grasped hands, and Denver, feeling for his latch-key, ushered Granice into the brightly-lit hall.

“Disturb me? Not a bit. You might have, at ten to-morrow morning ... but this is my liveliest hour ... you know my habits of old.”

Granice had known Robert Denver for fifteen years--watched his rise through all the stages of journalism to the Olympian pinnacle of the _Investigator’s_ editorial office. In the thick-set man with grizzling hair there were few traces left of the hungry-eyed young reporter who, on his way home in the small hours, used to “bob in” on Granice, while the latter sat grinding at his plays. Denver had to pass Granice’s flat on the way to his own, and it became a habit, if he saw a light in the window, and Granice’s shadow against the blind, to go in, smoke a pipe, and discuss the universe.

“Well--this is like old times--a good old habit reversed.” The editor smote his visitor genially on the shoulder. “Reminds me of the nights when I used to rout you out... How’s the play, by the way? There _is_ a play, I suppose? It’s as safe to ask you that as to say to some men: ‘How’s the baby?’”

Denver laughed good-naturedly, and Granice thought how thick and heavy he had grown. It was evident, even to Granice’s tortured nerves, that the words had not been uttered in malice--and the fact gave him a new measure of his insignificance. Denver did not even know that he had been a failure! The fact hurt more than Ascham’s irony.

“Come in--come in.” The editor led the way into a small cheerful room, where there were cigars and decanters. He pushed an arm-chair toward his visitor, and dropped into another with a comfortable groan.

“Now, then--help yourself. And let’s hear all about it.”

He beamed at Granice over his pipe-bowl, and the latter, lighting his cigar, said to himself: “Success makes men comfortable, but it makes them stupid.”

Then he turned, and began: “Denver, I want to tell you--”

The clock ticked rhythmically on the mantel-piece. The room was gradually filled with drifting blue layers of smoke, and through them the editor’s face came and went like the moon through a moving sky. Once the hour struck--then the rhythmical ticking began again. The atmosphere grew denser and heavier, and beads of perspiration began to roll from Granice’s forehead.

“Do you mind if I open the window?”

“No. It _is_ stuffy in here. Wait--I’ll do it myself.” Denver pushed down the upper sash, and returned to his chair. “Well--go on,” he said, filling another pipe. His composure exasperated Granice.

“There’s no use in my going on if you don’t believe me.”

The editor remained unmoved. “Who says I don’t believe you? And how can I tell till you’ve finished?”

Granice went on, ashamed of his outburst. “It was simple enough, as you’ll see. From the day the old man said to me, ‘Those Italians would murder you for a quarter,’ I dropped everything and just worked at my scheme. It struck me at once that I must find a way of getting to Wrenfield and back in a night--and that led to the idea of a motor. A motor--that never occurred to you? You wonder where I got the money, I suppose. Well, I had a thousand or so put by, and I nosed around till I found what I wanted--a second-hand racer. I knew how to drive a car, and I tried the thing and found it was all right. Times were bad, and I bought it for my price, and stored it away. Where? Why, in one of those no-questions-asked garages where they keep motors that are not for family use. I had a lively cousin who had put me up to that dodge, and I looked about till I found a queer hole where they took in my car like a baby in a foundling asylum... Then I practiced running to Wrenfield and back in a night. I knew the way pretty well, for I’d done it often with the same lively cousin--and in the small hours, too. The distance is over ninety miles, and on the third trial I did it under two hours. But my arms were so lame that I could hardly get dressed the next morning...

“Well, then came the report about the Italian’s threats, and I saw I must act at once... I meant to break into the old man’s room, shoot him, and get away again. It was a big risk, but I thought I could manage it. Then we heard that he was ill--that there’d been a consultation. Perhaps the fates were going to do it for me! Good Lord, if that could only be!...”

Granice stopped and wiped his forehead: the open window did not seem to have cooled the room.

“Then came word that he was better; and the day after, when I came up from my office, I found Kate laughing over the news that he was to try a bit of melon. The house-keeper had just telephoned her--all Wrenfield was in a flutter. The doctor himself had picked out the melon, one of the little French ones that are hardly bigger than a large tomato--and the patient was to eat it at his breakfast the next morning.

“In a flash I saw my chance. It was a bare chance, no more. But I knew the ways of the house--I was sure the melon would be brought in over night and put in the pantry ice-box. If there were only one melon in the ice-box I could be fairly sure it was the one I wanted. Melons didn’t lie around loose in that house--every one was known, numbered, catalogued. The old man was beset by the dread that the servants would eat them, and he took a hundred mean precautions to prevent it. Yes, I felt pretty sure of my melon ... and poisoning was much safer than shooting. It would have been the devil and all to get into the old man’s bedroom without his rousing the house; but I ought to be able to break into the pantry without much trouble.

“It was a cloudy night, too--everything served me. I dined quietly, and sat down at my desk. Kate had one of her usual headaches, and went to bed early. As soon as she was gone I slipped out. I had got together a sort of disguise--red beard and queer-looking ulster. I shoved them into a bag, and went round to the garage. There was no one there but a half-drunken machinist whom I’d never seen before. That served me, too. They were always changing machinists, and this new fellow didn’t even bother to ask if the car belonged to me. It was a very easy-going place...

“Well, I jumped in, ran up Broadway, and let the car go as soon as I was out of Harlem. Dark as it was, I could trust myself to strike a sharp pace. In the shadow of a wood I stopped a second and got into the beard and ulster. Then away again--it was just eleven-thirty when I got to Wrenfield.

“I left the car in a dark lane behind the Lenman place, and slipped through the kitchen-garden. The melon-houses winked at me through the dark--I remember thinking that they knew what I wanted to know. ... By the stable a dog came out growling--but he nosed me out, jumped on me, and went back... The house was as dark as the grave. I knew everybody went to bed by ten. But there might be a prowling servant--the kitchen-maid might have come down to let in her Italian. I had to risk that, of course. I crept around by the back door and hid in the shrubbery. Then I listened. It was all as silent as death. I crossed over to the house, pried open the pantry window and climbed in. I had a little electric lamp in my pocket, and shielding it with my cap I groped my way to the ice-box, opened it--and there was the little French melon... only one.

“I stopped to listen--I was quite cool. Then I pulled out my bottle of stuff and my syringe, and gave each section of the melon a hypodermic. It was all done inside of three minutes--at ten minutes to twelve I was back in the car. I got out of the lane as quietly as I could, struck a back road that skirted the village, and let the car out as soon as I was beyond the last houses. I only stopped once on the way in, to drop the beard and ulster into a pond. I had a big stone ready to weight them with and they went down plump, like a dead body--and at two o’clock I was back at my desk.”

Granice stopped speaking and looked across the smoke-fumes at his listener; but Denver’s face remained inscrutable.

At length he said: “Why did you want to tell me this?”

The question startled Granice. He was about to explain, as he had explained to Ascham; but suddenly it occurred to him that if his motive had not seemed convincing to the lawyer it would carry much less weight with Denver. Both were successful men, and success does not understand the subtle agony of failure. Granice cast about for another reason.

“Why, I--the thing haunts me ... remorse, I suppose you’d call it...”

Denver struck the ashes from his empty pipe.

“Remorse? Bosh!” he said energetically.

Granice’s heart sank. “You don’t believe in--_remorse?_”

“Not an atom: in the man of action. The mere fact of your talking of remorse proves to me that you’re not the man to have planned and put through such a job.”

Granice groaned. “Well--I lied to you about remorse. I’ve never felt any.”

Denver’s lips tightened sceptically about his freshly-filled pipe. “What was your motive, then? You must have had one.”

“I’ll tell you--” And Granice began again to rehearse the story of his failure, of his loathing for life. “Don’t say you don’t believe me this time ... that this isn’t a real reason!” he stammered out piteously as he ended.

Denver meditated. “No, I won’t say that. I’ve seen too many queer things. There’s always a reason for wanting to get out of life--the wonder is that we find so many for staying in!”

Granice’s heart grew light. “Then you _do_ believe me?” he faltered.

“Believe that you’re sick of the job? Yes. And that you haven’t the nerve to pull the trigger? Oh, yes--that’s easy enough, too. But all that doesn’t make you a murderer--though I don’t say it proves you could never have been one.”

“I _have_ been one, Denver--I swear to you.”

“Perhaps.” He meditated. “Just tell me one or two things.”

“Oh, go ahead. You won’t stump me!” Granice heard himself say with a laugh.

“Well--how did you make all those trial trips without exciting your sister’s curiosity? I knew your night habits pretty well at that time, remember. You were very seldom out late. Didn’t the change in your ways surprise her?”

“No; because she was away at the time. She went to pay several visits in the country soon after we came back from Wrenfield, and was only in town for a night or two before--before I did the job.”

“And that night she went to bed early with a headache?”

“Yes--blinding. She didn’t know anything when she had that kind. And her room was at the back of the flat.”

Denver again meditated. “And when you got back--she didn’t hear you? You got in without her knowing it?”

“Yes. I went straight to my work--took it up at the word where I’d left off--_why, Denver, don’t you remember?_” Granice suddenly, passionately interjected.

“Remember--?”

“Yes; how you found me--when you looked in that morning, between two and three ... your usual hour ...?”

“Yes,” the editor nodded.

Granice gave a short laugh. “In my old coat--with my pipe: looked as if I’d been working all night, didn’t I? Well, I hadn’t been in my chair ten minutes!”

Denver uncrossed his legs and then crossed them again. “I didn’t know whether _you_ remembered that.”

“What?”

“My coming in that particular night--or morning.”