Part 13

When Mr. Keller sat down again in the wicker chair, about two yards away from her, a sense of languor crept upon June. The warmth of the fire, the glow of the lamp, the notes of a singularly quiet voice were like a subtle drug. Alive to danger as she was, its caress was hard to resist. Such a position was one of acute peril, for she was literally throwing herself upon the mercy of a person who was very much an unknown quantity, yet what alternative was there?

“Don’t mind a pipe, I hope?” The polite voice from the chair opposite was not really ironical; it was merely kind and friendly, yet feminine intuition shivering upon the dark threshold of a mighty adventure knew well enough how easily a tone of that kind could turn to something else.

“Oh no, I don’t mind at all.” She tried again to get the right key, but a laugh she could not control, high-pitched and irrelevant, was horribly betraying.

“That’s all right then.”

For about a minute, Mr. Keller puffed away in a sort of whimsical silence. Then he said with a soft fall, whose mere sweetness had the power to alarm, “Your hair’s jolly. Very jolly indeed!”

June nervously muttered that she was very glad he liked it.

“So much of it, don’t you know. Awfully useful to me just now. Quantity’s almost as valuable as the colour. Does it reach your waist when you let it down?”

June, not without a little pride, said that her hair when let down reached below her waist.

“Capital!” said Mr. Keller, with a laugh. “The very thing I’m looking for just now. You’ll make a stunning Andromeda.”

June had not heard of Andromeda. She had read some Dickens, and a little George Eliot, and she could remember bits of Shakespeare learned at school, but her tastes were not literary. She pretended to know all about Andromeda, yet the next words of Mr. Keller were a proof that he was not deceived. June did not know, however, that he had pierced clean through her ignorance.

“She’s the altogether. A classical subject.”

“I like classical subjects myself.” Abruptly June’s mind went back to Miss Preece, the revered head mistress of the Blackhampton High School where it had been her privilege to spend one term. Her voice rose a whole octave, in its involuntary desire to approximate as closely as possible to that of a real lady.

“So do I.” Mr. Keller’s humorous purr was that of a man well pleased. “That’s capital.”

“You can’t beat classical subjects, can you?” said June, making a wild attempt to achieve the conversational.

Again Mr. Keller looked across at her out of those near-set eyes of which by now she was rather afraid. “No, you can’t,” he said. “So large and so simple, and yet they strike so deep. They are life itself. A sort of summing up, don’t you know, of all that has been, all that can be, all that will be.”

June responded with more composure than she had yet shewn that she supposed it was so. It was nice to listen to talk of this kind from a man of Mr. Keller’s polish. The chair was most comfortable, and how good it was to be in front of the bright fire! Her nerves were being lulled more and more as if by a drug; the sense of her peril amid this sea of danger into which she had plunged began to grow less.

“I expect,” said Mr. Keller, in a tone so friendly and so casual that it fed the new sense of peace which was now upon June, “I expect you are pretty well used to the altogether?”

Even if she did not know in the least what was meant by “the altogether,” it did not seem to be quite wise to confess such ignorance. “Ye-es, I suppose I am.” And in a weak attempt to rise to his own agreeable plane of intimacy she laughed rather foolishly.

“Capital!” said Adolph Keller. “You are a well built girl.” He sipped a little whisky. “Excellent shoulders. Figure’s full of fine lines. Bust well developed. Plenty of heart room. Everything just right.”

She coloured at the literal way in which he catalogued her points; even if it was done in the manner of an artist and a gentleman, one was a little reminded of a dog or a horse.

“I’ll fix you up a screen. And then you can get ready.” He sipped a little more whisky, and rose briskly and cheerfully. “Near the fire; it’s real chillsome to-night. And when you pose you can sit on top of it if you like.” He opened the lid of the coal box, and replenished the fire. “We must take care you don’t catch cold. If you feel a draught, you can have a rug round your knees. I only want to make a rough sketch of the lines of the figure, to begin with; the shoulders chiefly. It won’t take long. Quite sure you won’t have a finger?” He pointed to the whisky. “Buck you up a bit. You look rather down.”

June was quite sure that she would not have a finger. Mr. Keller passed beyond the screen into the studio itself to procure a second screen. June felt this activity to be alarming. It brought her up against the fact that she was there in the capacity of an artist’s model. Suddenly it dawned upon her that she was expected to take off her clothes.

XXXVIII

MR. KELLER cleared a space near the fire, and elaborately arranged a second screen, which June did not fail to notice was decorated with nude figures.

“There you are,” he said. “That’ll keep you snug. And if you sit on a stool by the fire with a rug over your knees, you’ll be as warm as a kitten.”

June paled, but she did not speak.

“Begin as soon as you like, the sooner the better. Are you quite sure you won’t have just a spot?” Again he pointed to the bottle on the table. “You look as if you want a drop of something.”

Once more June declined the offer in a voice which in her own ear seemed absurdly small and faint.

“Pity,” said Mr. Keller cheerfully, as he looked at her. “It’d put some life in you.” And then, as she was still inert, he went on in a tone which pleasantly mingled gentlemanliness and business, “I always pay a sovereign an hour, you know--for the altogether.”

A light of fear came into June’s large eyes. “Does it mean,” she asked, shyly and awkwardly, as she looked away from him, “that I shall have to take off my clothes?”

“Why, of course,” he said, matter-of-factly. Her obvious embarrassment was not lost upon him, but the knowledge did not appear in his manner.

June shivered slightly. In that shiver a deep instinct spoke for her. “I couldn’t do that,” she said.

“Why not?” He lit a cigarette. “Aren’t you well?”

June was very far from well. She felt within an ace of being overcome by all that had happened to her. Besides her bruised shoulders were still aching horribly. Even without the deep instinct that governed her, it would not have been possible to expose them.

“No-no,” she said, “I--I’m not well.”

As she spoke, she had to fight a powerful desire to burst into tears. But her latent fear of this man had suddenly grown. Overdriven as she was, however, she was yet conscious of a stern need to keep a hold upon herself. She knew nothing, less than nothing of her host, beyond the fact that he was smooth of speech. On the surface he was a gentleman, but as he stood looking down at her now she glimpsed in his dark eyes that which seemed to countervail everything.

Again she shivered. The sense of helplessness was paralyzing. It was as if a chasm had abruptly opened right under her feet. She was at his mercy. But she must not give one thought, so long as a spark of will remained with her, to the possibility of throwing herself upon it.

He continued to stand looking at her while she fought against a welling weakness that must have been only too patent. Then, as if a little puzzled by her, he went and fetched a glass from another part of the studio. He poured out a small quantity of spirit and offered it neat.

“Drink this. It’ll do you good.”

His voice, for the first time, had the grip of authority. He held the glass to her lips, but as if containing deadly fumes they shrank from contact with it.

“Don’t be a little fool.” The sharp tone was like the touch of a whip. “Why don’t you do as you are told?”

She had not the strength to resent the command even if she was able to muster the power to resist it.

“Look here,” he said, confronted by a limit to patience. “Why have you come? What’s the matter with you? Tell me.”

She remained mute. There was nothing she could tell. A lodging for the night, food, advice, protection were what she sought. Dominated completely as she was by hard necessity, she yet dare not confide in Keller. The subtle change that had come upon him since he had fixed up the screen and poured out the whisky filled her with an intense longing to get away. In spite of a growing weakness, which now threatened dire collapse, the subtle feelers of her mind were on the track of danger.

With a slow gathering of will that was a form of agony, she tried to collect the force to rise from the perilous comfort of the low wicker chair. But she was not able to rouse herself to action before the effort had been nipped by his next remark.

“If you’ve no intention of sitting to me, you’d better say in two words why you’ve come here.”

The voice was no longer smooth; there was a cutting edge to it, lacerating to June’s ear.

“I wanted you to lend me a sovereign.”

It was the literal truth. But the unguarded words slipped from her before she could shape or control them. Almost before they were uttered she realized their bitter unwisdom.

“You can have a sovereign--if that’s all you want.” His tone grew light again. “But it’s only fair and reasonable that you should earn it first.”

Strive as she would, she was not able to keep a faint dew of tears from filming her eyes.

“No need to take off more than your bodice, if that’s what’s troubling you.”

With her shoulders on fire, she could not take off her bodice, even had she wished to do so.

She sat inert while he continued to stand before her. The thread of will she still had, fully concentrated though it was on getting away from him, was now unequal to the ugly challenge of his voice and eyes.

“Let me go,” she half whimpered.

Suddenly, in her own despite, her defences had begun palpably to fail. The blunder was fatal--if the cry of nature overdriven can be called a blunder. His eyes pinned hers. Trembling under the spell of their hard cunning she began to perceive that it was now a case of the serpent and the bird.

A frown darkened his face as he cast back to the first meeting with this girl. He tried to recall their conversation in the teashop two days ago. At the time it had interested him considerably, but he had laughed over it since, and decided to dismiss it from his mind. She had told him a cock-and-bull story about a picture. He could not recall the details of an absurd yarn which had not seemed worth his while to remember. At the best it was a bald and unconvincing narrative. But it concerned a Rembrandt. No, not a Rembrandt. A Van Roon!

With a heightening of curiosity, Adolph Keller gazed at the hunted creature now shrinking from his eyes. By Jove, she looked as if she had been through it! Something pretty bad must have happened to her quite recently. But why had she come to him?

Thoughts of the picture set his active mind to work. She had come to him because she was in want of money. So much, at least, was clear. To judge by the look of her, she had probably, at a moment’s notice, been turned out of house and home. A domestic servant, no doubt, and no better than she should be, although a certain taste about her much-rumpled clothes and an attempt at refinement of manner suggested the wish to rise above her class.

In the midst of this quick mind process, Adolph Keller saw the brown paper parcel. It was in the place where his visitor had laid it when she had first sat down. He noticed that she had cunningly reared it by the farther side of her chair, so that it might be beyond the immediate range of his eye.

Keller’s pulse quickened, yet he allowed no hint of his intriguing discovery to shew in his manner. Once again it changed towards his guest. The tone of sharp authority vanished. Twisting a dark moustache round strong, yet delicate fingers, his air of extreme gentlemanliness verged upon the sugary, as he said: “I don’t like to see you like this. I don’t really.”

The tone’s unexpectedness, perhaps even more than its kindness, moved June to further tears.

“You had better tell me, hadn’t you, just what’s upset you?”

She shook miserably. And then, thrown off her guard, by this new note of concern, she found the courage to venture again: “Please lend me a sovereign and let me go. I promise solemnly to pay it back.”

He smiled in a way obviously to reassure. “What’s your hurry, my dear girl?” Soft, as were the words, they yet caused the design to fail.

Their non-effect was clearly visible in the girl’s tragic eyes. She was caught in a trap; all his trimmings and posturings seemed only to emphasize the fact that she had no means of getting out.

Like a powerful drug the brutal truth attacked her brain. It was as if its higher nerve centres could no longer act. She was completely in the power of this man. And only too well did she know that he knew it.

Inevitably as fate, those slim fingers dipped towards the side of her chair. “What have we here?” The inflexion was lightly playful, yet it drove all the blood from her heart. “May I look?” His hand closed on the parcel before she could muster one futile finger to stay it.

Galvanized, as if by electricity, she sprang up from her chair without knowing what she did. “Please--it’s mine!” Without conscious volition she tried weakly to defend her property.

He put her off with the cheery playfulness of a teasing brother. “Just one little peep,” he said. The treasure was yielding its wrappings already to those deft fingers. Smiling all the time, he treated the thing as a mere joke. And he was able to give the joke full effect, because, not for an instant did he expect it to turn out anything else.

XXXIX

ADOLPH KELLER gave a low whistle. He took in his breath quickly. The treasure, in its rare incredible beauty, had declared itself to his eyes. And to the eyes of an artist, wholly unready for the revelation, it came in a single devastating flash.

“My God!” he said, in a whisper, half rapture, half surprise.

Aglow with excitement he removed the shade from the electric lamp. Holding the picture beneath the light, an arm’s length away from his eyes, he turned it over several times in that fashion of the expert which June had now learned to dread. And then humming softly, and with his fingers still enclosing it, he passed beyond the screen to a table on which lay a microscope.

With a feeling of nausea, June watched everything he did. Only too well she knew that the microscope would simply feed his excitement. In a fresh spasm of weakness, she reeled against the chimneypiece. She had now the sensation of having fallen over a precipice into a bottomless pit. Already she was sinking down, down, down into night and damnation.

Keller soon returned, microscope in hand; and while he plied it under the lamp she dare not glance at his face. Passively she waited for his next words. The power of action had left her.

When, at last, he did speak, his voice was calmer and gentler than she looked for. “Tell me,” he said, “how did you come by this rather jolly old thing?”

The tone of playfulness was almost silly. But she was not deceived, for striking through it was the oiliness of Uncle Si. And she knew that she had only to glance at that face shining pale under the lamp, which was a thing she dare not do, to carry the resemblance farther.

“Tell me,” he repeated softly.

A sense of destiny seemed to weigh her down.

“It has been given to me.” Her voice was hardly audible.

“Given to you.” He smiled a little, as his mind went off in search of the half forgotten fragments of their talk two days ago. “Let me see--your best boy, wasn’t it?--who made you a present of a picture--by a well known R. A.?”

June did not know how to answer, yet she was able to realize that an answer of some kind was imperative.

“That’s it,” she said. There was nothing else she could say.

“I rather like this thing, do you know.” His voice was acquiring a sort of growing brightness which seemed quite to admit her to his confidence. “It might almost have been painted by the snuffy old Scotsman--one MacFarlane by name--who first shewed me how to draw. It’s just in his manner. By Jove!”--The voice of Adolph Keller seemed to glow with humour--“I can almost see that cantankerous whiskyfied old fool daubing that water and those trees. But in his day not a bad painter, you know, not a bad painter.” And the voice of the pupil tailed off in a note of reluctant affection of which he seemed half ashamed.

It was June’s turn to say something, but her frozen lips could not utter.

Keller, holding the picture in both hands, gave her a side look, which he tried, as far as he could, to conceal. In the midst of this scrutiny, he said: “To you, I expect, one picture is very much the same as another?”

“I know what I like,” June was able to answer, perhaps for no better reason than that by now she understood only too well that it hardly mattered what she answered.

“Well, anyhow, that’s something,” said Keller, with a forced laugh. “Great thing to know your mind in these little matters. Nice of your best boy--was your best boy, wasn’t it?--to give you this. Not that it’s worth much to the ordinary buyer. Pictures are like lovers, you know. Their beauty, sometimes, is in the eye of the beholder.”

It sickened her to hear him lie in this way. The deadly sensation of falling, falling, falling came over her again. But she let him run on. For one thing she lacked the power to check him; and even had the power been hers it would have been worse than futile to try to do so.

XL

“LOOK here,” said Adolph Keller, in the midst of his prattle. “I’ve taken rather a fancy to this bit of a thing. Suppose you let me have it. I’ll give you a landscape in exchange; I’ve one or two that are not so bad, and you shall have your pick. Moreover,” and he fixed June with a steady eye, “you shall have your sovereign as well.”

She shook her head tensely. Inclination now wished to tell him the fabulous worth of the picture; but prudence said no. The calculated way in which he had lied was proof enough that he knew its value already. She held out her hand. In a voice dry and choking she said: “Please give it to me. I ought to be going.”

He gazed at her with the eye of a condor. “Much better take what you can get for it, hadn’t you? It’ll be a difficult thing to sell, you know. This is quite a fair offer.”

“Give it me, please,” June gasped miserably.

“Don’t be a little fool.”

The tone was like the closing of a door. She knew at once that he had not the remotest intention of giving it back to her. And what followed immediately upon the words made the fact only too clear. He laid the picture on a table some little distance away, and then pouring out a quantity of spirit he drank it neat. His next act was to produce a case from which he took forth a pound note.

“Here you are,” he said roughly. “Take this and be jolly thankful. And then make yourself scarce, as soon as you like.”

It was an intimation that there was going to be no more pretence. The tone was that of a cynical bully who judged it to be best for both parties that the owner of the Van Roon should now be given an unmistakable perception of reality.

Overdriven as June was, the knowledge that at the very last she was to be robbed of the fruits of her hard-won victory was more than she could bear. Faced by this man’s cool insolence and mean cunning, she was swept by a tide of rage. He knew that she could have no proof of ownership, and he was going to reap a full advantage from the fact. At that moment, of an unendurable bitterness, she was spurred and lashed by the same Devil which two hours ago had driven Uncle Si to frenzy.

“The picture’s mine,” she cried hoarsely. And then, advancing towards the table. “Give it me ... you thief!”

At the ugly word he recoiled a step, but the next instant he grabbed her by the wrists. In the struggle to get free, she felt his evil breath upon her face. Many a dram must have gone to so much foulness; as his powerful grip slowly fastened upon her there came swift knowledge of a new and more urgent peril.

* * * * *

She was alone with this man in his own flat. Utterly without a means of defence as she was, she had been mad enough to offer him a physical challenge. In a few seconds she would be at his mercy. And then, inflamed by drink, and being the kind of beast that he was he would insist upon the spoils of the victor.

Before she was fully alive to what was taking place she found herself forced slowly backwards to the wall. She knew then that she was fighting for her life, and for that which in this unspeakable moment implied so much more.

“I’ll teach you to come here, you----!” His face was that of a maniac.

She gave a shriek of terror and lashed out wildly at his shins. Fighting like a tigress, at first she kept him at bay. The power of his hands was terrific, but she did not scruple to use the weapons nature had given her. After a long and horrible minute of claws, teeth and feet, in the course of which she bit him savagely, it grew reasonably clear to Adolph Keller that if only she cares to use it, the female of the species does not lack a means of defence.

“You beauty!” he gasped, as he struggled to shift his grip upon her.

Goaded by the furies he found his way at last to her throat. And then she felt that he was going to kill her. Moreover, as his madman’s grip began slowly to distil her life through its fingers, he perceived how simple a matter it was going to be.

XLI

KELLER’S own defences were almost down, but just in the nick of time was he able to realize this fact. And man of calculation that he was, even in this moment of madness, when each devil in his soul conspired for his final overthrow, he was able, by dint of underlying coolness of blood to make a powerful effort to save himself.

He longed to kill this wretched girl, but as he pressed his fingers into the soft and delicate throat, he was stayed by thoughts of the price that would have to be paid for wreaking an insane passion upon her.

For a wild instant he feared that the premonition had come too late; the primordial beast in his heart had slipped its chain. Already it had tasted blood. In this frenzy of revolt, the fetters imposed by centuries of civil life were hardly likely to be submitted to again.

Gasping and helpless June felt that she was dying. The clutch upon her was that of the garotte. Her eyes began to darken. Clawing the air for the breath she could not draw, the end that seemed inevitable now was yet far off.

At last, as if responding to her prayer, a kind of stupor came upon her. But how tardily! Brain, heart, soul, body contended no more against a power beyond their own; at last her slow life was ebbing. The end of torment indescribable would be akin to joy.

Æons seemed to pass. A flicker of summer lightning, ages off, came and was not. So faint it was and so far that it could only be reckoned in terms of eternity. More light flickered which, of a sudden, grew miraculously near. The vivid sense of pain returned; she grew alive to the fact that the harsh glare of the electric bulb, which was still unshaded, was beating down upon her eyes.

Powerful arms were about her, she was being supported. The fumes of raw spirit were in her nostrils, a glass was pressed against her lips. She fought again to get free, only feebly now, for this was but a last reaction of a dying will. Yet the final word of all was nature’s. When mind itself had ceased to count, the life-force grasped wildly at the proffered means of life.

“Thank God!” she heard a thick voice mutter. “I felt sure you were a goner.”