Part 13

The taxi twisted through the gates, round the little drive, and to the great door. An odd feeling it was, to stand again in front of that door after nine years--but now we faced a house black and still where once had been a house of shining windows, gay with music and the laughter of the most brilliant company in London. Oh, the Georgians, the magnificent young Georgians--mostly dead!

We told the driver to wait, and followed Antony in. We stood still in the pitch-black hall until he should switch on the light, and in the blaze of light in which the cloaked figure faced us I instantly understood what Tarlyon had meant when he said that Antony had “changed.” I can only describe the change by saying that the structure of his face seemed to have fallen into disrepair; its brick-red complexion of old had dwindled to a faint pink, so that one had an idea that any ordinary face would have been a ghastly white; and he looked worn with more than the usual wear of passing years. But the wild eyes were still wild, and uncommonly fine he looked as he faced us in the sombre hall, the huge dandy in the black cloak with the head of flaming hair brushed immaculately back.

He smiled at us with that sudden charm for which women had forgiven him much--too much; he flung out an arm in the grand manner.

“Welcome to the old house,” he said. “And for heaven’s sake try to look as though you didn’t miss Roger.”

But the magic of Roger Poole was not, I thought, in the place; the house was now but a shell for a noisy man.

III

“Champagne is indicated,” said Antony; and that indication led us to the dining-room--a long, oak-panelled room at the back of the house. The curtains were not drawn across the two French windows, which gave out to a lawn sloping carelessly down to the water of Regent’s Park; and in the second in which Antony fumbled for the electric switch the dark shapes of the trees looked like the van of an impenetrable forest. But dark shapes of trees always look more or less like that.

“Didn’t you say something about an appointment?” Tarlyon asked vaguely, as Antony ravished the wire off a bottle.

“Did I?” He looked up at us from his business, very thoughtfully. “Oh, did I?”

“Pop!” said the champagne cork.

We drank, and Antony looked at his wrist-watch.

“Damn!” he said. “It’s stopped.”

“The time being just 11.25,” I helped him.

“Thanks,” said Antony, very mild, very thoughtful. “Excuse me a moment, will you?” And he strode across the room to the folding doors which led to Roger’s old library and card-room. He closed the door behind him, but it did not catch, swung open a few inches. No light filled the dark vertical space.

“Never known him so polite before,” I muttered.

“He’s absent-minded,” said Tarlyon, looking thoughtfully at the dark space.

“What I want to know,” he whispered, “is what he’s doing in there in the dark?”

“Keeping his appointment,” I suggested facetiously.

Tarlyon looked from the door to me.

“Poor devil!” he said softly. I thought he was pitying me for my wit, of which I was never very proud.

He put down his empty glass, dug his hands into his pockets, and lounged to the folding-doors. I never knew a man who could walk so casually as Tarlyon; you never expected him to get anywhere, but he always got there before you expected him to.

He kicked the slightly open door a little wider with the tip of his shoe. I was just behind his shoulder.

“Antony!” he called softly.

From the light in which we stood the library was a pit of darkness. Nothing moved in the pit. There was no sound.

“He’s not there,” I whispered; and I wondered why I whispered.

“Can you smell anything?” a hoarse voice suddenly asked from the darkness.

Tarlyon lounged into the black room. But somehow, I did not feel called upon to follow. I leant against the door.

Deeply set in the darkness I could at last make out the faintly white patch which must be Antony’s shirt-front; and I wondered what tomfoolery he was up to now, asking stupid questions in a startling voice out of a poisonously dark room. I could smell nothing at all, and didn’t expect to.

“What kind of a smell?” Tarlyon asked--in a reasonable tone! He stood just within the door, his back to me.

“Can you smell _nothing_ at all?” the hoarse, subdued voice asked again. “But, of course, it’s very faint now.”

Tarlyon put up his nose and sniffed. I sniffed. More than faint it was, I thought.

“Been smoking?” Tarlyon asked, and he sniffed again.

“No,” came a whisper.

“Oh,” said Tarlyon. This was lunatic talk, and I was just about to say so when Antony asked sharply:

“Why did you ask?”

“I thought I smelt smoke,” said Tarlyon. “Might be cigarette smoke.”

“It is,” I snapped, for I was smoking a Turkish cigarette just behind his ear.

“You blasted fool!” said Antony--and with such contempt behind it that from being bored I got annoyed. I stretched out my hand on the inside of the library door and switched on the light.

“Turn that out, you fool!” came a frantic roar, and I had a vision of a red giant murdering the distance between us. I’ve never thanked God for anything so much as for having directed the body of George Tarlyon to be standing between Red Antony and myself. I turned off the light quick enough.

“Steady, Antony, steady!” said Tarlyon.

“Oh, go to hell!” growled Antony.

I thought to myself that we couldn’t be very far from it at the moment. But the spell, or smell, it seemed, was broken. I was thankful for that, anyway.

Back in the lighted dining-room Antony emptied his glass and grinned at me rather shamefacedly.

“Sorry, old boy,” he said. I grinned back, as though I had enjoyed it.

Tarlyon asked suddenly:

“Have you got a spare bedroom for me, Antony?”

I stared, Antony stared. Then Antony smiled, and never before had I seen him smile quite like that.

“Thank you, George,” he said, almost softly. “Now that’s really a friendly action. But I’ll be all right--you needn’t worry.”

Then he addressed me as well; I had never seen Antony so reasonable.

“Come to dinner here to-morrow night,” he begged. “Both of you. I can give you quite a good dinner.” He seemed very earnest, looking from one to the other of us. I was going to say I was engaged, but Tarlyon answered quickly:

“Right, Antony.” And because he looked at me in a certain way, I let it be.

IV

In the taxi, at last, Tarlyon said:

“Ralph, you risked your life by turning on that light, but you did a great service.”

“What do you mean?”

“Didn’t you see anything?”

I then lost my temper.

“No,” I shouted. “I neither smelt anything in the dark nor saw anything in the light, except that red lunatic charging at me.”

“He was only preserving his illusion,” Tarlyon said mildly. “Didn’t you see, in that second of light, the open desk just by us, beside the door?”

“I saw nothing but Antony, but quite enough of him.”

“Pity. If you had seen the desk, you would have seen a telephone overturned on it, the receiver hanging down, and a revolver on the floor.”

This was getting serious. I struck a match and examined Tarlyon’s face. He was not smiling.

“Fact,” he assured me. “You would have seen the desk just as it was after Roger Poole had shot himself at it.”

“You don’t mean----”

“I mean, old boy, that Antony has gone and put everything back exactly as he last saw it in Roger’s library. Roger, Roger’s wife, Antony and another fellow were in the dining-room. The telephone-bell rang in the library and Roger went to answer it, telling Antony to come with him. He didn’t turn on the light in the library. The telephone told Roger that the police were after him. And the two in the dining-room heard Roger telling Antony what he thought of him as a man and brother, then they heard a shot; and when they got to the door and switched on the light, they saw Roger dead at the desk and Antony standing where he was standing to-night. Antony went out by the window into the garden--and he has reconstructed the scene exactly as he last saw it, even to a dummy telephone and a revolver! In fact, everything is there except Roger. Silly, isn’t it?”

Silly was not the word. “But why, why?”

“That’s what I want to find out,” said Tarlyon. “Antony is playing some sort of a game with himself, and he’s frightening himself to death in doing it. He always was a superstitious ass. Giants usually are, somehow--perhaps because, having nothing physical to fear, they fear the psychic. I’ll bet he goes into that library every night at the same time--Roger shot himself at about twenty-five past eleven, by the way. Poor old Antony!”

“But what was all that nonsense about the smell?” I asked.

Tarlyon did not answer. At last he said:

“Did you ever hear, Ralph, the theory that if Judas Iscariot had not come after Jesus he might have done all that Jesus did? But as he found he could not because he was too late, he was doomed to crime. In a sort of far-fetched way it was the same way with Roger and Antony. The tragedy of those two brothers has something absurdly, fantastically reasonable about it. You see, Roger was a year older and did all that Antony wanted to do, the fine and brilliant things, while poor Antony could do nothing but make a fool of himself, which he did only too well. Antony would have been a man of many accomplishments, for he’s no fool, but for the fact that Roger was before him--so Antony thought. And Roger loved Antony, while Antony hated and admired and feared Roger. And at last, somehow or another, he managed to betray Roger. No one knows what that last moment held for those two--no one knows what lay behind the insults that Roger heaped on Antony at that final moment. For they were overheard, you know, by Roger’s wife and the man who was dining there. But something seems to have stuck in Antony’s mind and grown very big with years. I’m rather concerned for the poor devil, Ralph. He’s still afraid of his elder brother. Or perhaps he feels that Roger left something unsaid which he must hear, and so he wants to re-create him.”

It was as the taxi stopped at my door that Tarlyon cried out as though he had made a discovery: “Good God, of course!”

“Of course what?”

“Smoke, you fool! It _was_ smoke!”

V

What was our surprise, on entering the dining-room some minutes after nine o’clock the next evening--for Antony dined late--to see the table laid for four! And then a lady came in--a tall, dark young lady, a strange and unusual lady with a flash of very white teeth for a smile and a gardenia alight on the wing of her sleek black hair! I am afraid Tarlyon and I must have seemed very rude, for we were so surprised that we stared. The white teeth flashed at us. We bowed.

“My wife,” said Antony. We bowed again. She was the sort of woman one bowed to. Antony’s wife!

“Diavalen,” said Antony abruptly, “this is Lord Tarlyon and Mr. Trevor.”

Diavalen--Lady Poole!--said nothing. With that wonderful trick of flashing those wonderful teeth she didn’t need to say anything.

“She’s a Creole,” said Antony, as we sat at the table. He said it as he might have said that she was an orange. Those white teeth flashed at me, and I smiled back, feeling an ass. There didn’t seem much to say about her being a Creole....

I don’t know how Tarlyon felt about it, but it took me some time to get my wind. “My wife,” says Antony! Never a word nor a sign about being married--to that glorious, dark, alien creature with the flashing teeth and sleek black hair! Diavalen the Creole! Just like Red Antony to marry a Creole called Diavalen and then spring her on to you with a “my wife.” I remembered Antony once saying, years and years ago: “Never give away gratuitous information, old boy.” But there are limits. And one of them is to have a wife with flashing teeth, a gardenia in her hair, and a name like Diavalen, and then throw her in with the soup.

Red Antony was never what you might call a good host: not, particularly, at the beginning of dinner. To-night he was morose. But Tarlyon talked--to Lady Poole. It would take more than a lovely Creole to baffle Tarlyon. He seemed to have inside information as to what were the subjects best calculated to excite interest in a Creole married to a morose English baronet with ginger hair. Diavalen did not talk. But one did not realise that she wasn’t talking, for she was wonderfully expressive with her smiling, flashing, teeth. She seemed to have discovered the art of using teeth for something besides eating.

As Tarlyon talked to her she turned her face towards him, and of this I took advantage to stare at her face bit by bit. The perfection of that face was a challenge to a right-thinking man. “It is too small,” I thought. But it was not too small. “It is too white,” I thought. But it was not too white. For quite a long time I could not wrench my eyes away from those flashing teeth and scarlet curling lips--they fascinated me. Her face was white, the gardenia in her hair looked almost yellow beside the whiteness of Diavalen’s face; and I thought to myself that that white complexion was a considerable achievement, for I was sure her skin underneath was faintly, deliciously brown. It was a small face. It was a decoration, enchanting and unreal. And in the decoration were painted in luminous paint two large black eyes; the eyelashes swept over them, often she half closed them--they were very lazy black eyes; and deep in them there was a sheen, as of a reflection of distant fire. I did not like the lady’s eyes very much, I don’t know why. But as to that sleek black hair in which lay a gardenia like a light in silken darkness--you felt that you simply must run your hand over that hair to see if it was as beautifully sleek and silky as it looked, and you wouldn’t have minded betting that it was. She was the most strangely lovely woman I have ever seen. And she was the most silent.

Even Tarlyon was at last baffled by the silence of Diavalen. A silence fell. The teeth flashed at me, and I was just about to say something to her when Antony’s voice hit the drum of my ear and I dropped my fork.

“I shouldn’t trouble,” said Antony. “She’s dumb.”

That is why I dropped my fork. The servant picked it up and gave me another. I made a considerable business of it, and then I ate furiously. Red Antony, vile Antony! I didn’t look at Tarlyon. He was furious, I knew. He was a man who did not take a very liberal view of jokes like that. But the worst of Antony was that he didn’t care what view any one took; he just said the first thing that came into his great red head.

If the dinner, which was excellent as to food and wine, had been a frost before, it was, naturally, not a howling success after that. The only thing to do was to pretend that Antony had not spoken. It seemed too silly to say to the lovely Creole: “Oh, I’m _so_ sorry!” Poor Diavalen! But I couldn’t pretend, I simply could not find anything to say which didn’t need an answer. Just try being suddenly planted with a dumb woman and see if conversation flows naturally from you.

Tarlyon and Antony talked about English heavyweight boxers. Antony was himself a super-heavyweight and seemed to have a poor opinion of English heavyweights. He wanted to know whether their weight was calculated by the noise they made on being smitten to the ground in the first round. He said that he was tired of opening a newspaper only to read of the domestic history of Famous British Boxers and of seeing photographs of the wives, mothers and children of Famous British Boxers. He said that the whole idea of the press was to impress on the public how gentle, amiable and loving Famous British Boxers were in the home. He pointed out that the whole trouble lay in the fact that Famous British Boxers were too damned gentle, amiable, and loving in the ring. In fact, Antony, having put the lid on his wife, had woken up.

Then, at last, Diavalen rose, and we rose. I rushed to the door and held it open. Her teeth flashed at Tarlyon, and he bowed like a courtier. As she passed Antony, he said, “Good night, Diavalen,” but he said it as though he didn’t care whether her night was good or bad. As she passed Antony she gave him a look out of her large, black eyes. I was glad I did not know what that look said, but I was sure that Antony deserved it. “Good-night, Lady Poole,” I said; teeth flashed at me, a touch of pleasant scent hovered faintly, and Diavalen was gone.

“Heavens, she’s lovely!” I whispered, as I joined them at the table.

Tarlyon’s fingers played with the stem of his port-glass.

“Would you mind explaining, Antony,” he asked dangerously, “why you chose that infamous way of telling us that your wife was--well, not quite like the rest of us?” There was, I agreed, something blasphemous about the ghastly word “dumb” in relation to that lovely creature.

Red Antony leant back in his chair and dug his hands deep in his pockets, so that his white shirt-front stuck out like the breast-plate of a warrior. He looked bored.

“Favourite trick of hers,” he explained morosely. “Always tries to act as though she wasn’t dumb. If you had to live with that silly pretence it would get on your nerves, I can tell you. She does it very well, I admit. Takes a pride in it--making a fool of other people, I call it. On board ship from New York she put it over quite a number of people for a day or two. Lord, it would have got on any one’s nerves, the way she grinned and grinned and showed her teeth! Why not be honest and say one’s dumb and be done with it? Or let me say it! There’s no crime in being dumb, especially with a beautiful face like that. But she won’t see it, she must smile and flash her teeth--she’s got a repertoire of grins that would astonish a movie star; and she’s so proud of them that even if she could speak she wouldn’t. And sometimes all that grinning and toothwork gets me so raw that I could put back my head and howl--and she knows it. Sorry I offended you, George. But I’m nervy these days. I’m raw--_raw_!” He shouted that last word at us with a thump on the table; and raw he looked, with the eyes blazing out of him, and his once huge, once red, once jolly face shrunk to a mockery of itself, with the skin drawn tight across his jaws and hollow in the cheeks.

Tarlyon picked up a liqueur-glass which the thump had upset. “Sorry about your unhappy marriage, Antony,” he said, “but, you know, it takes a Napoleon to marry a beautiful Creole. How did it happen?”

“How?” And Antony laughed; at least he made a noise which was perhaps intended to sound like laughter. “How? Because she made it happen--how else? D’you think because she’s dumb that she hasn’t got more fascination than a thousand women rolled together? Those eyes? Met eyes like that before, George? If hell has a face its eyes will be like that. I _had_ to marry her.... In Mexico where I went after the Armistice. I suppose you fellows remember that I went to Mexico three years before the war. I was in love with the girl who became Roger’s wife--inevitable, wasn’t it, that the only woman I ever loved should fall to Roger? He didn’t do it on purpose, of course--it just happened. So I went to Mexico, to try to do something which Roger could not do before me. Last chance kind of thing, you know----” The rain of words faded out of him. He had moved considerably from the subject of Diavalen, but who could hold a haunted face like that to a subject? I wished I could, for I didn’t want him to run amok about Roger. There was something--well, indecent, in talking about a man dead nine years or more as though he were alive and still wanting to “put it across” Antony at every turn. I wished Tarlyon would say something, but he was silent, his fingers fiddling with the stem of his port-glass. Antony was drinking next to nothing; round about his coffee-cup were at least six quarter-smoked cigarettes, and now he began to maul a cigar. I never saw him smoke that cigar.

“In Mexico,” Antony said softly, “I found oil. It was very good oil, as Roger said later, but there wasn’t much of it. My luck again! But I made Roger share it this time. You remember how I reappeared in England? Through that window over there, while Roger was giving a big dinner-party, sitting where I’m sitting now. You were here, George. Roger and I made it up before the lot of you--after a silence of years. Entirely on my side, the quarrel--Roger always loved me. We made it up, you remember, George? I wanted, you see, to plant Roger with that oil. Cascan Oil--it sounded like a big thing at the time. That was the last big dinner-party Roger ever gave. He was unhappy at home--some love misunderstanding--and he took to me, Roger did. He went head over heels into that bucket-shop. Of course he soon saw through me and my oil--the man wasn’t born who could take Roger in--but he let the company go on. He wanted to see how far _I’d_ go. Giving me my head, you know. He had packets of money in reserve, and thought he could put the thing right any moment. But he got reckless--watching me and wondering how far I’d go. Roger had always loved me ever since we were children--he never thought of me but as a naughty baby with a bee in my red head about him. I could see all the time he was wondering how far I _dared_ go. And he was unhappy at home, poor Roger; he and his wife somehow couldn’t get their particular ways of loving each other to work well together. So he had nothing to do but get reckless and chuckle over the naughty baby. I went the limit. The bucket-shop crashed on Roger’s head. He tried to pull up, chucked his money in, and other people’s, but it wouldn’t save it. Clear case of dirty work. A greasy bubble, Cascan Oil. Left a nasty mess when it burst. And all the papers signed in Roger’s name. Telephone rang in the next room while we were in here. I was sitting where you are, Trevor. Roger looks at me with a kind of crooked smile. ‘Come with me,’ he says, and I went. Into that room, the library. Roger didn’t trouble to switch on the light; the telephone was on the desk beside the door. The police were after him, said the man on the telephone--the police after Sir Roger Poole, Bart, M.P., and all the rest of it! ‘Listen,’ says Roger. And I listened while he told me a few things about myself. ‘A poor husk of a man,’ he called me. ‘A graveyard of a brother you are,’ he said. ‘And the epitaph on your grave will be _Dolor Ira_,’ he said, for Roger was a great Latin scholar and could lash out bits of Tacitus as easily as a parson might give you the Bible. I thought he was going to shoot me, I was ready for it--but he’d shot himself. Roger loved me, you know----”

“Then why the hell,” Tarlyon blazed out, “did you take this cursed house?”

Antony mauled his cigar.

“Because,” he said with a grin, “it just happened that way. It was fate to find it empty--a fine, large house like this at a low rent while all England was yelling for houses. But I might not have taken it if Diavalen had been against it----”

“Oh,” said Tarlyon to that.

Antony looked at his wrist-watch, and jumped up in a mighty hurry. “God, the time’s gone! Excuse me a moment.”

“We will not!” cried Tarlyon, and had his back against the library door almost before you saw him leave the table.

But Antony walked his way to the library door without a word.

“Don’t, old Antony, don’t!” Tarlyon begged.

“Out of my way!” said Antony. He said it as though he was thinking of something else, which was Antony’s most dangerous way of saying anything.

Now Red Antony was a giant, and irresponsible at that. The two of us couldn’t have held him from that library door. Tarlyon let him pass with a wicked word, and has regretted it ever since. Antony slammed the door behind him, and we heard the twist of the key.