Running Water Part 32

"When did you notice that?" asked Chayne, quickly. "When did you first notice it?"

Sylvia reflected for a moment.

"The day after you had gone."

"Are you sure?" asked Chayne, with a certain intensity.

"Quite."

Chayne nodded his head.

"I did not understand the reason of the hurry. And I was perplexed--and also a little alarmed. Everything which I did not understand frightened me in those days." She spoke as if "those days" and all their dark events belonged to some dim period of which no consequence could reach her now.

"Our departure had almost the look of a flight."

"Yes," said Chayne. For his part he was not surprised at their flight. He had pa.s.sed more than one wakeful night during the last few months arguing and arguing again whether or no he should have disclosed to Sylvia the meaning of that softly opening door and the shadow on the ceiling as he read it. He might have been wrong; if so, he would have added to Sylvia's burden of troubles yet another, and one more terrible than all the rest.

He might have been right; and if so, he might have enabled Sylvia to avert a tragedy. Thus the argument had revolved in a circle and left him always in the same doubt. Now he understood that his explanation of the incident had been confirmed. The loud whistle from the darkness of the road, the yokel's cry, which had driven Garratt Skinner from the room, as noiselessly as he had entered it, had done more than that--they had driven him from the neighborhood altogether. Some one had seen him--had seen him standing just behind Walter Hine in the lighted room--and on the next day he had fled!

"I was right," he said, absently, "right to keep silent." For here was Sylvia at his side and the dreaded peril unfulfilled. "Well, you returned to London?" he added, hastily.

"Yes. There is something of which I did not tell you, that night when we were together on the downs. Walter Hine had begun to take cocaine."

Chayne started.

"Cocaine!" he cried.

"Yes. My father taught him to take it."

"Your father," said Chayne, slowly, trying to fit this new and astounding fact in with the rest. "But why?"

"I think I can tell you," said Sylvia. "My father knew quite well that he had me working against him, trying to rescue Walter Hine out of his hands. And I was beginning to get some power. He understood that, and destroyed it. I was no match for him. I thought that I knew something of the under side of life. But he knew more, ever so much more, and my knowledge was of no avail. He taught Walter Hine the craving for cocaine, and he satisfied the craving--there was his power. He provided the drug.

I do not know--I might perhaps have fought against my father and won. But against my father and a drug I was helpless. My father obtained it in sufficient quant.i.ty, withheld it at times, gave it at other times, played with him, tantalized him, gratified him. You can understand there was only one possible result. Walter Hine became my father's slave, his dog.

I no longer counted in his thoughts at all. I was nothing."

"Yes," said Chayne.

The device was subtle, diabolically subtle. But he wondered whether it was only to counterbalance and destroy Sylvia's influence that Garratt Skinner had introduced cocaine to Hine's notice; whether he had not had in view some other end, even still more sinister.

"I saw very little of Mr. Hine after our return to London," she continued. "He did not come often to the house, but when he did come, each time I saw that he had changed. He had grown nervous and violent of temper. Even before we left Dorsets.h.i.+re the violence had become noticeable."

"Oh!" said Chayne, looking quickly at Sylvia. "Before you left Dorsets.h.i.+re?"

"Yes; and my father seemed to me to provoke it, though I could not guess why. For instance--"

"Yes?" said Chayne. "Tell me!"

He spoke quietly enough, but once again there was audible a certain intensity in his voice. There had been an occasion when Sylvia had given to him more news of Garratt Skinner than she had herself. Was she to do so once more? He leaned forward with his eyes on hers.

"The night when you came back to me. Do you remember, Hilary?" and a smile lightened his face.

"I shall forget no moment of that night, sweetheart, while I live," he whispered; and blushes swept prettily over her face, and in a sweet confusion she smiled back at him.

"Oh, Hilary!" she said.

"Oh, Sylvia!" he mimicked; and as they laughed together, it seemed there was a danger that the story of the months of separation would never be completed. But Chayne brought her back to it.

"Well? On that night when I came back?"

"I saw you in the road from my window, and then motioning you to be silent, I disappeared from the window."

"Yes, I remember," said Chayne, eagerly. He began to think that the cocaine was after all going to fit in with the incidents of that night.

"Walter Hine and my father were going up to bed. I heard them on the stairs. They were going earlier than usual."

"You are sure?" interrupted Chayne. "Think well!"

"Much earlier than usual, and they were quarreling. At least, Walter Hine was quarreling; and my father was speaking to him as if he were a child.

That hurt his vanity and made him worse."

"Your father was provoking him?"

Sylvia's forehead puckered.

"I could not say that, and be sure of it. But I can say this. If my father had wished to provoke him to a greater anger, it's in that way that he would have done it."

"Yes. I see."

"They were speaking loudly--even my father was--more loudly than usual--especially at that time. For when they went up-stairs, they usually went very quietly"; and again Chayne interrupted her.

"Your father might have wanted you to hear the quarrel?" he suggested.

Sylvia turned to him curiously.

"Why should he wish that?" she asked, and considered the point. "He might have. Only, on the other hand, they were earlier than usual. They would not be so careful to go quietly; I was likely to be still awake."

"Exactly," said Chayne.

For in the probability that Sylvia would be still awake, would hear the violent words of Hine, and would therefore be an available witness afterward, Chayne found the reason both of the loudness of Garratt Skinner's tones and his early retirement for the night.

"Did you hear what was said? Can you repeat the words?" he asked.

"Yes. My father was keeping something from Mr. Hine which he wanted. I have no doubt it was the cocaine," and she repeated the words.

"Yes," said Chayne. "Yes," in the tone of one who is satisfied. The incident of the lighted room and the shadow on the ceiling were clear to him now. A quarrel of which there was a witness, a quarrel all to the credit of Garratt Skinner since it arose from his determination to hinder Walter Hine from poisoning himself with drugs--at least, that is how the evidence would work out; the quarrel continued in Walter Hine's bedroom, whither Garratt Skinner had accompanied his visitor, a struggle begun for the possession of the drug, begun by a man half crazy for want of it, a blow in self-defence delivered by Garratt Skinner, perhaps a fall from the window--that is how Chayne read the story of that night, as fas.h.i.+oned by the ingenuity of Garratt Skinner.

But on one point he was still perplexed. The story had not been told out to its end that night: there had come an unexpected shout, which had interrupted it, and indeed forever had prevented its completion on that spot. But why had it not been completed afterward, during the next few months, somewhere else? It had not been completed. For here was Sylvia with all her fears allayed, continuing the story of those months.

"But violence was not the only change in Walter Hine. There were some physical alterations which frightened me. Mr. Hine, as I say, came very seldom to our house, though my father saw a great deal of him. Otherwise I should have noticed them before. But early this year he came and--you remember he was fair--well, his skin had grown dark, quite dark, his complexion had changed altogether. And there was something else which shocked me. His tongue was black, really black. I asked him what was the matter? He grew restless and angry and lied to me, and then he broke down and told me he could not sleep. He slept for a few minutes only at a time. He really was ill--very ill."

Was this the explanation, Chayne asked himself? Having failed at the quick process, the process of the lighted room and the open window, had Garratt Skinner left the drug to do its work slowly and surely?