The Crime and the Criminal Part 30

"I owe you five and thirty thousand pounds already."

"Look here, Archie, I don't want to make myself disagreeable, as you believe, but when you like you can be about as much of an idiot as they make them. Your proceedings last night would have been more appropriate at a symposium in the county asylum. As to what you say you owe me, we'll postpone the settling day, with your permission, to when your s.h.i.+p comes home."

"The arrangement was that all paper was to be taken up within a week."

"Rubbish. You and I know what those sort of arrangements are worth."

"Are you suggesting that I'm a thief?"

"I'm doing nothing of the sort. I'm a.s.serting that you're a fool."

"Reggie!"

"Archie?"

He glared at me so that, for a moment, I thought that he was going to give further proof of the truth of my words upon the spot. But he changed his mind. He dropped on to a chair with a sort of gasp.

"What you say is correct enough. I have no right to cavil. I thank you for the word." He sat silent. Then he added, "But it's not only you I owe, I owe Pendarvon."

"If you take my advice, you'll pay Pendarvon."

"It's not advice I want; it's money. I owe the man, in round numbers, four thousand five hundred pounds. I don't know where to turn to raise four hundred."

"My dear Archie, you must excuse my saying, that's your affair. You would punt--although he gave you warning. The man lost heavily himself.

This morning he's sent me round a cheque to settle."

"He has, has he? He is an honest man. My G.o.d! what it is to have money!"

"That's nonsense. If you were made of money you would not be justified in playing as you played last night."

"That's right. Give it me. I deserve it all. I wonder what my father will think when he finds out, once more, what sort of son I am."

"He'll think of the days of his own youth. When they are confronted with similar revelations, all our fathers do."

"I doubt it. I don't think my father was ever such as I am. Certainly, he never bound himself to commit murder within a month. I suppose that you have not forgotten that the Honour of the Club is in my keeping."

I had not. I had very clearly understood that it was that fact which had caused him to make the spectacle of himself which he had done. I stood contemplating the fire, twisting Mrs. Carruth's note between my fingers. He repeated his own words bitterly--"The Honour of the Club."

"It's a pretty club."

"My faith it is!"

"Your only bantling."

"Don't say that. It's Pendarvon's. You know it is. It's the biggest part of the debt I owe him. When I think of it, I feel like killing him."

"Why don't you?"

"It's against the rules. You stood by the rules, and so will I."

"Who are you going to kill?"

"For one thing, I shall kill my father. It will be as good as his death-blow when he hears of the sort of thing I am."

"That sort of murder won't come within the scope of the definition. If it did, possibly seven men out of ten would be ent.i.tled to the diploma of the club. Archie, I'll make you a proposition. I'll give you the money to pay Pendarvon, and I'll cry quits for what you owe me, if you'll agree, since you must kill some one, to kill any person I may nominate."

"Reggie!--what devil's game are you up to now?"

"At present, none. At this moment I have not the faintest reason to wish myself rid of any living creature. But before the end of the month the situation may be altered. Is it a deal?"

He hesitated; rose, and began to walk about the room. I watched him as he did so. I noticed how he clasped and unclasped his hands. He turned to me.

"I agree."

I sat down, then and there, and wrote him an open cheque for five thousand pounds.

"The balance will enable you to rub along for a time. If you take my tip, you'll let Pendarvon have his coin at once--before leaving town."

He took the cheque. Scanning the figures, he began to fold it up with nervous fingers. A smile--of a kind--wrinkled his lips.

"What things we may become! If ever there was blood money, this is it.

And I'm a Beaupre. And do you know, Townsend, that for ever so long I've been dreaming dreams." He looked up at me, with a sudden flas.h.i.+ng of his eyes. "Dreams of Dora Jardine."

I turned again to the fire--smiling in my turn.

"You told me so before."

"But I never told you what sort of dreams I had been dreaming. I never told you how she fills all my veins till, in all the world, I see nothing, think of nothing else, but her. I never told you how she is with me by day and by night, sleeping and waking; that, wherever I am, and whatever I do, I am always repeating to myself her name. I never told you that the dreams which I have dreamed of her have driven me mad. I never told you that."

"With all due respect to you, I should hardly have believed you if you had."

"Why? Because I am the thing I am? There's the pity of it! I have been so conscious of my unworthiness, so conscious that I never could be worthy, that, constrained by some madness which I verily believe is in my blood, I have become more unworthy still." He came closer to me. His voice dropped to a sort of breathless whisper. "And yet, Reggie, do you know, I believe that, in spite of all, she cares for me."

"I think not."

He became, all at once, almost ferocious.

"You think not! What right have you to think? How can you tell what grounds I may have for my belief?"

I turned to him. I had purposely kept my back towards him while he had been indulging in his hysterical ravings. Now I was surprised and amused to see what a change his hysterics had produced. His cheeks were flushed. His eyes were flaming. He seemed to have increased in stature.

He seemed to have lost all traces of the hang-dog air with which he had entered the room.

"I ought, Archie, to have stopped you. If I remember rightly I did stop you on a previous occasion. I have, I a.s.sure you, good cause for thinking that your belief is an erroneous one; that cause is, that I have reason to believe that she cares for me."

"For you--Reggie!"

"I will be frank with you. With her father's express approval I am going down to c.o.c.kington to-day in the character of Miss Jardine's suitor."