Witching Hill Part 22

"He hasn't done it yet, and I mean to know the reason if he ever does,"

said I, perhaps with rather more confidence than I really felt. I went on to outline my various notions of prevention. Uvo found no comfort in any of them.

"You can't trust him alone there for the night, after this, Gilly! He'll pull it off, Sarah or no Sarah, if you do. And if you send him either to prison or an asylum--but _you_ won't be sending him! That's just it, Gilly. He'll have been sent by me!"

It was a case of the devil quoting scripture, but I was obliged to tell Uvo, as though I had found it out for myself, that criminals and criminal lunatics were not made that way. Villain-wors.h.i.+ppers did not go to such lengths unless they had the seeds of madness or of crime already in them. Uvo could not repudiate his own thesis, but he said that if that were so he had watered those seeds in a way that made him the worst of the two. There was no arguing with him, no taking his part against this ruthless self-criticism. He owned that in Nettleton he had found a sympathetic listener at last, that he had poured the whole virus of his ideas into those willing ears, and now here was the result. He threatened to get up and dress, and to stagger into the breach with me or instead of me. No need to recount our contest on that point. I prevailed by undertaking to do any mortal thing he liked, as long as he lay where he was with that quinsy.

"Then save the fellow somehow, Gilly," he cried, "only don't you go near Nettleton to-night! He obviously isn't safe; take the other risk instead. Since the old soul's out of the house, let him set fire to it if he likes; that's better than his murdering you on the spot. Then we must get him quietly examined, without letting him know that we know anything at all; and if a private attendant's all he wants, I swear I'm his man. It's about the least I can do for him, and it would give me a job in life at last!"

I did not smile at my dear old lad. I gave him the a.s.surance his generosity required, and I meant to carry it out, subject to a plan of my own for watching Nettleton's house all night. But all my proposals suffered a proverbial fate within ten minutes, when I was about to pa.s.s the still dark house, and was suddenly confronted by Nettleton himself, leaning over the gate as though in wait for me.

And here I feel an almost apologetic sense of the inadequacy of Nettleton's personality to the part that he was playing that night; for there was nothing terrifying about him, nothing sinister or grotesque.

The outward man was flabbily restless and ineffective, distinguished from the herd by no stronger features than a goatee beard and the light, quick, instantaneously responsive eye of an uncannily intelligent child.

And no more than a child did I fear him; man to man, I could have twisted his arm out of its socket, or felled him like an ox with one blow from mine. So I thought to myself, the very moment I stopped to speak to him; and perhaps, by so thinking, recognised some subtler quality, and confessed a subtle fear.

"I was looking for my old servant," said Nettleton, after a civil greeting. "She's not come in yet."

"Oh! hasn't she?" I answered, and I liked the ring of my own voice even less than his.

"Anyhow I can't make her hear, and the old fool's left her door locked,"

said Nettleton.

"That's a bad plan," said I, not to score a silly point, but simply because I had to say something with conviction. It was a mistake.

Nettleton peered at me by the light from the nearest lamp-post.

"Have you seen anything of her?" he asked suspiciously.

"Yes!" I answered, in obedience to the same necessity of temperament.

"Well?" he cried.

"Well, she seemed nervous about something, and I believe she has gone to her own people for the night."

We stood without speaking for nearly a minute. A soft step came marching round the asphalt curve, throwing a bright beam now upon its indigo surface, and now over the fussy fronts of the red houses, as a child plays with a bit of looking-gla.s.s in the sun. "Good-night, officer,"

said Nettleton as the step and the light pa.s.sed on. And I caught myself thinking what an improvement the asphalt was in Witching Hill Road, and how we did want it in Mulcaster Park.

"We can't talk out here, and I wish to explain about this wretched rent," said Nettleton. "Come in--or are you nervous too?"

I gave the gate a push, and he had to lead the way. I should not have been so anxious to see a real child in front of me. But Nettleton turned his back with an absence of hesitation that rea.s.sured me as to his own suspicions, and indeed none were to be gleaned from his unthoughtful countenance when he had lit up his hall without waiting for me to shut the front door. At that I did shut it, and accepted his invitation to smoke a pipe in his den; for I thought I could see exactly how it was.

Nettleton, having found his candles out and his servant flown, having even guessed that I knew something and perhaps suspected more, was about to show me my mistake by taking me into the very room where the conflagration had been laid for lighting. Of course I should see no signs of it, and would presently depart at peace with a tenant whose worst crime was his unpunctuality over the rent. Nothing could suit me better. It would show that the house really was safe for the night, while it would give time for due consideration, and for any amount of conferences with Uvo Delavoye.

So I congratulated myself as I followed Nettleton into the room that had been locked; of course it was unlocked now that he was at home, but it was still in perfect darkness as I myself had left it. The shavings rustled about our ankles; but no doubt he would think there was nothing suspicious about the shavings in themselves. Yet there was one difference, perceptible at once and in the dark. There was a smell that I thought might have been there before, but unnoticed by Sarah and me in our excitement. It was a strong smell, however, and it reminded me of toy steamers and of picnic teas.

"One moment, and I'll light the gas. We're getting in each other's way,"

said Nettleton. I moved instinctively, in obedience to a light touch on the arm, and I heard him fumbling in the dark behind me. Then I let out the yell of a lifetime. I am not ashamed of it to this day. I had received a lifetime's dose of agony and amazement.

My right foot had gone through the floor, gone into the jaws of some frightful monster that bit it to the bone above the ankle!

"Why, what's the matter?" cried Nettleton, but not from the part of the room where I had heard him fumbling, neither had he yet struck a light.

"You know, you blackguard!" I roared, with a few worse words than that.

"I'll sort you for this, you see if I don't! Strike a light and let me loose this instant! It's taking my foot off, I tell you!"

"Dear, dear!" he exclaimed, striking a match at once. "Why, if you haven't gone and got into my best burglar-trap!"

He stood regarding me from a safe distance, with a sly pale smile, and the wax vesta held on high. I dropped my eyes to my tortured leg: a couple of boards had opened downward on hinges, and I could see the rusty teeth of an ancient man-trap embedded in my trousers, and my trousers already darkening as though with ink, where the pierced cloth pressed into quivering flesh and bone.

"It's the very same thing that happened to that last maid of mine,"

continued Nettleton. "I shouldn't wonder if you'd never seen a trap like that before. There aren't so many of 'em, even in museums. I picked this one up in Wardour Street; but it was my own idea to set it like that, and I went and quite forgot I'd left it ready for the night!"

That was the most obvious lie. He had set the thing somehow when he had pretended to be going to light the gas. But I did not tell him so. I did not open my mouth--in speech. I heard him out in a dumb horror; for he had stooped, and was lighting the candles one by one.

They were all where they had always been, except one that I must have kicked over on entering. Nettleton looked at that candle wistfully, and then at me, with a maniacally sly shake of the head; for it lay within my reach, but out of his; and it lay in a pool, beneath glistening shavings, for the whole room was swimming in the stuff that stank.

The lighting of the candles--in my brain as well as on the floor--had one interesting effect. It stopped my excruciating pain for several moments. We stood looking at each other across the little low lights, like Gullivers towering over Lilliputian lamp-posts; that is, he stood, well out of arm's-length, while I leant with all my weight on one bent knee. Suddenly he gleamed and slapped his thigh.

"Why, I do believe you thought I was going to set fire to the house!" he cried.

"I knew you were."

"No--but now?"

"Yes--now--I see it in your d.a.m.ned face!"

"Really, Mr. Gillon!" exclaimed Nettleton, with a shake of his cracked head. "I hadn't thought of such a thing. But I am in a difficulty. The gas is on your side of the room, just out of your reach. So is the control of the very unpleasant arrangement that's got you by the heel.

Is it the ankle? Oh! I'm sorry; but it's no use your looking round. I only meant the trap-door control; the trap itself has to be taken out before you can set it again, and it's a job even with the proper lever.

After what's happened and the language you've been using, Mr. Gillon, I'm afraid I don't care to trust myself within reach of your very powerful arms, either to light the gas or to meddle with my little monster."

"See here," I said through the teeth that I had set against my pain.

"You're as mad as a hatter; that's the only excuse for you----"

"Thank you!" he snapped in. "Then it won't be the worse for me if I _do_ give you a taste of h.e.l.l before your death and--cremation!"

"I'm sorry for you," I went on, partly because I did not know that the insane call for more tact than the sane, and partly because I was far from sure which this man was, but had resolved in any case to appeal with all my might to his self-interest. "I'm sorry for anybody who loses his wits, but sorriest for those who get them back again and have to pay for what they did when they weren't themselves. You go mad and commit a murder, but you're dead sane when they hang you! That seems to me about the toughest luck a man could have, but it looks very like being your own."

"Which of these four candles do you back to win?" inquired Nettleton, looking at them and not at me. "I put my money on the one nearest you, and I back this one here for a place."

"Two people know all about this, I may tell you," said I with more effect. Nettleton looked up. "Uvo Delavoye's one, and your old Sarah's the other."

"That be blowed for a yarn!" he answered, after a singularly lucid interval, if he was not lucid all the time. "I think I see you walking into a trap like this if you knew it was here!"

"It's the truth!" I bl.u.s.tered, feeling to my horror that the truth had not rung true.

"All right! Then you deserve all you get for coming into another man's house----"

"When your servant came for me, and when we found out together that you were trying to burn it down?"

I was doing my best to reason with him now, but he was my master, sane or crazy. His cleverness was diabolical. He took the new point out of my mouth. "Yes--for going away and standing by to see me do it!" he cried.

"But that's not the only crow I've got to pluck with you, young fellow, and the other jacks-in-office behind you. Must pay your dirty extortionate rent, must I? Very last absolutely final application, was it? Going to put a man in possession, are you? Very nice--very good!