Men of Affairs Part 53

"What you've shown me."

Richard's voice sounded far away and disinterested.

"Show you some more. Stand up! Stand up! I can't bear a drowsy man."

And he kicked the chair half across the room. "Don't hang on to that table--stand on your legs," and grasping Richard by his s.h.i.+rt front he forced him into an upright position and held him there. His voice hardened and rasped like a cross cut file as question after question boomed out with the relentless quality of minute guns.

"A year ago you went travelling."

"You say so." The replies were barely audible.

"During that time you tumbled on your find."

"If I did, I did."

"When was it you struck?"

"That's my affair."

"I've made it mine. When was it you struck?"

"During the six months," said Richard with a twinkle of dying humour.

"That answer won't do."

"Only one you'll get."

"I'm pretty close behind you, Anthony Barraclough."

Again the twinkle came and went as Richard gave answer.

"Still behind?"

"Anthony Barraclough, I've a complete list of the places you visited."

"Been buying a pocket atlas?"

"The actual places."

"Fine!"

"And I could hazard a guess where the locality is. Like me to try?"

"If it amuses you any."

The American's voice rose and filled the room, reverberant as thunder.

"P'r'aps it isn't so far away after all."

And out of the wreckage of his resources, Richard Frencham Altar brought up his big guns for a final effort at counter battery.

"P'r'aps it isn't, p'r'aps it is," he cried. "Why, you blasted fool, you'll get nothing from me--nothing. If you know so d.a.m.n much go and find the place yourself."

Ezra Hipps seized him by the shoulders and flung him back against the wall.

"We mean to find out."

"Not from me--not from me," Richard repeated, but the power which had upheld him was dwindling fast. He knew, knew beyond question that in a few more moments the truth would be shaken out of him unless he could devise some means of slackening the strain. And then he had an inspiration.

"You fool! You fool!" he cried. "Can't you see what you've done, you and your idiot crew? As you've driven health from my body so, by your blasted privations, you've driven memory from my head."

He tottered drunkenly toward a chair and sat down all of a heap.

"What's that?" demanded Hipps, with real alarm.

"I can't remember," Richard laughed hysterically. "I can't remember what you want to know," and his head fell forward into his hands.

For nearly a minute, Hipps looked at him in silence and his face was very white indeed. Then with the breath escaping between his teeth he turned away.

It was sheer lunacy on the part of Richard to peep through his fingers to judge the effect of his words. For it is an established truth that the nerves of a man's back are sensitive to another's gaze.

Ezra Hipps swung round so quickly that Richard failed to cover his face in time. The mischief was done.

"Very clever," said the American and laughed. "Very clever and I nearly bought it, but not quite." He seized Richard's wrist and twisted it downward. "A word of advice against the future, Mister Barraclough. Next time you're working a crumple-up don't let the chap you're pulling it on see you looking at it between your fingers." He strolled up to the door whistling pensively and halted with his hand on the latch. "I'm doubting if you're going to be a whole lot of use to us for you're a tough case. When it comes up at Committee my thumb points down."

He went out and the bolt shot home behind him.

For a long while Richard rocked in his chair muttering. He felt very lonely and his throat ached, his head ached--he ached all over--a childish desire to snivel possessed him and could not be subdued. If only there had been a shoulder, some sweet, kind, soft shoulder to soak up the tired angry tears that fell and fell. A kindly shoulder, a gentle voice to drive away the horror of these nightmare days. Was all sweetness gone out of the world? Was the world no more than four square walls peopled with devils who asked and asked and asked? Was there nothing else but greed of money, hatred, want, and d.a.m.nable persecution? A voice within cried aloud: "Why suffer it all? Why bear the brunt of other men's adventure?" Five thousand pounds. Was it a fair price for breaking one's body against rocks, for shattering one's soul against man unkind?

Wild uncontrollable resentment seized him and in its wave tossed him against the door of his prison battering at the panels with bare fists and shrieking aloud in a voice he could not recognise as his own.

"Gentlemen! Gentlemen! You've made a mistake. I'm not Bar'clough, nev' met him. Richard Frencham Altar I am--father shot himself--Torrington paying me five thousand--keep it up for three weeks--but you've made the course too stiff. I can't stay the distance. I can't stay the distance."

His knees gave way beneath him and he fell to the floor beating the boards and blubbering like a school-boy.

But there came no answer from the hollow empty house and presently the paroxysm pa.s.sed and he looked up slowly seeing, as it were, a vision of himself false to every tradition of manhood he had held most dear.

"Coward!" he said. "Rotten blasted coward! Three weeks and this is the last day." He looked at his watch. "Only another hour and then I'm free to speak. Stick it for another hour. Stick it for another hour."

And the very saying of the words seemed to increase his stature, swell his chest, revitalise his manhood.

When a moment later the door opened and Van Diest chanting his perpetual hymn came quietly into the room he found Richard rocking on his heels beside a chair beating time to the music with a shaking forefinger while from his parched lips he emitted a pathetic pretence at whistling the same tune.

"S'bad," muttered Hugo Van Diest. "S'bad business. Must tink all the time and be worried by dese things. For G.o.d's sake you don't fidget.

You tink all the suffering was wit you, but it was inside of me where the pain live."

"Ha ha!" said Richard.

"Discomfort is nutting. I haf before me the prospec' to be beat. It wa.s.s the torture to be beat. You know that."