# Bluebeard's Chamber/Part 2

from Good Housekeeping, April 1925, pp. 38–40, 106, 108, 110, 113, 114, 116, 119, 120, 122, `24, 125, 128, 131, 132, 134, 139, 140.
Illustration: Napier did not hear the door open, but she was there, facing the four of them. He could hardly see her. She was like a light shining through the mist. He gathered all the strength he had left
ROBERT NAPIER had wanted something of Sir John Elroy. He had not got it. But as he went home, it seemed to him that he walked in triumph. He was thirty-seven, and he loved for the first time. It was Margaret, Sir John's daughter who had wrought the miracle
He saw her later in the winter at a great reception where his scientific fame was apology for his shabbiness. After that he met her again and again, and she loved him as he loved her.
But he was almost starving. His own funds and his partner's had vanished in long research. Marriage with this girl seemed impossible. And then in his despair something happened, in the laboratory, and he knew and Jimmy Sewell knew that all the riches of the earth could be theirs at will. A terrible force of destruction had been revealed to them, and the nation who owned it would rule the world.
PART II
NAPIER did not know how long he had been out, until a clock above a jeweler's shop warned him. He did not know where he had been or where he was. He had walked steadily like a man in haste and with a fixed purpose, and he had reached nowhere. But he was aware suddenly that he was terribly tired. His very thoughts stumbled and could go no further. And yet there was no rest for them. Behind him, like uncertain trail of light, lay endless streets, some dark and empty, some racked with a fierce, tragic turmoil—unwholesome crowds eddying on the dirt pavements, seeking in the glare and noise some sort of escape—and then the great river, flowing blackly under the sodden sky, dividing east and west forever.
He had gone and on, apparently unseeing and unaware. But it was as though the men and women who jostled him were really closing in on him, pursuing him, clutching at him with soiled and piteous fingers, adjuring him that as he was their brother to whom great power had been given he should deal justly with them and all their kind throughout the world. They did not know their own appeal. Individually they might have demanded revenge and destruction against peoples whom they believed they hated. They spoke as they had been taught. But out of their deep unconsciousness rose another spirit. It seemed to brood over them, to speak for them, asking for a little peace, a little pity for all men.
Presently by mean and wretched streets he found his way back to the main thoroughfare with its gold chain of trams clanging gaily across the bridge. On the Embankment were the usual derelicts. They sat motionless and huddled, like people long since dead, until the heavy tread of a policeman on his rounds roused them and sent them scudding into the dark. They were so phantom-like that it was hard to believe that they would not vanish with the daylight. But to Napier they had a queer significance. They were impersonal, faceless people. They had no stake in the world. They were outside life, in their tragic way, free. And to them he was just another shadow. He sat down beside one of them. It was a woman, and she had something with her that seemed a child. He could not tell her age, for they were outside the lamplight, but because she sat upright with her chin lifted, he guessed that she was not so beaten as the rest.
She answered him civilly and with an air of grim patience. “Yes, it was late to have a kid out; but then Andy wasn't a kid exactly; he was near fifteen, but he'd never be no bigger, and, he was 'queer.' Born in an air raid. Couldn't expect 'im to be ordinary.”
She put her arm over the misshapen figure beside her and drew it close. “Him and me was just considering the river,” she said. “Life's a mess for most of us. It ain't no good to me, and it ain't no good to 'im, poor angel. And since the end's the same for us all—might as well get on with it.”
NAPIER nodded. “As a matter of fact, I've got a little scheme for blowing up the world,” he said casually. “Shall I use it?”
“Are you lucky enough to be drunk, mister?”
“Let's pretend I'm sober, anyway.”
“G'ar on with you! Who are you?”
“I'm what's called a scientist. I've discovered a new force. I could blow the world up, but actually I'm thinking of selling my discovery to the Government. I'd get an awful lot of money, and the Government could make a dust-heap of any country they didn't fancy. What do you think about it?”
He felt her looking at him. Certainly she thought him mad, but there was something in his proposition that touched her fancy. And he waited for her answer as though she were speaking for those others.
“You go and drop your old discovery into the river,” she said, “and yourself, too, if you don't know 'ow to 'old your tongue.”
“But if life is a mess—”
“That's not for you nor me to decide, my lad. You blow yourself up. Leave other folks alone.”
“Even the people who made your boy what he is?”
“'O were they? I dunno. And they didn't know me. I don't 'old with all this blowin' up business. Let men fight with their fists, if they must fight, that's what I say. You and your discovery! If I thought you was talking truth, I'd push you in the river with my own 'ands.”
She stood up, and the boy shuffled to his feet with an ugly, animal sound of weariness. Napier saw him clearly now. His face was that of a baby that had been born old. It was vacant, and yet it was scarred with all the fear and horror of life. The woman stood forward a little, shielding him from the stranger's gaze. A kind of dignity clothed her.
“It ain't yours to sell,” she said abruptly.
He did not answer, but he held out the last money he had, and she considered it, lying in his outstretched hand.
“Blood money?” she asked.
“No—it's all square.”
“I wouldn't take blood money—I don't care 'o's the blood is. And don't you, neither.”
“I won't,” he said
He waited until she had trailed wearily into the darkness. He would never see her again, and for her he would be merely a drunken swell who had talked nonsense and given her half-a-crown. But she had pronounced judgment for him—his own judgment.
He went back into Whitehall. He had a dim notion of seeing Margaret now while his vision was so clear that she must inevitably share it with him. He had lost sight of the girl who had clung to him, crying for her playthings. It was as though he knew of some other Margaret who would understand—and go with him. He hadn't bought her. They were lovers and comrades.
And Sewell, too. Even Sewell— At bottom he was a man of cool, imperturbable judgment. He was infinitely clever. He would recognize their responsibility.
Then, as he reached the corner of Downing Street, he met Sewell. They almost collided, and for a moment they stood staring at one another. There was something naked in their regard—a deadly sort of nakedness like the flash of two suddenly drawn weapons.
Sewell laughed uncertainly. “I suppose I oughtn't to be so astonished,” he said. “This must be an habitual haunt of yours. Well, don't let me interfere.”
“Where are you going?”
“Back to the laboratory. I have some papers—”
Napier turned and walked with him
“If you don't mind, I'll come, too,” he said.
SEWELL stood under the central lamp, arranging his papers. His hands were steady, but their uncertain, methodless movements betrayed his inattention. The two men did not look at each other or speak, and throughout their walk their conversation had been trivially casual, but they had watched one another, feeling for an opening. Now the door had closed; the field had narrowed down. In this familiar room which had been the scene of their long comradeship, they were at last to meet face to face, and the realization that they did not know each other held off the final moment of reckoning. They were like duellists who have no means of measuring each other's strength. But there was danger—they knew that—both of them.
It was Sewell who spoke at last. His hands were idle now, but he went on staring down at them. With his heavy, lowered head he looked up, like a bull, threatening and motionless. “I've seen Elroy,” he said; “I had an interview with him tonight.”
“I guessed as much,” Napier answered.
“The chance to see him came my way unexpectedly—through a friend. I didn't think it was worth while consulting you until I had seen him, It was just a preliminary—”
He was lying, Napier knew. He went on putting away some glass apparatus. His silence, falling into Sewell's expectant break, was a challenge. Sewell made his first gesture—one of anger and resentment.
“I suppose you think I hadn't the right?”
“No—I don't think you had.”
“Why not? I gave nothing away. You can be sure of that. Elroy only knows there is something.”
“That's too much,”
“I don't see that. It isn't as though we weren't absolutely ready. There's no harm done in getting the market warm, as it were.”
“You talk as though you were selling a new soap.”
“Well, we are selling something, aren't we? This is a commercial age, my dear Napier. The day has gone by when scientists starved in their garrets. We have as much right to our profits as other men.”
Napier considered his companion. It was curious that this inspired brain should have been harnessed to this personality. He held himself steady. One had to reason and be patient. But in the depths of him was the premonition of failure—of disaster. He could foretell what was to happen. It was as though a hooded presence had crept into the room. Presently the veil would be lifted. Then they would both know.
“Of course they will want their tests made,” Sewell went on with increasing fluency. “We must expect that, and no harm can be done. Even if their cursed specialists got track of anything, it would take them years to reach our point. But Elroy knows that men of our standing wouldn't make claims they couldn't substantiate. He's a man of action, and what we have to sell he wants now. It is the psychological moment. Why, with this new war looming he wouldn't dare let such a chance slip.”
He waited. Still Napier was silent.
“He's prepared for a million each. And you can have the daughter thrown in.”
It was all very well to be steady. But there were things too beastly— The brain that he had respected and almost loved became something horrible, like a strange, evilly beautiful flower growing out of a dung-heap.
“Miss Elroy doesn't come into this.”
“Oh, very well, I should have thought she did. I was glad for your sake.”
“Do you think I'd sell a thing like this to buy my own personal happiness?”
“I don't know what else you're going to sell it for,” Sewell retorted
Napier checked his answer. After all Sewell was only saying what he himself had thought for an hour or two of crazed and ruthless egotism. He hadn't had time to realize the thing in all its titanic magnitude. One had to have patience.
“A million will buy all I want,” Sewell went on: “but what I want I want badly. I've worked for it all my life—” There was something feverish and even piteous about him now. He was like a man dying of hunger and conjuring up visions of a endless banquet.
“MY GOD, Napier—you don't know what it means to me. I've worked for knowledge—yes, I have. I starved and suffered for it. But I'm not like you. There's a breaking point. I'm a man—I want power and comfort and the best of everything. In a way it's a shame—” he gave a high, unsteady laugh. “Perhaps I ought to have been a stockbroker. Then I could have made a fortune and not had to wrestle with weird fellows like you, with God knows what maggots on the brain. But there it is. And it isn't every stockbroker who can sell for a million profit.”
“You can't sell this thing.”
“What's that—what's that you're saying?”
“You can't sell it—it's too big.”
“You mean a million isn't enough? I know it isn't. But what can one do with more?”
“I don't mean that either. It's not like anything else that has ever happened. The man who discovered gunpowder must have been frightened. He must have had his moments of vision. But gunpowder was nothing—not compared to this. It might mean the end of civilization—of humanity, itself.”
“We have to take the risk,” Sewell flung back. “You can't stop men from finding things out—and if they destroy themselves. that's their affair. It will be us or some one else. It's going to be us. Besides, for years, it will be in the hands of a very few.”
“Who will have it in their power to bully or destroy the rest.”
“They will be our people. We might have got more out of the French or the Germans. who would bleed themselves white for such a chance.”
“Our people aren't to be trusted.”
“My dear Napier!”
“No body of men is to be trusted—even if we were always in the right, it would be the end of everything if we could impose our rightness on unwilling people. Besides, it wouldn't work. In the end the rest would find out, and in their hatred and anger—”
“That won't be in our time.”
“You talk as though nothing mattered once we are dead.”
“Nothing will matter—to us.”
THE air in the room seemed to grow stifling Both men were breathing quickly. There was sweat about Sewell's mouth, and his eyes under the fine brows, were dangerous
“What's in your mind?” he demanded brutally “What do you want?”
“To bury our knowledge in ourselves and pray to Heaven that it will never come to light until men are sane enough to use it.”
“You're mad, yourself.”
Napier made a gesture of despair. “I used to think that knowledge could never be evil. But it's like everything else—it depends on us—and we're not good enough.”
“You mean I'm not good enough. Very likely. I never pretended to be a saint. I'm not sanctimonious about myself. I'm an ordinary man. I have something to sell, and I mean to sell it.”
“You have me to reckon with,” Napier interrupted heavily.
“Yes. You're my partner. I took you into partnership. It was my money. Don't forget that. But I mean to deal fairly with you. What I get, you'll get. But I'll sell all the same, and you can't stop me.”
“I can make your merchandise valueless to you.”
They had not moved, and yet they seemed to be drawing insensibly nearer—to be closing down on each other. Sewell's stare had become glazed and almost stupid.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Because I shall have killed you.”
“You're—you're threatening me!”
“No—it's not just a threat, Sewell. I give you a chance. I'll take your word of honor but if you break it I shall kill you just the same. You see for yourself—it won't be worth your while.”
“You—you unspeakable blackguard!”
“I knew it must seem like that to you. I can see it your way, too. That's the ghastliness of it. I can't get angry—I'm like an executioner—I can't help myself.”
“Don't—you cursed sanctimonious humbug!”
“I'm not that, anyway. I'm doing for myself, too.”
Sewell nodded. “They'll hang you, my dear fellow—don't forget. And there'll be an end to you, and Margaret Elroy will marry some one else, and thank her God—”
“I dare say. It doesn't matter. Sewell, can't you see that it can't matter—our happiness—my honor—what does it all mean compared to the fate of the whole world? Stop thinking about yourself, or about me—”
Sewell brought his open hand crashing down on the table, and a glass retort, jarred to fragments, fell with a soft, sinister tinkle, It was the first note of violence—ominous, like a signal—and both men held back, breathless. For a moment they half pleaded with one another—urgently, with a pitiful attempt at understanding reasonableness.
“Look here, Napier—go carefully. We don't want to make a mess of this. You're exaggerating, you know. And anyhow you can't saddle me with your peculiar quixoticism. If you had meant to conceal our results if they didn't happen to seem safe, you had no right to work with any one. I tell you, I'm an ordinary man with ordinary ambitions, and I have a claim on my rewards,”
“There may not be any,” Napier interrupted, “You can't absolutely foresee what'll happen—but one can get a fair idea. With this new war looming, Elroy won't be able to hold his hand even if he would—the military will see to that. There'll be a ghastly cataclysm—a city—a whole population wiped out in an hour—and then panic—everywhere—over the whole world—falling markets, a surging up of the dregs who haven't anything to lose, a break-down of a civilization which is based only on a relative sense of security—a world gone mad with fear—destroying itself because of its unspeakable fear.”
Sewell threw out his arms. He laughed. He looked bloated and drunken. “Let them go mad. Let them destroy themselves. We shall remain. We'll have this teeming, overcrowded universe to ourselves. We're gods!”
“Crazy gods! You can't do it, Sewell. There wouldn't be a parallel crime in history.”
“You're exaggerating. Things like that don't happen.”
“They have happened. They were bound to happen. This thing has been possible ever since the dawn of science. Men have foreseen it—shrunk from the thought of it. It's come—a thousand years too soon. We're responsible. We can't escape it.”
“We're scientists. We have no concern with the results of science.”
“Not even with a million of money?”
“Curse you—I'm not pretending. I've told you—every man for himself—you fool—”
Napier had turned to the door. He set his back to it. “Well, you know my course.”
“You humbug—and now I'm going to tell you mine.”
HE DRAGGED open the drawer of the table by which he stood. Napier heard a click, but for a moment Sewell's hand was hidden. They faced each other, and the years of their companionship were wiped out. They were not even themselves, but representatives of vast, opposing forces. They were irreconcilable, and in Napier's recognition of the inevitability of what was to happen there was pity and horror.
“It's clear, isn't it—we can't both go out of this room? I shall say you were a traitor—selling to the enemy. Any jury would acquit me. I'm not giving you a chance. I wouldn't trust you—”
The hand shot up. Napier heard a noise that sounded deafening and yet a long way off. Sewell's face with its embittered lust had vanished in a cloud of smoke that slowly drifted until the face came out again—staring—aghast. There was no pain yet, but Napier knew that something was happening to him. Besides, not even a madman could have missed at that range. Probably he was dying.
He had the serenity and clearness of vision that he had heard came with death. He felt queerly detached—as though he stood high above life and could understand and be sorry— even for Sewell. Because Sewell, who loved life and the things of life—had to die, too.
Sewell knew.
He made an effort to fire again, but the weapon had jammed. He screamed and threw things at the slowly, painfully advancing man—anything he could lay his hands on—the glass retorts—his revolver itself—like a child in a tantrum trying to escape punishment. Napier closed on him. It was extraordinary how sure he was that he would be strong enough. He wasn't alone. Behind him were all those unknown, pleading people. Not in our time, O Lord—
He had his hands on Sewell's throat. For a moment longer Sewell was a man, vital, indestructible, and then he was gone. Napier held something in his hands that in a breath had become nothing.
Napier said aloud: “I'm awfully sorry, old man, we've done for each other.”
But he couldn't die yet—not if this piteous sacrifice was to be justified. And though he had so much to do, he was very careful with Sewell. He dragged his body into the adjoining room and laid him out decently with a cloth over the distorted face. Poor Sewell and his riches, his fine house and his motor-cars and good living. If it hadn't been for that wonderful, terrible brain, he might have been happy in his common, ordinary way.
Napier's knees had broken under him. He sank slowly forward, lying with his head on Sewell's breast.
9
THROUGHOUT the night he passed from consciousness into unconsciousness. He dreamed that he was rowing a rocky little boat against a strong tide and through a dense fog that broke every now and again into patches of extraordinary clearness. In one of these patches he saw his lodging house room and the safe, and inside the safe a neat pile of papers. They were a long way off, but he knew he must get them somehow. Even as he looked at them, they fluttered and came to life, taking on hideous and monstrous shapes. He could see pestilence and death fingering the lock, trying to get out. He shook his head at the awful, beastly things.
“No, you don't—” he said. “I'm not dead yet, you know.”
By daybreak he had managed to drag himself back into the laboratory. He found that his wound was in his left shoulder, near the apex of the lung. It must have been bleeding slowly for a long time, but now the bleeding had stopped, and the pain had come. Every breath he drew sent a sword through the breadth of his body. It made it almost impossible for him to think. It made him sick, and the cold sweat ran down his face. But the worst thing was his weakness. He thought of the long flight of stairs down into the street, and of waiting there for a taxi, and of driving—driving—and of coming to another long flight of stairs— He knew he couldn't. Why, he couldn't even pay the taxi-man, and the taxi-man would make a row. But perhaps he could persuade the taxi-man to help him up those stairs—to open the safe for him—if there was a taxi-man. simple-minded enough not to see that there was something frightfully wrong—
Still, it was the only chance. After a long time he managed to get his coat from the chair across the room and to cover the blood-soaked shoulder with it. He wiped the blood and dirt from his face. And then he fainted again—suddenly, as though he had been pole-axed.
He came back after an incalculable interval He had been talking to Margaret and she had understood. She had been wonderful. She had seemed to grow and brighten before his eyes like a spirit. She put her hands on his torn body, and it ceased to hurt him. And now he knew what to do. The girl who had walked so gallantly with him through the storm wouldn't fail. She was real. She didn't believe in that real self. But he did. He had staked the world on it. Presently he reached the telephone, and everything he did took an eternity of suffering. A voice answered him, and he heard his own voice saying over and over again: “Tell her to come at once—Robert Napier—she will understand—”
He spoke very patiently and clearly, but he couldn't listen. He hadn't time. Some one was knocking at the back of his brain, louder and more insistently. He hung up the receiver and was giddily on his feet just as the door opened.
Then three very immaculate men came in. They were so decent and grave-looking that for a moment Napier thought they were the undertakers come for his and Sewell's body. Then he recognized Elroy and nearly laughed. For, of course, Elroy wasn't an undertaker—though he would have made a very good one with that white, inexpressive face. He was Prime Minister of England and Margaret's father.
The other two men he knew also. Elderly, celebrated fellows with professorships and titles and God knows what. They had always thought him a little mad, mainly because he wouldn't snatch at a safe career, but went muddling along after unknown gods.
They were right. The unknown gods had frightful faces—the faces of blind and greedy men.
THE three looked about them—at the wrecked room and at the ashen-faced man with that queer air of lofty and surmounted suffering. Elroy bowed vaguely.
“I think we have met already, Mr. Napier. I have no doubt that Mr. Sewell told you that we were coming.”
“He meant to, perhaps—he hadn't time.”
He used only the shadow of his voice, and Elroy did not seem to hear. He made a little introductory gesture:
“You know each other—Professor Edstein, Sir Roland Jameson—Mr. Napier. We were expecting Mr. Sewell to be here.”
“I am here for Sewell. I am speaking for him.”
“I don't quite understand. It is hardly a matter that we can discuss without him. I hope there is nothing wrong? You—you seem to have had some sort of accident—”
“Yes—an accident. My—my colleague has been hurt. He can not see you—”
He was fighting for time. He had to get rid of these three grim and remote figures. Sometimes they looked to him like black crows, and sometimes the fog covered them and they became phantoms. He put his hand on the table to steady himself, and something warm and sticky began to trickle down his arm.
“At least,” Elroy said, “we can go over the preliminaries, There is no time to lose, Mr. Napier. If there is anything in your claims—”
“We make no claims,” Napier interrupted.
“How do you mean? Mr. Sewell was with me last night. He made very definite claims.”
Neither of us makes them now.”
“But—”
One of those others spoke. Napier thought it was Edstein, though it was difficult to place the voice. He was afraid of Edstein with his Jewish intuitions.
“But if Mr. Sewell was sure less than ten hours ago—what has happened since then? There has been no opportunity.”
“He and I were at work all last night. We decided the time had not come.”
The three men were silent. They were looking at him closely, and he knew that they did hot believe him. It seemed to him that Elroy's mask was breaking up, and behind it was a cold, swift purpose—deadly because there was no heart to it. Napier saw that it was a sort of despair driven into a narrow channel of action.
You will forgive me if I point out that your explanation is not satisfactory. I gathered from Mr. Sewell that he was not sure of your attitude—that you might raise objections,”
“I have raised them. And Sewell has accepted them.”
“What are they?”
Napier did not answer. He was terrified of his weakness. And now it was James speaking —James with his title and his pomposity and his red, clever face.
“What possible objections are there? Come, Napier, you and Sewell are not men given to exaggerations. And on our side you know we are men of honor. You can trust us. Like you, we have our country's welfare at heart. It is of paramount importance to us all—compared to which our personal interests are as nothing If your claims are justified, you will have done more for England than any man living. And England will not be ungrateful.”
Napier wanted to laugh. It was as though the funny, round little man had burst out all over waving flags. They whirled round him—red, white and blue—
“Perhaps Mr. Napier is thinking of the world,” Edstein said softly.
Napier turned to him, smothering a gasp of pain. The brown eyes behind the glasses understood too much. Very slowly they began to travel from Napier's face down the length of his body, seeking a complete explanation.
“I have given you our answer,” Napier said.
“We can't accept it, Mr. Napier; this isn't the matter of a minor discovery. At your own showing the existence of our country depends on it. If you refuse us, we can only accept one of two alternatives—either Mr. Sewell was lying incredibly, or you have chosen to sell to a higher market—to our enemies—”
“Ah—!” It was Sir Roland, exclaiming to God, and Napier saw the flags blow out in a wind of patriotic fury.
He smiled a little and caught Edstein's melancholy response,
“There might be a third alternative.”
“Come—at least, we have a right to meet and discuss the matter with Sewell himself.”
Napier nodded. “Yes—yes—I agree to that Tomorrow—tomorrow—at any time you choose—”
Edstein was looking steadfastly at the table. “I'm afraid Mr. Napier is hurt—seriously hurt—” he said.
NAPIER looked down, too. He saw that his hand rested in a pool of blood. The others had seen. They fluttered round him—they were really crows after all. And now that he was dying, they were not afraid any more. He slid from Edstein's supporting arm into a chair and the coat fell, and there was an end to the bitter game
“A bullet wound—good God!—how did this happen?”
“Sewell shot me—and I killed him—”
“Napier—man—you must be delirious—”
“He is there—in there—”
He heard one of them throw open a door—an exclamation—a scuffle of feet—and then silence. Their consternation in the face of a single death struck him as curious. He felt some one—Edstein, probably fumbling at his coat, and he freed himself gently.
“It's all right—it doesn't matter.”
“Napier—how did this happen?”
“It was a sort of duel.” He spoke slowly and carefully and with an immense indifference. For nothing that he could do now mattered The specters locked in that black safe were turning the handle—whispering and chuckling to themselves. “I told Sewell that I should have to kill him—and naturally he tried to kill me first.”
“But why—?”
“He meant to sell our discovery—nothing would stop him.”
“Sell—? You mean he was double-crossing us—selling to the enemy?”
“No—to you.”
It was a relief to know that Edstein at least had some glimmering of the truth. It saved him the effort of wearily explaining what they would never understand. He heard them talking—whispering, it seemed to his fading senses—and then footsteps—swift and light and yet to him loud and tragic as the tramp of a relieving force that had come too late,
Margaret—Margaret. It was like a knife turning in his wound. A simple and human demand for happiness kindled in him for the last time. And he had lost everything. He had had one life—one chance—and he had thrown them away. He would see her once more—then never again. He was grateful for the death that seemed to be creeping up his limbs in a glacial tide, because though he had the courage to do this thing, he knew that he had not the strength to go on without her. Perhaps he was different from other men. She wasn't just an incident. He had played his part as had seemed right to him, but there were limits to a man's endurance. And he was tired, and there was no purpose left.
“Look here, Napier, this is an ugly business. But we've all got to remember that the issues are too big to be governed by ordinary procedure. Even the law bows to national emergency. I have one proposal to make to you.”
Napier did not hear the door open. But she was there, facing the four of them. He could hardly see her. She was like a light shining through the mist. He gathered all the strength he had left. There was Elroy's voice again, strange in its excitement:
“Margaret! What are you doing here?”
“I sent for her,” Napier muttered.
“You dragged her into this disaster—this hideous scandal!”
“I tell you,” Napier said loudly as though he were addressing a great crowd—“that she and I do not matter—nor our honor nor our happiness. And yet our individual honor and happiness are everything. That is why one must die for them.”
HE THOUGHT Edstein was crying. Sentimental little Jew. What an ass he was making of himself—talking nonsense! And yet it was clear enough in his head—
“You must leave here at once, Margaret. And no one must know you have ever been here.”
She closed the door behind her. “He sent for me. I am going to marry him. If there is any trouble, I am in it.”
That was gallant and loving of her. He could see her with her head up, breasting the storm.
“Sir John is right, Margaret. I sent for you—but it's too late. Please go now.”
“What is too late? What has happened? You can't treat me like an equal one moment Robert, and then as though I were a frightened child. I shan't scream or have hysterics—not whatever you have done.”
“I have killed some one—Sewell—the man I worked with.”
“Napier—leave my daughter out of this!”
“No—she's big enough—”
“Yes—I'm all right. Oh, Robert, your hurt—you're bleeding—”
“Please—it's nothing. Don't think of that. Sewell shot me. I had told him I had to kill him.”
“Oh, my dear—it sounds crazy—incredible. Why—why—?”
It was Edstein speaking in a little husky voice: “You see, Miss Elroy, these two had made a discovery—a very wonderful and terrible discovery. It would have enabled this country to blow the strongest enemy in the world to fragments. Sewell wanted to sell it to the Government. And so Mr. Napier killed him.”
He could not see her now The light faded—she was a long way off, cold and still.
“I don't understand at all. It's like a dream. Sewell was right. What else could he have done? Why should any one have killed him?”
No one answered her. She looked from one to the other of them, but there was a frightening unreality about them all. She could not believe that they were really here in this strange place with its sinister wreckage. She could not believe in herself who, a quarter of an hour before, had been wondering what dress she should wear at the Leversons ball—still less in the man who watched her with that piteous intentness, as though he saw her from along way off. He was wounded. He looked aged with suffering, and yet the fact that neither she nor any of them came to his help deepened her sense of nightmare. She loved him, and she believed that he was dying, and yet something held her back. Perhaps it was the door behind him—half open—ominous—
He had killed some one.
Surely in a minute she would wake up.
Then she saw the dark, Jewish little man. His face was wrinkled in a grimace as though he had eaten something unendurably bitter He was looking at her, too, with a sort of pity, and she knew that it was true. This wasn't a dream. A terrible thing had happened—the sort of thing that happened to other people and was screamed in headlines from the evening papers... “Well-known scientist—amazing tragedy—” And then perhaps her own name.
She wanted to escape. And then because she couldn't—because of that something in him which drew and held her—a pitiless resentment rose in her like a flood of poison. She had been dragged out of her course; she didn't belong here. She belonged to the light-hearted people who would dance without her tonight at the Leversons' ball—who never did anything violent unless everybody did it. It was cruel that she should love a man who was a murderer and perhaps a traitor—whose touch and voice turned everything that was real to her into nothing.
She hated him as a trapped animal hates its captor. And she knew that in a moment she might have her arms round him, holding him and his incomprehensibleness against the world.
HER father went over to the half-open door and closed it gently.
“I don't know what Mr. Napier had in his mind when he brought you into this,” he said with a cold bitterness. “Mr. Napier's mind is a mystery to most of us. But since you are here, you may as well know the whole position. We have got to act very quickly. Mr. Napier holds, we believe, a secret which is of unparalleled importance. I tell him that it is not his to conceal. It belongs to his country Sewell thought so. Sewell was prepared to place it in our hands. Sewell is dead. Mr. Napier killed him, and we have to deal with Mr. Napier alone. I make him a definite proposal. This tragedy can be hushed up. We are practically in a state of war, and it will be a simple matter for me to explain to the police that Sewell was preparing to sell to the enemy—”
Napier laughed, though the laugh hurt all over his body. “That was to have been Sewell's explanation.”
Elroy did not heed him. “But if justice is to be diverted, it can only be for reasons of national security. Mr. Napier has got to justify us.”
He waited, and then his tone changed, and became human and almost pleading: “Come—you're a young man still—you have everything before you. To a man who serves his country as you will have done, everything will be possible.”
He was offering her as part of his bargain. She saw that Napier knew. His body rested against the table in a crumpled, broken attitude, and all the life he had left seemed to have gathered in his face like a beaten army taking its last stand.
“I want to speak to Margaret alone,” he said, “Then I can answer you.”
He spoke with authority, and Elroy yielded, shrugging his shoulders.
“I can give you only five minute: Every moment makes our position more ambiguous.”
They went out into the passage. But even she was held back by a strange timidity. She knew that an appeal would fall lifeless before whatever purpose possessed him. He wasn't thinking of their love. He had some other use for her. She became afraid of him. He was going to drag her deeper, deeper into his life.
She stumbled over a few dead words: “My darling, do what they say. It must be right—of course it must be right. You must have been mad—overwrought—my poor darling—but it's not too late. We can be happy. And you're hurt—I can't bear it.”
He was holding out his hand. “That's the key of my safe—a note to the woman who keeps my rooms. You must go at once—my lodgings—no one will stop you. You will find my papers—destroy them—every one of them—I wouldn't have sent for you—but there was no one else—no one to trust—”
She drew away from him. She would have run out of the room. But he was too strong. There was fascination in the very madness of his confidence.
“You can't trust me.”
“I do, I do, Margaret.”
“It would be a crime—like betraying my brother—all the people who had ever died for this country. You mustn't ask me.”
“But I do. I've no one else. I've got to stop them getting out. Once they're freed, it'll be too late.”
She did not know what he meant. His eyes were fixed beyond her, and there was a horror in them that almost made her turn, as though evil itself stood at her shoulder.
“Margaret—? You must pretend—you mustn't let them know—they'd persuade you.”
“I don't need to be persuaded. I'm on their side.”
He shook his head. The light began to fade out of his face. After a minute he said slowly, bringing out one word after another as though it had been an intolerable load:
“Very well. I give them to you. It's the only chance. Only—wait a little, just two weeks. That won't matter. Take them away with you. Somewhere where you'll be alone. I don't ask more. Promise. Quickly. I have no time—”
She believed him dying. She was panic-stricken. Her love for him was like a mad torrent, sweeping her off her feet. She had no thought but to save him and herself and every one—at his own terms—on any terms.
“I promise—”
She took the key from his icy hand.
“Hide it, Margaret. Lie to them, dear—” He smiled faintly, with a piteous quaintness. “Women have always wanted power. Now you have all the power in the world—”
He fumbled for the telephone, and she watched him, hypnotized by a sense of tragic inevitability. He was like a mad god, marching steadily to his own ruin.
“What are you doing, Robert?”
“I'm ringing for the police. I'm not giving you the chance to buy me—you must choose without that.”
THE nightmare closed down again. The police. The police, and their little notebooks, and their heavy-footed discretion. The growing crowd on the street walk. Just for a second she saw the stretcher and its burden. He looked very tall and straight, lying there, with the peace of death on his white face. The crowd believed him dead; they lifted their caps as he passed.
At last it was the little Jew man who handed her into the hastily summoned taxi. She didn't even know his name, but she clung to him, and he was very gentle and very bold. He seemed too shaken himself to care what he said.
“You must love him a great deal, Miss Elroy.”
She bent toward him as he stood at the open door of the taxi.
“What will happen—what will they do?”
“I don't know—perhaps that doesn't matter. Perhaps they will hang him—not for killing one man, but for preventing them from killing millions. We always hang our prophets, It doesn't seem to stop them.”
She gave a moan of anguish. She felt a childish bitterness that no one comforted her. No one cared that her life was in ruins: they were absorbed in vaster issues. The little Jew man's eyes were blurred-looking as though with tears, and as the taxi started forward he did not even lift his hat to her,
10
AT THE high cross-roads where the arable land ended and the moors began, she dismissed the car. It was her custom to walk the rest of the way, and the chauffeur touched his cap silently, and within a minute the big limousine was a moving speck on the surface of the darkly undulating country. She stood and watched it vanish. She reflected that it was an ordinary car and that the chauffeur had an innocent, stupid face, and that between them, unless men were to die for nothing, they carried the world's future. It lay there, smooth and neat, in her suitcase, and if an accident could have destroyed it, she would have thanked God. For it was hers. He had given it her—almost without conditions. And at first it had all seemed terribly, but splendidly, easy. She saw Napier as a man crazed with overwork and herself as making good the evil he had done. After all, it was what he had originally meant to do. She remembered how he had spoken to her that other day—so coolly and sanely—of the power he had and which he meant to use. She had not believed in him them. Perhaps, if she had, this disaster would never have happened. But at least now her duty was clear. Or so it had seemed. She would keep her promise. She was keeping it now. But in the end there could be no hesitation.
And then— She didn't know when the doubt had begun. In that first day of anguish and horror she had had no time to think. She had acted blindly like a soldier under orders. She hadn't even seemed to feel much. She remembered standing in his deserted room looking about her with panic-stricken eyes that had seemed incapable of observation. Afterward she knew that they had seen everything and had stored her memory with trivial, piteous detail. The chair pushed back from the table—the pipe on the dusty mantelpiece—the friendly litter of books—the ugliness and the fineness. Yes, there had been a sort of fineness. Something in the man had touched his surroundings and conquered them. Even the slatternly landlady, standing in the doorway, had seemed to feel it. She had talked about him in a rambling, tipsy way.
“He was different,” she had said, “not queer—just different. And people wot is different 'as an 'ard time of it in this world.”
She did not know then—and Margaret had not told her.
She had taken the papers from the safe, which was the only substantial piece of furniture in the room, and fled out into the streets where the placards had already begun to spring up like violent-colored flowers out of a dirty soil. She dared not look at them lest she should see that he was dead. But all that day, amid the terrors that beset her, her mind went back to the shabby room as to a quiet refuge. It picked up the little things that had belonged to him as though they could open the door of his mind. For she could only pretend to herself that he was mad. In her heart she recognized the high serenity that had possessed him. She knew without understanding that he had never been more splendidly sane than when he had destroyed himself. And there was that fineness in him, frightening and disturbing, because it shook her faith in the fineness of her world. He had had unexampled power in his hands, and he had judged and condemned it by mysterious standards of his own. She would have been his wife, and he had chosen to turn away from her and go into the wilderness. And yet she knew that he loved her more than life. And he had trusted her as though he knew she was to be trusted.
She hadn't failed him—not yet. She had acted quickly—in the nick of time, for an hour later his rooms had been ruthlessly ransacked. But of her there had been no trace.
Then she had come to Knaresholm. Her father had agreed somberly. With war and scandal knocking at his door, he had small thought for her.
“Better stay there till all this blows over. I've moved heaven and earth to keep your name out of it. It's for you to see that it stays out.”
She had had a moment's relief. The thought of her world's quizzical and mocking whispers had made her flinch. Now, out here on the wide moors where he had been with her, she wondered at her own indifference.
She walked on slowly. The evening was gray and very still. The challenging winds that she loved had dropped, leaving a sullen, unbroken sky to hang like a suffocating roof over the moors. They would come again. She could fancy them gathering themselves together in grim fury for the assault. She wished they would come now. The silence frightened her. It was as though the very hills waited and watched. He had said, “Now you have all the power in the world.”
SOME one was coming up one of the sheep-walks. For a moment her heart stood still with recollection. Then she could have laughed for sheer bitterness. It was the man Fletcher. As he came up, he touched his cap, looking at her with furtive, brooding eyes. He would have passed on, but she stopped him. She wanted to hear the sound of a human voice—to be reassured as to the reality of her life. He would remind her that she was Miss Elroy, who was beautiful and young and rich, and safe from the unknown, dangerous tide that was dragging at her.
“Everything all right at Knaresholm, Fletcher?”
He did not answer for a moment. Then he said heavily, “It's as it always is, miss.”
She tried to laugh. She wished, after all, that she had not spoken. There was something about the man that added to her sense of a suspended waiting calamity. She had always disliked him, and now she knew that her dislike was a sort of fear.
“I expect Knareholm's a deadly place if you live in it year in, year out,” she said. “I see it only at its best.”
He nodded. “That's right, miss. A deadly place—”
Later, as they walked down the hill, he broke the silence. “They talk of another war. Maybe, as you're from town, you know, miss—?”
“I don't know more than any one else. Every one's afraid. It looks as though we should have to go through it again.”
He threw up his arms. He laughed like a madman. “Oh, God!” he said. “Oh, God!”
The cry brought her to a standstill. Its violent and outrageous mockery was like a blow in the face. She realized that she had hardly thought of him as a human being She walked on, saying with a cold contempt that hid her uneasiness,
“Are you afraid then?”
“Yes—I'm afraid—” He grinned round at her. “I'm afraid all right.”
“They told me you were very brave, Fletcher. You tried to save my brother's life.”
“God forgive me: I wish they'd killed me.”
His teeth were chattering. He seemed to her horrible and half-crazed. She walked faster, flying from the oncoming dark and this companionship. She found herself humoring him as though he had some power to hurt her.
“There's no need for you to mind. They won't take you again.”
“How do you know who they'll take? How do you know what'll happen to any of us?”
He had lost his respect. The restraints between them were broken down by his fear. She thought, “If every one were afraid like this, we should tear each other to pieces.” Then she steadied with a sudden tremendous realization. She lifted her head, and her proud eyes swept the beloved country under the dark, threatening sky. In a few days she would be free of her promise. Then, through Napier and in spite of him, this little bit of land would be mistress of the world.
“We shall be all right,” she said.
They had reached the iron gates of the park. Knaresholm itself lay dark and lifeless as a black rock. But the Old House was awake. She wondered if it ever slept. It looked like a huge, distorted face staring through the trees with its bloodshot eyes.
The man Fletcher confronted her. He held himself upright, towering over her, paralyzing her resentment.
“How do you know?” he said. “God—what do you know?”
She did not answer. It was as though in the very midst of his anger he gave her an ironic pity. But after a moment he seemed to recollect himself. He crumbled into his old sullen acquiescence, touched his cap, and was to gone, sliding like a discovered thief into the seamless shadow.
11
NOW she was alone with the quiet and the firelight and the little stack of papers for which Napier had sacrificed his friend and all their happiness. It was difficult to believe in them. They looked neat and innocent with their pretty diagrams. Yet she did believe in them—as her father had done and the little Jewish professor. Edstein had come to see her just before she left, and she had an idea that he suspected something and that he was warning her. He told her about Napier and the operation that had saved his life, the ready tears coming into his brown eyes, because, as he said, he knew that Napier had wanted to die.
“You see, he won't defend himself in the only way that could help. He'll tell the truth, and if war breaks out and people hear that he might have knocked the enemy down in the first round, they'll want to lynch him. He won't have a chance with a jury. He'll seem like a traitor to them. And anyway—he's lost everything he cared about—”
He meant herself—
Queer, how touching inanimate things were! She turned over the pages, unconsciously caressing them. She could see him bent over them, very earnest and painstaking and somehow very young in his earnestness—like a big school-boy engaged on a difficult task. She imagined herself coming up to him and kissing him, and his eager groping for her hand. For she knew that though for some inevitable reason of his own he had turned away from her, she was all he loved.
“You dear—” she whispered. “You dear—”
Her own inadequate tenderness broke down the barriers she had built up against him. Suddenly he became very real to her—very close, It was as though they had been married a long time and their love had deepened and wound its tentacles about their very innermost selves, binding them in a sweet, quiet intimacy. And she knew that if she lived to be an old woman there would never be any one else. And she was so young. There might be so many years—
Gradually her crying ceased; the sound of it frightened her. There was no one nearer to her than the servants in the far wing of the house, yet she felt as though she had startled some one awake by her crying. She was pitiably alone, and yet it was not the loneliness that brought her sharply to her feet. It was as though the shadows of the vast room had moved, were closing down on her, watching her, with their faces shrouded.
By an effort of the will she forced herself to go over to the fire and stir it to new brightness so that the shadows fell back from her, momentarily disconcerted, but patient and waiting. She held her shaking hands to the flames. From where she knelt, she could see Peter's chair—the big lounge chair where he had used to stretch himself after a day's shooting. She could almost see the glow of his pipe and hear his comforting, jolly voice,
“Well, infant, what's the trouble?”
And there was Napier at her shoulder, white-faced and insistent, terribly sure of her. “Destroy them—burn them now—I trust you—I do trust you.”
It was as though the two men confronted each other. Bitter antagonists. For Peter would have said:
“The rotter! He's either mad or a mean skunk—the sort of chap who hates his own country, right or wrong. By God! I hope they hang him.”
And he would have gone on talking in his breezy, vigorous way of the coming war and of what he would do to pacifists and C. O.'s and others of the accursed fry. And it seemed to her that all the fresh-faced, well-dressed young men who were her friends gathered behind him, staring at this alien shadow, and saying in their nice voices, “By Gad—yes—ought to be shot at dawn—”
They were right. Of course. Peter had always seemed in the right. He was so splendidly sure. One's country first and always. And yet what was it some woman had said—some woman who had died in that last war—died very bravely, “Patriotism isn't enough.” What had she meant—what had Napier meant? Why had he killed a man and every hope of happiness? Had these people some wider vision?
“Margaret—destroy them—I do trust you—”
He had asked her to wait. It was as though he were sure that if she waited she would understand. He had said it was his only chance. He gave her all the power in the world.
“By Jove—with that in our hands it'll be some war—eh, what? That'll l'arn the beggars—”
Yes—that's what Peter would have said, chuckling to himself. He had gone off that last time with a laugh and a joke. He wasn't afraid of dying. Every one died sooner or later. And war was a splendid business. A man's life—a sort of big-game hunt, with men for your quarry and men to hunt you— No one had ever been sorry for Peter.
IT WASN'T a case of happiness any more. Happiness was gone. If she could just do the right thing. She had all the power in the world, and she was only a girl. There was Robert Napier on one side, and every one she knew and trusted against him. They were indignant with her for listening to him.
“The fellow's crazy. It was Sewell's work as much as his, and Sewell meant to play the game. Why, there wouldn't be a shot fired—not an English soldier wounded. In half a day Europe would be groveling on its knees.
She stood up. This time she was quite sure. There was some one looking at her. She felt invisible and mocking eyes holding her like the hands of a malignant ghost. She turned about, panic-stricken by the sheer intangibility of her fear—then at the window that opened out on to the terrace, she saw Fletcher's face, white and intent, pressed against the panes. He nodded and beckoned to her. She scarcely hesitated. The thought that he had seen her afraid stung her so that if he had come to murder her, she would have opened the window to him with the same proud, indignant face.
“You have no right—” she began sternly.
Then for the first time she heard the rain. It was coming down steadily, and the sound in the windless silence was unendurably mournful. She forgot this ominous visitor. She saw Napier, suffering and deserted, upheld by nothing but his inexplicable faith, and suddenly her whole heart rallied to him. She almost said aloud into the dark, “You're not alone, my darling—”
Fletcher stood motionless. He had not so much as touched his cap to her. And his face had a look of mad amusement. Yet there was something about him that impressed her so that she was neither afraid nor angry—a sort of tragic largeness.
“I didn't think it was wise to ask for you,” he said. “The servants talk. Better come just as you are.”
“Where?” she asked.
“The Old House. Theres some one to see you—”
“Some one asking for me?”
“No. They don't ask. Some one you've got to see.”
“Why don't they come here?”
“There are reasons.”
“Who are they?”
“You'll find out. They haven't much time.” He bent his black brows at her. “You called me a coward, Miss Margaret. What are you?”
She answered with dignity: “I've a right to know—your behavior is strange enough. But I'm not frightened.”
“No—? Not a little? Well, you can trust me. I was with Master Peter all through. I wouldn't get your feet wet on a fool's errand. You'll curse yourself to your dying day if you don't come.”
“But if they didn't ask for me, why should you ask—?”
“Because—” he said, “I never wanted to hurt a German as I want to hurt you, Miss Margaret—”
She caught her breath. Then she lifted her head a little. “Very well—I'll come.”
She closed the window behind her and stepped out on to the sodden grass. She was without hat or cloak, and the rain, fine and glacial, seemed to penetrate to her very bones. But she could not have waited. She was too afraid. Not of the man striding gloomily beside her. It was an old fear—fear of that house that had once been a laughing, happy place and almost overnight had closed down in a haunted silence. She knew that if she waited, she might run away.
THE trees seemed to surround the house like a somber and hostile bodyguard. Fletcher held open the door for her. Against the dim light of the passage he towered, black and monstrous. He peered at her.
“Nerves all right, Miss Margaret? Not going to scream or have hysterics, are you? Mustn't do that. Such a pretty, happy, young lady. Go right up. I'll leave you. You'll like to be alone—”
She passed him without a word. She believed that he was mad. But the conviction that there was something here that she must know drove her forward in the teeth of her fear.
On the faded walls hung old pictures, photographs of Peter's college days, his shooting trophies. A stag's head—a royal—of which he had been very proud—stared down at her with glassy eyes. She had not seen these things since she was a child. She was like a ghost. The sound of her footsteps seemed to be soaked up by the mournful silence. The ancient stairs were quiet under her tread. But just above, under the door that faced her, a line of light cut across the darkness.
Fletcher's whisper followed her mockingly:
“Don't knock. Go in. There's no one to hurt you—not a hair of your pretty head.”
She had ceased to think. She felt that she had become fear itself, cowering on the verge of a bottomless horror. Her will seemed in the control of some outside power. It drove her up those last steps—it forced her hand to the door. She remembered queerly how just such a slow, silently opening door had always seemed a menacing thing—
The room hadn't changed. It wasn't like the rest of the house—not dead and shrouded in the past. It was warm with life. A fire that had once blazed genially, glimmered to meet her. A carefully shaded candle threw down a pale light from the mantelpiece. Yes it was a dream. Peter's room, luxurious and shabby, and Peter's long, slim legs stretched out to the last warmth. She could not have cried out. So long and slim and graceful, And above them—in the shadow of the big chair—nothing—nothing recognizable—a hulk—limbless—and something white—a sheet of paper—a mask with slits—an awful caricature that turned slowly toward her with its unchanging stare—its grin—
“Who is it—?”
It wasn't a voice. It was an animal trying to talk—a gurgling, scarcely distinguishable sound. She whispered her own name—she did not know how. Whereat the slender, graceful legs struggled to their feet, the bulk stood up, turning gropingly toward the light, beating at with its empty sleeves, striking against it with its shapeless mass—like some huge, dreadful moth.
The candle fell at last—sputtered and went out. But there was still the fire—
For one moment she had been nearly mad. Then it was that understanding and pity rose behind her like a great wave and lifted her above herself and beyond the reach of horror The thing had sunk back into the great chair, It was trying to hide itself and crying—the sound of its crying tore the silence.
She went to it and knelt down and gathered it in her arms.
“Oh, Peter—my darling—”
It turned to her then—gallant, happy Peter—cowering against her like a lost child...
THE man Fletcher waited. He stood black and motionless at the open door. As the dawn began to show spectrally among the trees, Margaret Elroy came down the stairs and stood beside him. He turned and looked at her. The crazy fury had gone from his face and the youth from hers.
“I was mad, Miss Margaret,” he said “We all go mad here. Gordon, too. He couldn't stand it. They had to send him away. It's these moors—and the loneliness—with that—”
“They treated me like a child,” she said. “I was one—”
“And then your pretty face—and the village gossip—dancing and laughing with your young men—and him—like that—dying—”
“It's all right now.”
“And the talk of war—light talk—the boys singing their cursed songs—death or glory— And your fine politicians, counting them like poor, silly geese: 'We can land a hundred thousand tomorrow—' All over the world—”
She laid her hand on his arm.
“They won't dare,” she said. “Perhaps they'll never dare again.”
12
HE WONDERED about the other men who had stood where he was standing, and was sorry for them. Guilty or innocent, he knew their loneliness. The dock seemed to hold him up like a strange wild animal for the world to gape at. To the right of him was the fashionable audience, rustling and craning to have a better view—to the left, the jury, who were to decide what sort of animal he was—mad or bad or harmless—opposite him, on a higher level, a spot of vivid color in the murky atmosphere, the Judge himself, who knew what had to be done with dangers to society. The well of the Court was full of legal heads and rustling papers.
He was not strong enough to stand, and they had given him a chair. For the most part he sat with folded arms looking at the patch of light above the Judge's canopy. He remembered the story a chief engineer had once told him. The man had stayed alone in the engine room of a torpedoed ship which he and a handful of his men were trying to save. And looking up through the main shaft, he had watched the great mast bend over and had known an infinite peace because he had done all that a man could do. When you had done that, Napier thought, your loneliness didn't matter—nor anything that life could do to you.
He had no defence and no defender. He had shut himself off from people. Ever since he had had strength to think clearly, he had known that this was the only course—to stand alone and sink alone. Margaret must not be dragged down with him. He thought of her with an aching pity. He saw now that the burden he had put upon her was intolerable. She was only a child, with nothing but her love for him to illuminate her. Everything was against her—her traditions, her people. She would act in the only way that would seem right and reasonable.
Well, she had been his only chance—the only hope of all men, had she but known it. Such an ironic, pathetic business!
He wondered if they would hang him. He thought not. Mad or sane, a long sentence would suit the case better. That was the dreadful thing—the endless years, his brain rotting and festering, his work undone, and Margaret somewhere in the world—not able to forget. After all, he was the one man for her. He had smashed her life with his own.
THERE was a queer atmosphere in the Court—a tension as though invisible wires were being drawn to snapping point. He had felt it first outside in the crowd that had surged around him with their white, inimical faces, their eyes hard and curious and afraid. Hysteria—war hysteria. Perhaps they would try to lynch him. They were in the mood. Unaccountable, irresponsible. A movement this way or that and they would be ready to fling themselves cheering and unarmed upon the enemy—or turn and fly in a panic as headlong and as senseless. For they were afraid. In the old days you marched with the soldiers to the station and then you went home to your beds. But now it was different. In a few hours an unnamed death might be upon them. Some of them remembered.
And he might have saved them.
People came and went in the witness box. There was Edstein—Edstein who bowed to him and testified to his honorable position among scientific men, giving his evidence with a secretive little smile. And then Sir James pompous and indignant. Elroy himself came, and the Court stirred. Their destiny lay in his hands. In a few days now he would speak for them, pronouncing sentence of life or death on them or on their children. He looked old and broken. He would not lift his eyes to the prisoner in the dock.
Margaret Elroy's name was never spoken.
Then it was Napier himself. He made his statement patiently and quietly. Yes, he had refused to make his country invincible. That was what it amounted to. The jury of twelve plain, common-sense men blinked at him. So he was that sort—a conscientious objector, a pacifist (who had killed a man)—a Bolshevik, something at any rate outside the herd—defiant of the herd's ideals. And the herd instinct in them grew red and angry. They wanted to destroy him. These twelve ordinary, pacific men were stirred with a sudden blood-lust. They were glad when the Prosecution Counsel gibed at him in his smooth and courtly way. Before they hung him, they wanted to see him tortured and ridiculous.
Where was this precious secret—had anybody ever seen it—was there any proof of its existence, beyond the talk of the discoverers? Could not the prisoner produce evidence?
Napier shook his head. “No—I have no evidence.”
It was known that a woman had gone to his rooms after the arrest and had taken papers from his safe. Who was she? Napier remained silent. Counsel leaned toward him, pointing a denunciatory finger. He was very able. Alternately he made the man before him into a charlatan and a mean traitor who would have sold to the enemy at a greater price. Sewell became the patriot martyr. Suddenly Napier cut short the flood of questions and innuendo.
“I have told you that I killed him. We made our discovery a thousand years too soon. I was responsible. There is no country fit to hold such power.”
They moaned at him. They were like tigers, crouching and swaying in their hungry anguish. Their hatred became venomous. So he gave himself airs, did he? They weren't good enough, weren't they? Well, they would show him.
Some one—a warder—touched him on the shoulder, and he went back into the dock. He kept his eyes fixed on the light above the Judge's head. After all, there was nothing they could do to him. A man's peace and safety were in himself.
“Call Margaret Elroy—”
It seemed to him that the whole Court rose to its feet with him. For the first time he stood at his full height, drawn up as though to meet something more final than his sentence. He saw her. She was turned toward him, and smiling. It was as though, before the whole world, she stretched out her hands to him.
And he knew that she was not a girl any more. She was full-grown ...
SHE took the oath. She was more composed than any one in the Court. Behind her answers was a quiet sub-current of thought. She was remembering her old life and wondering how she could ever have believed that it was life. She thought of Edstein, and their two months of anxious toil together, and of the poor ghost, now laid forever in peace, who had brought her to this place—
She heard some one questioning her.
“Yes—I know the prisoner. We are to be married—”
He shook his head at that in agonized denial, and she smiled at him. It was touching to be so strong.
“You say that you have important evidence.”
“It was I who took the papers from Mr. Napier's safe.”
“On whose authority?”
“On his. He asked me to destroy them.”
“You did so?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I thought he was wrong.”
“You were thinking of your country?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do with them?”
“I waited. I had promised. I consulted with Professor Edstein. He believed that Mr. Napier was justified—”
“Wait. You must only answer my questions. Where are those papers?”
“Copies were delivered to the British Government an hour ago.”
“Ah—!”
They will be in the hands of the Council of the League of Nations today—in the hands o every civilized nation in the world—”
She turned to him. She believed that she said aloud: “Is that right? Is that what you would have done if you had had time?” But she could not see his answer. Suddenly she was blind with tears. They blotted out the Court's inhuman order, its bloodless decorum. For her it was a place full of living people who loved and hungered and thirsted and knew fear, and who were confronted with an issue on which the fate of their kind depended. She appealed to them. If some one tried to silence her, she paid no heed. Her voice was shaken, but it sounded clear and thrilling like a trumpet call in that stifling silence.
“There'll be no war, never, never. They won't dare—no one will ever dare again. The destroyer would be destroyed. Great armies—great navies—they won't help. One day they'll seem like foolish toys to us. We'll have to be decent and have pity and understanding for one another— The nightmare is over. And if we're free at last, it's because this man forgot himself for the sake of all of us—”
The tears had passed like a mist. She saw the blood rush up into his face—the clear light of recognition. She thought she heard his answer,
“My dear—my dear—that was well done—”
And now to neither of them did the verdict of the world matter. They were together—and they would be together always.
THE hysteria had broken. They were not terrified, angry animals any more, but men lifted for a little while on to a rare height of vision. They told each other afterward that he had killed in self-defence. But that was not their real reason. In their hearts they knew that it was fine for a man to have thought not of himself, nor his friend, nor his love, nor his country, but of all of them—over the whole world.
The twelve plain, common-sense men stood in their places and gazed across the gray, waiting Court. They looked small and solemn and intent. Perhaps they saw in him a prophet. Perhaps they saw beyond him to a time when a uniting fear might turn to something nobler.
At least he had set them on the road. He had set them free.
And they could do no less
The End