At twenty paces the men took their stand, facing each other. The shortness of the distance, prescribed by Sir George, was a further point in favour of so indifferent a marksman as Gadsby.
The artist braced himself for the effort upon which his life depended. Quentin, with a damnable excess of zeal, had impressed upon him the necessity of hitting Sir George so as either to kill him or to maim him beyond the possibility of returning the fire.
“Remember,” he said at the last moment, “that if you miss him, you’re a dead man; so don’t waste the chance you’re given!”
Quentin conceived this to be the very words calculated to tune up his principal to the requisite pitch of nerve and accuracy. Their effect was, of course, the very opposite. Realising how much — how very much — depended upon his steadfastness, Gadsby began to tremble. In this condition he faced his opponent, and levelled his pistol to take aim.
And when he found Sir George quite calmly surveying him through his quizzing-glass whilst awaiting the bullet, Gadsby’s arm began to shake. A moment it quivered there in its horizontal position, an object of deepest apprehension to Sir George; then the hammer fell.
As the artist peered through the lifting wisp of smoke and saw his opponent still in the same position, apparently entirely unmoved, he turned sick and dizzy. The shot had gone wide, and it was now Sir George’s turn. Gadsby mastered himself and stiffened perceptibly. For the sake of these gentlemen who stood by him, if not for his own, he must preserve a steady front whilst he received a fire that must bring death!
He watched Sir George’s arm come slowly to the horizontal until he could see no more than the nozzle of his pistol across the twenty paces that separated them. Then, on the verge of physical sickness, unable to watch the approach of death, he closed his eyes.
Eternities passed, and still the shot did not come.
It seemed to Gadsby that he stood on that spot for a hundred years, so consciously felt had been every fraction of each of the few seconds that were sped. Then he heard Sir George’s voice:
“Ned, will you ask Mr. Quentin if he will give me leave to speak a word with his principal?”
Gadsby looked up, startled, to see that Sir George had lowered his pistol, and he heard Quentin excitedly answering, without awaiting the formality of the words’ repetition to him:
“’Tis most irregular, Sir George. ’Pon my honour it is! After you have fired your shot, if you please.”
“My difficulty,” said Sir George, “is that he may no longer be here to listen to me then.”
Quentin turned to Gadsby, and asked the question as he was bidden. Gadsby moistened his dry lips, eagerly to utter the words that should give him this last chance, whatever it might be.
A moment later Sir George was standing before him, his seconds, at the baronet’s request, having drawn out of earshot, cursing Sir George’s eccentricities.
Unquestionably it was most irregular, but Sir George cared nothing for that. He was in a quandary — tormented by a doubt, confronted by a riddle that he had almost hoped the painter’s bullet would have solved. He could not take this man’s life in that cold-blooded fashion until he had positive knowledge that the thing he feared was true. After all, it might not be. And all he hoped from life was centered in that.
“Sir,” he said, “I ask your pardon for proceeding so outrageously. But I have terms to propose, to which you may find it possible to accede. The fewest words will serve. You will have heard that I can hit a flying swallow, and you may conceive that if I fire to kill you your death will be as certain as only death itself can be. I am not going to fire to-day,” Sir George continued slowly. “In the agreement into which we have entered there is no stipulation that the second shot be fired within any given time. It is mine to fire when I please and where I please provided that at the time no less than twenty paces separate us.
“Now, sir, whether I ever fire that shot at you or not shall depend upon circumstances. If these circumstances prove favourable to yourself, I shall impose that you leave town this very day, and return to Gloucester; and that before you depart you return with me to King Street
to take your congé of Lady Sutliffe. On my side, I undertake to afford you the fullest amends for the affront I put upon you yesterday at White’s. I shall publicly declare that the charge I then brought against you was utterly unfounded. As your shot has already afforded you all the redress to which you were entitled by the laws of honour, you will perceive that such an admission as this will be extremely generous on my part.”
Gadsby, who had been staring at the baronet out of a face that was woefully white, cleared his throat to reply.
“I do not think I apprehend you quite, Sir George,” said he.
“I do not think it necessary that you should,” was the cool answer. “I have — out of motives which I see no necessity to disclose — imposed certain conditions which may (for I do not promise absolutely that they will) save your life. For nothing less, I assure you, hangs in the balance. Reject these conditions, and I step back to my place yonder, and in twenty seconds you will be before your Maker. It is for you to make choice, sir.”
Another man in Gadsby’s place might have told Sir George to fire and be damned. But Gadsby was of no such fine temper, as Sir George had shrewdly judged. Indeed, the painter had a difficulty in dissembling the eagerness with which he accepted this unexpected chance of life and the terms imposed.
Thus it fell out that a half-hour later Sir George and Mr. Gadsby came together in a chaise to the baronet’s handsome house in King Street
. Sir George gave his order to a lackey in the hall.
“You will inform her ladyship that Mr. Gadsby is here, and desires to take his leave of her before quitting town. And on your life,” he added, too low for Gadsby to overhear, “you will say no word of my presence.”
The servant bowed and departed, whilst Sir George ushered his still bewildered guest into the library to wait.
Thither came the lackey presently with a scared face.
“Sir George! Sir George!” he panted. “Her — her ladyship is taken ill. She swooned away when I — when I spoke your message.”
Joy leapt in Sir George’s heart at that announcement. But his face remained impassive. He begged the artist to give him leave, and went upstairs, four steps at a time, to his wife’s room.
He found her still unconscious in the arms of her woman, who was almost as white, and who gasped when she saw the baronet enter.
He took his wife into his own arms, bathed her brow tenderly, and bade the woman hold salts to her ladyship’s nostrils.
Presently she revived. She opened her eyes, vacant at first, then quickening, with horror, and, lastly, stared in amazement at her husband, who was bending over her.
“George!” she cried. And again. “George!” Her fingers clutched his arm. “Oh, thank God! — thank God!” she burst out, in a shuddering sob. “I thought you had been killed.”
Thus had he wrested from her the truth which her perversity denied him. He was content; he was jubilant at the result of the ordeal to which he had submitted her. With a nod he dismissed her woman. Then he drew her to his heart, and kissed the face of her he loved above all worldly things.
“Oh, I did so fear for you!” she moaned. “I did so fear for you! And when word was brought to me that Mr. Gadsby was here, I — I —”
“I know — I know, sweetheart. But all is well,” he reassured her; “all is so very well.”
Brokenly she begged his pardon for her wrong-headedness. But this he cut short.
“Mr. Gadsby is below, waiting to take his leave of you. Will you receive him?”
“How can I?” quoth she. “Beg him to hold me excused.”
Begging her to expect his immediate return, Sir George went to dismiss his guest.
“Mr. Gadsby,” said he, “I present to you her ladyship’s compliments and her regrets that as she is but newly risen she cannot in person receive your adieux.
She desires me, further, to wish you a happy journey into Gloucester. I’ll not detain you, sir, since you will be eager to set out.”
Gadsby drew a breath of relief. Then he looked into the other’s face, and marvelled at the change in it. Its impassivity had departed; there was a flush upon the cheek, and a sparkle in the eye. He wondered what it might portend, and he was plagued too, by a doubt, which increased when Sir George stood, at parting, by the door of the chaise.
Then, as if answer the artist’s unspoken thoughts, the baronet drew a pistol from his pocket.
“This is the shot I owe you, Mr. Gadsby,” said he easly. “Lest you think I boasted to you this morning, please observe.”
He raised the weapon, and fired at a swallow darting overhead. But as he pulled the trigger Mr. Gadsby seized his arm, and deflected his aim, so that the bird escaped the doom that had impended.
Sir George stared at him, frowning. The artist explained:
“I would not have you, sir, destroy the life of an innocent creature to make good a boast.”
Sir George’s frown deepened; then it vanished, and he smiled quizzically.
“I would observe, sir, that by all the laws of honour you were wrong to touch my arm at such a moment. I might claim the right to another shot. But I shall not. Besides, I, too, was irregular, since I stood within the prescribed distance of twenty paces.”
Then he laughed good-humoredly, for his relief had brought him a great happiness, and he loved all the world that morning, including Mr. Gadsby.
“At least,” he concluded, “I have served my purpose — to ascertain whether you have a heart, sir. And I am glad to discover that it seems you have.”
WIRGMAN’S THEORY
Whatever might be said against Roger Wirgman — and his intimates, had they been willing to speak, might have said a good deal — it was not to be denied that he was a man of marked individuality. And in this twentieth century world a man of individuality is like a rosebush in a bed of weeds. I don’t know that my metaphor is exactly applicable to Roger Wirgman, for there was little about him, morally or physically, that suggested roses. He was lank of figure with the brow of a philosopher and the mouth of a satyr.
He was widely read, rather than well read; he had a passion for criminology, and murder was his study predilect. He contended — and facts offer no lack of justification for his contention — that the dictum “murder will out” was found, when tested, to be as fallacious as most proverbial tenets.
“Given,” he would say in his cold-blooded manner, “a man of sufficient education, with an imagination wide enough to foresee all possible issues, and intelligence strong enough to provide capably for each and every one of those issues so as completely to cover up his tracks, and he may kill with impunity.
“Think of the hundreds — indeed, I might almost say thousands — of yearly undiscovered murderers. Why are their crimes not brought home to them? Because, possessed of the qualities I have mentioned, they have successfully effaced all traces of any implicating evidence.
“Now, what is the first question that is asked when an investigation is opened? It is: Who could have had a motive for doing this? To baffle research at the outset, therefore, we must arrange that no motives shall be apparent. So that when a man is noxious, and his removal becomes a desideratum or a thing that at some future time may be necessary, we must look to it that we do not betray those feelings by over inveighing against him and exposing our inimical sentiments. On the contrary, let us feign and protest friendship and affection for him; let us court him, and make it appear that we are his dearest friend. Thus, when some day he is found dead, with a suggestion of foul play attaching to his end, and it comes to be asked who were his enemies, none shall think of naming us.”
In this fashion would he pursue his pet theme, dilating upon the contriving of accidents by land and water in a horrible, cold-blooded, logical manner that made his audience shudder.
“To listen to you,” said Pegram one night after Wirgman had delivered himself in this usual strain, “one might almost believe you had actual experience.”
“On the contrary,” rejoined Wirgman with a touch of whimsical regret, “I’m afraid that I am never likely to have an opportunity of applying my theories. Nevertheless, I am convinced that should the occasion arise I could prove them sound; though, for obvious reasons, I should unfortunately be unable to lay my results before you.”
“Wirgman, you’d make a nasty enemy,” laughed Pegram; “and I for one am glad to rank among your friends.”
“Touch wood,” muttered a humourist, “to avert the omen.”
“Come to think of it, though,” rejoined another, “it is really his friendship that is dangerous, for the first step according to his methods entails making a close friend of his proposed victims.”
At that there was a fairly general and good-humouredly bantering laugh at Wirgman and his theory, and the topic was abandoned for others in better concert with a club smokeroom.
Little did Harry Pegram dream how soon that theory was to be put into practice against himself; and still less did Wirgman think how he was to discover the gulf that lies between theories based upon human actions and their application.
The thing came about six months later. It arose from a sufficiently common cause — a woman, whom by an ill chance they had both elected to woo. She was a poor thing herself, in every sense unworthy of the struggle that followed between the rivals; but then is it not in the tortuous way of things that such women as these shall have power to inspire great passions and stir up great strife?
A coolness, slight at first, but later more remarkable, fell between the two friends. They grew distant in their manner, and avoided each other in so marked a degree that their estrangement grew into matter for conversation. Then Pegram did a mean and foolish thing. He uttered a slander calculated to harm Wirgman. When it came to Wirgman’s ears and he discovered the source of it, he flew into a violent rage — self-possessed though he ordinarily was — and swore to kill the fellow. The threat was voiced in that same club smokeroom, and loudly enough to be heard by its every occupant. That he would kill Pegram they looked upon as mere hyperbolical expression of his passion — a mere figure of speech. But that his anger was deep they realised, and they implored him to calm hinself. Outwardly he succeeded in doing so; but inwardly his rage boiled on, and the desire to do for that man’s existence what that man had done for his character was unabated.
Had anything been needed to swell his rancour he had it a week later in the announcement of Pegram’s betrothal to the lady. Wirgman had over-estimated his own attractions, her show of favour had lured him on, and perhaps justified him in building an elaborate castle in the air. He relied upon his marriage to mend his crippled resources — for the lady was well endowed. This castle of his now came toppling about his ears, and the financial crisis which he was compelled to face deepened his ill will towards Pegram, and carried him a step farther in the contemplation of that gentleman’s removal.
One night in the solitude of his elegant chambers he pondered the injury that had been done him. He cursed the moment of folly in which he had threatened Pegram’s life. He recalled the theory he had been so fond of expounding, and he reflected bitterly upon how grievously he had neglected to be guided by it now that its application had become desirable. Gloomily he sat and thought. He was a man of stern, determined mind, without conscience and without any principles to speak of; and he found himself dwelling upon the contemplation of murder as calmly and coldly as he had been wont to dwell upon its theoretical aspect.
A dozen means suggested themselves to his fertile brain, any one of which he might have adopted with safety had he but refrained from alienating Pegram, and, above all from foolishly proclaiming his resentment and threatening his rival’s life.
With brows knit he sat on through the night, and thought with all the intensity of his subtle intellect, until at length the frown lifted, and a smile gradually stole over
his strong face, and relaxed the lines of his cruel mouth. He had found a way.
He realised that it was beyond his power — and the act he contemplated must render it doubly so — to win the woman, or, in fact, to reap any advantage beyond the satisfaction his enemy’s destruction might afford him. But that satisfaction he deemed more than sufficient. Introspection showed him that he hated the woman now almost as bitterly as he hated the man; and he gathered pleasure from thought that the blow he intended to strike would be sufficiently far-reaching to wound her also. For this it was worth while abandoning England and his friends, even had not his creditors rendered such a step imperative in any event, now that he was not to have the assistance of her wealth to set him straight; and friends, after all, were of very slight consideration to a man of such self-centred interests.
Pegram was at the time staying down at Port Wimbush with the lady — whose name, by the way, was Miss Drummond — and her mother. No locality could have been better suited to Wirgman’s projects than this little seaside resort.
His first step was to contrive a disagreement with his bankers, which afforded him the motive he sought for withdrawing his deposit, a matter of some three thousand pounds, representing all that he possessed.
On the morrow he left town. But before he went he took care to look in at the club, and announce to everybody likely to be interested that he was going down to Port Wimbush to administer to Harry Pegram the completest thrashing ever one gentleman visited upon another.
What he was about to do he knew. For the manner of it he must profit by such circumstances as should offer themselves. He put up at the Swan Hotel — having previously ascertained that Pegram and the ladies were staying at the Crown — and during the whole of the next day he kept to his room.
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