Short Stories

by Agatha Christie

  "And it's my opinion," he ended, "that this fellow Eastney is a bit cracked. Gillian would have had trouble with him if I hadn't turned up to look after her."

  His laugh sounded a little fatuous to Mr Satterthwaite, and no responsive smile came to the girl's face. She was looking earnestly at Mr Satterthwaite.

  "Phil's all right," she said slowly. "He cares for me, I know, and I care for him like a friend - but - but not anything more. I don't know how he'll take the news about Charlie, I'm sure. He - I'm so afraid he'll be -"

  She stopped, inarticulate in face of the dangers she vaguely sensed.

  "If I can help you in any way," said Mr Satterthwaite warmly, "pray command me."

  He fancied Charlie Burns looked vaguely resentful, but Gillian said at once, "Thank you."

  Mr Satterthwaite left his new friends after having promised to take tea with Gillian on the following Thursday.

  When Thursday came, Mr Satterthwaite felt a little thrill of pleasurable anticipation. He thought, "I'm an old man - but not too old to be thrilled by a face. A face..." Then he shook his head with a sense of foreboding.

  Gillian was alone. Charlie Burns was to come in later. She looked much happier, Mr Satterthwaite thought, as though a load had been lifted from her mind. Indeed, she frankly admitted as much.

  "I dreaded telling Phil about Charles. It was silly of me. I ought to have known Phil better. He was upset, of course, but no one could have been sweeter. Really sweet he was. Look what he sent me this morning - a wedding present. Isn't it magnificent?"

  It was indeed rather magnificent for a young man in Philip Eastney's circumstances. A four-valve wireless set, of the latest type.

  "We both love music so much, you see," explained the girl. "Phil said that when I was listening to a concert on this, I should always think of him a little. And I'm sure I shall. Because we have been such friends."

  "You must be proud of your friend," said Mr Satterthwaite gently. "He seems to have taken the blow like a true sportsman."

  Gillian nodded. He saw the quick tears come into her eyes.

  "He asked me to do one thing for him. Tonight is the anniversary of the day we first met. He asked me if I would stay at home quietly this evening and listen to the wireless programme - not to go out with Charlie anywhere. I said, of course I would, and that I was very touched, and that I would think of him with a lot of gratitude and affection."

  Mr Satterthwaite nodded, but he was puzzled. He was seldom at fault in his delineation of character, and he would have judged Philip Eastney quite incapable of such a sentimental request. The young man must be of a more banal order than he supposed. Gillian evidently thought the idea quite in keeping with her rejected lover's character. Mr Satterthwaite was a little - just a little - disappointed.

  He was sentimental himself, and knew it, but he expected better things of the rest of the world. Besides, sentiment belonged to his age. It had no part to play in the modern world.

  He asked Gillian to sing and she complied. He told her her voice was charming, but he knew quite well in his own mind that it was distinctly second class. Any success that could have come to her in the profession she had adopted would have been won by her face, not her voice.

  He was not particularly anxious to see young Burns again, so presently he rose to go. It was at that moment that his attention was attracted by an ornament on the mantelpiece which stood out among the other rather gimcrack objects like a jewel on a dust heap.

  It was a curving beaker of thin green glass, long-stemmed and graceful, and poised on the edge of it was what looked like a gigantic soap-bubble, a ball of iridescent glass. Gillian noticed his absorption.

  "That's an extra wedding present from Phil. It's rather pretty, I think.

  He works in a sort of glass factory."

  "It is a beautiful thing," said Mr Satterthwaite reverently.

  "The glass blowers of Murano might have been proud of that."

  He went away with his interest in Philip Eastney strangely stimulated. An extraordinarily interesting young man. And yet the girl with the wonderful face preferred Charlie Burns. What a strange and inscrutable universe!

  It had just occurred to Mr Satterthwaite that, owing to the remarkable beauty of Gillian West, his evening with Mr Quin had somehow missed fire. As a rule, every meeting with that mysterious individual had resulted in some strange and unforeseen happening.

  It was with the hope of perhaps running against the man of mystery that Mr Satterthwaite bent his steps towards the Arlecchino Restaurant where once, in the days gone by, he had met Mr Quin, and which Mr Quin had said he often frequented.

  Mr Satterthwaite went from room to room at the Arlecchino, looking hopefully about him, but there was no sign of Mr Quin's dark, smiling face. There was, however, somebody else. Sitting at a small table alone was Philip Eastney.

  The place was crowded and Mr Satterthwaite took his seat opposite the young man. He felt a sudden strange sense of exultation, as though he were caught up and made part of a shimmering pattern of events. He was in this thing - whatever it was. He knew now what Mr Quin had meant that evening at the Opera. There was a drama going on, and in it was a part, an important part, for Mr Satterthwaite. He must not fail to take his cue and speak his lines.

  He sat down opposite Philip Eastney with the sense of accomplishing the inevitable. It was easy enough to get into conversation. Eastney seemed anxious to talk. Mr Satterthwaite was, as always, an encouraging and sympathetic listener. They talked of the war, of explosives, of poison gases. Eastney had a lot to say about these last, for during the greater part of the war he had been engaged in their manufacture. Mr Satterthwaite found him really interesting.

  There was one gas, Eastney said, that had never been tried. The Armistice had come too soon. Great things had been hoped for it.

  One whiff of it was deadly. He warmed to animation as he spoke.

  Having broken the ice, Mr Satterthwaite gently turned the conversation to music. Eastney's thin face lit up. He spoke with the passion and abandon of the real music lover. They discussed Yoaschbim, and the young man was enthusiastic. Both he and Mr Satterthwaite agreed that nothing on earth could surpass a really fine tenor voice. Eastney as a boy had heard Caruso and he had never forgotten it.

  "Do you know that he could sing to a wine-glass and shatter it?" he demanded.

  "I always thought that was a fable," said Mr Satterthwaite smiling.

  "No, it's gospel truth, I believe. The thing's quite possible. It's a question of resonance."

  He went off into technical details. His face was flushed and his eyes shone. The subject seemed to fascinate him, and Mr Satterthwaite noted that he seemed to have a thorough grasp of what he was talking about. The elder man realised that he was talking to an exceptional brain, a brain that might almost be described as that of a genius. Brilliant, erratic, undecided as yet as to the true channel to give it outlet, but undoubtedly genius.

  And he thought of Charlie Burns and wondered at Gillian West.

  It was with quite a start that he realised how late it was getting, and he called for his bill. Eastney looked slightly apologetic.

  "I'm ashamed of myself - running on so," he said. "But it was a lucky chance sent you along here tonight. I - I needed someone to talk to this evening."

  He ended his speech with a curious little laugh. His eyes were still blazing with some subdued excitement. Yet there was something tragic about him.

  "It has been quite a pleasure," said Mr Satterthwaite. "Our conversation has been most interesting and instructive to me."

  He then made his funny, courteous little bow and passed out of the restaurant. The night was a warm one and as he walked slowly down the street a very odd fancy came to him. He had the feeling that he was not alone - that someone was walking by his side. In vain he told himself that the idea was a delusion - it persisted. Someone was walking beside him down that dark, quiet street, someone whom he could not see. He wondered what it was that br
ought the figure of Mr Quin so clearly before his mind. He felt exactly as though Mr Quin were there walking beside him, and yet he had only to use his eyes to assure himself that it was not so, that he was alone.

  But the thought of Mr Quin persisted, and with it came something else - a need, an urgency of some kind, an oppressive foreboding of calamity. There was something he must do - and do quickly. There was something very wrong, and it lay in his hands to put it right.

  So strong was the feeling that Mr Satterthwaite forebore to fight against it. Instead, he shut his eyes and tried to bring that mental image of Mr Quin nearer. If he could only have asked Mr Quin - but even as the thought flashed through his mind he knew it was wrong.

  It was never any use asking Mr Quin anything. "The threads are all in your hands -" that was the kind of thing Mr Quin would say.

  The threads. Threads of what? He analysed his own feeling and impressions carefully. That presentiment of danger, now. Whom did it threaten?

  At once a picture rose up before his eyes, the picture of Gillian West sitting alone listening to the wireless.

  Mr Satterthwaite flung a penny to a passing newspaper boy, and snatched at a paper. He turned at once to the London Radio programme. Yoaschbim was broadcasting tonight, he noted with interest. He was singing "Salve Dimora," from Faust and, afterwards, a selection of his folk songs, "The Shepherd's Song," "The Fish,"

  "The Little Deer," etc.

  Mr Satterthwaite crumpled the paper together. The knowledge of what Gillian was listening to seemed to make the picture of her clearer.

  Sitting there alone...

  An odd request, that, of Philip Eastney's. Not like the man, not like him at all. There was no sentimentality in Eastney. He was a man of violent feeling, a dangerous man, perhaps -

  Again his thought brought up with a jerk. A dangerous man - that meant something. "The threads are all in your hands." That meeting with Philip Eastney tonight - rather odd. A lucky chance, Eastney had said. Was it chance? Or was it part of that interwoven design of which Mr Satterthwaite had once or twice been conscious this evening?

  He cast his mind back. There must be something in Eastney's conversation, some clue there. There must, or else why this strange feeling of urgency? What had he talked about? Singing, war work, Caruso.

  Caruso - Mr Satterthwaite's thoughts went off at a tangent.

  Yoaschbim's voice was very nearly equal to that of Caruso. Gillian would be sitting listening to it now as it rang out true and powerful, echoing round the room, setting glasses ringing -

  He caught his breath. Glasses ringing! Caruso, singing to a wineglass and the wine-glass breaking. Yoaschbim singing in the London studio and in a room over a mile away the crash and tinkle of glass not a wine glass, a thin, green, glass beaker. A crystal soap bubble falling, a soap bubble that perhaps was not empty...

  It was at that moment that Mr Satterthwaite, as judged by passersby, suddenly went mad. He tore open the newspaper once more, took a brief glance at the wireless announcements and then began to run for his life down the quiet street. At the end of it he found a crawling taxi, and jumping into it, he yelled an address to the driver and the information that it was life or death to get there quickly. The driver, judging him mentally afflicted but rich, did his utmost.

  Mr Satterthwaite lay back, his head a jumble of fragmentary thoughts, forgotten bits of science learned at school, phrases used by Eastney that night. Resonance - natural periods - if the period of the force coincides with the natural period - there was something about a suspension bridge, soldiers marching over it and the swing of their stride being the same as the period of the bridge. Eastney had studied the subject. Eastney knew. And Eastney was a genius.

  At 10.45 Yoaschbim was to broadcast. It was that now. Yes, but the Faust had to come first. It was the "Shepherd's Song," with the great shout after the refrain that would - that would - do what?

  His mind went whirling round again. Tones, overtones, half-tones. He didn't know much about these things - but Eastney knew. Pray heaven he would be in time!

  The taxi stopped. Mr Satterthwaite flung himself out and, raced up the stone stairs to a second floor like a young athlete. The door of the flat was ajar. He pushed it open and the great tenor voice welcomed him. The words of the "Shepherd's Song" were familiar to him in a less unconventional setting.

  "Shepherd, see thy horse's flowing main -"

  He was in time then. He burst open the sitting-room door. Gillian was sitting there in a tall chair by the fireplace "Bayra Mischa's daughter is to wed today - To the wedding I must haste away."

  She must have thought him mad. He clutched at her, crying out something incomprehensible, and half pulled, half dragged her out till they stood upon the stairway.

  "To the wedding I must haste away - Yaha!"

  A wonderful high note, full-throated, powerful, hit full in, the middle, a note any singer might be proud of. And with it another sound, the faint tinkle of broken glass.

  A stray cat darted past them and in through the flat door -

  Gillian made a movement, but Mr Satterthwaite held her back, speaking incoherently.

  "No, no - it's deadly - no smell, nothing to warn you. A mere whiff, and it's all over. Nobody knows quite how deadly it would be. It's unlike anything that's ever been tried before."

  He was repeating the things that Philip Easter had told him over the table at dinner.

  Gillian stared at him uncomprehendingly.

  III

  Philip Eastney drew out his watch and looked at it. It was just halfpast eleven. For the past three-quarters of an hour he had been pacing up and down the Embankment. He looked out over the

  Thames and then turned - to look into the face of his dinner companion.

  "That's odd," he said, and laughed. "We seem fated to run into each other tonight."

  "If you call it Fate." said Mr Satterthwaite.

  Philip Eastney looked at him more attentively and his own expression changed.

  "Yes?" he said quietly.

  Mr Satterthwaite went straight to the point "I have just come from Miss West's flat."

  "Yes?"

  The same voice, with the same deadly quiet.

  "We have taken a dead cat out of it."

  There was silence, then Eastney said, "Who are you?"

  Mr Satterthwaite spoke for some time. He recited the whole history of events.

  "So you see, I was in time," he ended up. He paused and added quite gently, "Have you anything-to say?"

  He expected something, some outburst, some wild justification. But nothing came.

  "No," said Philip Eastney quietly, and turned on his heel and walked away.

  Mr Satterthwaite looked after him till his figure was swallowed up in the gloom. In spite of himself, he had a strange fellow-feeling for Eastney, the feeling of an artist for another artist, of a sentimentalist for a real lover, of a plain man for a genius.

  At last he roused himself with a start and began to walk in the same direction as Eastney. A fog was beginning to come up. Presently he met a policeman who looked at him suspiciously.

  "Did you hear a kind of splash just now?" asked the policeman.

  "No," said Mr Satterthwaite.

  The policeman was peering out over the river.

  "Another of these suicides, I expect," he grunted disconsolately.

  "They will do it."

  "I suppose," said Mr Satterthwaite, "that they have their reasons."

  "Money, mostly," said the policeman. "Sometimes it's a woman," he said, as he prepared to move away. "It's not always their fault, but some women cause a lot of trouble."

  "Some women," agreed Mr Satterthwaite softly.

  When the policeman had gone on, he sat down on a seat with the fog coming up all around him, and thought about Helen of Troy, and wondered if she were a nice, ordinary woman, blessed or cursed with a wonderful face.

  Chapter 9

  THE DEAD HARLEQUIN

  Mr Satterthwaite w
alked slowly up Bond Street enjoying the sunshine. He was, as usual, carefully and beautifully dressed, and was bound for the Harchester Galleries where there was an exhibition of the paintings of one Frank Bristow, a new and hitherto unknown artist who showed signs of suddenly becoming the rage. Mr Satterthwaite was a patron of the arts.

  As Mr Satterthwaite entered the Harchester Galleries, he was greeted at once with a smile of pleased recognition.

  "Good morning, Mr Satterthwaite, I thought we should see you before long. You know Bristow's work? Fine - very fine indeed. Quite unique of its kind."

  Mr Satterthwaite purchased a catalogue and stepped through the open archway into the long room where the artist's works were displayed. They were water colours, executed with such extraordinary technique and finish that they resembled coloured etchings. Mr Satterthwaite walked slowly round the walls scrutinising and, on the whole, approving. He thought that this young man deserved to arrive. Here was originality, vision, and a most severe and exacting technique. There were crudities, of course. That was only to be expected - but there was also something closely allied to genius. Mr Satterthwaite paused before a little masterpiece representing Westminster Bridge with its crowd of buses, trams and hurrying pedestrians. A tiny thing and wonderfully perfect. It was called, he noted, The Ant Heap. He passed on and quite suddenly drew in his breath with a gasp, his imagination held and riveted.

  The picture was called the Dead Harlequin. The forefront of it represented a floor of inlaid squares of black and white marble. In the middle of the floor lay Harlequin on his back with his arms outstretched, in his motley of black and red. Behind him was a window and outside that window, gazing in at the figure on the floor, was what appeared to be the same man silhouetted against the red glow of the setting sun.