by G. Roy McRae
Derek Capel had entered the house briskly, as was his wont, drawing off gloves and coat, with a cheery word for the butler who had opened the door for him, and an ever ready smile on his dark handsome face.
Some people said that Derek Capel was too ready to smile these days. It was as though he were endeavouring to flout cruel Fate who had played so many capricious tricks with him.
Young, handsome, and well endowed with the riches of the world, life should have been pleasant enough for him. And indeed, it could not be said that he did not squeeze every ounce of pleasure from life. His daily and nightly programme was one whirl of gaiety. He was supposed to have attended a society dance in London that night, and he was still in evening dress. But he had long since left the reception hall, and climbed into his car, to drive it recklessly, restlessly through the night.
Women as a rule liked Derek Capel. He was young, eager, and he gave promise of being an ardent lover.
His utter recklessness allied to his jovial laugh and charming manners seemed to the opposite sex to be the concrete of that which is most elusive in life—Romance. And even discerning mothers, who looked upon Derek Capel as an eligible bachelor, did not forget that despite his apparent irresponsibility—say at Brooklands Racing Track, where he was a skilful, as well as a reckless driver—he always managed to emerge triumphant and laughing from his many adventures.
If he dabbled on the Stock Exchange the shares were sure to rise, and Derek Capel was sure to sell out at the right time. He was one of Fortune’s favourites.
Yet one would scarce have thought so on seeing him enter the hall of Capel Manor. He handed his hat, gloves and overcoat to the butler with a brisk little nod, but once having dismissed him he stood on the hearthrug fingering his short moustache, and into his face crept a haggard, weary look such as few people had seen there.
‘Gad!’ he murmured. ‘If only I could keep away from the place. If only I could forget!’
That was impossible and he knew it. Life had made of him a spoilt darling—and thwarted him of the one thing he desired above all others. Derek Capel, with a long line of imperious, head-strong ancestors behind him, men who had carved their paths to fame and fortune through all manner of adversities, was not the man to take disappointment lightly.
Indeed, he had taken his blow very hardly indeed.
He strode to the mantelpiece now, and took up a photograph. His dark, handsome eyes were haunted with pain as he gazed at the likeness of Eleanor Appleby.
They had been sweethearts as boy and girl. As he had grown up he had come to love her with that apparently brotherly camraderie that really disguises a very deep-rooted and passionate feeling. He had always understood that one day he should take his bride … And then had come the bombshell—her marriage to Professor Appleby.
Derek Capel’s teeth showed as a white bar in his tanned face, and for a moment the dancing butterfly of London ballrooms looked wolfish. ‘Curse the fellow!’ he raged. ‘Heaven knows what fiendish tricks he plays. Oh, I’ve seen ’em together! If I could only catch him treating her badly—’
It was then that there sounded a knock at the door, and the butler entered to announce that the gardener at the Lodge had called, and wished to see Mr Capel on a matter of great urgency. He bore a message, he said, from Mrs Appleby.
Derek could hardly restrain his eagerness. He had the aged gardener brought in, and almost snatched the note from him. When he had read it he had looked up, his lips moved voicelessly.
‘Come round … her husband!… Afraid!’
It was on him, too, that strange premonition of disaster, as he stared unseeingly before him for a moment. He was aware that he was trembling a little. His thoughts were like horses out of hand. They galloped away with him. And they were a strange mixture of murderous thoughts, and joyful ones—joyful that Eleanor should have sent to him for aid.
Suddenly he clenched his fists and turned away.
He wanted only a pretext to visit the Lodge, and that was easily supplied. Professor Appleby and he were neighbours, and he often visited there, though he seldom saw Eleanor. They had this much in common, that they both had a love for books, and in particular for rare volumes.
On Derek Capel’s last visit, Professor Appleby had expressed a great desire to see a rare first edition of a book on mediævel witchcraft and poisons which he possessed in his library. The younger man had almost forgotten the matter, but now he remembered it again, and thinking it would serve as an excuse for his midnight call, he hurried to get the book.
Snatching hat and coat from the butler, he flung himself recklessly in at the wheel, and sent the long, low Mercedes car travelling through the night like some incredibly swift dragon with its two lighted eyes.
He did not drive the car in through the gates of the Lodge, but drew her to a halt outside and got out with a curiously set face, his dark eyes glowing.
The bare wintry branches of the trees on either side of the drive seemed to stretch out despairing arms to one another as Derek Capel hastened up the drive. Somewhere an owl hooted dismally, and the sound tore at the man’s nerves. To him the house that sheltered Eleanor Appleby seemed a place of queer dread tonight, yet it lured him on, drew him unresistingly as if on a cord.
He rang the front-door bell, and was almost glad to see the bulky figure of Professor Appleby coming himself to answer it.
They kept up an appearance of neighbourly friendship, though Derek Capel was sensible of a latent suspicion, mingled with cunning amusement, in Professor Appleby’s eyes at times as he regarded him. The professor seemed delighted to cast Derek Capel and Eleanor together as much as possible, though he was always there to watch them. The younger man had no doubt but that Professor Appleby guessed his secret, and took a malicious enjoyment in taunting him.
Himself, Derek Capel, cherished a flaring hatred for the scientist. It was a hatred that almost frightened him by its violence. He conceived that even if Professor Appleby had not married Eleanor, they were born for mutual dislike. The astonishing part was that he dissembled his real feelings with a cunning that was alien to him. He pretended to a hearty good-fellowship with his neighbour.
… And all the time in his heart there was that bitter hatred that went hungry for revenge.
Professor Appleby’s white shirt front gleamed at him as the door opened. The great white face with its peculiarly bright eyes dropped the monocle, the eyebrows lifted in surprise, and the lips twitched with their hateful smile.
‘Why, it’s Capel! Come to give us a look-up on his midnight tear through the country.’
‘Frightfully sorry if I’m worrying you,’ said Derek Capel hastily. ‘I saw the light in your windows, so I thought I’d look in and see whether you were up. Fact is I’ve been carrying this book you wanted about with me in the car, and it’s just occurred to me.’
He held out the book, and his host immediately pounced on it. He turned over its binding, and in a new tone of cordiality invited his midnight guest into the study.
For a moment Professor Appleby was a different man. He was genuinely pleased with the volume Derek Capel had brought him, and he turned its leaves with the delicacy and care of the true bibliophile. It was a rare old volume.
All at once, however, Professor Appleby looked across at his visitor with hooded eyes.
‘But Eleanor would be charmed to see you,’ he said, with a vague note of mockery. ‘I believe she has retired to her room, but I am sure not yet to bed. We will ring and see whether she is disposed to grace our company with her presence.’
And with that twitching smile on his lips he crossed to the bell-push.
Vera, the house parlourmaid, answered the ring, her eyes red from crying. She scowled at her master’s urbane request, but vanished without a word. And in a few minutes Eleanor Appleby entered the study.
She came forward, smiling through her fear, and put out a cool little hand to Derek, looking entirely adorable and desirable in her gown of cream ninon and lace.
The sight of her set Derek Capel afire, and in his smile and greeting as he took her hand there was a wealth of significance which did not escape the basilisk eyes of Professor Appleby.
Eleanor’s heart beat quicker with fear as she looked at her husband. Nothing escaped him. He was smiling now with that twitching of his lips as he looked down at the book, and there was something about his pretence at preoccupation that was very sinister.
‘Here it is,’ he said suddenly, in his slightly shrill voice. And his interest in the book was now very real. ‘It is, as I suspected, made up to my own formula. A poison that leaves no trace. I have it there,’ he went on in some excitement, pointing to the chemical cabinet. ‘You see!—In that little blue bottle! I have not experimented with it yet, but I am almost assured that it will prove to be what I claim.’
Involuntarily Eleanor Portal and Derek Capel exchanged glances.
Impelled by a fascination she could not understand or resist, Eleanor crossed to the medicine chest and reached out a delicate hand for the little blue-black bottle labelled ‘Poison,’ which stood there, and at which the professor had pointed.
Revulsion and attraction were pulling different ways with her. She had a shuddering impulse to throw up her arm across her forehead, to shield her gaze from that impish black bottle. And yet another thought came into her brain. If the worst came to the worst it would be—useful!
Professor Appleby was watching the play of emotion on her face closely, and suddenly as she was about to take the bottle he shot out an arm and grasped her wrist.
‘I don’t think,’ he said curtly, ‘that we’ll allow you to try any experiments with that bottle. They might have unfortunate results.’
She dropped her gaze, trembling violently.
Professor Appleby was, indeed, in one of his queer moods tonight, and electric tension hung in the air. But he was all urbanity as he turned once more to Derek Capel.
‘You must have a spot of something, old fellow, after your drive. What is it to be? Whisky, eh?’
‘Just a finger,’ agreed Derek nonchalantly.
But directly the professor’s back was turned to go for the drinks, Derek’s dark, handsome eyes sought and met Eleanor’s. He asked questions barely in a whisper. What happened? Had he ill-treated her? How could he help?
Impulsively Derek’s hand went out and found that of the woman he loved. She did not resist. Indeed, she clung to it. She was scarcely conscious of what she did; only knew that her heart was breaking with sorrow—and that Derek Capel was a very dear and old friend.
It was then, as they stood intimately near to one another, that Professor Appleby glanced in the mirror hanging against the wall—a mirror that reflected them both. A terrible savagery fleeted across his features, and there was a flash like summer lightning in his eyes.
He had suspected it. But the actual proof roused the raging beast in him.
He turned, and like a hawk from the wrist of the hunter, struck across the room, and seized his wife’s wrist in a grip of iron. She cried out at the pain of his grip, but he was brutally savage now, his thick underlip protruding as he thrust her towards the door.
‘Another lover, eh?’ he hissed as he pushed her past the curtains. ‘I’ll attend to him. Get up to your room.’
He watched her as she staggered rather than walked up the staircase, her slim shoulders shaking. At length, moistening his dry lips with the tip of his tongue, he strode back to the study.
Derek Capel was still there, standing near the shaded lamp. His arms were folded, and he appeared to be quite dispassionate. Professor Appleby, a monstrous glowering figure, came forward to the desk, and peered at him for a long moment as a mastiff might peer at a pup.
Derek Capel, faintly amused, returned his glance steadily and disdainfully.
At last Professor Appleby took up his wine glass, but paused to make remark.
‘Generally I would feel inclined to snap a man’s spine if he paid too much attention to my wife. But in this case it’s Eleanor who will pay.’ He rocked back on his heels with a tinny cackle. ‘You fool, Capel, you love her—but she’s mine. And tonight she’ll pay—pay—pay!’
Derek Capel snapped open his cigarette case, and lit one of the white tubes with a hand that was a trifle unsteady. The blue smoke streamed from his nostrils as he silently consumed the cigarette. He evidently badly needed the sedative. But he would not touch the whisky that had been poured out for him.
At last with his upper lip lifting in what was almost a silent snarl, he reached for his coat and hat, and slung the former over his arm, strolling towards the door. On the threshold he turned. ‘You cur, Appleby,’ he said, very quietly and contemptuously. ‘You cur! You’re not fit to have the care of a woman. I feel that you’re vile—one of the vilest things God made. Be very careful that it is not you who pays!’
He turned and strode from the room and the house, while Professor Appleby stared after him in gibbering rage.
‘My God!’ burst from the professor’s lips.
He seemed on the verge of apoplexy, and staggered towards a chair, sinking into it heavily. But after a time he became more calm, though it was a sinister calm.
A silence fell on the house, save for the ticking of the clock.
If Derek Capel wished to incite the professor to murder he could scarcely have gone about it in a more efficacious manner. With his heavy-lidded eyes bent on the ground Professor Appleby sat brooding.
His thoughts were all of the white, soft woman lying upstairs in bed, with the heart of her beating madly. He clenched and unclenched his hands, and at last got up and paced up and down the study. He saw the glass of port he had poured out, and lifting it, drained it off at a gulp.
A minute ticked away.
Heavens, what was it? He felt queer—bad! All at once he commenced panting hoarsely—breathing with difficulty. His head felt as if it were charged with cotton-wool on fire, and in his stomach was an awful pain.
Madly he tore at his collar, wrenched it from his neck. He could not breathe. Like a drunkard lurching towards an objective, he lurched towards an arm-chair. He wanted to cry out—to call for help, but he could not. His agony was immense, but mercifully it was short-lived. The death-rattle was already in his throat, and all was going black before him.
He fell heavily into the chair, and in doing so knocked a costly old Chinese vase from a pedestal nearby. It crashed just outside the fringe of the carpet in a thousand pieces—and the sound of it was like the last trump in that expectant house of dread. From the bedroom above came cries of alarm, and mingling with them were the terrible sobs that tore the throat of Professor Appleby in his last, short death agonies.
Eleanor Appleby in dressing-gown and slippers rushed into the room, followed by two frightened maids in their night attire, the old cook and housekeeper, who had managed Professor Appleby’s menage for a generation, and Vera, the house parlourmaid, who alone seemed to remain calm.
‘Why—what—good heavens!’ Eleanor exclaimed, staring with dilated eyes at the huddled figure of her husband in the arm-chair.
He managed to turn to her with glazed eyes half-opened, and dying, his hatred stabbed at her from those eyes.
‘I’ve been poisoned,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Poisoned by—by—’ his eyes wandered round the room, and fixed Vera and then Derek Capel, who had entered quietly.
He subsided in the arm-chair, his last breath spent in that accusation.
There was a pregnant pause, filled with the gasps of those in the room. The servants, for the most part, were petrified with fear. The old cook could not even wail. She was sucking in breath like a fish out of water, her ample bosom heaving spasmodically. Amongst the servants only Vera, the parlourmaid, remained calm, and there was a contemptuous curl to her lips that could hardly be deemed respectful in the presence of death.
Eleanor was trembling violently, and her childish face was pitiful.
‘Derek—hold me,’ she whispered. ‘I—I feel I�
��m going to faint.’
There were tiny beads of perspiration on Derek Capel’s brow. His face was pale beneath his tan, and quivering as he put an arm round her. He was hardly more collected than she, but he appeared to make a great effort.
‘It’s a great shock,’ he said in a low tone. ‘Er—if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll have a spot of something to pull me together.’
He made a movement towards the round mahogany table, and took up the port decanter. But as he did so his hand shook violently, and in his eyes—studiously averted from the decanter he had picked up—there was a look of stark fear.
Eleanor bit her white lips. She could have cried out as she saw him take out the stopper. He was pouring the liquid in a glass with a shaking hand that spilled a little of it on the carpet. And Vera, the house parlourmaid, was watching the procedure through narrowed lids.
Suddenly Eleanor Appleby’s body springs were released. With a little cry, half moan, she darted forward and took the decanter from him. He yielded it to her grasp like a child, and looked at her stupidly as she tried to smile at him—a twisted, agonised little smile that struggled like the sun against the clouds.
‘Don’t, Derek,’ she whispered. ‘Not that. You—I’m going to play the game through to the end.’
She seemed on the verge of fainting. And then all of a sudden she gave a little gasp.
‘Oh!’
There was a sound of a crash. The decanter had slipped from her nerveless fingers, and now it lay on the floor, its glass shattered in pieces, and the red port streamed over the carpet in a blood-like pool.
A silence fell.
Eleanor moved across the room with faltering steps, and then suddenly threw up her arms like a baffled swimmer and nearly collapsed on the floor. Just in time, however, the old gardener, George—he who had taken her message to Derek Capel that night—dashed forward from the curtained doorway and caught her, leading her to a chair.