Down Under

by Patricia Wentworth

  The curtain over the door was lifted. Philip Rennard stood there smiling. Not one of the three had heard the door open. He stood there and smiled, and repeated Louise’s word,

  “Perfect.”

  Rose Anne did not move. She stood as she had been standing all the time, her head a little bent and her eyes cast down. There was a tall mirror against the wall, but she had not looked into it. She refused to see the reflected image of Philip Rennard’s bride.

  Philip sent the two women away and shut the door. He praised them, and they departed in a flutter of happiness. Philip did not often praise.

  When they were gone he stood back as Louise had done, and said in his own words very much what she had said.

  “Won’t you turn round, Rose, and let me see you?”

  She turned with the gentle mechanical movement of a wax-work. She kept her eyes down and her hands folded. Philip watched her for a long minute. Then he said, leaning back against the door,

  “It’s no good, Rose—the game’s up.”

  Rose Anne’s heart knocked against her side. It had been a dumb, desperate game, and she had played it desperately for what it was worth. She had given him nothing—not one look, not one catch of the breath, not one tremor of all the fear which filled her aching heart, not one quiver of her anguish.

  He said again, laughing, “The game’s up, my darling Rose—my beautiful Rose—my Rose.”

  Rose Anne kept silence, but when he put a hand on her shoulder she drew away.

  “I don’t like to be touched, Philip.”

  “Don’t you? Well, I’m going to touch you—I’m going to kiss you—I’m going to marry you. This is your wedding dress, you know.” He linked his hands behind her shoulders and held her lightly. “I tell you the game is up. You’re not drugged, and you’re not dumb. You’ve kept it up very well, but you gave yourself away last night. I wasn’t sure, you know, so I let you sit by Loddon and I let you dance with him, and you gave yourself away. Disappointing—isn’t it? Because you nearly pulled it off. You see, you didn’t reckon on the fact that I’m in love with you—romantically, enthusiastically, innocently in love with you. And that being the case, I couldn’t help picking up the—shall we say, emotional interchange that was going on. You were broadcasting at very high pressure and I got your wave-length. So it’s no use shamming dumb any more. Come, Rose—look at me! And let’s talk like human beings. I’m sick to death of this wax doll business.”

  Rose Anne lifted her eyes. Was this bluff? Did he know? Could he be sure?

  The moment her eyes met his she knew that he was sure. She met a hard certainty, a challenge, a leaping passion.

  “Well,” he said, “you see. What next? Let us talk. You’re coming to me, you know. From the first time I saw you there’s never been any question about that. But I don’t want you broken, I want you whole. I want you to come of your own free will. Rose—look at me! You’ve never been loved as I shall love you—you’ve never been kissed as I shall kiss you. Look at me! I can make you forget Loddon in a week, in a night, in a single hour. Only come to me of yourself. You haven’t any choice—but choose, Rose, choose to come to me! I want you of your own free will—not forced—not drugged.”

  She looked at him and said in her natural voice,

  “Let me go, Philip.”

  His hands dropped at once and he stood back.

  “There—you’re free. Now come to me.”

  She said again, “Let me go, Philip.”

  “When I’m dead—not before—never before. Don’t think it, Rose.” He spoke in his quietest tone.

  Rose Anne said, “You want me of my own free will, but you’ll never have me that way. Any other way would kill me. I really do mean that. You couldn’t hold me if I were dead.”

  She was so pale that it frightened him—the pallor and the faint, steady voice. He took her hand quite gently.

  “Rose, don’t talk like that. I’m not a brute. I love you. I can make you love me—I know I can. Rose, look at me!”

  She looked at him.

  “I shall never love you, Philip. I love Oliver.”

  His hand closed hard on hers—cruelly hard.

  “You had better not say that, you know—you had better not think it. If he comes between us, there will be a quick way out for him—or perhaps a way that’s not so quick. Rose, I won’t touch him if you come to me, but if you set him up between us, what do you expect—that I shall bear it—that I shall stand by and see him look at you as he looked last night? No, no, my dear, wake up. This isn’t England, with a policeman round every corner—this is Down Under, and I can do exactly what I like. Loddon—” he paused, changed his voice to a deeper one, and repeated the name—“Loddon—he has exactly as long to live as I choose. If I say he is to die, he will die, and if I say how he is to die, that is how it will be—quickly if I say it is to be quick, or very, very slowly if I say it is to be slow.” He turned her hand palm upwards. “It is all in this little hand of yours.”

  Rose Anne drew her hand away.

  “You said, let us talk like human beings, but you are not talking that way at all. Will you listen whilst I talk to you?”

  He smiled.

  “Oh, yes, I’ll listen.”

  “Philip, you say you love me, and I believe you do. I want you to let me go—I want you to let us both go. It will hurt you, but won’t it hurt you if I die?”

  He continued to smile his very charming smile.

  “Darling Rose, it would hurt me quite unbearably, but you are not going to die. Go on—I didn’t mean to interrupt. I love hearing you talk.”

  A little colour came into her cheeks.

  “Please, please let us go.”

  Philip laughed.

  “Darling, be practical. With the best will in the world I couldn’t very well risk your coming back with the police—could I?”

  “Philip, we would give our word of honour—we would promise—”

  “Oh, Rose, Rose, Rose!”

  His mockery stopped her. Her colour failed. She looked away. There never had been any hope of course, but it is difficult for a woman to believe that she has no power to move the man who loves her.

  Philip stopped laughing and put his arms round her.

  “Oh, Rose, my darling, don’t look like that. Such a beautiful, simple plan, wasn’t it? You couldn’t expect me not to laugh, could you? You’re only a little girl still, and that’s one of the things I love about you.”

  “Let me go, Philip,” she said, but this time he held her fast.

  “It’s no good, my dear—you’re mine. Stop fighting me—stop bruising yourself. I won’t hurt you—I won’t even let you hurt yourself.” He looked at her strangely and said the last words again. “I won’t let you hurt yourself, you poor frightened child.”

  “Let me go, Philip.” The words came very low, but they were steady.

  As she spoke, he released her, but before she had time to step back he stooped and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

  “Good-bye, my dear, till tomorrow. Louise has surpassed herself. You’ll be a lovely bride.”

  He went to the door and turned there, looking at her.

  “I listened to you, and now, my dear, I want you to listen to me. I’m going to make this easy for you—I’m going to make it as easy as I can. I’m going to give up something I’d set my heart on to make it easy for you. When it’s all over and you are my wife I’d like you to give me credit for this. That’s some of what I want to say, and here’s some more. I don’t want you to think that you’ve got to spend the rest of your life down under—I don’t want you to think that. I’m coming and going all the time, and as soon as you love me—and you’re going to love me, you know—just as soon as you love me I’ll take you with me. I’ll show you the world. I’ll show you Paris, London, Rome, Vienna. You shall go where you please, and see all the things you have ever dreamt of seeing. We’ll have the most marvellous time. Oh, Rose, don’t look at me like that! I swear I’ll m
ake you happy. I’m going now. You’re like a ghost, the ghost of a lovely rose. Rest when I’ve gone—rest and sleep. You are going to sleep. Sleep well, my dear, and dream if you can about me.”

  His words came strangely to Rose Anne. There was a bright mist between them, a bright, moving mist. Philip’s voice came and went in it. The ground shook and trembled under her feet. She heard the door shut, and the sound jarred the moving mist so that it fell in upon her and she fell with it, down, and down, and down. She knew that she was falling, but she did not know how she fell.

  CHAPTER XXX

  Down Under, having neither sun nor moon, marked its main divisions of time by the sounding of a great gong. At noon, at midnight, at eight in the morning, and at eight in the evening the gong boomed out its signal from the great hall, and the echoes ran murmuring along the galleries until they lost themselves in the outer silence.

  Food was brought to Oliver when the evening gong sounded—soup, and something savoury in a casserole. When he had eaten, a servant brought him coffee, and went out, leaving the tray.

  Oliver had poured himself out a cup, when Dr Spenlow came in. He looked at the coffee, looked at Oliver, raised his eyebrows, and turned away with a shrug to rummage amongst the papers on his table. Oliver lifted the cup to his lips, and set it down again.

  “Anything the matter with the coffee?” he enquired.

  “Very good coffee,” said Dr Spenlow with his back turned.

  Oliver took up the cup again and smelled it. It smelled of very good coffee and of nothing else. He let a drop of it touch his tongue, and it tasted as good as it smelled. He said bluntly,

  “What’s the matter with it? Is it drugged?”

  Dr Spenlow did not look round.

  “When the game’s lost and you’ve thrown in your hand, it’s not a bad thing to go to bed and sleep, and the longer the sleep the less likely you are to worry over the lost game when you wake up again.”

  Oliver stared at the cup in his hand. It was white with a gold rim. The coffee lay black against the gold.

  “Does one wake, Spenlow?” he said.

  Dr Spenlow glanced over his shoulder fleetingly.

  “Oh yes, one wakes. You needn’t worry about that—at the moment.”

  Oliver was tempted. If he drank—if the coffee was drugged, he could drink it and be drugged into a cessation of this intolerable pain.

  If he drank … He would see them damned before he let them drug him. But it might be as well that they should think him drugged—it might be as well.

  The trouble was that he hadn’t the slightest idea of how to get rid of the coffee. He ought to dispose of at least two cups, but how to get rid of even half a cup of coffee in this rock-walled, rock-floored room was a problem.

  Dr Spenlow said, “Nobody touches my bottles. There are several on the top of the bookshelf. The big one is half empty.… But I think you would be a fool. My own prescription would be sleep, but who am I to come between a fool and his folly?”

  Oliver said, “Thank you,” and got up.

  The bottles were easily reached. The big one had some dark stuff in it—dark, sticky stuff. It smelled like nothing on earth. He poured in two cupfuls of coffee, corked the bottle, and put it back on the shelf. Dr Spenlow rustled among his papers and kept his back to the room. Presently he said,

  “If there’s any coffee left, you’d better drink it. You can’t do anything, you know—she’s had some already.”

  Oliver’s hand fell on his shoulder.

  “Tell me what you mean—at once!”

  Harold Spenlow turned round.

  “Oh, my dear Loddon, what’s the good of going on like this? Miss Carew has had a cup of coffee. She needs sleep—she needs a little pleasant oblivion. The coffee is really very, very beneficent, and when she wakes up she won’t mind what is going to happen tomorrow any more than she would mind a dream about being married. You dream the most extraordinary things, but you don’t really mind what happens in a dream, because it doesn’t really touch you. Miss Carew won’t really mind, because my very humane drug will keep her in a dream until she has had time to adjust herself.”

  Oliver said in an almost unrecognisable voice,

  “You said—he wouldn’t—drug her.”

  Dr Spenlow nodded.

  “I know I did. I wasn’t lying to you. He didn’t want her drugged, but—he’s fond of her. I wouldn’t have believed it of Philip, but he can’t bear to see her unhappy. Also there’s this. He was afraid of the drug because he thought it had done something to her—he thought she couldn’t shake it off. But when he found out that she was shamming, well, he made up his mind not to risk a scene, so she’s had her cup of coffee, and when it comes to the ceremony tomorrow she’ll say her piece without a tremor, and our Reverend Luke won’t have to risk one of his rather tiresome attacks of conscience. There you are—everything for the best in our best of all possible worlds.”

  Oliver was silent. Then suddenly, urgently, he said,

  “Spenlow—help us to get away. You could if you wanted to.”

  Dr Spenlow smiled his bitter smile.

  “Oh, my dear Loddon, do you think so? Wake up and face the facts! Suppose I helped you to what you term get away. You would get, perhaps, as far as I got, perhaps not so far, and there you would die miserably, as I very nearly died. You would have the added torture of seeing Miss Carew die too. As far as she is concerned, I take leave to think that it would be very much better for her to marry Philip, who worships her in his own erratic way. As for yourself, if you want to commit suicide, I can give you something that will do the job painlessly. There remains my own point of view. I don’t particularly enjoy my life, but I should rather like to finish the experiments on which I am at present engaged, and I shouldn’t fancy the lingering end which Philip might consider appropriate. In fact there’s nothing doing. I really advise you to finish the coffee.”

  “No,” said Oliver.

  Dr Spenlow shrugged his shoulders.

  “Have it your own way. And now it’s my duty as your guardian to lock you up for the night, so if you don’t mind—” He waved towards the open door of the room in which Oliver had slept.

  “Why am I to be locked up? They’ve never done that before.”

  “Just a precautionary measure. I don’t think Philip would place any obstacle in the way of your committing suicide alone, but it’s natural that he shouldn’t want Miss Carew to be involved.”

  Oliver looked at the door, at Harold Spenlow, and at the key in Harold Spenlow’s hand. And then he was looking at something else—the small automatic pistol which Harold Spenlow had taken out of his pocket.

  “No, no, Loddon, you can’t rush me. Pistol practice is one of my recreations. In with you, or there’ll be trouble!”

  Oliver walked into the small, bare room. He heard the door slam and the key turn in the lock.

  CHAPTER XXXI

  The booming of the midnight gong had died away an hour before. In the galleries of Down Under the lights burned all night long, a light to every twenty yards. Rose Anne opened the door of her room from the inside, withdrew the key, closed the door, locked it again, and after a moment’s hesitation slipped the key into her pocket. She wore the blue jumper suit in which she had run across to the Angel to see little Florrie Garstnet on that other wedding eve which seemed so long ago. She stood looking up and down the gallery for a moment, and then ran along it till she came to a left-hand turn, which she followed. There were three turns, but she knew her way.

  She came to Dr Spenlow’s door without meeting anyone at all. She stood fingering the handle, afraid to turn it, afraid not to turn it, waiting for her heart-beats to grow quieter so that she could listen for a possible sound from within. There was no sound. She turned the knob, the catch moved back, and the door swung gently in. Rose Anne followed it, shut it behind her, and looked around her with wide, seeking eyes.

  There was a light in the room which showed everything plainly—the litte
red writing-table, the book-lined walls; two doors, one open, one shut; the table in the middle of the room, across which Dr Spenlow sprawled, his head on his folded arms.

  Rose Anne stood looking at him. A tray had been pushed from the table. The metal coffee-pot lay on its side, spreading a dark stain upon the carpet. The sugar-basin had spilled its lumps. The cup was broken. In the place where the tray had stood were two whisky bottles, both empty. The room reeked.

  She went to the open door and looked in—Dr Spenlow’s empty bedroom.

  She went to the other door, and found it fast. This was expected. Her hand went to her pocket for the key of her own room. There was so little hope that it would fit, but there was so little hope in any direction. You had to do what you could, and nurse your hope, and pray to be kept from Philip.

  She put the key in the lock with a steady hand, but it wouldn’t turn. She went on trying, but it wouldn’t, wouldn’t turn. She put it away again and looked about her. If Dr Spenlow had locked the door, then Dr Spenlow must have the key.

  She crossed to the door which gave upon the gallery and bolted it. Then she came back to Harold Spenlow.

  Where would he have put the key? In a pocket? Men had such a confusing number of pockets. She was afraid of touching him, but she had to do it—she had to have the key. She felt in the two pockets she could reach, but it wasn’t there. How was she to move the heavy, inert body? She did put a hand on his arm, and under its light touch he made a sound between a groan and a snore, and stretched so that his right hand hung over the table edge. Something fell from it out of her sight. She had to go round the table before she could see what it was.

  And it was the key.