Female of the Species

by Sapper

  And still Drummond sat silent and cowed.

  “But I shall not release it yet: that I promise you. There is a little ceremony to be gone through before our finale. The rest of them have seen it, Drummond, but to you as my principal guest it will come as a surprise. And after it is over, and the knife that you see up there is buried in Phyllis’ heart, your turn will come.”

  She was rocking to and fro in her mad excitement.

  “Paul has arranged it,” she cried exultingly. “Clever Paul. Behind each one of you is enough explosive to shatter you to pieces. But Paul has so arranged it that even as Phyllis waits and waits for death to come – so will you all wait. You will see it creeping closer and closer, and be powerless to do anything to save yourselves. I shall light the fuse, and you will see the flame burning slowly towards this little box. And when it reaches that box – suddenly, with the speed of light, the flame will dart to the gun-cotton behind your backs. For the fuse that connects the gun-cotton to the box is of a different brand to the one I shall light. Paul knows all these things: Paul is clever.”

  And now the madness was on her in earnest. She walked to and fro in front of the altar stone, her arms outstretched, worshipping the plaster cast of Peterson.

  “Is my revenge worthy, my King?” she cried again and again. “Does it meet with your approval? First she shall be killed before their eyes, and then they will wait for their own death. They will see it coming closer every second, until, at last…”

  “Great Heavens! man,” shouted Darrell to Paul, “you can’t let her go on. The woman is mad.”

  But he took no notice: his eyes were fixed on the woman who had now become silent. She seemed to be listening to a voice we could not hear, and something told me that we were very near the end.

  “Put out the lights, Paul,” she said gravely.

  I took one last look round the room: at Mrs Drummond, lying bound, with the black man gloating over her; at Irma, standing triumphant by the altar stone; and finally at Drummond. Even now I could hardly believe that it was the finish, and that he had nothing up his sleeve. But there he still sat with his head sunk on his breast, the personification of desolate defeat. And then the lights went out.

  Once again we were plunged in darkness that could be felt, but this time it was not a rehearsal. In a few minutes that knife would fall from the ceiling, and the poor girl would be dead. And we should see it actually happen. The sweat poured off me in streams as the full horror of it came home; I scarcely thought of what was going to be the fate of the rest of us afterwards. To be lying there bound, knowing that at any moment the knife might fall, was enough to send her crazy. More merciful if it did.

  “A model of Stonehenge, Drummond. You have realised that?”

  At last he seemed to have recovered the use of his tongue.

  “Yes, I have realised that.”

  His voice was perfectly steady, and I wondered if even now he realised what was coming.

  “And the stone on which Phyllis lies is the stone of sacrifice. Do you think she is a worthy offering?”

  “Do you really mean to do this monstrous thing, Irma Peterson?” he asked.

  “Should I have gone to all this trouble,” she mocked, “if I didn’t?”

  “And yet, when on one occasion you asked me, I spared Carl’s life. Do you remember?”

  “Only to kill him later,” she cried fiercely. “Go on, Drummond: beg for her life. I’d like to hear you whining.”

  “You won’t do that,” he answered. “If I ask you to spare her, it is for a different reason altogether. It is to show that you have left in you some shred of humanity.”

  “As far as you are concerned, I have none,” she said. “As I say, should I have done all this for nothing? Listen, Drummond.

  “It was in Egypt, as I told you in my first letter, that the idea came to me. By the irony of fate, it was suggested to me by a man who knows you well, Drummond. You and dear Phyllis had been staying at the same house with him, and he was so interested to find out that I also knew you. He told me about this splendid game of hidden treasure, and it appeared that you had won. I asked him the rules, and he said they were exceedingly simple. Everything depended on having good clues: I trust that mine have been up to standard.”

  She paused, and no one spoke.

  “From the game, as you played it then, to the game as you have played it now, was but a short step. Preparation was necessary, it is true; but the main idea was the same. I would give you a hidden-treasure hunt, where the prize was not a box of cigarettes, but something a little more valuable. And I would leave you to think” – her voice rose suddenly – “you poor fool, that if you succeeded you would get the prize.”

  She laughed, and it had an ugly sound.

  “However, of that later. Having made my preparations, the next thing was to obtain the prize. That proved easier than I expected. Twice, but for one of those little accidents which no one could foresee, Phyllis would have got into a special taxi in London – a taxi prepared by me. But I could afford to wait. For weeks you were watched, Drummond – and then you went to Pangbourne – where you began to realise that I was after you. And then came the opportunity. A hastily scrawled note in your handwriting – Paul is an adept at that, and I had several specimens of your writing – and the thing was done.

  “‘Bring the Bentley at once to Tidmarsh, old girl. A most amazing thing has happened. – H.’ Do you remember the note, Phyllis? I don’t blame you for falling into the trap: it said neither too much nor too little, that note. And so I got the prize at a trifling cost. It was naughty of you to hit him so hard, my dear, as I’ve told you before. Paul said it was a positively wicked blow.”

  Once again that mocking laugh rang through the room, but I hardly heard it. With every sense alert, I was listening to another sound – the sound of heavy breathing near me. Something was happening close by – but what? Then came a groan, and silence.

  “What was that? Who groaned?” Her words came sharp and insistent.

  “Who, indeed?” answered Drummond’s voice. “Why don’t you continue, Irma Peterson? We are waiting for the theatrical display.”

  “Pedro! Pedro! Is Drummond still in his chair?”

  Came that same throaty chuckle, followed by Drummond’s voice again: “Take your hands off me, you foul swab.”

  “It is well,” she said, and there was relief in her voice. “I should not like a mistake to occur now. And, with you, Drummond – one never knows.”

  “True,” said he, “one never knows. Even now, Irma – there is time for you to change your mind. I warn you that it will be better for you if you do.”

  “Thank you a thousand times,” she sneered. “Instead, however, of following your advice, we will begin. The sacrifice is ready; we have delayed enough.”

  Once more I became conscious of movement near me, and my pulses began to tingle.

  “Just for the fraction of a second, Drummond, will you again see Phyllis alive: then the knife will fall.”

  The faint light was beginning behind the Friar’s Heel, in a couple of minutes it would be all over. Unless…unless… My heart was pounding; my tongue was dry; was it the end, or were strange things taking place?

  “The dawn,” she cried. “You see the dawn, Drummond. Soon the sun will rise, the rays will creep nearer and nearer to Phyllis. And then… See…the rim is already there. It is coming, Drummond; coming. Have you any last message, you poor damned fool, for her? If so speak now for my hand is on the lever of the knife.”

  “Just one,” said Drummond lightly, and to my amazement his voice did not come from the chair in which he was imprisoned. “Every beard is not false, but every nigger smells. That beard ain’t false, dearie, and dis nigger don’t smell. So I’m thinking there’s something wrong somewhere.”

  There was a moment’s dead silence, then she gave a little choking gasp. Came a streak of light as the knife shot down, a crash, and on the stone of sacrifice lay the bust of Car
l Peterson, shattered in a hundred pieces.

  For a while I couldn’t grasp it. I stared stupidly at the woman who was cowering back against the altar stone; at the crumpled figure of Paul lying on the ground close by me. And then I looked at the nigger, and he was grinning broadly.

  “So it ain’t poor dear Drummond in dat chair,” he chuckled. “That is my very good friend John Perkins, and when you thought John was talking, it was really dis nigger what spoke, so you see you weren’t quite as clever as you thought, my poppet.”

  Suddenly she began to scream hysterically, and Drummond raced round the chairs setting us free.

  “Guard Phyllis,” he shouted, as the door opened and Charles followed by the chauffeur came rushing in. It lasted about five seconds – the scrap; but that five seconds was enough. For when it was over and we looked round for Irma she had gone. Whether there was some secret door which we didn’t discover, or whether she fled through the passage into the garage, we shall never know. But from that day to this there has been no trace seen of her. And I don’t even know the ultimate fate of the various men of the house-party. Having caught the lot, including Charles, we put them in our chairs. And then Drummond lit the fuse and we left them bellowing for mercy.

  “Let ’em sweat for ten minutes,” he remarked. “I’ve disconnected at the junction box, but they don’t know that I have. Now then, boys, once again – and all together – Froth Blowers forever.”

  We stood in the road and we yelled at the tops of our voices. And it was only when we’d finished that I suddenly remembered the sailor.

  “That’s all right, old boy,” laughed Drummond. “Been retrieving any more bad plums out of wastepaper-baskets lately?”

  And so the game ended, and I know that that night I was too tired to even think about the strangeness of it – much less ask. It wasn’t till lunch next day, that Drummond cleared up the loose ends. I can see him now, lolling at the end of the table with a lazy grin on his face, and a tankard of beer beside him.

  “You’ll probably curse my neck off, chaps,” he said, “for keeping you in the dark. But honestly, it seemed the only way. It was touch and go, mark you – especially for Phyllis, and that was where the difficulty came in!”

  “For the Lord’s sake start at the beginning,” said Darrell.

  “In the first place, I wasn’t too sure that they really did think we’d been killed at the Mere. And so it became absolutely vital that I should not be caught. But how to arrange it, and at the same time lull her suspicions, and make her think she’d got me, was the problem. Obviously by providing myself with a double, which is where dear old John came in. He acts for the movies, and he’d grown that awful fungus for a part he has to play shortly. When it is removed, however, he really does look rather like me; moreover he’s the same build. So off we set – me as a sailor, him as me – without the smell of an idea as to what we were going to slosh into down here.

  “Then came an amazing piece of luck. We motored down – John and I – and we passed the house of last night. There was of course nothing suspicious about it – nothing to mark it as the spot we wanted. Except one thing, and therein lay the luck. As we went past the drive another car coming towards us slowed up, evidently with the intention of turning in. And sitting beside the driver in the front seat was the gent called Paul. That settled it.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “You couldn’t be expected to know,” he answered, “but I should have thought old Toby’s grey matter would have heaved to it, especially as he spotted the astounding likeness to the late lamented Lakington. Don’t you remember the message Phyllis scrawled with her finger, in the blood at the back of her seat? LIKE LAK. It couldn’t mean anything else, unless it was the most astounding coincidence. So we were a bit on the way, but not far. We’d found a house connected with them, but whether Phyllis was inside or not I hadn’t an idea. However, being a bit of an adept at exploring houses at night, I intended to do so until you two bung-faced swabs went and made fools of yourselves at Stonehenge that afternoon.

  “Never,” he grinned cheerfully, “in the course of a long and earnest career have I heard two people give themselves away so utterly and so often as Toby and Dixon did that afternoon. It was staggering, it was monumental. And the man they deliberately selected to be the recipient of their maidenly confidence was Paul himself. Beer – more beer – much more beer.”

  “Damn it, Hugh,” cried Sinclair…

  “My dear lad,” Drummond silenced him with a wave of his hand, “you were the finest example of congenital idiocy it has ever been my misfortune to witness. The stones of Stonehenge are little pebbles compared to the bricks you dropped, but I forgive you. I even forgive jolly old Dixon’s scavenging propensities in wastepaper-baskets. Such is my nature – beautiful, earnest and pure. But you assuredly caused me a lot of trouble: I had to change my plans completely.

  “Paul obviously suspected you: no man out of a lunatic asylum could possibly avoid doing so. And as I had no possible means of knowing that all he wanted to do was to get on with the job, I had to assume that he would pass on his suspicions to Irma, and proceed to rope the pair of you in. Time had become an urgent factor. So I wired Algy, and when he arrived, I told him by letter what to do. He was to announce loudly, that he proposed to go to the Friar’s Heel by night, but as he valued his life, he wasn’t to do anything of the sort.”

  He leaned back in his chair, and looked at me with twinkling eyes.

  “You may be a damned idiot, Joe,” he said, “but I looks towards you and I raise my glass. Had it remotely dawned on me that you were going there yourself, I’d have given you the same warning. But it didn’t.”

  “You knew I was there?” I stammered.

  “Laddie,” he remarked, “hast ever listened to a vast herd of elephants crashing their way through primeval forest? Hast ever heard the scaly rhinoceros and young gambolling playfully on a shingly shore, whilst they assuage their thirst? Thus and more so, was your progress that night. Like a tank with open exhaust you came into action: like a battalion of panting men you lay about, in the most obvious places you could find, and breathed hard. You were, and I say it advisedly, the most conspicuous object in the whole of Wiltshire.”

  He frowned suddenly.

  “You know what we found there, the others don’t. Some poor devil who looked like a clerk – stone dead. What he was doing there, we shall never know, but it was perfectly obvious that he had been mistaken for Algy. The nigger had blundered, and it was a blunder which might prove awkward. You heard them talking, Joe – Paul and Irma: but it didn’t require that confirmation to see how the land lay. All along I had realised that Phyllis and I were the principal quarry. If she got you so much the better, but we came first. And what I was so terribly frightened of, as soon as I saw that body, was that Irma would get nervous, and believing I was already dead, would go back, finish off Phyllis straight away, and then clear out. I still had no definite scheme; I didn’t even have a definite scheme after I’d functioned with the nigger. In fact I didn’t really intend to fight him at all.

  “I suppose he must have smelt me or something; at any rate he came for me. And by the Lord Harry, it was touch and go. However” – he shrugged his shoulders – “I pasted him good and hearty in the mazzard, and that was that. In fact he is in an awkward predicament that nigger. I dragged him into one of those disused sheds, and handcuffed him to a steel girder. Then I put his victim beside him. And he will find explanations a little difficult.

  “The trouble was that all this had delayed me. I hadn’t got a car, only a bicycle – and that house had to be explored at once. My hat! laddie,” he said to me, “I didn’t expect to find you as part of the furniture. How on earth did you get there?”

  “On the luggage grid of their car,” I said.

  “The devil you did,” he grinned. “The devil you did! Joe – you are a worthy recruit, though when I saw you through the skylight I consigned you to the deepest pit of hell.
But thank Heavens! you didn’t give away the fact that you’d seen me.”

  “I thought you were one of them,” I said.

  “I know you did, old boy,” he laughed. “What we’d have done without your thoughts, during this show, I don’t know. They have all been so inconceivably wide of the mark, that they’ve been invaluable.”

  “Don’t pay any attention to him, Mr Dixon,” said his wife.

  “My darling,” he protested, “I mean it. Joe has been invaluable. The air of complete certainty with which he proclaimed the exact opposite to the truth, has saved the situation. I’ve been able to bank on it. And once I realised what that foul female intended to do, I wanted every bit of assistance I could get.

  “The first alternative was to try and get you out of the house single-handed, but I dismissed that as impossible. I didn’t know your room; the house was stiff with men, and – most important of all – that woman would have shot on sight.

  “The second alternative was to get all the bunch into the house without arousing her suspicions. And when I heard her reading the letter she was sending Algy, I realised we were getting on. John and Toby could be brought in at a suitable time, and there only remained the problem of what I was going to do. I confess I didn’t think of it: John suggested the nigger. It was a risk, but it proved easier than I thought.”

  “Damn it, Hugh,” cried Darrell, “why didn’t you say who you were in the afternoon? You were alone with us, and if you’d set us free then we could have tackled the whole bunch.”

  “Because, Peter,” said Drummond gravely, “it would have taken us some minutes to tackle them. It would have taken Irma half a second to kill Phyllis.”

  “At any rate,” said Jerningham, “you might have let us know. Jove! old boy, I never want to go through twenty minutes like that again.”

  “I know, chaps – and I’m sorry. I’d have spared you that if I’d thought it safe. But then you would all of you have been acting, and I wanted the real thing. I knew that Dixon thought John was me, and would tell you so, too. And I wanted you all to carry on, as if you thought so. The rest you know. It was easy for me to talk every time instead of John, with the room in semi-darkness as it was. And I think you’ll admit we staged a damned good fight.”