“As you were saying,” Darwent observed thoughtfully, “the possibility is remote. —I hate pistols.”
And he ran towards the window, throwing aside the light chair beneath it. In his mind, as he said that he hated pistols and shuddered in saying it, was a memory of Crosstree Island, where an ammunition ship was wrecked.
Just below the window was the slate roof of the mews, or stable, which stretched behind every house here. The roof sloped, but at no great pitch. Worming his way through the narrow window opening, Darwent jumped out and balanced himself.
He was hemmed in by the backs or sides of high reddish-black brick houses. A narrow alley divided the mews from the corresponding mews of the houses opposite. The windows at the back of the house just opposite were either shuttered or blank with gloom.
An ammoniac odor of horses, and of kitchen slops too, rose up about him. That shot could only have been fired from …
The sound of voices in argument floated up from the alley below. Bracing himself against slipping, Darwent walked to the edge of the roof and looked down.
“Did anybody hear that noise?” he asked.
In the alley a groom with uprolled sleeves was currycombing a skittish roan mare. Beside him, watching judicially, stood a very fat man whose coat of many short capes—together with shawls round his neck even in July, and a low-crowned curly-brimmed hat—marked him as a stagecoach driver.
“Did anybody hear that noise?” Darwent repeated.
“Didn’t see nothing,” said the groom, growling. Both he and the stagecoach driver were determined to mind their own business. They knew what the noise had been. “Anyway, what’s the odds?”
“Walk-er!” jeered Darwent, in the groom’s own language. “Nobody was hurt.”
“Ah?” inquired the groom, suddenly taking an interest and looking up.
Darwent pointed to the roof of the mews across the alley.
“It was fired,” he said, “from that roof or thereabouts. But I didn’t hear anyone run across the slates, or jump down. Did you?”
The groom admitted he hadn’t.
“Then where was it fired from?”
Up to this time the stagecoach driver, clearly a man of importance, had said nothing. By his bearing he was one of the Mighty Men, idol of small boys, lord of whip and ribbons, who drove a crack mail coach. He spat through filed front teeth, the filed teeth again showing a Mighty Man.
“Winder,” he said.
Darwent nodded: By the line taken by the pistol ball, even though it might have been deflected when it struck the hat, it must have been fired from a window on the corresponding floor of the house opposite. Darwent eyed the width of the alley between the mews roofs, finding it not quite so narrow as it looked.
But a good, long jump would do it. Backing up the slates to get purchase for a jump, he ran forward, launching himself into the air, and landed with a crash on the slates of the mews opposite. A pair of closed shutters faced him, and he rapped at them sharply.
The shutters were opened in his face, so quickly that he almost tumbled backward down the roof. In the aperture of an open window stood a middle-aged timorous lady, faded but still pretty, with a bottle of smelling salts in her hand.
“Forgive me, madam,” apologized Darwent, on his hands and knees. “But I am not a housebreaker. I only wish to inquire …”
“Oh, how you startled me!” the lady said reproachfully, and inhaled smelling salts. “I can’t endure bangs. My family (on my father’s side, that is) have always been of the Royal Navy. But I can’t endure bangs. Was it a long nine?”
“It was not a ship’s gun, madam. It was a pistol.”
“My husband,” said the trembling lady, “commands the Swiftstraight frigate. But I can’t endure bangs.”
“A distressing experience,” said Darwent, finding it difficult to be gallant while on his hands and knees. “But might I inquire whether this house is a private place of residence?”
“It contains most fashionable lodgings, sir, for married couples and single gentlemen. There are no bangs.”
“To be sure. Your name alone—er—”
“It is Bang,” said the lady reproachfully. “I do not perpetrate a stupid joke, sir. It really is Bang.”
“—ensures that no handgun was fired from here, Mrs. Bang. But might I trouble you to ask whether any gentleman, or anyone else, occupies rooms facing opposite?”
“There is only Mr. Lewis, sir. Mr. Tillotson Lewis. A fine young gentleman, though I fear in somewhat indigent circumstances.” Tears appeared in her eyes. “You must excuse me. I fear I shall faint.”
The shutters were just as quickly and unexpectedly closed.
Darwent backed away from them, though still contemplating them. He knew the sly lurker would have had ample time to get away. But a name reverberated through his mind.
Lewis.
The smoky gold of the evening sky had darkened to pale white and dull blue. There were many shadows. Out of one window a maidservant with cap askew was shaking out a feather bed, preparatory to making it up in the bedstead for the night. Before long the watchmen would go calling the hours; the Bow Street patrols, horse and foot, would prowl on their rounds.
Lewis …
He had heard that name, and heard it today. Somebody had spoken it. But Darwent could not pluck it out amid a welter of so many words empty or significant.
Then, as he turned round, took a’run, and leaped for the mews roof of number thirty-eight, the memory returned. “Why, he’s …” Buckstone had begun, in that little white-painted room at the club. And presently Buckstone had added: “No, you’re not Lewis. For a second I thought you were.” Lewis was no uncommon name; it might mean nothing.
Yet it seemed to Darwent he could feel the repulsive strands of the web brush on his hands and face and body; he could feel the tug of a spider larger than life.
No brooding, now!
Scrambling back up the mews roof, Darwent wormed through the open window into a now-shadowy bathroom. As he had expected, Caroline was gone. Even the bullet-pierced hat was gone. When he opened the door to the bedroom, he saw an empty room still scattered with gowns, frocks, petticoats, shifts, stays, French stockings, not yet put away in cupboards or chests of drawers.
But, as he opened the door giving on the passage outside, he met the first footman at the top of the stairs.
“My lord,” said Alfred, with evident relief. The footman, carrying a long thin waxen spill tipped with tiny flame, was lighting the candles as he passed. He touched the spill along a bracket of five candles, backed by a round mirror, on the wall near the bedroom door. As the flames curled up—how oppressed they seemed, amid a stuffiness of heavy carpets and curtains!—they lighted up Alfred’s powdered wig and green livery, no less than his puzzled eyes.
Darwent spoke suddenly.
“Miss Spencer and the other guests. Are they not arrived?”
“Yes, my lord. Long ago. I should have told your lordship, but …” Stolid again, his eyes did not exactly indicate the bedroom, though they conveyed an answer.
“Miss Spencer is in the Amber Room,” he went on, indicating the floor above. “The—er—Mr. and Mrs. Raleigh are next door. At your convenience, my lord, the surgeon would like to speak with you.”
“Good. Where is my wife?” After a pause Darwent added: “Speak up, roan! You know you may.”
Alfred did know he could. It was another thing he liked about the governor. You could treat him man to man, yet with no familiarity on either side.
“Her ladyship, my lord, is with Miss Spencer. —You spoke, my lord?”
“No, no!”
“Her ladyship gave herself the trouble of hurrying upstairs in informal costume. I have never seen her ladyship so kind and gentle. In five minutes, my lord, she and Miss Spencer have become the best of friends.”
“Alfred … good God!”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Do you understand this?”
“No, m
y lord. A Mr. James Fletcher has called,” the footman continued hastily. “Since he said the matter was urgent, I took the liberty of asking him to wait in the drawing room.” Alfred nodded toward the front of the passage. “I trust this was—?”
“Oh, yes. Admirable.”
Then the details of the duel had been settled. Though Darwent allowed nothing to show in his expression, he could have rubbed his hands together with a savage and lingering pleasure. The footman moved toward the front of the passage, lighting more candles. Darwent was about to follow him when the portly figure of Mr. Samuel Hereford, surgeon in chief at Bart’s, appeared past Alfred from the staircase to the floor above.
“Lord Darwent,” said Mr. Hereford in a low, grave voice, “this is not a time for prolixity or learned speech. I will be frank with you.”
Seeing the look on the surgeon’s face, Darwent did not reply.
“If you ask me why we were so long in coming here,” continued the surgeon, “I will tell you. At one time I feared the lady might be dying.”
“Dying!”
“Oh, perhaps not immediately. My feeling was pure imagination, if you like. But born of experience.”
“You said it was harmless! What’s the matter with Dolly?”
“My lord, I don’t know.”
The five wax lights, against the round mirror on the wall, shone down on Mr. Hereford’s head as he inclined it. Strands of gray-white hair were brushed across his skull to hide near-baldness, and the side hair was brushed out on his cheeks in points.
“However!” he added quickly, as he saw Darwent put one hand against the wall to steady himself, “I think, without giving too much reassurance, I may have found at least some measure of remedy.”
“You’ll save her?”
“I dare to hope so.”
“How?”
“My lord, I count myself a man skilled in my work. But I can only grope in the dark. My colleagues would laugh at me; my reasoning is an old wife’s tale. I ventured to send to the Clarendon Hotel for … well, it is not usually considered a drug. But already the patient is better!”
In one hand he carried a heavy black-leather bag, in the other his black hat. Mr. Hereford shook them both for emphasis, his plump face full of wonder.
“You are not leaving her now sir?”
“For a brief time only, my lord. I shall return in an hour.”
He bowed, marched to the head of the steps leading downstairs, hesitated, and turned round.
“A last word, my lord,” he said with an effort. “I mention your personal affairs only because I must. You are married, I understand?”
“Yes.”
“Does the patient, Miss Spencer, know you are married?”
“No.”
“She must not learn it yet. I have requested her ladyship, your wife, not to mention it. Of course Lady Darwent would not forget herself and drop an incautious word?”
“No, of course she w—!” Darwent stopped. His heart felt as cold as a bitter night on a heath. “I don’t know,” he said.
The surgeon looked at him quickly.
“Well! Mrs. Raleigh is there; Mrs. Raleigh is vigilant; she will prevent it. Don’t fear while Mrs. Raleigh is there. At the same time …”
“Yes? What were you thinking?”
“We are men of the world, you and I. Yet I don’t understand why you brought the patient here! It was ill-advised, my lord. Very ill-advised. You yourself have an undesirable affect on the patient. I must request you: don’t visit her until she is out of danger, or else—we lose her. Good evening, my lord.”
There was not a sound as Mr. Hereford went down the carpeted stairs.
Darwent might have cried after him, “You said Dolly wasn’t seriously ill! Blame your own lack of knowledge!”
But he said nothing. He stood there for a minute or two, clamping his jaws together and finally pressing his hands over his eyes. Then, with no purpose whatever, he wandered toward the front of the passage. He had touched the knob of the drawing-room door before he remembered that Jemmy Fletcher was waiting there.
Darwent straightened his shoulders, shook his head with an attempt to clear it, and went in.
“I say, old boy,” querulously complained Jemmy, who was sitting on a green-and-white-striped sofa and glancing through a richly bound copy of the Decameron, “a fellow’s time’s of value, you know. It’s almost dinner hour.”
“My apologies, Jemmy. I was detained.”
It was the bijou drawing room, where Caroline and Mr. Crockit had completed their plans on the night arranged for Darwent’s hanging. Alfred had lighted the two pairs of candles, each in a delicate glass vase, on either side of the white marble mantelpiece. He had drawn together the heavy green-velvet curtains, bordered in gold, across the two high windows.
There was in Jemmy’s manner a certain coolness, an aloof poise, which his companion might have found odd if Darwent had noticed it. But Darwent, trying to clear his mind, snatched at the first thought which entered it.
“Jemmy, are you acquainted with a gentleman named Lewis?”
“Eh? You mean Till Lewis?”
“Tillotson Lewis! That’s it! Yes.”
“But, damme, Dick, you saw him today! I thought you knew each other.”
“I saw him? Where?”
Jemmy threw down the Decameron on the green-and-white-striped sofa.
“We’d just gone into White’s, old boy, after you’d stared (d’ye mind?) so dashed rudely at those fellows in the bow window; and they don’t like it, I can tell you. Anyway, we went into White’s. And Till Lewis walked straight across in front of you. Don’t you remember?”
“Yes! I remember!”
“Why, Till turned round to look at you. I thought you were both goin’ to speak to each other, but you didn’t.”
Well enough, in imagination, Darwent could see the half-ghostly figure which crossed before him in the gloom, and experienced again the sensation that it was vaguely familiar. Yet he could have sworn he had never met Tillotson Lewis, and never heard the name until it was mentioned by the sad-eyed Mrs. Bang.
“Now, old boy,” Jemmy said suddenly. “About that duel.”
It was as though, with pleasant shock, someone had thrown a bucket of cold water into Darwent’s face. His brain cleared instantly. He was eager, alert, strung to expectancy.
“Good, Jemmy! Have you arranged the time and place?”
“Yes, old boy. Wimbledon Common, not far from the windmill. Five o’clock tomorrow morning, before the magistrates can get wind of it.”
Jemmy, his long legs crossed, was in full evening clothes. His black tailcoat, white waistcoat, black silk breeches with diamond buckles and black stockings, were as glossy as though you had just unpacked him. His fair hair, curled à la mode, gleamed by the wax lights.
For a moment he studied the carpet. Then he raised his head coolly.
“But there’s one thing, old boy, I’m afraid we can’t allow. It won’t do, you know.”
“What won’t do?”
“Fighting with sabers. I’m afraid it’s got to be the pistol.”
A sharp premonition, which should have occurred to him before, spread and blackened through Darwent’s mind.
“Who says it’s got to be pistols?”
“Jack Buckstone. All the fellows at White’s will agree with him, you know.”
Darwent walked to the small round table in the middle of the room, while Jemmy examined his fingernails.
“Let me be very clear about this,” said Darwent. “As the challenged party, you agree that I have the choice of weapons?”
“Of course, old boy. But naturally you’ll choose pistols.”
“Why? The dueling code permits sabers.”
“Oh, the code!” said Jemmy offhandedly. His blue eyes opened in a vaguely uncomfortable way. “Dash it, old boy, be reasonable! You’re not a couple of dem cavalrymen. Got to do what’s in fashion, dash it!”
“Tell me,” said Darwent,
studying him. “I asked you whether Buckstone could use the saber, and you answered that he was a very able swordsman. Did he ask you whether I could use the pistol?”
“No, old boy.”
“Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that I had never touched a pistol in my life?”
Jemmy shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, old boy,” he said coolly, “I’m afraid that’s your lookout.”
Was there, round Jemmy’s mouth and eyes, a faint trace of malice? His companion could have sworn Jemmy Fletcher, whatever else he might be, was genuinely good-natured. As Darwent’s mind blackened with fury, he hid his thoughts even from himself.
“Major Sharpe,” he said, “seemed to me the very best type of army man; and that’s saying the best you can say of anybody. You must have dealt with him, not Buckstone. What did Major Sharpe have to say of this?”
“Damme, old boy, that’s where Jack’s so shrewd! He is, you know. Devilish shrewd. Come, now! Be fair! Admit it even if you don’t like it.” There was humor in Jemmy’s eyes. “Sharpe’s a cavalryman. Thinks saber duels ought to be for the cavalry.”
“Then it was Major Sharpe who forbade sabers? Is that what you mean?”
“Oh, no. But don’t you see, Dick? It don’t matter a curse what he says. It’s what Jack says.”
“Is it, by God!”
“Of course, old boy. He’ll simply refuse, and make a laughingstock of you. In fact, he already has.”
“After issuing the challenge himself?”
“My dear old fellow, Jack don’t need to prove himself. Whereas, if you don’t mind my saying so, nobody knows you. Jack’s a sizzler. He’s been out nine times, and never missed.”
“Yes, Jemmy. I even remember hearing the same thing from a turnkey at Newgate.” Darwent tapped his fingers idly on the table. “How is it,” he asked with powerful restraint, “that he’s never been embroiled with the law? That his precious hide never felt the stone of a prison?”
“Shrewd!” remarked Jemmy, shaking his head admiringly. “Shrewd!”
“You have already commented on Sir John Buckstone’s shrewdness, I think.”
The Bride of Newgate Page 12