‘Soon I’m going to stop calling you X, Ravenscourt … Shall I go on?’
Ravenscourt’s eyes were fixed in a wide stare upon this man who had found him. And curiously, the only emotion in his eyes was curiosity; an overweening desire to know. He said in a low voice:
‘Yes. Yes. Go on. Get off theory. Give facts.’
‘In good time,’ said Anthony. ‘What hindered us most was inability to think of the link which connected X—who, presumably, was in what they call “a good position” with two so utterly different men as Blackatter and Bronson. But we pegged away on other lines. I got on to Master Thomas Harrigan; my friends got on to Dollboys. I took Harrigan because he was the first to see the bodies; we got on to Dollboys, because he was, though he seemed perfectly above-board, the only witness really against Bronson. From Harrigan, who, as you know, is an instance of arrested mental development, I learned more than I had dared hope. I found that before he found the men, he had seen a light in the trees which was not moonlight. A light which I argued must have been from a car or motor-bicycle’s head or spot-light, and was, in fact, on your car … Wasn’t it?’
Ravenscourt nodded. But he never took his eyes from Anthony’s face.
‘That,’ said Anthony, ‘gave me a lot of heart. It was practical corroboration of pure theory. It showed us that X existed in fact as well as in our minds … And then my friends, most ingeniously, put up a stunt on Dollboys to which his reaction was not the reaction of a blameless and conscience-free man. More corroboration.
‘And then—and then, Ravenscourt—I got that link I spoke of just now. I saw, because a girl said something about soldiers and I replied to the effect that the neighbourhood seemed lousy with ’em, I saw what could have brought these three apparent irreconcilables, X and Blackatter and Bronson, together. The War. I should have thought of it sooner: I shall never understand why I didn’t …
‘So now I’d something to work on besides these corroborations which Harrigan and Dollboys had given me. But first, I wanted to see Dollboys, thinking I might frighten everything—or enough of everything—out of him. As I might have. But you called on Dollboys even earlier than I did, Ravenscourt. You went to the house, to which you had entry. And you called Dollboys down, and then you dropped something on to the floor of the kitchen. And as Dollboys bent to pick it up you rammed his own gun, which you’d borrowed, into his ear and fired it. You took a big risk of waking the mother, but you got away with it. You knew the thickness and solidity of the house and you knew the old woman was deafish and a heavy sleeper, and you knew that her bedroom was at the far end of the upper floor. But you got flurried and made that hideous mistake of forgetting the left-handedness …
‘You know, Ravenscourt, I suppose I killed Dollboys. Not that I mind much. If I hadn’t arranged to have Dollboys frightened, Dollboys wouldn’t have panicked and communicated with you—as he must have done—and you wouldn’t have found it necessary to get on your Luke Curtain rig—I suppose you started Curtain in the beginning as (a) a nondescript disguise to slouch from your own land across to Dollboys’ in and (b) in case you were seen—as twice you were by Mrs Dollboys—in Dollboys’ house …
‘But back to the point. There was I, with yet another corroboration but no Dollboys. I had to get to work at once on my new line. I made out a list of the soldiers of officer-rank in the neighbourhood, and I sent it up to a friend of mine in the War Office. I wanted all their records, with particular reference to their map positions in France. And I got them, or most of them … That was the first lot, and you weren’t in it! Blackatter’s record you gave me yourself—and that was when you began to feel I was getting too warm, wasn’t it? Bronson’s I had from the Scotland Yard file. I wanted an officer, serving or retired, preferably handsomely decorated, who could have been at any given spot at the same time as both Bronson and Blackatter. I’m afraid a lot of time was wasted on that list. A lot of time. I hadn’t put your name on it. I was blind and worse than blind. I was treating you in my mind as a policeman and therefore a non-eligible; which is a bad case of non sequitur. And then, by the grace of God, I saw. Something happened which showed—made me sure at all events—that the very man I’d missed off my list was the only one that need have been on it.
‘I went up to town myself. It was a long job. But we got it done. I found that you fitted. For your unit, with you in it, and Blackatter’s unit with him, and Bronson’s with him—all were at Varolles in March ’18 …’
Ravenscourt beat upon the table with his clenched hands, and the handcuffs rattled and jingled. He cried:
‘Stop that! You’ve said all that. You’ve pushed home your theories …’ He made an attempt, rather pitiful, to sneer. ‘Now give us facts.’
‘What is a fact, Ravenscourt? Do you want me to tell you how you killed Blackatter and nearly made Bronson your scapegoat?… I can. You killed Blackatter elsewhere and took his body in your car up to that gate near the fringe of Bellows Wood. Quite probably you killed him in the car. And you made sure that there was no one about, and you switched off your lights, got out of the car, and opened the gate by lifting it off its hinges. You then drove the car in through the gate and turned it to the right, into that cart track. You then backed it until it faced the clearing. You hadn’t wanted to use your lights, but you found you’d have to. The night was very dark and what moon there was was hidden. You listened carefully and at last had to risk it. You switched on your headlights—or a spot-light. You hauled Blackatter out of the car and carried him, just beside the beam of light, for you had to take care not to block it, in among the trees and down over that little bank into the clearing. You posed his body as afterwards it was found. You ran back as quickly as you could to the car. You switched off that light and you went back into the trees and waited. You were in luck. You knew that Bronson walked often this way at about this time, but you hadn’t been able to ensure that he would come. If he hadn’t come, I suppose you’d just have left what remained of Blackatter where it was and waited another chance at the second bird. But Bronson came. And he came fairly close, as you had guessed he would if he came at all, to where you were hiding. And you hit him on the back of the head, possibly with a revolver-butt, probably with a heavy stick. And you carried him across the clearing and dumped him, arranging it so that he would seem to have slipped and hit his head against that stump. And then you took his gun and fired it, and put it into his grip. And then you took from your own pocket the note which Blackatter had sent you that morning and you put it into Bronson’s pocket. And then you went, very quick and quiet you were, back to the car. And you switched on your light again and were going to start your engine …
‘But you didn’t start it. Your lucky night, wasn’t it, Ravenscourt? Just in time you heard a noise; someone crashing and crackling through the undergrowth on the far side of the clearing. That was Tom Harrigan. He’d seen the pretty light. But the light went out, and in the clearing he found something—two somethings—which drove all thought of the pretty light out of that tiny brain. And by your dark car you waited; and I expect your heart was in your mouth for a bit. But at last Tom went running and you began to breathe easily. When he was out of earshot, you opened the gate, backed out into the road, put the gate back in position and at last drove off. And that was all you had to do, except to bribe Dollboys to fake his evidence. And that was very cleverly done; for it did more to get Bronson nearly hanged than the rest of the evidence put together, and yet it was only the false-reporting of that remark of Blackatter’s as he turned to leave the private bar of The Horse and Hound … There, that’s all, I think. And that, I imagine, it was what you meant by “facts”. To be exact, none of my statements were facts; but I’d swear to them just the same. They were developed inferential theories as to what the facts were. And, as I say, except in regard to the minute details, I would swear to them.’
His voice stopped; but the room seemed to hold the sound of the level, modulated, deliberately unimpassioned words. Ant
hony sat as he had sat all the time he had been speaking. The eyes of the other men went from him to that other facing him across the table.
Ravenscourt sat as if he were stone and not flesh. He did not seem even to breathe. He kept his wide blue gaze upon Anthony’s face.
The silence went on. It grew and went on growing; it seemed at last to become alive, as silences will.
Pike cleared his throat uneasily, and a little shuffling of his boot upon the wooden floor sounded like an explosion. Lucas started; so that his chair creaked. He frowned and settled again into immobility.
But these small sounds had broken the spell. Ravenscourt spoke. And at his tone ten eyes brought astonished gaze to bear upon him. For his tone was the tone of a man who is free and in the midst of life and yet with all life before him. He said:
‘Gethryn: I congratulate you!… You’ve found out so much, starting from so little, that it seems to me that you must know everything. But there’s an envelope’—he nodded his head downwards at the table—‘in the drawer there. There’s something in it I’d like you to read … after I’m gone …’
‘Stop him!’ roared Dyson and left the sofa in a bound.
The room was bedlam for a second which seemed many minutes.
With his final word Ravenscourt had leapt to his feet. He seemed for an instant to tower above them like a Thor. His fair hair was wild and his eyes were steely flames. His shoulder caught Pike in the chest and Pike sprawled upon the polished floor. Lucas, with an agility most surprising, was out of his chair in a bound. But the handcuffed fists of Ravenscourt took him in the chest and he fell with a crash which shook the room.
It was over. They saw—they all of them saw—what he was going to do. And none of them was in time. Dyson’s fingers, as he hurled himself forward, brushed the flying skirts of the tweed coat; but brushed them only.
They saw Ravenscourt gather himself, crouch like a runner, hurl himself forward, towards the middle of those three great windows. And this window, like its fellows, was closed against the wild night.
Two paces from it Ravenscourt checked in his rush; flung his joined arms above and before his head. His pose was a diver’s. And dive he did. He sprang upward and outward, and as his spring began its downward curve his arms met the glass of the great window …
He was gone. And the ring of that appalling smash was in the ears of the men he had left. Glass lay in glistening, jagged patterns upon the oaken floor. The wind rushed into the room.
The room was silent. To the ears of the men within it had come the ghost of a sound; a sound soft and heavy and to the senses terrifying.
Flood ran for the door, and was gone. After him went Pike and Dyson together, and, last, Lucas limping from his fall.
Only Anthony did not move. He sat in the chair from which he had not stirred. Presently he glanced down. His fingers searched and found the knob of a drawer. He pulled it towards him. It was empty save for a long, thin envelope.
He took out this envelope. In a bold, ugly handwriting there was written across it:
‘Strictly Confidential. Open in case of Death.’
Anthony weighed the thing in his hand. It was very light. He drew out two sheets of foolscap. Both sides of the sheets had been written on. The handwriting was the same as that upon the envelope, but smaller and far neater. It had about it an air of deliberate clarity.
Anthony began to read. He read:
‘I don’t know why I write this.’ It started like that, with no heading or preamble. ‘But I’d better get it down. It’s a poor little story and I’ll be short about it.
‘Varolles, March ’18. The big Bosche slam beginning. The sector caught it very hot. The –th Brigade in particular. Hell on earth, and below it, for twelve days. Always fresh troops are coming. But they never did. “Jam yesterday”, etc.
‘Then the line went. Pouf! Like that. It went, because there was no order for retreat, in bits. Only the bits that went were very big and bits that stayed were very, very small. Damned silly little blobs of men, like futile islands in a sea of grey-coats.
‘One spot in the sector. There’s four men, one’s a Sergeant, with a Machine Gun. Not a Vickers, mark you, but a Bosche gun they’ve collected, together with boxes of filled belts.
‘They were an island all right. And a big one. Peninsula really. There were seven of ’em—all out of the Dene Foresters—at dawn that day. At nine there were four. At eleven there were three and at a quarter past only two. That Sergeant was left with one man. Good men they all were. But the Sergeant he was six good men.
‘At noon the Sergeant’s one man got it. And almost as he died the Bosche stopped. And that meant the noise stopped. You know the relief when the noise stops. Hurts at first.
‘The Sergeant doubled up over his gun. He jerked at his water-bottle. It was empty. He split its strap with a tug of his hand and pitched it away.
‘Over to the right, in some shell-hole, an Englishman began to yell. I know he was an Englishman, because I could hear some of his words. That’ll tell you what the quiet was like.
‘Where was I? Oh, I was an officer. I was in the trench behind the forward-post that Sergeant had made for himself and his Bosche gun. No. I wasn’t in his Regiment. But then there’d been a mix-up. And an unholy one at that. Everyone was all over the place.
‘That quiet seemed to last for a year. The man in the shell-hole began yelling again. The officer in the trench—that’s me!—began to feel better. He screwed himself up to climb out on to the parapet.
‘The home-made gun-post wasn’t twenty yards away. I saw the Sergeant looking first at his gun; then at that shell-hole the yelling was coming from. He was in two minds. When, he wondered, would the Bosche begin again? Had he got time?
‘I crawled out towards him. My belly shook even when it was pressed tight against the dry mud. The sun was hot. Damned hot. More like August than March. There was a stink.
‘The fellow in the shell-hole went on yelling.
‘The sergeant turned round and saw me. In those days you couldn’t tell, unless you were right up close, an officer from a member of the Sanitary Squad. Before I got within ten yards of him he was bellowing. And he could bellow. He flung out an arm and pointed at the shell-hole. He roared, “Go an’ gettim! Where the hell ’a you bin? Go an’ gettim!”
‘And then the Bosche began their music again. And in earnest this time.
‘The officer didn’t move. That was me! I didn’t move. I lay where I was. I pressed my face into the ground and longed for that stinking trench. I saw the Sergeant look at me. And then he jumped up and fairly bolted for the shell-hole.
‘I lay and prayed.
‘When I lifted my head an inch the Sergeant was back at his gun. He was shooting like all hell. The grey Bosches were moving, though.
‘I shot one agonised look at the shell-hole. On the lip of it was the man and he was crawling towards the gun.
‘And the gun went on. And something clicked inside me somewhere. The grey Bosche were nearer; some of them; hordes of them.
‘In my breeches I had a white handkerchief. And it was, by some miracle of war, what passed in wartime for clean.
‘I fumbled it out. I had, just like a Tommy, a bayonet. I fumbled that out.
‘I tied the handkerchief on to the bayonet. I put up my arm, with this flag at the end of it, and waved. And waved and waved. Bullets which had been chipping the mud all round me slacked off …
‘And the shell-hole man was only twenty-feet from the gun. He was calling something out to the Sergeant and pointed at me and shouting.
‘I stood up. I waved and waved.
‘The Sergeant turned and saw me. I began to run, towards the Bosche.
‘The Sergeant, just as I was abreast of the gun, jumped up.
‘His fist caught me under the ear. It was odd; I wasn’t unconscious. But I was temporarily paralysed. I fell over the gun. For one clear moment I saw; saw the Sergeant hurl my flag away. Saw the wounded man
from the shell-hole pointing towards the empty boxes of ammunition; saw the Sergeant, realising, snatch up his rifle—the bayonet was on it—from the ground.
‘And he didn’t run back. And he didn’t wait. He ran forward towards those Grey Things.
‘And the shell-hole man was crawling, away from the gun, back towards his shell-hole.
‘And then the whole world blazed into one flame which was the Heart of Noise.
‘That was our Artillery.
‘Those promised fresh troops had come.
‘And I was found, with a bullet in the shoulder which I’d never felt, lying across that German gun which, used against the Germans, had made that peninsula and kept it for half a day.
‘And I got the VC for that.
‘The Sergeant, I thought then, was annihilated. I tried to trace him but couldn’t.
‘The shell-hole man, I thought then, was annihilated. I tried to trace him, but couldn’t.
‘And I got the VC.
‘I like having the VC.
‘And the shell-hole man was Blackatter.’
There was a break in the document here. But at the foot of the page, written in a different ink, were the words:
‘And the Sergeant was Bronson. I’m sure of it. I didn’t believe Blackatter when he told me at first. But I’ve been to the inn and looked.
‘It’s those shoulders that convince me.’
Anthony folded up the foolscap sheets and slipped them back into their envelope.
V
Dyson came into the room. Still Anthony sat in his chair. He replaced the telephone’s receiver: he had been talking to his wife, who now was running, upon winged feet, carrying up the stairs of Bronson’s house the news of Bronson’s safety.
The Noose Page 22