Fire, Burn!

by John Dickson Carr

  Kate turned in the air and fell face down. She fell fourteen feet, her hair lifting from her shoulders, and her body as limp as a dead woman’s because she had fainted. That dead-weight landed on the right-hand side of the long roulette-table just below.

  Under such an impact one of the table-legs, underneath the same side, broke off completely. The other, wavering, splintered and broke as well. The opposite end of the table, eighteen feet long and covered with green felt, grotesquely jerked up and tilted into the air.

  Ivory counters, banknotes, gold coins rolled over and spilled down to the right. But that was not what drove a stamp of silence on every mouth.

  With a ripping and twanging noise, two long taut wires tore the carpet underneath the table. Those wires ran to the two good table-legs on the left. They glistened as they surged up, tearing the carpet still further and exposing a metal plate with four black buttons.

  Then it was as though the table, endowed with life, went mad. Machines do go mad, when you smash them. Few understood the exploding hiss of compressed air. But they saw the roulette wheel itself jump up as a coiled spring emerged at one side, crawling and expanding like a metal snake. Another uncoiled spring shot up as though to attack the wheel.

  Every man down on the floor there, punter or blackleg, stood up or ran to look. All stayed motionless, hats falling off or eyeballs glistening, when they saw.

  Cheviot alone, at the broken handrail, was looking at Kate de Bourke.

  She had slid down the table, her skirt dragged above her knees. He could not see her face. But her outspread arms moved. Her fingers clutched at the green baize. Slowly, dazedly, she lifted her head and blinked round.

  Nobody heard Cheviot’s strangled gasp of relief.

  He had given the wrong order—“Bulmer! Grab her!”—which might have sent a half-crazed woman to her death. It turned him sick when he saw her fall.

  And yet, as so often happens, she had fallen as flat and limp as a jockey or a drunken man. Far from being dead or bone-smashed, the woman was not even hurt.

  Hardly two seconds had elapsed since she fell. But every one of his eight men, despite his frantic gesture, had run out into the gallery and lined up on either side of him.

  They were trapped here amid thirty-odd blacklegs, whose eyes were beginning to move up to the gallery.

  They were trapped here, that is, unless …

  The bursting hush still held. Vividly Cheviot was conscious of four persons standing up at the far side of the roulette-table. The tall young man addressed by the footman as my lord, he of the luxuriant brown side-whiskers and the red nose, was stricken cold sober. Beside him stood the thick-set bruiser in the piebald wig, hand threateningly half-raised towards him.

  Beyond the wheel, staring at it, was the stout man with the yellow side-whiskers, whom Cheviot had seen at Lady Cork’s. Beyond him loomed the lean, bony blackleg with the lined face and the false teeth.

  “Yes!” Cheviot shouted.

  A quiver went through them all. All of them looked upwards: seeing uniforms, seeing truncheons, seeing only Cheviot in evening-dress and empty-handed.

  His voice rang out again.

  “That is how they fleeced you,” he said, pointing down to the roulette-table.

  From across the room, at the rouge-et-noir table, he heard the click as the hammer of a pistol was drawn back to full-cock.

  “Yes, we are the police,” Cheviot said. “But on whose side do you stand: on the side of those who robbed you—or on ours?”

  One, two, three, four …

  “My lord” whirled round to the bruiser in the weird wig. My lord’s high, harsh voice rose up.

  “You damned cheating leg,” he said, almost in surprise.

  His left fist swung and drove into the bruiser’s fat stomach. His right came over to the head. Taken completely off-balance, the breath squeezed from his lungs, the bruiser sat down hard on a chair which broke under him.

  At the same moment the expression altered on the face of the bony man with the false teeth. A knife slipped out of his sleeve. He had no time to use it on Yellow-whiskers beside him. Snatching the rake from the hand of the second croupier, Yellow-whiskers lunged with the head of the rake and smashed the false teeth down his throat.

  At the rouge-et-noir table, two punters ran in together at the croupier, pulling him over backwards by the neckcloth and flinging him on the carpet under a rain of cards from six packs. Somebody threw a bottle. Somebody else raised a war-cry. The battle boiled over.

  At each end of the gallery above, a small staircase led down to the floor. Cheviot ran to the head of his men on the right-hand side. Catching sight of Inspector Seagrave on the extreme left end, he raised his hand high, singled out the three behind him, and snapped his fingers.

  “Now!” he said.

  And empty-handed he led three constables down into the brawl on the right stairs, while Inspector Seagrave led four men down into it from the left.

  16

  “I Kissed Thee Ere … They Killed Me”

  THE CLOCKS WERE striking three in the morning when a hackney cab turned into Cavendish Square towards Flora Drayton’s house.

  The passenger inside, despite his uneasiness, was jubilant. He almost sang.

  Outwardly he looked respectable enough. Neither his cloak nor his hat had entered the brawl at Vulcan’s. The cloak was worn closed and fastened at the chin, the hat jolted on the seat beside him because the head-bruise ached.

  Cheviot’s jaw felt very sore on the right, but it did not seem to be swollen. He scarcely felt his body-bruises, though they would be stiff enough next day. On the seat at his right lay two account-books, and Cheviot’s handkerchief, tied up in a knot, containing five pieces of jewellery.

  “Ta-ti-ta!” sang Superintendent Cheviot, who was not very musical.

  If only it were not for Flora’s wrath …

  The cab slowed from a trot and drew up at the door of her house.

  Cheviot glanced out of the window. The house would be dark and sealed up; he must, of course, find some way of breaking in. He looked. Astounded, he looked again.

  A gleam of gaslight illuminated the fanlight over the front door. Though the shutters were closed inside the windows to the left of the door, they bore tiny star-shaped openings; and the room was lighted too.

  Gathering up hat, handkerchief, and account-books in a bundle, Cheviot hastened to jump down and pay the cabman who opened the door. By this time he had discovered that you did not tip cabbies in the way he knew it; the jarvey stated from threepence or sixpence more than his actual fare, and you paid that.

  He ran to the door. He had hardly touched the bell-knob when the door was opened by a middle-aged, almost stately woman, rather stout, in a lace cap and long lace apron. She resembled a housekeeper rather than a maid.

  “Good evening, sir,” she said as casually as though they were meeting at seven in the evening, and not at three o’clock in the morning.

  “Er—good evening.”

  “Your hat, sir?”

  “Thank you. But not,” he said hastily, “the cloak or—or these other things.”

  “Very good sir,” said the middle-aged woman, who was now beaming at him.

  “Er—is she—Lady Drayton—is she—?”

  The woman merely curtseyed gravely, indicating closed double-doors at the left of the marble-floored foyer.

  Flora made no pretence that she had not heard wheels stop in the street outside. Still fully dressed in her dark-blue gown bordered with gold, she was sitting up straight at a round table near the fire, her fingers pressed hard on the pages of the leather-covered book she had ceased to read.

  A petroleum-oil lamp burned on the table. Gaslight flickered yellow from a bracket on either side of the white-marble mantelpiece, and there was a good blazing fire. All these brought out the delicate hollows under her eyes.

  When Cheviot opened and closed the doors behind him, she still sat rigidly: her slender neck upright, her eyes
searching him in fear that he had been hurt. When he seemed uninjured, she uttered a little cry.

  Hastily Cheviot put down the account-books, the handkerchief-wrapped jewellery, on a chair of cherry-covered velvet. For Flora ran across to him, throwing her arms round him with such violence that he tightened his shoulders against the pain of body-bruises. Flora put her head back. He kissed her so hard and in such a complicated way that after some seconds he thought it better—let us say more delicate—to hold her a little away from him.

  His voice was husky. But he tried to assume a light tone.

  “May I observe, my dearest, that of all the women on earth you are the most utterly unpredictable?”

  “What a pretty compliment!” Flora almost sobbed. She really thought it the highest of compliments. “You can bandy words fairly, when you like.”

  Whereupon she must put on a grand-hostessy and haughty air, drawing back from him even while she clung to him.

  “Foh!” said Flora, in pretended disgust. “You have been smoking again.”

  “Certainly I have been smoking. But you needn’t make it sound as though I had been smoking opium or hashish. After all, it’s only tobacco.”

  “Which,” declared Flora, drawn up even with tears in her eyes, “is a filthy and repulsive habit, not permitted in any well-bred house. If a man must smoke, he goes upstairs and smokes up the chimney.”

  “He—what?”

  “He sits on the hearth,” here she grandly indicated the hearth of the fireplace not far from her, “and puts his head inside and lets the smoke go up the chimney. Of course,” Flora added hastily, “there mustn’t be any fire.”

  Cheviot was in a mood which combined desire, hilarity, and the knowledge that he was beginning to understand her at last.

  “I sincerely hope not,” he said with a grave face. “If I were obliged to stick my head up the flue over a fire, I might find my whiskers a trifle singed before I had finished the cigar.”

  “But you haven’t got any whis—oh, stop! You’re quizzing again! I hate you!”

  “Flora, look at me. Do you honestly mind the smoking?”

  “No. Of course I don’t. Kiss me again.” Then, after an interval: “I allow I was cross with you tonight—”

  “You had cause.”

  “No, no! I was furious,” said Flora, dropping her grand airs and becoming natural, “because I was so frightened. Do you imagine I had heard nothing of Vulcan? Or his reputation? And there he was, daring you to remain. And there you were—oh, no matter! But there was trouble, was there not?”

  “A little, yes. Nothing to speak of.”

  “Thank God,” she said breathlessly. “Darling! Come and sit down and tell me. Let me have your cloak.”

  “No, no! Not the cloak!”

  But Flora had already unfastened the catch and slipped off the heavy astrakhan collar. When the cloak fell into her hands, she leaped back and stifled a shriek.

  His collar and neckcloth were gone. His shirt was crumpled, dirty, and in two places spotted with dried blood. His trousers, split at both knees, were as dust-patched as the torn coat. In this coat, slewed back round as well as possible when he had washed his hands and face at a pump, the right sleeve showed the black-burned rent of a bullet-hole.

  “I—I see.” Flora spoke in a low voice, swallowing. “I remark it. There was but little trouble; nothing to speak of.”

  She began to laugh, and went on laughing.

  “Flora! Enough of that! You must not give way so!”

  Her laughter ceased as he spoke. Pressing the cloak hard against her breast, she looked up with such intense tenderness that he could not meet her gaze.

  “Nay, that was no nerves or megrims, Jack. It was honest laughter for the comical. But it came from the heart, which must hurt a little too. Now I will tell you what I determined, and determined this night.”

  She moistened her lips, pressing the cloak more tightly against her breast.

  “To be open with you, my dear, there is much I don’t understand. Of you. Sometimes you might be a man from another world. I don’t understand why you insist so much on ‘your work.’” Perplexity made her bite her lip. “A gentleman does not work, or at least need not. Never, never, my father said! No, don’t protest!—For why need I understand?

  “Shall I be a silly woman,” she cried, “as so many are silly? And fancy that affectations are realities? I was stupid last night—yes, I was!—and again tonight. You won’t find me stupid another time, if you love me. And, if you are so devoted to this cause of the police—why, then, so am I! That is no merit in me. It is because I love you, and I would not have you other than as you are.”

  Still Cheviot looked down at the carpet. He did not raise his head. There was a lump in his throat, and he did not look up because he could not.

  Flora had moved closer. He reached out; and, as she shifted the cloak to her left arm, he lifted her right hand and pressed his lips to it.

  And then, as complete understanding came to them and wrapped them round in a warmth which seemed never to be broken, there rose up from somewhere at the back of the foyer the clank-jangle-rattle of the front door-bell.

  Flora drew back from him and stormed.

  “At this hour?” she exclaimed. “No! I’ll tell Miriam to admit no one. They shan’t take you away from me tonight!”

  “You may be sure of that.” He spoke grimly. “No power on earth could compel it.”

  There was a light, discreet tap at the door; then a long pause; then the door was opened by the stately housekeeper.

  “My lady—” she began in some hesitation, and paused. “I should not have disturbed you, as well you know, save that … it is Lady Cork.”

  “Lady Cork?” Flora spoke blankly.

  Cheviot’s begrimed white gloves, adhering with dried blood to the knuckles inside, cost him pain as his fists clenched.

  “We had better see her,” he muttered.

  “You—you are sure?”

  “Yes. This afternoon, Flora, I began to see the solution of the problem.”

  “Of Margaret Renfrew’s murder?”

  “Yes. I had been blind. But I saw who committed the crime; and tonight, at Vulcan’s, I realized how it was done. Barring one detail, and one question which you and Lady Cork alone can answer, my cause is complete.”

  Flora drew a deep breath. “Miriam, please beg Lady Cork to come in.”

  As the door closed, Cheviot spoke again in that same rapid mutter.

  “You are not to be alarmed at what I say. All is well. But this morning Mr. Richard Mayne, one of the Police Commissioners, did his best to make out a cause that you had killed the Renfrew woman and I had shielded you. No, I beg: don’t start or put your hand to your mouth!”

  Cheviot glanced at the closed door and spoke still more quickly.

  “At any time,” he said, “I could have cleared you. But only by confessing that both of us had told lies and suppressed evidence, which would have been more dangerous still. My only hope lay in showing how this murder was done. And that I think—I say I think—I can now prove to the full.”

  He held up his hand for silence. Catching the cloak from Flora’s arm, he draped it round himself and fastened the collar as Miriam announced the Countess of Cork and Orrery.

  They heard Lady Cork’s sniff, and the tap of her crutch-headed stick, before the little, stout-bodied, vigorous old woman stumped in.

  Lady Cork did not wear her white frilled cap, but the white poke-bonnet with long sides gave much the same effect as her shrewd eyes probed out of its shadow. Her white gown was the same, under a grey fur pelisse rucked up round her.

  The eighteenth century, with all its train of ghosts, crowded in round her and fluttered the gas-jets with their presence.

  “Lawks, girl!” she said to Flora, with a hint of apology even in her defiant tone. “I’d not ha’ been so troublesome to you, at this time, if I hadn’t seen lights burning on the ground floor.” There was a very slight e
mphasis on the word “ground.”

  Even two or three days ago, Flora might have been in agitated confusion. But she was all coolness and graciousness, smiling.

  “You are most welcome, Lady Cork. But surely you are up late?”

  “I’m always up late. I don’t sleep.” Lady Cork craned her neck round. “No, no, wench, I’ll keep me hat and coat. Don’t fuss me!”

  This last remark was addressed to her pretty young maid, Solange, hovering in the doorway. Solange’s soft and liquid brown eyes peered out from the hood of a green cape, herself in confusion at seeing Flora.

  “Sit down there,” Lady Cork told Solange, pointing with her stick at a far chair, “and be vanished. My visit’s a brief one.”

  “As is mine,” murmured Cheviot, touching his cloak.

  “Is it, George Cheviot’s son?” Lady Cork asked sardonically. Her eyes moved to Flora and back to him. “Is it? Bah! Tell the truth and shame the devil!”

  “A practice, madam, I strongly recommend to yourself.”

  “Hey? D’ye say I don’t tell the truth?”

  “Sometimes, madam. But seldom directly.”

  Nor, as he knew, would she approach any subject directly. Lady Cork snorted. She peered round the room, papered in silvery grey, its chairs and sofa and ottoman upholstered in cherry-coloured velvet.

  Snorting, she hobbled over and plumped herself down in Flora’s armchair, under the lamp and beside the fire, with the little round table at her elbow. On the table lay the book, opened, which Flora had been reading when Cheviot entered.

  Lady Cork blinked at the pages. It was as though the very sniff of printer’s ink set her off.

  “D’ye know where I’ve been this night? No? Well! I’ve been a-dining with John Wilson Croker,” Lady Cork said ferociously, “and a parcel of other red-behinded Tories. Can you imagine what Croker has the impudence to propose?”

  “Yes,” returned Cheviot. This was the only way to keep her from flying off at a tangent. “Mr. Croker proposes to edit and annotate a new edition of Boswell, which may take him two years or more. No doubt he wished for your reminiscences?”

  “Ay; so he did. Why, curse his dem—”