Gaslight

by William Drummond

  “It is after ‘luncheon,’ ” he said. “Now be a good little girl and go upstairs as I say.”

  “Why don’t we have an early dinner and then you can see me take it?” Any suggestion was worth making if it could keep him from seeing her bedroom.

  “Because I choose to dine at the Club,” he answered, “and I must insure you take the medicine.”

  Bella said. “Very well, then. But there is no need for you to disturb yourself. I will fetch the medicine.”

  He nodded agreement and watched her go to the door. Then he called to her. “Do not trouble to pour the stuff down the sink, my girl. I have another bottle.”

  As Bella came out of the dining room with the medicine, she saw Elizabeth at the head of the basement stairs. The cook beckoned to her and when Bella came over, she backed down the stairs so that they could talk behind the closed door. “It’s Mr. Rough,” Elizabeth whispered. “He’s gone to Sir George Raglan to get a warrant. Them was the rubies you gave him. Keep him talking, Mr. Rough says, don’t let him go out. Mr. Rough’ll be back just as soon as he can.”

  Bella walked very slowly up the stairs. She should, she supposed, be overjoyed at Elizabeth’s news. For the man whom she had thought was her husband she had no remnant of love or respect. A murderer, a thief, a bigamist, he was more loathsome than she had ever dreamed even in her deepest bouts with hate. Yet, even though bigamously, she was still his wife. She had to save him if she could.

  She opened the door.

  “Ah,” he said, “you were so long I began to fancy that the little bird had flown!”

  “Jack,” she said, “I have something very grave to tell you.”

  He grinned.

  “I am not saying this out of love for you. Whatever I may have felt for you, you have utterly destroyed. I am saying this from a sense of duty, probably misplaced, but there it is.”

  He grinned even more widely.

  “You must leave this house at once, Jack, and never come back. The police will be here any minute!”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Mr. Manningham threw back his head and roared with laughter. “Oh! Oh! That is rich!” he said, holding his sides. “That really takes the biscuit!”

  Bella looked at this great guffawing bully, so caught in the toils of his petty tyranny that he could not realize his own danger. “Are you mad, Jack? Have you always been? The police! I mean it. They’ll be here any minute.”

  Mr. Manningham opened his cigar box, took out a cheroot and sniffed it. “You would have done well in theatricals, my girl.” He struck a match. “You play the tragic heroine to the manner born.” He drew on the cheroot till the tip glowed. “If I did not know you so well, I would be even more impressed.”

  “You don’t believe me, do you?” The tragic irony illuminated her. Her role must be to play the dutiful wife, to save Jack from himself. But Nemesis would triumph. It was not for her to destroy Jack. He would do it himself.

  Mr. Manningham contemplated the tip of his cheroot. “I must make a confession, dear child. While you went below, I went upstairs.” He carefully blew two smoke rings and watched them waver and widen and disperse. “Imagine my surprise to discover that you were planning to anticipate the doctor’s verdict. A flight no doubt to your dear friend Minty? Am I wrong?

  “Or were you making ready for the asylum?” he asked. “If so, I must warn you. In the locked wards there is not room for all those pretty things. A small hamper will accommodate your wardrobe.”

  There was nothing which Bella could say which would bring home to this man the danger on the brink of which he hovered. She stretched and took the cameo brooch. She must, as wife, spare nothing which might save her husband. Not that she wished to save him, but she must avoid the guilt of his destruction.

  Jack was too caught up in the delights of torture to notice her action. “You would not think, surely, that I would so fail of my conjugal duty, dear girl, as to allow you to escape the treatment necessary to remedy your condition. What harm might you do yourself or others if left at large? Oh, no! Your welfare is far too precious to me for that. Having sacrificed our evening at the theatre to your imbecility, I must now do the same to my dinner at the club. I have changed my mind. I shall dine at home; and you may take your medicine after dinner.”

  Bella had hidden the brooch behind her back and while he was talking she had opened it. “I meant what I said about the police, Jack,” she said.

  “And I meant what I said about dining at home.”

  “Then shall I go down to advise Elizabeth?” Bella could not have felt such triumph in being one step ahead of her husband if she had not been one step behind for so many years.

  “And let you go running hysterical into the street? Pray spare me and the neighbors that humiliation!” He turned away and depressed the bell-pull; and as his head was averted, Bella lay the brooch-box open on the top of his bureau. “It surprises me, Bella, that with your upbringing, you never learned the proper treatment of inferiors.”

  Bella could not hide, not so much her triumph, but the lack of the fear which he had come to expect in her. Now she knew it was he who was mad, not herself. Jack looked at her in surprise. She dropped her gaze and he saw the brooch on the bureau.

  For a moment he thought it was broken. Then, “My God!” he said and picked it up. “What is this?”

  “It is what you gave me on the day we were married.”

  Elizabeth tapped on the door.

  “Or rather on the day when we were supposed to be married.” Then before Jack had fully caught the importance of her remark, Bella called to Elizabeth to enter. As Elizabeth did so, there came a loud hammering on the front door. “You wanted me, sir?”

  Jack was an extraordinary study, the play and counter-play of revelation, surprise and apprehension producing in him reactions which in their contradiction created chaos. His eyes, hands and legs began a series of uncompleted movements like that of a machine struggling with an obstruction in its works.

  Bella could say or do nothing. The man was beyond her now, the prey to invisible furies pursuing him from every side.

  “Shall I go to the door, madam?” In addressing Bella, Elizabeth recognized the change of authority.

  “No! Stay where you are, the both of you!” Jack spoke with the authority not of master of the house but of an intruder whose superiority lay in brute force.

  Suddenly he went to the window, parted the curtains and looked out. With a shock, Bella saw a shadowy figure on the balcony before Jack closed the curtains.

  From below came the boom of the knocker echoing up the stairwell. Jack looked at the two women, as if they were strangers. “You will not open that door for five minutes,” he said and then, with surprising speed and delicacy, he was past them, out of the room and running up the stairs.

  The two women said nothing, but instinctively they moved to the doorway. They heard him swearing in the darkness as he tried to fit the key into the lock of the door leading to the upper floor, a grunt as he turned the wards and the slam as he pulled the door to behind him and locked it again.

  “I can’t understand it, madam,” Elizabeth said. “Like Mr. Rough said, I left the area door unlocked. Shall I go down, madam?”

  Bella shook her head. “Wait!”

  They did not wait long. While the hammering continued on the front door, there were noises of footsteps on the stairs. On the half-landing appeared the figures of Mr. Rough and a policeman. They seemed in no hurry.

  “Good evening, madam,” Mr. Rough called. “I trust you are safe and sound.”

  As they came in, he introduced the policeman as Sergeant Brownjohn. “Could you open the window, Elizabeth? We shan’t need Constable Corke on the balcony any longer.”

  Bella looked as mystified as she felt.

  “The bird has flown,” Mr. Rough explained, “but not far. It occurred to me that our Mr. Power might explain his possession of the brooch containing the Barlow rubies as part of his inheritance
from the old lady. So it would be wiser if he acknowledged his guilt by trying to escape arrest.”

  There was a gust of cold air as the window opened and the constable stepped in. As Elizabeth closed the window, sounds of struggle came from above. The inspector jerked his head and the constable moved to the door.

  “We arranged a little reception party for Mr. Power in the attic,” Mr. Rough said, “entering over the roof from Number Eleven.”

  The inspector produced his warrant. He unfolded it as they heard the police and their prisoner coming down the stairs.

  Mr. Rough held out his hand. “May I, sergeant?” he begged.

  The Sergeant smiled. “I suppose you deserve it.” He handed over the paper.

  Bella went over to the fireplace. In the mirror over the mantel-shelf she could see what passed without the pain of confrontation.

  Yet when she saw the man brought in between two policemen with Constable Corke guarding the rear, she did not recognize the proud, self-righteous tyrant who had tortured her for seven years. This was Dr. Jekyll transformed into Mr. Hyde, the ugly face of evil stripped of the mask of respectability. She was appalled to have been so bewitched to have lived with this devil as his wife.

  Mr. Rough read: “Sydney Charles Power, I have a warrant for your arrest for the murder of Alice Barlow. I should warn you that anything that you . . .” From the back, he looked like a granite statue of justice. “Will you accompany us to the station in a peaceful manner, Power?”

  Something scrabbled at Bella’s skirt, a warm, wet tongue caressing her fingers. She looked down and there was Cerberus, the paw no longer bandaged. She stooped and gathered him into her arms. And as she raised the puppy, holding him to her bosom, she turned to face the man with whom she had lived these years in hell.

  Had the impression of evil been an illusion created by the reflection in the looking-glass? Or was it that the moment of her stooping had given Jack the time to compose his features? Whatever the reason, Bella saw before her the man whose charm and dignity had won her at first sight in Hampstead and whose dependence on her in the intervening years in sudden moments of collapse or tenderness had made tolerable the far more frequent periods of domineering hardness and unholy cruelty.

  “Might I ask the kindness of being allowed a few minutes alone with my wife before going to face this ridiculous charge at the police station?”

  Mr. Rough believed it would do no harm to give Power a little more rope to make sure of his hanging himself but he turned to Bella. “Miss Hickok is quite aware that you married her bigamously and that while you were upstairs tapping walls and lifting floorboards in your search for the Barlow rubies, you were at the same time trying to drive her out of her mind. Do you want to tell her what you were up to, Power? Did you hope to drive her to suicide? Or would you have been content to have her certified, so that you could realize her capital, pay off the creditors and buy more fancy ladies? Is that what you wanted?”

  Jack did not show the slightest reaction to Mr. Rough’s accusations. “If I had wanted to talk to Bella publicly,” he said with dignity, “I should not have requested the kindness of seeing her alone. But since you will not grant even this modest favor . . .” He turned to go.

  “Wait,” Bella said. “Mr. Rough, I would like those few minutes, if we may.”

  Jack stopped and looked at her in admiration. “There’s my girl speaking.”

  Mr. Rough and the detective-sergeant drew to one side to hold a muttered conference. Then Mr. Rough gave permission on one condition. If left alone with Bella, Power must be bound. “This man has already committed one most brutal murder, madam. We cannot risk another.”

  While rope was being fetched from the kitchen, Jack protested against the indignity of this degrading procedure; about mistaken identity; the damages he would claim for false arrest. And he continued to protest while he was being securely roped into the high chair on which he had sat when he was at his writing desk. His hands were tightly lashed behind its back, his ankles bound to its legs.

  “We shall be outside, madam,” Mr. Rough said. “Five minutes. And if before then he looks like he’s actin’ ugly, give a call.”

  The moment the door closed, Jack whispered, “Quick, Bella. Cut the knots. There’s the penknife on the desk.”

  “I don’t understand,” Bella said. It was impossible to imagine that after all this Jack should expect her to release him; or that even if she did, he would get away. Though Mr. Rough had posted no one outside the window, he certainly had made some disposition to seal that escape route. “You must be mad.”

  “For God’s sake, Bella. Don’t torment me!”

  Mad! She had used the word colloquially, but she suddenly saw that it was literally true. “Of course, I see it now,” she said. “When you made those noises in the attic and tried to make me think it was all my delusions, and your hiding the picture and my jewelery . . . I thought you were being diabolically cruel.”

  Jack tugged at his bonds. “Don’t talk, girl,” he said. “Act! Hurry, if you love me!”

  “Love?” The word penetrated the privacy of her thought. “I wonder. I believe that I do still. I love the bit of you that is still sane.”

  “Then have pity on me!” He strained, not so much to escape from the tight bonds as to win contact with her and secure her aid.

  “I have,” she said. “On all of you; the mad part just as much. I thought I was in hell, but what about you?”

  He thought that she was deliberately playing cat and mouse with him. The pleading left his voice. “You know what they are going to do to me.”

  “Nothing compared to what you did to Alice Barlow,” she said coldly. “Why didn’t you just kill me as you did her? Perhaps because you insanely realized the idea of a long, slow torture of my mind? No, I do not think I can pity you, Mr. Power—even when you are Power-less.”

  “And you want to have my death on your conscience?” he said. “You want to be haunted by it? Are you prepared for that? If they hang me, my girl, it will not be the end for you! I’ll come back. You needn’t worry. Maybe you did not hear ghosts in the attic. It was me. But when I am gone and you hear strange noises in the attic or the next door room, I give you warning. It will still be me.”

  There are limits to pity, and Bella had reached them.

  Bella looked at him strangely. “You mean you would haunt me unless I cut you free?”

  He nodded.

  “You would haunt me till I went out of my mind?”

  “And after. Always!”

  She picked up the penknife. “But if I cut you loose, you won’t haunt me—even if they catch you?”

  “Yes.” He licked his lips.

  “Do you promise?”

  “I swear!”

  “Well, then,” she said, “I suppose I must.” She looked down at the penknife with furrowed brows. “How does it work?”

  “You know perfectly well!”

  “But I do not,” she said. “I really think that I must have lost my wits, after all. Shall I ring to ask Nancy to give me my medicine? That would do me good, would it not?”

  “What I said about haunting, I mean it. I swear.”

  Bella looked up from the penknife. “Has Alice Barlow haunted you all these years?”

  “Ye . . . No!” he shouted.

  She held up the penknife. The blade gleamed. “You gave me such a surprise that I seem to have opened it somehow,” she said. “That means I can cut you free and then you won’t haunt me.”

  She smiled at him idiotically and went behind his chair. He did not dare to speak and snap the thread of hope still holding, but she could see his body tensed like a coiled spring. She laid her fingers on his wrist and laid the knife to the rope. But she did not cut.

  “For God’s sake, hurry!”

  She held the penknife away from his grasp. “I’m worried,” she whispered. “If Alice Barlow hasn’t haunted you, how will you be able to haunt me?”

  “She has,” he hi
ssed. “And she was good.”

  Bella stood up. She walked to the door. “Mr. Rough,” she said. “I would like your advice.”

  Mr. Rough and the sergeant came in. “Do you believe in haunting?”

  They looked bewildered.

  “The reason I ask,” she said, “is that that man threatened to haunt me after death, unless I cut him free, as he has been haunted by Alice Barlow.”

  “Is this true, Power?” Mr. Rough asked.

  “You can’t have her as a witness. A wife can’t testify against her husband!”

  “True enough,” agreed Mr. Rough, “except that Miss Hickok is not your wife. Not that we shall have to call her, in view of your admission of guilt.”

  After his execution, it was not the ghost of the dead Sydney Power which haunted Bella but the memory of Jack Manningham, who had never really existed except in her dreams of love and nightmares of fear.