The Infernal Device & Others: A Professor Moriarty Omnibus
Page 45
"You think so?" Cecily asked. "Try asking some of them. You might be surprised."
Barnett realized that now was not a propitious time to propose marriage. He should probably postpone the question until another day. But he had spent all morning building up the courage and it would probably be even harder another time. He decided to wait until dessert.
They spoke of many things during the course of the meal. One of the hallmarks of a good journalist is a wide and searching curiosity. The conversation ranged from the possibility of a new war in Europe to the claims of a Scottish inventor that he was perfecting a machine that could fly. The question of the rights and indignities of women gradually faded into the past, although Barnett was sure that it was not forgotten. He would have to give it some thought.
Toward the end of the entrée they reached the subject of the series of murders. Cecily was quite wrapped up in the articles she was doing about the murders. "There must be something that connects these crimes," she insisted to Barnett. "The poor man is obviously in the grip of some overpowering compulsion that causes him to seek out these particular victims."
"By 'the poor man,' I assume you are referring to the mysterious individual who has been slitting the throats of perfectly innocuous middle-aged men in their own bedrooms," Barnett said.
Cecily poked thoughtfully at the remains of a poached whitefish on her plate. "A man who commits a heinous crime," she said, "has put himself outside the bounds of common human intercourse. This is not an easy thing to do, not an easy decision to make. To choose to be isolated from the rest of humanity, there must be a compelling need. One can feel a revulsion at the deed, and at the same time pity the man who felt compelled to commit it."
"I'd rather save my pity for the victims," Barnett said. "The frightening thing about a murderer like this one is that he isn't isolated from society. We could breathe easier if he were. He is embedded in our midst, and hidden by the camouflage of assumed innocence. There is nothing about his appearance or manner to proclaim him as a secret slitter of throats. He probably discusses each murder with his friends, and shakes his head in wonder that anyone could commit such a horrible deed."
"A man like this has no friends," Cecily said. "That is one of the signs of the type of abnormality that causes a man to feel impelled to commit this sort of crime."
"How can you be so sure about that?" Barnett asked. "He may be the most popular man in his club. He may have to employ two social secretaries to respond to all his invitations."
Cecily put down her fork and pushed her plate aside. "I don't think so," she said. "I've been doing some reading, you might say research, on the background and antecedents of the killer type, and I would say that almost certainly he is a very lonely man."
One waiter returned to hand them dessert menus, while another sneaked in behind the first and removed the fishy remains from in front of Cecily.
"Now," Barnett said, after the waiter went off to have vanilla souffles constructed for their desserts, "what have you found in your research that indicates our murderer is such a lonely man? You think he is driven to commit these crimes out of simple boredom?"
"No," Cecily told him. "You have it wrong way around. I believe this man is so driven by his need to commit these crimes that he has no time for normal human desires like companionship, or love, or recreation."
"What about eating?" Barnett asked.
"I would say he eats as an animal eats," Cecily said. "He ingests food to give him the necessary energy to keep going. I doubt if he cares what he eats, or is even aware what the dish in front of him contains."
"And upon what do you base this stark image of a man driven by forces stronger than himself?"
"On my study of similar crimes committed in the recent past," Cecily said. "The Düsseldorf Slasher of fifteen years ago was a man named Roehm. When the police apprehended him he was living in a bare, unfurnished room with only a couple of blankets on the floor to sleep on. The only clothing he possessed was several changes of undergarments and one extra shirt. And this was a formerly respectable, middle-class man."
"Who was he killing," Barnett asked, "and why?"
"He killed three magistrates, two clerks of the court, two bailiffs, and a man that drove the prison wagon before he was captured."
"He must have had it in for the courts."
"His wife was arrested and convicted of a homicide and sentenced to the mines. Three years later it was discovered that she was innocent, and she was released. It was too late; the hard labor and terrible conditions at the mines had weakened her until she was beyond medical help. The state gave her thirty gold marks for recompense. She died six months later. A year after that the murders began."
"I'd say the man had a just grievance," Barnett commented. "Imagine what emotions must have been bottled up inside of him. It's not surprising that they came out as a series of slashings."
"He was certainly acting under the influence of a powerful compulsion," Cecily agreed. "As was the Mad Bomber of Paris in 1878, who went around leaving infernal devices in the left-luggage rooms of railway stations. As was Mr. Pinkley of Chicago, who made it his practice to give bonbons laced with arsenic to ladies of the street."
The soufflés were delivered at this moment, and Barnett stared down at his. It was very attractive, rising a full three inches off the top of the dish. "Arsenic, eh?" he said.
Cecily laughed. "Don't worry," she told him. "I've heard of its being sprinkled into omelets, but never a soufflé."
Barnett looked up and grinned at her. "You can't be too careful," he said.
"So I've been led to believe," Cecily said.
They ate their desserts in contemplative silence. The time, Barnett realized, had come. He took a deep breath. "Cecily," he said, "there is something I'd like to ask you."
"Yes, Benjamin?"
He took another deep breath. "I, ah, would like to ask your father for your hand in marriage."
Cecily put her fork down carefully on the side of the plate and nudged it with her finger until it was in the perfect position. The silence stretched on.
"Say something, Cecily," Barnett finally blurted out.
For another long moment there was no response. Cecily's eyes darted around as though she felt trapped at the table and was looking desperately for a way out. Then she turned to Barnett and pointed a finger at him. "I'm certain you don't realize this," she said, "but that proves my point, what you just said. It's so typical. And you're not even aware of what you did."
"What do you mean, 'not aware'?" Barnett demanded, his voice cracking slightly with the effort to suppress both his anger and his bewilderment at this reaction. "I just proposed marriage to you, that's what happened."
"No, it isn't," she said. "You just informed me that you were going to ask my father. Is it my father that you wish to marry? If not, then why are you going to ask him?"
This, Barnett decided, was not his day. Perhaps there was something to astrology after all. "It is the custom," he said. "What I'm actually doing is asking you, you know that. But your father has to give you away."
"Why?" she asked. "Supposing Father says no?"
"I, ah, hadn't thought of that," Barnett said. "Frankly, if you say yes, I don't give a damn what your father says."
"That is courageous of you," she said.
Barnett dropped his fork onto his plate with a little silver clatter. "All right!" he said. "I'm not asking your father, I'm asking you. Cecily, will you marry me?"
"I don't know," she said.
"What?"
Cecily leaned forward and took his hand. "I would like to marry you," she told him. "But I'm not sure you'd really like to be married to the sort of wife I'd be."
"Cecily, I love you," Barnett said. "This table's too wide for me to hold you properly, but I love you more than anything and I want you to be my wife. I know that's trite, but there it is. I have loved you for some time. Since the day you first knocked on the door of the American News Service, as a matter of fact."<
br />
"It took you long enough to get around to declaring it," she said.
"I had commitments," Barnett said. "There were reasons."
"No, never mind that," she said. "That was unfair of me. I've been aware for some time of how you feel about me. And I'm honored."
"Honored," Barnett said. "Which means that you don't love me."
"No, it doesn't," Cecily said. "Benjamin, dearest, I do love you. I even wish to marry you, I just don't think you really want to marry me."
"With all my heart," Barnett said. "You want me to be your wife."
"Yes."
"You want to set up a home for me."
"With you."
"You want me to quit work."
"Of course."
"Well, I want to marry you, Benjamin, but I have no desire to give up my career. I want to be a reporter. I don't want to just sit home and tend the babies—if we have any babies."
"Why not?" Benjamin asked. "What's wrong with tending babies?"
"I'll tell you what," Cecily said. "I'll keep my job and you stay home and tend the babies."
"Cecily!" Benjamin said, sounding positively shocked.
"Those are my terms," Cecily said. "Have you a counter offer?"
"Don't be ridiculous," Barnett said.
"You think it's ridiculous, do you?" Cecily demanded. "All my life I've wanted to be a reporter. And now, when I've just begun to make it, when I'm doing a series that's picked up by our whole list, when I've been offered a job in the city room of the Chronicle, you think I should give it up just because you happen to love me and I happen to love you. Well, I tell you, Mr. Barnett, it won't wash. It just won't wash!"
"You love me?" Barnett said.
"Of course I love you," Cecily replied. "What do you think I've been telling you?"
"Oh," he said. "But—now let me see if I understand this correctly—you don't want to marry me because then you'd have to stay at home and tend the babies, if we had any babies, rather than being free to pursue your career as a journalist."
"That's right," Cecily said. "Although you make it sound horrible. What is so wrong with a woman's wanting to do something with her life?"
"I, ah, don't know," Barnett confessed. "I've never given it much thought. I mean, basically I see nothing wrong with it at all. I think women should certainly be as free as men to do—most things. But when I think of my wife, I must confess that I picture her at home running the household while I battle the outside world."
"I agree it is a lovely image," Cecily said. "And there are undoubtedly many women who would dearly love to occupy the position you imagine. Which is why I think that although I might love you, we should not marry. It would be stifling to me and dreadfully unfair to you. I must be free, Benjamin, to take advantage of whatever life has to offer!"
"Well," Benjamin said, "if you must ..." He stared into his coffee. "I will admit that I have not given much actual thought to what I want or need from a wife. What I have is mostly half-formed images involving you and me sitting around a fire and holding each other in various, ah, postures."
"I am sorry, Benjamin," Cecily said.
Slowly Barnett raised his eyes to meet hers. "The Chronicle?" he asked.
"I meant to tell you about that," she said.
SIXTEEN — THE GAME
In a contemplative fashion
And a tranquil frame of mind,
Free from every kind of passion
Some solution let us find.
—W. S. Gilbert
It is commonly believed that work is anodyne of sorrow: Benjamin Barnett reminded himself of this as he focused his energies on the work at hand. First there was the necessary rearranging of the staff of the American News Service in the absence of Cecily Perrine. Then there was the detail work for Professor Moriarty, as he perfected his plans for the impossible crime. But the sorrow remained. There seemed to be nothing he could do that did not, in some tortuous way, remind him of Cecily. She had left the American News Service office to take a feature reporter's position with the Morning Chronicle. He did not begrudge her that. It was the sort of experience she could not get at the Service. And she was very sincere in wanting the experience. She had taken a cut in salary on accepting the new position.
The American News Service had not actually lost Miss Perrine as a writer, since they were free to buy her stories from the Chronicle for the American wire. But the office was certainly empty without her. Through a conversation with the Chronicle's general manager, who was simultaneously resentful and apologetic about acquiring Cecily Perrine, Barnett found out how and why the job offer was made. The Morning Chronicle suddenly realized that it was in great and immediate need of a female reporter. This discovery was the direct result of Lord Hogbine's having left the sixty-year-old newspaper to his wife in his will. And Lady Hogbine, who had already used much of the unentailed Hogbine fortune to endow an undergraduate ladies' college at Oxford, a home for unwed mothers in Stepney, and a trade school for female typewriter operators in Bethnal Green, was shocked to discover that there were no ladies on the reporting staff of the Morning Chronicle. Cecily Perrine was one of the few experienced reporters who also happened to be a lady.
"She does love me, you understand," he told Moriarty in a confidential conversation in the privacy of the professor's study. "It is the prospect of matrimony that she finds unacceptable. She is not willing to give up her freedom to become any man's wife."
"A sensible girl," Moriarty said. "Wife is the only position of involuntary servitude left in the civilized world since Mr. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation."
Barnett snorted and left the room. He had felt the need to confide in someone, but this was not what he wanted to hear.
Moriarty sent Barnett to Plymouth to meet the Hornblower when she docked. "My plans are nearly complete," he said. "But there is certain information that is sketchy or absent. You are a reporter. You have unquestioned access to the various officials and a historical right to ask stupid questions. Find out everything you can about the transportation of the treasure."
"What, exactly, do you want to know?" Barnett asked.
"Details," Moriarty told him. "I want all the picayune, unimportant little details. Everything, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, is of interest to me."
"Supposing they don't want to tell me anything?" Barnett said. "After all, they will be transporting a priceless treasure. The police and the army may be smart enough to want to keep their exact plans a secret."
"Don't go to the military or police authorities," Moriarty said. "Interview Lord East. He is the sort of busybody who will insist upon knowing every facet of the plan. Actually, he probably formulated the plan himself. He fancies himself awfully clever."
And so Barnett arrived in Plymouth the day before the battleship Hornblower was scheduled to tie up to the military dock. That evening, in his hotel, Lord East allowed himself to be interviewed by the gentlemen of the press. He and his entourage occupied an entire floor, and they seemed to have brought along enough furnishings and paraphernalia to outfit an expedition to Tibet. Lord East was a short, fat man whose once-fair complexion had turned beet-red from years of exposure to the Indian sun. He dressed in the best Savile Row approximation of an oriental potentate, and carried a swagger cane of dark-brown wood, traced with a delicate ivory inlay.
"Always glad to talk to you newspaper wallahs," Lord East told the score of fidgeting reporters who had gathered in his receiving room. He climbed up onto a rattan footstool, which one of his Hindu servants placed carefully in front of his feet. "The average Briton doesn't know nearly enough about the empire we've been carving out for him for the past hundred years. The Indian subcontinent is a vast and fascinating region, more than ten times the size of these little islands. And we have made it ours; sent forth the best we breed, our sons and brothers, and made it ours. We have unified some two hundred petty kingdoms under the British raj. I am proud of my small part in this great achievement."
Lord East looked down at him in annoyance. "What was that?" he asked.
"This conquest," the man said with a slight, undefinable mid-European accent. "These unifications—would you say they have been on the whole good for the native peoples in question? Educational, perhaps?"
"Who are you, sir?" Lord East demanded.
"Heinrich von Hertzog, your lordship. Berliner Tagenblatt."
Lord East struck a pose on his footstool that would have been the envy of many a piece of heroic statuary. "Welcome to England, Mr. Hertzog," he said, his voice carrying a burden of frigid disapproval that is only achieved at the better public schools. "It is certainly a pleasure to have you among us. To answer your question, what's good for Britain is good for the empire. That should be self-evident."