A Case in Camera

by Oliver Onions

  And what I had just told her, which she had not hitherto known, was thatAudrey Cunningham shared the knowledge with her.

  PART IX

  WHAT PHILIP KNEW

  I

  The other day, accompanied by an engineer acquaintance, I was potteringabout certain new excavations in the heart of London, and came upon anumber of heaps of crushed and broken-up concrete, evidently the remainsof old foundations. Yet those foundations could not have been very old,since I myself could remember the buildings of which they had been thesupport, and these had been old-fashioned rather than old. One of themhad been a theater, another an hotel; and I stood there with my friend,looking over the waste of rubbish and barrows and wheeling-planks andthrown-up London clay, trying to evoke in my mind the exact plan ofthose vanished streets of thirty-odd years ago.

  I found it difficult. Had these streets been older streets there wouldhave been remembered records to help me. Prints would have jogged mymemory, maps and plans have come to my aid. The seventeenth oreighteenth centuries would somehow have come nearer home than thatunnoteworthy period of hardly more than a generation ago. Particularlywhen I tried to picture the huge new palaces of ferro-concrete that willpresently arise, that intermediate epoch seemed ephemeral and withoutsignificance.

  And so, even already, I find this record of our Case to be. There is astrange blank, full (I know) of all manner of busyness and bustle andrestless effort, but without either the security of history nor yet thefull brightness of new discovery. The _Scepter_ action seems somehowmore remote than the Armada, the findings of this high-soundingCommittee or that farther away than Trafalgar. All is still too near tobe seen, and by the time the dust has settled another pen than mine willhave to take up the tale.

  Indeed, I have more than once felt inclined to hand over the pen now,for, when all is still to prove, a younger faith and vision than thoseof my day are needed. For example, Cecil Hubbard tells me that the manwho nowadays does not know at least the elements of all this lore ofwave-lengths and directional wireless has no business to say that hebelongs to his age at all, and sadly I believe him. Yet Philip Esdailecontrives to keep abreast, not by joining in the banging and burnt-corkof so much contemporary painting, but by virtue of something else, oftentemporarily hidden, that will still be quietly there when the whistleshave ceased to scream and the tom-toms to thud. He too maintains thecontinuity, sharing with his forerunners that quality, whatever it is,which makes the old centuries modern and the novelty of yesterdayafternoon musty and stale before the sun next rises.

  Therefore, it should be understood that the rest is more theirs and lessmine than ever. In the _Scepter_ action Charles Valentine Smith,speaking (thanks largely to my friend Glenfield) from the witness-boxand not from the dock, with wreaths and garlands and the glamour of hisEmbassy adventure almost visibly about him, made this abundantly clear.Easily, familiarly, and with pronouns all over the shop, he dealt withmatters so far above my head that I will make no attempt to report him.If you are interested, there are _The Times_ Law Reports in which youcan read it all. And similarly with the whole crop of associated actionsand inquiries and investigations. My own interest in them is no morethan that something has been born in my time whose infant strugglingsand gaspings I witnessed, and about which I shall doubtless becomegarrulous all too soon.

  II

  So that conjuror's passion-flower to which I have likened this case allbut folded itself up into its original pilule again. That it did not doso was due to a series of small happenings which I will now relate.

  The first of these was my leaving Santon before Mrs. Cunningham arrivedthere. Mollie, despite her energy, did not discover her friend'swhereabouts so easily as she had anticipated. It took her, to beprecise, a fortnight, at the end of which time I had to leave. But sonarrowly did I miss Mrs. Cunningham that I believe her train passed mineon the way.

  But I did not leave Mollie without that sort of smiling salute thataccompanies a fencer's "en garde." If (I told her flatly) she heldherself free to accept information from me and to give nothing butpitying looks of sex-superiority in return, I for my part should alsoconsider myself at liberty to do as I pleased should further informationcome to light. What I had in my mind was that if she and AudreyCunningham were going to put their heads together in the country Rookeand I might do the same thing in town. I may say that I was quiteconscious of the feebleness of my retort, and did not for a momentexpect that Rooke would have anything fresh to tell me.

  "Very well," Mollie laughed gayly from the platform. "But you can tellMonty from me that I'll look after this end of it. Don't tell himanything about the ring though, or you may spoil it So long, mydear--see you in September----"

  And the waving hands of the Santon party slid past my carriage window.

  I gave Monty her message, though strictly without prejudice to myself asits bearer. He was not caught up into any sudden transport of joy.Instead some cheerful confidence of his own seemed to envelop him.

  "I fancy that will be all right now," he said.

  "Do you? Well, I'm very glad. It's a great improvement on the lasttime."

  "Oh, I've had rather a bit of luck since then," he replied.

  His "bit of luck" seemed to me slender enough grounds for his confidencethat all would yet be well. It appeared that he had been sent by aweekly paper down to Hounslow to make certain sketches (he was in fullharness again), and there he had got into conversation with a groundofficial, an ex-R.A.F. man. He had rather "palled up" with this man, andhad seen him several times since. Indeed, Monty was a little inclined toimpart recently acquired information with regard to the organization of"dromes" and similar matters, and had quite a number of yarns that were"absolute facts" to tell. His conversation also had become noticeablyslangier.

  "You see," he remarked casually, "I think I'm on the track of why thatpal of Philip's shot the other chap."

  I found myself staring blankly at him; but, as often happens in momentsof shock, I did not at first feel the full force of what he said. Iinterrupted him.

  "I say--I hope you haven't been talking too much about that?" (I knewhis weaknesses, and a perfectly open candor was one of the gravest ofthem.)

  But "Lord, no!" he instantly reassured me. "Talking about it? Do youthink I'm a----" the initials he used were those of the words "blindfiddler."

  "I'm glad of that," I murmured.

  And then it was that the full weight of what he had said began to sinkinto my mind.

  "Then why did he shoot him?" I asked presently, when I was a little moremaster of myself. This conversation, I ought to have said, took place onthe top of a bus going eastward down Piccadilly. I was on my way to theoffice, and I had found Monty with a finished drawing which he also wastaking to Fleet Street. He looked away over the Green Park.

  "Well, I'm not perfectly sure I'm right, of course," he replied, turningto me again. "In fact, I might be miles out--right off the map. But I_did_ see him on the roof that morning, you know, and I've been tryingto piece it all together again, and I must say it fits in pretty well."

  "What fits in, and with what?"

  He dropped his voice. "Well, you see, this fellow Smith waved his handthe way I told you--like this----" On the bus top he made that sameaimless and wavering movement of his hand that I had seen him make inEsdaile's studio, that I had seen Mr. Harry Westbury make in the Chelseapublic-house. "I think now he wanted the pistol back again, but ofcourse I didn't give it him."

  "What did he want it for?"

  "Might have wanted to shoot himself," Monty replied.

  I pondered deeply, my eyes on the passing facade of the Ritz. CertainlyMonty, as the first on the scene that morning that now seemed such agesago, had the right to collate his original observations with anything hemight subsequently have learned, and the resulting conclusion wouldprobably be a strong one. But that Chummy had possibly wished
to shoothimself was no explanation of why he had shot Maxwell. Indeed, anotherexplanation was far more probable. Having realized that he had in factshot him he might merely have wished to take the shortest way outhimself, and I drew Monty's attention to this.

  "I'm coming to that," Monty answered. "You see this fellow Wetherhead isa jolly interesting chap. You remember the July push on the Somme? Well,he was in that--Bristol Fighter--and then he went up the line to Wipers.He told me that one time when they were in Pop--Poperinghe that is, youknow, and we'd a lot of heavy guns there----" (but I think I may safelyomit the rather lengthy second-hand recital of Wetherhead's movementsand experiences). "Extraordinary yarns he has to tell. Did you know thata first-class pilot can drive another one down with the wash of hispropeller? He can, Wetherhead says. He gets above him, and maneuvers forposition, and then--I forget exactly how Wetherhead put it, but heshowed me with a couple of models they have there----"

  "Yes, yes, but you were going to say----"

  "So I was; I know I'm rambling a bit, but it's awfully interesting, andyou must meet Wetherhead. Well, when he was with the infantry (NorthwoldFusiliers) he says quite a number of their fellows used to carry littledoses of poison about with them, just in case. He'd heard awful yarns ofthe way some of these Boches used to treat their prisoners. So they hadthis poison to be ready for anything, like Whitaker Wright with hiscigar."

  "Monty, if you don't come to the point----"

  "Why, I'm there now; don't have a vertical gust, old thing. Well, justin the same way Wetherhead says some of these pilots and their observershad an arrangement that if one of them got it in the neck the other onewas to finish the job for him. And the other way round, of course. Heand his observer--he's going to introduce me to him--they had it allfixed up, but luckily it never came to that. So it's not impossible thatthese two fellows were like that. What do you think? It fits in with myend all right, and you've been down there and seen Smith. What aboutyou? I'm inclined to have a bit on it myself."

  _A bit on it!_ ... A bit! Instantly I would have had all I possessed onit. Our bus was standing at the Circus end of Lower Regent Street whenMonty at last came out with it, but it had reached Waterloo Place beforeI next became conscious of my physical surroundings. A bit on it!...Look at Monty as I have tried to describe him to you. An unworldly andlovable and gentle sort of donkey he was in some ways; now that he hadfinished with his dummy trees and linoleum infantry he was apparentlybeginning to learn a little about other aspects of the war; andWetherhead (whoever he was--already Monty had so crammed him down mythroat that I was resolved to put the width of England between us ratherthan meet him) suddenly stood for the whole of the Air Force to him. Butbehind all his sweet credulity Monty was no fool. He was aware of hisground. He _had_ been the first on the roof that morning. He _was_ inthe last event capable of putting two and two together and of scoring abull. Do you know these flashes of the absolute and unalterablerightness of a thing? One of them blinded Saul of Tarsus on the road toDamascus; something of the same kind blinded me for the whole length ofLower Regent Street. I had no longer one single shadow of doubt. Nay, Ihad a certitude that even Monty didn't share. _He_ "wasn't perfectlysure." But _I_----!

  For what else could it have been? What else in the whole realm of man'screated spirit? For what other reason could Esdaile, up to then waveringand swayed by doubts, have visited the hospital where Smith lay, havebeen back in his own home again within half an hour, and then havestraightway borne his exonerated friend off into the midst of hisfamily? Why, from that moment, had he immediately set about to get hisown half-confidences to the rest of us back into his possession again?Why, at Santon, had my own questions been met with a silencing stare? Ofall the things conceivable to have been told, could Smith have told himanything but this?

  And Smith's own demeanor on that uplifted Yorkshire headland? Wasnot that too explained? I thought it was, and could onlymarvel--marvel--that not as much as the smell of the fire had passedupon him. That white and welding heat of war had not merely made hispact with Maxwell a thing to be honored in the last emergency without afurther moment's thought, but it admitted no sigh nor compunction norregret afterwards. Compunction? Sigh? Regret? For what? It had had to bedone, and it had been done. As gladly would he have accompanied hisfriend's spirit on that last flight of all, but, that denied him,unsorrowing he remained behind, ground-officer henceforward to an angel.What more than this is death to those who for four years have beencrucified all the day long? What else is life, their own life or thatother-own their friend's, when it is held at this instant readiness? Thecoil about it all is not for them, but for us, who peer about forbullets and cartridge-cases and holes in the floor. Chummy's everybreath would not have been his absolution had he _not_ laughed withEsdaile's children and, with Joan perched on the carrier behind him,cheerfully fouled the Santon roads with the stench of his exhaust. Hehad _no_ burden to assume. He had, on the contrary, an urgent task tocarry on. And in the carrying-on of it he knitted his uncomprehendingbrows over Maxwell's _Transactions_ and _Proceedings_ and carried a deadman's portrait on his wrist.

  III

  Instead of going straight to the office that morning I waited in someante-room or other while Monty took in his drawing. Somebody elsewaiting there, who may or may not have known me, observed that it was afine morning, but I am not sure that I replied. I was in no mood forexchanging casual remarks about the weather.

  For while I still marveled--and I need hardly say rejoiced--admirationand joy must wait for the present. It might be some little time before Isaw Monty again (he had told me he was making business calls during agreat part of the day and working until late into the night), andanother point had struck me. This was his new confidence that it wouldpresently be "all right" between himself and Audrey Cunningham. I hadhad a glimpse, if not yet the full revelation, of where Smith stood; butI did not yet clearly see how this affected Mrs. Cunningham. Yet inMonty's mind a connection obviously existed. He came out of the editor'sden again, folding up the brown paper that had enwrapped his drawing andputting it carefully into his pocket.

  "Brown paper's scarce," he said. "I've used this piece four timesalready. And I undo all the knots in my string too. Well, which way areyou going?"

  We left the office and, barely a hundred yards away, turned into theTemple. Presently he resumed our previous conversation by asking me whatI thought of his guess; and I told him. I told him also my difficultyabout what his own engagement had to do with this.

  "Do with it?" he repeated as we began to pace backward and forward alongKing's Bench Walk. "It's a good deal to do with it--if that aboutSmith's right, of course. You see, you hardly know Dawdy. She thinks youdon't like her very much----"

  "Then I hope you'll take the first opportunity----" I began hurriedly,but he waved his hand.

  "Oh, don't you worry about it. I don't suppose she means it. And whethershe does or not it seems to me this is exactly where I come in."

  "Then you see more than I do," I remarked.

  "Don't you? I mean her taking sudden fancies of that kind. I'm notsuperstitious myself--silly I call it--but she's a mass of it.Theatrical people are, I've heard, and anyway she is. I think that beastCunningham started her off. When she used to sit up at night waiting forhim to come home she used to do all sorts of stupid things--sit therecounting slowly, and if he didn't come before she counted a hundred hewouldn't come at all--counting the taxis that passed too--watching theclock--beastly. Filthy time she had. I hope I'm somewhere near thatbrute at the Resurrection."

  Presently he swallowed his anger and continued.

  "Well, about when Philip offered us that studio, that accident happened,and everything was at sixes and sevens. Philip began it, stopping allthat time in the cellar and behaving like a lunatic when he did come up.What his game was--well, you can search me. So first Philip startsplaying the goat, and then there was all that fuss about Mrs. Esdailegoing away, and Philip staying on day after day, always
saying he wasgoing and everything was perfectly all right but never budging an inch,mind you. Well, it began to get on Dawdy's nerves. And I began to catchit too. She said _I'd_ something up my sleeve as well, and of course Ihad, about that pistol. And then there was that time when we took herwardrobe down into the cellar."

  "Yes, tell me about that."

  "Absolutely nothing to tell. That's all Dawdy's fancy too. If there'dbeen anything funny he wouldn't have left the key in the door, wouldhe?"

  "He took it out afterwards."

  "It was there for some days anyway. In fact, I took another box ofDawdy's down, but I came straight up again. You're all wrong about thatcellar."

  "Hubbard doesn't think so."