THE STROKE OF ONE
TO Derracott, sunk in his extreme dejection, time had passed like a bird on the wing, and he was already within eyeshot of his house. But now the passage of those footsteps in his wake roused in him a certain vague wonder. He realised that they had seemed to pursue him for some time down the solitary streets; and a little beyond his doorway he halted in the darkness, and turning, awaited curiously the approach of his follower. From his post he saw a figure in the full glory of evening dress pierce the darkness, move sharply into the lamplight, and run briskly up the steps of his own portico. Struck with an amazed alarm, he watched the man insert a pass-key in the lock, and, opening the door, vanish without a sound into the region beyond. The door clicked behind the invader, and Derracott was left staring at the black fanlight. The street-lamp shone upon the desolate area and the vacant wall, but still he stood without a movement on the pavement; until at length his startled heart stirred slowly, and the blood flowed down the arteries once more. With a quick breath of alarm he took a step towards the portico, stopped suddenly, and gazed up at the blind windows of the upper stories. Then with a palsied hand he drew a cigarette from his pocket, stuck it between his lips unlit, and, crossing the way, put his elbow on the rails of the square, and fell into the most tragic reflections.
This then was to be his welcome from a journey so dismal, and in a mood so desperate. Had he come upon the morrow, as he had anticipated, this house had been smiling for him, his wife bright with a false radiance, and all the consolations of home eloquent of hope and comfort. Sick at heart from his fruitless mission, he would have entered upon this rest at the invitation of a score of specious pleasures. But as it was, the miscalculation of one day had sufficed to rob him of this decent refuge; and plunged upon debt embittered with failure, there was now no longer, as it seemed, love to forgive him, neither faith nor courage to inspire and strengthen. And yet of her at least he had been certain, though his world else was rumbling in his ears. His gaze besieged the house as though to tear the walls asunder and peer into its shameful secrets. His blood ran now at a charge, and his fingers quivered upon his cigarette. He cast it from him, and walking precipitately across the road marched up the steps with a thumping heart. As he closed the door the dark silence of the hall dropped like a cloak upon him, and insensibly subdued his actions. His feet made no sound upon the heavy carpet: in his own house he stole with the air and cunning of a thief. Some faculty of restraint had come to his trembling summons, and his breath issued sedately, his pulse fluttered in measured beats, his eyes and ears waited in the silence and the darkness. At the top of the first flight he stopped a moment before his wife's drawing-room, rapped gently with his knuckles, and opened the door slowly.
The room glowed in a soft red light, which illuminated also two stricken faces in the background. The man had risen to his feet and clutched the back of a high chair, his eyes set hard upon the incomer. But it was upon the woman that Derracott's glance fell first. She kept her seat, crouched in the hollow of a large armchair, her face rigid to her lips, her chin twitching to her short breaths, her eyes wild and staring. Mortal terror never sat upon features so spectral; meaningless noises issued from her mouth. Derracott, his cheeks blanched, his muscles strung as upon wires, stepped into the room, and upon this company.
'I have surprised you, my dear,' he said quietly. 'Ah, Harland!' and he nodded to the man.
The woman gave him no answer, but Harland lifted his hand from the chair, sank into a seat, and laughed with uneasy harshness.
'Yes,' he returned, 'I'm afraid Mrs. Derracott is startled. She I'd no notion you were away, and looked in a few minutes ago to see if you'd give me a game.'
'I saved a day and so I'm here,' explained Derracott, He stood before the fire and warmed his hands, his white face stooped to the blaze. Strange little sounds drummed in his head, but his fingers spread from his palms without a shiver. The woman recovered herself with a short indrawn gasp, rose and moved uncertainly towards him.
'Why, Teddy,' said she tremulously, 'you have given me a—a start. But you've got your coat on'and she laid a hand upon his shoulder.
He turned about, but his eye avoided her.
'Ah,' said he, 'I was going to ask you whether you would allow me to disrobe in your boudoir.'
She laughed hysterically.
'Teddy! of course!' she cried, and fetched up in a spasm of silence.
He pulled off his overcoat deliberately, and turned again to the fire without a glance at his companions. He had to them the look of preoccupation, and indeed he was at the moment abstracted from all definite thought. The sudden rush of this spectacle, albeit in his fears, had choked the channels of his mind, and he fell back tremblingly upon the obvious. He had the vague desire to stand from this horrible crisis and wait upon his drowsy will. His nerves strained and tightened; his whole body swelled with tension. The silence struck a fear into the others, and presently drove the man to speech.
'You're not very lively, old fellow.' he said with elaborate cheerfulness. 'Had a bad journey?'
Derracott turned at last; his brain was moving.
'No,' he replied after a pause, and with painful deliberation. 'Pretty fair, but I am somewhat tired. I had a long day yesterday.'
'Poor Teddy!' said his wife caressingly, and put out a frightened hand to him.
For the first time since that exchange of glances upon his entrance Derracott's eyes rested momentarily upon her face. An obscure and furtive terror lingered there, and, as his gaze dwelt steadily upon her, flashed swiftly into open panic. Her head drooped slightly forward, poised over against him as a bird before a serpent; his glance passed on, and touched the man. Harland was fingering his moustache; he pulled out his watch. 'By Jove!' he exclaimed, 'I'd no notion it was so late. Mrs. Derracott, you must forgive me. Well, old chap,' and he made as though to rise, 'you're too tired, I suppose, for this game, so I'll be off; I won't keep you up.'
Derracott's muscles softened; his body breathed with warm life again.
'Not yet,' he said. 'I'll give you a game before you go. Only my wife had better go to bed. Come, Lucy; it's beyond your hour.'
The woman, straightening herself in her chair, regarded them both with frantic eyes; terror had sat upon her visage since last her husband had looked upon her. She rose with difficulty and opened her mouth. Some cry hung unuttered on that tongue; some prayer was contained inarticulate behind those scarlet trembling lips. She moved mechanically to Harland with an outstretched hand, stopped, sighed deeply, and left the room without a word. Harland from the edge of his seat watched his host with doubt; but the grey face of the latter, and his veiled eyes spoke of nothing but great weariness.
'We will drink first,' he said.
He filled two glasses from the decanter upon the table. Harland's hand shook at his lips, but he drained the glass and laughed.
'Now for this game, my boy,' he said cheerfully.
Derracott, whose fingers were playing with his brimming wine-glass, made no response, and Harland examined him anxiously.
'You're very much down, old chap,' he said, after a space of silence; then he hesitated and his eyes suddenly lightened. 'It's not money?'—Derracott looked up so sharply that he winced from the glance.
'Yes,' he answered slowly. 'I'm heavily dipped.'
'My dear chap!' cried Harland as with an eager sympathy; and then feeling shyly for his words; 'look here, Derracott,' said he, 'why not let me give you a leg over? Is it much?'
'I don't mind your knowing,' said Derracott, softly; 'I owe you close on five thousand, and there's some twenty thousand elsewhere.'
'Derracott,' said Harland, leaning towards his companion with insinuation, 'cross out that five, and I'll stand in for the twenty.'
The ashes of the fire collapsed in the silence that ensued; Derracott's face never moved; he turned the shank of the glass between his fingers.
'That's a generous offer,' he said.
'Generous be damned,' returned Harland, gaily. 'It's nothing to me, and we're old pals and'
'Twenty-five thousand, as the market goes, is, I suppose, a generous price for honour,' broke in Derracott with an air of meditation.
The vestiges of colour ran from Harland's cheeks; their eyes encountered across the table; no words passed, but in that mute question and its vacant answer, as it were, the position of the combatants was acknowledged and defined. With a thin breath, almost of relief, Harland waited for the other whose eyes were still upon him. Derracott squared his elbows on the table.
'Yes,' said he, 'and now for this game.' Beneath the calm surface of his manner Derracott was at the white heat of fury. Every emotion in his nature had gone into the crucible of that raging fire. Did his thought flicker upon that wife he had loved so earnestly, the passion that possessed him leapt in flame from his heart; were his embarrassments flashed instantly before him, his fury mounted in crimson tongues. Pent by his fierce jealousy, his mind converging full upon this sudden horror, he sat with quiet eyes and face of stone, stalking ever nearer to his fluttered quarry.
'You will smoke?' he asked at length. Harland shook his head, and Derracott lit a cigarette and blew the smoke thoughtfully through his nostrils.
'I think,' he resumed presently, 'that I ought to make my own rules in this game.' His voice rang with a note of unconcern, even of pleasantry. Harland threw up his hands.
'I have nothing to say,' said he. Derracott rose softly, took some note-paper from a writing-table, and scribbled for some seconds upon it. Then he took the cigarette from his lips and handed the paper across the table. What Harland read was as follows:—
'I, Edward Derracott, being in the full possession of my senses, have decided to put an end to my life. It has become too much to bear. My debts have involved me too deeply, and I am tired of the struggle. I have no strength to go on. May God help my wife! Forgive me, Lucy: I have tried, but there seems no way out hut this. Let others take warning by my fate. The turf is accursed. God help me.'
Harland inquired of the writer with his eyes, and the latter jerked his cigarette at the ink.
'Let it have verisimilitude,' he said, 'according to your circumstances.'
Harland's jaw dropped suddenly; he shrugged his shoulders and took up the pen. When he had finished he passed the paper to Derracott, who nodded and rose.
'Put it in your pocket,' said he. 'At this hour the gardens will serve our purpose.'
He drew a brace of pistols from a drawer, and motioning to his companion descended the stairs. The chill October moon shone frostily upon the crisp grass of the square as the two made their way in silence to a central bower of evergreens, the pleasant haunt of children at their hide-and-seek throughout the afternoons.
'I think,' said Derracott, in his suave passionless voice, 'that here is the proper theatre for our little comedy.' He handed a pistol to his adversary. 'Twenty-five thousand!' he murmured. 'There is no need of superfluous witnesses. We two can play our own hands. Twenty-five thousand was a generous offer.'
His hand, with its weapon close-grasped hung at his side.
'If you are resolved to end this thing in this way,' said Harland hoarsely, 'there's no help for it. What are you going to do?'
'According to my idea of the game,' said Derracott softly, 'we should have the option of firing at twelve paces or approaching at the signal. You may have observed it was on the stroke of one when we left. Perhaps you will be good enough to take the church bell as a word of command.'
Harland made no answer, but took his station in the open; Derracott put his back against a leafless ash and waited. The moon struck full upon his face; his eyes moved restlessly; his lips whispered inaudibly. The faint sound of a remote clock rose from a distance and vibrated on the stillness. Harland steadied his arm before him, but Derracott stirred not. A moment intervened of dreadful silence—to Harland a space of hours; and then a heavy bell boomed from the clock tower of the church. A pistol cracked, and a withered branch snapped on the ash by Derracott's head. He himself laughed gently and marched slowly forward to the spot where stood Harland waiting for his death. Smilingly he regarded his victim.
'Twenty-five thousand pounds!' said he. 'It was a notable bid. But I think my solution was the better. My good sir,' he said, 'the exigencies of this game demand that I should be free of all coroner's courts; and my hand trembles. Suppose I offer you the work yourself? You would be more expeditious, I feel sure. Let us live up to our papers.'
He held out the pistol; Harland, his face sickly white, made a gesture of impatience, and took it by the butt. For a second he looked into Derracott's eyes. Each had a confession of suicide in his pocket, and it needed but an instantaneous turn of the wrist, and this smiling devil had exchanged fates with him. Harland wavered for a breath of time; and then, clapping the barrel to his heart, pulled the trigger.
The body sank in a heap at Derracott's feet. He watched it huddle limply among the damp and yellow leaves; noted its open eyes and its pallid moonlit face. A stain of blood rested on the lips. He bent over the dead man: his pulse throbbed riotously.
'Twenty-five thousand,' he muttered in a thin dry whisper, 'a generous offer for my honour.' He laughed. 'He might have told me before he went how much he gave for hers.'
He ceased, stared at the stiffening face with a gasp, drew himself up gradually, and then with a short cry of horror flung himself upon the muddy turf, his mouth gaping at the dead.