LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

pocket and ​felt along the wall with his hand. An instant's groping and his fingers touched the telephone receiver, followed it down to the base of the instrument, and then, stooping, he slipped his knifeblade in between the wires and the wall and severed the connection.

      He straightened up and listened. From the rear above him, he could hear Harold Merton's step at the top of the stairs—then the door at Varge's right swung under his hand, and he went quickly along the hall past the dining room to the library door. There was no flurry, no excitement in his movements—every action, swift, rapid though it was, was one of deliberate precision. With his hand on the library doorknob, just opposite the foot of the front staircase, he paused for an instant to listen again. And now there was not a sound—either Mrs. Merton nor Anna, the old maid-servant, had been disturbed. Varge's lips drew together in hard compression, the knob turned silently, he pushed the door open, stepped over the threshold and closed it again behind him.

      A faint red glow from the grate fire at the lower end of the room and directly opposite the low window that gave onto the lawn in front, rather than illuminating, seemed, by contrast, to accentuate the darkness of the apartment in all but the little, shifting, flickering space around the fireplace itself. On this space Varge's eyes had fastened instantly. A form with arms outflung lay upon the great bear-skin rug before the hearth, silent, motionless; the face was turned toward the fire, and the light, as though in grim defiance of death, tinging the cheek with its own rich, deep colour, gave to the features the appearance of the rosy hue of health. It ​was as if the man had thrown himself down to rest and relaxation, to watch the firelight's play—and had fallen asleep. Poor, pitiful illusion that could last no longer than to enhance the stern awfulness of reality! From the temple upwards across the thick, white hair was a deep open wound, and below it the hair itself was dark and matted; while a little trickling stream of something red, a red deeper even than the glowing coals, still ran down, but very slowly now, behind the ear, and as though to hide itself and its telltale story, disappeared beneath the dead man's collar.

      At the Doctor's feet lay the fender bar—a long piece of stout, square, wrought iron, some four feet in length, drawn to rough, ornamental javelin points at the ends. And that it, fashioned once by kindly hands, should be the instrument of death, seemed to Varge, as his eye fell upon it, to lend a curiously mingled touch of pathos and irony to the scene. He remembered the day, a day last summer, the Doctor's birthday, when Joe Malloch, the blacksmith, had brought the gift to the house. The Doctor had been away, and he had helped Joe to set it up before the grate—two small iron pedestals, cleverly forged to represent little mediæval towers, and the bar to rest between them. He remembered the old Doctor's surprise and keen delight when he had seen them. One of the pedestals, knocked over, lay now on its side against the inner edge of the hearth.

      A sudden, low, choking sound, like a strong man's stiffled sob, came from Varge's lips as he stepped across the room, and, on his knees between the fire and Doctor Merton, knelt for a moment over the other's body.

      Against the fire, Varge's form loomed up for an ​instant, throwing into relief a figure well above medium height, but whose proportions were hidden by a heavy overcoat buttoned to the neck. A fur cap, pulled close over the forehead and ears, was on his head. His face was completely in shadow, but as he turned now quickly and, rising, picked up the fender bar, there was a momentary gleam of dark eyes—and the eyes were splashed and wet.

      The fireplace, wide, old-fashioned, built of brick, jutted out into the room, leaving a space barely more than five feet on each side between it and the walls; and here, on either side, just in the middle of this space and at the height of a man's shoulders—where the wainscoting ended—were the small cupboards, some two feet square, that Harold Merton had spoken of. They had been built originally with glass doors for Mrs. Merton's best china in the old days when she had presided there over her afternoon tea-service, but, with the years, the Doctor had come to appropriate the room as library, study and consultation room, and the glass doors had been replaced with stout wooden ones—and the china by the Doctor's cash-box, account books and papers.

      Varge stepped at once past the fireplace to the right hand side and felt out with his hand. The cupboard door was still wide open, the key still in the lock; inside, his fingers closed on the metal cash-box. This he took out, closed and locked the door, and abstracted the key from the lock. He turned back for a moment now to where Doctor Merton lay, placed the cash-box on the rug and slipped the key into the Doctor's pocket.

      Another instant, and he returned to the cupboard. He raised the fender bar across the door, his hands ​moved along it as though measuring—and then he stood motionless, listening. From the pantry, behind the dining room, came the muffled ringing of the telephone, very low, very indistinct, as though a hand were held over the bells to deaden the sound. Harold Merton was trying to get a connection. Again and again Merton rang, and Varge waited. The seconds were flying by. It had been necessary to destroy the connection to account for Merton's otherwise suspicious tardiness in communicating with the authorities, and he had refrained from telling the other what he had intended to do in the hope of instilling into the nerve-shaken, incoherent man a little confidence on finding a grain of truth in the story he was to tell—that he had tried to get connection and couldn't; and, also, there would be, perhaps even more important, the very evident genuineness of Merton's surprise when some one else should call his attention to the cut wires. But he had told Merton to waste no time. Would the man never—the ringing stopped, a guarded step came down the hall, passed the library door, halted a bare moment by the hall-rack, evidently to secure hat and coat, and then the outer door opened and closed softly—Merton had gone for Mrs. MacLaughlin.

      Varge's hands, one at each end of the bar, rose to his chin, his elbows straight out from his body. Then very slowly the elbows closed in and downwards, a sweat bead sprang to his forehead, a panting gasp came from his lips, and slowly, very slowly, his hands crept together.

      And now, guided by the sense of touch, Varge inserted one of the thin, flattened, javelin ends of the bar ​into the crack between the edge of the door and the jamb and just under the lock, and, with a steady pressure, began to lever backward. There was a slight creak of splitting woodwork, and then a little sharper sound as the lock began to yield and give. Varge put out his left hand against the door to keep it from flying back with a thud against the wall—and wrenched it free.

      Coolly, methodically, but still with the same sure swiftness that held neither haste nor indecision, he stepped back to the fireplace, placed the cash-box under his arm and laid the fender bar where he had found it at the Doctor's feet—only now the heavy wrought iron bar was no longer straight—halfway down its length it was bent at right angles.

      Varge walked quickly to the front window and let the shade roll full to the top; then to the door, reaching up to press the button and throw on the light as he passed out. He closed the door behind him, went down the hall toward the rear, through the pantry, crossed the kitchen, unbolted the back door, and, stepping out into the night, ran the hundred yards to the bottom of the snow-covered garden. Here, he hurdled the high fence with a strong, agile swing; and now a wide, open tract of land was before him, leading upward in an easy rise to a pine wood a quarter of a mile away to the right, for which he headed.

      The soft snow, lately fallen, was ankle deep above the harder crust beneath, but it did not seem either to impede his progress or cause him added exertion to maintain the pace he had set for himself. With arms close in at his sides, his head well up, every movement born ​of the instinct of the athlete, he was running now with long, tireless strides as he had never run in his life before.

      Again and again, intruding upon that on which his mind was bent, surged with chaotic impetuosity a whirl of thoughts—the past, Mrs. Merton, the Doctor, his own life; and once, in a flash, the thought of the future. Again and again, he drove them back—there would be time enough for that, God knew, in the days to come. Now it was his own acts of the past few minutes that were vital—carefully, logically, as he ran, he weighed and balanced them one by one, their relation to each other, their coherence as a whole. Had he made any mistake? Was there anywhere the little forgotten point, the flaw, that the keen wits to be pitted against him would pounce upon?

      He had reached the edge of

Скачать книгу