LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

at their desks, and if I made any hurried movement in turning over the pages of my ledger, everyone was on the look-out instantly. But it only amused me and I went on with my work in the usual way.

      At dinner time I went out and had half a pint of beer at the 'Southern Cross,' and I can see now the startled and amazed looks on the faces of two of the clerks who happened to be lunching at the same bar. I was known so well as a rabid teetotaler and as one who had never entered a public-house. That afternoon there was absolute quiet in the office, and at half-past five they all melted away without any word of insolence or rudeness to me.

      I went home myself, in a queer mood of exaltation. I was quite pleased with everything in general, and was smiling to myself at the day's adventures.

      But for all this I could feel a murderous temper only just beneath my smiles, and knew that the very slightest crossing might rouse me instantly to a pitch of rage. The people that got in my way as I made for the train—the man who asked to see my season ticket at the barrier—the woman who took up too much space with her parcels in the carriage—and the paper boy who shouted too loudly as he passed the carriage door—all almost made me choke in fury. Under my pinched white face, I was a seething volcano, and if they had only known it, as dangerous to everyone I came in contact with as a man with a bomb.

      As I came up our street, Boulter was leaning over his front gate, talking to Meadows, the detective. I should have passed them by with a nod and 'Good evening,' but Boulter shouted to me, in the way of those hard of hearing, and I had to stop.

      "Did you hear anything last night, Mr. Wacks?" he bawled thunderously. "Any suspicious noises outside the house at all—because there was something happened in my garden—did you hear anyone moving in the night?"

      I shook my head as if pressed for time and wanting to pass on, but he continued impressively. "Someone murdered my rabbits last night—seven of them—seven of the best I ever bred. All laid out stiff and still when I came out this morning to feed 'em."

      I felt the detective was eyeing me narrowly and I feigned great interest at once.

      "All your rabbits dead, Mr. Boulter!" I ejaculated. "They must have had something wrong to eat."

      Boulter snorted furiously. "Something wrong to eat, eh? All seven of 'em with their necks broke and laid out as straight as on the counter of a butcher's shop. Something wrong to eat, eh? You're a fool, sir—another damn fool, sir."

      It struck me at once what a liar the man was, for I remembered how careful I had been to curl the smelly brutes up in circles so as to make it look as if they had all died in their sleep.

      The detective interrupted Boulter's flow of abuse. "No noises in the night, Mr. Wacks?" he remarked pleasantly. "No creaking of the gate? Nothing out of the ordinary? But I suppose you weren't awake. You didn't hear the dog bark by any chance?"

      Nell came up to us as he spoke and began interestedly to sniff about my legs. I remembered, with a pang of uneasiness, that it was in those very trousers that I had gripped the rabbits between my knees as I had broken their necks.

      I shooed her off irritably, but she was most persistent, and wouldn't go away until Boulter himself hit her angrily on the back with a stick, and then she sat down a few paces off and watched me with her bead on one side.

      I made a mental note that she was dangerous, and that I must serve her as I had served the rabbits directly I could find an opportunity.

      I answered the detective that I certainly had heard nothing suspicious during the night, although my window had, of course, been wide open the whole time.

      Boulter calmed down a little then, and went into further details. It was murder, he insisted, cold-blooded murder by a scoundrel, and the strange part of it was his dog Nell had never given any warning. She had been quiet all night (lie number two, I thought), and had been found sleeping in her kennel just as usual when he went out at half-past six.

      He was determined to find out who had done it, and we might mark his words, it would all come out one day.

      I got away at last, and the detective, making my departure the excuse, came along with me. "It's quite interesting about those rabbits," he remarked musingly. "The whole thing seems so purposeless to me. What should anyone want to kill Boulter's rabbits for, unless they owed him a grudge, and, if anyone did, who in their senses would go to the risk of entering his back garden in the dead of night, killing seven rabbits and then methodically returning them one by one to their separate cages, and refastening the doors? It must have taken a lot of time, and there was the dog there all the while."

      I didn't pretend to hazard a guess, and together we entered our house. Mrs. Bratt met us in the hall, full of importance and wearing her best dress.

      "His lawyer has come," she whispered excitedly. "I got his address through the young man at the bank, and he is here now arranging everything."

      She had evidently forgotten the unpleasantness of the morning, and was eager to enlist our interest in the dead man's affairs.

      But they didn't interest me in the least. Captain Barker might have been dead for years for all I cared, and I went to my room thinking least of anybody about him.

      All teatime, it was Boulter's dog alone that occupied my thoughts. She was a mangy beast, and it might be somehow found out through her that it was I who had visited the back garden in the night. She must be got rid of, and I determined to lose no time, but to do it straight away that very night.

      I knew the brute's habits well. In addition to that of howling vilely at nights, there was another one, equally objectionable to those who happened to be in the vicinity at the time. In the summer months she was accustomed every evening, about sunset, to frequent the banks of the Torrens River, just below North Adelaide, and there, with a score or more of other dripping beasts, to yelp and yell while certain two-legged idiots threw sticks and stones into the water for their edification and excitement.

      I would interview her, I thought, as she was returning home, and bash her quietly on the head in some convenient corner.

      I set off just before eight with the iron bar in my trouser pocket. Its curved shape made it quite easy to hide, and except that it banged up against my leg when I walked quickly, it was not inconvenient to carry.

      I reached the riverside just about dusk, but to my disappointment and rapidly rising anger I could see nothing of Nell. There were plenty of other howling brutes there, but not the one I wanted. Where was Boulter's beastly dog? I asked myself irritably. She could always have been found here, night after night, when no one wanted her, and yet tonight, the very night she was wanted, something had kept her away. Perhaps Boulter himself had locked her up after last night's affair. Anyhow, I would get at her somehow.

      I wandered irritably across the park lands with my hand ready on my bar of iron on the off-chance of still meeting my prey.

      It was nearly dark by then, and I sullenly cursed my bad luck. The footpath was quite deserted, and I took out my watch to look at the time. It had stopped at half-past seven, and I was furious. I had paid thirty shillings for it less than a month ago, and this was the way it was serving me.

      A figure loomed up towards me out of the dusk. It was a short, stout man, and he was carrying his hat in one hand and with the other was mopping a rather bald head with a handkerchief.

      He was puffing and blowing with the heat, and waddling along, apparently in no particular hurry. I asked him, not over politely, what was the time, but he shook his head vaguely and grunted something that left me as ignorant as before. I repeated my question, but he didn't take the slightest notice, and continued to waddle on.

      A paroxysm of fury burst over me, and I shouted after him that he was a cad, but he still took no notice at all, and, chattering now with rage, I ran after him and pulled him by the arm. He turned round with a start, and with a frightened stare on his white face, elbowed me roughly in the chest. I instantly lost all control, and, whipping out my piece of iron as he started to walk on, struck him twice over the head. He put up his hands to protect himself, but I struck savagely again, and he fell on the path without a moan.

Скачать книгу