Ричард Марш
Violet Forster's Lover

CHAPTER XXIX
The Visitor Remains

Had the billiard-table taken to itself wings and commenced to waltz about the room, those present could scarcely have been more amazed. That a lady could be introduced in that haphazard, unlooked-for, bewildering fashion by one of their own servants, who knew the written and unwritten rules as well as anyone living-it was a crime almost equivalent to high treason. It was all done before they had really time to recover their breath-the lady was in, the orderly had gone, the door was closed; there they were, gaping at her, and she was looking at them. They seemed to have lost their presence of mind, to say nothing of their manners.

Presently her attention became centred on Noel Draycott.

"You!"

The monosyllable seemed to burst from her in the fullness of her surprise. Plainly he was as much of a ghost to her as he had been to his colleagues of the mess. Major Reith stammeringly took upon himself the task of endeavouring to make it clear to her that the position was unusual.

"Miss Forster, I-I'm afraid it's rather contrary to regimental custom to receive ladies in this apartment. Some mistake has been made. Let me take you to where you will feel more at home."

A surprising interruption came from Noel Draycott.

"No mistake has been made. It is by my instructions that Miss Forster has been shown in here. She has a right to be present at what I am about to say; you will see that, Reith, yourself, before I have finished."

It was said with an air of authority which caused the others to look at him askance. Miss Forster turned to Major Reith, holding out something in her hand.

"I received," she said, "this card." She read out what was written on it: "'If Miss Forster will present herself at the main entrance to the officers' mess to-night about ten o'clock, and will hand this card to the orderly whom she will find in attendance, she will learn the whole truth about Sydney Beaton.'"

"May I look at that card?" inquired the major. She gave it to him. "This is the most extraordinary thing to receive. May I ask how it reached you?"

"I found it awaiting me on my return home this afternoon. I was told that a man had brought it who said that there was no answer."

Captain Draycott carried the lady's explanation several stages farther.

"That card came from me; I wrote it. I gave Barnes directions to show Miss Forster in here directly she arrived. As Miss Forster is at least as much interested in Sydney Beaton as any of us, and has heard one story, I consider that the least we can do is to give her the first opportunity which offers to become acquainted with the truth."

The major still seemed uncomfortably conscious of the irregularity of the position.

"Really I hardly know what to say; but if it is the general wish that this lady shall remain-"

Mr. Tickell took upon himself to answer before the sentence was concluded.

"Of course it's the general wish; we are only too glad to have Miss Forster among us. Miss Forster, won't you have a chair?"

The lady declined; she said she would rather stand. One person declared himself to be in disagreement with Mr. Tickell-Anthony Dodwell.

"Without intending the least discourtesy, I cannot admit that Draycott is entitled to introduce his lady friends where no ladies are allowed, even if the intruder is Miss Forster."

"Then in that case you are one against all the rest of us, so you don't count. Now, Noel, what is it all about? Cut it as short as you can, old man, and then, as Reith puts it, if Miss Forster will allow us, we will take her somewhere where she will feel more at home."

Thus urged, Mr. Draycott prefaced his story with a few outspoken, candid words; every eye was fixed upon him, and all was still.

"The story which I am about to tell you is not very much to my credit, nor to that of others; I don't propose to try to excuse myself in any way whatever; I'll just say my say straight out."

He paused for a second as if to get his words into proper sequence.

"I can tell you the first part in half a dozen sentences; in fact, in one: That night when Sydney Beaton was accused of cheating, he never did cheat, and we behaved as we did to an innocent man."

Mr. Tickell broke out the moment the words were uttered.

"If I haven't felt it in my bones; the very next morning in bed I began to feel it; I've not been easy in my mind ever since. Now, Dodwell, what do you say to that?"

"I say that, for reasons of his own, Draycott says the thing which is not; you all heard what he said that night."

"What I said then was a lie; one for which I deserve all that I am likely to get. I behaved all through like a blackguard-that's what I want to tell you."

"You may put it either way you like," sneered Anthony Dodwell; "it is plain to the meanest intelligence that you behaved like a blackguard whichever way you put it. Either you were lying then, or you're lying now; from neither predicament do you come out nicely."

Draycott ignored the other's words.

"Dodwell owed Beaton a grudge, and I owed Dodwell money, or at least, he said I did."

"You're a pretty bounder-I said you did!"

"He said I did. As a matter of fact, I don't believe that I owed him a farthing; but he made out that I owed him a lot, more than I could pay without going to the Jews, which I had promised my father I never would do. I didn't want to have a row, or a scandal; I've seen since what a fool I was, but it seemed to me then that he had got me under his thumb. He had, as I said, a grudge against Beaton; that was about some money which he said Beaton owed him and which Beaton wouldn't pay."

"If I had posted Mr. Beaton, as I ought to have done, that would have brought him to his senses, and then Mr. Draycott wouldn't have been standing there, stuffed with the lies he's going to tell."

Still Draycott continued to ignore the other's words; he went on with his story as if Dodwell was not persistently interrupting.

"Dodwell said to me that if I would help him to get even with Beaton, he would say no more about the money which he made out I owed him, and as I was tired of his perpetual dunning, I was cad enough to listen."

"You were a cad first, last, and altogether, Mr. Draycott."

"Then that night we played poker, and Dodwell said that he had seen Beaton cheating; then he looked at me, and he winked; I knew what he meant, and I said that I had too-but I hadn't."

There arose an outcry from those who heard him; all the men began speaking at once. Major Reith called them to order.

"Gently, gentlemen, gently; let us know where we are standing."

"You are standing," cried Anthony Dodwell, "in the presence of an infamous animal whom only the fact that Miss Forster is here, prevents me from characterising as he deserves. I don't wish to assert that he took care that the lady was here before he began what he calls his story; but when the lady has gone he will receive from me the treatment from which her presence saves him."

"If you will take my advice," the excited gentleman was told by Major Reith, "you will let Draycott tell his story without comment or interruption; when he has finished you will be able, if you think it necessary, to tell yours; but you will not improve your case by doing your best to keep him from stating his. Draycott, do we understand you to say that you did not see Sydney Beaton cheat?"

"I did not."

"You did not see him exchange one card for another?"

"I did not."

"You did not see him do anything irregular, or indulge in malpractices of any kind?"

"Absolutely no; nor do I believe that he did. I did not believe it then; I believe it still less now. I believe he played as straight a game as anyone else, and Dodwell knew it."

Three or four men interposed to prevent Anthony Dodwell venting his wrath upon the speaker then and there.

"I'll break every bone there is in your body," he declared, "before I've done with you, you libellous hound."

Suffering his threat to go unheeded, Draycott looked him steadily in the face. Clifford, the biggest and most powerful man in the regiment, addressed himself to the infuriated Dodwell.

"Let me tell you something frankly. I've had doubts about you from the first; and I've not been the only doubter. I for one have regretted the part I played that night; I only hope that one day I shall be able to forget it. I'm not saying a word for Draycott, he's given himself away with every word he's said; but he'd better do that than continue to play the cur to Beaton in the way he owns he has done. Your case, Dodwell, is safer in our hands than in your own. After what has happened we'll sift his story to the bottom before we pronounce judgment on it either way; I'm afraid the time has gone by when his mere 'Yes' or 'No' would be accepted. But if you want to force us to the conclusion that you are the kind of person he says you are, you can't do better than continue your present behaviour. If you weren't afraid of what he has to say, you'd let him say it; that, to us, if not to you, is as plain as the nose upon your face. Draycott, I'm going to take the liberty of asking you one or two questions. Do you seriously wish us to understand that merely because Dodwell winked at you, you charged Beaton with being a cheat when you knew he wasn't?"

"That's what it comes to."

"Then it comes to a very ugly thing."

"That I realise. Dodwell said to me that if I helped him to get even with Beaton he'd say no more about that money. I took the wink to mean that that was the moment in which he wanted me to help him-and I did. The next day he gave me a quittance for the whole amount; I had not misunderstood him."

"Do you mean to tell us that the next day you talked Beaton over between you, and that each of you admitted to the other that he had lied?"

"The next morning Dodwell came to my room and told me that after all he had found out that he was wrong in supposing that I owed him money, and he gave me a sort of friendly note admitting it in so many words."

"So you got your price?"

"I did."

"Then what was said about the night before?"

"Very little-in words; but he knew I hadn't seen Beaton cheat, and I knew he hadn't."

"How did you know he hadn't?"

"Because Beaton hadn't cheated; I'd been watching him all the time, he was seated next to me, and I was sure of it."

"Dodwell charged him with substituting one card for another. There was a card upon the floor; Dodwell said he had dropped it and taken the other in its place."

"The card upon the floor was mine."

"Do you mean that you had dropped it intentionally?"

"I didn't know I had dropped it till it was picked up. I recognised it as mine when I saw it-it was a nine of spades. I had two pairs in my hand-nine high; the nine of spades was one of them."

"And you, knowing the nine of spades was yours, had allowed us to think that Beaton had dropped it from his hand to take another, and a better one, in its place; in fact, one which gave him a full. You allowed us to think that?"

"I did."

"You admit that you never for a moment supposed that Beaton had cheated, having sufficient reasons for knowing otherwise; but it's possible that Dodwell may have thought he did."

"He never thought it."

"What grounds have you for saying that? Now, Dodwell, don't you interfere; you shall have your turn presently, when you'll have every opportunity of making Draycott out even blacker than he has painted himself. Consider, Draycott, before you speak; it's a very queer story you're asking us to swallow, much queerer than your first. What grounds have you for saying that Dodwell never thought, even at the moment of making his accusation, that Beaton had cheated?"

"He told me so."

"Weren't you surprised at his making to you such a remarkable admission?"

Draycott paused before he answered.

"I was inclined to think at first that he might have made a mistake, though I couldn't see how he had done it; but before very long I knew he hadn't. That nine of spades was on the floor. I didn't know I'd dropped it, but as I threw down my hand he saw me brush it off the table with my elbow. He knew that it never had anything to do with Beaton."

"When did he make you these frank confessions?"

"That belongs to the part of the story that I haven't come to yet."

"Oh, there is a part of the story that you haven't come to? What part's that? You seem to have been bottling up a good deal inside yourself, Draycott."

"It's the story of what took place on the night of the Easter ball at Avonham."

CHAPTER XXX
The Story of what Happened after the Easter Ball

So far the only sounds heard in the billiard-room had been the questions and the answers. The listeners had been so still; particularly had this seemed to be the case with Violet Forster. She gripped with her gloved hand the back of the chair as if from the very intensity of the grip she derived moral support. She stood very straight, with her lips tightly pressed together, and with a strained look on her white face, as if with her every faculty she was bent on following the words, without missing a syllable or an accent, and, if possible, reading any hidden meaning which might lie behind them. Her immobility was so continuous as to be almost unnatural.

But when Mr. Draycott made that reference to what had happened on the occasion of the Easter ball at Avonham her whole being seemed to undergo a sudden transformation. Her hands fell to her side; a faint flush came into her cheeks; her lips parted; she moved a little forward with an air of odd expectancy, as if she longed, and feared, to hear what was coming.

Before Draycott was allowed to continue there was an interposition from Anthony Dodwell, addressed directly to him.

"Let me warn you, Draycott, that for every lie you're going to utter-and I can see from the look of you that you're going to tell nothing else but lies-I'll call you to an account; and don't flatter yourself that, however your friends may try to cover you, you'll escape me."

As he answered, Draycott looked Anthony Dodwell very straight in the face.

"I shall never be afraid of you again-never! Don't you suppose it!"

"Don't you be so sure. You were afraid of me once; and, when you and I are again alone together, you'll be just as much afraid of me as you ever were. Gentlemen of your habits of body are only courageous when they know themselves to be in a position in which they are sure of being protected by their friends."

"I don't think I ever was afraid of you, Dodwell; but you were a mystery to me, I didn't understand you, and I was a fool. But now I do understand you; if you were holding a revolver to my throat I shouldn't be afraid of the kind of man you are. I know you."

Draycott turned to the girl.

"You remember, Miss Forster, that on the night of the Easter ball you said something to me about that poker business?"

"I remember quite well."

"I'd been ashamed of myself a long time before that; but what you said to me made my shame greater than I could bear. All along I had had a feeling that if Beaton had gone under because of what had happened, of what I had said, then I was directly responsible for his undoing; although he had never done me a bad turn-I had done that to him. I understood that nothing had been heard of him, that he had disappeared. He might have committed suicide; I was haunted by a feeling that he had. If so, his blood was on my head."

"From whom have you been learning all this fine language, Draycott?"

The question came from Dodwell; it went unanswered.

"I told myself, over and over again, that I would make a clean breast of it, that I would let everybody know that Beaton was a man of honour, and that I was not. But I had not found it easy, when it came to the point; in the first place, there was Dodwell; and then there was my-I suppose it was cowardice."

"In anything in which you were concerned one can always count on your playing the coward."

"But that night, after what you had said to me, I made up my mind that I could stand it no longer. I looked up Dodwell and I told him so. He laughed, as he always did; then when he saw I was in earnest-"

"I saw you were drunk."

"When he saw I was in earnest, he said that if I would turn up after the dance he would talk things over with me then."

"I warn you once more-look after that tongue of yours."

"I should advise you, Dodwell," struck in Clifford, "to begin by looking after your own. You keep on talking about Draycott's cowardice, while all the time you seem to be in mortal terror of what he is going to say."

Noel Draycott continued as if he had not been interrupted.

"When the others went upstairs I stayed behind."

"But where were you?"

The question, eagerly asked, came from Violet Forster.

"At first I was in the conservatory."

"But weren't the lights out?"

"They had been; I turned some of them on again. Dodwell came to me. We started quarrelling right away."

"You were quarrelling drunk." This was Dodwell.

"I told him that I meant to tell you, Miss Forster, the whole truth about that poker business in the morning; I knew you were interested in Beaton, and that you had a right to be the first to hear. Afterwards, I informed him, I should make it known in the regiment. When he saw that I meant what I said, he threatened me."

"You miserable animal-threatened you!"

"When, in spite of his threats, I made it clear that nothing would keep me from doing what I said, he got worse. He would not let me leave him. I didn't want to have a row with him; I knew there would be more than enough scandal anyhow; I was in a house in which I was a stranger. As you know, the whole lot of us were asked to the dance, and I had no acquaintance with either my host or hostess; but it was only after a sort of rough and tumble that I managed to slip away."

He paused, as if to enable himself to recall quite clearly what had occurred. Dodwell, seizing a billiard cue which rested against a chair, glared at him as if he would have liked to continue the quarrel where it had left off.

"He followed me; I don't know the geography of the house, but I know that we came to what seemed to be a sort of drawing-room in which there was a lot of gilded chairs and furniture."

"I know," said Miss Forster. She glanced at Major Reith. "You remember?"

"Perfectly-am I ever likely to forget?"

Draycott went on.

"In the scrimmage we had we knocked the things all over the place. We made such an awful din that I kept on wondering how it was that nobody heard us."

"Someone did hear you-I did. And Major Reith heard you also."

This again was Miss Forster.

"He wouldn't let me leave the room until I'd promised that I wouldn't say a word about what I said I would, and I wouldn't promise. I was no match for him; he's a bigger and a stronger man than I am; he hammered me a good deal, and I told him what I thought of him. There was a sort of a club lying on a table; he sent me flying against the table, the table went over, and I with it; the club fell on to the floor. I told him again what I thought of him as I was going over. I suppose that made him madder than ever. He picked up the club, and he struck at me with it. I put up my left arm to ward off the blow, and he broke it-just there."

Mr. Draycott held up his left arm, touching it between the wrist and the elbow.

"I heard the bone snap. I was trying to get up from the floor when he hit me a second time; that time I think it must have got me on the head-down I went again, for good. Yet I was conscious that he kept on hitting me as I lay motionless. What is still queerer-I can't explain it, but I had an extraordinary feeling that Sydney Beaton had come into the room, that he saw Dodwell raining blows down on me, that he said something, that Dodwell gave a yell at the sight of him, and ran away. That's all I can remember of what took place at Avonham."

"It seems to be a pretty good deal." This was Clifford. He turned to Dodwell. "What do you think?"

"It's a farrago of lies."

"Somehow, Dodwell, you don't look as if it were a farrago of lies. I don't want to prejudice the minds of the judge and jury before whom you will possibly be brought, but if I were betting I should be inclined to lay odds-against you. Do you deny that you did meet Draycott in the conservatory after the rest of us had gone to bed?"

"What right have you to ask me questions?"

"I see; that's the tone you take! What right has anyone to ask you questions? As I expected-you deny that you quarrelled with Draycott?"

"What have my private affairs to do with you?"

"Your private affairs? It has come to that! You call attempted murder your private affair? Do you deny that you did strike Draycott as he says?"

"I deny everything."

"I see-a general denial. You know, Dodwell, you should have started denying at the first. When you tacitly admit that you did meet Draycott, and that you did quarrel with him, you have already reached the point at which a general denial only tells against you. What I don't understand, Draycott, is, where have you been since that night? I don't know if you are aware that the British public has been taking a most lively interest in your private affairs, and that all sorts of more or less interested persons have been searching for you high and low. It's a good time ago, you know, since the Easter ball. The puzzle is, in what unfindable place have you been hidden all this while?"

"I've been with Beaton."

"You've been-where? Pardon me, Miss Forster, you were going to speak."

"I-I was only going to ask him what he meant by-by saying that he has been with Mr. Beaton."

"It is not altogether easy to explain; you will get a fuller explanation from someone else; I can only tell you what I know. The last thing I remembered at Avonham was, as I have told you, that Dodwell was beating me about the head with a club as I lay on the floor."

"You delightful person, Mr. Dodwell." The interruption came from Frank Clifford. "Mixed up with it was the feeling that Beaton was in the room. Then, I suppose, I lost consciousness. When I came to myself again I couldn't make out what had happened, or where I was. Then by degrees I began to understand that I was in bed, in a strange room, and that Beaton was leaning over me. 'Why, Syd!' I said-it wasn't a very brilliant remark to make, but I remember that I did make it. What he said I don't know, I fancy I must have slipped back into unconsciousness again. To make a long story short, when I did come really to myself again, I found that I was in Beaton's rooms."

"But how on earth did you get there?" demanded Major Reith. "When I last saw you I could have sworn that you were lying dead on the floor of that room at Avonham. Directly my back was turned, did you get up and walk to Beaton's rooms?"

"That's a part of the story with which I'm not very well posted. It wasn't only imagination when, while Dodwell was clubbing me, I felt that Beaton had come into the room; he had, and Dodwell had seen him-and he saw what Dodwell was doing to me. He will be able to bear witness to that part of my story, as Dodwell is probably aware."

Suddenly, it seemed, that Mr. Dodwell had decided to take up a new position as regarded the last part of Noel Draycott's story.

"I don't deny that I did strike him, I never have denied it, but what I did was only done in self-defence."

"While a man was lying on the floor you struck him, with a club, in self-defence?"

"He had been threatening me, and telling all sorts of lies, and I was half beside myself with rage, and I meant to give him the thrashing he deserved, and if I went a little too far it was because I had been drinking, as he had, and was mad with fury, and didn't know what I was doing-and there you are."

"And all this time the world has been wondering what became of Draycott, and you never so much as hinted that you knew."

"I didn't know; I was just as much in the dark as anyone-I wondered."

"You thought you had killed him?"

Dodwell was silent; Clifford went on. "You thought you had killed him, and that was why you never said a word."

"I knew I hadn't killed him."

"How did you know?"

"If I had he'd have been where I left him; he wouldn't have got up and walked away."

"It didn't occur to you that what you had done to him that night had anything to do with his disappearance?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"You didn't think it advisable, or necessary, to come forward and throw some sort of light on what seemed an insoluble mystery by telling your story of what took place that night?"

"I wished to avoid a scandal."

"What a thoughtful man you are, Mr. Dodwell! It did not occur to you, I suppose, that if you did tell your story you'd be in the hands of the police immediately after-that had nothing to do with your silence?"

Anthony Dodwell was silent. Clifford, who seemed to be taking on himself the office of examiner-in-chief, put a question to Draycott:

"How came Beaton to be at Avonham that night? Was he an invited guest?"

"That I cannot tell you; I only know it was lucky for me that he was there."

"You say he saw Dodwell clubbing you, and that when Dodwell saw him he ran away. Why didn't Beaton, knowing that crime had been committed-because you must have been in a pretty bad state, or Reith wouldn't have thought you dead-?"

"I believe I was; I believe that for ever so long nobody thought I should live; indeed, it's only by a miracle that I'm alive now, and owing to Beaton's care of me."

"Then, as I was saying, knowing that a crime had been committed, why ever didn't Beaton rouse the house?"

"That again I cannot tell you. I fancy that, as Dodwell put it, he also wished to avoid causing a scandal."

"From, however, I presume, a different motive; he couldn't have been afraid of the police. Then are we to understand that you have remained in Beaton's quarters all this time?"

"Exactly; he did everything for me; I owe everything to him-life, all."

"And what does he owe to you?"

"That's just it; what doesn't he owe to me? It's the consciousness of what he owes that's driven me here to-night; which made me feel that I must take the first chance that offered to clear him in the eyes of all you fellows-and that I must do it, too, in the presence of Miss Forster. That's why I arranged that she should be here; and now you fellows will see why I wanted her to stay. Only recently I recovered consciousness-what you could call consciousness-and since then I've been hanging between life and death; I know I couldn't lift a finger. I fancy that Dodwell must have hit me on some peculiar spot, because I believe the doctor fellows never thought I should regain my reason; I must have been a handful to Syd Beaton. I had done him the worst turn possible, and he knew what I'd done, but he treated me as if I'd been the best and truest friend that ever was. I'm convinced that if it hadn't been for him I shouldn't be here talking to you now. A better, a finer, a nobler fellow than he never lived-and that's what I want you fellows to know. You may do what you like to me; I deserve any punishment; but you ought to beg Sydney Beaton's pardon-and you've got to do it, too."

"Have we? You rush your fences. And, pray, where is Mr. Beaton, if, as you say, we have to beg his pardon?"

"I believe that, by now, he ought to be outside."