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The Lighted Way, a novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim |
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Chapter 35. Mr. Weatherley Returns |
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_ CHAPTER XXXV. MR. WEATHERLEY RETURNS It was twenty minutes past nine on a Saturday morning when the wonderful thing happened. Precisely at his accustomed hour, in his accustomed suit of gray clothes, and with his silk hat a little on the back of his head, Mr. Weatherley walked into his office, pausing as usual to knock the ash from his cigar before he entered the clerks' counting house. Twelve young men gazed at him in frank and undiluted amazement. As though absolutely unconscious of anything unusual, Mr. Weatherley grunted his "Good morning!" and passed on into the private room. Arnold and Mr. Jarvis were busy sorting the letters which had arrived by the morning's post. Mr. Weatherley regarded them with an expression of mingled annoyance and surprise. "What the devil are you doing, opening the letters before I get here?" he exclaimed. "I'm punctual, am I not? Twenty-two minutes past nine to the tick. Get out of my chair, Jarvis!" Mr. Jarvis rose with a promptitude which was truly amazing, considering that a second ago he had been sitting there as though turned to stone. Mr. Weatherley was disposed to be irritable. "What on earth are you both staring at?" he asked. "Nothing wrong with my appearance, is there? You get out into the warehouse, Jarvis, and wait until you're sent for. Chetwode, go and sit down at your desk. I'll be ready to dictate replies to these as soon as I've glanced them through." Mr. Jarvis made a slow retreat towards the door. Every now and then he turned and looked back over his shoulder. "You will allow me to say, sir," he faltered, "that I--that we all are glad to see you back." "See me back?" Mr. Weatherley repeated, frowning heavily. "What the devil do you mean, sir? Why, I was here till nearly six last evening, straightening out the muddle you'd got Coswell's account into." Mr. Jarvis withdrew precipitately, closing the door behind him. Mr. Weatherley glanced across the room to where Arnold was standing. "I'm hanged if I can understand Jarvis lately," he said. "The fellow seems off his head. See me back, indeed! Talks as though I'd been away for a holiday." Arnold opened his lips and closed them again without speech. Mr. Weatherley took up the letters and began to read them, at first in silence. Presently he began to swear. "Anything wrong, sir?" Arnold asked. "Has every one taken leave of their senses?" Mr. Weatherley demanded, in a startled tone. "These can't be this morning's letters. They're all about affairs I know nothing of. They're dated--yes, they're all dated July 1. I was here yesterday--I remember signing the cheques--May 4, it was. What the--" He stopped short. The office boy had performed his duty. Opposite to him stood the great calendar recording the date--July 2 stared him in the face. Mr. Weatherley put his hand to his forehead. "Come here, Chetwode, quickly," he begged. Arnold hurried over towards his employer. Mr. Weatherley had lost flesh and there were bags under his eyes. His appearance now was the appearance of a man who has received some terrifying shock. His hands clasped the sides of his chair. "I'm all right, Chetwode?" he gasped. "I haven't been ill or anything? This isn't a nightmare? The office seems all changed. You've moved the safe. The letters--I can't understand the letters! Give me the Day Book, quick." Arnold passed it to him silently. Mr. Weatherley turned over the pages rapidly. At May 4, he stopped. "Yes, yes! I remember this!" he exclaimed. "Twenty barrels of apples, Spiers & Pond. Fifty hams to Coswell's. I remember this. But what--" His finger went down the page. He turned over rapidly, page after page. The entries went on. They stopped at June 30. He shrank back in his chair. "Have I been ill, Chetwode?" he muttered. Arnold put his arm upon his employer's shoulder. "Not exactly ill, sir," he said, "but you haven't been here for some time. You went home on May 4--we've none of us seen you since." There was a silence. Very slowly Mr. Weatherley began to shake his head. He seemed suddenly aged. "Sit down, Chetwode--sit down quickly," he ordered, in a curious, dry whisper. "You see, it was like this," he went on, leaning over the table. "I heard a noise in the room and down I came. He was hiding there behind a curtain, but I saw him. Before I could shout out to the servants, he had me covered with his revolver. I suppose I'm not much to look at in a black tie and dress coat, wrong thing altogether, I know,--but Fenella was out so it didn't really matter. Anyway, he took me for the butler. 'It isn't you I want,' he said, 'it's your mistress and the others.' I stared at him and backed toward the door. 'If you move from where you are,' he went on, dropping his voice a little, 'I shall shoot you! Go and stand over in that corner, behind me. It's Mrs. Weatherley I want. Now listen. There's a ten-pound note in my waistcoat pocket. I'll give it to you to go and fetch her. Tell her that an old friend has called and is waiting to see her. You understand? If you go and don't bring her back--if you give the alarm--you'll wake up one night and find me by your bedside, and you'll be sorry.' You see, I remember every word he said, Chetwode--every word." "Go on, please!" Arnold exclaimed, breathlessly. Mr. Weatherley nodded slowly. "Yes," he said, "I shall tell you all about it. I remember every word that was spoken; I can see the man at this moment. I didn't move from where I was, but I was a little annoyed at being taken for Groves, and I told him so. 'If you're a burglar,' I said, 'you've found your way into trouble. I'm the master of the house and Mrs. Weatherley is my wife. Perhaps you'll tell me now what you want with her?' He looked at me and I suppose he decided that I was telling the truth. 'Your wife,' he said slowly, 'is looking for trouble. I'm not sure that it hasn't come. You know she was a friend of Rosario--Rosario the Jew?' 'I know that they were acquainted,' I said. He laughed then, and I began to hate the fellow, Chetwode. 'It was your wife,' he said, 'for whom Rosario wanted that title. She could have stopped him--' Then he broke off, Chetwode. 'But I don't suppose you understand these things,' he said. 'You'd better just understand this, though. I am here to have a little explanation with Mrs. Weatherley. I have a message for her, and she's got to hear it from my own lips. When I've finished with her, I want her brother, and when I've finished with him, I want the young man who was here the other night. It's no good saying he's not here now, because I saw him start.'" Mr. Weatherley paused and felt his forehead. "All the time, Chetwode," he went on, "I was watching the fellow, and it began to dawn upon me that he was there to do her some mischief. I didn't understand what it was all about but I could see it in his face. He was an ill-looking ruffian. I remembered then that Fenella had been frightened by some one hanging about the house, more than once. Well, there he was opposite to me, Chetwode, and by degrees I'd been moving a little nearer to him. He was after mischief--I was sure of it. What should you have done, Chetwode?" "I am not quite sure," Arnold answered. "What did you do?" "We're coming to that," Mr. Weatherley declared, leaning a little forward. "We're coming to that. Now in that open case, close to where I was, my wife had some South American curios. There was a funny wooden club there. The end was quite as heavy as any lead. I caught hold of it and rushed in upon him. You see, Chetwode, I was quite sure that he meant mischief. If Fenella had come in, he might have hurt her." "Exactly," Arnold agreed. "Go on, sir." "Well, I gripped the club in my right hand," Mr. Weatherley explained, seizing a ruler from the table, "like this, and I ran in upon him. I took him rather by surprise--he hadn't expected anything of the sort. He had one shot at me and missed. I felt the bullet go scorching past my cheek--like this." Mr. Weatherley struck the side of his face sharply with the flat of his hand. "He had another go at me but it was too late,--I was there upon him. He held out his arm but I was too quick. I didn't seem to hit very hard the first time but the club was heavy. His foot slipped on the marble hearthstone and he went. He fell with a thud. Have you ever killed a man, Chetwode?" "Never, sir," Arnold answered, his voice shaking a little. "Well, I never had before," Mr. Weatherley went on. "It really seems quite amazing that that one blow right on the head should have done it. He lay there quite still afterwards and it made me sick to look at him. All the time, though, I kept on telling myself that if I had not been there he would have hurt Fenella. That kept me quite cool. Afterwards, I put the club carefully back in the case, pushed him a little under the sofa, and then I stopped to think for a moment. I was quite clever, Chetwode. The window was open through which the man had come, so I locked the door on the inside, stepped out of the window, came in at the front door with my latchkey, crept upstairs, undressed quickly and got into bed. The funny part of it all was, Chetwode," he concluded, "that nobody ever really found the body." "You don't suppose that you could have dreamed it all, do you?" Arnold asked. Mr. Weatherley laughed contemptuously. "What an absurd idea!" he exclaimed. "What a perfectly absurd idea! Besides, although it did disappear, they came up and told me that there was a man lying in the boudoir. You understand now how it all happened," he went on. "It seemed to me quite natural at the time. Still, when the morning came I realized that I had killed a man. It's a horrid thing to kill a man, Chetwode!" "Of course it is, sir," Arnold said, sympathetically. "Still, I don't see what else you could have done." Mr. Weatherley beamed. "I am glad to hear you say that, Chetwode," he declared, "very glad. Still, I didn't want to go to prison, you know, so a few days afterwards I went away. I meant to hide for quite a long time. I--I don't know what I'm doing back here." He looked around the office like a trapped animal. "I didn't mean to come back yet, Chetwode!" he exclaimed. "Don't leave me! Do you hear? Don't leave me!" "Only for one second, sir," Arnold replied, taking an invoice from the desk. "They are wanting this in the warehouse." Arnold stepped rapidly across to Mr. Jarvis's desk. "Telephone home for his wife to come and bring a doctor," he ordered. "Quick!" "He's out of his mind!" Jarvis gasped. "Stark mad," Arnold agreed. When he re-entered the office, Mr. Weatherley was sitting muttering to himself. Arnold came over and sat opposite to him. "Mrs. Weatherley is calling round presently, sir," he announced. "You'll be glad to see her again." Mr. Weatherley went deadly pale. "Does she know?" he moaned. "She knows that some one was hurt," Arnold said. "As a matter of fact," he continued, "I don't think the man could have been dead. We were all out of the room for about five minutes, and when we came back he was gone. I think that he must have got up and walked away." "You don't think that I murdered him, then?" Mr. Weatherley inquired, anxiously. "Not you," Arnold assured him. "You stopped his hurting Mrs. Weatherley, though." Mr. Weatherley sighed. "I should like to have killed him," he admitted, simply. "Fenella and Sabatini, too, her brother,--they both laugh at me. They're a little inclined to be romantic and they think I'm a queer sort of a stick. I could never make out why she married me," he went on, confidentially. "Of course, they were both stoneybroke at the time and I put up a decent bit of money, but it isn't money, after all, that buys a woman like Fenella." "I'm sure she will be very pleased to see you again, sir," Arnold said. "Do you think she will, Chetwode? Do you think she will?" Mr. Weatherley demanded, anxiously. "Has she missed me while I have been--where the devil have I been, Chetwode? You must tell me--tell me quick! She'll be here directly and she'll want to know. I can't remember. It was a long street and there was a public-house at the corner, and I had a job somewhere, hadn't I, stacking cheeses? Look here, Chetwode, you must tell me all about it. You're my private secretary. You ought to know everything of that sort." "I'll make it all right with Mrs. Weatherley," Arnold promised. "We can't go into all these matters now." "Of course not--of course not," Mr. Weatherley agreed. "You're quite right, Chetwode. A time for everything, eh? How's the little lady you brought down to Bourne End?" "She's very well, thank you, sir," Arnold replied. "Now it's a queer thing," Mr. Weatherley continued, "but only yesterday--or was it the day before--I was trying to think whom she reminded me of. It couldn't have been my brother-in-law, could it, Chetwode. Did you ever fancy that she was like Sabatini?" "I had noticed it, sir," Arnold admitted, with a little start. "There is a likeness." "I'm glad you agree with me," Mr. Weatherley declared, approvingly. "Splendid fellow, Sabatini," he continued,--"full of race to his finger-tips. Brave as a lion, too, but unscrupulous. He'd wring a man's neck who refused to do what he told him. Yet do you know, Chetwode, he wouldn't take money from me? He was desperately hard up one day, I know, and I offered him a cheque, but he only shook his head. 'You can look after Fenella,' he said. 'That's all you've got to do. One in the family is enough.' The night after, he played baccarat with Rosario and he won two thousand pounds. Clever fellow--Sabatini. I wish I wasn't so frightened of him. You know the sort of feeling he gives me, Chetwode?" Mr. Weatherley continued. "He always makes me feel that I'm wearing the wrong clothes or doing the wrong thing. I'm never really at my ease when he's about. But I like him--I like him very much indeed." Arnold had turned a little away. He was beginning to feel the strain of the situation. "I wish Fenella would come," Mr. Weatherley wandered on. "I don't seem to be able to get on with my work this morning, since you told me she was coming down. Queer thing, although I was with her last evening, you know, Chetwode, I feel, somehow, as though I'd been away from her for weeks and weeks. I can't remember exactly how long--there's such a buzzing in my head when I try. What do you do when you have a buzzing in your head, Chetwode?" "I generally try and rest in an easy-chair," Arnold replied. "I'll try that, too," Mr. Weatherley decided, rising to his feet. "It's a--most extraordinary thing, Chetwode, but my knees are shaking. Hold me up--catch hold of me, quick!" Arnold half carried him to the easy-chair. The horn of the automobile sounded outside. "Mrs. Weatherley is here, sir," Arnold whispered. Mr. Weatherley opened his eyes. "Good!" he murmured. "Let me sit up." There was a moment's pause. Arnold moved to the door and held it open. They heard the swish of her skirts as she came through the outer office, and the heavier footsteps of the doctor who followed. Mr. Weatherley tried vainly to rise to his feet. He held out his arms. Fenella hastened towards him. "Fenella, I couldn't help it," her husband gasped. "I had to kill him--he told me he was waiting there for you. My hands are quite clean now. Chetwode told me that he got up and walked away, but that's all nonsense. I struck him right over the skull." She fell on her knees by his side. "You dear, brave man," she murmured. "I believe you saved my life." He smiled. His face was suddenly childlike. He was filled with an infinite content. "I think," he said, "that I should like--to go home now--if this other gentleman and Chetwode will kindly help me out. You see, I haven't been here since May 4, and to-day is July 2. I think I must have overslept myself. And that idiot Jarvis was opening the letters when I arrived! Yes, I'm quite ready." They helped him out to the carriage. He stepped in and took his usual place without speaking again. The car drove off, Fenella holding his hand, the doctor sitting opposite. _ |
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