Burford Delannoy

“ She knew it would stun him. She had seen a man fall senseless—and remain senseless for an hour—on the occasion of a far less heavy weight falling on his head.
Ten minutes would suffice for her task, if he remained senseless as long.
She mapped out what she would do if the stone failed. She would drop from above, spring on him from behind, and half choke the life out of him with her strong, long, bony fingers.
Then she would bring him to again, when she had fastened him up. She did not want him to die—yet.
Before four o'clock, Gerald Danvers entered the mill. ”

“ I'm going to find Gerald Danvers, and tell him that a bigger old fool don't prowl about this airth than I am; and I'm going to beg him—d'ye hear—beg him to forgive me for insulting him."
"Dear father!"
"That's it, Tess. Because your old dad's a bit of a fool, you don't want to rub it in, do you? You leave that to your mother. Come here, girlie, and gimme a kiss."
"Lawd sakes, now! Just listen to the man! As if I'd said anything!"
"No, mother," said the farmer, over Tessie's shoulder—he was holding her to him—"it wouldn't be you to say anything. Silence is the kind of thing you shine in. ”

“ Do you expect me and Tessie to hang on to that axle?"
"What? Are you going?"
"Am I? I reckon. If you think, George Depew, that you are going to career around the streets of N'York, bulging money at every pocket, with nary a sensible soul to look after you, let me tell you, you make a mistake."
"But, mother dear," said Tessie; "you will never be ready. The train goes in twenty minutes, and you will never have time to change your dress."
"Won't I? Sakes alive! You've known me for nigh on nineteen years, and you don't know your mother yet." ”

“ The trembling fingers of the farmer gripped the scissors, and he cut the twine. Then he tore off the brown paper and revealed—a piece of folded newspaper!
For a moment there was a silence, but in that moment a great change came over those present.
All the hilarity left Gerald. He stood looking at the packet with surely the whitest face that ever living man bore. The farmer's clouded to the pitch of blackness, and, bringing his hand down on the table with a force which made the crockery on the dresser ring again, he blurted out:
"What damned fool's game is this, anyhow?" ”

“ If you want to live, pray that the rain may not come; if you want to die, pray that it may. When you feel that waterfall reaching you, then you may know that presently there will be force enough to turn the wheel, and that you will go round and round, faster and faster, now in the air, now in the water, now in the air, now in the water! ”

“ The lawyer, who had guessed something of what had happened, judiciously left them together for a few minutes.
Mrs. Depew carried out her threat; she walked straight over to Gerald, and gave him what she called a "smack."
"You, Gerald," she said, "I'm as real pleased to see you as I am to see the snow go away in winter. I believed in you, my lad, from the first, and if I've got an old fool for a husband, remember that he is only an old fool, and there's no scrap of real bad in him—that he's as good a husband, and as good a father as ever stepped in shoes." ”

“ I plank those notes into his hand, and I say, 'Farmer, there's your part of the bargain,' then I step across to you and I say, 'and I think this is mine?' Farmer he agrees, and you and I——"
"But Gerald, darling——"
"That's right; you keep on calling me 'darling.' It sounds real sweet—just like molasses—coming from your lips."
"I wish you would be sensible for a minute."
"Couldn't, Tessie, if I tried. I've earned you, my girl, and you're mine, mine, mine!"
"Gerald, don't scream out like that!"
"Don't care. There's only the dicky birds to hear, and it won't frighten them. ”

“ Just picture to yourself what your life would be married to a centless man."
"But, dad, why should you think he will always be poor?"
"All his life, Tessie, he has been living on other people."
"But he may reform, dad. You said he was doing the work better than Josh had done it."
"New brooms sweep clean."
"And in a new country, dad, perhaps he has turned over a new leaf."
"Supposing he has, Tessie, what is his future? If he left here, he might get a job as a store clerk; what can he expect to be better? A store clerk with perhaps a dozen dollars a week."
"You are hard on him, dad." ”

“ We don't want to talk of death now, Tessie, but of life, the life which is before us, the life which you and I are going to travel in double harness. The life——"
"Take your arm away, Gerald. There's the farm, and mother and father are standing at the door."
"Hip, hip, hooray, farmer!"
"Come right in, lad, come right in. You, Jim, look after the mare."
"Mother-in-law, give me a kiss."
"I'm sure——"
"It's right, farmer, isn't it? She can kiss her future son-in-law in safety, can't she? I bring you home nineteen thousand pounds, and Tessie and I enter into partnership till death doth us part. ”

“ But the blackest cloud has a silver lining, and I know that money is in America.
"I've got to find it, Tessie, and I'm going right away now to do it. Right away into New York, and you won't see me back here again until I come with the money; until I come to make your father apologize for calling an honest man a thief, and admit that it doesn't always do to judge by appearances."
"Gerald!"
"Oh, I don't blame him, lass; things look black, cruelly black; and if he knew all, he'd be more full of wonder than unjust rage. ”

“ Pay each of the brokers with a thousand pound note; you will want the change out of it for working with. Worse come to the worst, if the shares have to be sold, there will only be the loss of a few pounds."
"I will do that."
"And now get along home, Charley, or you will have your little woman worrying about you. Don't, for heaven's sake, breathe a solitary syllable which will give the faintest clue to what has happened. Your wife is a smart little woman—don't give her too much money at first. ”

“ But one likes to exchange ideas, dad. You might, for instance, circle ten miles round the farm and you would not meet one soul who could tell you what poetry meant."
"And this man, Danvers, he talks well?"
"He is a gentleman, dad."
"Without a dollar to call his own."
"Dad! is he any the less a gentleman for that?"
"The world thinks so, Tessie."
"Let it, dad, I don't; and I know you don't. A man's a man for all that."
"But a poor man, Tessie—in a double sense. I am really sorry to hear you say this."
"What have I said, dad?"
"Nothing, girlie, nothing. But I can read you. ”

“ That brought the farmer to his feet. He said:
"You saw? How on earth could you see?"
But the woman, annoyed at having been betrayed into speech, was silent.
Gerald spoke again.
"Susan, don't be a fool. If your husband is dead, I did not kill him. Your common sense ought to tell you that. But if he is dead, you ought to know how, and by what means.
"I never saw either of the passengers who were found dead, and do not know their names—if I ever heard them. But it is surely a duty for you to find out the true story. Dead men tell no tales, but live ones do. ”

“ He guessed that it would be a noiseless weapon, perhaps a knife, and a feeling of wonder stole over him, wonder of how it would feel as the knife sheathed itself in his heart.
No feeling of fear, not a scrap; he would welcome it. It would end the pain. And then he prayed. ”

“ Yet that eternal hope we hear of in the human breast, sprang up in the lawyer's, when he reflected that America was a long way off, that he, Loide, was the executor, and would have the proving of the will.
What would be easier than to show the legatee the income his aunt had been deriving, and effect a bogus sale of a part of the property for about five thousand pounds? That he could transmit to America, and end the matter. ”

“ I have made up my mind"—he sat down with an air of determination as he spoke "to talk to you; to talk to you freely, when the whole of your nineteen thousand pounds is found.
"I've got hold on the balance that's missing, and it only wants the lawyer to put things in trim for it to be recovered. When it is—when the whole nineteen thousand pounds is in your possession—I shall want you to eat the word 'thief' you applied to me."
"Ain't I just eating it, Gerald?" said the old man humbly. "Is there a man here in N'York with as much humble pie in his mouth as I've got? ”

“ The woman did move. Opened her eyes, and then seemed to remember how she came on the floor.
She started into a sitting position, and her eyes fell on Gerald. Once more she screamed out:
"A ghost! A ghost! A ghost!"
Then she fell back in a burst of frenzied hysterical laughter, and despite the fact that two men held her down, the tattoo made by the tapping of her feet could be heard all over the building.
Ultimately, she was carried up to her room, quieted, and with the assistance of the farmer's wife and daughter undressed and put to bed.
Danvers was rather struck by the change in positions. ”

“ In another moment he had clapped the towel over his victim's mouth, and drawn down the knife with a sawing, cutting movement.
There was just a faint, gurgling sound for a moment, a convulsive quiver of the whole of the sleeper's body, then stillness. The towel had stifled any possible cry—the knife had done the rest.
Loide stood there for a moment to recover his [Pg 46] breath. He could almost hear his own heart beating.
He tried to still it by thinking that there was not a scrap of risk, that it was all over now, that, presently, he would possess nineteen thousand pounds. ”

“ It is all very well to be cool over your own murderous work, but when you come across another man's, it is apt to startle you. Loide was the most startled individual on the Atlantic at that particular moment.
He sat there in stony amazement and horror. He feared to open the other parcels. Still he had to.
Qualms had to be kept down. The possession of nineteen thousand pounds depended on his search.
He imagined that Depew had murdered some one in England, and was taking the body out, perhaps to hide traces of his crime in the sea. ”

“ We leave America for England, and turn back in our history a week or so—to Wimbledon and The Elms on the night of Gerald's adventure there.
The police and Gerald are in the passage by the front door, and a haggard faced man is crouched below the steps listening.
He hears all that Gerald says, and his fury rises to white heat as he realizes by his late clerk's reticence that he is not a detective at all! ”

“ The hole got deeper and deeper, the digger standing in it and shoveling out the earth, and all the while the white face remained glued to the bars of the window.
As midnight struck, the task was finished. The lawyer stuck the spade into the earth, wiped his brow, put on his coat, and picked up his lantern.
As he mounted the steps leading into the house, Gerald dropped to the floor of the cellar, and waited, dreading—he knew not what.
The flap was flung up, and the lawyer bent over. In one hand Gerald could see a pistol! ”

“ If, on the other hand, Depew did not lie down, then he would have to use his weapon stiletto fashion. A spring from his bunk on to his victim standing with his back towards him, and a powerful downward sweep and plunge, would be half way successful.
He imagined that most men threw up their arms and staggered back on the happening of such a thing—gathered the idea from witnessing the dramas of the Adelphi—that would enable him to turn and plunge the weapon into the man's heart. ”

“ That made Gerald ponder.
Was it wise in going to the New York police at all? He knew that a murderer had escaped at Queenstown—it had been common talk on the ship—and that the murder was done in English waters.
Why then wake up the American police by giving them identification clues to Josh, and so possibly foul a trail in England?
It was just possible that the murderer was lulled to an idea of security by the absence of discovery. That would make his own work easier. ”

“ Do you feel that you love him, Tessie?"
She was playing with the seal at the end of his watch-chain, and her eyes were cast down as she answered:
"He's the nicest man round these parts, dad."
"To look at, Tessie—yes. I admit that. He's got the city polish on him. It's a question if that's good though. The bit of veneer on an article of furniture doesn't make the wood beneath any better quality."
"No, but the farm hands, dad! And then at Oakville who is there to talk to?" ”

“ But, see here, Charley, there's time yet. We can be poor and honest, and give up this fortune, or a few hours' nasty work, and wealth—nineteen thousand pounds."
He picked up the notes again, and the rustle made both men's eyes sparkle.
A piano organ in the distance was jigging out a "Belle of New York" tune, but no sound of it was heard by the brothers. Their ears were full of that crisp, crackling sound.
"But how do you mean that he will have to go?"
"One of us in his name, to America." ”

“ Depew, and the bleeding of him for all he was worth.
Being a city lawyer, and moving in city financial circles, blackmailing had not for him the horrid appearance it presented to most people.
One gets used to the atmosphere one breathes daily, and the atmosphere of London city reeks of blackmail. ”

“ There is nothing to fear. Before I am far away on the trip to America you may be sure that every [Pg 25] trace of a clue to the contents of those portmanteaus will be lying at the bottom of the sea. A dark night, an open port, and there will be an end of the matter. This passage ticket is, I see, for a two berthed cabin—that makes it easier."
"I fear——"
"I know you do, old man—early and provident fear is the mother of safety. But there is nothing to fear. Murder will out, that we see day by day. But it is not as if we had murdered the man. We have not that crime on our consciences. ”

“ Susan did not comply with the request contained in the postscript. She had read it when she left the post-office, and thrust it into her pocket as she hurried to the pier.
There, the shock of the discovery that her husband was dead, and the double shock of relief and joy to find that the dead man was not her husband, upset her so, that she lost consciousness, and for a time the subsequent proceedings interested her no more. ”