E. W. Hornung

“ For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die."
"It's all I'm fit for, death!" groaned Guy Berridge, trying to tug the fierce moustache out of his mild face. "The sooner the better, for me! And yet I did love her, God knows I did!" He turned upon Uvo Delavoye in a sudden blaze. "And so I do still—do you hear me? Then give me back my ring, I say, and don't encourage me in this madness—you—you devil!" ”

“ It was a very keen bright day, worthier of General January than his chief-of-staff. Ruts and puddles were firmly frozen; our bicycle bells rang out with a pleasing brilliance. In Bushey Park the black chestnuts stamped their filigree tops against a windless radiance. Under the trees a russet carpet still waited for March winds to take it up. The Diana pond was skinned with ice; goddess and golden nymphs caught every scintillation of cold sunlight as we trundled past. In a fine glow we entered the palace and climbed to the grim old galleries.
"Talk about haunted houses!" said Uvo Delavoye. ”

“ So, indeed, was I; for though a tear is nowhere more out of place than on the cheek of a trained nurse, yet in none is it such welcome evidence of human interest and affection. And there was the tender tact of the pretence to which she had lent herself before my eyes; even as a memory it nearly filled them afresh. Yet I could not speak of it to Coplestone, and to Delavoye I would not, lest I were led into betraying that which I had promised Ronnie to keep entirely to myself. ”

“ And to me the picture of Uvo Delavoye, tramping up and down in the moonlight as he talked, was as plain as though there had been no old wall between us.
"I know you have a thin time of it. But so has he!"
That was almost the first thing I heard. It made an immediate difference in my feeling towards the other eavesdropper. But I still watched his hands.
"Sitting on top of a cricket pavilion," said the other voice, "all day long!"
"It takes him out of himself. You must see that he is eating his heart out, with this war still on, and fellows like Gillon bringing it home to him every day." ”

“ I could not help staring now. Mrs. Ricardo had reddened so inexplicably.
"There was no need to tell me the other part!" she said, scornfully. "I was in it—as you know very well!"
Then I did know. She was the bedizened beauty who had raked in the five-pound notes, and smashed a magnum of champagne in her excitement, at the orgy in Sir Christopher Stainsby's billiard room.
"I know it now," I stammered, "but I give you my word——"
"Fiddle!" she interrupted. "You've known it all the time. I've seen it in your face. He gave me away to you, and I shan't forgive him!" ”

“ But it was just at such moments that there was a smack of greatness about Uvo Delavoye; given the stimulus, he could carry a thing off with a high hand and the light touch of a born leader; and so it must have been that he had Miss Julia coyly giggling when I fully expected her to stamp her foot.
"You talk about our curiosity," she rallied him. "You men are just as bad!"
"I have a right to be curious," returned Uvo, in a tone that surprised me as much as hers. "You forget that your villain was once the head of our clan, and that so far the fact is quite unmistakable." ”

“ The full moon made smouldering panels of the French window leading into the garden, but little or no light filtered through the long red blind. Delavoye went round to it on tip-toe, and I still say it was a natural instinct that kept our voices down and our movements stealthy; that any other empty house, where we had no business at dead of night, would have had the same effect upon us. Delavoye speaks differently for himself; and I certainly heard him fumbling unduly for the blind-cord while I went over to the gas-stove. ”

“ The Estate alone, or rather the whole original property and nothing else, was outlined and filled in, and the rest left as white as age permitted. It was like a map of India upside down. The great house was curiously situated in the apex, but across the road a clump of shrubberies stood for Ceylon. Our present Estate was at the thick end, as Delavoye explained, and it was a thrilling moment when he laid his nail upon the Turkish Pavilion, actually so marked, and we looked out into the moonlit garden and beheld its indubitable site. The tunnel was not marked. ”

“ I confess I like a man to laugh at his own jokes, and to look as though he meant the things he does mean. Uvo Delavoye would do either—or neither—as the whim took him, and I used sometimes to think he cultivated a wilful subtlety for my special bewilderment. Thus in this instance he was quite capable of assuming an alarming pose to pay me out for any undue anxiety I might betray on his behalf; therefore I had to admire the revolver in my turn, and even to acclaim it as a timely acquisition. But either Uvo was not deceived, or else I was right as to his morbid feeling about the weapon. ”

“ I never thought to hear a grown man go on like that."
"And such a man!" cried Uvo. "It's not the talk so much as the talker that surprises me; and by the way, how well he talked, for him! He was less of a bore than I've ever known him; there was passion in the fellow, confound him! Red blood in that lump of road metal! He's not only sorry for himself. He's simply heartbroken about the girl. But this maggot of morbid introspection has got into his brain and——how did it get there, Gilly? It's no place for the little brute. What brain is there to feed it? ”

“ But I held up my hand: the nightingale was singing in the wood exactly as when we plunged below the earth. Somehow it brought us together again, and there we stood listening till a clock struck twelve in the distant Village.
"''Tis now the very witching time of night,'" said Uvo Delavoye, "'when church-yards yawn'—like our back garden!" I might have guessed his favourite play, but his face lit up before my memory. "And shall I tell you, Gillon, the real name of this whole infernal Hill and Estate? It's Witching Hill, my man, it's Witching Hill from this night forth!" ”

“ Certainly I never thought of a sinister explanation until Uvo Delavoye put one into my head, and then I had no patience with him.
"It's this heat," I declared; "it's hot enough to uproot anybody."
"I wonder," said he, "how many other places they've found too hot for them!"
"But why should you wonder any such rot, when you say yourself that you've never even nodded to Abercromby Royle?"
"Because I've had my eye on him all the same, Gillon, as obvious material for the evil genius of the place." ”

“ Mrs. Delavoye was a fragile woman with a kind but nervous manner; the daughter put me more at my ease, but I could scarcely see either of them by the dim light from the French window outside which they sat. I was more eager, however, to see "the pit's mouth," and in the soft starlight of a velvet night I made out the two Dutch chairs lying face downward over the shaft.
"It's so tiresome of my brother," said Miss Delavoye, following my glance with disconcerting celerity: "just when we want our garden chairs he's varnished them, and there they lie unfit to use!" ”

“ Nettleton looked at that candle wistfully, and then at me, with a maniacally sly shake of the head; for it lay within my reach, but out of his; and it lay in a pool, beneath glistening shavings, for the whole room was swimming in the stuff that stank.
The lighting of the candles—in my brain as well as on the floor—had one interesting effect. It stopped my excruciating pain for several moments. We stood looking at each other across the little low lights, like Gullivers towering over Lilliputian lamp-posts ”

“ A middle-aged man was hobbling towards us in the thinning stream of homing citizens. He did not look one of them; he wore light clothes and a straw hat which he did not remove in accosting my companions; and I thought that he looked both hot and cross as he leant hard upon a serviceable stick.
"Gossiping at the gate, as usual!" he cried, with a kind of rasping raillery. "Even Mr. Delavoye won't thank you for keeping him standing on this villainous asphalt till his feet sink in."
"That would have been one for you, Gilly, in the old days," said Uvo. "Captain Ricardo—Mr. Gillon." ”

“ I never knew a man with more; it came out every hour that we spent together, and before long it was needed almost every minute. One day Delavoye dashed into the office in town clothes and with a tragic face.
"They want a second nurse! It's come to that already," he said, "and I'm going up about it now."
"But isn't that the doctor's job?" I asked, liking the looks of him as little as his news.
"I can't help it if it is, Gilly! I must lend a hand somehow or I shall crack up. It's little enough one can do, besides being day-nurse to poor old Coplestone, and this afternoon he's asleep for once. ”

“ With Ronnie, it was a way of cracking jokes and telling stories, and taking an extraordinary interest in the boy's preparatory school, so that its rather small beer came bubbling out in a sparkling brew that Coplestone himself had failed to tap. Then Uvo could talk like an inspired professional about the games he could not play, about books like an author, and about adventures like a born adventurer. In Egypt, moreover, he had seen a little life that went a long way in the telling; conversely, one always felt that he had done a bigger thing or two out there than he pretended. ”

“ Of course you're only joking, Gilly, but I could quite understand it if you weren't. There's no vice in old Nettleton, let alone crime; but there's a chuckle-headed irresponsibility that might almost let him in for either before he knew it. He never does seem to know what he's doing, and I'm sure he never worries about anything he's once done. If he did, he'd have gone further afield from the scene of his downfall, or else taken rooms in town instead of a red elephant of a house that he evidently can't afford. As a tenant, I quite agree that he is hopeless. ”

“ And it was worst of all when the smile faded from the face to gather in the eyes, in a liquid look of unfathomable cynicism, new to me in Uvo Delavoye, and yet mysteriously familiar and repellent.
"Yes; they're certainly a drawback, Gillon, but I don't know that they've a right to be anything more. We don't ask to be put into this world; surely we can put ourselves out if it amuses us." ”

“ And Uvo Delavoye confirmed the statement.
"It wasn't such a deep sea as you thought, Gilly. But it was the spirit that saved the show, and that's just where our poor friend overshot the mark. Spirit burns itself, not the thing you put it on. It's like the brandy and the Christmas pudding. Those shavings would have been far more dangerous by themselves, but drenched in methylated spirit they burnt like a wick, which of course hardly burns at all." ”

“ So it has, in point of fact; but for me, there'd have been days and days to spare. But imagine yourself creeping back into your empty hole to die like a rat, and still thinking of every little thing to prevent your being found!"
"And to keep it from looking like suicide when you were!" said I, with yet a lingering doubt in my mind.
"Well, then I say you have the finest suicide ever!" declared Uvo Delavoye. "I only wish I knew when he began to think it all out. Was it before he called you in to see the tap that didn't turn off? Or was it the defective tap that suggested the means of death? ”

“ Yet it seemed natural enough that we should talk about Uvo Delavoye, as I sat on another of the broken columns and lit a cigarette at Mrs. Ricardo's suggestion. Uvo was one of those people who are the first of bonds between their friends, a fruitful subject, a most human interest in common. So I found myself speaking of him in my turn, with all affection and yet some little freedom, to an almost complete stranger who was drawing me on more deliberately than I saw.
"You were great friends, Mr. Gillon, weren't you?"
"We are, and I hope we always shall be." ”

“ That was where Uvo Delavoye did come in, and with him his mother's new cook, Sarah, in the bonnet with the nodding plume—just as she had been to see her pore old master.
"It's a beautiful mad-'ouse," said Sarah, with a moist twinkle in her funny old eye. "I only 'ope he won't want to burn it down!"
"I only hope you're keeping his effort to yourselves," said I. "It'll do the Estate no good, if it gets out, after all the other things that have been happening here."
"Trust us and the doctors!" said Uvo. "We're all in the same boat, Gilly, and your old Muskett's the only other soul who knows. ”

“ When a straight man goes off the rails, there's generally some tremendous cause; but one of the surprises of this case, as my banker has managed to ascertain, is that Abercromby Royle is in a position to repay every penny. He has more than enough to do it, lying idle in his bank; so there was no apparent motive for the crime, and I for my part am prepared to treat it as a sudden aberration."
"Exactly!" cried Delavoye, as though he were the missing man's oldest friend and more eager than either of us to find excuses for him. ”

“ Mornings are the worst of all for people seeing you."
"But not for what they think of seeing you."
"Oh! what do I care what they think?" cried the wife of the man beside me. "I'm far past that. It's you men who keep on thinking and thinking of what other people are going to think!"
"We sometimes have to think for two," said Uvo—just a little less steadily, to my ear. ”

“ Royle, and all through me! The woman's an invalid; this may finish her off. If it were the man himself I wouldn't mind. Where the devil do you suppose he is?"
"I'll tell you later," said Uvo Delavoye, without moving a muscle of his mobile face.
"You'll tell me——see here, Delavoye!" I spluttered. "This is a serious matter to me; if you're going to rot about it I'd rather you cleared out!"
"But I'm not rotting, Gilly," said he in a different tone, yet with a superior twinkle that I never liked. "I never felt less like it in my life. ”

“ The man had aged; he seemed even a little shaken, but not more than by a moderate dose of influenza; and to a casual eye the improvement was more astounding than the previous deterioration, especially in its rapidity. His spirits were at least as good as they had been before, his hospitality in keeping with the season. I ate my Christmas dinner with father and son, and Delavoye and I first-footed them on New Year's morning. What was most remarkable on these occasions was the way Coplestone drank his champagne, with the happy moderation of a man who has never exceeded in his life. ”

“ Altogether it was not in my allowance of human nature to lose such an opportunity of showing him his new friend in his true colours.
"He is clever," whispered Uvo, as though that was the bond between them. "He knows something about everything, and he's a wonderful carpenter and mechanic. You must really see the burglar-trap that he concocted after the scare. If another Cheffins paid him a visit, he'd put his foot in it with a vengeance."
"It would be six of one and very nearly half a dozen of the other," said I with hardihood. "Set a Nettleton to catch a Cheffins, as you might say, Uvo!" ”

“ And the accountant shook his downcast head.
"I only meant, my dear chap, if you'd had some disagreement——"
"We've never had the least little word!"
"Has she changed?" asked Uvo Delavoye.
"Not that I know of," replied Berridge; but he looked up as though it were a new idea; and there was more life in his voice.
"She'd tell you," said Uvo, "if I know her."
"Do people tell each other?" eagerly inquired our friend.
"They certainly ought, and I think Miss Hemming would."
"Ah! it's easy enough for them!" cried the miserable young man. ”

“ Devil a bullet would leave the barrel, and I tried all three."
"But what an infernal disgrace!" cried the colonel, shuffling to his slippered feet. "Why, the damned things ought to go off if you raised them from the bottom of the sea! I'll let the makers have it in next week's Field, libel or no libel, you see if I don't! But that won't console either you or me, Mr. Delavoye, and I can't apologise enough. I only hope the scoundrels were no more successful here than they were at my house?" ”

“ One felt the flight of time only at such homely spectacles as Shoolbred's van, delivering groceries at the house which Edgar Nettleton had tried to burn down with me in it. And an empty perambulator, over the way at Berylstow, confirmed the feeling when Delavoye informed me that the little caller was a remarkable blend of our old friend Guy Berridge and the whilom Miss Hemming.
Mulcaster Park had moved bodily with the times. It had its asphalt paths at last. Incidentally I missed some blinds which had been taken over as tenant's fixtures in my first or second year. The new ones were not red. ”

“ I had better admit plainly that the thing was that old ring with the white peacock set in red, and that Uvo Delavoye was once more as I had known him down to that hour.
"Don't touch the beastly thing!" he cried. "It's served me worse than it served poor Berridge! I shall have to think of a fresh lie to tell him—and it won't come so easy now—but I'd rather cut mine off than trust this on another human hand!" ”