The Moon Rock by Arthur J. Rees (e novels to read TXT) 📗

did none of these things. Without a word of warning, before he even knew I was in the room, I sprang on him, clutching him, shaking him in a blind insensate fury till my strength suddenly failed me and left me sick and giddy.

“‘I am Remington,’ I said—‘Jim Remington.’ I leaned against the table, panting and exhausted, looking at him. His self-control was something to marvel at. He just sat still, returning my look with cold motionless eyes, no doubt trying to discern the features of the man he had wronged through the film of age. But in spite of his self-control I could see the grey pallor of fear creeping into his face, and he could not keep his lips from trembling. Twice he essayed to speak, but his mouth refused to utter the words. What he did say was strange to me, when he got it out at last. ‘I was right’—I heard him whisper, almost to himself—‘I knew, I knew.’ He repeated those words several times. It was then I saw that his self-control arose from the fact that although he was terrified he did not appear to be so greatly surprised. Surprised he was, but not in the way I had expected. His prime difficulty seemed to be to get out of his head the identity by which he had known me. ‘You are Ravenshaw—Dr. Ravenshaw,’ he said. ‘How can you be Remington?’ He brought out this with an effort, like a man trying to shake off an unreasoning horror.

“I had expected him to face it out, to challenge me, perhaps deny all knowledge of my existence. Instead, he merely sat there staring at me with an air of terrified realization, like a person gazing upon the dreadful materialization of an expected phantom. I told him the truth in the fewest possible words, and he listened silently, never removing his eyes from me, the phantom of his past. When I had finished he lay back in his chair, but his eyes stared up at me with a kind of dead look, like half-closed eyes in a coffin. ‘I knew that you were rescued from the island,’ he said. ‘But I thought you were long since dead.’

“That statement surprised me. I asked him how he had learned of it. He told me it was through the medium of an overheard conversation in a London hotel nearly thirty years before. He had gone up to town to see his lawyer, and one of the people at the hotel where he put up happened to be one of the passengers of the Erechtheus, the steamer which had rescued me. The man sat at the next table, and Turold heard him tell the story to a friend one night at dinner. It had happened just like that—quite simply, but it was a possibility I had overlooked. Not that it mattered, as it happened, but it would have—if Alice had been with him. Turold, of course, kept his knowledge to himself. He was too cautious to approach the passenger, but he instructed his lawyer to make guarded inquiries at the shipping office of the vessel in order to verify the story. Then he returned home, consumed by anxiety, no doubt, to wait for my reappearance. As the months slipped past and I did not appear, hope revived within him. It appears that he had heard the passenger say that I was a wreck—a physical wreck. That must have been a cheering item in a bad piece of news. I can imagine its growing importance in Turold’s mind as the time went on and I made no sign. Finally (and thankfully) he reached the conclusion that I was indeed dead, and that he had nothing more to fear. There was an element of uncertainty about it, though, a lack of definite knowledge. I fancy that was one of the reasons which led him to take Thalassa into his service when he turned up some time later. It was a deep and subtle thing to do. Thalassa was bound to help him against me, if ever I came back.

“The years went on, and he grew quite certain, as any man in his position would, in the circumstances. He forgot all about me. That frame of mind lasted until he came to Cornwall, and then, it seemed, I came back into his life in the strangest way. I haunted him in the spirit, and he never once guessed that I might be there in the flesh. Who can explain this?

“As he spoke of it he looked as though he had a grievance against me, as, perhaps, he had—from his point of view. ‘You faded from my mind for twenty years,’ he said. ‘But here—in Cornwall—your memory began to haunt me. It was your footsteps, principally. I used to fancy you were following me across the moors. Tonight for the first time I actually heard them—heard them above the noise of the storm. They came to my ears clear and sharp, around the house, on the rocks, under the window.’ He cast on me an appalled, a hopeless glance. ‘Why have you left it so long?’ he cried. ‘What do you want—now?’

“He positively had no glimmering of my feelings. His fixed idea, like a cancerous growth, had sucked all the healthy life out of him. Hot anger stirred within me again, but I retained control of myself this time. I asked him how he had found out about the earlier marriage, and he told me Alice had babbled something in her delirium—enough to arouse his suspicions. It seemed that he had waited for one of her lucid intervals, and wormed the truth out of her. ‘The proofs—of course you’ve obtained them?’ I asked casually. Yes, he had the proofs. He had sent to London for them immediately. I asked him where they were. ‘What do you want to know for?’ he asked in an agitated voice. I told him quite simply, that he must give me his proofs and tell the members of his family that he had been mistaken—that Alice’s first husband had really died before she married him. If he agreed to do that he had nothing farther to fear from me—I would remain dead forever. ‘You can destroy proofs, but not facts,’ he muttered in reply to this. I told him the facts were never likely to come to light if he entered into a compact of silence.

“He sat for a few moments as if contemplating the alternatives I had placed before him—sat with one hand in his table-drawer, seeking for papers, I thought. He desisted from doing this, and said quite suddenly, ‘The proofs are in the clock-case.’

“I had no suspicion. He had once shown me a curious receptacle in the bottom of the clock-case, where he kept papers. I went towards the clock, and was stooping over the drawer in the bottom of the case when I heard a swift footstep behind me. I turned. He was approaching with a revolver. The secret of his disclosure and the open drawer were explained. I suppose I owed my life to his dim sight, which compelled him to come so near.

“I sprang at him, and we struggled. That struggle brought down the clock with a shattering crash. Robert Turold and I were locked in one another’s arms, wrestling desperately for the revolver, when I saw the great moon face of the clock flit past my vision like the face of a man taking a header off a pier. The crash startled Robert Turold. His hand loosened, and I got the revolver from him. As I tore it from his fingers it went off, and shot him.

“He backed away from me with a kind of frozen smile, then crumpled up and slid to the floor. I bent over him. He made a slight movement, but I could see that he was dying—that he had only a very few moments to live.

“Coolly and rapidly I reflected. The fall of the clock would be heard downstairs. Flight! There was a chance, if Thalassa had not returned. My other instinct was to secure the proofs first, though they were really useless then. I rummaged in the clock-case, and found a large envelope which I stuffed in my pocket. The face stared up at me; the clock had stopped at a minute to nine. I had an idea—an inspiration. I pulled the long hand down to the hour-half—to half-past nine. If I escaped from the house undiscovered, with only that half-stupid little woman downstairs, I would rush across the moors home—call my servant on some pretext as soon as I got in, and ask her the time. Then I should be quite safe—could defy everybody. Make it ten o’clock, then! No—too long to be safe. It might be discovered.

“It is strange how quickly the brain works when the instinct of self-preservation is aroused. These thoughts flashed through my mind in a kind of mental lightning. In the briefest possible space of time I was on my feet and out of the room. I locked the door on the outside, intending to take the key to defer discovery, but it slipped from my fingers in my haste, and fell in the dark passage. I dared not stop to search, for just then I heard a sound—or thought I did. Panic seized me. I feared I was trapped—my escape cut off. I flung precaution aside and went leaping downstairs to the door. I fumbled for the door-catch in the darkness, flung open the door, and ran out into the night—across the moors and home.

“I had hardly got inside before your sister came with her husband to see me—to beg me to go with her to Flint House and reason with your brother. To reason with him! He was beyond the futility of argument, the folly of retort. I did not want to go—at first. Then it dawned upon me that a kindly fate offered me a providential chance of securing my safety. No suspicion could fall on me if I went back—and found the body.

“And so it turned out. We reached Flint House just at the right moment, for me. I broke into the room and found him—dead. He was not where I had left him. In a last paroxysm he had struggled to his feet and fallen across the clock-case, with the intention, as I shall always believe, of putting back the hand of the clock. I think his dying vision saw me alter it, and his last thought—his last effort—was to thwart my intention to mislead those upon whom would devolve the duty of investigating his death. But death was too quick to allow him to carry out his intention.”

The cessation of the speaker’s voice was followed by silence. Thalassa had nothing to say—no need for words. Austin Turold could not trust himself to speak. It was not that his cynical philosophy of life failed him at that moment. The eternal staging of the drama was the eternal tragedy of the performers. But he was thinking of his son. He had vision enough to realize that in Sisily’s death Charles had lost all. His own hardness of outlook melted at that thought. It crumbled his worldliness to ashes, flooded his heart with vain regret, found utterance at last in the whispered words—

“How am I to tell my son?”

His eyes, dwelling on the door of the inner room, revealed the direction of his thought.