A Case in Camera
regret afterwards. Compunction? Sigh? Regret? For what? It had had to be
done, and it had been done. As gladly would he have accompanied his
friend's spirit on that last flight of all, but, that denied him,
unsorrowing he remained behind, ground-officer henceforward to an angel.
What more than this is death to those who for four years have been
crucified all the day long? What else is life, their own life or that
other-own their friend's, when it is held at this instant readiness? The
coil about it all is not for them, but for us, who peer about for
bullets and cartridge-cases and holes in the floor. Chummy's every
breath would not have been his absolution had he _not_ laughed with
Esdaile's children and, with Joan perched on the carrier behind him,
cheerfully fouled the Santon roads with the stench of his exhaust. He
had _no_ burden to assume. He had, on the contrary, an urgent task to
carry on. And in the carrying-on of it he knitted his uncomprehending
brows over Maxwell's _Transactions_ and _Proceedings_ and carried a dead
man's portrait on his wrist.
III
Instead of going straight to the office that morning I waited in some
ante-room or other while Monty took in his drawing. Somebody else
waiting there, who may or may not have known me, observed that it was a
fine morning, but I am not sure that I replied. I was in no mood for
exchanging casual remarks about the weather.
For while I still marveled--and I need hardly say rejoiced--admiration
and joy must wait for the present. It might be some little time before I
saw Monty again (he had told me he was making business calls during a
great part of the day and working until late into the night), and
another point had struck me. This was his new confidence that it would
presently be "all right" between himself and Audrey Cunningham. I had
had a glimpse, if not yet the full revelation, of where Smith stood; but
I did not yet clearly see how this affected Mrs. Cunningham. Yet in
Monty's mind a connection obviously existed. He came out of the editor's
den again, folding up the brown paper that had enwrapped his drawing and
putting it carefully into his pocket.
"Brown paper's scarce," he said. "I've used this piece four times
already. And I undo all the knots in my string too. Well, which way are
you going?"
We left the office and, barely a hundred yards away, turned into the
Temple. Presently he resumed our previous conversation by asking me what
I thought of his guess; and I told him. I told him also my difficulty
about what his own engagement had to do with this.
"Do with it?" he repeated as we began to pace backward and forward along
King's Bench Walk. "It's a good deal to do with it--if that about
Smith's right, of course. You see, you hardly know Dawdy. She thinks you
don't like her very much----"
"Then I hope you'll take the first opportunity----" I began hurriedly,
but he waved his hand.
"Oh, don't you worry about it. I don't suppose she means it. And whether
she does or not it seems to me this is exactly where I come in."
"Then you see more than I do," I remarked.
"Don't you? I mean her taking sudden fancies of that kind. I'm not
superstitious myself--silly I call it--but she's a mass of it.
Theatrical people are, I've heard, and anyway she is. I think that beast
Cunningham started her off. When she used to sit up at night waiting for
him to come home she used to do all sorts of stupid things--sit there
counting slowly, and if he didn't come before she counted a hundred he
wouldn't come at all--counting the taxis that passed too--watching the
clock--beastly. Filthy time she had. I hope I'm somewhere near that
brute at the Resurrection."
Presently he swallowed his anger and continued.
"Well, about when Philip offered us that studio, that accident happened,
and everything was at sixes and sevens. Philip began it, stopping all
that time in the cellar and behaving like a lunatic when he did come up.
What his game was--well, you can search me. So first Philip starts
playing the goat, and then there was all that fuss about Mrs. Esdaile
going away, and Philip staying on day after day, always saying he was
going and everything was perfectly all right but never budging an inch,
mind you. Well, it began to get on Dawdy's nerves. And I began to catch
it too. She said _I'd_ something up my sleeve as well, and of course I
had, about that pistol. And then there was that time when we took her
wardrobe down into the cellar."
"Yes, tell me about that."
"Absolutely nothing to tell. That's all Dawdy's fancy too. If there'd
been anything funny he wouldn't have left the key in the door, would
he?"
"He took it out afterwards."
"It was there for some days anyway. In fact, I took another box of
Dawdy's down, but I came straight up again. You're all wrong about that
cellar."
"Hubbard doesn't think so."
"What does he say?"
"He doesn't actually say anything; he doesn't know; but he wouldn't be
surprised if it turned out Philip had some sort of a portable
installation down there. But don't take this from me. I know nothing
about these things."
"Wetherhead knows about them," Monty mused....
"Go on about Mrs. Cunningham."
"Well, as I tell you, it got on her nerves. She began to say she was fed
up with men and silly things like that. Didn't want to get married at
all; wanted to go and live with some girl. And then one day----"
But here he suddenly stopped, and for a reason I could easily guess.
Undoubtedly at this point she had made independent investigations, which
Monty either knew or suspected and didn't want to talk about. His
hesitation over, he continued.
"Well, so it dragged on, until one evening I met her after rehearsal,
and that was the finish. Absolutely done in she was; ten hours that day
and nothing but a bun and a glass of milk. Of course, I saw she was all
tuckered up, and I didn't want to take much notice of what she
said--just gave her something to eat and tried to calm her down. But it
was no good. When I called at Oakley Street the next morning she'd
gone--gone to stop with this other girl; and in a week the Company was
off."
In spite of Mollie's injunction I ventured to ask a question.
"Did she return the ring you gave her?"
"No, and that's one of the reasons why I think it might be all right
yet. But the chief reason's this. She's got it into her head that it all
started with that crash. Superstition, but there was no arguing with
her. Well, suppose I'm right in what I told you, and Smith didn't really
shoot that chap at all--didn't shoot him in the way we thought at first,
I mean. It would be just like Dawdy to say that took the bad luck all
off. She's always either up or down, poor darling. A rotten life she's
had."
I nodded, remembering Mollie's words: "She _would_ be just the woman to
take a hint of that kind." Although Monty didn't know it, Audrey _had_
lost her ring, _would_ regard the loss as an omen, and the loss had
probably taken place shortly before Monty had met her at the stage-door.
It _did_ seem to follow, even as Monty said, that with the removal of
the whole Case out of the regions of ordinary crime, there might be an
end also of the nightmare shadows that had oppressed Audrey Cunningham's
soul.
IV
This record has already taken so many turns and windings, anticipations
and doublings back upon itself, that I cannot see that one more
excursion will either make or mar it. Many pages ago I wrote that the
Case _was_ a Case, complete, self-contained, and independent of the
larger issues and forces in which it is nevertheless paradoxically
rooted and involved. And though the Case as an entity is approaching its
close, the outside influences continue. The _Scepter_ decision, for
example, is being appealed against, and Mackwith tells me that there is
every likelihood that it will end up in the Lords. The Press, from which
I shall shortly retire, seems to be attaining something like a real
policy with regard to the matters of which I have spoken, and,
encouraged by certain signs of Ministerial yielding, has taken still
better heart. Cairo to the Cape has for the present failed, and Charles
Valentine Smith did not succeed in becoming a member of that gallant
Expedition; but other great projects are in meditation, and this very
day the announcement is made of an impending flight round the world
itself, for which Cooks and Ansons and Drakes and Dampiers of little
more than half my age will eagerly flock to enter. The gloomy
forebodings of Hills, my fellow-clubman, that attack and defense will
presently become a matter of black typhus cultures do not at present
seem likely to be fulfilled, not altogether for the reasons publicly
given, but for quite other ones; but the chances are that he is right
about gas, and that one day we may have to carry fans and
box-respirators as we now carry umbrellas. What must come must come,
even as it came to our fathers before us, and we, like they, can only do
the duty of our day. The rest is out of our hands, and it is impotence
and vanity even to dream too far ahead. So to our immediate business, of
which my own present portion is the final putting to bed of our Case.
With the permission of Philip Esdaile, A.R.A., and the others, I bid you
to yet another breakfast. This time it is a wedding breakfast, and a
double one. Hardly an hour ago Joan Merrow, spinster, became Mrs.
Charles Valentine Smith, and Audrey Cunningham (_née_ Herbert) Mrs.
Montagu Rooke. Joan was married at Holy Trinity, Sloane Street, and
wears her full bridal attire; but Audrey Rooke wears the gray costume
and the black satin hat (that sticks out on each side of her head like
the serifs of a capital "I") in which she walked from the Registry
Office. And there is present the same party, with the addition of
Chummy, with which this story opened.
V
Again the breakfast recess was full of charming light. About the walls
the love-making butterflies danced when carafes were moved, and only the
flowers on the table were different--for it was early in a halcyon
autumn, and the mulberry outside had already begun to turn. The faces of
the Esdailes and the Rookes were enviably brown, for Monty and Audrey
had spent three weeks at Santon and the whole party had returned
together; and Joan, who knows perfectly well that I adore her, had very
simply and sweetly come over to my side of the table and linked her
hands for a moment round my arm. Then, after a warm little pressure, she
had returned to Chummy again, who had risen. He was staying at an hotel
in Gloucester Road, must get out of his wedding garments, and would then
return to take Joan away.
"Don't change your mind and not come back," Joan called after him; and
he waved his hand from the door and was off.
"What about Joan? Isn't it time she was changing too?" Philip hinted.
Mollie gave him a sidelong look. It was understood that Philip was
willing at last to explain himself, and that look was Mollie's comment
on the situation. Mingled with its fondness were faint pity, irony,
wonder at us. It said, as plainly as need be, "That tiresome business
all over again! What a sex!"
But all she openly said was, "Come along then, Joan--you too,
Audrey--never let it be said we aren't properly submissive----"
And they too departed.
Instantly Cecil Hubbard swung round his chair to face Philip. Philip
gave a backward glance through the French windows. He seemed to derive
some reassurance from the sunlight that made vivid the garden outside.
"Well...?"
"Well...."
The words came simultaneously from the two men. As for the rest of us,
we were content for the present to let Cecil Hubbard make the running.