Only seven were hanged
"Bravo! Bravo! You shall have time! You shall have air! Then you
will confess failure! The victory I have striven for! A fateful
Christmas morn, my lord! I shall open a window. This atmosphere is
vitiated. Then for your admission! Your confession! Your judgment!"
The waiter rose and walked to the nearest window, the cudgel under
his arm; and as he walked and while his hands were on the heavy
curtains he still talked.
"He that liveth by the sword shall perish by the sword, my lord! The
_lex talionis_ code! Remember the Book of Exodus, chapter
twenty-one--_then thou shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth
for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound
for wound, stripe for stripe----"_
A shuffle behind him! He wheeled just in time.
There, within a yard of him almost, towered the judge, a chair swung
high above his head, poised to strike.
The judge's shout mingled with the shout of the waiter. Down came
the chair! The waiter leaped and swung his bludgeon.
Crash!
The crack of wood against wood! The chair broke, but the judge still
held a carved leg with which he struck with all his strength. The
blow caught the waiter on the shoulder; but the bludgeon went up and
fell on the judge's head at the same moment.
Both men fell; the judge like a log, straight to the floor as a tree
falls before the ax of the lumberman; the waiter sideways, grabbing
for a hold as he went down.
The chair leg flew across the room and rattled against the wall. But
the bludgeon remained in the waiter's hand, glued to his fingers by a
grip that had never held it so well since Kartarus swung it when he
plundered England.
The waiter was on his feet in a moment. He looked down at the judge,
bludgeon still in his right hand. For all his modern clothes he
might have been Kartarus then! The poise was that of the barbarian,
the same grim elasticity of body, the bludgeon gripped as only that
savage hand could grip it, the out-thrust aggressive chin, even the
wisp of dark hair that trailed across forehead to the left temple and
hung close to the left ear. Kartarus!
A feeble moan came from the prostrate judge.
The waiter bent down and looked into the wrinkled face; then stooped,
still holding his cudgel, and lifted the heavy form and propped it in
the presidential chair. A terrible wound was on the judge's head, a
wound that would have killed most men outright. And yet the waiter
had not struck with all his force.
He poured out some wine and held it to the judge's lips, and dabbed
the blood that streamed down from the gaping wound. The judge opened
his eyes dazedly.
"Who are you?" he murmured.
"My lord, my lord!"
He gave the judge a little more wine. The judge's hand was raised
feebly and his finger pointed to the flask which the waiter had laid
on the table at the beginning of that eventful night.
"My lord, there is nothing in that flask but water. It was my trick
on you. Just my trick. Only water, my lord. Are you feeling
better?"
The judge was far from better. He was not only losing blood rapidly;
he was also losing consciousness. His eyes were glazing and his head
drooped.
His lips moved.
"You will not escape," he murmured. "You will be caught,
blackmailer!"
"My lord, you brought this upon yourself. I did not come here to
assault you. I came to conquer you logically, not by force. I came
to smash your proud, domineering pose, that crust of legal
self-deception and self-esteem that has blinded you----"
"You poisoned these gentlemen!"
The waiter glanced at the sleeping members of the Clue Club. One or
two had slightly changed their positions like men who slumbered
uneasily.
"All they had was knock-out drops, my lord. How do you feel?"
But the judge did not reply, for his strength was fading. His great
head fell on the high back of his chair, the ability to support
himself went out of his limbs. He would have slid to the floor had
not the waiter caught him. But he could not hold the judge in the
chair. The wounded man's eyes were closed by this time, his clothes
were drenched in blood all down one side. The waiter put his arms
around him and gently lowered him to the floor and laid a cushion
under his head.
He brought a basin of water, a sponge and a towel and began to bathe
the judge's wound.
Daylight was now flooding the apartment. The candles had burned to
their ends and smoked in the sockets. Outside was a white world.
Snow lay thick on the houses and street, on the window sills, on the
electric standards, on the telephone cables. Snow was falling
steadily, coming down from the gray sky in large flakes that gave the
impression of an endless sheet of spotted muslin being unrolled in
front of the windows.
The judge's lips trembled. The waiter bent his ear close.
"Judgment of death!"
Was it a verdict or merely the semiconscious repetitions of a fading
brain?
"Your secret is safe with me, my lord," whispered the waiter. "I
have kept it for many years. I have kept it because I have schemed
to come to you. It was when I was in prison that I first had the
idea----"
A change came over the judge's countenance. His breathing was now
fast and feeble. A strange pallor spread from his throat to his
forehead, his eyes seemed to sink into cavities, and the closed lids
gave a suggestion of ghastly transparency. It was as though the
glazed balls were gazing at the waiter through skin veils.
"Who are you?" he breathed with difficulty.
The waiter sat up, rigid; but before he could answer the judge's
weary tone came again, this time with a touch of clarity that
thrilled.
"I remember! You were--the boy!"
His head fell back.
"I am your son!" cried the waiter.
Did a sigh escape the judge's blue lips? Perhaps. But now there was
stillness--utter stillness.
The waiter put his hand over the judge's heart. There was no
beating. He touched the eyes. There was no flicker, no reaction.
The waiter rose to his feet. He took the sponge and slopped it
quickly over that part of the table where he had sat. He wiped every
glass he had touched. He went over every place where he might have
left a telltale mark and obliterated any possibility of detection.
He rolled the blood-stained towel into a ball and placed it on the
fire so that it would burn quickly. He picked up the black cap, the
book, and the photograph, and pocketed them. He slipped a pair of
rubber gloves on his hands and lifted the flask of water which he had
pretended was an antidote to the dope and drained it into a
flowerpot. He slipped to and fro, doing a few other things so that
his trail would be lost. He washed out the bottle from which he had
dealt the doped drink.
Finally he stepped to a cupboard and took out an overcoat and cap.
He donned the coat and pulled the cap well down over his brows. He
lifted the bludgeon and hefted it. He noted that his fingers fitted
into the burnt grooves, that he could wield this weapon as if it had
been made for him. He put it into his coat pocket.
He was at the door when a sound caused him to turn.
One of the members of the Clue Club was stirring, stretching his
limbs, yawning, with closed eyes, as one who comes slowly back to
life.
The waiter slid outside before he was observed and closed the door
softly behind him.
No hypothetical conditions now prevailed.
CHAPTER XI
_Lex Talionis_
In his attempt to prove that the taking of human life for murder was
unjustifiable the waiter had taken a human life.
He marched along the street with his cap pulled down, his overcoat
collar buttoned up over his chin, his hands thrust deep into his
pockets. The bludgeon was hidden because he had thrust it up his
sleeve. There were very few people about--a stray milkman, a postman
with his parcels and letters shielded from the falling snow by his
wide waterproof cape, a solitary policeman at a corner.
The waiter marched on, head bent so that his face was invisible.
Only his eyes looked out on the white world.
From a side street came the sound of singing. A group of waits,
ushering in the day of days in all the year, were beginning a hymn:
"_Peace on earth, Good will to men!_"
The waiter hurried past the side street and pursued his way. He had
no time to lose. But he knew his objective: it was some distance
outside the city, a house near the river. There he would find what
he wanted, what he most required for the moment--safety, a place to
hide from his fellows. Good will to men!
It had not been an easy affair to make his call at the Clue Club.
Before he had taken upon himself the job of waiter for one night he
had been on the run with the law at his heels. The law had been on
his heels, it seemed to him, ever since he could remember. The law
was his greatest enemy. Between it and him there was an endless
feud, a ceaseless war, waged with varying, minor victories for both
sides. He still wore the brand of the most recent victory of the
law--his prison clothes!
But although the law had won several rounds, he believed himself
superior to it, and his boldness had given him victory as often as
defeat. He had learned the law by opposing it. His life had been
one long conflict with it. A man discovers a great deal about an
antagonist if he fights long enough.
This man had been on the run for more than a week. He had broken
prison after careful and deliberate consideration, for he had had
plenty of time to work out his plan. He had served a term in a
convict jail long enough to know every routine, every minute detail,
and one day he had escaped.
As he ploughed his way through the snow he remembered every item of
that escape, he went over every point. The first twenty-four hours
had been the worst, the most exacting, in many ways. They had been
the hours during which he had separated himself from the prison with
all the speed and all the cunning of his very alert brain.
Everywhere warders were searching for him. The local police were on
the watch. The civil population were looking out. He had been a
hunted thing that traveled over the landscape as a fox travels,
furtively.
Everything was against him from the moment he took the chance of
freedom into his hands. The very weather was an enemy. His only
food for forty-eight hours had been what he stole from the kitchen of
a cottage on the moors. He had stolen that food with a wild,
terrible joy--the joy of finding something to stay the hunger that
made him savage. He had slept one night under the seat of a railway
coach in a siding where there was a line of disused coaches. He came
out before dawn to stagger on his way toward the city.
If only he had been able to get rid of his prison clothes he would
have faced the daylight, but it was not until he reached the suburbs,
the outer suburbs, that he was able to get a coat and a pair of
trousers from a shabby clothing store, and these garments he pulled
over his prison clothes for warmth. The nights were bitter and the
frost chilled him through and through.
He had two agonies grinding him. The more pressing for the time
being was the deadening sensation caused in his limbs by the absence
of heat. This made him feel as if his body was brittle. Only a man
of very strong frame could have stood the cold and hunger of the next
few days; and this man's suffering went deeper than his bone. It
went to his soul. During that week, while he was making his way
across country, and while he was hiding about the outer suburbs, he
was as a beast of the field. He ate anything on which he could lay
his hands. He gnawed at refuse which he took from dustbins at night.
He prowled like a vulture among the byways of the city's fringe,