Part 28 (1/2)

”Ah! Again?” he said, with a little kindling in his eyes.

”'Again'?” Then I saw. He had seen Miss Angela during the last hour, and she had doubtless spoken of my own call on her. ”Yes, again,” I answered.

That third stage had a curious close. That close was nothing less than the reunification of those two halves of the Giant to the fabulous splitting into two of whom I have likened my mental state. They came together again, these two halves, as the two forces come together that make the thunder clap ... but of this in a moment.

After several moments of increasingly rapid talk, we were both standing, he defiantly with one hand on the edge of the mantelpiece, I at the other end of the hearth. He had risen a moment before at certain words of mine, as if to inform me that our interview was over. Once I had seen his eyes move towards the place where the bell-rope should have been, but that lay, a red woollen heap, on the floor behind me, and he would have had to pa.s.s me in order to get into his bedroom. He had found an appearance of forcefulness in the use of violent words.

”Why, d.a.m.n your impudence!” he bl.u.s.tered. ”Look here, my good man! If you suppose I'm going to be talked to like this by you or anybody else----”

”Then deny the fact,” I said for the fifth time.

”I'll not deny or anything else till I know what right----”

”I know it comes late, but I've spoken of it before.”

”Yes--sneaking behind my back!” he said hotly, probably again remembering his recent conversation with Miss Angela.

”To your face.”

”Yes--and if it hadn't been for something else I should have told you then what an interfering devil you were!”

”Merridew,” I said slowly, ”it's the last time.”

He sneered.

”I'm glad of that--and confound you for a meddler!” he cried. ”If that's all you came for, get out, and I'll get somebody else to look after my trunk!”

We were silent for a s.p.a.ce, and in that s.p.a.ce I heard the voice of that human Jeffries, almost pitifully seeking still to save him. ”Give him every chance,” sobbed that Jeffries, ”he's only a weakling--you could crush him mentally as you could physically--it would be little better than infanticide--try him again--show him that red thing on the floor--and that carved thing on the door.”

But now Archie in his turn seemed to have become divided. He had suddenly turned white. But an habitual pertness still persisted in his tongue. I don't think this had any relation whatever to the physical peril he seemed at last to have realised he was in. I stood over him huge and black as Fate.... ”Spare him if you can,” that generous bloodthirsty devil in me muttered quickly.

”Merridew,” I said heavily, ”you'll disappear to-morrow morning ...

_or_----”

”Shall I?” he bragged falteringly....

”And you won't come back. I shall stay here to-night and put you into the train myself.”

”Then you'll have to sleep in the bath--and you should know by this time how small that is,” came from his lips.

And yet it came only from his lips. His terrified heart had no part in it. His only chance now was to have screamed aloud.

But he did not scream. Instead, he stooped swiftly, caught up the poker, and struck at my head with it.

It was then that the thunder-clap came, and that I was James Herbert Jeffries, whole, and a murderer. Swiftly as Archie and I came together the halves of that Giant came together. Instinctively I had guarded my head, perhaps realising--I cannot say--that a single drop of blood might mean for me precisely what I intended to do to him; but it mattered little whether blood blinded my eyes or not. Another redness gorged me, and then, my mind became whitely blind. As colours are lost on a disc that revolves, so all my plans and preparations spun and mingled. All was there, yet nothing was there. For an instant my visual memories of that pleasant, dimity-papered apartment stood separate; my own old experiences and new divinations also stood separate; I saw ahead, three or four minutes ahead, his struggles in my great arms, my left arm about his ankles, my right hand over his mouth, the red of the woollen bell-rope against his white neck ... and then all wheeled hideously together....

I was upon him, smothering him with my bulk, and wondering even as I bore him backwards to the door whether I myself was bleeding....

The fourth stage was characterised throughout by an extraordinary quietness. There was the light sound of the turning of paper in it, for I had to search in a pile of old books and papers for his shorthand pad and to make sure I had the right one--I had to take from my breast pocket another sheet of paper and to glance at that also to make sure that it also was the right one--and then I had to approach the bedroom door and to drop this into his pocket....