Beyond this place (19 page)

His nostrils dilated, his face was bloodless. "What sort of a game do you think you and I are in? Do you think we're playing for fun? I know what you're up against! But you . . . you'd let them all tramp over you . . . you want it both ways . . . you want to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. Well, so be

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it! If you don't want me to help you, go your own way, and I'll go mine."

His voice dropped, he rose and threw his cigarette butt in the empty fireplace. Paul stood watching him, wounded and aroused, torn by indecision. It was the word "help," thrown out by Castles, which finally swayed him. Obscure and inscrutable though it might be, he could not reject this proffered aid.

"I'll go," he said. "What time shall I meet you?"

"No!" Castles shook his head. "It's no use pretending. We're finished."

"What time will I meet you?" Paul repeated.

Castles turned slowly, buttoning his coat.

"Do you mean it?" He searched Paul's face intently. "Very well. Outside the High Court. Two o'clock. Tomorrow." He swung round and held the door open.

CHAPTER XXV

ON the following afternoon, which was grey and damp, Paul met the ex-convict as arranged. The High Court was a noble edifice of fine grey stone, built in the Palladian style, with moulded pillars set into the tall portico. At the entrance in a central niche, a marble figure with bandaged eyes stood holding the scales of justice.

Castles, who was shaved and respectably dressed in a drab suit with a white collar and black tie, apparently knew his way about. He led Paul through a side archway and up a broad circular staircase to a heavy mahogany door, guarded by an official to whom, without a flicker of his impassive face, he handed two stamped admission cards. When the officer had inspected the cards he laid his finger on his lips, to ensure silence, then ushered them through the door into a narrow public gallery where they squeezed into two vacant seats.

Below, lay the crowded court — the robed judge on his dais at

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one end, the jury box to the left, the witness stand to the right, the well of the court, filled with figures in wig and gown, and in the centre, the dock, where a young woman in a cheap Nottingham shawl stood between two motionless bareheaded policemen. Grey and sombre though it was, all this broke upon Paul's vision with blinding force. Gripping the gallery rail, he leaned forward, his gaze bent upon Lord Oman. His lordship was an aged figure, of more than average stature and stooping slightly, as though beneath the weight of honours. His face, the colour of port wine against his snowy ermine, was haughty, fixed in implacable severity. On either side of the beak-like nose his heavy jowls hung down, dangling like the dewlaps of a bulldog. From beneath the brooding thatch of eyebrows, his eyes looked out, senile yet formidable.

A pressure on Paul's arm made him turn to Castles, who now pointed towards a figure rising at the front of the court.

"Don't bother about Oman, he's in his dotage." The words grated on his ear. "There, getting ready to speak . . . your real friend . . . Sprott."

Paul felt a faint sweat break out upon him as he looked in the direction indicated, and observed the compact form of the prosecuting counsel in curled wig and sombre black robe. His hard, close-bitten cheeks and rounded chin showed clean-cut in the twilight of the court, he pursed his mobile lips and sent his fine eyes darting, like an actor, searching out his audience, as, after a due pause, he began to address the jury in a final, measured recapitulation of the case.

Sordid and wretched, the facts were of the simplest. The accused was a woman of the streets, a prostitute of the poorest class who, since the age of seventeen — she was now twenty-four — had followed her trade in a mean quarter of the city. She had, inevitably, a "protector," the man who "watched for her" at the street corner, who lived with her upon her pitiful immoral earnings, who, in fact, preyed upon her and often beat her brutally. One night, without provocation, when she was drunk, in a surge of revulsion and remorse, she had stabbed him with a kitchen knife, then turned the weapon, but ineffectually, upon herself.

It scarcely seemed as if this miserable story would bear elabora-

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tion, but Sprott dwelt upon it, and all its sordid aspects, in dramatic detail, and with withering admonition, indicating to the jury that no thought of extenuating circumstances should cause them to compromise their verdict. If the accused had, of deliberate intent, slain her paramour, then unquestionably she was guilty of murder. It appeared to Paul as if the prosecutor were revelling in the fair execution of his duty, drawing from his own exposition of the vicious degradation of the accused, an almost histrionic satisfaction, using his utmost powers to crush and to condemn.

When he concluded, with a final dramatic gesture, a thrust with the actual knife showing how it had pierced the victim's heart, he sat down amidst a deathly stillness.

"Take a good look at him," Castles's hoarse voice was keyed to a whisper. "That's how he worked on Mathry."

Even without this prompting, staring rigidly at the prosecutor, Paul was conscious of a surge of extraordinary emotion, so violent and intense it turned him sick and brought a cold dampness to his brow. In his past life he had experienced instinctive manifestations of dislike — certain natures are mutually antagonistic, and at first sight a wave of animosity passes between them. But this present feeling held more, far more, than that ordinary aversion. Dark and predestined, it welled from the very depths of his being. He thought of all that this man had said of his father, the merciless and unwarranted vituperation which he had heaped upon him. He remembered, from the photograph, the trapped and hunted look upon his father's face as he bore the cross-examination of the prosecutor, of this man, now lounging at ease here, before his eyes. Oh, it was true that familiarity must breed contempt, and constant usage dull even the finest sensibility. Nevertheless, there was, in the studied deportment of this agent of the Crown, something so impervious, so bereft of ordinary humanity, it roused in Paul's breast a wild thirsting for revenge.

Suddenly there was silence. The speech for the defense was over, the judge had concluded his summing up. With a shuffling of feet, the jury retired, the court quickly cleared.

"Four o'clock," Castles remarked, drawing back his pale lips. "Just in nice time for them all to have tea."

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"How can you?"

Castles shrugged with cynical indifference.

"It's all in the day's work for them . . . Oman and Sprott, Unlimited. I wonder how many they've knocked off between them in the last fifteen years. Want to go out?"

"No," Paul answered between his teeth, and turned away.

His neighbour on the other side was eating sandwiches from a paper bag with the air of a habitue — a hollow-chested little man with scanty hair plastered across his waxen scalp. He leaned over confidentially.

"You two came in a bit late. You missed the best of the sport. Sprott wasn't too bad in his final address but you ought to have heard him this morning. Gave it to her hot and strong. Scrapings of the gutter . . . panderin' to the dregs of humanity ... he didn't half make her cry. All over bar the shouting now. I give the jury another ten minutes. She'll swing all right. By the looks of that foreman — I bet his wife nags him — there won't be no recommendation to mercy. Excitin', ain't it? I'd rather see this than a football match, any day."

A pasteboard ticket to see the show. Were they all like that, Paul wondered. The hot air of the gallery sent a flush of nausea over him. The jury were back now, and the judge, all of them.

"Guilty!"

Of course . . . the little man, the expert, had predicted it. But not the scream from the poor wretch, cowering beneath her shawl, in the dock, nor the fit of coughing, the prolonged and racking paroxysm which followed. His lordship, frigidly annoyed, was forced to wait until it ceased. Then the black cap — Paul watched with staring eyeballs as the crape was laid upon the judge's head and, as the words came forth, "to hang by the neck till you are dead," fifteen years were rolled away, he felt all that his father must have felt, he writhed in torment, tried to cry out and could not, fought for breath, came to himself clutching the hand-rail of the gallery.

"It's all over," Castles said, agreeably. "Not bad for a matinee."

In a daze, Paul accompanied him down the staircase, out through the wide forecourt. Already the newsboys were calling out the verdict. As they came into the street Castles paused.

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"Shall we go somewhere for a bite?"

He seemed trying to estimate Paul's reactions, cold and curious, as though he watched an insect pinned beneath a magnifying glass. Yet there was more in it than that . . . behind that death-mask brow Paul sensed the presence of emotions, darker even than his own.

"I couldn't eat anything."

Castles put a hand on his companion's arm.

"Why don't we go back to my place for a drink? I think we need it."

"All right." In the seething welter of his emotions Paul cared neither what he did, nor where he went.

They walked off together.

CHAPTER XXVI

WHEN they got to the back room in the Lanes Paul sank into a chair while Castles carefully pulled down the blinds, took a bottle from the cupboard and poured out two drinks.

"We've earned this," he remarked, as he handed Paul the glass. "It won't hurt you. I got it from the right place."

The stimulant warmed Paul's stomach and steadied his nerves. In his distress he felt he needed it, and because of that need gave no thought to the effect which it might have upon his present mood. Never in his life had he known such a dark and hopeless bitterness of soul. He emptied his glass at a gulp and made no protest when, tilting the bottle, Castles refilled it for him.

Placing his drink upon the mantelpiece the ex-convict stood for a moment observing the young man, out of the corner of his eye. Stealthily, he moistened his lips, conscious that the crisis was at hand. Yes, that unique combination of chances he had so often longed for was at last before him. He must not miss the opportunity afforded him by that thin spill of papers thrust into his palm with a muttered injunction during exercise in the yard, a

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few days before his release. Mathry, the prisoner in Stoneheath, meant nothing to him — in any case, he was finished and done for, a lifer without the slightest hope of remission. To Paul he gave not a thought, except to regard him as a heaven-sent instrument of revenge.

At the time of his "disgrace" Charles Castles had been trust officer for the large Midland Counties Insurance Company. A bachelor, with sporting tastes, he lived well, went out occasionally with the local hunt, regularly patronized the neighboring race-meetings. To such a man, astute and venturesome, it was second nature to gamble "on a good thing." Thus, when information of a most private nature reached him of an amalgamation planned between his own organisation and the small Haddon Hall Fire and Life Assurance Company — a jointure which would prove immensely favourable to the minor concern — he sensed this as the opportunity of a lifetime, and borrowing from the Midland Counties funds under his control, he bought fifty thousand shares of the Haddon Hall stock.

The purchase was achieved discreetly, yet the amount involved was so large that a rumour began to circulate, and after some time reached the ears of the authorities. To Castles's dismay, an examination of his books was demanded by the sheriff, who was then Mr. Matthew Sprott. Immediately Castles went to Sprott, whom he had often met socially and, having freely acknowledged his culpability, asked him to stay the investigation for a mere ten days. Quite correctly, the sheriff refused. Under his direction Castles was rigorously investigated, prosecuted, found guilty, and given the maximum sentence. In the interim the Haddon shares had tripled in value. But instead of making seventy thousand pounds, Charles Castles received seven years' penal servitude.

To a man of his disposition it was unforgettable — always, with a deadly and increasing venom, he hated Sprott, sought unceasingly for revenge without danger to himself. And now . . . after all these years . . . had come Mathry's son ... an idealistic young idiot, hell-bent on the melodramatic folly of "clearing his father's name." Good God, the mere thought of it was enough to make a cat laugh. In the circles wherein Castles now moved, all that pertained to police activity was a matter of common knowl-

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edge and so it was not long before he had full word of Paul's inexpert striving. How easy, thereafter, for one of his subtlety of mind to seize the advantage.

Castles could resist no longer. With a tremor, almost of intoxication, he yielded. Composing his features to their mask-like blankness, he advanced towards Paul.

"I must admit you took it well this afternoon," he said, seating himself on the arm of the other's chair. "You made yourself go through with it, didn't you?"

Paul gave no answer.

"Perhaps I was unfair to you last night." An inflection of grudging acknowledgement crept into Castles's voice. "After all, things have turned out bad for you. With everything gone wrong, and the police badgering you, I don't blame you for losing heart." He paused and shook his head. "You're battering your head against a stone wall. That's why I wanted you to see that precious pair today. Oh, not so much Oman — he's an old, broken-winded hound now, though he still likes to follow the scent of blood. It's Sprott I really mean." As Castles articulated the prosecutor's name his face darkened, and despite his effort to maintain a note of irony, his tone turned hard as stone.

"He's the master mind of the system, the most cursed reactionary in the city of Wortley. I couldn't tell you all he's done — always indirectly, always under cover. He's the one who put your father into the hell of Stoneheath. And so long as he's around you'll never get him out."