The Bradmoor Murder (8 page)

“Mahadol got up. ‘What do you mean?' he said.

“The woman looked at a jeweled watch on her wrist. ‘Do you remember Leouenheim? … Well, I have his report. I got it out of his lodgings at the residency the night before he disappeared. I don't overlook anything.'

“She seemed to study the face of the jeweled watch.

“ ‘I knew what you were doing, Mahadol, and I didn't object to it, don't get a wrong impression. I am quite willing for you to be the Rajah of Gujrat, provided you are generous.'

“There must have been the menace of the devil in her vulture face.

“ ‘No doubt you are generous, but I prefer to be sure of it. I prefer, in fact, to take no chances on your generosity.'

“She fumbled with the jewels on the watch.

“ ‘I can turn Leouenheim's report over to the Foreign Office.'

“She said that the man's face changed, that it became the color of a handful of ashes. He kept repeating what he had said before.

“‘What do you mean?'

“She knew where she had him! She was no fool to go about with threats and nothing behind them. That's what made her the greatest blackmailer in the world; she always had the data.

“She went on.

“ ‘You looked pretty carefully through all the papers Leouenheim left behind him when he followed the Rajah the next day. It was like a German to write a report. You thought of that.… But you were thinking behind events, Mahadol. I had already thought of it.'

“Her voice was soft, like the flying of a killer owl.

“ ‘Don't be misled. The report is in Leouenheim's handwriting; no one could imitate it. It would be authenticated in any Foreign Office in the world.'

“Mahadol did not move. The woman looked leisurely about the room for a cigarette, and when she got it she squatted down on a rug before the creature's big feet. Then she went on:

“ ‘The morning following the night on which the Rajah was supposed to disappear, you
brought the abandoned uniform, pretty well cleaned up—washed, in fact—and showed it to Leouenheim. He took the coat of the uniform with him. The next day he came to see you. And what he said to you put the fear of God in you, Mahadol. He said:

“ ‘ “The Rajah is dead!”'

“She paused and watched the smoke rings from her cigarette climb slowly toward the ceiling. She was in no hurry. She wanted her words to sink in to the bone.

“ ‘Leouenheim didn't know where the Rajah was; he had not seen him; he had talked with no one. He did not know what had occurred; couldn't have known any of the facts connected with the disappearance of the Rajah, except that you had brought to him the abandoned uniform. That was all Leouenheim had to go on.'

“She stopped again. One would have said she was only interested in the smoke rings.

“ ‘You know all that, Mahadol. You had Leouenheim watched. He had not gone out of the residence on that night; no one had visited him; there were no sources of information available to the man. He knew absolutely
nothing, could have known nothing, except, as I have said, that you brought to him the abandoned uniform—and only the coat of that. How could he know that the Rajah was dead?

“ ‘You tried to find out how he knew, and his answer was that the evidences in his possession were conclusive, and that he would make a report to the English resident in Gujrat.

“ ‘That was enough for you, Mahadol!

“ ‘That night Leouenheim disappeared, “followed the Rajah,” you said.'

“The woman laughed.

“ ‘That was one time you told the truth—precisely the truth, Mahadol! Leouenheim did follow the Rajah!'

“She must have looked like a harpy there before him on the floor, with her big bony face—an abominable creature that had winged out of the pit; her voice like a loathsome caress.

“ ‘But clever as you were, Mahadol, you were not so clever as I. I knew the report had been written before Leouenheim went to see you, and I got possession of it while he was in audience with you. He had written it out,
put it into an envelope, and addressed it to the Resident—and I have it.'

“The big creature moved his thick neck as though he felt fingers on it. He tried to hold his composure, but his hands on the arm of the chair jerked. He was like one laid hold of in the dark by an invisible, deadly, illusive assailant. I suppose the woman's soft, loathsome voice behind the vulture face was the worst thing. She had the friendly manner of an ox butcher who has his knife in his sleeve.

“ ‘Don't be disturbed about it, Mahadol!' she said. ‘I'll turn the report over to you. But I want one hundred thousand pounds sterling.… Think about the thing for a moment. For one hundred thousand pounds sterling you can be the Rajah of Gujrat.'

“Then she got up softly and went behind the curtain. She wanted her words, as I have said, to sink in to the bone.

“The heavy curtains cut off the room like a wall across it. Lady Gault was in the dark here, above was the sky sown over with stars, below the hotel gardens, and beyond the white yacht on a sea of amethyst. She knew what
was going to happen. The successful termination of her last adventure was before her. What she had said to Mahadol was no lie. Life was only possible for her in the soft Mediterranean sea, without it she was under a sentence of death. She had no fear of what would happen in the room behind … the trapped prince would divide the loot. And she had that immense uplift of the spirit that attends a sense of victory.

“One can imagine how Mahadol thought about it.

“What had the cursed German written? He knew Leouenheim, a professor from Bonn, a little wizened creature who went about with a lens and a measure of acid—direct, accurate and always right! When he said, ‘The Rajah is dead!' he knew.

“But how could he know? Even a professor from Bonn was not clairvoyant. He had seen only the Rajah's coat, and it had been cleaned. How could this miserable German tell by a coat that its owner was dead?

“And the man's mind, like a beast penned in a trap, kept turning backwards on itself.

“He had taken no chance on Leouenheim.
If the German knew the Rajah was dead, he knew too much. The Rajah had deserted to the Sikhs in the purpose of a German war plot. It was not for Leouenheim to break down that story. He must follow the Rajah. And so Mahadol had acted in a wisdom large and comprehensive to him.…

“He had been swift to act and cunning to conceal the evidences of that action. It was as though he had strangled, weighted and sunk the body of this crime, and here it was, unfastened from the weights, rising into the sun.

“Lady Gault stood for some time before the open window, the cold air on her face. Presently she observed two figures walking in the garden below. They moved slowly without speaking and without touching one another—a young man and a girl, come out into the garden from the dance. The night was like a fairy day. There was a soft moon veiled by a distant mist, and the myriad stars sown over the dome of the sky gave a white light. And the two lovers silent, and in a wrapt melancholy drew down the attention of the woman above them in the window. She leaned over the sill, in the dark, and regarded them …
here was God at His eternal game! Her face hardened into a cynical smile.

“God at His game in the garden below, and she at her game, above, in the sitting room of Mahadol of Gujrat! And she had suddenly a profoundly curious impulse; was this thing that labored with every trick, with every artifice, eternally, without ceasing, to the end that life should continue, merely an impulse in nature, continuous and persistent, but blind—or was it an intelligence behind the world? If it were nature there would be waste and it would often fail. It would labor when it could not win with precisely the same vigor, the same care, the same patience with which it labored when it could win. And was she—that was to say, the human intelligence—in its directing of events superior to this thing?

“She leaned over in the window.

“The two figures walking in the garden advanced and seated themselves on a bench before a flowering vine, and a rift, thinned out in the mist, let the moon through. The faces of the two person were now visible in the light, and she knew them. It was the young Duke of Dorset and the girl from America.

“Lady Gault said that she very nearly laughed!

“God was wasting His effort! The properties just inherited by the young duke were bankrupt—she knew to a shilling the value of every estate in England—the girl had no fortune. A union of these two was out of the question. This youth could not take a duchess into beggary, and he knew it; the girl beside him knew it. The fact, certain and inevitable, was between them like a partition of steel.

“And yet this Thing—this Thing behind the world—had labored with an endless patience to accomplish it. It had drawn them together across three thousand miles of sea; it had lured them, enticed them, drugged them with its opiates, enveloped them with emotions until they dared not touch their hands, trust their voices! It was all done with such superb intelligence up to this point. Lady Gault saw that. All that this boy lacked the girl possessed. She was an exquisite blend of distant bloods. She had the fine nerve, the delicate beauty, the mysterious charm that this old English race needed to revitalize it. Everything was right; amazingly, inconceivably right
… and it was all for nothing! The woman at the window reflected.

“It was as though she had gone to every care to blackmail one who had nothing in his pocket, or had threatened one with her menace when she had no fact behind it.

“And the comprehension of it stimulated her like a victory. She was superior to this Thing. It would lose in the game it played, but she would win in hers. And she rose and went back into the sitting room.

“The Indian was standing, his back against a table, a polo mallet in his hand.

“Lady Gault laughed.

“‘It won't do, Mahadol,' she said, ‘you are not lucky at murder. Break the pastern of Lord Winton's gray pony to-morrow in the first chukker; it will relieve you and set him wild.'

“She passed around him, softly like a cheta around a tethered goat.

“ ‘Leouenheim knew from the Rajah's coat that he was dead, and I knew from a broken seam of moss in the palace garden where the dead man was … you removed every trace in that garden, Mahadol, with a devil's cunning—the
best Khazi in India couldn't have found a spoor to follow, but you could not knit together a bed of broken moss, and you forgot that when the green edges dried up they would leave a brown line that the eye could see.'

“Then she went back behind the curtain.

“Nothing in the garden below had changed, except that the situation seemed to have grown more tense. The two persons talked together, their voices, but not their words, were audible. The woman above them in the darkness could not hear what they said, but she had no need to hear it. It would be the vague, irrelevant talk of persons bent like a bow.

“She got down on the floor by the window, put her elbows on the sill, her face in her hands, and considered them.

“What fool work to bring a thing like this thus far and then fail with it! But would it fail? That was the point of consuming, dramatic interest to the woman. A blind impulse in nature would fail, but an intelligence would find a way to win. Well, let the thing work out a solution if it could … the responsibility was not on her.

“She very nearly uttered the words.

“And then something happened.

“It was, the woman said, as though one watching another under the will of a hypnotist should suddenly realize that the hynotist had faced about on him.

“The responsibility
was
on her!

“The sense of it descended like a pressure. And she could not escape it. She tried. What weakness was this, what obsession, what absurdity? But it was of no use. The responsibility was on
her
!

“God is His universe labored at some great work. Life must go on. It was a chain which for mysterious, unknowable reasons must continue, lest somehow the destiny of all was periled. Did it break, then the labor of all was lost; the immortality of all endangered. Some doom reaching equally to the farthest ancestor; some doom not clear, not possible to get at, but sinister and threatening attended the breaking of that chain. The living, blind and rebellious sometimes denied this, but the dead knew; the very myriads of them seemed to press around her, their faces ghastly!

“She got up, her knees weakened. This old family, strengthened, vitalized, must go on.

“There must be a fifth Duke of Dorset!

“And she staggered about there in the darkness behind that curtain.

“It was not her affair, she was no party; she would not be drawn into this thing. But it was of no use! This thing could not be rejected by any Cain's disclaimer!

“She went back into the lighted chamber.

“The Indian had capitulated. It was in his face.

“She turned on him like a harpy.

“ ‘This thing's ended!' she said. ‘You pay a hundred thousand pounds sterling!'

“Her voice was like the edge of a steel tool.

“ ‘Leouenheim found a fragment of bone in a shoulder seam of the Rajah's coat, bedded in the fibers of the cloth—fixed there, I suppose, by the rubbing of your servants when they washed out the blood stains. That fragment of bone would have meant nothing to me, nothing to you. But when Leouenheim saw it he knew that the Rajah was dead. It was a fragment of the
stapedial bone
of the inner ear. It could only have been removed by an injury resulting in death. She paused. ‘When Leouenheim saw that fragment of bone he knew that
the Rajah was dead … and when I saw that the moss grown over the covering stone of a cistern in the palace garden was broken along the edge I knew where the dead man was.'

“She went out and down the stairway—vicious, bitter! Like Mahadol, she, too, was trapped! But unlike that weak-fibered creature, the unbroken spirit in the woman snarled.