The Complete Simon Iff (11 page)

“Of course it would. You don’t know all, though you must be the devil to know what you do. But Fraser had aortic regurgitation; he died while still speaking to you. We had meant him to say a great deal more. That was where our plan broke down.”

“Still, it was a good plan,” returned Simon Iff cordially. “And the rest is simple. The car is left on a lonely road, with Fraser in it, an evident suicide. And the doctor was to drive past; he was in waiting, after firing the shot into Fraser’s abdomen, for the lights of the patrol or whoever should come up; and he was to certify that the shot had caused death. Why should anyone suspect anything else? Perhaps the doctor would offer to take it away in his car, and lose time in various ways, until the hour of death was no longer certain. Now, Fisher, why didn’t he do as arranged?”

“Clara was full of morphia up to the neck. She did it all, plan and execution, on morphine and hysteria. Oh, you don’t know her! But she broke down at that moment. She was in the car with Leslie; she had a fit of tearing off her clothes and screaming, and he had to struggle with her for an hour. When she came to, it was too late and too dangerous to do anything. When I heard it, an hour later, I knew the game was up. I knew that Fate was hunting us, even as we had thought we were hunting Fate! The two accidents — Fraser’s death and her insanity — were the ruin of all! God help me!”

“So she took morphia!” cried Macpherson. “Then was that what you meant about the Chinaman?”

“Good, Macpherson! You’re beginning to bring your Shakespeare into the bank!”

“But you — how did you know about it?”

“I was ten years in China. I’ve smoked opium as hard as anybody. I recognized the drama from the first as a mixture of opium-visions and sex-hysteria.”

“But I still don’t see why they should play this mad and dangerous game, when it would have been so simple just to steal the money and get away.”

“Well, first, there was the love of the thing. Secondly, it was exceedingly shrewd. The important point was to cover the one uncoverable thing, the theft of the money. Left alone, your business routine would have worked with its usual efficiency. You would have traced the Paris package minute by minute. Instead of that, you never gave it one thought. You were out on a wild goose chase after Fraser. She took you out of the world you know into the world she knows, where you are a mere baby. I could follow her mad mind, because I have smoked opium. You might try that, too, by the way, Macpherson, if the Russian Ballet doesn’t appeal to you!

“And now, Mr. Fisher, I wish you to answer my second question. I have reasons for inclining to acquit you, in part; for giving you a chance. The man I mean to hang is Dr. Leslie. He is one of a common type, the ambitious money-loving Scotsman, clever and handsome, who comes to London to make his way. They become women’s doctors; they seduce their patients; they make them drug-fiends; they perform abortions; and to the extortionate charges for their crimes they add a tenfold profit by blackmail. These men are the curse of London.”

“It’s true; I think he ruined Clara with morphine. I feel sure she was a good girl once.”

“Tell us of your relations with her.”

“I met her a year ago. Her fascination conquered me at once. Oh, you don’t know her! She could do anything with us all! She could tantalize and she could gratify, beyond all dreams. She was a liar to the core; but so wonderful, that even at the moment when reason declared her every word to be a lie, the heart and soul believed, as a nun clings to a crucifix! I was her slave. She tortured and enraptured me by day and night. At this moment I would kill myself to please her whim. She has delighted to make me do degrading and horrible things; she has paid me for a week of agony with a kiss or a smile; she ——”

The boy gasped, almost fainted. “Are there such women?” asked Macpherson. “I thought it was a fairy-tale.”

“I have known three, intimately,” returned Simon Iff: “Edith Harcourt, Jeanne Hayes, Jane Forster. What the boy says is true. I may say that indulgence in drink or drugs tends to create such monsters out of the noblest women. Of the three I have mentioned, the two latter were congenitally bad; Edith Harcourt was one of the finest women that ever lived, but her mother had taught her to drink when yet a child, and in a moment of stress the hidden enemy broke from ambush and destroyed her soul. Her personality was wholly transformed; yes, sir, on the whole, I believe in possession by the devil. All three women ruined the men, or some of them, with whom they were associated. Jeanne Hayes ruined the life of her husband and tore the soul out of her lover before she killed herself; Jane Forster drove a worthy lawyer to melancholy madness. Of their lesser victims, mere broken hearts and so on, there is no count. Edith Harcourt made her husband’s life a hell for three years, and after her divorce broke loose altogether, and destroyed many others with envenomed caresses.”

“You knew her intimately, you say?”

“She was my wife.”

Macpherson remained silent. Fisher was sitting with his head clasped in his hands, his body broken up with sobs.

“Now, Macpherson, we are going to compound felony. I’m glad there was no murder, after all. I want you to let me take Fisher away with me; I’m going to put him with a society of which I am president, which specializes in such cases, without cant or cruelty. Its aim is merely to put a man in the conditions most favorable to his proper development. This was a fine lad until he met the woman who destroyed him, and I know that such women have a more than human power.

“It will be your business to put Miss Clavering in an asylum, if you can catch her, which I sorely doubt. But I think that if you go warily, you may catch Leslie.”

It turned out as he had said. Clara had scented mischief, with her morphine-sharpened intellect and her hysteric’s intuition. She had persuaded Sir Bray Clinton to send her down to a hospital of his own in the country — and on the way she had seized the soul of the chauffeur. They disappeared together, and there was no word of her for many a day. But Leslie had suspected nothing in the visit, or had laughed it off, or had decided to bluff it out; he was arrested, and sentenced to penal servitude for life.

Fisher justified the good opinion of Simon Iff; but his spirit was broken by his fatal love, and he will never do more than serve the society that saved him, with a dog’s devotion.

Macpherson followed the old mystic’s advice; he is to-day the most daring, although the soundest, financier in London. Two nights ago he dined with the magician at the Hemlock Club. “I’ve brought Shakespeare into the Bank,” he said, laughingly, to Simple Simon. “But I’ll keep him out of the Club, this time!”

“Oh well!” said Simon, “to spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgement wholly by their rules is the humor of a scholar; they perfect nature, and are themselves perfected by experience; crafty men condemn them, wise men use them, simple men admire them; for they teach not their own use, but that there is a wisdom without them and above them won by observation. It’s well worth Five Pounds!”

“But,” objected Macpherson, “that’s not Shakespeare; that’s Bacon!”

Simon Iff did not permit himself so much as the antepenumbra of a smile. “William Shakespeare wrote the works of Francis Bacon; that is one of the Official Beliefs of the Hemlock Club.”

“For the Lord’s sake!” cried the Banker. “I’ll never live up to this Club. Man, it’s a marvel!”

“Well,” answered the magician, sipping his wine, “You might try a course of William Blake.”

Simon Iff bounded into the Hemlock Club. He was by all odds the oldest member of the club; but to-day he had the elasticity of a boy, and he was so radiant that some people would have sworn that they actually saw flashes of light about his head. He bounded up the great stairway of the club two steps at a time.

The porters relaxed their solemnity, for the man’s exaltation was contagious. “So Simple Simon’s back from one of ’is Great Magical Retirements again. I wonder wot in ’Eving’s name ’e does.” “I wisht I knew,” replied the other. “The old boy’s ninety, if ’e’s a dy.”

In the lunch-room the atmosphere was certainly in need of all the exhilaration it could find. There were only a dozen men present, and they were talking in whispers. The eldest of them, Sir Herbert Holborne (’Anging ’Olborne of the criminal classes) was neither speaking nor eating, though his lunch lay before him. He was drinking whiskey-and-soda in a steady business-like way, as a man does who has an important task to accomplish.

Simon Iff greeted them with a single comprehensive wave of the hand. “What’s the news, dear man?” he asked his neighbor. “Are you all rehearsing a play of Wedekind’s? Oh, a steak and a bottle of Nuits,” he added to the waiter. “The old Nuits, the best Nuits, for I must give praise to Our Lady of the Starry Heavens!”

“You do not appear to require the stimulus of alcohol in any marked degree,” observed Holborne, in his driest manner.

“Stimulus!” cried Iff; “I don’t take wine to stimulate. It is because I am stimulated, or rather, fortified, that I drink wine. You must always drink what is in tune with your own soul. That’s the Harmony of Diet! It is stupid and criminal to try to alter your soul by drugs. Let the soul be free, and use what suits it. Homeopathic treatment! So give me green tea when I

am exquisite and esthetic like a Ming Vase; coffee when I am high-strung and vigilant as an Arab; chocolate when I am feeling cosy and feminine; brandy when I am martial and passionate; and wine — oh, wine at all times! — but wine especially when I am bubbling over with spiritual ecstasy. Thus, my dear Holborne, I fulfil the apostolic injunction, ‘Whatsoever ye do, whether ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of God!’ Every meal is a sacrament to me. That’s the simplicity of life! That’s why they call me Simple Simon!”

The outburst brought his fellow-clubmen out of their apathy. One of them remarked that, while agreeing with the thesis, and admiring the force and beauty of its expression, it was unseasonable. He wished to tone down the exuberance of the old mystic, for the sake of the general feeling.

“Why, what is wrong?” said Iff more sedately. “Not that anything is ever really wrong; it’s all illusion. But you evidently think there’s a great deal amiss; and” — he looked round the table — “Sir Herbert seems to be at the bottom of it.”

“I will ask you to spare me,” spoke the judge; “this morning I was compelled to perform the most painful duty of my career. Tell him, Stanford!”

“Why, where have you been?” said James Stanford, a long lean lantern-jawed individual who filled the Chair of History at Oxford University.

“Oh, I’ve been everywhere and nowhere,” replied Simon. “But I suppose a historian would take the view — an utterly false and absurd view, by the way — that I have been sitting in my oratory at Abertarff, meditating, for the last two months. I have heard nothing of the world. Are we at war with the Republic of Andorra?”

Stanford leaned forward across the table, while the rest kept silent.

“You remember Briggs?”

“Knew him well at one time; haven’t seen him for ten years or so.”

“Well, this morning Holborne had to sentence him to death for the murder of his nephew.”

“I say, Holborne, that’s a bit thick,” ejaculated Iff, rudely. “Just because you dislike the way he ties his neckties, to go and fit him out with a hemp cravat!”

“I am in no mood for your stupid jokes, Iff,” retorted the Judge, severely. “I had no course but to give effect to the verdict of the jury, which they gave without leaving their seats.” “But your summing-up must have been a masterpiece of imbecility!”

“There was no defence, nor could be. Look here, Iff!” The judge broke out hotly. “I thought you knew men. Can’t you see I’m all broken up over this? I knew Briggs intimately; I was exceedingly fond of him; this has been the shock of my life.” “Oh, well!” returned Iff, “it is done now, and the best thing we can do is to forget it. Listen to what happened to me at Abertarff! One of those nasty skulking tramps came round and set fire to my barn. Luckily the stream was flowing at the time — as it does all the time — but, seeing the danger, it directed its course against the fire, and extinguished it.”

“Another miracle of Simple Simon!” sneered one of the younger men, who knew the old man chiefly from his reputation as a magician.

“Young man!” replied Simon, “I drink to your better understanding — and your better manners. (Waiter, bring me another bottle of this Nuits!) I shall need much wine.” He fixed his small oblique eyes terribly on the offender. “The difference between you and me is this,” he continued. “I don’t believe the silly story I have just told you; whereas you all do believe the silly story Stanford has just told me.”

“Come, come!” said Stanford, “it is stupid to talk like this. You haven’t heard the evidence. You’re simply defending Briggs because you think you know him; because you think you know that he wouldn’t have done such a thing.”

“Oh, no!” said the mystic, “all men are capable of every kind of evil intention. But some are incapable of carrying such intentions into effect, just as a paralytic cannot walk, although he may desire infinitely to do so.”

“There was no difficulty about this murder. It was a quite plain shooting.”

“If you’ll tell me the facts, I’ll prove to you how you are wrong.”

“I wish you could, damn it!” interjected Holborne. “Stanford has made a very special study of this case. He has been in court all the time, and he has verified every piece of evidence by independent research.”

“My university asked me to watch the case,” explained Stanford. “As you know, I am a barrister as well as a historian. Briggs, of course, was at Magdalen with me, though I never knew him well. The Vice-Chancellor begged me to leave no stone unturned to discover a flaw in the procedure, or in the case for the Crown. I failed utterly.”

“Have you your notes with you?” asked Holborne. Stanford nodded. “Suppose we adjourn to the smoking-room? They will take some time to read.”

“This is a lovely piece of luck,” remarked Iff, as they filtered into the adjoining room. “I come back from my isolation, fairly bursting for distraction, and I walk right into the heart of a first-class fairy story.” But he was quite unable to communicate his spirit to the other men; he seemed more of a crank than ever; they liked him, and his theories amused them; but they knew better than to apply mysticism to the hard facts of life.