The Complete Simon Iff (55 page)

"Fancied!" cried Camilla indignantly. "I lived with him for years. I saw the scars upon his body; I watched the cancer eat away his mind."

"You give your case away, Miss Craig," returned Iff, expostulating. "You force us to remember that this statement was drawn up by a lawyer who was also a lunatic, with ideas of persecution. You remember that, towards the end, he..." His speech was interrupted by a hubbub at one door of the saloon.

"All this must stop," cried a harsh voice. "It has gone on too long."

It was the captain who sprang to action. "Turn her out!" he cried. But Simon Iff put his hand on the mate's shoulder. "You're in command of this ship, Mr. Mate," he said, "and I think that we ought to hear what this lady has to say."

An old woman was walking towards the platform. Every neck was craned to look at her. No one present could have doubted the truth for a moment. Her hair was white, though it showed that it had once been as red as Camilla's. But enough remained of fierceness in the eyes, of voluptuousness in the mouth, and of arrogance in the nose, to declare them mother and daughter. Instinctively the room was hushed.

"My name," she said, "was Clare O'Grady. I remember very little of my early life. My first clear memories take me to New Orleans. I lived in the Red Light District. On my professional cards was printed 'The Little Red Devil,' with an obscenely worded invitation. One night, a party landed from an English ship. Two of the men were not in argument. The youngest of the party, a bigger fool than the rest of them, you may think, was defending the women of the District. 'It isn't their fault,' he shouted, 'they aren't given a chance. I could take one of these women right here, and make a damn fine thing of her.' The others immediately took him up. theydared him to make his word good. 'By God, I will,' he said, walking straight to my door.

"The first words he ever spoke to me were, 'Will you marry me?' Of course I never thought he meant it, and I joked with him. 'Will you?' he insisted. 'Of course I would,' I answered. 'Come to my ship at eleven to-morrow morning,' he said, 'and we'll get married right away. You may want to buy yourself some things,' and he pulled out a one hundred dollar bill, and put it in my hand. You could buy something for one hundred dollars in those days!

"He went on his way. Of course, he was drunk--in the morning he would throw me off the ship. But I would go nevertheless. Suckers like that are not born every minute. Well, the next day we were married. There sits my husband, John McVea.

"But the Little Red Devil was devilish still. I delighted in making my husband's life a hell. I deceived him almost to his face. I made drunken scenes--I stole his money; I pledged his credit. I assaulted him. He remained absolutely imperturable. The most he would say was that a good ship should weather most storms.

"At first I had liked his kindness. I tortured him, strange as it sounds, because I loved him. But my inability to conquer him turned into hate and fear. We had--we have a daughter."

It was the last stroke to Camilla Craig. She went into violent hysterics, and had to be taken from the room. The old woman would have continued her story, but Simon Iff checked her.

"Pray wait till Miss McVea comes back," he said. "You must finish, since things have gone so far; but she must be the first to hear."

The silence lent great impressiveness to the scene. Each mind was busy with a thousand speculations. When Camilla reappeared, it was as if the curtain had been raised upon some famous tragedy, for the first time unearthed. Mrs. McVea, pale with suppressed emotion, went on with her story.

"We had a little daughter, and she bored me. I hated domestic life. I wanted constant change of scene and people. I wanted drink. I had plenty of money to spend; I could do what I liked, but the moral force of my husband cowed me. I was never quite comfortable when I had done wrong, and as that was every day, I became wretched. I wanted power--I ruined men as some rakes ruin women--not for love but for vanity--and my husband was the only man I could not move. Among my many intrigues, I had conquered a lawyer, named Johnson. He was a very wealthy man, and I knew that I was cleverer than he. I would collect an independent fortune, and enjoy myself. One day my husband came back from a voyage to find the house shut up. Johnson had no need to practice his profession--I insisted on his taking me all over the world. We landed up at last on the island of which my daughter has told you. It was there that things began to happen. My lover was passionately devoted to me, but he did not trust me. He wanted to keep a whip of money over me. He would not marry me--he would not settle anything on me; I was no better off than before.

"One day, I saw an ad in the Over Seas Edition of the Daily Mail. It contained these words 'Little Red Devil, nothing to forgive, when you feel like it.'

"I hated my husband as I have never hated anything. I knew how his life was bound up with the child. I had taken her away--NOTHING TO FORGIVE!! I would give him something to forgive if ever he crossed my path, and just then, well, it was not paths crossing. But he caught up. He had taken a year's leave, and somehow or other he had tracked us down. He made no advances to me--he treated me as though he had never seen me before. I understood that he was there to be my husband if I were tired of Johnson. To me his attitude was a persection. I lay awake night after night thinking how I could break his spirit. I wanted to soil him. I thought I would put a crime upon him. It was I who tried to murder Johnson. The other Europeans on the island were all crazy about me--my puppets. I meant to see my husband hanged. And then the plot went wrong. Johnson came back. I held my hand; but I told my husband that I would not have him on the island. I could not bear the situation. If only Johnson had had the sense to die! But he came back to reason. He had regained my favour. I could make him a hideous engine of revenge against my husband.

"But after years, the taste even of revenge grows dull. I had managed to embezzle, I suppose you would call it, various large sums from Johnson's estate during his incapacity. The missionary on the island had forged a marriage certificate for me. When I couldn't stand it any longer, I quit the game. With my money and my magnetism, I was a queen in Paris, Vienna and St. Petersburg. I went on the stage--I became the favourite of emperors.

"And then again, Nature had her revenge. So insatisable was my temperament that I wearied even of the wanton bounty of my life. I was at the time very intimate with the Mother Superior of a very fashionable nummery--a woman of princely family and income, and the morals of Satan himself. The nights that I passed under her roof were literally heaven to my world-weary mind. I craved to join them, but it was no use. I could understand their austerities as a sort of perverse pleasure, but I simply could not believe that nonsense of their creed. I think I must have been a little mad. Remember I was more famous then than my daughter is now, and with worse reason. Oh, I was sick of it! I wanted a new sensation. I tried drugs--I wore them out. I couldn't even acquire a habit. There was one sensation left for me--the one we're all sure of--Death. The Little Red Devil should be game to the finish. I would make a splash. I was to appear on Christmas Eve at the Ellis Theatre in London. I had the lead in a new play. When I took my call I would kill myself in full view of the audience. The night came.

"During the performance of a play I've always made it a rule not to see people in the house. It disturbs one's thought. I came to take my call, to make my little speech--I had the pistol in my sleeve--I had prepared my speech--it was to end by telling the audience that this play was the crowning triumph of my life--that now I was quite sure that I had everything the world could offer, and that I hated it, and so...I intended to finish the sentence with a shot. When I came out before the footlights, I saw my husband sitting inthe stalls. I hardly remember what happened in my mind. It was a remorseless logic so clear that my dull brain cannot pick up the threads, but I went on with my speech; and I ended it by pulling out the pistol, putting it to my forehead, and dropping it to the floor. 'I will come home with you John, if you will be round at the stage door in half an hour.'

"A tumult of laughter and applause was the passing bell of my life.

"My husband received me as if nothing had happened. But about one week later he said, 'I've been watching you, Little Red Devil, and what you need is work. Another month of this, and you would turn loose again.' He made me stewardess on his ship, and I have never left him since. We never found the baby; Johnson had hidden her too well--until to-night."

"The case," said Simon Iff, "is one which appears to me to present all the features of an early reconciliation. I suggest that that at least might take place out of court."

Miss Mollie Madison was dressed in a cream-coloured frock. It was decidedly daring with her emeralds and her blazing hair. But it satisfied the eye of Simon Iff, and that was the great point at issue.

For a terrible disaster had befallen him. His colleague, Captain Lascelles of the British Navy, had fallen sick, and there was nothing to be done in the way of regular work till he recovered. He had therefore the option of going into a trance, or of finding some amusement. The words "Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do," had come into his mind, and he, taking this as an inspiration, and reflecting that no mischief could be so mischievous as Miss Mollie Madison, had asked her to come round.

"Tell me anything but the Old Old Story," he exclaimed, "I'm bored to tears; don't you know any old thing like that Pasquaney Puzzle?"

She went to fetch her vanity bag, and proceeded to extract a letter.

"Dolores wrote me this the other day," she said, and began to read.

"Darling Mollie,

I must just jot down this while I think of it. Dearest, don't, don't, don't make any mistake. They're all alike. It bores them--you know what I mean--now don't be angry, because it's true. So prepare yourself, darling, for the very worst. What you must do is to work up all the unsolved mysteries in the papers--the real ones, of course--and if you ever see signs, bring one out, and tide him over.

Your loving Dolores."

"The infernal genius of this cat!" cried Simon. "How dare you flaunt your very trickery in my face? I must be a lost soul."

She shook her finger, the one with the great cabochon emerald, at him.

"Do you wonder we're not truthful, when you talk like that when we are?"

"I admit that when a man understands a woman, he tries to put an ocean or two between them. However, you had better 'tide me over'. Qualis artifex pereor!"

"Listen to the tale of A. B. Smith of Potter's Place, Massachusetts. Four years ago, June 23, 1907, at precisely 8 o'clock on a Sunday evening, came the climax. One week earlier, A. B. Smith had reached the fifty third year of his age. During all that period nothing had ever happened to him, or to his. His parents were farmers, decent people in moderate circumstances, his uncle an Episcopalian minister. Potter's Place is a cross-road, of no importance or interest to anybody beyond the local worthies. There is a railway station, where the less fortunate or skilful trains occasionally stop.

"A. B. Smith inherited his father's farm, and his uncle's library. He had a good education in Boston, and took a mild interest in butterflies. He married Matilda, the only daughter of Farmer Jones across the valley, when he was 20 and she 21. Their union was blessed by two children, a son William and a daughter Mary. The birth of Mary had been a serious risk for the mother; she lay ill for months. Two operations were necessary to save her life, and she was never her own woman again, but sank rapidly into age and infirmity.

"With advancing years A. B. Smith became a substantial man. He had no energy or ambition; he just drifted into prosperity with the rest of the country; he became more absorbed in reading and in entomology; and, leaving the farm in William's very capable hands, built himself a house on the side of a hill, a mile from the next dwelling. It is situated on a grassy slope, with hardly any trees. It is a substantial building, but not very large; Mary and her mother tended it without assistance. They moved to this house in 1899.

"William, assisted by a capable manager, lived on in the old farmhouse. He was 30 years of age in 1907; Mary was a year younger. Neither of the children had any more imagination than the parents. They had not even fallen in love, though William was supposed to be 'getting acquainted' with the innkeeper's daughter. That is, he called on her most evenings, and said nothing particular. On Sundays, meeting his family at church, he would invariably return to the new house for dinner. He would pass the afternoon in relating the news of the week, for his father rarely left the garden, which he was very fond of tending in an amateur way, and after an evening collation, walk home to the farm to bed. In fine weather his family would walk part of the way with him.

"A. B. Smith had suffered slightly from rheumatism, and now and then (though by no means always) walked with a stick.

"On June 23, 1907, this placid ritual had reached the point where they were all leaving the house. The evening was fine, warm, and windless. They left the door open behind them.

"A. B. Smith, walking on his daughter's arm behind his wife and son, was just thirty two yards from the door when he said, 'I think I'll get my cane, Mame,' and went back. The others waited. They saw him enter the house. He never came out again; from that day to this there has been absolutely no clue or trace of him of any kind."

"Is that all?" said Simon, seeing her fold up the paper.

"That's all."

"Very uninteresting. You don't tell me a single pertinent fact. Where was the stick he went to get, in the first place? What about other exits to the house, for the second? Then--oh, there are fifty points I want to know!"

"I don't know about the stick. I saw the house, though. There is only the one entrance; the back door merely leads to the woodpile. It is a long one-story building, cut into the hillside for shelter. It would take a very fine climber to get up the perpendicular shale behind the house, and nobody could possibly do it unobserved. The family naturally enough had turned to watch at once for the father's return; the old lady called out only a minute or so after he had entered, impatient of delay; and she sent Mary to look almost immediately afterwards, as he did not reply. She could not have taken a minute to fail to find him, in that small house; and she came out, with awe and wonder already upon her, to raise the alarm, within five minutes--I feel sure--of his passing within the door. There is no question of any distraction of their attention; they were all looking at him, from the very moment of his leaving them, and watching for his return. It was like a Vanishing Lady trick on the stage."