The Woman in White (90 page)

I dared not allow her time to say a word more. She tried to hold
me again. I unclasped her hands, and was out of the room in a
moment. The boy below heard me on the stairs, and opened the
hall-door. I jumped into the cab before the driver could get off
the box. "Forest Road, St. John's Wood," I called to him through
the front window. "Double fare if you get there in a quarter of
an hour." "I'll do it, sir." I looked at my watch. Eleven
o'clock. Not a minute to lose.

The rapid motion of the cab, the sense that every instant now was
bringing me nearer to the Count, the conviction that I was
embarked at last, without let or hindrance, on my hazardous
enterprise, heated me into such a fever of excitement that I
shouted to the man to go faster and faster. As we left the
streets, and crossed St. John's Wood Road, my impatience so
completely overpowered me that I stood up in the cab and stretched
my head out of the window, to see the end of the journey before we
reached it. Just as a church clock in the distance struck the
quarter past, we turned into the Forest Road. I stopped the
driver a little away from the Count's house, paid and dismissed
him, and walked on to the door.

As I approached the garden gate, I saw another person advancing
towards it also from the direction opposite to mine. We met under
the gas lamp in the road, and looked at each other. I instantly
recognised the light-haired foreigner with the scar on his cheek,
and I thought he recognised me. He said nothing, and instead of
stopping at the house, as I did, he slowly walked on. Was he in
the Forest Road by accident? Or had he followed the Count home
from the Opera?

I did not pursue those questions. After waiting a little till the
foreigner had slowly passed out of sight, I rang the gate bell.
It was then twenty minutes past eleven—late enough to make it
quite easy for the Count to get rid of me by the excuse that he
was in bed.

The only way of providing against this contingency was to send in
my name without asking any preliminary questions, and to let him
know, at the same time, that I had a serious motive for wishing to
see him at that late hour. Accordingly, while I was waiting, I
took out my card and wrote under my name "On important business."
The maid-servant answered the door while I was writing the last
word in pencil, and asked me distrustfully what I "pleased to
want."

"Be so good as to take that to your master," I replied, giving her
the card.

I saw, by the girl's hesitation of manner, that if I had asked for
the Count in the first instance she would only have followed her
instructions by telling me he was not at home. She was staggered
by the confidence with which I gave her the card. After staring
at me, in great perturbation, she went back into the house with my
message, closing the door, and leaving me to wait in the garden.

In a minute or so she reappeared. "Her master's compliments, and
would I be so obliging as to say what my business was?" "Take my
compliments back," I replied, "and say that the business cannot be
mentioned to any one but your master." She left me again, again
returned, and this time asked me to walk in.

I followed her at once. In another moment I was inside the
Count's house.

There was no lamp in the hall, but by the dim light of the kitchen
candle, which the girl had brought upstairs with her, I saw an
elderly lady steal noiselessly out of a back room on the ground
floor. She cast one viperish look at me as I entered the hall,
but said nothing, and went slowly upstairs without returning my
bow. My familiarity with Marian's journal sufficiently assured me
that the elderly lady was Madame Fosco.

The servant led me to the room which the Countess had just left.
I entered it, and found myself face to face with the Count.

He was still in his evening dress, except his coat, which he had
thrown across a chair. His shirt-sleeves were turned up at the
wrists, but no higher. A carpet-bag was on one side of him, and a
box on the other. Books, papers, and articles of wearing apparel
were scattered about the room. On a table, at one side of the
door, stood the cage, so well known to me by description, which
contained his white mice. The canaries and the cockatoo were
probably in some other room. He was seated before the box,
packing it, when I went in, and rose with some papers in his hand
to receive me. His face still betrayed plain traces of the shock
that had overwhelmed him at the Opera. His fat cheeks hung loose,
his cold grey eyes were furtively vigilant, his voice, look, and
manner were all sharply suspicious alike, as he advanced a step to
meet me, and requested, with distant civility, that I would take a
chair.

"You come here on business, sir?" he said. "I am at a loss to
know what that business can possibly he."

The unconcealed curiosity, with which he looked hard in my face
while he spoke, convinced me that I had passed unnoticed by him at
the Opera. He had seen Pesca first, and from that moment till he
left the theatre he had evidently seen nothing else. My name
would necessarily suggest to him that I had not come into his
house with other than a hostile purpose towards himself, but he
appeared to be utterly ignorant thus far of the real nature of my
errand.

"I am fortunate in finding you here to-night," I said. "You seem
to be on the point of taking a journey?"

"Is your business connected with my journey?"

"In some degree."

"In what degree? Do you know where I am going to?"

"No. I only know why you are leaving London."

He slipped by me with the quickness of thought, locked the door,
and put the key in his pocket.

"You and I, Mr. Hartright, are excellently well acquainted with
one another by reputation," he said. "Did it, by any chance,
occur to you when you came to this house that I was not the sort
of man you could trifle with?"

"It did occur to me," I replied. "And I have not come to trifle
with you. I am here on a matter of life and death, and if that
door which you have locked was open at this moment, nothing you
could say or do would induce me to pass through it."

I walked farther into the room, and stood opposite to him on the
rug before the fireplace. He drew a chair in front of the door,
and sat down on it, with his left arm resting on the table. The
cage with the white mice was close to him, and the little
creatures scampered out of their sleeping-place as his heavy arm
shook the table, and peered at him through the gaps in the smartly
painted wires.

"On a matter of life and death," he repeated to himself. "Those
words are more serious, perhaps, than you think. What do you
mean?"

"What I say."

The perspiration broke out thickly on his broad forehead. His
left hand stole over the edge of the table. There was a drawer in
it, with a lock, and the key was in the lock. His finger and
thumb closed over the key, but did not turn it.

"So you know why I am leaving London?" he went on. "Tell me the
reason, if you please." He turned the key, and unlocked the drawer
as he spoke.

"I can do better than that," I replied. "I can SHOW you the
reason, if you like."

"How can you show it?"

"You have got your coat off," I said. "Roll up the shirt-sleeve
on your left arm, and you will see it there."

The same livid leaden change passed over his face which I had seen
pass over it at the theatre. The deadly glitter in his eyes shone
steady and straight into mine. He said nothing. But his left
hand slowly opened the table-drawer, and softly slipped into it.
The harsh grating noise of something heavy that he was moving
unseen to me sounded for a moment, then ceased. The silence that
followed was so intense that the faint ticking nibble of the white
mice at their wires was distinctly audible where I stood.

My life hung by a thread, and I knew it. At that final moment I
thought with HIS mind, I felt with HIS fingers—I was as certain
as if I had seen it of what he kept hidden from me in the drawer.

"Wait a little," I said. "You have got the door locked—you see I
don't move—you see my hands are empty. Wait a little. I have
something more to say."

"You have said enough," he replied, with a sudden composure so
unnatural and so ghastly that it tried my nerves as no outbreak of
violence could have tried them. "I want one moment for my own
thoughts, if you please. Do you guess what I am thinking about?"

"Perhaps I do."

"I am thinking," he remarked quietly, "whether I shall add to the
disorder in this room by scattering your brains about the
fireplace."

If I had moved at that moment, I saw in his face that he would
have done it.

"I advise you to read two lines of writing which I have about me,"
I rejoined, "before you finally decide that question."

The proposal appeared to excite his curiosity. He nodded his
head. I took Pesca's acknowledgment of the receipt of my letter
out of my pocket-book, handed it to him at arm's length, and
returned to my former position in front of the fireplace.

He read the lines aloud: "Your letter is received. If I don't
hear from you before the time you mention, I will break the seal
when the clock strikes."

Another man in his position would have needed some explanation of
those words—the Count felt no such necessity. One reading of the
note showed him the precaution that I had taken as plainly as if
he had been present at the time when I adopted it. The expression
of his face changed on the instant, and his hand came out of the
drawer empty.

"I don't lock up my drawer, Mr. Hartright," he said, "and I don't
say that I may not scatter your brains about the fireplace yet.
But I am a just man even to my enemy, and I will acknowledge
beforehand that they are cleverer brains than I thought them.
Come to the point, sir! You want something of me?"

"I do, and I mean to have it."

"On conditions?"

"On no conditions."

His hand dropped into the drawer again.

"Bah! we are travelling in a circle," he said, "and those clever
brains of yours are in danger again. Your tone is deplorably
imprudent, sir—moderate it on the spot! The risk of shooting you
on the place where you stand is less to me than the risk of
letting you out of this house, except on conditions that I dictate
and approve. You have not got my lamented friend to deal with
now—you are face to face with Fosco! If the lives of twenty Mr.
Hartrights were the stepping-stones to my safety, over all those
stones I would go, sustained by my sublime indifference, self-
balanced by my impenetrable calm. Respect me, if you love your
own life! I summon you to answer three questions before you open
your lips again. Hear them—they are necessary to this interview.
Answer them—they are necessary to ME." He held up one finger of
his right hand. "First question!" he said. "You come here
possessed of information which may be true or may be false—where
did you get it?"

"I decline to tell you."

"No matter—I shall find out. If that information is true—mind I
say, with the whole force of my resolution, if—you are making
your market of it here by treachery of your own or by treachery of
some other man. I note that circumstance for future use in my
memory, which forgets nothing, and proceed." He held up another
finger. "Second question! Those lines you invited me to read are
without signature. Who wrote them?"

"A man whom I have every reason to depend on, and whom you have
every reason to fear."

My answer reached him to some purpose. His left hand trembled
audibly in the drawer.

"How long do you give me," he asked, putting his third question in
a quieter tone, "before the clock strikes and the seal is broken?"

"Time enough for you to come to my terms," I replied.

"Give me a plainer answer, Mr. Hartright. What hour is the clock
to strike?"

"Nine, to-morrow morning."

"Nine, to-morrow morning? Yes, yes—your trap is laid for me
before I can get my passport regulated and leave London. It is
not earlier, I suppose? We will see about that presently—I can
keep you hostage here, and bargain with you to send for your
letter before I let you go. In the meantime, be so good next as
to mention your terms."

"You shall hear them. They are simple, and soon stated. You know
whose interests I represent in coming here?"

He smiled with the most supreme composure, and carelessly waved
his right hand.

"I consent to hazard a guess," he said jeeringly. "A lady's
interests, of course!"

"My Wife's interests."

He looked at me with the first honest expression that had crossed
his face in my presence—an expression of blank amazement. I
could see that I sank in his estimation as a dangerous man from
that moment. He shut up the drawer at once, folded his arms over
his breast, and listened to me with a smile of satirical
attention.

"You are well enough aware," I went on, "of the course which my
inquiries have taken for many months past, to know that any
attempted denial of plain facts will be quite useless in my
presence. You are guilty of an infamous conspiracy! And the gain
of a fortune of ten thousand pounds was your motive for it."

He said nothing. But his face became overclouded suddenly by a
lowering anxiety.

"Keep your gain," I said. (His face lightened again immediately,
and his eyes opened on me in wider and wider astonishment.) "I am
not here to disgrace myself by bargaining for money which has
passed through your hands, and which has been the price of a vile
crime.

"Gently, Mr. Hartright. Your moral clap-traps have an excellent
effect in England—keep them for yourself and your own countrymen,
if you please. The ten thousand pounds was a legacy left to my
excellent wife by the late Mr. Fairlie. Place the affair on those
grounds, and I will discuss it if you like. To a man of my
sentiments, however, the subject is deplorably sordid. I prefer
to pass it over. I invite you to resume the discussion of your
terms. What do you demand?"