While he was on the stairs the telephone-bell rang in his study. He took off the receiver and listened moodily to a profound silence, varied only by the sound of someone furtively picking a lock with the aid of a dynamo. Angrily he banged on the receiver and arranged himself in an armchair with a heavy book.
When he had done this the bell rang again. A petulant voice—no doubt justifiably petulant—said suddenly, “Are you the Midland Railway?”
John said, “No,” and rang off; then he thought of all the bitter and ironic things he ought to have said and regretted his haste.
He sat down and lit his pipe. The accursed bell rang again, insistently, with infinitesimal pauses between the rings. He got up violently, with a loud curse. The blood surged again in his head; the ticket collector and the maddening train and Mrs. Bantam crowded back and concentrated themselves into the hateful exasperating shape of the telephone. He took off the receiver and shouted, “Hullo! hullo! What is it? What is it? Stop that ringing!” There was no answer; the bell continued to ring. He had banged his pipe against the instrument, and the first ash was scattered over the papers on the table. He took it out of his mouth, and furiously waggled the receiver bracket up and down. He had heard that this caused annoyance, if not actual pain, to the telephone operator, and he hoped fervently that this was true. He wanted to hurt somebody. He would have liked to pick up the instrument and hurl it in the composite face of the evening’s persecutors. His pipe rolled off on to the floor.
He shouted again, “Oh, what is it? Hullo! hullo! hullo!”
The ringing abruptly ceased, and a low, anxious voice was heard: “Hullo! hullo! hullo! Is that you, John? Hullo!”—Stephen’s voice.
“Yes; what is it?”
“Can you come round a minute? I must see you. It’s urgent.”
“What about?” said John, with a vague premonition.
“About—about—you know what!—about the other night—you must come! I can’t leave the house.”
“No, I’m damned if I do—I’ve had enough of that.” At that moment John felt that he hated his old friend. The accumulated annoyances of the day merged in and reinforced the new indignation he had felt against Stephen since the sack incident and the revelations of Mrs. Bantam. He had had enough. He refused to be further entangled in that business.
Then Stephen spoke again, appealingly, despairingly. “John—you must! It’s—it’s come up.”
VI
John Egerton prepared himself to go round. He cursed himself for a weak fool; he reviled his fate, and Emily and Stephen Byrne. But he prepared himself. He was beaten.
But as he opened the front door the bell rang, and he saw Stephen himself on the doorstep—a pale and haggard Stephen, blinking weakly at the sudden blaze of light in the hall.
“I came round after all,” he said. “It’s urgent!” But he stepped in doubtfully.
The two curses of John Egerton’s composition were his shyness and his softheartedness. When he saw Stephen he tried to look implacable; he tried to feel as angry as he had felt a moment before. But that weary and anxious face, that moment’s hesitation on the step, and the whole shamefaced aspect of his friend melted him in a moment.
Something terrible must be going on to make the vital, confident Stephen Byrne look like that. Once more, he must be helped.
In the study, sipping like a wounded man at a comforting tumbler of whisky and water, Stephen told his story, beginning in the fashion of one dazed, with long pauses.
That evening, just before dinner, as Mrs. Bantam had correctly reported, the doctor had been sent for. And Stephen, waiting in the garden for his descent, gazing moodily through a thin drizzle at the grey rising river, had seen unmistakably fifty yards from the bank a semi-submerged object drifting rapidly past, wrapped up in sacking. A large bulge of sacking had shown above the surface. It was Emily Gaunt.
He was sure it was Emily Gaunt because of the colour of the sacking—a peculiar yellowish tint, unusual in sacks. And because he had always known it would happen. He had always known the rope would work on the flimsy stuff as the tide pulled, and eventually part it altogether. And now it had happened.
When he saw it he did not know what to do. “I felt like rushing out into the boat at once,” Stephen said, “and catching the thing—but the doctor … Margery … I had to wait. …” he finished vaguely.
“Of course,” said John.
“When he came down he said all was well—or fairly so—and he’d come again this evening. I’m expecting him now.” Then with sudden energy, “I wish to God he’d come. … Is that him?” Stephen stopped and listened. John listened. There was no sound.
“But we mustn’t waste time— now—tide turning in a moment.” He leaned forward now, and began to speak with a jerky, almost incoherent haste, telescoping his words.
“When he’d gone I dashed down to the boat … could still see the—the thing in the distance—going round the bend … thought I’d catch it easily, but the engine wouldn’t start—of course! Took me half an hour … starved for petrol, I think. …” He stopped for a moment, as if still speculating on the precise malady of the engine.
“When I did get away … went like a bird … nearly up to Kew … but not a sign of the—the sack … looked everywhere … couldn’t wait any longer … I had to get back … only just back now … against the tide. John, will you go out now? … for God’s sake, go … take the boat and just patrol about … slack water now … tide turns in about ten minutes … the damned thing must come down … unless it’s stuck somewhere … you must go, John. We must get hold of it tonight … tonight … or they’ll find it in the morning. And, John,” he added, as a hideous afterthought, his voice rising to a kind of hysterical shriek, “there’s a
