It gave at least some cause for a feeling of superiority to the neighbours. They all thought Mr. Marble unbearably snobbish. He sent his children to secondary schools—on scholarships, it is true, and after some years at public elementary schools—while their children began to work for their livings at the age of fourteen, and he wore a bowler hat, while the neighbouring menfolk wore caps. They none of them liked Mr. Marble, although they all had a soft corner in their hearts for Mrs. Marble. “Poor thing, he treats her like the dirt beneath his feet, he does.”
It was a comforting feeling that this monster suffered from the same troubles as they did, and was at times unable to pay his rent, even as they, for so the collecting clerk told them.
Mr. Marble spent the evening sitting in the drawing-room of 53 Malcolm Road; on his knee was the last of the Free Library books on crime. It was very interesting—a Handbook to Medical Jurisprudence. Until he had begun it, Mr. Marble did not know what Medical Jurisprudence was, but he found it more and more absorbing. The periods spent in gazing out of the window grew shorter and shorter as he read all about inquests, and the methods for discovering whether a dead body found in the water had been put there after death or not, and the legal forms necessary for certifying a person insane. Then he passed on to the section of Toxicology. He read all about the common domestic poisons, spirits of salt, lead acetate, carbolic acid; from these the book proceeded to the rarer poisons. The first ones mentioned, perhaps given pride of place because of infinitely superior deadliness, were hydrocyanic acid and the cyanides. The comments on the cyanides were particularly interesting:
“Death is practically instantaneous. The patient utters a loud cry and falls heavily. There may be some foam at the lips, and after death the body often retains the appearance of life, the cheeks being red and the expression unaltered.
“Treatment—”
But Mr. Marble did not want to know anything about the treatment. Anyway, it was easy to see that there would rarely be an opportunity of treating a sufferer from cyanide poisoning. Besides, he did not want to read the book at all after that. It made his stupid heart beat too fast again, so that he had difficulty in breathing while his hand shook like the balance-wheel of a watch. And the book had started an unpleasant train of thought, that set him once again gazing out into the garden, only twilight now, at the end of the day, while he thought about blank horrors.
He knew much more about crime than when he had first become a criminal. He knew that nine murderers out of ten were only discovered through some silly mistake. Even if they were very careful about planning the deed, and carried it out successfully, they still made some ridiculous blunder that betrayed them. But in some cases they were found out by some unfortunate mischance. It was generally through the gossip of neighbours, but sometimes it was through the insatiable curiosity of some really uninterested person. Now Mr. Marble could rely upon there being no gossip. No one knew that young Medland had come to his house that night. And he had made no blunder. It was only some event beyond his control that could betray him. Such as? The answer came pat to mental lips—someone else moving into the house after he had been turned out, someone with a taste for gardening. Come what may, he must not be turned out of 53 Malcolm Road. But he might be at any minute now. His tortured mind raced like a steamship propeller in a rough sea. Supposing the franc should fall! He would lose his money, but that would be only part of his loss, and the least part, too. For Saunders would complain about his loss, perhaps even to the management of the Bank, certainly in a way that would come to the ears of the authorities. Then Marble would lose his job—not possibly, but certainly. Then—a few weeks of grace perhaps, and then, rent unpaid, out of the house he would go. After that it was inevitable. Mr. Marble shuddered uncontrollably. It all depended on the franc. One part of Mr. Marble’s feverishly active mind began to toil once more through all the data accumulated that had made him decide that the franc would rise; another part began to regret bitterly that he had ever entered into such an absurd venture, rashly leaving his temporary safety—which already he began to long for again—in a wild search for permanency. Perhaps this was his blunder, like Crippen’s flight to the Continent. Perhaps it was because of this that he was going to be hanged by the neck till he was dead. That other book, the one about Famous Criminals, had been disgustingly fond of that expression. Mr. Marble shuddered again.
Mr. Marble sat till late that night—indeed, he sat until early the next morning, disregarding, hardly hearing the appeals of his wife, working out with one part of his mind the chances of the rise of the franc, with the other the chances of escaping detection. Mr. Marble found some ghoulish details at the end of the Handbook to Medical Jurisprudence which interested him as well as appalled him. They dealt with the possibilities of identifying bodies after prolonged burial.
At half-past seven the next morning, Mr. Marble, who was already
