The Passing of Mr Quinn

He thrust his hands deep in the pockets of his trousers and stood with feet apart, his chin sunk as he stared with glittering eyes at the cobra.

Suddenly he started.

Through the microphone concealed in one of the dummy books had come distinctly the sound of a knock at the front door of the Lodge, then faintly the sounds of the maid’s footsteps and the opening of the door. Then voices; a man’s deep and hearty, and a woman’s confused low tones.

Professor Appleby’s brows drew together, and somehow the faint contortion gave the heavy white face with its bright eyes a terribly sinister expression. The professor had that type of gross face that many exceedingly clever men possess; to watch its fleeting expressions provided a fascinating, if rather frightening study.

He listened. It was evident that those in the hall were taking care not to be overheard, for their voices sounded in undertone to their footsteps moving towards the drawing-room. The microphone made of their conversation a mere confused buzz, and only now and then did a word sound with clarity.

Professor Appleby knew that his wife and Doctor Alec Portal were talking together in the drawing-room.

He caught snatches through the microphone, chiefly in the man’s voice.

‘… You must not … then leave him … For your own sake I beg of you, Eleanor.’

The listening professor smiled beneath frowning brows. Quickly he picked up the writhing, harmless cobra and stowed it away in the wickerwork basket, then once more wiping his hands in his handkerchief, he crossed the carpet, lithe and buoyant to an astonishing degree in a man of such heavy build.

Softly traversing the passage between the study and the drawing-room, he opened the door suddenly, and the two inside the room, seated on a settee near the window, looked up startled to see him regarding them from the threshold.

In the woman his presence caused instant and dire confusion. Eleanor Appleby snatched away the delicately moulded hand that Doctor Portal had been holding whilst in pursuance of his professional duties he felt her pulse, and that same hand went like a fluttering bird to her heart. She paled—it was pitiable that swift pallor that drained her face of every vestige of colour—and her dilated eyes stared at her husband whilst she trembled.

Doctor Alec Portal looked swiftly from Professor Appleby to the beautiful, stricken creature on the settee beside him, and a frown knit his brows as he sprang to his feet.

Across the empty space of the room the two men measured glances. Doctor Alec Portal’s level-gray eyes did not waver, though in those few seconds he knew that rumour was right about Professor Appleby.

His eyes were restless, unnaturally bright under the frowning brows; his mouth twitched ever so slightly. He held himself well in check, of course, but the cruel glow that showed in his eyes as he looked at Eleanor could not belong to a quite normal man.

It was Doctor Alec Portal who spoke first.

‘Professor Appleby, I believe?’ he said in icy tones.

These two had crossed each other’s path many times, yet had never spoken. In public Professor Appleby was an extremely dignified and even ponderous man, and scarcely likely to take notice of a country medico.

Alec Portal, however, looked far different from the traditional village doctor. He had bought the country practice at Farncombe merely as a diversion from his wealth and because medicine appealed to him. Earlier in life he had selected the army as a career, and he bore the stamp of it unquestionably.

Hardly yet in his forties, he stood some six feet in his socks, with a fair, tanned and clean-cut face that could be unbelievably boyish and handsome, and at times implacably stern.

Stern he appeared now as Professor Appleby crossed the room towards him. It was quite obvious from the professor’s attitude, the sneering smile upon his lips, that he was going to commit one of those breaches of good taste for which he was becoming notorious.

‘Every one in Farncombe knows that I am Professor Appleby, I think,’ he said with icy contempt. ‘And also that my wife is—well, mine.’

Doctor Alec Portal flushed.

He could not mistake the implied allusion. It was, in fact, coldly brutal, and he heard a little gasp from the settee. Professor Appleby was regarding him with a provocative and sneering smile, and Doctor Portal controlled his rising anger with difficulty.

‘That is exactly my point,’ he said harshly. ‘I am Doctor Alec Portal, as you know, and I am in attendance upon Mrs Appleby in a medical capacity. I am glad to have the opportunity of seeing you tonight, professor, for I wish to warn you that your wife is far from well.’

Professor Appleby’s eyebrows shot up.

‘Indeed,’ he said suavely, ‘that is news to me. I have qualifications as a medical man myself, and I should have said that Mrs Appleby is enjoying the best of health. Still—’ he crossed the carpet, and took his wife’s hand, feeling her pulse with a judicial air.

His back was half-turned to Alec Portal, but, indeed, the young doctor was not exercising any special vigilance for the moment, and therefore he did not observe the cruel pressure of Professor Appleby’s strong fingers upon his wife’s arm.

Alec Portal was caught up in a sudden strange wonder. As the professor had crossed the room Eleanor Appleby had cast a swift glance of appeal to him. And for a breathless moment a galvanic force that Doctor Portal had never before experienced and did not understand, swept through him.

He knew that he was trembling a little. He believed it was through the tensity of the situation, for he was sure that a demon raged in the breast of this man whose intellectual achievements had amazed the scientific world. A demon of merciless cruelty, urging him, driving him to outrageous acts of subtle torture.

And yet—what was this wild thrill that raged through him as he stared at Eleanor Appleby? It was as if he had suddenly awakened to something new and wonderful.

Her eyes were cast down, and she was trembling violently, and her childish face was pitiful. Yet, perhaps because of her extreme pallor, she looked as fresh and sweet as a dew-drenched rose at dawn. Alec Portal continued to stare at her. That brute’s wife, he told himself! And with the soft lamplight pouring on her flawless face and brown-gold hair she looked a very dainty and pretty little wife.

So pretty, indeed, as her lashes trembled against her smooth, pale cheeks that a voice whispered madly within him of things he had never dreamed.

All at once a little gasp broke from her. She looked up at the man who held her wrists so cruelly; her eyes lit with anguish.

‘Oh, please—please stop!’ she whispered.

Doctor Alec Portal heard it. He started forward, his handsome face working convulsively. But at the same moment Professor Appleby released his wife, and turned. There was sardonic amusement, and something else unfathomable, lurking in the gleaming eyes that mockingly challenged the doctor’s.

‘I must thank you for your solicitude,’ he drawled, ‘but I find my wife quite well. In any case, I think I should prefer myself to choose her medical attendant if she were ill—one, say, who is not quite so impetuous, and who understands better the etiquette of his profession.’

Aflame with anger, Doctor Portal was on the point of making some hasty retort, but checked himself in time. There was something besides his own personal feelings to be considered. This girl—for she was little more—was being driven to breaking point.

His eyes, narrowed to shining slits, blazed at the cold, sneering face.

‘I warn you, sir, that you may have a very serious matter to answer for,’ he said between clenched teeth. ‘Mrs Appleby needs rest and change. She is near to nervous prostration, and must take a holiday. It is the worst case of nerves I have ever encountered.’

Professor Appleby drew himself up. His smooth, white face lost its sneering smile and became terrible.

For a moment he glared at the young doctor, and his eyes held the burden of his storming and reviling soul.

‘Nerves, eh?’ he grated, like a bug spitting venom, ‘Doctor, from my own observations, I should say it was a case of the heart.’

He walked to the door and flung it open. For all that he was holding it under control, his rage was staggering.

‘Get out,’ he said thickly. ‘D’you hear? Get out! Or, by the Lord Harry, there’ll be a case of horsewhipping for the villagers to gossip again. And please have the decency to leave my wife alone in future. And don’t come near my house again—understand.’

Alec Portal stared at him hard.

Not since his schoolboy days had he felt such an overwhelming, primitive impulse to punish another human being. He would dearly have liked to have wiped the disdain from that gross face with a thudding left. But in the end he shrugged and gathered up his ulster and cap. He was in an impossible position, and the only thing he could do was to leave with dignity.

Bestowing a formal little bow upon Eleanor, who sat with eyes cast down, shamed, he strode past the malevolent figure of Professor Appleby at the door and went from the house.

But as he opened the front door, he heard the sound of a stifled sob, and he looked back, startled, questioning. She was in there with that brute, crying. Should he go back? Should he kill the husband?

His heart was filled with a cold, murderous rage. He took a grip of himself, and was astonished. What was the matter with him? Was he himself tonight?

He closed the door, and strode away into the gathering dusk, pulling his coat collar up and his broad-visored cap down. He was almost afraid of himself, afraid of his own thoughts and desires. Something primitive and lawless had woke to life in Doctor Alec Portal, who had always thought himself so cold.

He walked quickly, trying to shake off his thoughts. One thing was obvious. He must never go near the house that contained Professor Appleby’s wife again. Passion and love had been awakened in his deep strong nature at last. And it was love for another man’s wife!

Even now he fought against a wild impulse to turn back. All his chivalry urged him to protect her from that brute. But with a resolute gritting of his teeth he strode on.

His eyes were bleak as they penetrated the gathering dusk.

‘Heavens,’ he muttered; ‘it’s a funny old world!’

Doctor Alec Portal had scarce closed the front door behind him when Professor Appleby returned to the drawing-room. Outwardly he was calm and collected. His gleaming monocle was screwed in his right eye, and he tried to restrain the twitching of his lips.

Eleanor, his wife, was still sitting on the settee, racked by a tempest of half-stifled sobs.

He watched her from the doorway with a sneering smile.

Her beauty no longer moved him. Indeed, beauty in all living things impelled in him an awful, mad lust to destroy. That was the kink in this brilliant scientist’s brain. He had been known to sit for hours plucking the petals from one choice bloom after another. As a boy, one of his absorbing hobbies had been the collection of butterflies and birds’ eggs, and he had plundered nests ruthlessly and taken a peculiar delight in the destruction of Nature’s most beautiful creatures.

Thus it was with his wooing of Eleanor.

From the first, her beauty and peculiar charm had exercised a fatal fascination for him. He desired her as he had wanted the butterfly when a boy—to pin down and destroy. He had never been the lover. And on the very day of their marriage had come frightful disillusion for Eleanor Appleby.

She had married not a man, but a fiend who was capable of exercising the most cunning and subtle forms of cruelty.

Whether it was from knowledge of the law’s remorselessness, or his own desire to play with his victim, Professor Appleby had adopted a gradual process of destruction. His constant spying on her, his taunts, his subtle and hideous little cruelties, all were tearing at Eleanor Appleby’s nerves. Visibly she had lost her fragrant charm, and was listless, apathetic, like a drooping flower. But even she had not known how near she was to nervous exhaustion until recently, and then in a panic she had sent for Doctor Alec Portal.

Professor Appleby threw back his head in a mirthless, almost silent laugh.

He felt queerly elated—pleased. Something seemed to snap in his brain, and the result of it was that he felt as a man does who has tossed off a bumper of champagne to which he is unaccustomed. When he let himself go there were compensations to this queer kink in his brain. He knew he was not normal, but it was a very pleasant state.

He commenced to lash her with his tongue.

‘So this is what you do!’ he said in that thin, precise tone with which he addressed a medical board. ‘You, whom I thought were a faithful wife—you to whom I have given the best in me. To think that you are a light-o’-love, Eleanor …’

He had chosen the words with devilish cunning. She started as though fire had touched her, and looked up.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said with his thin, mirthless smile. ‘I heard it, even in my room. He was urging you to go away—to leave me—’

With a faint moan she put up her hand as if to stay the cruel words. But he stepped forward and dashed it aside, glowering down at her.

‘Say something,’ he commanded with brutal violence. ‘What is that man to you?’

She was trembling violently.

‘I—I—you don’t understand—’

She got no further. His white hands went out, gripping her neck and shoulder. Against all her resistance she was swung gently, powerfully this way and that. There was a softness in that great strength, but she knew it could shake the life out of her, crush her with but little effort.

‘Listen,’ he said evenly and grimly. ‘The rest of the world lies outside this house. The house is mine, and so is everything in it,’ he added. For a fraction of a moment he stared at her, and in his glittering eyes she read what his words but thinly disguised.

She was shuddering violently at that look of sheer, animal gloating—it made her sick with terror.

He had changed now. And the metamorphosis in him was more frightening than any she had ever known. For he became the ardent wooer.

She almost cried out when he stretched out his arms. Then he caught her to him, and she was crushed against him in a savage embrace that nearly suffocated her. Again and again she tried to cry out, to push him away from her. But his lips were seeking hers.

His arms were around her, and the touch of her soft, girlish form suddenly seemed to set him afire with the desire for possession.

‘You witch!’ he said hoarsely. ‘You can’t get away from me now. You’re mine—mine, d’you hear?’

Sick with terror she nearly fainted. A low cry broke from her lips.

‘Oh, please … please … have mercy … If you have any chivalry in you have pity on me.’

But he only laughed at her.

‘Little wife; there’s something I want. You’re going to give it to me, or else—’ He stopped, but the words had purred out of his mouth with a cold terrific deliberation that frightened her more than anything that had yet happened.

White-faced, ashen, she stood against the wall, staring at him. Professor Appleby was lighting a cigarette coolly and deliberately.

‘Go to your room,’ he said. And then after a significant pause. ‘You understand?’

She gasped. And then all at once with a low cry of anguish she turned and darted from the room like a startled fawn.

After she had gone Professor Appleby laughed—his soft, mirthless laugh, and inhaled deeply of his cigarette. He sat down at the piano and played Rubinstein’s Melody in F softly, and with the touch of a master. An animal cruelty glowed from his eyes. He felt somehow that tonight the crisis would be reached. He had goaded his wife to the last pitch of desperation; a little more and her taut nerves would snap.

He was not sure that he wanted that. He preferred to play with her a little longer as a cat does with a mouse.

At last, with a little twisted smile on his lips, he rose from the piano, and softly closed the lid.

Treading like a cat he crossed the carpet, opened the door and mounted the stairs. In her room, Eleanor heard his stealthy footsteps along the corridor, and she looked up like a startled fawn. It was he! He was coming as he had said!

Her distress was pitiful, and she was in a state of bodily as well as mental torment; so much so that she was forced to hold her hand to her heart to stay the agony of its wild beating.

The soft footsteps came nearer. A vein throbbed madly in Eleanor Appleby’s temple as she crouched back on the bed, and looked up towards the door.

Then she saw his shadow, huge and grotesque, thrown from the illuminated passage into the bedroom, lit only by its tiny reading-lamp. Professor Appleby’s face and figure became framed in the doorway. Eleanor felt her senses swooning, and a little cry escaped her.

Professor Appleby laughed softly as his eyes devoured her crouching back on the bed. The light from the passage brought into relief her gleaming white arms and throat, the oval face with its expression of childish anguish. Professor Appleby stretched out a hand from the doorway, and its shadow leapt ahead, and seemed to make with twitching fingers at his wife’s throat.

The strain of it on her overwrought nerves was too much, A little shriek left her lips.

Professor Appleby echoed it with a soft laugh.

‘Very well, my dear,’ he said from the doorway. ‘The night is young yet. I will leave you to compose yourself.’

He withdrew, and walked softly down the passage polishing his monocle. This he screwed into his eye with a portentously solemn expression. As a matter of fact, dignity became Professor Appleby very well, and he was able to face the world with a very good countenance. His lapses from dignity were, therefore, all the more shocking, and when the insane light glowed from that heavy, intellectual face it provided a nightmare sight.

He strove to fight his enemy as he descended the stairs. A nerve twitched visibly at his temple. He told himself he was a celebrated figure. The taint of insanity! How ridiculous such a suspicion was in connection with himself! Only the previous day a daily newspaper had published a two-column eulogy on his brilliant research work.

He wrestled with his demons as he descended the stairs. Then all at once he gave a real start as he saw a neat figure in black kneeling at the foot of the stairs, ostensibly brushing the carpet.

Professor Appleby smiled beneath frowning brows. It was Vera. It fed his ego to think that he had paid for the black silk stockings that so enhanced the charm of the house parlourmaid’s figure … Though he wanted nothing more to do with her now. A scowl darkened on his face as he manœuvred to step past her.

The girl—she was comely, even pretty in a coarse way—looked up at him with a haggard face and a pathetic smile on her lips.

‘Sir!’

His momentary anger was gone, and he looked at her indulgently. Indeed for a moment a lambent flame shone in his eyes. She was a trim enough figure in her rather short black frock and white lace apron. Professor Appleby, who had carried on a vulgar intrigue with this woman, and had tired of her—forbidding her, indeed, to come near him, showed a little relenting now for the first time for weeks.

‘Well,’ he asked softly; ‘what is it you want—more money?’

The girl gained courage, and smiled at him coquettishly. She began to believe that she had not lost her hold on him after all, and her visions of what she might expect enlarged correspondingly. She knew that he hated his wife, and, indeed, she had helped him in many a subtle cruelty he had practised upon Eleanor Appleby. And now, tonight that he appeared to be in softer mood, she determined to make a bold bid for him, though secretly she was more than a little afraid of him.

‘It’s something very important I’ve got to tell you,’ she said, glancing at him archly. ‘You’ve been very cruel to poor little me these last few weeks. I’ve been afraid, but—oh, you must listen to me. You must.’

Professor Appleby smiled. His glance was like a cold little searchlight playing on her. His curiosity was roused. But she appealed only to his instincts of cruelty now. He had taken his pleasure with her, and she had no longer power to quicken his flaccid interest.

‘I shall be in the study,’ he said after a long pause. ‘Your mistress will not be down again, Vera.’

She nodded dumbly, afraid once more of the sinister side to this man, and Professor Appleby, screwing in his monocle, strolled first into the drawing-room, leaving the door open for a purpose of his own.

With cat-like tread he crossed over to the grand piano, whose sides gleamed sardonically, as if the instrument also enjoyed the cruel jest he contemplated. Lighting a fresh Turkish cigarette, he sat down at the stool, and his fingers caressed the ivory keys. Genius was in his touch, and his voice had uncanny powers of gymnastics. Melody throbbed through the room as he sang and played.

‘I know not, I care not, where Eden may be,

But I know

I’m in very good

Company.’

He laughed. The old, old song had been one that Eleanor’s mother used to sing, and it always brought the tears to his wife’s eyes when she heard it. For there is a memory in a song—memory and associations and passionate longing. And from his wife’s heart with that song he knew he could wring the bitter, bitter cry: ‘Mother, if only you could come back—come back!’

But she had no one in the world. She was merely his possession to do with as he liked.

Upstairs in her room, Eleanor heard the song with its sinister mockery, and something died in her heart for ever. Her pride, her most cherished possession, was beaten to the ground. She was frightened—frightened of being in this big house—frightened of being alone with him.

The tears were rolling down her cheeks, and she made no effort to repress them.

Then, at last, in a panic that he might come again, she climbed off the big downy bed.

Feverishly, desperately, she crossed to the telephone in her room. A silence had fallen in the drawing-room, and she knew her husband’s uncanny gift for discovering everything that went on in the house. But she must do it—she must! In a queer, fluttering voice she asked for a number. She hung up the receiver and sat still, the heart of her beating madly. Derek Capel. Queer that she should think of him now. But they had known each other since childhood, and Derek had said when she married that if ever she needed a friend …

The telephone bell rang stridently. She stared at it a moment, almost as if she expected an apparition to issue from its mouthpiece. Then with trembling hands she took the receiver again.

Derek Capel’s manservant answered the ’phone; and in answer to her low-voiced inquiry he informed her that his master was not in; he would not be back until later.

She replaced the receiver with a sense of utter, wild desolation.

Derek! He was so strong, so self-reliant. She needed someone. After a long moment she went to her writing-table, and feverishly scribbled a note to him.

‘Come round … some time tonight. Derek, you must. I’m frightened—frightened of him. I’ve got a feeling that something dreadful is going to happen tonight. My husband has—oh, I cannot tell you. He is a brute. He is not fit to live. If I had the courage I believe I would kill him myself.’

She folded up the letter in haste, and put it in an envelope and addressed it to Derek. If she hurried downstairs now she would catch the gardener, and he would take it and keep silent for a few shillings.

On tiptoe she sped down the stairs, the letter in her hand. The broad staircase turned rather abruptly to face Professor Appleby’s study door. She had expected the door to be closed as usual, but as she came round a blaze of light struck her like a blow.