The House Of Cain Read online

  “My sympathies are entirely with. you in your domestic troubles,” he said slowly. “Arsenic, most certainly, is the stuff to give ’em.”

  For the merest fraction of a second Anchor’s eyelids lifted before he continued, with a deep sigh:

  “Imagine a domesticated man, like me, unable to win women’s genuine love because of my money. My first wife said she loved me, and, being then unsophisticated, I believed her. Imagine the anguish, the humiliation, of my disillusionment. She lied, as I suppose she had been brought up to lie. She loved my money, or the luxuries my money bought her. She sold her charms to me for money. If I had divorced her, she would have been wealthy for life on my alimony. One morning, in her dressing-room, she told me with brutal frankness that she had married me to be divorced. So I divorced her–in a quiet and economic fashion of my own––with arsenic.”

  “Well, it was what she asked for, wasn’t it?” murmured Monty.

  “My second wife’s assurances of devotion I accepted with more reserve,” Anchor went on. “Even so, it was a painful shock to me, and ultimately a fatal shock to her, when she allowed hatred to blaze in her eyes when I showed husbandly affection. As for my last wife, poor thing! she was considered the loveliest woman in America. She swore she loved me; but, after my previous experiences, I could not believe her. My experiences had taught me the impossibility of my gaining––at least as a millionaire––a woman’s real love; so I forced myself to be content with what poor substitute for love I was able to command. What did annoy me considerably was the fact that she gave my love-money to the doctor I have mentioned. I was paying for the satisfaction he received when he held her in his arms; and that, I think, I was entitled even legally to resent. However, she passed away quite peacefully; it was the doctor who raised objections.”

  The blind man shrank as under a succession of blows. The speech of the man was deliberate; he picked his words; the thoughts he expressed were perfectly coherent: yet he discoursed on murder and his own terrible actions with an evenness of voice and absence of emotion absolutely astounding in a human being. So gentle were the inflections of his voice that the blind man could almost imagine that now and then it held a sob. He could not visualize what Monty saw, the slaty agate eyes, empty of ordinary human softness, tenderness, compassion. Anchor was human, possessing a human brain, human sanity; but instead of human nature he had the nature of a tiger. Mentally he was monstrous; as much so as in physical constitution was the little bald-headed aged youth.

  “Perhaps the fact is that I started to pursue domestic happiness somewhat late in life,” Anchor drawled. “Perhaps had I started earlier––and poorer––I might have attained it. We all seek for something in life, but seldom does one of us obtain just what is sought for. Dr. Moore, for instance, chased after fame, and would have obtained a lasting hold upon it had it not been for the scurvy interference of Fate.

  “With a colleague he, in London, spent several years in painstaking endeavour to discover the cause or causes of cancer. With Dr. Talmadge he was prosecuting a series of experiments on plants, when his partner startled him by announcing that he had won another of Nature’s secrets, partly by chance; not the cause of cancer, but the sure means of destroying the bacillus of consumption.

  “Most unnaturally, Dr. Talmadge declined to share his certain renown with Dr. Moore, an attitude betraying ingratitude, for my friend here was financing the experiments. In the circumstances it was, perhaps, excusable for Dr. Moore to remove his colleague by the cave-man’s method of hitting him behind the ear with a stone-headed implement used for pulverizing crystals in a mortar. I emphasize the neolithic method advisedly, my dear Moore. It always astounds me that a man in the front rank of modern medical science should have used so crude a means. I know, of course, that all doctors resort to primitive measures in emergency, and perhaps this was such a case.

  “However, my friend found Talmadge’s memorandum of the discovery, and, leaving the body in the laboratory, retired to his bed in the room above. You will doubtless remember how Fate fired the house, and how a policeman, seeing smoke issuing from the laboratory window, rushed in and rescued the body. Dr. Moore was compelled to leave hurriedly on a visit to friends, while through some inadvertence the priceless memorandum was consumed together with the house.”

  “Then you must be Dr. Walling?” Martin interrupted in horrified tones. Moore made no reply.

  “Let us not probe into the past too deeply,” suavely advised Anchor. “We come next to Earle, who, a little more than twelve months ago, was a prosperous business man of Bathurst.

  “Earle had not long been left a widower, burdened with the responsibility of bringing up three young children. Passionately fond of them, as he was, he became greatly alarmed at their probable future on learning from his medico that he had but six months longer, at most, to live. Having no relations, either his own or his late wife’s, his fears became a nightmare that his sweet mites would be at the mercy of harsh and unsympathetic strangers.”

  Only Martin’s training as a journalist, only the instinct of the news-getter, kept him a silent listener in his seat. The pleasant, gentle voice flowed on.

  “Possibly Percival Earle may be excused for thinking that, when he was dead, no matter what provision he made for them, his children would be dragged up, unsheltered by a father’s love from the evils besetting young men and maids in this wicked world. So, conceiving the idea that heaven––to my mind a problematic sphere of existence––would be preferable for his innocent children to earth, he––er––lulled them painlessly into eternal sleep.”

  Silence fell after that last word. The aged infant and the fat man went on eating unconcernedly. The maid poured herself another cup of tea. As for Earle, he sat slumped down in his chair, his eyes closed, but from them falling large tears. His face was white as milk, the red cheek blotches absent, and his hands lay on the table before him, excessively thin, blue-veined, and long fingered. Monty, at heart no less horrified than Martin, looked at Earle with wonder. The man’s behaviour was rational, yet he believed it impossible for him to be sane.

  “We come now to the interesting personality of Mallowing,” Anchor continued. “His case is, as far as I know, unique, because he has got what for many years he sought in vain. Picture him tied to a shrew of a woman for fifteen years. Imagine him as a sensitive, cultured man, his personality swamped by that of the virago, fearful of her temper, subservient to her lightest whim, living a joy-blasted life for a decade, his naturally sunny nature subdued to the acid mentality of his terrible partner.

  “They lived in a house near the railway station at Charlton, way down in Victoria, where he was earning a good living as manager of a wide estate business. To satisfy his exacting wife, it became his habit to leave his office punctually at five o’clock, and as punctually enter his house a quarter of an hour later.

  “But one afternoon, when leaving his office, a motor-car knocked down a man; and, temporarily forgetting his too affectionate spouse, he spent several priceless minutes in rendering first aid. Consequently it was six o’clock before he reached his home, forty-five minutes later than the time fixed by his wife.

  “He dreaded the explosive greeting, the cross-examination, the suspicious questions, the crowning insult of sniffing at his breath. It was when he saw his wife grimly awaiting him in the hall––waiting to demand fiercely the reason of his being forty-five minutes late, and to give him forty-five minutes’ hell for it––that, almost or quite subconsciously, his long-suppressed manhood asserted itself, and he freed himself in a moment from his hideous bondage by merely raising-and dropping-his reversed walking-stick.

  “The simplest of action, yet it meant a recreated life. Behold Mallowing to-day. A happy, care-free man able to laugh again, able to remember that he has human instincts and a personality of his own, joyous with the joy of freedom from intolerable oppression.” The rotund figure sat up squarely in his chair, and, gazing across the table at the bushman, pic
ked up and drank his tea as though responding to a toast. There was nothing sinister, no trace of insanity, not even an indication of ordinary masculine temper in that chubby, friendly face. When Monty regarded him, the big man doubted for the first time the truth of Anchor’s revelations, in this case, at any rate. Mallowing looked the sort of man who would turn away from the swatting of a fly with horror.

  “Then there is Smith,” went on William J. Anchor, nodding towards the little bald youth.

  “‘The Cat’ they call him in Sydney, on account of his astonishing ability to climb walls and stroll about house-tops. You would be surprised at the difficulty I have in restraining him from viewing the scenery from the roof above us. Constant attendance at the moving-picture shows imbued him with the ambition to be––ah!––‘quick on the draw,’ I think they call it. I do think the cinema has a detrimental effect on the character of our youth today; any way, Smith neatly holed a policeman who apparently was anxious to inquire the time, and that wretched policeman gave his colleagues a most excellent description of ‘The Cat’ before he departed this life.

  “To observe Lane, next to Mr. Martin, one would hardly credit the fact that only two years ago he was passionately fond of a lady at Brisbane. Nevertheless, I assure you, such was the case.”

  The fat man raised his huge unkempt head, and for a fleeting second his piggy eyes glared at the ex-rubber king. But only for a second. He continued eating his enormous meal long after the others had finished.

  “Lane feared to be displaced in the affections of his lady, and, to minimize the danger, strangled a rival. The feat being performed with an utter absence of artistry, Lane would certainly have come to an untimely end had we not made him welcome here. I think, Lane, they would have given you only a five-foot drop.”

  Again the huge man raised his head, but this time the expression in his small eyes was softened to a dog-like devotion. Monty chuckled.

  “You seem well up in the hanging process,” he said.

  “I have given the matter some attention, I admit,” Anchor replied coolly, sipping the last of his tea. “But to proceed. A case of human interest is that of Mrs. Jonas. Our housekeeper is an exceedingly respectable and––er––an excessively religious woman. She is strong on sex morality, and rules us with a rod of iron. A little more than three years ago she lived with her husband, a pillar of the church, as, indeed, was she, at Port Augusta. Imagine, gentlemen, her horror and disgust when she discovered that her husband was keeping a separate establishment. I do not wonder that she infringed medical and legal etiquette by prescribing and administering to her husband and his paramour a remedy containing strychnine, which in such cases as a rule is effectual.

  “Madeline Fox, who remains with us, has a temper which will, I much fear, get her into serious trouble one of these days. Forgive me, Madeline, we all have our faults, I know; but between our chef’s temper and yours I am sure poor Mrs. Jonas is sorely tried. Nevertheless, gentlemen, Madeline has had numerous lovers, which I admit is not surprising.”

  The girl, hardly turned twenty, smiled boldly at Anchor and as boldly at Monty. Anchor did not smile in return, but Monty did. He smiled at her again when Anchor went on to explain how she had murdered a faithless lover by stabbing him to the heart with a hatpin.

  “As for Mabel Hogan, her romance also was flavoured with strychnine, when the father of her child, instead of marrying her as promised, was blackguardly enough to taunt her with their sin.

  “Gilling, whose unfortunate absence we all deplore,” with a steady look at Mallowing, “killed a little girl of ten years with an iron bar because he coveted the sum of two shillings and one penny which she was conveying to the grocer to pay her mother’s bill. And last, gentlemen, but by no means least, is the most important member of our family, comrade Johnston, our wonderful chef. I admire Johnston, his nerve is superb. He most artistically carved into small pieces his lifelong friend because the said friend made some paltry objection when he, Johnston, relieved him of his bank account. We have all learned to respect Johnston.

  “That, I think, completes the outline of the histories of all who at present compose our happy community. Several have left us to take up again their worldly burdens: we hope to have with us in the future friends equally as dear. Shall we adjourn to the veranda for a smoke?”

  The question was asked with the polish of an ambassador. The recital might have been that of an interesting sea voyage, so passionless and deliberate was its delivery. Martin felt that he was surrounded by a ring of beasts, human beasts, waiting crouched to spring upon Monty and him. Without sight he could not visualize the pathetic Earle, the cheerful Mallowing, or the prim, good-looking Mrs. Jonas. Even the big man was surprised and found it difficult to credit that all these ordinary, very human-looking people, were takers of life. He wondered what Mallowing’s face looked like when he struck that fatal blow.

  Horror was writ plainly on Martin’s face, but if either Anchor or Moore expected Monty to blanch they must have been disappointed, for he beamed on the company with twinkling eyes, even while his arm cuddled the revolver.

  “Well, well, well!” he warbled genially. “I am indeed pleased to find myself in such congenial company. Having started quite a promising graveyard of my own––the latest addition being young Gilling, who wanted me to adorn his––I feel already at home among you.”

  Pushing back his chair, he helped Martin to rise, taking then an arm preparatory to leading him to the veranda. Looking steadily into the agate eyes of his host, he added:

  “To me excitement is the breath of life, Mr. Anchor, and, so far, the dank clamminess of death to the other fellow.” .

  CHAPTER XIX

  THE HOUSE OF CAIN

  AS Martin well knew, Monty Sherwood was by no means of the callous disposition which, by way of accommodating himself to his company, he had put on. The fact was, he regarded evil in other men much as a governess regards naughtiness in her charges––a naughtiness grown to evil in the adult. When he met with evil and was able to punish it his methods were original and drastic. In punching a cardsharp into insensibility, his object was not the mere infliction of pain, but to apply such corporeal chastisement as at least might induce the sinner to consider “safety first” in its moral aspect. Seldom does a teacher feel satisfaction in the act of caning a scholar, but he does feel satisfaction if the act produces, even temporarily, better behaviour.

  The big man regarded evil in men and women as a childish trait which they had never grown out of. Criminals he looked on as people whose minds had not kept pace with the growth of the body. He believed that the ancient idea of casting out devils by inflicting pain on the body they inhabited was preferable to inflicting pain on the mind. He had told Martin once that “a good wallop on the nose will cure a thief of itching fingers when ten years of imprisonment will fail. A bleeding, broken nose will not jar his mind so much as gaol, and heaven knows that the man’s mind is jarred and warped enough as it is. A criminal is like a little child: shutting the child in a dark room doesn’t do it any good. A good spanking does.”

  Whereas Martin had come to regard Anchor and his friends as a company of fiends, Monty felt like a master who, having left the classroom for a moment, returns to find his scholars engaged in a general fight. Here were people who had never grown up! As infants they probably had delighted in murdering insects and birds; their infantile taste for killing remained a part of them. Thus he was able to regard them with benevolent amusement until such time as their desire to kill recurred, in which case he would inflict chastisement. It could not be helped if the chastisement had to be inflicted by the impact of a bullet instead of a cane. The punishment must grow in severity with the growth of the body.

  Many will disagree with Monty Sherwood’s opinions here expressed; nevertheless, it is an actual fact that card-sharps did not practise their depravity in Monty’s presence oftener than once.

  So it was that the big man smiled on the company as a doti
ng father smiles on his wayward children. They regarded him as a simpleton, a child-like giant, and William J. Anchor smiled in return and accompanied them to the veranda with a chuckling: “I think we shall appreciate your visit, Mr. Sherwood.”

  “Not more than I shall do,” Monty said, first introducing Martin to a chair and then seating himself.

  “I sincerely hope you will enjoy your stay,” their host observed when, reclining in a deep lounge, he regarded them while biting at a long, thin cheroot. “We are a queer community, but a peaceful one. War and strife we leave to the outer world.”

  “Not a bad idea,” agreed the bushman, lighting his pipe.

  “We did not come here with any intention to disturb your peace,” Martin put in. “If you are what you say you are, we could not possibly be anything but friends after the great service you have rendered my promised wife, Miss Austiline Thorpe. I am unaware if you are the direct instigator of her rescue from gaol, and consequently from a shameful death; yet, on account of your protection of her, I for one shall forget my duty as a citizen. It is therefore, with no thought of strife that I speak to you now.”

  “I am delighted to find that you accept in such a spirit what must be a most disturbing situation,” Anchor murmured.

  “I think we now understand one another,” Martin said, exhaling cigarette smoke. “What does puzzle me, however, is why Miss Thorpe has not appeared. She must realize how anxious I am on her behalf, and she cannot have forgotten that at least we were lovers.”

  “My dear sir, never be surprised at a woman’s whims,” Anchor replied softly. “Long ago I decided that trying to understand a woman was a waste of precious brainstuff. I used to worry myself ill trying to please women; now I most emphatically decline to be worried by any woman.”