The Beach of Atonement Page 2

  “You’re, a good sort, George,” Dudley said after a short silence: “We’ve been pals a long time. You won’t fail me now, will you?”

  “I might be doing good by failing you.”

  “You won’t. You will be assuring me a hempen rope.”

  It did not enter Finlay’s mind that when he consented he became accessory to the contemplated crime, nor did it then occur to Dudley that he was placing his old partner in that unenviable position. It was sufficient for Finlay that he was asked for help by one who had always been a friend in fair weather; and a stauncher friend in foul weather. He could never forget how Dudley had engaged specialists regardless of expense when his youngest boy almost died.

  “Very well, Arnold; I’ll be there,” he said slowly.

  CHAPTER II

  “THE MOVING FINGER WRITES—”

  WHEN Finlay had gone, Arnold Dudley sat alone in his office. It occurred to him how utterly strange it was that during the morning of that ordinary. Saturday he should have planned a murder and elaborated means to escape the legal punishment of the crime. He had left his home thinking happily of his wonderful Ellen and of the golf tournament in which he was to play that afternoon. Now he was not merely contemplating killing another man, but was absolutely resolved to kill if he found that man with his wife.

  If Tracy had dared to seduce Ellen’s allegiance from him, then it was probable that others knew of it also, more than probable that others as well as Tracy were laughing, sneering at him, at Arnold Dudley. He would be the butt of coarse jokes, the man with bull’s wool over his eyes, the simpleton, the easy-going poor silly fool.

  Mentally, Dudley squirmed in his chair, Physically, his body twitched as though each muscle strove independently to kill the beast who tortured it. Tracy—the laughing, good-looking peacock, conscious of power over women, to whom no woman’s virtue was sacred! The powerful hands lying on the office table clenched and unclenched to the sound of rubbing fingers and snapping tendons.

  The mood vanished. The expression of agony and hate working the features of his strong face was wiped away as writing on a slate is wiped off with a damp sponge.

  “Ellen! Ellen! God! it is unbelievable, was the cry wrenched from him. Ellen of the starry eyes, Ellen of the adorable red lips, Ellen of the soft entwining arms! Ellen who had been his, was his! Yes, damn it! was his.

  Springing to his feet, he paced the room, his hands locked behind him, his head thrown back, his eyes seeing not the ceiling but the pictures, the flashing pictures of Ellen, as she had appeared to him through the years.

  “She’ll be alone. She’ll be alone. I’ll bet a million she will be alone,” Dudley muttered.

  Of course she would be alone. It was to insult her, to wrong her past forgiveness, to even think, let alone believe that she would be with Tracy. Why, her loyalty, her goodness and freshness and beauty, had proved themselves a thousand times—a thousand times. That lying devil on the ‘phone! It was he who deserved a pistol bullet. And—

  “Ellen and Tracy—Ellen and Tracy—Ellen and Tracy!” screamed the imp in his mind.

  He beat his forehead with his open hands, as though to smash the shrieking, lying imp. He was in the Garden of Gethsemane. The mental agony, not less than his bodily exertion, brought to his forehead beads of perspiration that streamed down his face, trickled into his eyes and burned them. The room seemed hot, suffocating. Lurching to the connecting-door, he passed into the bigger office without, and gazed stupidly at the desks, the covered typewriters, the safe, the press. Hanging on the wall was a large cheap mirror. He almost ran to it, there to stare and stare at the ghastly face it reflected, the unnaturally wide, unwinking eyes.

  “You’re the mug ! You’re the fool! You are the poor fool who plays golf, whilst Tracy plays with your wife and laughs, and laughs, and laughs ! Handsome, eh? A man! A thing of no account, a thing in pants to raise a laugh among real men.”

  “Ellen and Tracy—Ellen and Tracy—Ellen and Tracy!” screamed the imp.

  It was then that Nature made one tremendous effort to assert itself and stave off the menace of insanity. The heat of his body and within his brain subsided, vanished. He became cool, almost cold. His eyelids winked as though with threatening tears, and wearily he rubbed them with the back of his hand.

  Yes. He must keep calm. He must not let himself go like that again. There was nothing he. could do till about four o’clock. It was no use worrying, for worrying would not put back the finger of Fate. at was it that wise old Persian had said? “The moving finger writes?” Yes, that was it. “The moving finger writes and having writ—having writ—moves on.” Of course! Worrying would not mend matters. Whatever the moving finger had written could never be wiped out.

  His body made its wants known. He became sensible that he was hungry and thirsty. Yet to go out to a restaurant meant meeting people, and perhaps someone of them would notice him, and, knowing, smile when he had passed. They would smile, laugh, jeer. They—

  There! He was off again. That must not be. That was dangerous. He would get Jones, the hall-porter, to fetch him some sandwiches and a bottle of wine. Let it be champagne. He needed bucking up.

  When Jones brought the wine and the sandwiches, Arnold Dudley was emerging from the lavatory refreshed by a wash and a brisk towel-rubbing. Again within his office, he poured himself a water-tumbler of the wine, and drank as a man drinks whisky when he is seeing strange, non-existent things. It was then five minutes past two. He was feeling much better; in fact, his brain was so clear that the thoughts raced through it. He must not allow that, mental storm to arise again.

  For a while he cogitated the advisability of ringing up A 2778, and finding out if Ellen’s cook was then with her mother. But that would prove nothing. And Ellen would hear of it and want to know his reason, and if Ellen was innocent he would be unable to confess the terror of his suspicions. Some day he would tell her. He would have to. He would never again feel clean in her presence until he did.

  Presently he began to wonder why he was being tortured, why he was being punished. He had never committed any crime, legal or moral.

  Always had he striven to give his fellow-man a “square deal”. It was his very honesty that had made him successful in the world of business, wherein honesty was as rare as a jewel in muck.’ Was it payment exacted for his years of happiness and prosperity? But he had earned them in previous struggling years !

  It was a quarter after three when he rose to his feet and, picking up the black bag, opened it and took out the evil-looking black automatic pistol. Dudley handled it like one well accustomed to firearms, as indeed he was. Of latter years he never used that automatic, but in the old days he had shot with it many, many kangaroos from the seat of his truck. He knew well that if Tracy was in his house he, Dudley, would not miss.

  Slipping it into his right-hand coat-pocket, he shut the bag, secured his hat and gloves, passed out into the hall, and hung the keys of the doors on their nail in the porter’s office. At the kerb was waiting his single-seater, a beautiful Southern Cross super-six.

  The “Terrace” was deserted; the workers in the blocks of offices and the banks were scattered over the beaches, the recreation grounds, the far-flung roads among the eastern range of hills. Leisurely he drove east, the black bag. beside him, the automatic weighting the right side of his coat. Crossing the Causeway; he idly noted the shags drying themselves on marking piles or diving down into the sun-bronzed water, and wondered why men could not be as they were, without emotions, without the pain and the strife pounding at a man’s life.

  Coming to the Sandringham Hotel at Belmont, he felt tempted to stop and have more champagne. The urge demanded that he should drink and drink until he became insensible to feeling, insensible to hearing that vile imp in his brain with its everlasting scream : “Ellen and Tracy—Ellen and Tracy—Ellen and Tracy !”

  It was because he knew, if he did get drunk, there would be an inevitable awakening, when the imp would revive
and go on shrieking, that Dudley resisted and drove on till he came to the cross-road leading to his house.

  There he pulled into the kerb of the newly-made sidewalk, and, leaving the car, walked slowly along the road until he came to a narrow lane that would lead him past the rear of the houses adjoining his own. They were mansions rather than houses, each set within its three acres of tree and shrub-covered grounds.

  He paused when he came to two high wooden gates admitting to the short gravel path that ended at the kitchen and offices. Passing on, for the gates being opened would make their familiar creaking noise, Dudley finally scaled the wall where the branches of a great almond-tree spread above it.

  Now in his own grounds, as a thief in the night he walked circumspectly towards the house, keeping always to the concealing shrubs and ornamental trees, until he came opposite a never-used side-door. To reach the door he had to cross an open space, asphalted and gently inclined, whereon he always hosed his car on Sunday mornings. Listening, no sound of human activity within the house reached his ears, and, whilst thus he listened, a tabby-cat rubbed itself against his leg, purring, its back arched, its tail erect. It was the kitchen cat. And the kitchen cat was locked out.

  So the servants were away.

  Crossing to the door, he produced his bunch of keys, fitted one into the Yale lock, and slowly, very slowly, pushed the door inward. It creaked softly once—twice. It creaked again when he slowly closed it after him and stood in a short passage that debouched into a longer one running the length of the house.

  The house was as still as though it were deserted.

  He put down the bag against the wall, and, unlacing his shoes, took them off his feet and set them beside the bag. When he moved forward along the passage the automatic was in his hand, his finger within the trigger-guard. At the angle of the passage he stopped to listen again. At that point he could hear the ticking of the grandfather clock in the morning-room. He thought he could hear another sound besides. He held his breath. Very low, as though coming from a great distance, he could hear the murmur of voices.

  Soundlessly; he edged along the main passage towards the hall. Several doors opening into the passage were open. A cross-passage which he passed revealed a conservatory at its further end and a splash of green and brilliant reds and yellows. And just beyond it he halted outside a closed door.

  It was from within this room that the voices came. It was his wife’s room—Ellen’s room.

  “Ellen and Tracy—Ellen and Tracy—Ellen and Tracy !” shrieked the triumphant imp.

  The truth struck Dudley as a blow from an iron fist. He rocked, on his feet, his eyes closed, his face drained of blood. For a moment he remained there, a man on fire with hate, rage, and madness. His left hand sprang to the handle of the door, but stopped its movement, poised above it. On the verge of flinging it open and rushing within to press and press and again press the trigger of the automatic, Arnold Dudley heard another voice, a voice that whispered fatefully down the ages:

  “The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on:...”

  He was too late. Too late to save his honour, too late to save Ellen’s virtue. Too late for all things worth while in life to be saved. Think ! He must—he must think.

  Opposite the door, its back against the wall, was a chair. Dudley seated himself on it, unconsciously taking care to make no noise and there, his wide feverish eyes fixed on that fatal closed door, and the automatic in his right hand resting on his knees, he waited.

  It seemed that his mind no longer dwelt in his body, as though it was an entirely separate entity, a separate thing that fought and strove to get through the door, to gain the room beyond. It urged and coaxed and swore at his inert body for refusing to rise and do its bidding. The struggle went on for a long time, but presently his mind came under a peculiarly soothing influence. It was going back into the months and the years which had gone, and the happiness contained therein became something real, a material thing that welcomed it and showed it pictures as a mother will show the pictures in a play-book to a child that has awakened from a nightmare.

  He found Ellen just a girl, a lovely winsome girl, a governess teaching a squatter’s young children. He had found her in a squatter’s garden, and the blue of her eyes rivalled the plumage of the “forty-eights” screeching in a near-by gum-tree. Loving her, he knew she loved him. They drove together one evening in his truck whilst the setting sun tipped the leaves of the mulgas and the jam-woods with tiny points of gold. And she had leaned against hum, and he had suddenly brought the heavy truck to a stop, and, turning, had looked into those blue pools, looming ever larger the closer he drew her face to his, closer until her parted lips lay beneath his own, and her scented breath fanned his face.

  Ellen! The shackles of mortality fell from him. The touch of her lips made him a God.

  And their wedding ! Just a quiet personal affair in a little old church in Fremantle which had been built, stone by stone, by haggard, hopeless hulks of men deported from a country across the world, and now blessed and redeemed by Ellen’s happiness.

  Frightened, shy, elfin ‘Ellen! Ellen who wanted to run away from him! Ellen who had stayed and worked and saved his money and urged him up, up, till he gained the pinnacle of success.

  It was a wonder woman, lovely, alluring, and tender, who always ran out of the house to the garage when he was putting away the car on his return from the city. Who took his arm and led him within the house, led him within their marvellous paradise, and insisted on being kissed and kissing him again and again, before they went in to dinner. There was a green gown she wore, a gown that did not criminally hide her white arms when they slid up and around his neck boy, and would not let him finish his dinner, but insisted, demanded, entreated to be taken at once to Mrs. Finlay; and then, whilst she and the mother watched beside the cot, sent him rushing about Perth to find and dispatch to the bedside West Australian’s greatest doctors.

  “Ellen and Tracy—Ellen and Tracy—Ellen and Tracy!”

  Curse that clamouring devil! What had Ellen to do with Tracy, or Tracy with Ellen? And why was he seated in that chair in that long passage and facing that closed door?

  Dudley’s body shuddered. His face was as though he were dead, as white as the back of a dead cuttlefish; but when he opened his eyes the pupils were expanded, surrounded by white, emitting light, a jade-green light, a light that springs from hell.

  To him came the sound of movement beyond the door. Someone was walking across the floor, nearing the door. Footsteps paused, hesitated on the further side. The handle of polished bronze turned, ceased to turn, then turned a full quarter of a circle.

  Slowly the door was drawn inward. Dudley saw a splash of pale blue. It was the colour of a silk wrapper, and through the opening door he saw the .wrapper was about his wife. How slowly that door was opening! Ellen was turned sideways to him. A man’s arm, dark blue-coated, and white-cuffed, encircled her shoulders. She was looking upward, an astonishing expression of loathing on her face, and into Dudley’s vision, when the door opened still further, came the pale handsome face of Edmund Tracy.

  Tracy’s head sank down towards Dudley’s wife’s. upturned face. When he kissed her Arnold Dudley’s body shivered. There was neither fire nor passion in that embrace. And after the kiss Tracy straightened up, and, swinging back the door to its full extent, took half a step forward.

  Dudley saw the satisfied, triumphant smile fade from Tracy’s face. He watched with peculiar incuriousness the dawning of an expression of horror, of terror. With icy calmness he regarded Tracy’s high white forehead, which bore a faint vertical line above the bridge of the straight, delicately-moulded nose. He heard, when he raised the automatic, his wife take in her breath with a sharp hiss.

  The automatic roared.

  Comical surprise leapt into Tracy’s face the instant he sagged and collapsed.

  CHAPTER III

  THE JUSTICE OF MAN

  TWO days and two awful nights ha
d dragged out their leaden minutes, and towards noon of the third day Arnold Dudley drove his old tone truck towards the old-fashioned village of Dongara, on the west coast of the Sunset State.

  The period of mental excitability had passed and was followed by a lethargy of mind which caused him to live far more in the immediate past than in the present. The truck was driven by a robot rather than a man.

  His wife’s shrieks immediately after the collapse of Tracy were more real than the warbling of a magpie high on a box-tree limb beneath which he passed. Nor did he see the tree of the glittering sheet of water in the bed of the valley below the road. He was again in that fateful passage, looking down on the still form of his wife’s seducer, and then at his wife beyond the body, cowering, the twitching muscles of her face drawing horrible marring lines.

  His following actions were but dimly remembered. He retained the idea of a memory that he had levelled the automatic at Ellen, and that when he was about to pull the trigger the thought occurred that to shoot would be only to waste a good cartridge. Ellen was like a dream of loveliness painted on a vase, and the vase had fallen and broken, and the lovely face was lined by tiny cracks. It was a vase, a broken vase, he looked at so gravely; and what was the use of smashing a vase already broken?

  How he left the house, whether by the front, the back, or the side door, he never remembered. The next picture in the sequence of the past he was living through and through again in the present, was of his passing over the bridge spanning the Swan river at Guildford. There remained nothing tangible or visible of Midland Junction; the next picture showing his car drawn up behind a dilapidated ton truck and George Finlay standing beside him. Finlay’s red face was serious to the verge of blankness; Finlay’s eyes, grey and shrewd, searched every feature of his, Dudley’s, face, and Finlay said ;

  “He was there—you’ve done him in?”