Devil's Tor (8 page)

Hugh twisted his moustache.

"I'm not so sure that it mayn't be I, in spite of the colouring. I seem to have obeyed the voice of the wild very much in the manner of those others, and from where else should I have got the obsession? My worthy old governor interested himself in nothing but the leaving a respectable fortune behind him, in genuine Piet fashion. Nor have I ever heard of other geographical adventurers in his stock. So it must be through my mother."

Involuntarily Helga glanced at the clock. It was midnight, and though there was still no need to hurry, she preferred now to let an unnecessary topic die a natural death, so that Hugh might come all the more quickly to his intended business.

"It's half our lifetime nearly since we met, Hugh," she remarked pensively after a pause, her hands being clasped over crossed knees. "It's a most sobering thought. What things we have both seen, done, and known in the meantime! Uncle must appear sadly changed to you. You haven't seen him since you were a lad?"

"Not for twenty years, to put a rough date to it. Of course he's changed, but then he's getting on."

"I want you to be as considerate to him as you can. I know he's generally grumpy, and only seems to wake up to say something caustic, but you must remember the infirmities of his age; and he has really been awfully sweet to me. He quite stepped into the breach when poor Dick died."

"I haven't so far intentionally been discourteous to him, Helga. I trust superfluous discourtesy isn't my nature. On the other hand, it's pretty obvious by now that my society affords him no excessive satisfaction; and as I, for my part, assuredly stand in no need of any strained agreeableness from him, we must probably for the short remaining period of my stay carry on as at present. Perhaps I should entertain a greater private respect for him if he hadn't gone into moneymaking. It rather blunts the edge of his philosophy for me."

"But money is so necessary. And he was thoroughly upset by the poor reception of intellectual works that had cost him years and years of thought. That estate agency business, too, it wasn't sought, but was practically thrust under his nose; and there has never been any question of surrendering his culture, which has always continued to exist side-by-side. I wish you had my faculty, my dear—to place yourself more in the skins of other people."

"You're a finely-tempered soul all round, Helga. Only don't expect persons without your natural advantages to be the same."

He got up, stretched his arms, with the affectation of a half-yawn, and looked down at her.

"You have guessed there is a particular matter I want to talk to you about?"

"What matter, Hugh?"

But the whole of his week-long timidities and caution had suddenly flown with these first ventured words of his, and now he seemed to experience a wonderful coolness and clearness of mental definition, which would enable him exactly to state his request without exciting his cousin's surprise, or extending the ground alone to be made known to her. And first he saw that he must bring up the affair of his estate.

"It is what I came down to Whitestone for. But up to to-day I've been meaning to speak to Uncle Magnus about it, and then, during a whole week, either he's been in the wrong mood or else I have. So I have decided to have it out with you instead. Ingrid warned me only this evening against worrying him. I'm glad, for with you of course I can talk very much more at ease, and you will have a quicker apprehension of the case; besides which, since you are to be my executrix—but that's a preliminary thing. …"

Helga was encountering him with a tranquillising upward regard.

"Won't you sit down again, Hugh?" He complied, and she added:

"I didn't know that you were appointing me your executrix."

"I took the liberty of naming you when I made a new will after the death of my sister. You and Ingrid then became my next-of-kin, and so I drew up the will in favour of you two. Under the circumstances, I took it for granted that you would undertake the executorship. If I never notified you at the time, it was because I wished not to raise possibly false expectations. I might be getting married—though that was always highly improbable. Now it's quite out of the question, and I can give you the straight assurance that you and your daughter are to inherit, in equal proportions. At present—supposing I were to die at once—you would get something like nineteen thousand pounds after payment of death duties; between you."

Helga, gazing at him oddly, sat amazed and silent. She had imagined that he was in money difficulties, and now he was all at once able to leave so much behind him! She was unaware of any immediate access of pleasure at the surprise. For one thing, it was little likely that she (being so much older than Hugh, and he so fit-looking) would ever outlive him. And, his own declaration notwithstanding, he might still find a wife. There were notoriously such swarms of marriage-seeking girls in India, where he so often was. She could not determine Ingrid's chances of inheritance.

He talked on.

"The estate's perfectly straightforward. It certainly doesn't represent a millionaire's fortune, still it should prove a useful little addition to what you may have already. It's the unconsumed portion of my father's hoard. All of it in good sound non-speculative stock, mostly trustee; with a few ready hundreds at Coutts', Charing Cross, and personal effects very much scattered over India, London and here, which it wouldn't be worth your while to worry much about. My solicitors hold the will; Marquis & Kent, Norfolk Street, Strand. They would act for you if you wished."

But Helga's continued dumbness and air of disturbed abstraction were chilling him, for he had expected at least some little show of gratification, whereas now he was being driven to conceive that she was only affronted. Possibly in his clumsy failure to provide that margin for the extra sensitiveness of women he had conveyed to her the idea that he was deliberately insulting their assumed position of dependence and poverty. If so, it was very silly of her, and he did not know how to put it right. He trusted that her own better sense would put it right for her and him in the next few moments.

"Marquis & Kent," he repeated, in a colder tone. "Shall I write it down for you?"

"No, I shall remember it, Hugh. But I am thinking how to thank you, this provision of yours is so awfully decent and considerate. In all human probability you will survive me, so I don't count, but I'm intensely touched by what you are doing for Ingrid. Sometimes I positively can't face the thought that the poor child must one day fight the world alone."

"Let us hope that she'll be safely and happily married to a good fellow long before you depart."

"We'll speak of that another time, Hugh. You have earned the right to be our adviser now. But may I tell her this?"

"Why not? If you wish. I really only mentioned the business to pave a way to what follows. If you are ready—?"

Helga threw him a swift glance, which was not for his seeing.

"I am ready, of course. It has to do with that box, has it not?"

"Yes. Before I begin, however—you aren't offended over this matter of the will? You are not imagining that I have taken too much for granted?"

"Why should you think that, Hugh? I am only very, very grateful."

"You seemed perturbed."

"No, indeed. I think it is a perfectly beautiful action, since it is not to deprive any nearer person."

"No one else has a claim at all."

Her grown quiet warmth of manner now satisfied him that she had never felt affronted, but had only perhaps been overwhelmed by the unexpectedness of his news. He was even glad that she had taken it so. It showed dignity and the complete lack of greed, which he had always been certain of as her character. He could therefore proceed more easily.

"In my possession is a thing of value, Helga, which I am to exhibit to you in a minute or two, for identification purposes. Yes, it's in that box. And in connection with it I'm to ask you a favour—which I fancy you ought to be able to grant. But if you can't, then you will refuse it, and I shan't take offence as long as I know beforehand. The article in question strictly doesn't come under my estate—which is why I was first of all going to beg the request of Uncle Magnus, though not an executor. In other words, it's not my own property. I want it got back, after my death, into the hands of a couple of men who have the better claim to it; though in fact it's not theirs either. Now, Helga, I can't give you the address or addresses of these people, so the whole of your commission will be to hang on to the valuable until they personally apply for it, which may be to-morrow or in three, six or twelve months' time. Soon or late, they are pretty sure to apply for it; but should they fail to, I want it thrown out somewhere, where no one can ever get at it. Keep it by you, say, three years, not longer. That's a sketch of the service."

"It seems a not very onerous one, Hugh. I could easily do that."

"The thing in these days is usually in that tin box; otherwise loose in my pocket. The moment you hear of my death, I want you personally to run through my effects, and secure it. Nearly certainly I shan't ever be leaving England again."

"I will do that too. But why do you speak as if you were under capital sentence? Surely you are quite well?"

"I may die," he returned evasively, "so, as an obligation of honour, I am taking the necessary steps. I'll give you the names of the men, and I can also pass you a snapshot I took of them in Tibet, which is where I ran across them. That's all the rough idea, I think. And you will undertake the job?"

"Of course, Hugh."

"Thank you. It's a weight off my mind. Now I'll show you the curio, and you will memorise it for next time."

From his trouser pocket he took a bunch of keys, then, finding and separating nearly the smallest on the ring, he got up to insert it in the lock of the box on the table. Helga watched him strangely, without moving from her seat. She saw him remove what he wanted from the box, but could no more than distinguish that it was small before her hand was actually touching it. Silently he had given the object to her, and was standing by. It was like the half of a broken sea-shore black flint pebble. In circumference it was about the size of a crown-piece. The fractured interior surface appeared tough, smooth, horny and faceted. It conveyed no meaning to her.

"What is it then, Hugh?"

"Its value is traditional, and also natural. The first we needn’t go into. Something of the second you can appreciate for yourself here and now, if you wish it. By holding it from the light, you will get the appearance, or illusion, of some sort of interior motion. Get well round from the lamp and the firelight, and stare down into the snapped face for a long minute..."

Exceedingly puzzled, she obeyed his directions, turning her back to the room’s radiance, while encircling the steadied flint on her lap with a wall of additionally-darkening fingers. Then she frowned down at it, and in this way most of a minute passed in silence. Drapier had dropped into his chair again.

Before the whole minute was up she moved sharply, as if startled, but went on looking.

Something now was travelling perpetually across the face of the flint, from right to left, that resembled smoke. It was a kind of white vapour, now thick, now thin. Its form was ever-changing. Its drift across the flint was quite slow; and the smoke seemed to be in the flint, not on its surface. …

Next, after she had become more familiar with it, the tiny field of vision seemed mystically to have grown magnified, till she could fancy that she was peering down at an animated black night sky, over the face of which
clouds
were sailing. And sometimes this whole imaginable sky was filled by the mass of cloud-forms, while at other times they parted fantastically, in the manner of true clouds, to reveal deep rifts of blackness. And at still other times all was black sky, containing no more than a wisp here and there of nebulous vapour.

Of course it was less like the image of an overhead sky than the reflection of one, say, in the quiet illusory depths of some leaf-blackened roadside pool; but dwarfed in the process as well, as if an invisible reducing lens were in between. Yet unmistakably it remained a night sky; the blackness was not of the medium, or not alone of it. Surely what she had been beginning to imagine a glittering aberration of her sight could really be nothing else than infinitesimal star-points shining forth!...

A large foreign object came rudely between her eyes and their magic spectrum. She realised that it was Hugh's hand. He was standing over her again, proposing to take back his little hemisphere—stupidly she heard his words.

"Better not spend too much time on it, Helga. You may get fascinated."

"And then?" Her unwonted note of exasperation surprised herself. She made no appeal for longer time, however, and without protest saw him restore the flint to its box.

"You are the last person I should wish to see in the grip of the abnormal," was his simply-uttered reply to her question. She was unable to resolve what significance there might be in it, but was still patient, while her momentary anger had vanished, for she knew that she must now hear more—that he was of his own free will about to tell her more.

"Are you in such a grip, Hugh?" she asked, with a quiet simplicity equal to his.

He faced her from his chair.

"I hadn't meant to confess that I am, but I suppose the fact will appear of itself from the rest of my explanation. An honest man can't turn thief without practical justification, and still remain normal, Helga. Well then, not to mince words, I
stole
this thing you have just seen. And why have I stolen it? Because it won't allow me to give it back to the thieves immediately before me in time. So that's what you too have to fear—that it won't let
you
give it up. But then there may be the devil to pay! And that is why I cut short your experimenting."

"But in that case it is very odd."

"Would to God I could find it in my heart to tell you half the oddness of it, Helga! It's fast leading me to believe that the universe as a whole is very odd."