Mark Aldridge - The Passing of Mr Quinn

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.’