Mark Aldridge - The Passing of Mr Quinn

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.