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Hugo: A Fantasia on Modern Themes, a fiction by Arnold Bennett |
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Part 3. The Tomb - Chapter 26. Second Triumph Of Simon |
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_ PART III. THE TOMB CHAPTER XXVI. SECOND TRIUMPH OF SIMON 'Come up at once,' Hugo whispered. 'Door opposite top of stairs.' And he threw down on to the pavement a latchkey. 'What do you think of yourself now, Si?' Albert asked his brother, as they entered the house. 'You've let yourself in for something at last.' They found Hugo in an ordinary bedsitting-room. He was wearing his hat and his overcoat, and staring out of the open window. It was a cold night, but he did not seem to feel the icy draught which blew into the apartment. The whole of his attention appeared to be concentrated on No. 23. He did not at first even turn to look at the brothers when they came in. They explained themselves. 'I will tell you why I am here, and what has occurred to me,' said Hugo, playing, perhaps rather nervously, with the knife and cheese-plate which still lay on the small table by the window. 'Then we can decide what to do. I've hired this room.' No doubt existed in his mind that Simon had happened upon the track of the veritable living Ravengar. It could not be a coincidence that a man so strongly resembling Ravengar, a man posing as a doctor, and buying nearly a sovereign's worth of chloroform, should be occupying rooms in the same house as Camilla. The tremendous revelation of Ravengar's genius for stratagem and intrigue afforded by the recital of the two brothers came upon Hugo with a dazing shock. This man, whom he knew from Camilla's own story to be curiously deficient in ordinary human sentiments, had arranged a sham suicide for the benefit of the general public. He had let Hugo into the secret of that deception, but only to cheat him with another deception, and a more monstrous one. The brain that could conceive the fiction of suicide in the vault--a fiction which, while lulling Hugo into a false security as regards Camilla's safety, at the same time poisoned his happiness--such a brain might be capable of unimagined horrors. Sane or mad, the mere existence of that brain was a menace before which Hugo trembled. He realized that Ravengar had been consummately acting during the latter part of their interview on the first day of the sale, and again consummately acting when he spoke to Hugo on the telephone. Ravengar had, beyond doubt, deliberately set himself to lure Camilla back to England, and he had succeeded. Beyond doubt, all her movements had been spied and marked, and Ravengar had been in a position to complete his arrangements--whatever his arrangements were--at leisure and with absolute freedom. She had taken a room in Horseferry Road, and he had followed.... What was the sequel to be? That she was in his power at that moment Hugo could not question. And the chloroform? At that moment Ravengar had meant that the Hugo building should have been a funeral pyre--a spectacle to petrify the Metropolis. And it seemed to Hugo that if Ravengar was mad, as he must be, he could only have designed the spectacle as something final, as at once a last revenge and an accompaniment to the supreme sacrifice of Camilla. 'We must get into that house immediately,' said Hugo, when he had finished his own narrative. 'The question is how?' 'I've got a card of Inspector Wilbraham's, of the Yard, in my pocket,' Albert suggested. 'We might use that, and make out that this purchase of chloroform under a false name had got to be explained to the Yard instantly.' Albert had recently become rather intimate with Scotland Yard. Inspector Wilbraham had even called on him in reference to Bentley's death and the disappearance of Brown; and Albert was duly proud. 'We will try that,' said Hugo. 'Have you any handcuffs?' 'No, sir.' 'Go and obtain a couple of pairs. You can be back in twenty minutes. Bring also my revolver.' Hugo and Simon were left alone. Hugo spoke no word. 'I'll put the room to rights, sir,' said Simon, after a pause. He could bear the inaction no longer. Hugo nodded absently, and Simon collected the ruins of the vile repast which his master had consumed, and put them outside on a tray on the landing. 'There's a light now in the first story!' exclaimed Hugo. 'I hope that boy won't be long.' And then Albert arrived with the revolver and the handcuffs. He had been supernaturally quick. They descended and crossed the road. 'You understand,' Hugo instructed them. 'Let us have no mistake about getting in. Immediately the door is opened, in we all go. We can talk inside.' 'Supposing Albert and me went down to the area-door,' Simon ventured, 'instead of the front-door. We might get in easier that way. It's always easier to deal with servant-girls and persons of that sort in kitchens. Then we could come upstairs and let you in at the front-door. Three detectives seem rather a lot to be entering all at once. And, besides, you don't look like a detective, sir.' 'What do I look like?' Hugo asked coldly. 'You look too much like a gentleman, sir. It's the hat, sir,' he added. Simon had certainly surpassed himself that day. He had begun by surpassing himself at early morning, and he had kept it up. Probably never before in his life had he been so loquacious and so happy in his loquacity. 'That's not a bad scheme, Simon,' said Hugo. 'Try it.' The brothers went down the area-steps while Hugo remained at the gate. A light burned steadily in the first-floor window. And then another and a fainter light flickered in the hall, and after a few seconds the front-door opened. Hugo literally jumped into the house, and, safely within, he banged the door. 'Now,' he said. A middle-aged woman, holding a candle, stood by Simon and Albert in the hall. 'Are you the servant?' Hugo demanded. 'No, sir; I'm the landlady. And I'd like to know--' 'Your husband told me you were away and wouldn't return till to-morrow.' 'Seeing as how my husband's been dead these thirteen years--' 'We're in, sir. We'd better search the house to start with,' said Albert. 'There's three of us. The man that opened the door to you must have been a wrong un, one of _his_.' 'Never have I had the police in my house before,' wailed the landlady of No. 23, Horseferry Road, while the candle dropped tallow tears on the oilcloth. 'And all I can say is I thank the blessed Lord it's dark, and you aren't in uniform. Doctor Woolrich's rooms are on the first floor, and you can go up and see for yourself, if you like. And how should I know he wasn't a real doctor?' As the landlady spoke, sounds of footsteps made themselves heard overhead, and a door closed. 'Give me that candle, my good woman,' said Hugo, hastily snatching it from her. The three men ran upstairs, leaving the hall to darkness and the landlady. Whether Hugo dropped the candle in his excitement, or whether it was knocked out of his hand by means of a stick through the rails of the landing-banister as he ascended, will never be accurately known. He himself is not sure. The important fact is that the candle fell, and the trio stumbled up the last few stairs with nothing to guide them but a chink of light through a half-closed door. This door led to the rooms of Dr. Woolrich, and the rooms of Dr. Woolrich were well lighted with gas. But they were empty. There was a sitting-room and a bedroom, and on the round table in the centre of the sitting-room was a copy of the most modern edition of Quain's 'Dictionary of Medicine,' edited by Murray, Harold, and Bosanquet, bound in half-morocco; the volume was open at the article 'Anaesthetics,' and Hugo will always remember that the page was sixty-two. No sooner were the rooms found to be empty than Hugo rushed back to the landing, followed by Simon. The landing, however, even with the sitting-room door thrown wide and the light streaming across the landing and down the stairs, showed no sign of life. Then Albert, who had remained within the suite, called out: 'There must be a dressing-room off this bedroom, and it's locked.' 'Simon,' said Hugo, 'go to the front window and keep watch.' And Hugo ran into the bedroom to Albert. Decidedly there was a door in the bedroom which had the appearance of leading into a further room, but the door would not budge. The pair glanced about. No evidence of recent human habitation was visible either in the sitting-room or in the bedroom, save only the dictionary, and Albert commented on this. 'We must force that door,' Hugo decided, 'and be ready to look after yourself when it gives way.' As he spoke he could see, in the tail of his eye, Simon opening the front window and then looking out into the street. 'One--two--charge!' cried Hugo; and he and Albert flung themselves valiantly against the door. They made no impression upon it at all. Breathless and shaken, they looked at each other. 'Suppose I fire into the lock?' said Hugo. 'We might try a key first,' Albert answered. He took the key from the door between the bedroom and the sitting-room, and applied it to the lock of the obstinate portal. The obstinate portal opened at once. 'Empty!' ejaculated Albert, putting his nose into a small dressing-room. With a gesture of disgust Hugo turned away. In the same instant Simon withdrew his head into the sitting-room. 'I've seen him,' Simon whispered in hoarse excitement. 'He just popped out of the kitchen and came half-way up the area steps. Then he ran back. He saw me looking at him.' 'Ravengar?' Simon nodded. This was the hour of Simon's triumph, the proof that he had not been mistaken in the theory which he had raised on the foundation of the photograph. 'Come along,' said Hugo grimly, preparing to rush downstairs. But a singular thing had occurred. While Simon had been staring out of the front window, and Hugo and Albert engaged in forcing a door which led to emptiness, the door of the sitting-room, the sole means of egress from the first-floor suite, had been shut and locked on the outside. In vain Hugo assailed it with boot and shoulder; in vain Albert assisted him. 'Keep your eye on the street, you fool!' said Albert to Simon, when the latter offered to join the siege of the door. Hugo and Albert multiplied their efforts. 'There's a cab driven up,' Simon informed them from the window. 'A man's got out. Now he's gone down the area steps. They're carrying something up, something big. Oh! look here, I must help you.' And Simon ran to the door. Before the triple assault it fell at last, and the three tumbled pell-mell downstairs into the hall. The front-door was open. A cab was just driving away. It drove rapidly, very rapidly. 'After it!' Hugo commanded. The hunt was up. Two minutes afterwards another cab drove up to the door. Ravengar and another man emerged from the area holding between them the form of a woman. They got leisurely into the cab with the woman and departed. _ |
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