The Talleyrand Maxim Part 8

answered Parrawhite. "To me, at any rate. Now, then, this is my proposal. I'll be with you when this lady calls at your place tomorrow evening. We'll offer her the will, to do what she likes with, for ten thousand pounds. She can find that--quickly. When she pays--as she will!--we share, equally, and then--well, you can go to the devil! I shall go--somewhere else. So that's settled."

"No!" said Pratt.

Parrawhite turned sharply, and Pratt saw a sinister gleam in his eyes.

"Did you say no?" he asked.

"I said--no!" replied Pratt. "I'm not going to take five thousand pounds for a chance that's worth fifty thousand. Hang you!--if you hadn't been a black sneak-thief, as you are, I'd have had the whole thing to myself!

And I don't know that I will give way to you. If it comes to it, my word's as good as yours--and I don't believe Eldrick would believe you before me. Pascoe wouldn't anyway. You've got a past!--in quod, I should think--my past's all right. I've a jolly good mind to let you do your worst--after all, I've got the will. And by george! now I come to think of it, you can do your worst! Tell what you like tomorrow morning. I shall tell 'em what you are--a scoundrel."

He turned away at that--and as he turned, Parrawhite, with a queer cry of rage that might have come from some animal which saw its prey escaping, struck out at him with the heavy stick. The blow missed Pratt's head, but it grazed the tip of his ear, and fell slantingly on his left shoulder. And then the anger that had been boiling in Pratt ever since the touch on his arm in the dark lane, burst out in activity, and he turned on his a.s.sailant, gripped him by the throat before Parrawhite could move, and after choking and shaking him until his teeth rattled and his breath came in jerking sobs, flung him violently against the ma.s.ses of stone by which they had been standing.

Pratt was of considerable physical strength. He played cricket and football; he visited a gymnasium thrice a week. His hands had the grip of a blacksmith; his muscles were those of a prize-fighter. He had put more strength than he was aware of into his fierce grip on Parrawhite's throat; he had exerted far more force than he knew he was exerting, when he flung him away. He heard a queer cracking sound as the man struck something, and for the moment he took no notice of it--the pain of that glancing blow on his shoulder was growing acute, and he began to rub it with his free hand and to curse its giver.

"Get up, you fool, and I'll give you some more!" he growled. "I'll teach you to----"

He suddenly noticed the curiously still fas.h.i.+on in which Parrawhite was lying where he had flung him--noticed, too, as a cloud pa.s.sed the moon and left it unveiled, how strangely white the man's face was. And just as suddenly Pratt forgot his own injury, and dropped on his knees beside his a.s.sailant. An instant later, and he knew that he was once more confronting death. For Parrawhite was as dead as Antony Bartle--violent contact of his head with a rock had finished what Pratt had nearly completed with that vicious grip. There was no questioning it, no denying it--Pratt was there in that lonely place, staring half consciously, half in terror, at a dead man.

He stood up at last, cursing Parrawhite with the anger of despair. He had not one sc.r.a.p of pity for him. All his pity was for himself. That he should have been brought into this!--that this vile little beast, perfect sc.u.m that he was, should have led him to what might be the utter ruin of his career!--it was shameful, it was abominable, it was cruel!

He felt as if he could cheerfully tear Parrawhite's dead body to pieces.

But even as these thoughts came, others of a more important nature crowded on them. For--there lay a dead man, who was not to be put in one's pocket, like a will. It was necessary to hide that thing from the light--ever that light. Within a few hours, morning would break, and lonely and deserted as that place was nowadays, some one might pa.s.s that way. Out of sight with him, then!--and quickly.

Pratt was very well acquainted with the spot at which he stood. Those old quarries had a certain picturesqueness. They had become gra.s.s-grown; ivy, shrubs, trees had cl.u.s.tered about them--the people who lived in the few houses half a mile away, sometimes walked around them; the children made a playground of the place: Pratt himself had often gone into some quiet corner to read and smoke. And now his quick mind immediately suggested a safe hiding place for this thing that he could not carry away with him, and dare not leave to the morning sun--close by was a pit, formerly used for some quarrying purpose, which was filled, always filled, with water. It was evidently of considerable depth; the water was black in it; the mouth was partly obscured by a maze of shrub and bramble. It had been like that ever since Pratt came to lodge in that part of the district--ten or twelve years before; it would probably remain like that for many a long year to come. That bit of land was absolutely useless and therefore neglected, and as long as rain fell and water drained, that pit would always be filled to its brim.

He remembered something else: also close by where he stood--a heap of old iron things--broken and disused picks, smashed rails, fragments thrown aside when the last of the limestone had been torn out of the quarries. Once more luck was playing into his hands--those odds and ends might have been put there for the very purpose to which he now meant to turn them. And being certain that he was alone, and secure, Pratt proceeded to go about his unpleasant task skilfully and methodically. He fetched a quant.i.ty of the iron, fastened it to the dead man's clothing, drew the body, thus weighted, to the edge of the pit, and prepared to slide it into the black water. But there an idea struck him. While he made these preparations he had had hosts of ideas as to his operations next morning--this idea was supplementary to them. Quickly and methodically he removed the contents of Parrawhite's pockets to his own--everything: money, watch and chain, even a ring which the dead man had been evidently vain of. Then he let Parrawhite glide into the water--and after him he sent the heavy stick, carefully fastened to a bar of iron.

Five minutes later, the surface of the water in that pit was as calm and unruffled as ever--not a ripple showed that it had been disturbed. And Pratt made his way out of the wilderness, swearing that he would never enter it again.

CHAPTER VII

THE SUPREME INDUCEMENT

Pratt was in Eldrick & Pascoe's office soon after half-past eight next morning, and for nearly forty minutes he had the place entirely to himself. But it took only a few of those minutes for him to do what he had carefully planned before he went to bed the previous night. Shutting himself into Eldrick's private room, and making sure that he was alone that time, he immediately opened the drawer in the senior partner's desk, wherein Eldrick, culpably enough, as Parrawhite had sneeringly remarked, was accustomed to put loose money. Eldrick was strangely careless in that way: he would throw money into that drawer in presence of his clerks--notes, gold, silver. If it happened to occur to him, he would take the money out at the end of the afternoon and hand it to Pratt to lock up in the safe; but as often as not, it did not occur.

Pratt had more than once ventured on a hint which was almost a remonstrance, and Eldrick had paid no attention to him. He was a careless, easy-going man in many respects, Eldrick, and liked to do things in his own way. And after all, as Pratt had decided, when he found that his hints were not listened to, it was Eldrick's own affair if he liked to leave the money lying about.

There was money lying about in that drawer when Pratt drew it open; it was never locked, day or night, or, if it was, the key was left in it.

As soon as he opened it, he saw gold--two or three sovereigns--and silver--a little pile of it. And, under a letter weight, four banknotes of ten pounds each. But this was precisely what Pratt had expected to see; he himself had handed banknotes, gold, and silver to Eldrick the previous evening, just after receiving them from a client who had called to pay his bill. And he had seen Eldrick place them in the drawer, as usual, and soon afterwards Eldrick had walked out, saying he was going to the club, and he had never returned.

What Pratt now did was done as the result of careful thought and deliberation. There was a cheque-book lying on top of some papers in the drawer; he took it up and tore three cheques out of it. Then he picked up the bank-notes, tore them and the abstracted blank cheques into pieces, and dropped the pieces in the fire recently lighted by the caretaker. He watched these fragments burn, and then he put the gold and silver in his hip-pocket, where he already carried a good deal of his own, and walked out.

Nine o'clock brought the office-boy; a quarter-past nine brought the clerks; at ten o'clock Eldrick walked in. According to custom, Pratt went into Eldrick's room with the letters, and went through them with him. One of them contained a legal doc.u.ment over which the solicitor frowned a little.

"Ask Parrawhite's opinion about that," he said presently, indicating a marked paragraph.

"Parrawhite has not come in this morning, sir," observed Pratt, gathering up letters and papers. "I'll draw his attention to it when he arrives."

He went into the outer office, only to be summoned back to Eldrick a few minutes later. The senior partner was standing by his desk, looking a little concerned, and, thought Pratt, decidedly uncomfortable. He motioned the clerk to close the door.

"Has Parrawhite come?" he asked.

"No," replied Pratt, "Not yet, Mr. Eldrick."

"Is--is he usually late?" inquired Eldrick.

"Usually quite punctual--half-past nine," said Pratt.

Eldrick glanced at his watch; then at his clerk.

"Didn't you give me some cash last night?" he asked.

"Forty-three pounds nine," answered Pratt. "Thompson's bill of costs--he paid it yesterday afternoon."

Eldrick looked more uncomfortable than ever.

"Well--the fact is," he said, "I--I meant to hand it to you to put in the safe, Pratt, but I didn't come back from the club. And--it's gone!"

Pratt simulated concern--but not astonishment. And Eldrick pulled open the drawer, and waved a hand over it.

"I put it down there," he said. "Very careless of me, no doubt--but nothing of this sort has ever happened before, and--however, there's the unpleasant fact, Pratt. The money's gone!"

Pratt, who had hastily turned over the papers and other contents of the drawer, shook his head and used his privilege as an old and confidential servant. "I've always said, sir, that it was a great mistake to leave loose money lying about," he remarked mournfully. "If there'd only been a practice of letting me lock anything of that sort up in the safe every night--and this chequebook, too, sir--then----"

"I know--I know!" said Eldrick. "Very reprehensible on my part--I'm afraid I am careless--no doubt of it. But----"

He in his turn was interrupted by Pratt, who was turning over the cheque-book.

"Some cheque forms have been taken out of this," he said. "Three! at the end. Look there, sir!"

Eldrick uttered an exclamation of intense annoyance and disgust. He looked at the despoiled cheque-book, and flung it into the drawer.

"Pratt!" he said, turning half appealingly, half confidentially to the clerk. "Don't say a word of this--above all, don't mention it to Mr.

Pascoe. It's my fault and I must make the forty-three pounds good.

Pratt, I'm afraid this is Parrawhite's work. I--well, I may as well tell you--he'd been in trouble before he came here. I gave him another chance--I'd known him, years ago. I thought he'd go straight. But--I fear he's been tempted. He may have seen me leave money about. Was he in here last night?"

Pratt pointed to a doc.u.ment which lay on Eldrick's desk.

"He came in here to leave that for your perusal," he answered. "He was in here--alone--a minute or two before he left."

All these lies came readily and naturally--and Eldrick swallowed each.

He shook his head.

"My fault--all my fault!" he said. "Look here--keep it quiet. But--do you know where Parrawhite has lived--lodged?"

"No!" replied Pratt. "Some of the others may, though!"