Chapter XIV
The drawing-room of the Sanatorium was available until tea-time for the practice of correspondence. It offered for this purpose a small table with the complexion of mahogany and a leather top, upon which reposed an inkstand containing three pots, marked respectively in plain letters, “black,” “red,” and “copying,” and a number of ancient pens. When a new arrival had overcome his wonder and consternation at the various features of the establishment, he usually signalized his acceptance of what lay before him by writing to Capetown for a fountain-pen. As old inhabitants of the Cape reveal themselves to the expert eye by carrying their tobacco loose in a side pocket of their coats, so the patient who had conceded Dr. Jakes’ claims to indulgence was to be distinguished by the possession of a pen that made him independent of the establishment’s supply and frequently by stains of ink upon his waistcoat in the region of the left-hand upper pocket, where custom has decided a man shall carry his fountain-pen.
Margaret had brought her unanswered letters to this privacy and her fountain-pen was busy in the undisturbed interval following the celebration of lunch. Hers was the common task of the exile in South Africa, to improvize laboriously letters to people at home who had plenty to see and do and no need of the post to inject spice into their varied lives. There was nothing to write about, nothing to relate; the heat of the sun, the emptiness of the veld, the grin of Fat Mary—each of her letters played over these worn themes. Yet unless they were written and sent, the indifferent folk to whom they were addressed would not write to her, and the weekly mail, with its excitements and its reminders, would fail her. No dweller in lands where the double knock of the postman comes many times in the day can know the thrill of the weekly mail, discharged from the steamship in Capetown and heralded in its progress up the line by telegrams that announce to the little dorps along the railway the hour of its coming. They have not waited with a patient, preoccupied throng in the lobby of the post-office where the numbered boxes are, and heard beyond the wooden partition the slam of the bags and the shuffle of the sorters, talking at their work about things remote from the mail. The Kafir mail-runners, with their skinny naked legs and their handfuls of smooth sticks know how those letters are awaited in the hamlets and farms far remote from the line, by sun-dried, tobacco-flavored men who are up before the dawn to receive them, by others whose letters are addressed to names they are not called by, and by Mrs. Jakes, full-dressed and already a little tired two hours before breakfast. All those letters are paid for by screeds that suck dry the brains of their writers, desperately searching over the chewed ends of penholders for suggestions on barren ground.
There was one letter which Margaret had set herself to compose that had a different purpose. There were not lacking signs that her position in Dr. Jakes’ household would sooner or later become impossible, and it was desirable to clear the road for a retreat when no other road would be open to her. It was not only that Mrs. Jakes burned to be rid of her and had taken of late to dim hints of her desire in this respect, for Margaret was prepared, if she were forced to it, to find Mrs. Jakes’ enmity amusing and treat it in that light. Such a course, she judged would paralyze Mrs. Jakes; in the face of laughter, the little woman was impotent. But there was also the prospect, daily growing nearer and more threatening, of an exposure which would show her ruthlessly forth as the friend and confidante of the Kafir, Kamis, the woman for whom Ford and Mr. Samson, had, in their own phrase, “no use.” The hour when that exposure should be made loomed darkly ahead; nothing could avert its sinister advance upon her, nor lighten it of its quality of doom. She no longer invited her secret to make itself known. By degrees the warnings of Kamis, the threats of Boy Bailey, the malice of Mrs. Jakes, had struck their roots in her consciousness, and she was becoming acclimatized to the South-African spirit which threatens with vague penalties, not the less real for being vague, such transgressors as she of its one iron rule of life and conduct. When it should come upon her, she decided, she would summon her strength to accept it, and confront it serenely, in the manner of good breeding. But when that was done, she would have to go.
She was writing therefore to the legal uncle of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, who controlled her affairs and manifested himself with sprightly letters and punctual cheques. He was an opinionative uncle, like most men who jest along the established lines of humor, but amenable to a reasonable submissiveness on the part of his ward and niece. He liked to be inflexible—good-naturedly inflexible, like an Olympian who condescends to earth, but he could be counted upon to repay an opportunity for a display of his inflexibility by liberal indulgence upon other points. Therefore Margaret, after consideration, commenced the serious part of her epistle to the heathen with a suggestion in regard to investments which she knew would rouse him. Then, in a following paragraph:
I am better than I was when I came out, but not better than I was a month ago, and I don’t think I am improving as rapidly as Dr. David hoped. It may be that I am a little too far to the East of the Karoo. Was it you or somebody else who advised me to keep to the West?
“That ’ll help to fetch him,” murmured Margaret, as she wrote the last words.
Perhaps, later on, if Dr. Jakes thinks well of it, I might move to a place I hear of over in the West. I ‘m letting you know now in plenty of time; but I don’t want you to think there is anything seriously wrong. Please don’t be at all anxious.
“Now something fluffy,” pondered Margaret. “If I get it right, he ’ll order me to go.”
What makes me hesitate, she wrote, is the trouble it will cost me to move from here. Would you please show this letter to Dr. David and ask his opinion?
“That ’ll do the trick,” she decided unscrupulously. “Dr. David will see there ’s something in it and he ’ll back me up. And then, when the row comes, they shall each have a cut at me,—Mrs. Jakes and Fat Mary and all—they shall each have their chance to draw blood, and then I ’ll go.”
While she wrote, there had been the sound of footsteps on the stone floor of the hall outside the room, but she had been too busy to note them. Otherwise, she would quickly have marked an unfamiliar foot among them. They were reduced to that at the Sanatorium; they knew every foot that sounded on its floors and a strange one fetched them running to look from doors. But Margaret’s occupation had robbed her of that mild exhilaration, and she looked up all unsuspiciously as Mrs. Jakes pushed open the door of the drawing-room, entered and closed it carefully behind her.
She came a couple of paces into the room and halted, looking at the girl in a manner that recalled to Margaret that fantastic night when she had come with a candle to seek aid for Dr. Jakes. Though she had not now her little worried smile, she wore the same bewildered and embarrassed aspect, as of a purpose crossed and complicated by considerations and doubts.
“Are you looking for me, Mrs. Jakes?” asked Margaret, when she had waited in vain for her to speak.
“Yes,” replied Mrs. Jakes, in a hushed voice, and remained where she stood.
Again Margaret waited in vain for her to speak.
“I ’m rather busy just now,” she said. “What is it you want with me, please?”
Mrs. Jakes looked to see that the door was closed before she answered.
“It isn’t me,” she said then. “We—we don’t get on very well, Miss Harding; but this isn’t my doing. I ’ve never whispered a word to a soul. I haven’t, indeed, if I never speak another word.”
Margaret stared at her, perceiving suddenly that the small bleak woman was all a-thrill with some nervous tension. Her own nerves quivered in response to it.
“What is it?” she demanded. “What has happened?”
“It ’s the police,” breathed Mrs. Jakes. She gave the word the accent in which she felt it. “The police,” she said, with a stricken sense of all that police stand for, of which unbearable and public shame is chief. She was trembling, and her small hands, with their rough red knuckles like raw scars upon them, were picking feverishly at her loose black skirt.
Margaret’s heart beat the more quickly at the mere tone of her whisper, fraught with dim fears; but the words conveyed nothing to her. If anything, they relieved her. In the hinterland of her consciousness the forward-cast shadow of that impending hour was perpetually dark; but the police could have no concern in that.
“Oh, do please talk plainly,” she said irritably. “What exactly do you want to tell me? And what have I got to do with the police?”
The stimulus of her impatient tones was what was needed to restore Mrs. Jakes to coherence. She stared at the girl with a sort of stupefaction.
“What have you got to do with it,” she repeated. “Why—it ’s all about you. Somebody ’s told about you and that Kafir—about you knowing him and all about him, and now Mr. Van Zyl is in the doctor’s study. He ’s come to inquire about it.”
“Oh,” said Margaret slowly.
It had struck then, the bitter hour of revelation; it had crept upon her out of an ambush of circumstance when she least expected it, and the reckoning was due. There was to be no time allowed her in which to build up her courage; even her retreat must be over strange roads. Before the gong went to gather the occupants of the house for tea, the stroke would have fallen, and her place in the minds of her fellows would be with Dr. Jakes on the hearth-rug, an outcast from their circle. Unless, indeed, Dr. Jakes should also decline her company, as seemed likely.
It was the image in her mind of a scornful and superior Jakes that excited the smile with which she looked up at Jakes’ frightened wife.
“So long as he does n’t bother me, he can inquire as much as he likes,” she said.
Mrs. Jakes did not understand. “It ’s you he ’s going to inquire of,” she said. “I suppose, of course—I suppose you ’ll tell him about—about that night?”
“I shan’t tell him anything,” replied Margaret. “Oh, you needn’t be afraid, Mrs. Jakes. I ’m not going to take this opportunity of punishing you for all your unpleasantness. I shall simply refuse to answer any questions at all.”
“You can’t do that.” Mrs. Jakes showed her relief plainly in her face and in the relaxation of her attitude. She had forgotten one of the first rules of her manner of warfare, which is to doubt the enemy’s word. But in spite of a reluctant gratitude for the contemptuous mercy accorded to her, she felt dully resentful at this high attitude of Margaret’s towards the terrors of the police.
“You can’t do that,” she said. “He ’s got a right to know—and he ’s a sub-inspector. He ’ll insist—he ’ll make you tell—”
“I think not,” said Margaret quietly.
“But he ’s—”
Mrs. Jakes broke off sharply as a hand without turned the handle of the door and pushed it open. Ford appeared, and paused at the sight of them in conversation.
“Hallo,” he said. “Am I interrupting?”
Mrs. Jakes hesitated, but Margaret answered with decision.
“Not at all,” she said. “Come in, please.”
It occurred to her that the blow would be swifter if Ford himself were present when it fell and there were no muddle of explanations to drag it out.
Ford entered reluctantly, scenting a quarrel between the two and suspicious of Margaret’s intentions in desiring his presence.
“There ’s a horse and orderly by the steps,” he said. “Is Van Zyl somewhere about? That’s why I came in, to see if he was here.”
“He—he is in the study,” answered Mrs. Jakes, in extreme discomfort. She turned to Margaret. “If you will come now, I will take you to him.”
Ford turned, surprised.
“What for?” asked Margaret.
“He—sent for you.” Mrs. Jakes did not understand the question; she only perceived dimly that some quality in the situation was changed and that she no longer counted in it.
“But what the dickens did he do that for?” asked Ford.
“We ’ll see,” said Margaret, forestalling Mrs. Jakes’ bewildered reply. “Please tell him, Mrs. Jakes, that I am here and can spare him a few minutes at once.”
“Yes,” acquiesced Mrs. Jakes, helplessly, and departed.
Ford came lounging across the room to Margaret.
“What’s up?” he inquired. “You haven’t been murdering somebody and not letting me help?”
Margaret shook her head. She was standing guard over her composure and could not afford to jest.
“Sit down over there,” she bade him, motioning him towards the couch at the other side of the wide room. “And don’t go away, even if he asks you to. Then you ’ll hear all about it.”
He wondered but obeyed slowly, leaning back against the end of the couch with one long leg lying up on the cushions.
“If he talks in the tone of his message to you,” he said meditatively, “I shall be for punching his head.”
Sub-Inspector Van Zyl had had the use of a clothes-brush before expressing his desire to see Margaret; it was a tribute he paid to his high official mission. He had cleared himself and his accoutrement of dust and the stain of his journey; and it was with the enhanced impressiveness of spick-and-span cleanliness that he presented himself in the drawing-room, pausing in the doorway with his spurred heels together to lift his hand in a precise and machine-like salute. At his back, Mrs. Jakes’ unpretentious black made a relief for his rigid correctitude of attire and pose, and the pallid agitation of her countenance, peering in fearful curiosity to one side of him, heightened his military stolidity. His stone-blue eyes rested on Ford’s recumbence with a shadow of surprise.
“Afternoon, Ford,” he said curtly. “You ’ll excuse me, but I ’ve a word or two to say to Miss Harding.”
“Afternoon, Van Zyl,” replied Ford, not moving. “Miss Harding asked me to stay, so don’t mind me.”
Van Zyl looked at him inexpressively. “I ’m on duty,” he said. “Sorry, but I wish you ’d go. My business is with Miss Harding.”
“Fire away,” replied Ford. “I shan’t say a word unless Miss Harding wishes it.”
Margaret moved in her chair.
“You will say what you please,” she said. “Don’t regard me at all, Mr. Ford. Now—what can I do for you, Mr. Van Zyl?”
Van Zyl finished his scrutiny of Ford and turned to her.
“I sent to ask you to see me in the other room, Miss Harding, because I thought you would prefer me to speak to you in private,” he said, with his wooden preciseness of manner. “That was why. Sorry if it offended you. However—”
He stood aside and held the door while Mrs. Jakes entered, and closed it behind her. Stalking imperturbably, he placed a chair for her and drew one out for himself, depositing his badged “smasher” hat on the ground beside it. Seated, he drew from his smoothly immaculate tunic a large note-book and snapped its elastic band open and laid it on his knee. Ford, from his place on the couch, watched these preparations with gentle interest.
Van Zyl looked up at Margaret with a pencil in his fingers. His pale, uncommunicative eyes fastened on her with an unemotional assurance in their gaze.
“First,” he said; “where were you, Miss Harding, on the afternoon of the —th?”
He mentioned a date to which Margaret’s mind ran back nimbly. It was the day on which Boy Bailey had made terms from the top of the dam wall, the day on which the Kafir had kissed her hand, nearly two weeks before.
She had herself sufficiently in hand, and returned his gaze with a faint smiling tranquillity that told him nothing.
“I have no information to give you, Mr. Van Zyl,” she replied evenly. “It is quite useless to ask me any questions; I shan’t answer them.”
He was not disturbed. “Sorry,” he said, “but I ’m afraid you must. I hope you ’ll remember that I have my duty to do, Miss Harding.”
“Must, eh?”
That was Ford, thoughtfully, from the couch. Van Zyl looked in his direction sharply with a brief frown, but let it pass.
“It’s no use, Mr. Van Zyl,” said Margaret. “I simply am not going to answer any questions, and your duty has nothing to do with me. So if there is nothing else that you wish to say to me, your business is finished.”
“No,” he said; “it isn’t finished yet, Miss Harding. You refuse to say where you were on that afternoon?”
Margaret smiled slowly and he made a quick note in his book.
“I ought to say, perhaps,” he went on, looking up when he had finished writing, “that the information I am asking for relates to a—a person, who is wanted by the police on a charge of sedition and incitement to commit a breach of the peace. You were seen on the afternoon in question in the company of that—person, Miss Harding; and I believe—I believe you can help us to lay hands on him.”
“Is it Samson?” inquired Ford, raising his head. “I ’ve always had my suspicions of Samson.”
“Oh, Mr. Ford,” exclaimed Mrs. Jakes, pained.
“It ’s not Mr. Samson,” said the sub-inspector calmly; “and it is not any business of yours, Ford.”
“Oh, yes; it is,” answered Ford. “Because if it isn’t Samson it must be me—unless it ’s Jakes. You seem to think we see a good deal of company here, Van Zyl.”
“I don’t think anything at all,” retorted the sub-inspector stiffly; “and I ’ve nothing to say to you. My business is with Miss Harding, and you won’t help her by making a nuisance of yourself.”
“Eh?” Ford sat up suddenly. “What’s that—won’t help her? Are you trying to frighten Miss Harding by suggesting that you can use any sort of compulsion to her? Because, if that ’s your idea, you ’d better look out what you ’re doing.”
“I ’m not responsible to you, Ford,” replied Van Zyl shortly. “You can hold your tongue now. Miss Harding understands well enough what I mean.”
“Oh, yes,” said Margaret, as Ford looked towards her. “I understand, but I don’t care.”
It was taking its own strange course, but she was not concerned to deflect it or make it run more directly. She conserved her powers for the moment when the thing would be told, and Ford’s indignant championship arrested brusquely by the mere name of her offense. Presently Van Zyl would cease to speak of “a person” and come out with the plain word, “Kafir.” How he had gained his information she did not attempt to guess; but that he had the means to break her there was no doubting. She would answer no questions; she was determined upon that; but now that the hour of revelation was come, she would do nothing to fog it. It should pass and be done with and leave her with its consequences clear to weigh and abide.
She made a motion of the hand that hung over the back of her chair to Ford, as though she would hush him. He was puzzled and looked it, but subsided provisionally against the end of the couch again.
Van Zyl eased his shoulders in their bondage of slings and straps with a practised shrug, crossed one booted leg over the other and faced her afresh.
“Now, Miss Harding, you see that I am not speaking by guess; and it ’s for you to say whether you will have the rest of this here or in private. I ’m anxious to give you every possible consideration.”
“I shan’t answer any questions,” said Margaret, “and I decline any privacy, Mr. Van Zyl.”
“No? Very well. I must do my duty as best I can,” replied the sub-inspector, with official resignation. He referred to a back page of his note-book perfunctorily.
“On the —th of this month, man discovered weeping and disorderly on the platform at Zeekoe Siding, stated to Corporal Simms that he had been robbed of five hundred pounds by confidence trick on down train. Under examination, varied the sum, and finally adhered to figure of forty-three pounds odd, which he alleged was part of fifty pounds he had received from the—person in whose company he had seen you.”
“Ah!” Margaret found herself smiling absently at the memory of Boy Bailey making his bargain on the top of the dam wall, with his bare unbeautiful feet fidgeting in the grass.
Sub-inspector Van Zyl surveyed her with his impersonal stare and continued:
“He gave the name of Claude Richmond, but was afterwards identified as one Noah Bailey, alias Boy Bailey, alias Spotted Dog, etc., wanted by the police in connection with—a certain affair. On being charged, feigned to fall in a fit but came to under treatment, and made a certain communication, which was transmitted to me as bearing upon my search for this—person. The communication was detailed, Miss Harding, and he stood to it under a searching examination, and satisfied us that we were getting the truth out of him. Acting upon the information thus received, I next called upon you.”
He looked up. “You see what I have to go upon?” he said. “Since you know yourself what took place on the afternoon about which I asked you, you can understand that the police require your assistance. Do you still refuse to answer me, Miss Harding?”
“Of course,” replied Margaret.
Now it would come, she thought. Van Zyl would spare her no longer. She watched his smooth, tanned face with nervous trepidation.
He frowned slightly at her answer, and leaned forward with the note-book in his hand, his forefinger between the pages to keep the place.
“You do?” he demanded, his voice rising to a sharp note. Ford sat up again, watchful and angry. “You refuse, do you? Now, look here, Miss Harding, we ’ll have to make an end of this.”
Ford struck in crisply. “Good idea,” he said. “I suggest Miss Harding might quit the room for that purpose, and leave you to explain to me what the devil you mean by this.”
Van Zyl turned on him quickly. “You look out,” he said. “If I ’ve got to arrest you to shut your mouth, I ’ll do it—and quick too.”
“Why not?” demanded Ford. “That ’ll be as good a way for you to get the lesson you need as any other.”
“You’ll get a lesson,” began Van Zyl, making as though to rise and put his threat into action.
“Oh, please,” cried Margaret; “none of this is necessary. Sit down, Mr. Ford; please sit down and listen. Mr. Van Zyl, you have only to speak out and you will be free from further trouble, I ’m sure.”
“I ’ve taken too much trouble as it is,” retorted the sub-inspector. “I ’ll have no more of it.”
He glared with purpose at Ford. Though he had not at any moment doffed his formality of demeanor, the small scene had lit a spark in him and he was newly formidable and forceful. Ford met his look with the narrow smile with which a man of his type masks a rising temper, but so far yielded to Margaret’s urgency as to lean back upon one elbow.
“You ’ll be sorry for all this presently,” Margaret said to him warningly.
“Very soon, in fact,” added the sub-inspector, “if he repeats the offense.”
He settled himself again on his chair, confronting Margaret.
“Now, Miss Harding,” lie resumed briskly. “Out with it? You admit you were there, eh?”
“Oh, no,” said Margaret. “You ’re asking questions again, Mr. Van Zyl.”
“And I ’m going to have an answer, too,” he replied zestfully. “You ’ve got a wrong idea entirely of what ’s before you. You can still have this in private, if you like; but here or elsewhere, you ’ll speak or out comes the whole thing. Now, which is it going to be—sharp?”
“I ’ve nothing to tell you,” she maintained.
His blond, neat face hardened.
“Haven’t you, though. We’ll see? You know a Kafir calling himself—” he made a lightning reference to his book—“calling himself Kamis?”
She made no answer.
“You know the man, eh? It was with him you spent the afternoon of the —th, was n’t it? Under the wall of the dam down yonder—yes? You ’ve met him more than once, and always alone?”
She kept a constraint on herself to preserve her faintly-smiling indifference of countenance, but her face felt stiff and cold, and her smile as though it sagged to a blatant grin. She did not glance across to see how Ford had received the news; that had suddenly become impossible.
“You see?” There was a restrained triumph in Van Zyl’s voice. “We know more than you think, young lady—and more still. You won’t answer questions, won’t you? You let a Kafir kiss you under a wall, and then put up this kind of bluff.”
There was an explosion from Ford as he leaped to his feet, with the hectic brilliant on each cheek.
“You liar,” he cried. “You filthy Dutch liar.”
Van Zyl did not even turn his head. A hard smile parted his squarely-cut lips as he watched Margaret. At his word, she had made a small involuntary movement as though to put a hand on her bosom, but had let it fall again.
“You may decide to answer that, perhaps,” suggested the sub-inspector. “Do you deny that he kissed you?”
There was a pause, while Ford stood waiting and the sound of his breathing filled the interval. The fingers of Margaret’s left hand bent and unbent the flap of the envelope destined for the legal uncle, but her mind was far from it and its contents. “You liar,” Ford had cried, and it had had a fine sound; even now she had but to rise as though insulted and walk from the room, and his loyalty would endure, unspotted, unquestioning, touchy and quick. She might have done well to choose the line that would have made that loyalty valid, and she felt herself full of regrets, of pain and loss, that it must find itself betrayed. The vehemence of the cry was testimony to the faith that gave it utterance.
And then, for the first time in the interview, she dwelt upon the figure that stood at the back of all this disordered trouble—that of Kamis, remote from their agitated circle, companioning in his solitude with griefs of his own. He came into her mind by way of comparison with the directness and vivid anger of Ford, standing tense and agonized for her reply, with all his honest soul in his thin dark face. His flimsy silk clothes made apparent the lean youth of his body. The other went to and fro in the night and the silence in shabby tweeds, and his face denied an index to the strong spirit that drove him. He suffered behind blubber lips and a comical nose; he was humble and grateful. The two had nothing in common if it were not that faith in her, to which she must now do the peculiar justice that the situation required.
“Let ’s have it,” urged the sub-inspector. “He kissed you, this nigger did, and you let him? Speak up.”
Boy Bailey had said, imaginatively: “She held out both her arms to him—wide; and he took hold of her an’ hugged her, kissin’ her till I couldn’t stand the sight any longer. ‘You shameless woman!’ I shouted”—at that point he had been kicked by a scandalized corporal, and had screamed. “I wish I may die if he did n’t kiss her,” was the form that kicking finally reduced it to, but they could not kick that out of him. He stood for one kiss while bruises multiplied upon him.
“Well, did he kiss you or didn’t he?”
Margaret sighed. “I will tell you that,” she said wearily. “Yes, he did—he kissed my hand.”
Sub-inspector Van Zyl sat up briskly. “I thought we ’d get something before we were done,” he said, and smiled with a kind of malice at Ford. “You ’d like to apologize, I expect?”
Ford did not answer him; he was staring in mere amazement at Margaret’s immovable profile.
“Is that true?” he demanded.
Margaret forced herself to look round and meet the wonder of his face.
“Oh, quite,” she answered. “Quite true.”
His eyes wavered before hers as though he were ashamed and abashed. He put an uncertain hand to his lips.
“I see,” he said, very thoughtfully, and sat again upon the couch.
“Well, after that, what ’s the sense of keeping anything back?” Van Zyl went on confidently. “You see what comes of standing out against the police? Now, what are your arrangements for meeting this Kafir? Where do you send to let him know he ’s to come and see you?”
“No,” said Margaret. “It ’s no use; I won’t tell you any more.”
“Oh, yes, you will.” Van Zyl felt quite sure of it. He eyed her acutely and decided to venture a shot in the dark. “You ’ll tell me all I ask,—d’you hear? I have n’t done with you yet. You ’ve seen him at night, too, when you were supposed to be in bed. You can’t deceive me. I ’ve seen your kind before, plenty of them, and I know the way to deal with them.”
His shot in the dark found its mark. So he knew of that night when Dr. Jakes had fallen in the road. Mrs. Jakes must have told him, and her protests had been uneasy lies. Margaret carefully avoided looking at her; in this hour, all were to receive mercy save herself.
Van Zyl went on, rasping at her in tones quite unlike the thickish staccato voice which he kept for his unofficial moments. That voice she would never hear again; impossible for her ever to regain the status of a person in whom the police have no concern.
“You ’ll save yourself trouble by speaking up and wasting no time about it,” he urged, with the kind of harsh good nature a policeman may use to the offender who provides him with employment. “You ’ve got to do it, you know. How do you get hold of your nigger-friend when you want him?”
She shook her head without speaking.
“Answer!” he roared suddenly, so that she started in her chair. “What ’s the arrangement you ’ve got with him? None of your airs with me, my girl. Out with it, now—what ’s the trick?”
She looked at him affrightedly; he seemed about to spring upon her from his chair and dash at her to wring an answer out of her by force. But from the sofa, where Ford sat, with his head in his hands, came no sign. Only Mrs. Jakes, frozen where she sat, uttered a vague moan.
“Wha—what ’s this?”
The door opened noiselessly and Dr. Jakes showed his face of a fallen cherub in the opening, with sleepy eyes mildly questioning. Margaret saw him with quick relief; the intolerable situation must change in some manner by his arrival.
“I heard—I heard—was it you shouting, Van Zyl?” he inquired, stammeringly, as he came in.
“Yes,” replied the sub-inspector, shortly.
“Oh!” Jakes felt uncertainly for his straggling mustache. “Whom were you shouting at?” he inquired, after a moment of hesitation.
“I was speaking to her,” replied the other impatiently.
The doctor followed the movement of his hand and the light of his spectacles focused on Margaret stupidly.
“Well.” He seemed baffled. “Miss Harding, you mean, eh?”
The sub-inspector nodded. “You ’re interrupting an inquiry, Dr. Jakes.”
“Oh.” Again the doctor seemed to wrestle with thoughts. “Am I?”
“Yes. You ’ll excuse us, but—”
“No,” said Jakes, with an appearance of grave thought. “No; certainly not. You—you mustn’t shout here.”
“Look here,” began Van Zyl.
The doctor turned his back on him and came over to Margaret, treading lumberingly across the worn carpet.
“Can’t allow shouting,” he said. “It means—temperature. I—I think you ’d better—yes, you ’d better go and lie down for a while, Miss Harding.”
He was as vague as a cloud, a mere mist of benevolence.
As unexpectedly and almost as startlingly as Van Zyl’s sudden loudness, Mrs. Jakes spoke from her chair.
“You must take the doctor’s advice, Miss Harding,” she said.
Margaret rose, obediently, her letters in her hand. Van Zyl rose too.
“Once and for all,” he said loudly, “I won’t allow any—”
“I ’ll report you, Van Zyl,” said the little doctor, huskily. “You ’re—you ’re endangering life—way you ’re behaving. Go with Mrs. Jakes, Miss Harding.”
“You ’ll report me,” exclaimed Van Zyl.
“Ye-es,” said Jakes, foggily. “I—I call Mr. Ford to witness—”
He turned quaveringly towards the couch and stopped abruptly.
“What ’s this?” he cried, in stronger tones, and walked quickly toward the bent figure of the young man. “Van Zyl I—I hold you responsible. You ’ve done this—with your shouting.”
Margaret was in the door; she turned to see the doctor raise Ford’s head and lift it back against the cushions. Van Zyl went striding towards them and aided to place him on his back on the couch. As the doctor stood up and stepped back, she saw the thin face with the high spot of red on each cheek and the blood that ran down the chin from the wry and painful mouth.
“Hester,” Dr. Jakes spoke briskly. “The ergotin—and the things. In the study; you know.”
“I know.” And Mrs. Jakes—so her name was Hester—ran pattering off.
They shut Margaret out of the room, and she sat on the bottom step of the stairs, waiting for the news Mrs. Jakes had promised, between breaths, to bring out to her. Van Zyl, ordered out unceremoniously—the doctor had had a fine peremptory moment—and allowing a certain perturbation to be visible on the regulated equanimity of his features, stood in the hall and gave her side glances that betrayed a disturbed mind.
“Miss Harding,” he said presently, after long thought; “I hope you don’t think it ’s any pleasure to me to do all this?”
Margaret shook her head. “You can do what you like,” she said. “I shan’t complain.”
“It is n’t that,” he answered irritably, but she interrupted him.
“I don’t care what it is,” she said. “I don’t care; I don’t care about anything. Stand there, if you like, or come and sit here; but don’t talk any more till we know what ’s happened in there.”
Sub-inspector Van Zyl coughed, but after certain hesitation, he made up his mind. When Mrs. Jakes came forth, tiptoe and pale but whisperingly exultant, she found them sitting side by side on the stairs in the attitude of amity, listening in strained silence for sounds that filtered through the door of the room. She was pressed and eager, with no faculty to spare for surprise.
“Splendid,” she whispered. “Everything ’s all right—thank God. But if it hadn’t been for the doctor, well! I’m going to fetch the boys with the stretcher to carry him up to his room.”
“I ’m awfully glad,” said Van Zyl as she hurried away.
“So am I,” said Margaret. “But I ought to have seen before the doctor did. I ought to have known—and I did know, really—that he would have taken you by the throat before then, if something hadn’t happened to him.”
She had risen, to go up the stairs to her room and now stood above him, looking down serenely upon him.
“Me by the throat,” exclaimed Van Zyl, slightly shocked.
Margaret nodded.
“As Kamis would,” she said slowly. “And choke you, and choke you, and choke you.”
She went up then without looking back, leaving him standing in the hall, baffled and outraged.