The Ruby in the Smoke (23 page)

She looked down and saw, with horror, the open blade of a knife in his lap. It glinted in the faint light from the dockyard over the wall. His voice was soft and thick as if he spoke through felt, and she found herself beginning to shake. No, no, be still, she told herself. But this wasn't a target pinned to a wall—^this was a living man, and it would kill him . . .

She pulled back the hammer with her thumb. It made a faint click.

Van Eeden leaned forward and caressed her hand

briefly. She drew it away, but he was swifter: one hand flew to her mouth, the other held the knife to her breast. The hand over her mouth was sweetly scented; she felt sick and pushed the bag up between them, an inch from his chest. She heard his breathing. She was dizzy with fear.

"Well?" he said softly.

And then she squeezed the trigger.

The explosion seemed to rock the cab. The impact flung Van Eeden away from her and back against the seat; the knife dropped from his hand, and he clutched at his chest and opened his mouth once or twice, trying to say something—and then he slipped to the floor and fell still.

She opened the door and ran. She threw herself forward, away from what she had done; she was crying, she was shaking, she was wild with fear . . .

She couldn't see where she was going. There were footsteps coming after her, running, pursuing.

Someone was calling her name. She cried "No! No!" and ran on. She found she was clutching the gun, and flung it from herself with loathing; it skittered over the wet cobbles and then disappeared into the gutter.

A hand caught her arm.

"Sally! Stop! Sally, don't! Listen! Look—it's me—"

She fell and all the breath was knocked out of her. She twisted to look up, and saw Rosa.

"Rosa—oh, Rosa, what have I done—"

She clung to her and sobbed, and Rosa held her tightly and rocked her like a child, kneeling heedlessly in the filthy gutter.

"Sally, Sally—I heard a shot and—are you hurt? What has he done?"

*'I k-k-killed him—I killed him—it was m-me—"

And then came a fresh burst of sobbing. Rosa held her more tightly and stroked her hair.

"Are you—did you—are you sure?" she said, looking over Sally's shoulder.

"I shot him, Rosa," said Sally, her face in Rosa's neck. "Because he was going to—going to kill me, and . . . He had a knife . . ."

Such floods of grief shook her now that Rosa felt herself weeping too. She could not speak.

But eventually the older girl pulled her gently upright.

"Listen, Sally," she said, "we must find a policeman. We've got to—don't shake your head—we absolutely must. It's gone too far now. And with Mrs. Holland and everything. . . . You mustn't worry. It's all finished. But now that it's over, we must go to the police. I know what happened—I can testify to it. You won't get into trouble."

"I didn't know you were there," said Sally weakly, standing up and looking down at the mud on her cloak and skirt.

"How could I let you just go off like that? I got into another cab and followed. Thank heaven there was one there. And when I heard the shot—"

She shook her head; and then they heard the sound of a police whistle.

Sally looked at her.

"That's from the cab," she said. "They must have found him. Come on. . . ."

The Clock Tower

Strange Events at East India Docks

Mystery of Empty Cab

A Shot in the Night

An unexplained and mysterious disturbance took place near the East India Docks during the early hours of the morning of Tuesday last.

Police Constable Jonas Torrance, an experienced and reliable officer, was patroling his beat in the area of the docks when, at approximately twenty minutes past two, he heard the sound of a shot.

He hastened to make a search of the area, and within five minutes had found a four-wheeler cab apparently abandoned in East India Dock Wall Road. There was no sign of horse or driver, but when the constable looked inside the cab, he found evidence of a desperate struggle.

On the floor and seat was a substantial quantity of blood. P.C. Torrance estimated it to be not less than three pints and possibly a great deal more. It is clear that no one could lose this amount of blood in so short a time and live;

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and yet nowhere could be found the victim of this brutal attack.

A closer examination of the cab revealed a knife, of the sort used by seamen, under one of the seats. The blade was prodigiously sharp, but it was clean and free of blood.

The constable summoned aid, and a search was made of the neighboring streets, but nothing further was discovered. At present the case remains a mystery.

"We tried to tell him," said Sally. "Didn't we, Rosa?"

"We told him four times, and he wouldn't listen. Not a word would penetrate his skull. He ordered us away in the end, and said that we were hindering him in the performance of his duty."

"He just refused to believe it."

"He's an experienced and reliable officer," said Frederick. "It says so here. I think he had every right to send you about your business, and I don't know what you're complaining of. Do you, Bedwell?"

They were sitting around the table in Burton Street. It was three days later; the Reverend Bedwell had come down from Oxford to learn what had happened, and had accepted their invitation to dinner. Rosa was there because the play she was in had been taken off: the backer had lost his nerve before he had recovered his money, and Rosa was out of a job as a consequence. Sally knew that the Burton Street economy would suffer badly, but had said nothing.

Mr. Bedwell thought before answering Frederick's question.

"It seems to me you did the right thing in going to him," he said. "That was entirely good and proper. And you tried to tell him—what, four times?"

Rosa nodded. "He thought we were just being foolish and wasting his time."

"Then I think you've done all that you need to, and his reply is no more than the blindness of justice. The outcome is just; he was shot in self-defense, after all, which is a right we all have. And there's no trace of the man now?"

"Not a sign," said Frederick. "He probably found his way back to his ship. He's either dead or on his way to the East by now."

Mr. Bedwell nodded. "Well, Miss Lockhart, I think you've done everything you should, and your conscience should be perfectly clear."

Frederick said quietly, "What about me? I intended to kill that ruffian of Mrs. Holland's. In fact, I told him I would. Was that murder?"

"In defense of another, your actions were justified. As for your intentions—of that, I can't judge. You may have to live with the knowledge that you set out to kill a man. But I've exchanged blows with the fellow myself, and I wouldn't judge you too harshly."

Frederick's face was badly bruised. His nose had been broken, and he had lost three teeth; and his hands were so painful that he still had great difficulty in holding anything. Sally, when she saw him, had cried. She cried very easily now.

"How's the young fellow?" Mr. Bedwell went on.

"Jim? A broken arm and a fine pair of black eyes and assorted bruises. But you'd have to attack him with a regiment of cavalry and a howitzer or two to do any serious damage. What I'm more concerned about is the fact that he's lost his job."

"The firm's closed down," said Sally. "It's in utter con-

fusion. There's a report about it on another page of today's paper."

"And the Httle girl?"

"Nothing," said Rosa. "Not a word. Not a sign. We've looked everywhere—we've been to all the orphanages— but she's vanished."

She did not voice what they all feared.

"My poor brother was very fond of her," said the clergyman. "She kept him alive in that horrible place. . . . Well, well; we must hope. But as for you, Miss Lock-hart—well, should I call you Miss Lockhart? Or Miss Marchbanks.''"

"I've been Lockhart for sixteen years. And when I hear the word father, I think of Mr. Lockhart. I don't know what legal status I have, or what rubies count for in courts of law . . . I'm Sally Lockhart. I work for a photographer. That's all that matters now."

But it wasn't. A week went by, and still Adelaide did not appear, in spite of Trembler's endless tramping the streets and inquiring at the schools and workhouses. And still Rosa did not find another job, and worse: the play she had been rehearsing for folded too. Now there was nothing coming in at all except for what they could sell in the shop, and that situation was almost the worst of all—for having begun to establish themselves and sell the pictures, they needed desperately to build on this first foundation before the public lost interest; and they had no money to pay for the new pictures they would have to produce.

Sally tried one supplier after another, but no one would let them have paper or chemicals on credit. She argued, she pleaded, she put the case as forcibly as she could, and

got next to nothing. One firm let them have some printing paper, but not enough; that was the only success they had. As for the printing firm who was going to produce the stereographs, they had refused to pay any money in advance, and any royalties they could look forward to were too far ahead in the future to be of any use now. At one point Sally had to stop Frederick from selling the studio camera. ''Don't sell the equipment," she told him; "never do that. How on earth would we get it back.^ What are we going to do when we expand, if we have to spend the first money we get on buying back equipment we should never have let go in the first place?" He saw the sense of it, and the camera stayed in the studio. Occasionally he took a portrait or two; but the business they all cherished was dying.

And Sally knew that she had the money to save it. And she knew that if she tried to use it, Mr. Temple would find her and stop her, and she would lose everything.

Finally, one cold, still morning at the end of November, a letter arrived from Oxford:

Dear Miss Lockhart,

I must ask you to forgive my lapse of memory. I can only put it down to the shock of my poor brother's death, and the tragic events we have all lived through. Perhaps it is not important anyway, but I am sure you would want to know that before he died, Matthew remembered something your father—Captain Lockhart, that is—had said to him on the night the Lavinia was sunk. It was part of the message he had come all this way to deliver, poor fellow.

Captain Lockhart had said: "Tell her to look under the clock."

That was all Matthew remembered, but he insisted I

write it down and tell you. I did the first, but forgot the second until now.

I hope it has some meaning for you. Once again, I must apologize for not remembering it sooner.

With my kindest regards, Yours very truly, Nicholas Bedwell

Sally felt her heart beating fast. She knew which clock he meant. Their house in Norwood had, over the stable, a wooden clocktower—a tiny little folly cheerfully carved and painted, with a clock that struck the quarters and needed winding once a week. It was a preposterous thing to have in a suburban villa, but Sally had loved to clamber about the loft above the stable and watch the mechanism beating slowly. And underneath the clock there was a loose plank in the wooden wall of the loft, which Sally had prized off one day to find a perfect hiding place for treasures.

Look under the clock . . .

Well, it might be nothing, but it was all she had left. Without saying anything to the others, she bought a train ticket and set off for Norwood.

The house had changed in the four months since she had last seen it. The windows and the door had been painted, there was a new iron gate, and the rosebed in the center of the circular drive had been dug up and replaced with what looked as if it was going to be a fountain. It was not her home anymore, and she was glad of that; the past was over and finished.

The tenants were a Mr. and Mrs. Green and their large

family. Mr. Green was at work when Sally arrived— somewhere in the city—and Mrs. Green was paying a call on a neighbor, but a friendly, harassed governess saw Sally at once, and raised no objections to her looking in the stables.

"Of course they won't mind," she said. "They're very kind—Charles! Stop that at once!" (Sally noticed that a small child was demolishing an umbrella stand.) "Please go ahead, Miss Lx>ckhart—do excuse me, but I must—Oh, Charles, really!—You can find your own way? Of course you can."

The stables had not changed, and the familiar smell and the sound of the clock gave her a brief pang; but she hadn't come for that. It took her only a minute to make her way up to the hiding place and find the box—a little rosewood chest, bound with brass, which had stood on her father's desk for years. She recognized it at once and drew it out.

She sat on the dusty floor to open it. There was no key, just a simple catch.

The box was full of bank notes.

It took her several moments to realize what she had in her hands. She touched them wonderingly; she couldn't even guess how much there was. And then she saw a letter.

22 June 1872 My dearest Sally,

If you are reading this, the worst has happened, and I am dead. My poor girl, you'll have so much to bear—but you've got the strength to do it.

This money, darling, is for you. It is exactly to the penny the sum I put into Lockhart and Selby years ago, when Selby

was a good man. The firm will crash soon. I have made sure of that. But I have recovered this, and it is yours.

I am going to the East because an evil thing has wound itself around the company, and I must deal with it. No doubt I was a fool not to have spotted it earlier, but I trusted Selby, and—I repeat—he was a good man once.

That evil thing, Sally, is opium. All the China trade we now have was founded on it. The British government trades in it. But I thought for years that Lockhart and Selby did not; I would not allow it to, because I hate it.

I do so because I saw what it did to George Marchbanks, once my closest friend. If you are reading this, my dear one, you will have found your way to him by one means or another; you will know who he is, and what bargain we made. I have not seen him from that day to this, but I know he is still alive, and I know he will tell you the truth if you go to him.