Mr Rockaway Is Upset
MR ROCKAWAY was not happy.
Unhappiness produced a remarkable change in Mr Rockaway, as though it were that strange drug used by Dr Jekyll. Normally, Mr Rockaway’s long white hair was carefully brushed back from a magnificent forehead, his blue eyes were indicative of the joy of living, and his fresh-complexioned, large but not over-fleshed face bore an expression of goodwill towards all men.
This evening while sitting at his desk in his sumptuously appointed study his hair was ruffled, his eyes were small and hard and his mouth was drawn into a fixed scowl. He was unhappy because Fate had thrown a bar into the machine of contentment and peace he had created beside this sylvan inlet, wrecking the creation. The bar was ex-Superintendent Ericson, late of New Scotland Yard; and then, when he had begun to re-build the machine. Fate had wrecked it again in the person of this Bonaparte fellow. And to crown everything poor old Dan Malone must go and get strangled.
Poor old Dan! His brain was weak but his loyalty was as strong as steel, and to go and end like that was a crying shame.
That Dan Malone has messed up theDo-me business was less that unfortunate man’s fault than his own. He ought to have gone out with Dave and Dan on theDolfin that day, when there would not have been all this bother of sending Tatter to burgle a safe after ten years’ retirement from his profession, and then having to send him and Marshall to sea the next morning and drown three men, two of whom should have been disposed of when Ericson was shot. Yes, he was a fool to have expected so much from poor old Dan.
Of course, he was a fool. Living here and quietly enjoying life had sapped his mentality. He had lost his punch. Here he was thinking of poor old Dan as weak-minded when he himself was a thundering sight worse. When theDolfin brought back Spinks and Garroway he should have ordered poor old Dan to go out to sea straight away and drown them. But he hadn’t, and there was the kick. Throughout his long and somewhat exciting career he always had avoided murder because an early study of this crime convinced him that murder is an excessive spur to police activity, and that one murder very often demands another. And then there always had been the unpleasant thought of a rope about his neck.
Of course, Mavis was a disturbing influence clouding his matured judgment. Like her mother she was soft-hearted, and once she knew about the prisoners in the cavern she opposed their disposal in deep water. That created a problem the solution of which was extremely difficult if the disposal of the prisoners in deep water was not to be accepted. Retirement from business and settlement in a place like this free from the probability of enforced imprisonment, and with unlimited angling nearly all the year round, had not been accomplished easily, and a move to another place to achieve the same objective would be much more difficult. He had hated to think of leaving this machine he had created, and he wasn’t going to leave it.
Ah well! He had got rid of Mavis for a week or two, and she would spend a devil of a lot of money. But now he could clean up the mess made by poor old Dan and prolonged by Mavis who was so like her wonderful mother. He could still hear the dwindling hum of Tatter’s motor-bike, and with satisfaction he counted on having Bonaparte’s brief-case in his hands within three hours. With the evidence in that case destroyed, and with the prisoners, including Bonaparte if he stilllived, drowned in deep water, the rocks lying in the stream of his life would have been removed and the stream once again would run quietly and smoothly. And then, hey ho! for the swordfishing in earnest.
Mr Rockaway was sitting facing the tall french windows with his back to the door. So intense was his grief at the passing of Captain Malone, he failed to hear the infinitesimal sound of oil being squirted into the lock of the door and about the handles and catch. The uneconomic application of oil prevented Mr Rockaway from hearing the handle turned and the catch drawn inward to permit the door being opened. Rich though he was he would have denied the necessity of the oiling, but the person outside obviously thought otherwise, because having opened the door afraction, he squirted more oil into the hinges.
Even when in possession of a large amount of oil it was no mean feat to enter the room without Mr Rockaway being aware of it. It was a still greater feat for the intruder to close and lock the door without disturbing Mr Rockaway’s train of thought.
However, Mr Napoleon Bonaparte was wholly successful.
If unhappiness was a drug converting Dr Jekyll Rockaway into Mr Hyde Rockaway, the effect of pain and mental anguish produced by the sufferings of others was similar in Bonaparte, Inspector, C.I. B. His general appearance was the antithesis of that of the being known to his colleagues. The veneer of civilization, so thin in the most gently nurtured of us, was entirely absent. He was wearing nothing. A film of oil caused his body to gleam like new bronze. His hair was matted with blood. His eyes were big, and the whites were now blood-shot. His lips were widely parted, revealing his teeth like the fangs of a young dog.
The oil-can he had obtained from the garage he had left outside the door, but he had with him an old shot-gun he had discovered in the garage and had loaded with number BB shot which, as everyone knows, is substantial in size. Mr Rockaway was oblivious to Bony’s advance from the door to a position behind his back, of the gun being pointed at him and the pink-nailed finger touching the gun’s front trigger.
Soundlessly, Bony blew between pursed lips, and the white hair on the crown of Mr Rockaway’s head trembled in the miniature breeze. With slight irritability, Mr Rockaway turned round in his chair. The degree of shock he received can be understood. He was like a man petrified by the sight of a car rushing straight at him.
Bony had observed in the face of the man above the menacing pistol resolution to be obeyed. Mr Rockaway now saw above the muzzle of the double-barrelled gun a human face implacably determined to kill. He knew that, should he move a fraction of an inch, he would die instantly, and he did not want to die instantly. When he was dead he would not be able to enjoy life, to live well, to feel the stupendous thrill of fighting a swordfish. He knew, too, that had he wished to move he could not. Even his hearing was affected. He could see Bony’s lips moving, but the sound of the words spoken by Bony appeared to come from another direction.
“Malone was just an ordinary brute,” Bony said, sibilantly. “He killed Ericson swiftly because he thought himself in danger. You, you are much worse than Malone, much worse than a brute. You are something inexpressibly foul to have condemned two men to a semi-solitary confinement for more than three months, chaining them so that the use of their legs was cruelly restricted, with probable crippling for life, denying them mental recreation in reading and the ordinary common necessaries of life.
“I am going to give you a chance to live, Rockaway, not because you deserve it but because it pleases me to give it. It pleases me to give it because I dislike using this gun with which to kill you, a gun being an impersonal method of destroying vermin. I want to feel you dying. I want to feel you struggling futilely in my hands while you are dying-as Malone did. In a moment I am going to drop this gun and employ my hands in your destruction.”
The paralysing inertia of the nightmare still imprisoned Mr Rockaway. He now tried to move and he tried to speak, but he was unable to do one or the other. He thought that his mind was cracking when the electric light blinked once. He thought how strange it was that he continued to gaze at a limited circle in the centre of which were two blazing orbs of blue surrounded by scarlet. Although he was unable to look away from those orbs he did see the rusty gun fall to the carpeted floor and wondered why it did not discharge. He saw, too, Bony’s dark hands rise and slowly approach him, their fingers distended and curved. He wanted to gain relief from the paralysing inertia by screaming, but he could not even scream.
At this instant Joe’s boulder arrived, its last bounce on the hill-side having blinked the electric light.
The rear of the house faced a low cliff cut into the hillside where a level building area had been formed, and the chimney carrying smoke from the kitchen range was built into this rear wall. The boulder struck the chimney a few feet above the range, passed cleanly through the brickwork, sped through the large kitchen to crash into the passage between it and the dining-room, and there to fall through the floor and sever the electric light and power lines.
There followed an instant of complete silence. Then began a roar of extraordinary intensity when the tall brick chimney fell and cut through the roof and the kitchen ceiling. It collected all of Mr Rockaway’s table china from the racks and glass-fronted cupboards, and reached the linoed floor in a succession of thuds.
The sound effects of Joe’s boulder produced opposite results in the two men facing each other in the study. They momentarily froze Napoleon Bonaparte, and they released Mr Rockaway from the bonds of inertia. He leaped to his feet, sending the chair over against Bony’s legs, and rushed towards the door. But the light was out and he became lost, so that he crashed into an antique Venetian cabinet containing still more antique Chinese porcelain. On his rebound from this he felt Bony’s hands clutching at his coat, and he then provided proof of his abhorrence of being throttled by screaming, or rather squealing much like a rabbit when caught in a gin trap.
When he stopped to take in air he heard Bony laughing like a devil, and he again screamed, this time keeping it up. He saw the faint grey oblongs of the french windows and dashed to them, but he did not see his own desk and fell sprawling over it. Now he felt Bony’s hands on the back of his legs, felt them slip up his back towards his neck. It was not a soothing feeling, and he continued to scream.
Bony’s hands were at his shoulders when the door was smashed in and the windows crashed inward to admit half a dozen burly men. One of them flashed a torch, and the remainder fell on Mr Rockaway and Bony and tore them asunder at the instant Bony’s hands closed on Mr Rockaway’s throat and stopped his screaming.
More men entered the untidy study. More torches were flashed on. Mr Rockaway recognized the intruders as policemen and he craved their protection. Bony recognized among the visitors Detective-Sergeant Allen and Constable Telfer. It was only then that he was recalled to his educational attainments, his professional rank, and his pride in his father’s race. He was overwhelmed by a flood of shame that had nothing to do with his nakedness.