‘Then I suppose,’ he said in a very cool and level voice, when the other had begun to recover from his fit, ‘I suppose it’s your sister who has the liberating cash.’
Mr. Elver glanced at him, with an expression of surprise, almost of alarm, on his face. His eyes wavered away from Mr. Cardan’s steady, genial gaze. He took refuge in his tumbler. ‘Yes,’ he said, when he had taken a gulp. ‘How did you guess?’
Mr. Cardan shrugged his shoulders. ‘Purely at random,’ he said.
‘After my father died,’ Mr. Elver explained, ‘she went to live with her godmother, who was the old lady at the big house in our parish. A nasty old woman she was. But she took to Grace, she kind of adopted her. When the old bird died at the beginning of this year, Grace found she’d been left twenty-five thousand.’
For all comment, Mr. Cardan clicked his tongue against his palate and slightly raised his eyebrows.
‘Twenty-five thousand,’ the other repeated. ‘A half-wit, a moron! What can she do with it?’
‘She can take you to Italy,’ Mr. Cardan suggested.
‘Oh, of course we can live on the interest all right,’ said Mr. Elver contemptuously. ‘But when I think how I could multiply it.’ He leaned forward eagerly, looking into Mr. Cardan’s face for a second, then the shifty grey eyes moved away and fixed themselves on one of the buttons of Mr. Cardan’s coat, from which they would occasionally dart upwards again to reconnoitre and return. ‘I’ve worked it out, you see,’ he began, talking so quickly that the words tumbled over one another and became almost incoherent. ‘The Trade Cycle. . . . I can prophesy exactly what’ll happen at any given moment. For instance . . .’ He rambled on in a series of complicated explanations.
‘Well, if you’re as certain as all that,’ said Mr. Cardan when he had finished, ‘why don’t you get your sister to lend you the money?’
‘Why not?’ Mr. Elver repeated gloomily and leaned back again in his chair. ‘Because that blasted old hag had the capital tied up. It can’t be touched.’
‘Perhaps she lacked faith in the Trade Cycle,’ Mr. Cardan suggested.
‘God rot her!’ said the other fervently. ‘And when I think of what I’d do with the money when I’d made really a lot. Science, art . . .’
‘Not to mention revenge on your old acquaintances,’ said Mr. Cardan, cutting him short. ‘You’ve worked out the whole programme?’
‘Everything,’ said Mr. Elver. ‘There’d never have been anything like it. And now this damned fool of an old woman goes and gives the money to her pet moron and makes it impossible for me to touch it.’ He ground his teeth with rage and disgust.
‘But if your sister were to die unmarried,’ said Mr. Cardan, ‘the money, I suppose, would be yours.’
The other nodded.
‘It’s a very hierarchical question, certainly,’ said Mr. Cardan. In the vault-like room there was a prolonged silence.
Mr. Elver had reached the final stage of intoxication. Almost suddenly he began to feel weak, profoundly weary and rather ill. Anger, hilarity, the sense of satanic power—all had left him. He desired only to go to bed as soon as possible; at the same time he doubted his capacity to get there. He shut his eyes.
Mr. Cardan looked at the limp and sodden figure with an expert’s eye, scientifically observing it. It was clear to him that the creature would volunteer no more; that it had come to a state when it could hardly think of anything but the gradually mounting nausea within it. It was time to change tactics. He leaned forward, and tapping his host’s arm launched a direct attack.
‘So you brought the poor girl here to get rid of her,’ he said.
Mr. Elver opened his eyes and flashed at his tormentor a hunted and terrified look. His face became very pale. He turned away. ‘No, no, not that.’ His voice had sunk to an unsteady whisper.
‘Not that?’ Mr. Cardan echoed scornfully. ‘But it’s obvious. And you’ve as good as been telling me so for the last half-hour.’
Mr. Elver could only go on whispering: ‘No.’
Mr. Cardan ignored the denial. ‘How did you propose to do it?’ he asked. ‘It’s always risky, whatever way you choose, and I shouldn’t put you down as being particularly courageous. How, how?’
The other shook his head.
Mr. Cardan insisted, ruthlessly. ‘Ratsbane?’ he queried. ‘Steel?—no, you wouldn’t have the guts for that. Or did you mean that she should tumble by accident into one of those convenient ditches?’
‘No, no. No.’
‘But I insist on being told,’ said Mr. Cardan truculently, and he thumped the table till the reflections of the candles in the brimming glasses quivered and rocked.
Mr. Elver put his face in his hands and burst into tears. ‘You’re a bully,’ he sobbed, ‘a dirty bully, like all the rest.’
‘Come, come,’ Mr. Cardan protested encouragingly. ‘Don’t take it so hardly. I’m sorry I upset you. You mustn’t think,’ he added, ‘that I have any of the vulgar prejudices about this affair. I’m not condemning you. Far from it. I don’t want to use your answers against you. I merely ask out of curiosity—pure curiosity. Cheer up, cheer up. Try a little more wine.’
But Mr. Elver was feeling too deplorably sick to be able to think of wine without horror. He refused it, shuddering. ‘I didn’t mean to do anything,’ he whispered. ‘I meant it just to happen.’
‘Just to happen? Yours must be a very hopeful nature,’ said Mr. Cardan.
‘It’s in Dante, you know. My father brought us up on Dante; I loathed the stuff,’ he added, as though it had been castor oil. ‘But things stuck in my mind. Do you remember the woman who tells how she died: “Siena mi fe’, disfecemi Maremma”? Her husband shut her up in a castle in the Maremma and she died of fever. Do you remember?’
Mr. Cardan nodded.
‘That was the idea. I had the quinine: I’ve been taking ten grains a day ever since I arrived—for safety’s sake. But there doesn’t seem to be any fever here nowadays,’ Mr. Elver added. ‘We’ve been here nine weeks. . . .’
‘And nothing’s happened!’ Mr. Cardan leaned back in his chair and roared with laughter. ‘Well, the moral of that,’ he added, when he had breath enough to begin talking again, ‘the moral of that is: See that your authorities are up to date.’
But Mr. Elver was past seeing a joke. He got up from his chair and stood unsteadily, supporting himself with a hand on the table. ‘Would you mind helping me to my room?’ he faintly begged. ‘I don’t feel very well.’
Mr. Cardan helped him first into the garden. ‘You ought to learn to carry your liquor more securely,’ he said, when the worst was over. ‘That’s another of the evening’s morals.’
When he had lighted his host to bed, Mr. Cardan went to his appointed room and undressed. It was a long time before he fell asleep. The mosquitoes, partly, and partly his own busy thoughts, were responsible for his wakefulness.
CHAPTER VIII
Next morning Mr. Cardan was down early. The first thing he saw in the desolate garden before the house was Miss Elver. She was dressed in a frock cut on the same sack-like lines as her last night’s dress, but made of a gaudy, large-patterned material that looked as though it had been designed for the upholstery of chairs and sofas, not of the human figure. Her beads were more numerous and more brilliant than before. She carried a parasol of brightly flowered silk.
Emerging from the house, Mr. Cardan found her in the act of tying a bunch of Michaelmas daisies to the tail of a large white maremman dog that stood, its mouth open, its pink tongue lolling out and its large brown eyes fixed, so it seemed, meditatively on the further horizon, waiting for Miss Elver to have finished the operation. But Miss Elver was very slow and clumsy. The fingers of her stubby little hands seemed to find the process of tying a bow in a piece of ribbon extraordinarily difficult. Once or twice the dog looked round with a mild curiosity to see what was happening at the far end of its anatomy.
It did not seem in the least to resent the liberties Miss Elver was taking with its tail, but stood quite still, resigned and waiting. Mr. Cardan was reminded of that enormous tolerance displayed by dogs and cats of even the most fiendish children. Perhaps, in a flash of Bergsonian intuition, the beast had realized the childish essence of Miss Elver’s character, had recognized the infant under the disguise of the full-grown woman. Dogs are good Bergsonians, thought Mr. Cardan. Men, on the other hand, are better Kantians. He approached softly.
Miss Elver had at last succeeded in tying the bow to her satisfaction; the dog’s white tail was tipped with a rosette of purple flowers. She straightened herself up and looked admiringly at her handiwork. ‘There!’ she said at last, addressing herself to the dog. ‘Now you can run away. Now you look lovely.’
The dog took the hint and trotted off, waving his flower-tipped tail.
Mr. Cardan stepped forward. ‘ “Neat but not gaudy,” ’ he quoted, ‘ “genteel but not expensive, like the gardener’s dog with a primrose tied to his tail.” Good-morning.’ He took off his hat.
But Miss Elver did not return his salutation. Taken by surprise, she had stood, as though
