Part 17

The soul! What was the soul? Was it Driesh's "Entelechy;" that "innnermost secret" of animation? Was there substance to the soul? Was it material? A flame, Merville had once called it, a flame from a common fire. Could the flame leap at will from a man's body and leave him--what? A lunatic, a madman, a beast without reason? Ronald shrugged away the speculation, but the scholar in him was uneasy and insensibly he came back to the problem.

The promise of fair weather was belied as the car drew nearer to Wechester. A mist, thin and white, lay like a blanket on the streets, and Ronald's car "hawked" its way into the still thicker mist which lay on Wechester Common. The car drew up at the prison gates, and he looked at his watch. It wanted a quarter of nine.

Ronnie saw a thin man, thinly clad, walking up and down outside. His hair was long and fell over his coat collar, his nose was red with the cold, and now and again he stopped to stamp his feet. Ronnie wondered who he was.

A wicket opened at his ring, and he showed his authority through the bars before, with a clang and a clatter of turning locks and the thud of many bolts, the door swung open and he found himself in a square stone room furnished with a desk, a high stool and one chair.

The warder took his authority and read it, made an entry in the hook, and rang a bell. It was a cheerless room, in spite of the fire, thought Ronald. Three sets of handcuffs garlanded above the chimney piece; a suggestive truncheon lay on brackets near the warder's desk, and within reach of his hand, and a framed copy of Prison Regulations only served to emphasize the bareness of the remaining wall.

Again the clatter and click of the lock and another warder came in.

"Take this gentleman to the governor's room," said the doorkeeper.

Ronald was amused because the second warder put his hand on his arm as though he were a prisoner, and did not remove his hand even when he was unlocking the innumerable gates, doors and grilles which stood between liberty and the prisoners.

The governor's room was scarcely more cheerful than the gatekeeper's lodge. There was a desk piled with papers, a worn leather armchair and an office smell which was agreeable and human.

The governor shook hands with the visitor, whom he had met before, and Ronald nodded to the two other pressmen who were waiting.

Then they took him out into the yard.

The warder led the way, and the doctor followed, then came the governor and last, save for the warder who brought up the rear, went Ronald Morelle, without a single tremor of heart, to the house of doom.

To a great glass-roofed hall with tier upon tier of galleries and yellow cell doors, and near at hand (that which was nearest to them as they came in) one cell, door ajar. Outside three blankets neatly folded were stacked one on each other. They were the blankets in which the condemned man had slept.

Here was a wait. A nerve-racking wait to those with nerves. Ronald had none. A small door opened into the yard and he strolled through it and found himself in a small black courtyard. Twenty paces away was a little building which looked like a tool house. There were two gray-black sliding doors and these were open. All he could see was a plain clean interior with a scrubbed floor, and a yellow rope that hung from somewhere in the roof. He was joined by an officer whom he took to be the chief warder.

Physically Ronald was a coward. He admitted as much to himself. He feared pain, he shrank from danger. In his questionable business transactions he guarded himself in every way from unpleasant consequences, employing two lawyers who checked one another's conclusions.

Yet he could watch the pain of others and never turn a hair. He had witnessed capital operations and had found stimulus in the experience which the hospital theatre brings to the enthusiastic scientist. He had seen death administered by the law in England, America and France. Once he stood by the side of a guillotine in a little northern town of France and watched three shrieking men dragged to "the widow" and was the least affected of the spectators, until the blood of one splashed his hand. And then it was only disgust he felt. He himself was incapable of violent action. He might torture the helpless, but he would have to be sure they were helpless.

"Chilly this morning, sir," said the chief warder conversationally, and said that he did not know what was happening to the weather nowadays. "Is this the first time you've been inside?"

"In a prison? Oh lord, no," said Ronnie.

"Ah!" The warder jerked his head toward the door. "On this kind of job?"

"Yes, twice before."

The officer looked glum.

"Not very pleasant. It upsets all the routine of the establishment. Can't get the men out for exercise till after it is over. They sit in their cells and brood--we always have a lot of trouble afterwards."

"How is he going to take it?" asked Ronald.

"Who, the prisoner?" Mr. Marsden smiled. "Oh, he's going to take it all right. They never give any trouble--and he--he'll go laughing, you mark my words. We like him, here--that's a funny thing to say, isn't it? But I assure you, I've had to take three men off observation duty--they are the warders who sit in the cell with him--they got so upset. It is a fact. Old fellows who'd been in the prison service for years. Here's the deputy."

A tall man in a trench coat had come through the grille.

"Good morning, Morelle, have you seen the governor?"

Ronnie nodded.

"He won't be here for the--er--event," said Major Boyle. "Between ourselves, he said he couldn't stand it. An extraordinary thing. Have you seen Sir John Maxton?"

"No, is he here?" asked Ronnie interested.

"He's in the cell with the man--there he is."

Sir John's face was gray: he seemed to have shrunken. He had not expected to see Ronnie, but he made no comment on his presence.

"Good morning, Boyle. Good morning, Ronnie. I have just said goodbye to him."

"Aren't you staying?"

"No--he understands," said Sir John briefly. Then he seemed to be conscious of Ronnie's presence. The deputy had gone back to the hall.

"Ronnie, how could you come here this morning--and meet the eyes of this man so soon to face God?" he asked in a hushed voice.

Ronnie's lips curled.

"I suppose you feel in your heart that it is a great injustice, that your noble-minded murderer should go to a shameful death, whilst a leprous but respectable member of society like myself walks free through that gate!"

"I would wish no man this morning's agony," said the other.

"Suppose you were God--"

"Ronnie, have you no decency!"

"Ob, yes--but suppose you were: would you transfer the soul and the individuality of us two, Ambrose Sault and Ronnie Morelle?"

"God forgive me, I would, for you are altogether beastly!"

Ronnie laughed again.

There was the sound of a slamming door and a man came into the yard, squat, unshaven, a little nervous. A derby hat was on the back of his head, and in his hands, clasped behind him, was a leathern strap.

"There's the hangman," said Ronnie. "Ask him what he thinks of murderers' souls! What is death, Sir John? Look at those tablets on the wall--just a few initials. Yet they sleep as soundly as the great in the Abbey under their splendid monuments. Though they were hanged by the neck until they were dead. You would like God to change us. One of those changes which Merville talked about the other night--it was a pity you weren't there."

Sir John said nothing: he walked to the grille and a warder unlocked the steel door. For a second he stood and then, as the hangman went into the hall, he passed out through the opened gate.

Presently two warders came from the hall and then another two, walking solemnly in slow step, and then a bound man; a great rugged figure who overshadowed the clergyman by his side. The drone of the burial service came to Ronald Morelle and he took off his hat.

Sault was reciting something. His powerful voice drowned the thin voice of the minister:

"It matters not how straight the Gate--"

He paced in time to the metre.

"How charged with punishment the scroll,

"I am the master of my fate--"

Nearer, and yet nearer, and then their eyes met!

The debonair worldling, silk hat in hand, his hair brushed and pomaded, his immaculate cravat set faultlessly--and the other! That big gray-faced man with the mane of hair, his rough clothes and his collarless shirt!

They looked at one another for a fraction of a second, eye to eye, and Ronald felt something was drawing at him, tugging at his very heart strings. The eyes of the man were luminous, appealing, terrible. And then with a crash the world stood still--all animate creation was frozen stiff, petrified, motionless, and Ronald swayed for a moment.

Then a firm hand on his arm pushed him forward. He stepped forth mechanically. He had a curious, almost painful feeling of restriction. And then he realized, with a half-sob, that his hands were bound behind him, strapped so tightly that they were swollen and tingling, and warders were holding his arms. He tried to speak, but no sound came, and looking up he saw--!

Once more he was looking into eyes, but they were the eyes of himself! Ronald Morelle was standing watching him with sorrow and pity. Ronald Morelle was watching himself! And then again the urgent hand pressed him forward and he paced mechanically.

"----I know that my Redeemer liveth----"

The little clergyman was walking by his side, reading tremulously. Ronald looked down at himself, his shoe was hurting him, somebody had left a nail there and he cursed François: but those were not his shoes he was looking at, they were great rough boots and his trousers were old and frayed and there was a shiny patch on his knee.

"--Man that is born of a woman hath but little time upon this earth, and that time is filled with misery--"

He walked like one in a dream into the shed and felt the trap sag under him. The executioner--it must be the executioner, he thought, stooped and strapped his legs tightly. Ronald wondered what would happen. It was an absurd mistake, of course, rather amusing in a way--François had not been paid his month's salary, and François was meeting his brother today from Interlaken, Interlaken in the Oberland.

The man put a cloth over his face--it was linen, unbleached and pungent. When the executioner passed the elastic loops behind his ears, he released one too quickly and it stung.

"It is not me, it is not me," said Ronald numbly, "it is the body of Ambrose Sault--the gross body of Ambrose Sault! I'm standing outside watching! It is Sault who is being hanged--Sault! I am Morelle--Morelle of Balliol--Major Boyle," he screamed aloud. "Major Boyle--you know me--I am Morelle--"

Yet his body was huge--he felt its grossness, its size, the strength of the corded muscles of the arm; the roaring fury of the life which surged within him. He heard a squeak--the lever was being pulled--

With a crash the trap gave way and the body of Ambrose Sault swung for a second and was dead, but it was the soul of Ronald Morelle that went forth to the eternal spaces of infinity.

The prison clock struck nine.

_BOOK THE FOURTH_

I

A warder came round the edge of the pit with his arms extended as the executioner, reaching out his hand, steadied the quivering rope. The prison doctor looked down the pit.

"He's all right," he said vaguely.

The tremulous clergyman was the last to go; backing out of the death chamber he watched the warders close and lock the doors.

The body of Ronald Morelle settled its top hat firmly on its shapely head and looked down at the little parson. There were tears in that good man's eyes.

"He was not bad, he was not bad," he murmured shakily. "I wish he had repented the murder."

"There was nothing to repent," said Ronald quietly, "if repentance were possible, the murder was unnecessary."

His voice was strangely deep and rich. Hearing himself, he wondered.

The minister looked up at him in surprise.

"He said exactly the same thing to me this morning," he said, "and in almost identical words; the poor fellow expressed his thoughts in language which seemed unnatural remembering his illiteracy."

"Poor soul," said Ronnie thoughtfully. "Poor lonely, lonely soul!"

He took the minister's arm in his and they walked back to the prison hall. There was a surplice to be shed, devotional books to be packed in a little black bag.

The condemned cell was being turned out by two men in convict's garb. One was using a broom, sweeping with long, leisurely strokes, and his face had a suggestion of sadness. The other was carrying out the remainder of the bedding and washing the utensils which the dead man had used. All this Ronald noticed with a curiously detached interest.

Shepherded back again to the governor's office, there was a form to be signed, testifying that he had witnessed the execution which had been carried out in a proper and decorous manner. Ronald took the pen and hesitated a second before he signed. The appearance of his signature on paper interested him--it was unfamiliar.

"You've seen these executions before, Mr. Morelle?" said the under-sheriff.

"Oh, yes," said Ronald quietly. "I do not think I shall come again. The waste of it, the malice of it!"

"An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," said the under-sheriff gruffly and Ronald smiled sadly.

"The Old Testament is excellent as literature but in parts diabolical as a code of morals," he said, and went through the porter's lodge to the world.

There was a small crowd, some twenty or thirty people grouped at a distance from the gate. Their interest was concentrated upon the kneeling figure that confronted Ronnie as he walked out of the lodge.

"He comes here every time we have a hanging," said the gateman in Ronnie's ear.

It was the thin man in the threadbare coat; he knelt bareheaded, his blue hands clasped, his voice hoarse with a cold.

"--let him be the child of Thy mercies--pardon, we beseech Thee, O Lord our God, this our brother who comes before Thy seat of Judgment--"

Ronnie listened to the husky voice. Presently and with a final supplication, the man got up and dusted his knees.

"For whom are you praying?" asked Ronnie gently.

"For Ambrose Sault, brother," answered the man.

"For Ambrose Sault?" repeated Ronnie absently, "that is very sweet." He looked thoughtfully at the man and then walked away.

Following the Common road that would have taken him to Wechester, he heard a car coming behind him and presently the glittering bonnet moved past him and stopped.

"Excuse me, sir."

Ronnie looked round. He did not know the chauffeur who was touching his cap. And yet he had seen his face.

"I thought you may have missed the car--I had to park away from the prison."

Of course! He breathed a heavy sigh as the problem was solved. It was his own car and the chauffeur's name was Parker.

"I haven't the slightest idea where I was going," he laughed. "You look cold, Parker. We had better stop in Wechester and get breakfast."

Parker could only gape.

"Yes, sir," he stammered, "but don't worry about me, sir. I shall be all right."

Ronnie was puzzling again. Then he had it. The Red Lion! There was an inn just outside of Wechester; he had stopped there before. Apparently Parker expected some such directions.

They left the mists behind them at Wechester and came to the Red Lion.

A pretty girl waitress at the hotel saw Ronnie and tossed her head. Her manner was cold. He couldn't remember.

That was the oddness of it. He had lost some of his memories. They were completely blotted out from his mind. Why was this pretty girl so cross? He was to learn. Finishing his breakfast he strolled out into the big yard where the car was garaged. The chauffeur was at his breakfast.

"Hi! I want to have a talk with you!"

A man was approaching. He looked like a groom, wearing gaiters as he did, and he was in his shirtsleeves. Moreover, his style and appearance was hostile.

"You're the man who was staying here for the trial!" challenged the newcomer.

"Was I--I suppose so."

"Was you!" sneered the groom savagely. "Yes, you was! Staying here with a young woman and you went and interfered with my young woman. Yes, interfered--said things to her."

His voice went up the scale until he was shouting. There was a stir of feet and men and women came to the doors of outhouses and kitchens.

"Doesn't it strike you that you are making the young lady feel uncomfortable--if she is here," said Ronnie seriously. "You are shouting what should be whispered--no, no, Parker, please do not interfere."

"I'll tell you what does strike me," bellowed the groom, rolling up his sleeves, "that I'm going to give you the damnedest lacing you ever had--put 'em up!"

He lunged forward, but his blow did not get home. A hand gripped him by one shoulder and swung him round--crash! He fell against a stable door. Happily there was a wall for Parker to lean against. He was open-mouthed--incredulous.

Phew! Morelle who was ready to drop from terror at a threat, was standing, hands on hips, surveying the bewildered fire-eater.

"I'm extremely sorry you made me do that," he said almost apologetically, "but you really must not shout--especially about unpleasant things. If I--if I behaved disgracefully to the lady, I am sorry."

All this in a voice that did not reach beyond his adversary. Parker heard the low music of it and scratched his head. Morelle's voice had changed.

Later, when Ronnie was preparing to depart, Parker ventured to offer felicitations.

"I never saw a man go through it like that fellow did--and they think something of him as a fighter in these parts."

"It was nothing," said Ronnie hastily, "a trick--I learned it in New Caledonia from a Japanese who was in the same prison."

Parker blinked.

"Yes, sir," he said, and then Ronnie laughed.

"What on earth am I talking about? I think we will go home, Parker."

"Yes, sir," said Parker, breathing hard. He had never seen his master drunk before, and drunk he undoubtedly was, for not only had he fought, but he was civil. Parker hoped he would keep drunk.

In his pocket Ronnie found a gold cigarette case, a pocketbook, a watch and chain, a small billcase and a gold pencil. In his trousers pocket were a few silver coins and some keys. He found them literally; the seat of the car was strewn with his discoveries. Whose were they? The cigarette case was inscribed: "To Ronnie from Beryl." Ronnie--Beryl? Of course they were his own properties. He chuckled gleefully at his amusing lapse.

"No, I shan't want you again, Parker--how do I get into touch with you if--? Yes, of course, I 'phone you at the garage. Good morning."

"Good morning." Parker was too dazed to return the politeness.

Ronnie shook his head smilingly when the porter opened the gate of the automatic elevator. He would walk, he said, and went up the stairs two at a time. This exercise tired him slightly. And usually he felt so strong, nothing tired him. That day he lifted Moropulos and flung him on his bed. Moropulos had hated him ever since.

II

"What am I thinking about?" said Ronnie Morelle aloud.

François was not in. Ronnie had expected him to be there and yet would have been surprised had he seen him. There was a letter lying on the table. Ronnie saw it when he entered the room. He did not look at it again for some time. Strolling aimlessly round the library, hands in pockets, he stopped before the Anthony over the mantelpiece--ugly and a little unpleasant. He made a little grimace of disgust. Out of the tail of his eye he saw the letter. Why did people write to him, he wondered, troubled? They knew that he couldn't read, he made no secret of his ignorance. Yet, picking up the envelope, he read his own name and was unaware of his inconsistency. The letter was from François. His brother had arrived. He had gone to the station to meet him and would return instantly. Would Monsieur excuse? It was unlikely that monsieur would return before him, but if he did, would he be pleased to excuse. He wrote "excuse" three times and in three different ways, and they were all wrong. Ronald laughed softly. Poor François! poor--

His face became grave and slowly his eyes went back to the Anthony, that lewd painting.

Poor soul! His eyes filled with tears. They rolled with the curious leisure of tears down his face, and dropped on the gray suede waistcoat.

Poor soul! Poor weak, undeveloped soul!

Ronnie was sitting on the Chesterfield to read the letter. François, coming in hurriedly, saw a man crying into the crook of his arm and stood petrified.

"M'sieur!"

Ronnie looked up. His eyes were swollen, his smooth skin blotchily red in patches.

"Hello, François. I'm being stupid. Get me a glass of water, please."

His hand was shaking so that he could hardly hold the glass to his chattering teeth.

François watched and marvelled.

"Did you meet your brother?" Ronnie was drying his eyes and smiling faintly at the valet's grotesque dismay.

"Yes, M'sieur, I hope that m'sieur was not inconvenienced--"

Ronnie shook his head.

"No--make me something. Coffee or tea--anything--have you brought your brother here?"

"Oh, no, M'sieur."

"You will want to see him, François. You may take the rest of the day off."

"Certainly, M'sieur," said François, recovering himself. His services were seldom dispensed with until later in the day. Possibly his employer had excellent reason.

Ronnie did not hear the bell ring and until he caught the click of the lock and the sound of voices in the lobby, he had no idea that he had a caller.

François came in alone, secretive, low-voiced.

"It is Mister East, M'sieur: Yesterday was the day, but m'sieur forgot," he said mysteriously.

"Yesterday was--what day?" Ronnie rubbed his chin with a knuckle. How stupid of him to forget!

"Ask him to come in please."

François hesitated, but went, returning with a thin young man whose face seemed all angles and bosses. He was well dressed, a little too well dressed. His plastered hair was parted and one fringe curled like a wave of black ink that had been petrified just as it was in the act of breaking on the yellow beach of his forehead.

He had a way of holding back his head so that he looked down his nose in whatever direction his gaze was turned.

"Morning," he said coldly and cleared his throat.

"Good morning?" Ronnie's tone was polite but inquisitive.

"I called yesterday but nobody was in," said Mr. East, gently stern.

"Why did you call at all?" asked Ronnie.

A look of amazement toning to righteous anger from Mr. East.