The Dinner Club Page 3

  Chapter 2

  The Barrister’s Story, being the Decision of Sir Edward Shoreham

  “This morning,” he began, leaning back in his chair and crossing his legs, “I mislaid my cigarette case. I knew it was somewhere in the study, but find it I could not. Finally, having searched all over my writing table, I rang the bell, and somewhat irritably demanded its immediate production. The butler stepped forward and lifted it up from the centre of the blotting pad, where it had been the whole time, literally under my nose. What peculiar temporary kink in the brain had prevented my noticing the very thing I was looking for, when it was lying in the most conspicuous place in which it could possibly have been, I don’t know. I leave that to the Doctor. But the point of my parable is this – it decided in my mind the story with which I should bore you fellows tonight.”

  He paused to light a cigar, then he glanced round at the faces of the other five.

  “And if, as I get on with it, you think you recognise the real characters under the fictional names I shall give them, I can’t prevent you. But don’t ask me to confirm your thoughts.”

  “Exactly,” murmured the Actor. “Fire ahead.”

  “It was about four years before the war,” commenced the Barrister, “that I was stopping for a few nights at a certain house in Park Lane. It was in the middle of the season – June, to be accurate – and I was waiting to get in here. My wife was in the country, and, as I was more or less at a loose end, I accepted the offer of staying at this house. My hostess – shall we call her Granger, Ruth Granger – had been an old school pal of my wife’s; in later years she had become a real, intimate friend of us both.

  “At the time of which I speak she was a lovely girl of twenty-six, with the suffering of six years of hell in her eyes. At the age of twenty she had married Sir Henry Granger, and that fatal mistake had been the cause of the hell. Henry Granger was one of the most loathsome brutes it has ever been my misfortune to run across. He had not one single instinct of a gentleman in him, though he did happen to be the tenth baronet. How her parents had ever allowed the marriage beat me completely. Perhaps it was money, for Granger was rich; but whatever it was she married him, and her hell began.

  “Granger was simply an animal, a coarse and vicious animal. He drank heavily without getting drunk, which is always a dangerous sign, and he possessed the morals – or did not possess the morals, whichever you prefer – of a monkey. He was unfaithful to her on their honeymoon – my wife told me that; and from then on he made not the slightest attempt to conceal his mode of life.”

  The Barrister carefully removed the ash from his cigar. “I won’t labour the point,” he went on with a faint smile. “We have all of us met the type, but I’d like to emphasise the fact that I, at any rate, have never met any member of that type who came within a mile of him. Most of ’em have some semblance of decency about ’em – make some attempt to conceal their affairs. Granger didn’t; he seemed to prefer that they should be known. Sometimes since then I have wondered whether he was actuated by a sort of blind rage – by a mad desire to pierce through the calm, icy contempt of his wife; to make her writhe and suffer, because he realised she was so immeasurably his superior.” He paused thoughtfully. “He made her suffer right enough.”

  “Did she never try for a divorce?” asked the Soldier

  “No, never. We discussed it once – she, and my wife and I; and I had to explain to her our peculiar laws on the subject. His adultery by itself was, of course, not sufficient, and for some reason she flatly refused to consider a mere separation. She wouldn’t face the scandal and publicity for only that. I said to her then: ‘Why not apply for a restitution of conjugal rights. Get your husband to leave the house, and if he doesn’t return in fourteen days –’

  “She stopped me with a bitter laugh.

  “‘It seems rather fatuous,’ she said slowly, ‘getting a lawyer to ask my husband to do what he is only too ready to do – return to me.’

  “‘But surely,’ I began, not quite taking her meaning.

  “‘You see, Bill,’ she answered in a flat, dead voice, ‘my husband is very fond of me – as a stopgap. After most of his episodes he honours me with his attentions for two or three days.’

  “That was the devil of it – he didn’t intend to let her divorce him. She formed an excellent hostess for his house, and for the rest there were always les autres. And he wanted her, too, because he couldn’t get her, and that made him mad.”

  The Barrister leant forward, and the firelight flickered on his thin, ascetic face.

  “Such was the state of affairs when I went to stay. The particular lady at the time who was being honoured by Henry Granger was a shining light in musical comedy – Nelly Jones, shall we call her? It is very far from her real name. If possible, he had been more open over this affair than usual; everyone who knew the Grangers in London knew about it – everyone. He had twice dined with her at the same restaurant at which his wife was entertaining, once deliberately selecting the next table.”

  “What an unmitigated swine!” cried the Ordinary Man.

  “He was,” agreed the Barrister briefly. “But even that was not sufficient to satisfy the gentleman. He proceeded to do a thing which put him for ever outside the pale. He brought this girl to a reception of his wife’s at his own house.

  “It was the night that I arrived. She had fixed up one of those ghastly entertainments which are now, thank Heaven, practically extinct. Somebody sings and nobody listens, and you meet everybody you particularly want to avoid. Mercifully I ran into an old pal, also of your calling, Actor-man – Violet Seymour. No reason why I should disguise her name at any rate. She was not acting at the moment, and we sat in a sort of alcove place at the top of the stairs, on the same landing as the reception room.

  “‘There’s going to be a break here soon, Bill,’ she said to me after a while. ‘Ruth is going to snap.’

  “‘Poor girl!’ I answered. ‘But what the devil can one do, Violet?’

  “‘Nothing,’ she said fiercely, ‘except alter your abominably unjust laws. Why can’t she get a divorce, Bill? It’s vile – utterly vile.’

  “And then – well, let’s call him Sir Edward Shoreham, joined us. He was on the Bench – a judge, which makes the disguise of a false name pretty thin, especially in view of what is to come. I remember he had recently taken a murder case – one that had aroused a good deal of popular attention – and the prisoner had been found guilty. We were talking about it at the time Sir Edward arrived, with Violet, as usual, tilting lances against every form of authority.

  “I can see her now as she turned to Sir Edward with a sort of dreadful fascination on her face.

  “‘And so you sentenced him to death?’

  “He nodded gravely. ‘Certainly,’ he answered. ‘He was guilty.’

  “And then she turned half away, speaking almost under her breath.

  “‘And doesn’t it ever appal you? Make you wake in the middle of the night, with your mouth dry and your throat parched. All this – life, love – and in a cell, a man waiting – a man you’ve sent there. Ticking off the days on his nerveless fingers – staring out at the sun. My God! it would drive me mad.’

  “Ned Shoreham smiled a little grimly.

  “‘You seem to forget one unimportant factor,’ he answered; ‘the wretched woman that man killed.’

  “‘No, I don’t,’ she cried. ‘But the punishment is so immeasur-ably worse than the crime. I don’t think death would matter if it came suddenly; but to sit waiting with a sort of sickening helplessness–”

  “It was then Ruth Granger joined us. Some woman was singing in the reception room and, for the moment, she was free from her duties as hostess.

  “‘You seem very serious,’ she said with her grave, sweet smile, holding out her hand to Sir Edward.

  “‘Miss Se
ymour is a revolutionary,’ he answered lightly, and I happened at that moment to glance at Ruth. And for the moment she had let the mask slip as she looked at Ned Shoreham’s face. Then it was replaced, but their secret was out, as far as I was concerned, though on matters of affection I am the least observant of mortals. If they weren’t in love with one another, they were as near to it as made no odds. And it gave me a bit of a shock.

  “Shoreham was young – young, at any rate, for the Bench – and he was unmarried. And somehow I couldn’t fit Shoreham into the situation of loving another man’s wife. There had never been a breath of scandal that I had heard; if there had been, it would have finished him for good. A judge must be like Caesar’s wife. And Shoreham, even then, had established a reputation for the most scrupulous observance of the law. His enemies called him cruel and harsh; those who knew him better realised that his apparent harshness was merely a cloak he had wrapped tightly round himself as a guard against a naturally tender heart. I don’t know any man that I can think of who had such an undeviating idea of duty as Shoreham, and without being in the least a prig, such an exalted idea of the responsibilities of his position. And to realise suddenly that he was in love with Ruth Granger, as I say, came as a shock.

  “‘What was the argument about?’ she said, sitting down beside me.

  “‘Morality versus the Law,’ chipped in Violet.

  “‘The individual versus the community,’ amended Sir Edward. ‘Justice – real justice – against sickly sentimentality, with all due deference to you, Miss Seymour. There are hard cases, one knows, but hard cases make bad laws. There’s been far too much lately of men taking matters into their own hands – this so-called Unwritten Law. And it has got to stop.’

  “‘You would never admit the justification,’ said Ruth slowly.

  “‘Never – in any circumstances,’ he answered. ‘You have the law – then appeal to the law. Otherwise there occurs chaos.’

  “‘And what of the cases where the law gives no redress?’ demanded Violet, and even as she spoke Granger came up the stairs with this girl on his arm.

  “Ruth Granger rose, deathly white, and gazed speechlessly at her husband’s coarse, sneering face. I don’t think for a moment she fully grasped the immensity of the insult; she was stunned. The footmen were staring open-mouthed; guests passing into the supper room stopped and smirked. And then it was over; the tension snapped.

  “‘Have you had any supper, Sir Edward?’ said Ruth calmly, and with her hand on his arm she swept past her husband, completely ignoring both him and the girl, who flushed angrily.

  “‘I suppose,’ said Violet Seymour to me, as Granger and the girl went into the reception room, ‘that had Ruth shot that filthy blackguard dead on the stairs, Sir Edward would have piously folded his hands and, in due course, sentenced her to death.’

  “And at the moment I certainly sympathised with her point of view.”

  The Barrister got up and splashed some soda water into a glass. Then he continued: “I won’t weary you with an account of the rest of the reception. You can imagine for yourselves the covert sneers and whisperings. I want to go on two or three hours to the time when the guests had gone, and a white-faced, tight-lipped woman was staring at the dying embers of a fire in her sitting room, while I stood by the mantelpiece wondering what the devil to do to help. Granger was in his study, where he had retired on the departure of Miss Jones, and I, personally, had seen two bottles of champagne taken to him there by one of the footmen.

  “‘It’s the end, Bill,’ she said, looking at me suddenly, ‘absolutely the end. I can’t go on – not after tonight. How dared he bring that woman here? How dared he?’

  “Violet had been right – the break had come. Ruth Granger was desperate, and there was an expression on her face that it wasn’t good to see. It put the wind up me all right.

  “‘Go to bed, Ruth,’ I said quietly. ‘There’s no good having a row with Granger tonight; you can say what you want to say tomorrow.’

  “And at that moment the door opened and her husband came in. As I said, he was a man who never got drunk, but that night he was unsteady on his legs. He stood by the door, swaying a little and staring at her with a sneer on his face. He was a swine sober; in drink he was – well, words fail. But, by God! you fellows, she got through him and into him until I thought he was going to strike her. I believe that was what she was playing for at the time, because I was there as a witness. But he didn’t, and when she finished flaying him he merely laughed in her face.

  “‘And what about your own damned lover, my virtuous darling?’ he sneered. ‘What about the upright judge whom you adore – dear, kind Edward Shoreham?’

  “It was unexpected; she didn’t know he had guessed – and her face gave her away for a moment. Then she straightened up proudly.

  “‘Sir Edward Shoreham and I are on terms which an animal of your gross mind couldn’t possibly understand,’ she answered coldly, and he laughed. ‘If you insinuate that he is my lover in the accepted sense of the word, you lie and you know it.’

  “Without another word she walked contemptuously by him, and the door closed behind her. And after a moment or two I followed her, leaving him staring moodily at the empty grate. I couldn’t have spoken to him without being rude and, after all, I was under his roof.”

  The Barrister leant back in his chair and crossed his legs.

  “Now that was the situation,” he continued, “when I went to bed. My room was almost opposite Lady Granger’s, and at the end of the passage, which was a cul-de-sac, was the door leading into Granger’s study. I hadn’t started to undress when I heard him come past my room and go along the passage to his study. And I was still thinking over the situation about ten minutes later when Lady Granger’s door opened. I knew it was hers because I heard her speak to her maid, telling her to go to bed. The girl said ‘Goodnight,’ and something – I don’t quite know what – made me look through the keyhole of my door. I was feeling uneasy and alarmed; I suppose the scene downstairs had unsettled me. And sure enough, as soon as the maid’s footsteps had died away, I saw through my spyhole Ruth Granger go down the passage towards her husband’s study. For a moment I hesitated; an outsider’s position is always awkward between husband and wife. But one thing was very certain, those two were in no condition to have another – and this time a private – interview. I opened my door noiselessly and peered out. It struck me that if I heard things getting too heated I should have to intervene. She was just opening the door of his study as I looked along the passage, and then in a flash the whole thing seemed to happen. The door shut behind her; there was a pause of one – perhaps two seconds – and a revolver shot rang out, followed by the sound of a heavy fall. For a moment I was stunned; then I raced along the passage as hard as I could, and flung open the door of the study.

  “On the floor lay Henry Granger, doubled up and sprawling, while in the middle of the room stood his wife staring at him speechlessly. At her feet on the carpet was a revolver, an automatic Colt. I stood there by the door staring foolishly, and after a while she spoke.

  “‘There’s been an accident,’ she whispered. ‘Is he dead?’

  “I went up to the body and turned it over. Through the shirt front was a small hole; underneath the left shoulder blade was another. Henry Granger had been shot through the heart from point-blank range; death must have been absolutely instan-taneous.

  “‘My God, Ruth!’ I muttered. ‘How did it happen?’

  “‘Happen?’ she answered vaguely. ‘There was a man…the window.’

  “And then she fainted. The butler, with a couple of footmen, by this time had appeared at the door, and I pulled myself together.

  “‘Her ladyship’s maid at once,’ I said. ‘Sir Henry has been shot. Ring up a doctor, and ask him to come round immediately.’

  “The butler rushed off, but
I kept the two footmen.

  “‘Wait a moment,’ I cried, picking up the revolver. ‘A man did it. Pull back the two curtains by the window, and I’ll cover him.’

  “They did as I told them, pulled back the two heavy black curtains that were in front of the window. It was set back in a sort of alcove, and I had the revolver ready pointed to cover the murderer. I covered empty air; there was no one there. Then I walked over to the window and looked out. It was wide open, and there was a sheer drop of forty feet to the deserted area below. I looked upwards – I looked sideways: plain brickwork without footing for a cat.”

  “‘Go down to the room below,’ I cried; ‘he may have got in there.’

  “They rushed away to come back and tell me that not only were the windows bolted, but that they were shuttered as well. And I thought they looked at me curiously.”

  He paused to relight his cigar; then he continued thoughtfully: “I don’t quite know when I first began to feel suspicious about this mysterious man. The thing had been so sudden that for a while my brain refused to work; then gradually my legal training reasserted itself, and I started to piece things together. Ruth had come to again, and I put one or two questions to her. She was still very dazed, but she answered them quite coherently: “A man in evening clothes – at least, she thought he had on evening clothes – had been in the room as she came in. She heard a shot; the light went out and the window was thrown up. And then she had turned on the light just before I came in to see her husband lying dead on the floor. She knew no more. I suppose I must have looked a bit thoughtful, for she suddenly got up from her chair and came up to me.

  “‘You believe me, Bill, don’t you?’ she said, staring at me.

  “‘Of course, of course,’ I answered hurriedly. ‘Go and lie down now, Ruth, because we shall have to send for the police.’

  “Without another word she left the room with her maid, and, after telling the footmen to wait downstairs till they were wanted, I sat down to think. Now, this isn’t a detective story; such as it is, it concerns a more interesting study than the mere detection of crime. It concerns the struggle in the soul of an upright man between love and duty. And the man was Sir Edward Shoreham.