CHAPTER XIII
Timestood still for Penderel, waiting there in the hall. A few moments before, when he had been hustling the women across to that room, it had seemed as if there wasn’t a second to waste, but now, as he listened in loneliness between those locked doors, he found there was time enough and to spare. No sound came from above. He crossed over to the door through which Morgan and Waverton and Sir William had disappeared in a struggling mass, and he tried the handle. It was locked, of course; he knew very well it was. That meant that Waverton and Sir William would first have to dispose of Morgan and then get the key from the Femm woman, before they could join him. And Morgan might easily be a match for both of them for some time yet. He listened at the door. Vague, distant sounds came through, suggesting that Morgan had not yet been overpowered but was still putting up a fight somewhere at the end ofthe corridor, perhaps in or near the kitchen. A creak from the stairs sent him back into the middle of the hall, with his heart-beats filling his ears. But nobody was there.
If that had been the moment for action, he felt, all would have been well. There was, however, nothing to do but wait, listen to the mocking old timbers and wait, stare at the jumping shadows and wait; and now he suddenly felt sick and afraid. He wanted to run away, to take the good the night had brought him, out of its darkness, and hurry with it into safety. But he could not take it away, for if he went now, hiding his head, it would not go with him: all would be lost. Well, he had wanted something to do, and here was something to do. He hadn’t had to wait long, he told himself grimly. How queer it was that there was something inside you that could relish, grinning with irony, the most damnable situation you found yourself in, pointing out how damnable it was! He’d discovered that in France, when, as now, something in him was afraid and something else wasn’t, something shook and something grinned. Some of the old faces came popping up, smiled, and were gone; fellows he thoughthe’d forgotten; a spectral parade; and he wanted to keep one steadily before him so that he could cry ‘It’s a good war’ and once again hear it call back to him, just one of the daft old slogans: ‘Jam for the troops, mate.’ He would feel better after that. He might give Gladys a shout. She’d understand. But no, that wouldn’t do.
His eye went travelling idly up the dimly lighted stairs, waiting for madness to creep down from the dark, and then suddenly his mind cleared. His place wasn’t here, dithering and dreaming, but at the top of those stairs. Once down here, the madman might easily escape him and let hell loose, unless of course the other two came back before he arrived. So long as there wasn’t another way down, the best place for him was obviously at the top there; and even if there should be another way down, he wouldn’t be much worse off up there, because it wouldn’t take him long to get back again. And the sooner he went up the better.
He walked forward, then stopped and looked round hesitantly. His hand went to his forehead, which was cold and wet. Wasn’t there something he could take with him, somethingto grip? Well, there was a poker, and that was better than nothing. Hastily he seized it, and was crossing to the foot of the stairs when he bethought himself of the light. He couldn’t take it with him, that would be too dangerous; but if he put the lamp somewhere near the front door it would throw a little more light on the place where he would have to take his stand, at the very top of the stairs.
He crept up, slowly, shakily, his shadow leaping and sprawling before him. There were little noises everywhere now, not a stair in the house without its creak. All that part of the house that yawned above him seemed tense, expectant. The little patch of darkness at the top was thick and crawling with unrevealed terrors. A step or two more and out of that blackness would spring a white, gibbering face. He’d had a dream like that once—it all came back to him, raw and palpitating, the whole experience, almost between one stair and the next—and he remembered how he had wakened, a little boy sobbing in the night, to find his mother bending over him. Who would bend over him now? Why hadn’t they turned God into this vast maternal presence,smooth hands and a murmuring voice and a familiar lovely smell in the dark?
He was standing at the very top now, one hand behind him, touching the rail, the other achingly folded round the poker. While his eyes stared into the shadows and his ears seemed to run on and search the landing, his thoughts went sickeningly racing round. He was terribly afraid now, angry with himself for standing there. Why shouldn’t he rush downstairs, join Gladys in that room and lock the door, or plunge out into the night itself, into safety and sweet air? However, probably nothing would happen. But then, if nothing happened, he would be all right here. And if he went and something did happen, whether it hurt him or not, he knew that all would be over, the road missed for ever; the rest would be just breathing and eating and sleeping, with his spirit, a poor shamed ghost, returning time and again to take its stand on these stairs.
Yes, he could only stay. What was that? Surely that was somebody moving, not very far away? Why didn’t Waverton and Porterhouse show themselves? But then they wouldn’t, not because they didn’t want to,but because it always happened like that: he might have known that he would have to be alone. He’d always been more afraid of madness than anything else—the very thought of a maniac had always filled him with terror, and when this creature had raved on the stairs he’d felt sick, as if he were being pelted with lumps of putrid flesh—and of course he’d have to come in the end to face it alone. The thing came at last, the darkness shaping itself, and immediately everybody disappeared, doors were locked all round you, and you found yourself alone with it. That noise again, much nearer this time! Yes, he was at the other end of the landing. He was coming on steadily.
‘Stop!’ he cried, quite involuntarily. ‘Stay there, d’you hear? Don’t try to get past. I’ve got a poker here and I shall use it.’ His voice was ridiculously hoarse and shaky, not at all commanding.
The footsteps ceased, and he found he could just see a vague outline of the madman standing there a few yards away. Undoubtedly he had stopped at the sound of a voice, but he made no reply. Penderel waited and then asked himself despairingly how he could have expected a reply. Madness wouldn’t standthere bandying words with him. Nevertheless he had stopped.
‘Go back and don’t be a fool.’ Sheer necessity compelled him to speak out again, for only the sound of his own voice kept him from running away. ‘You’re not coming past here. Get back at once.’ It was woefully grotesque and futile perhaps, yet it raised his spirits a little.
Now there came an answering gabble from that vague shape, a gabble that seemed to end in a kind of chuckle. There was a movement, followed by a quick pattering down the landing. He was going away.
In his astonishment and relief, Penderel sank back against the banisters. Was it all over, then? Had he really gone? Did it only need a command or two, however shaky, just simple courage, no matter if it was raised perilously on tip-toe, to turn aside—flicking it away—what had seemed doom itself? There came now a moment of triumph, and his spirits went soaring. It seemed as if the corner were turned at last, and he had a flashing vision of life stretched widely and gloriously before him, the shining happy valley, lost for years and apparently gone for ever, a dreambitterly cast off, until this strange night brought glimpse after glimpse of it through thinning mist, and now finally swung it into full view. Now he knew what it was to be alive. He could have cried aloud with happiness.
The very next moment he was sick at heart. He heard the quick pattering again; the footsteps were hastening towards him through the darkness; and everything, even his courage, collapsed at the sound. He wanted to run headlong now, to run crying defeat and then to hide himself for ever. But one last slender cord of will, still unbroken, kept him standing there.
‘Stop!’ he cried again. But how feeble it sounded! He wanted to implore now and not to command.
The maniac had stopped already, however, though this time he was nearer. There burst from him a sudden yell of rage.
Penderel drew himself up and tried to control his voice. ‘You can’t come here, I tell you——’ he began; but before he could say any more, something heavy, a chair or a small table, came flying through the air, smashing against his right arm and ribs, sending the poker clattering below, and knocking him sideways andbackwards against the banisters as it crashed into them itself. He fell down, helpless in a spinning world, dizzy and sick. His arm hurt dreadfully, seemed to be broken. Soon the creature would be trampling the life out of him. He tried to rise, but it was too late, the maniac was upon him, and he received a blow in the face that sent his head back with a dreadful jolt and blinded him for a moment.
There was no fear left in him now. In an agony of effort he flung himself forward, grabbed the man’s legs and put out all his strength in one great lift. Down he came, and now they were rolling about the floor, tearing at one another. Penderel found himself possessed by a tremendous fury: ‘You bloody swine!’ he was jerking out, ‘I’ll kill you.’ He contrived to scramble to his feet, but before he had time to do anything but pull himself up, dizzily and achingly, the other was on his feet too and renewing the attack. He was a much older man than Penderel, but he was also much bigger and heavier and seemed to be unusually powerful.
Penderel had his back against the banisters. For a minute or two, while the madman was still breathless, there was little danger. He wasable to dodge or ward off the lumbering blows aimed at him. He covered himself with his left arm, for the right, though not entirely useless, hurt him terribly every time he moved it. Indeed, all his right side ached, and whenever he took a deep breath he felt a little stab of pain there. Standing where he was, he wasn’t really barring the way downstairs, though he could leap upon the man’s back if he should try to go down; but it was evident now that Saul Femm—Penderel had begun to give him his name—intended to settle with him before going any further. And if he could only hold out here, he told himself, the others would be in little danger. Waverton and Porterhouse might return any minute now, and even if he was finished before they did return, he would leave Saul in no condition to deal with them. There was just a minute or two in which to think of these things.
Now Saul was completely recovered and, screaming wildly, he hurled himself upon Penderel, who heard the banisters cracking ominously behind him. He felt helpless in the man’s grasp. The pressure of the banisters against the small of his back was agonising. And struggle as he might, he could not releasehimself. One hand was fumbling for his throat. The banisters were cracking again, and he felt himself being lifted. Desperately he drew up one leg and, hanging on with all his might, drove his knee into the other man’s belly, released the pressure a little, contrived to slip his leg down again, pushed a hand up under Saul’s slavering chin, and by summoning the very remnant of his strength was able to send them both tottering forward a pace, clear of the banisters. There they swayed, six inches this way and that, at close grips.
Blood and sweat ran down his face, blinding him; the pain in his side was intolerable; and he felt his strength ebbing out; but he held on, held on as if there was nothing else left in the world to do. And all the while his mind, escaping from this shameful nightmare of stench and blood and pain, went darting back to queer memories and flashing along the edge of vivid little dreams; and once more he was lying in the long cool grass near the playing-field wall, or listening to Jim and Tom Ranger outside a tent, a glimmer of starlight there, or standing under the blossom at Garthstead; and oddly mingling with these memories were thoughts that came and wentlike swallows, thoughts of the dusk and glitter of town at early evening, quiet pipes in the night, the loud jolly orchestra and the brightening curtain, that little place up five flights of stairs, Gladys laughing at him, brave eyes meeting his through a door suddenly opened. They were so long, so long swaying there in the dark, there was time for a whole shadow show of life.
He couldn’t see at all now; he had to fight for each stabbing breath; and the blood drummed relentlessly in his ears. One hand had found Saul’s throat and tightened on it, but he could no longer hold his ground and fell back inch after inch until at last he seemed to be lifted off his feet. He went crashing against the banisters; something was breaking; the life was being squeezed out of him; but still he held on. Now they were clear of the banisters again, for Saul had relaxed his pressure for a moment and had been compelled to fall back a step, with Penderel still clinging to him. Saul put out all his remaining strength in one tremendous heave. ‘I’m done, I’m done,’ Penderel was crying, crying through a black night of crashing, splintering woodwork and rushing air. And then there was no more pain.