“But, my dear fellow, that damned cow spoils the whole thing!” Ledlaw heard his own voice making the protest, and asking what the hand meant, and Henshawk telling him it was a sort of advertisement.
“I felt sure you wouldn’t mind. After all, a place like that belongs, at least in its artistic aspect — well, it belongs to England, don’t you think! It symbolizes the urban Englishman’s dream of home. And that’s my line of business now, Harold — helping the hard-up middle-class to own their homes. I had to put those beastly animals in afterwards on the advice of the advertising experts. You see, the town dweller always fancies he’ll do a spot of spare-time farming, the stock to look after itself and pay off the mortgage.”
There was a good deal of it, but Ledlaw barely listened. He had already decided that they would not “fix something.” He would find out the two things he had come to find out, and then he need never see Henshawk again.
“You were going to tell me about the timber, Albert.”
“Ah! Wheels within wheels! I have not seen — er — Mrs. Ledlaw. But I heard last year through a mutual acquaintance — a woman you don’t know — that your daughter, Harold, wants to be a doctor. Let’s see, she’s nearly eighteen now, isn’t she? That’s a seven-year course. Well — er — my informant said that you would not be asked to make any further contribution. So Mrs. Ledlaw decided to sell the timber in Swallowsbath Rise. Mind you, it won’t affect the look of the place, being the other side of the hill.”
He had been speaking with some awkwardness which now slipped away.
“When I heard this, I thought perhaps Mrs. Ledlaw might want to sell the whole outfit, as I knew you had bought it outright for her. I went down to see her last year, but she was on holiday and the place was shut up. So I thought I’d sketch it. I wrote to her asking if it was in the market and got a reply, written in the third person, saying no. I don’t suppose she remembers me. I haven’t seen her since — well, since.”
So that was that! He had the right to see that his daughter took her medical course in comfort. Now for that other question that must be approached circuitously. Twenty past six. He would have to hurry or he might fumble the showdown he had planned — if indeed it was to be a showdown, of which he was not yet certain.
“There’s another thing I want to ask you, Albert. You perhaps remember that, when Ruth divorced me, I withdrew the defense I had previously entered denying infidelity. I then vamoosed to Canada. I want to know whether you believed what that Valerie Carmaen said — that I had been her lover?”
“Really, Harold, after all these years!” Henshawk was definitely embarrassed.
“You knew her. And you knew she was the kind of dirt I wouldn’t touch if she were the only female left in the world.”
“Yes, yes, Harold! Just as you say!”
“Then you believe she faked that bedroom incident — that my original pleading, which I showed you, stated the truth?”
“Of course, I believe it if you say so! Didn’t I tell you at the time that I believed you! I wondered why you didn’t go on with the defense.”
“I withdrew the defense because Ruth made it clear that, whatever was proved in court, she would believe me guilty. That broke me up, Albert. Ruth and I hadn’t started too well. The first few months had been difficult. But we were just getting right. Life was going to be grand. And then this thing happened.”
“But it’s more than eighteen years ago, old man!”
“To me it’s as if it were yesterday. I know it’s an obsession and not quite sane, and all that. But all these years, when I’ve not been actually working, I’ve felt much as I felt at the time — humiliated, washed up, finished.”
Henshawk was making soothing noises. He looked sympathetic, not afraid. Perhaps, thought Ledlaw, there was no reason why he should be afraid. Perhaps the information he had received about Henshawk had been incorrect. He glanced at the clock — he would know in a few minutes.
“Have you any idea why that girl picked on me? I didn’t like her, but I never insulted her. She had no reason to hate me.”
“No, of course not! You shouldn’t let your mind dwell on it, old man. What about seeing a good psychiatrist?”
“She didn’t hate me. She just used me callously because she wanted to be divorced.”
He was not thinking now of Henshawk. In the grip of his obsession, he repeated the words he had been repeating for eighteen years.
“She had an income in her own right and could have fixed it with a professional co-respondent for a tenner and a little bother. But what she did to me is worse than positive cruelty, which at least has the excuse of malice or perversion. I think of that woman as the lowest moral type — a moral slug.”
“You’re working yourself up, Harold. It’s bad for you, and it’s very distressing for me — ah, excuse me!”
There had come a knock on the private door — the knock for which Ledlaw had been waiting. Both glanced at the clock. It was twenty-two minutes to seven.
Henshawk went to the door. Ledlaw remained still, his back — as Superintendent Karslake had inferred — to both doors. He would let her get well into the room before he turned and faced her. And if she were not the woman, he would just acknowledge the introduction and go.
“I am in conference,” he heard Henshawk say.
Too late, Ledlaw turned round. Henshawk had stepped into the corridor and was speaking to her there. Ledlaw could see neither. He sprang up, intending to thrust himself into the corridor. But Henshawk had already returned alone and shut the door.
“Only an anxious client! Look here, I don’t want to turn you out, old man, but I must get some work ready for my secretary who will be back presently. What about dining with me at the club tomorrow night?”
Ledlaw saw that a simple bluff would give him the answer he must have.
“ ‘An anxious client’, you said, Albert. Why did you say it?”
“I don’t get you, old man.”
“Was it your wife, Albert? I ask, because I sent Mrs. Henshawk a wire in your name asking her to call here at six-thirty. I ’phoned it from the Redmoon — where you were lunching. She was a little late.” He paused, decided it was safe to add: “I saw her face, Albert. I must apologize for having called your wife a moral slug.”
Ledlaw got up, actually intending to go. The love of self-torture that accompanies such an obsession as his had something new to feed on. Fate had used him even more vilely than he had known, for Henshawk had been his friend since school days.
But Henshawk, the frank egotist who had delighted in making a statuette of himself, could not endure the loss of face.
“I am sorry you saw Valerie. It can only deepen the tragedy for all three of us. To know all, Harold, is to forgive all. I want you to sit down again and let me explain.”
“Go ahead.” Ledlaw dropped back into the client’s chair. “It might be amusing to hear why she smashed up my life to save herself a tenner. Why, surely, she could have got the tenner from you! And you’d have gladly taken all the bother off her hands.”
“I didn’t know what she was doing until she had done it,” Henshawk began. “And I didn’t know the man was you until you yourself told me. It all originated in my refusal to deceive her husband. I’m like that, as you know — I can’t bear anything underhand. Well, I went to Carmaen and asked him to divorce her and let us marry. If ever there was a dog-in-the-manger it was Carmaen. He refused. But, being a beast, he gave Valerie to understand that, if it was anybody but myself, he would gladly divorce her. I happened to mention that I had recommended that hotel when you had to run down to Frensmouth for the night, and Valerie ran down too — but without my knowledge.”