The Safety Curten by Ethel May Dell (ebook e reader .txt) 📖

sunken hollows of his eyes look cavernous.
He turned the light away so that it streamed upon the open doorway. Then he resumed his former position of sphinx-like waiting, his chin upon his hand.
Half an hour passed. The day was dead. Beyond the radius of the lamp there hung a pall of thick darkness--a fearful, clinging darkness that seemed to wrap the whole earth. The heat was intense, unstirred by any breeze. Only now and then the cartoon on the wall moved as if at the touch of ghostly fingers, and each time there came that mocking whisper that was like wind in corn.
At length there sounded through the night the dull throbbing of a horse's feet, and the man who sat waiting raised his head. A gleam of expectancy shone in his sombre eyes. Some of the rigidity went out of his attitude.
Nearer came the hoofs and nearer yet, and with them, mingling rhythmically, a tenor voice that sang.
As it reached him the man at the table pulled out a drawer with a sharp jerk. His hand sought something within it, but his eyes never left the curtain of darkness that the open doorway framed.
Slowly, very slowly at last, he withdrew his hand empty; but he only partially closed the drawer.
The voice without was nearer now, was close at hand. The horse's hoofs had ceased to sound. There came the ring of spurred heels without, a man's hand tapped upon the doorpost, a man's figure showed suddenly against the darkness.
"Hallo, Conyers! Still in the land of the living? Ye gods, what a fiendish night! Many thanks for the beacon! It's kept me straight for more than half the way."
He entered carelessly, the lamplight full upon him--a handsome, straight-limbed young Hercules--tossed down his riding-whip, and looked round for a drink.
"Here you are!" said Conyers, turning the rays of the lamp full upon some glasses on the table.
"Ah, good! I'm as dry as a smoked herring. You must drink too, though. Yes, I insist. I have a toast to propose, so be sociable for once. What have you got in that drawer?"
Conyers locked the drawer abruptly, and jerked out the key.
"What do you want to know for?"
His visitor grinned boyishly.
"Don't be bashful, old chap! I always guessed you kept her there. We'll drink her health, too, in a minute. But first of all"--he was splashing soda-water impetuously out of a syphon as he spoke--"first of all--quite ready, I say? It's a grand occasion--here's to the best of good fellows, that genius, that inventor of guns, John Conyers! Old chap, your fortune's made. Here's to it! Hip--hip--hooray!"
His shout was like the blare of a bull. Conyers rose, crossed to the door, and closed it.
Returning, he halted by his visitor's side, and shook him by the shoulder.
"Stop rotting, Palliser!" he said rather shortly.
Young Palliser wheeled with a gigantic laugh, and seized him by the arms.
"You old fool, Jack! Can't you see I'm in earnest? Drink, man, drink, and I'll tell you all about it. That gun of yours is going to be an enormous success--stupendous--greater even than I hoped. It's true, by the powers! Don't look so dazed. All comes to those who wait, don't you know. I always told you so."
"To be sure, so you did." The man's words came jerkily. They had an odd, detached sound, almost as though he were speaking in his sleep. He turned away from Palliser, and took up his untouched glass.
But the next instant it slipped through his fingers, and crashed upon the table edge. The spilt liquid streamed across the floor.
Palliser stared for an instant, then thrust forward his own glass.
"Steady does it, old boy! Try both hands for a change. It's this infernal heat."
He turned with the words, and picked up a paper from the table, frowning over it absently, and whistling below his breath.
When he finally looked round again his face cleared.
"Ah, that's better! Sit down, and we'll talk. By Jove, isn't it colossal? They told me over at the fort that I was a fool to come across to-night. But I simply couldn't keep you waiting another night. Besides, I knew you would expect me."
Conyers' grim face softened a little. He could scarcely have said how he had ever come to be the chosen friend of young Hugh Palliser. The intimacy had been none of his seeking.
They had met at the club on the occasion of one of his rare appearances there, and the younger man, whose sociable habit it was to know everyone, had scraped acquaintance with him.
No one knew much about Conyers. He was not fond of society, and, as a natural consequence, society was not fond of him. He occupied the humble position of a subordinate clerk in an engineer's office. The work was hard, but it did not bring him prosperity. He was one of those men who go silently on week after week, year after year, till their very existence comes almost to be overlooked by those about them. He never seemed to suffer as other men suffered from the scorching heat of that tropical corner of the Indian Empire. He was always there, whatever happened to the rest of the world; but he never pushed himself forward. He seemed to lack ambition. There were even some who said he lacked brains as well.
But Palliser was not of these. His quick eyes had detected at a glance something that others had never taken the trouble to discover. From the very beginning he had been aware of a force that contained itself in this silent man. He had become interested, scarcely knowing why; and, having at length overcome the prickly hedge of reserve which was at first opposed to his advances, he had entered the private place which it defended, and found within--what he certainly had not expected to find--a genius.
It was nearly three months now since Conyers, in a moment of unusual expansion, had laid before him the invention at which he had been working for so many silent years. The thing even then, though complete in all essentials, had lacked finish, and this final touch young Palliser, himself a gunner with a positive passion for guns, had been able to supply. He had seen the value of the invention and had given it his ardent support. He had, moreover, friends in high places, and could obtain a fair and thorough investigation of the idea.
This he had accomplished, with a result that had transcended his high hopes, on his friend's behalf; and he now proceeded to pour out his information with an accompanying stream of congratulation, to which Conyers sat and listened with scarcely the movement of an eyelid.
Hugh Palliser found his impassivity by no means disappointing. He was used to it. He had even expected it. That momentary unsteadiness on Conyers' part had astonished him far more.
Concluding his narration he laid the official correspondence before him, and got up to open the door. The night was black and terrible, the heat came in overwhelming puffs, as though blown from a blast furnace. He leaned against the doorpost and wiped his forehead. The oppression of the atmosphere was like a tangible, crushing weight. Behind him the paper on the wall rustled vaguely, but there was no other sound. After several minutes he turned briskly back again into the room, whistling a sentimental ditty below his breath.
"Well, old chap, it was worth waiting for, eh? And now, I suppose, you'll be making a bee-line for home, you lucky beggar. I shan't be long after you, that's one comfort. Pity we can't go together. I suppose you can't wait till the winter."
"No, my boy. I'm afraid I can't." Conyers spoke with a faint smile, his eyes still fixed upon the blue official paper that held his destiny. "I'm going home forthwith, and be damned to everything and everybody--except you. It's an understood thing, you know, Palliser, that we are partners in this deal."
"Oh, rot!" exclaimed Palliser impetuously. "I don't agree to that. I did nothing but polish the thing up. You'd have done it yourself if I hadn't."
"In the course of a few more years," put in Conyers drily.
"Rot!" said Palliser again. "Besides, I don't want any pelf. I've quite as much as is good for me, more than I want. That's why I'm going to get married. You'll be going the same way yourself now, I suppose?"
"You have no reason whatever for thinking so," responded Conyers.
Palliser laughed lightheartedly and sat down on the table. "Oh, haven't I? What about that mysterious locked drawer of yours? Don't be shy, I say! You had it open when I came in. Show her to me like a good chap! I won't tell a soul."
"That's not where I keep my love-tokens," said Conyers, with a grim twist of the mouth that was not a smile.
"What then?" asked Palliser eagerly. "Not another invention?"
"No." Conyers inserted the key in the lock again, turned it, and pulled open the drawer. "See for yourself as you are so anxious."
Palliser leaned across the table and looked. The next instant his glance flashed upwards, and their eyes met.
There was a sharply-defined pause. Then, "You'd never be fool enough for that, Jack!" ejaculated Palliser, with vehemence.
"I'm fool enough for anything," said Conyers, with his cynical smile.
"But you wouldn't," the other protested almost incoherently. "A fellow like you--I don't believe it!"
"It's loaded," observed Conyers quietly. "No, leave it alone, Hugh! It can remain so for the present. There is not the smallest danger of its going off--or I shouldn't have shown it to you."
He closed the drawer again, looking steadily into Hugh Palliser's face.
"I've had it by me for years," he said, "just in case the Fates should have one more trick in store for me. But apparently they haven't, though it's never safe to assume anything."
"Oh, don't talk like an idiot!" broke in Palliser heatedly. "I've no patience with that sort of thing. Do you expect me to believe that a fellow like you--a fellow who knows how to wait for his luck--would give way to a cowardly impulse and destroy himself all in a moment because things didn't go quite straight? Man alive! I know you better than that; or if I don't, I've never known you at all."
"Ah! Perhaps not!" said Conyers.
Once more he turned the key and withdrew it. He pushed back his chair so that his face was in shadow.
"You don't know everything, you know, Hugh," he said.
"Have a smoke," said Palliser, "and tell me what you are driving at."
He threw himself into a bamboo chair by the open door, the light streaming full upon him, revealing in every line of him the arrogant splendour of his youth. He looked like a young Greek god with the world at his feet.
Conyers surveyed him with his faint, cynical smile. "No," he said, "you certainly don't know everything, my son. You never have come a cropper in your life."
"Haven't I, though?" Hugh sat up, eager to refute this criticism. "That's all you know about it. I suppose you think you have had the monopoly of hard knocks. Most people do."
"I am not like most people," Conyers asserted deliberately. "But you needn't tell me that you have ever been right under, my boy. For you never have."
"Depends what you call going under," protested Palliser. "I've been down a good many times, Heaven knows. And I've had to wait--as you have--all the best years of my life."
"Your best years are to come," rejoined Conyers. "Mine are over."
"Oh, rot, man! Rot--rot--rot! Why, you are just coming into your own! Have another drink and give me the toast