The Almost Perfect Murder by Hulbert Footner (reading the story of the TXT) 📕

alone together, whew! the lid blew off!

“It wasn’t Cristina that I baulked at; I could have tamed the little

termagant, and enjoyed doing it. It was her life, her gang, it was

everything she stood for that stuck in my crop. I don’t know if I can

explain what I mean. That crowd of decayed aristocrats and cast-off

royalties that fluffs around Europe from one expensive resort to

another sponging on millionaires. In a going concern like England, the

King is a real person, but the others are just play-actors. The whole

business of Highnessing them, and going down on your marrow bones, and

slipping them loans on the sly, is a comic sham. Yet my Dad couldn’t

see it. If he could buy lunch for a hereditary Prince he was happy….

Do you know Europe, Madame Storey?”

“I know it,” she said dryly.

“Then I need say no more. By God! that atmosphere would have

suffocated me! I’m an American. I must have air. I must be free to

say my say, and walk out on the show if I don’t like it.”

“Oh, quite!”

“So I saw almost from the first that marriage was out of the question,

and after that I was just out for the fun there was in it. I swear I

never thought Cristina was taking it seriously. A hundred times a day

she called me a boor, a peasant, a barbarian—with trimmings. She said

she’d sooner marry her footman than me. However, since she came to

America, I suppose she did take it seriously. Those girls over there

don’t savvy like ours do. Maybe it’s because they don’t want to. At

any rate, they’re not such good sports. Oh, well, anything I ever

started was bound to turn out badly.”

He swallowed a pony of brandy, and continued: “Where I made my mistake

was in not having it out with the old man in plain words. But it was

impossible to have a thing out with him, unless you both got in a

rip-roaring passion. When I tried to talk to him about it, he turned

it aside. So I just drifted. When we left Europe I thought the scheme

had been dropped. Wrong again! I was soon made to understand by

little things that the match was settled. In short, that I had to

marry the girl. That turned me stubborn and I…” He suddenly broke

off and took another drink.

“You what?” prompted Mme. Storey.

“Oh, I made up my mind I’d be damned if I would!”

This was obviously not what he had started to say. However, my

employer let it pass. “Her coming brought things to a head,” she

suggested.

“Yes,” he said ruefully. “I lit out. But the old man ran me to earth,

and I had to come back. Got here Monday, day before yesterday. We had

it out then with a vengeance. I tried to reason with him, but he

wouldn’t listen. Insisted that I had compromised myself. That made me

laugh. ‘Good God!’ I said, ‘if a fellow had to marry every girl he had

petted, Brigham Young would be nowhere!’ He said, in his stiff way:

‘It is somewhat different when a Princess is involved!’ ‘Princess, my

eye!’ I said; ‘her family was kicked out of that job nearly twenty

years ago!’ We were soon shouting at each other in the old way. He

said I had allowed him to commit himself so far that he couldn’t draw

back, and I said that I didn’t give a damn for his commitments, that I

was the one who had to marry the girl. He mounted his highest horse.

He said that I had to marry the girl, and there was no argument about

it, so then I played…” He suddenly bit his lip, and seized his glass

again.

“Played your trump card?” suggested Mme. Storey.

“No,” he said with an embarrassed smile, “I didn’t have any trumps.

Played my last card, I was going to say. I said I wouldn’t marry her,

and stood pat.”

There was clearly an important omission here, but as Mme. Storey was

not supposed to be examining him, she couldn’t very well take notice of

it. He went on to describe the final scenes of his quarrel with his

father. In doing so he completely forgot himself; his cheeks became

flushed, and his eyes sparkled with remembered anger as he acted the

scene out. “He said he’d cut me off without a cent! And I said go to

it!”

In the middle of this the blue eyes suddenly went blank, and he caught

himself up gasping. “Oh, God! what am I saying! And he lying upstairs

cold!” He sprang up from his chair, and walked away into the shadows.

He leaned his arms against the wall, and dropped his head upon them.

It was terribly affecting.

“However, that has got nothing to do with the tragedy of yesterday,”

said Mme. Storey soothingly.

“No,” he said heavily. He returned and dropped into his chair. All

the light had gone out of his face. He stared before him, fingering a

wine-glass without noticing what he was doing. “That is a complete

mystery,” he murmured. “Surely the doctors must be mistaken. Who

would want to kill my Dad?”

“Did he cut you off?” asked Mme. Storey—though she knew very well.

“Yes,” he said indifferently. “Made a new will yesterday morning.”

“When did you learn that?”

“Just a little while ago, from my mother. The lawyer has talked to

her.”

“How did your father receive you yesterday afternoon?” asked Mme.

Storey in a conversational tone.

I could have shrieked a warning to him, but anyhow it would have come

too late. He fell directly into her trap. “Well, he had quieted down

some,” he said gloomily. “But he wouldn’t let me talk.”

A second later he realised that he had betrayed himself. He lifted a

ghastly face towards my employer.

“How … how did you know I was here yesterday?” he stammered.

“I didn’t know,” she answered. “You have just told me.”

A horrible silence fell upon us three. I was enraged with my mistress.

It didn’t seem like the square thing to do, to accept his invitation to

dine merely for the purpose of entrapping him. On the other hand I

felt a kind of fierce joy in the young man’s desperate situation. It

seemed to bring me a little closer to him. If the whole world abandons

him I will still be his friend! I told myself.

After a while Henry Varick raised his head, and said with a kind of

weary defiance: “Well, suppose I did see my father yesterday afternoon?

What of it?”

“Nothing,” said Mme. Storey mildly. “I am only wondering why you tried

to conceal the fact?”

“Well, I was tempted because it seemed easy to conceal it. I came

through a secret entrance, and I met nobody. Nobody knew I was in the

house except … my mother.”

“And Miss Gilsey,” put in Mme. Storey.

He stared at her again. “You are a terrible woman!” he murmured. “…

Yes, Miss Gilsey saw me come, because she is always with my mother.

But she would not have betrayed me.”

“Nor your mother’s maids?”

“Nor my mother’s maids either. I didn’t notice whether they saw me or

not…. As for my reason for concealing my visit, surely that must be

clear to you. It appears that my father was taken sick a few minutes

after I had left him. Anybody could foresee what a nasty story that

would start. The scapegrace son, and all that. My whole past life

raked up. My object was simply to keep a dirty mess out of the papers.

I had no fear of the outcome. Why, no sensible person would believe

that I had done it. A son does not poison his father! It is

incredible! Am I a monster?”

Mme. Storey expressed no comment.

“And, anyhow,” he went on, “what a fool I would be to make an attempt

on my father’s life when he had just made a will cutting me off!”

“But you did not know that,” she coldly pointed out. “You told me you

had just found it out. Yesterday all you knew was that your father

intended to change his will. On former occasions it had not been

accomplished so quickly.”

The young man pressed his head between his hands. “Oh, God! what a

frightful position I am in!” he groaned.

“Why did you come back yesterday?” asked Mme. Storey.

“For the most natural reason in the world. I had cooled off. I was

sorry for some of the things I had said. I hoped he might be sorry

too.”

“Were you prepared then to accept the Princess?”

“Oh, no! There was no question about that,” he answered quickly. “I

just wanted to say I was sorry. I suppose it won’t be believed, but I

loved my father. Besides, why not confess it? I am only human. I was

worried about the will. I care for money as little as any man, but the

threat that had been held over me was that Theodore Varick, my father’s

nephew, was to get it all, in order to carry on the family

traditions—Oh, my God! The thought that that … excuse me! that he

might be able to crow over me! that snooper! that worm!—he’s not a

man, he’s a water-cooler! Why, for the last five years he’s been

sucking up to my dad, sympathising with him for having such a graceless

son! Gad! once I had the pleasure of smashing his pasty face and I

hope to do it again! Anything to keep Theodore out! I came back

prepared to eat humble pie, to agree to anything short of marrying

myself to that foreign woman.”

“You went direct to your mother’s room?” prompted Mme. Storey.

“Yes.”

“Did you send word to your father that you were in the house?”

“No, indeed, he would only have refused to see me. I went to his

study. I went through all the rooms of the two suites so I wouldn’t

show myself outside.”

“Was the Princess still with him?”

“No, he was alone when we…”

“Who was with you?” interrupted Mme. Storey.

“Nobody,” he said. “A slip of the tongue. I was thinking of my

mother. We had been discussing whether she ought to come with me, but

she didn’t.”

“Now, come,” said my employer with dry good-humour. “Isn’t it a fact

that Mrs. Varick was out of the house altogether at that hour?”

“Well … yes,” he said sullenly. “If you know everything already why

ask me? She was out. Is that important?”

“No,” said Mme. Storey. “Go on.”

“Cristina must have just gone, I could smell her perfume, and my father

was still fussed.”

“That made it more difficult for you then.”

“No, on the contrary, I think he was relieved that the thing was done

with. He treated me pretty decent—for him. Of course, he was pretty

stiff with me, he was never the one to admit he had been wrong. But I

think he showed it a little. At any rate, he didn’t refuse my hand.

He had his tea, and I drank a whisky and soda … Gabbitt must have

found the glass! Was it he who gave me away?”

“No,” said Mme. Storey. “Every servant in the house knew