Nothing Venture (29 page)

He felt it go, and then flick back and catch him blinking.

Robert Leonard laughed again.

“Not looking quite your best—are you? Like a wash and brush up? Oh, I see you've had the wash. What about a drink? You've got a bit of a head, haven't you?” As he spoke, he swung the light to and fro.

Jervis steadied himself against the intermittent dazzle, and got what he could from it. Only a four-foot drop from where he was to pool level. There were two pools, one running right back to the wall of the cave, and another between him and the iron bars. The tide was right up to the bars now, and the step was hidden. The passage from Foxy's house had been behind him. The beam cut down from it at an angle and swung to and fro. There must be a fairly foot-worthy path between the edge of the pool and the tilted boulder, because Leonard must have brought him that way. The cave was about twenty feet across, and his rock a little on one side of the middle—say eight feet from the wall where the passage came out.

The light swung in. He saw that there was just such a narrow path as he had guessed at. The ray poured down almost vertically for a moment, and then cut right across the cave and made a steady circle on the dropping wall. Jervis guessed that the torch had been set down.

“I've come to talk business,” said Robert Leonard.

Jervis spoke to him for the first time. He said,

“You damned swab!”

“And I don't want any of your back-chat,” said Leonard. His voice was the voice of a man who stands in a lounging attitude with his hands in his pockets. “I've got you cold—and if you haven't got enough sense to see it, and to keep a civil tongue in your head, you can stay here and drown—it would suit me better. D'you get that? I'd sooner you were drowned—dead men tell no tales, and all the rest of it. It would suit me a whole heap better to let you drown. You get that by heart and keep it in mind!”

Jervis could just see him now that the light was still. He had set it down, not at his feet, but on some sort of ledge on a level with his hand. His hands showed, and his face, and a light patch that was collar and shirt. They looked like pale funguses in the dark. The rest was shadow.

“Well?” said the easy voice. “Going to be sensible and talk? You're up against it, you know.”

Jervis got up and stood against the tilted boulder. He set an elbow on it and leaned' his head on his hand. Moving made him giddy for a moment. He said,

“What do you want?”

The thing seemed still so inconceivable. His thoughts felt stiff; he couldn't really bend them to deal with it. There was a blind rage waiting to sweep him off his feet, but he'd got to keep that back. A blind rage—a blind tide—rising tide—spring tide—storm tide—waiting to carry him away, to sweep him against the rocks, to dash him senseless, to drown the cave—and him.

He leaned heavily upon his hand. He heard Leonard speaking, but the words went by him. It was like a wrong tuning on the wireless—a blare of sound without words or sense. Then, all at once, his name sharp and clear, and the confusion gone.

“Jervis!” and, “What about it?”

He looked up stupidly, blinking at the ray.

“I didn't hear what you said.”

Robert Leonard swore with an obvious anger which Jervis found heartening. Come to think of it, it was annoying to breathe fire and slaughter, and find that the victim hadn't been attending. Jervis laughed inwardly.

“Perhaps you wouldn't mind saying it again,” he said politely.

Once more Robert Leonard swore. He had quite an extensive vocabulary and appeared to be in good form.

“Look here, I've come here to talk business, not to waste my time!”

“It's valuable of course!” said Jervis.

Leonard's voice took on a nasty rasp.

“Yours is, if mine isn't. D'you like being here? You're thirsty, aren't you? You'll be thirstier soon, unless you're dead. Perhaps you've noticed that the tide's coming in. Well, either we're going to talk business, or I go away and leave you—and if you've any idea of getting out this way yourself, you can put it out of your head. In the first place, you can't get up without a ladder, and in the next, there's a pretty tough gate, and when I go away I lock it behind me. See?”

He snatched up the torch and turned its circle of light straight downwards. Then with a crook of the wrist he brought it slowly up the face of the wall.

Jervis had argued that there must be steps cut in the rock. There were no steps. The rocky face hung over a little. It was sheerly unclimbable. The light came up to the ledge where Leonard stood. It was a mere sill like a wide door-step, with the mouth of the passage rising in an irregular arch above it.

Leonard swung the light round past his shoulder and let the beam play on a half open iron gate, heavy, rusty, and strong. Closed, it would fill the arch. A new chain and padlock dangled at its edge; the light picked out the bright steel links. Then the torch was set down again.

“Got that?” said Leonard. “No getting up without a ladder. The ladder's up here, and it'll stay here until we come to terms. Now—what about business?”

“What do you want?” said Jervis.

“Now you're talking! It's not so much a question of what I want—because I've already told you that you'd suit me best dead—it's a case of what sort of compromise I'm willing to make. You ought to be damned glad I'm willing to compromise at all.”

Jervis kept his mouth shut. If he could have laid his hand on a loose bit of rock, he would have chanced it and had a shot at the pale blur that was Leonard's face. But there weren't any loose bits of rock; the drag of the tide saw to that.

Leonard went on speaking.

“I prefer you dead—but you can buy yourself off if you like.”

“Look here, Leonard—”

“I don't
want
you to,” said Robert Leonard. “I keep telling you so. I want you dead. You'd be a lot safer dead.
You
'd be a lot safer, and I'd be a lot richer. It's money in my pocket if you like to be a damn fool and drown.”

There was a hard, bitter silence. Jervis held his tongue, and, like David, it was pain and grief to him. The things that he would have liked to say to Robert Leonard blared in him. His head felt red-hot. His hand gripped a rib of rock, and it was not until afterwards he knew that he had cut it deeply across the palm.

“Aren't you going to ask me why?” Leonard's voice was careless again. “No? Beast of a temper you've got—haven't you? Nasty, sulky brute of a temper! It'll get you into trouble if you don't look out—bad trouble. Well, if you're not going to ask me why it would be money in my pocket if you insist on drowning, I'll tell you all the same, because I'd sooner have all the cards on the table. Mine are all aces, so I don't mind showing them. If you're dead, Rosamund gets King's Weare and the cash—and what Rosamund gets I get. You see, she couldn't marry you the other day, because she was married already. We've been married eleven years.”

“Is that true?” said Jervis sharply.

“You've got a nasty unbelieving nature as well as the devil of a temper! I don't think you'll be missed if the tide gets you. True? Of course it's true! I married Rosamund the day she was twenty-one. So you see you've kept us out of King's Weare a good long time. You know, I shouldn't have been heart-broken if you'd been drowned when you came to grief on the rocks at Croyston ten years ago.”

“You were married to Rosamund then?”

“We'd been married a year. It would have been very convenient if you'd been drowned. I merely mention this to show you that I've waited quite long enough, and I'm getting a bit impatient.”

“What do you want?” said Jervis.

“Thirty thousand pounds,” said Robert Leonard.

“Talk sense!” said Jervis contemptuously. The sum staggered him.

“Sense?” said Leonard. “I'm giving you your life, aren't I? If I lock that gate behind me and leave you here, I get King's Weare and eighty thousand—don't I? I'm asking you a bare third—I might take the whole. I've only got to leave you here.”

“Then why don't you?” said Jervis.

He really wanted to know. If Leonard was married to Rosamund, it was quite obvious that Jervis Weare was worth a good deal more to him dead than alive. Leonard had put the matter in a nutshell. Only why didn't he crack the cut—why any hesitation about leaving Jervis to drown? He felt quite unable to credit Leonard with a qualm of conscience.

He waited for an answer to his “Why don't you?”

“Rosamund has an objection,” said Leonard regretfully.

Jervis threw up his head and laughed.

“Not really! May I ask why?”

“Sentiment,” said Leonard.

“
Rosamund!
”

“You wouldn't suspect her of it. But that's how it is with women—you never know where you are—and it's lucky for you. If you ask me, I should say thirty thousand is letting you off dirt cheap. You'd better close before I raise it.”

There was a pause. Then Jervis laughed again.

“In case you're forgetting it, this
is
the twentieth century. One doesn't just disappear, and no notice taken.”

“Who's going to disappear?” said Leonard. “You either pay up, and explain your absence any way you like, or else—”

“Yes?”

“Or else you're washed ashore somewhere along the coast—the current sets round Croyde Head, doesn't it?—and there has been another unfortunate bathing fatality. Rosamund will remember your having cramp once or twice this summer when you were bathing together.”

Jervis said things. They may or may not have got through Robert Leonard's skin; they certainly relieved Jervis. Leonard's voice did not sound as if he had been touched. He said,

“None of that's business! We're supposed to be talking business.”

“Do you think I carry thirty thousand pounds in my pockets?”

“No—and I don't expect to cash a cheque for thirty thousand across the counter either. You can stand ready for bouquets. We're prepared to take your word—and I call that a really handsome compliment. Rosamund says she's never known you go back on your word in your life, and she's prepared to go bail that you'll ante up and hold your tongue. So you see, that makes the whole thing perfectly simple. You give your word—I drive you over to the junction—you put up any story you like to account for your absence—and not later than tomorrow you buzz up to town and tell old Page you've decided to settle thirty thousand on Rosamund. It's as easy as falling off a log.”

Jervis leaned against the rock. He was thinking hard. It had been in his mind that when the tide rose he could hold on to the iron bars of the portcullis which divided the inner and outer caves. If the portcullis didn't reach to the roof, he might get over it when the water was high enough; and, once in the outer cave, he would have a pretty good chance of getting away when the tide went down. He could float for hours in this warm water with the bars to hold on to. He reckoned that the water would be up to his waist in half hour or so. He might have to hold on for five or six hours. Well, he ought to be able to do that.

“Thinking it over?” said Robert Leonard. “You've not got too much time. Better speed up the thinking machine!”

He picked up the torch again and sent the beam glittering down upon the pool. There wasn't a pool any longer; there was one smooth blackness of water—and the edge of it was level with the rock on which Jervis stood. The light shifted and showed that smooth blackness everywhere. It came back again and rested upon the edge of the rock a yard away from his feet. It showed the water and the rock in a silver ring; and as Jervis looked at the ring, the water lifted very gently and flowed over the rock. The beam swung upwards, and the torch was set down again.

The light had never touched the portcullis. Did those bars go up to the roof—or didn't they?

“Well, are you going to come to terms?” said Robert Leonard.

Jervis said. “No,” almost absently. His mind was on the portcullis and the question of whether it would be possible to get over it and into the outer cave. He could do it if there was a space. But was there a space? He became aware that Leonard was swearing at him.

“Do you
mean
that ‘No,' you fool?”

“Oh yes.”

If being absent and a bit dreamy was the way to annoy Leonard, then Jervis was prepared to go on being dreamy till all was blue. It was less of a fag than letting oneself go—easier—easier—too easy.…. He found himself on his hands and knees in an inch or two of water. He must have turned giddy. Leonard's voice echoed above him in the dark.

“All right—you've had your chance. If you won't take it, that lets me out. You've only to stay obstinate, and I scoop the lot. Drown, and be damned to you!”

The gate at the mouth of the passage banged with a violent metallic sound that filled the cave with clanging echoes.

Jervis sat in two inches of water, and waited for the noise to stop.

XXXVII

The water was up to his waist. He wasn't giddy now. He made his way to the portcullis. It would be quite easy to hold on to the bars. As a matter of fact, he would not need to be in the water for as long as he had reckoned. The tilted boulder which he had not been able to climb would be accessible now; only he must be careful not to lose himself—he must be able to get back to the portcullis again.

He floated himself off in the direction of where he thought the boulder must be, but did not succeed in getting on to it. When the water was up to his shoulder, he tried again, got a foothold, and was able to climb right out of the water on to a ledge with a back to it. He remembered that the boulder met the wall of the cave. He leaned against the rock, and began to wonder what happened to the air when the sea came into a cave like this. It seemed as if one of three things must happen.