FullReads

“All the while one phrase of the old man’s buzzed in my brain like the fly about the melon. ‘I’LL SHOW HIM WHAT MONEY CAN DO!’ Good heaven! If I could but show the old man! If I could make him see his power of giving happiness as a new outlet for his monstrous egotism! I tried to tell him something about my situation and Kate’s–spoke of my ill-health, my unsuccessful drudgery, my longing to write, to make myself a name–I stammered out an entreaty for a loan. ‘I can guarantee to repay you, sir– I’ve a half-written play as security. . .’

“I shall never forget his glassy stare. His face had grown as smooth as an egg-shell again–his eyes peered over his fat cheeks like sentinels over a slippery rampart.

“‘A half-written play–a play of YOURS as security?’ He looked at me almost fearfully, as if detecting the first symptoms of insanity. ‘Do you understand anything of business?’ he enquired mildly. I laughed and answered: ‘No, not much.’

“He leaned back with closed lids. ‘All this excitement has been too much for me,’ he said. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll prepare for my nap.’ And I stumbled out of the room, blindly, like the Italian.”

Granice moved away from the mantel-piece, and walked across to the tray set out with decanters and soda-water. He poured himself a tall glass of soda-water, emptied it, and glanced at Ascham’s dead cigar.

“Better light another,” he suggested.

The lawyer shook his head, and Granice went on with his tale. He told of his mounting obsession–how the murderous impulse had waked in him on the instant of his cousin’s refusal, and he had muttered to himself: “By God, if you won’t, I’ll make you.” He spoke more tranquilly as the narrative proceeded, as though his rage had died down once the resolve to act on it was taken. He applied his whole mind to the question of how the old man was to be “disposed of.” Suddenly he remembered the outcry: “Those Italians will murder you for a quarter!” But no definite project presented itself: he simply waited for an inspiration.

Granice and his sister moved to town a day or two after the incident of the melon. But the cousins, who had returned, kept them informed of the old man’s condition. One day, about three weeks later, Granice, on getting home, found Kate excited over a report from Wrenfield. The Italian had been there again–had somehow slipped into the house, made his way up to the library, and “used threatening language.” The house-keeper found cousin Joseph gasping, the whites of his eyes showing “something awful.” The doctor was sent for, and the attack warded off; and the police had ordered the Italian from the neighbourhood.

But cousin Joseph, thereafter, languished, had “nerves,” and lost his taste for toast and butter-milk. The doctor called in a colleague, and the consultation amused and excited the old man– he became once more an important figure. The medical men reassured the family–too completely!–and to the patient they recommended a more varied diet: advised him to take whatever “tempted him.” And so one day, tremulously, prayerfully, he decided on a tiny bit of melon. It was brought up with ceremony, and consumed in the presence of the house-keeper and a hovering cousin; and twenty minutes later he was dead. . .

“But you remember the circumstances,” Granice went on; “how suspicion turned at once on the Italian? In spite of the hint the police had given him he had been seen hanging about the house since ‘the scene.’ It was said that he had tender relations with the kitchen-maid, and the rest seemed easy to explain. But when they looked round to ask him for the explanation he was gone– gone clean out of sight. He had been ‘warned’ to leave Wrenfield, and he had taken the warning so to heart that no one ever laid eyes on him again.”