The Firing Line by Robert W. Chambers

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"2d. I want to leave my English riding-crop, spurs, bridle, and
saddle to a Miss Virginia Suydam. Fix it legally.

"3d. Here is a list of eighteen ladies. Each is to have one of my
eighteen Chinese gods.

"4th. To my wife I leave the nineteenth god. Mr. Hamil has it in
his possession. I have no right to dispose of it, but he will
have some day.

"5th. To John Garret Hamil, 3d, I leave my volume of Jean DuMont,
the same being an essay on Friendship.

"6th. To my friend, William Van Bueren Portlaw, I leave my dogs,
rods, and guns with a recommendation that he use them and his
legs.

"7th. To my sister, Lady Tressilvain, I leave my book of comic
Bridge rules, and to her husband a volume of Methodist hymns.

"I'll be in town again, shortly, and expect you to have my will
ready to be signed and witnessed. One ought always to be
prepared, particularly when in excellent health.

"Yours sincerely,
"LOUIS MALCOURT."

"P.S. I enclose a check for the Greenlawn Cemetery people. I wish
you'd see that they keep the hedge properly trimmed around my
father's plot and renew the dead sod where needed. I noticed that
one of the trees was also dead. Have them put in another and keep
the flowers in good shape. I don't want anything dead around that
lot.

"L.M."

When he had sealed and directed his letter he looked around the silent
room. Shiela was sewing by the window. Portlaw, back to the fire, stood
staring out at the rain; Lady Tressilvain, a cigarette between her thin
lips, wandered through the work-shop and loading-room where, from hooks
in the ceiling, a thicket of split-cane rod-joints hung, each suspended
by a single strong thread.

The loading-room was lined with glass-faced cases containing
fowling-pieces, rifles, reels, and the inevitable cutlery and
ironmongery associated with utensils for the murder of wild creatures.
Tressilvain sat at the loading-table to which he was screwing a delicate
vise to hold hooks; for Malcourt had given him a lesson in fly-tying,
and he meant to dress a dozen to try on Painted Creek.

So he sorted snell and hook and explored the tin trunk for hackles,
silks, and feathers, up to his bony wrists in the fluffy heap of
brilliant plumage, burrowing, busy as a burying beetle under a dead
bird.

Malcourt dropped his letter into the post-box, glanced uncertainly in
the direction of his wife, but as she did not lift her head from her
sewing, turned with a shrug and crossed the floor to where Portlaw stood
scowling and sucking at his empty pipe.

"Look at that horrid little brother-in-law of mine with his ferret eyes
and fox face, fussing around those feathers--as though he had just
caught and eaten the bird that wore them!"

Portlaw continued to scowl.

"Suppose we take them on at cards," suggested Malcourt.

"No, thanks."

"Why not?"

"They've taken a thousand out of me already."

Malcourt said quietly: "You've never before given such a reason for
discontinuing card-playing. What's your real reason?"

Portlaw was silent.

"Did you quit a thousand to the bad, Billy?"

"Yes, I did."

"Then why not get it back?"

"I don't care to play," said Portlaw shortly.

The eyes of the two men met.

"Are you, by any chance, afraid of our fox-faced guest?" asked Malcourt
suavely.

"I don't care to give any reason, I tell you."

"That's serious; as there could be only one reason. Did you think you
noticed--anything?"

"I don't know what I think.... I've half a mind to stop payment on that
check--if that enlightens you any."

"There's an easier way," said Malcourt coolly. "You know how it is in
sparring? You forecast what your opponent is going to do and you stop
him before he does it."

"I'm not _certain_ that he--did it," muttered Portlaw. "I can't afford
to make a mistake by kicking out your brother-in-law."

"Oh, don't mind me--"

"I wouldn't if I were sure.... I wish I had that thousand back; it
drives me crazy to think of losing it--in that way--"

"Oh; then you feel reasonably sure--"

"No, confound it.... The backs of the aces were slightly rough--but I
can scarcely believe--"

"Have you a magnifying glass?"

The pack has disappeared.... I meant to try that."

"My dear fellow," said Malcourt calmly, "it wouldn't surprise me in the
slightest to learn that Tressilvain is a blackguard. It's easy enough to
get your thousand back. Shall we?"

"How?"

Malcourt sauntered over to a card table, seated himself, motioned
Portlaw to the chair opposite, and removed the cover from a new pack.

Then, to Portlaw's astonishment, he began to take aces and court cards
from any part of the pack at his pleasure; any card that Portlaw called
for was produced unerringly. Then Malcourt dealt him unbelievable
hands--all of a colour, all of a suit, all the cards below the tens, all
above; and Portlaw, fascinated, watched the dark, deft fingers nimbly
dealing, shuffling, until his senses spun round; and when Malcourt
finally tore up all the aces, and then, ripping the green baize cover
from the table, disclosed the four aces underneath, intact, Portlaw,
petrified, only stared at him out of distended eyes.

"Those are nice tricks, aren't they?" asked Malcourt, smiling.

"Y-yes. Lord! Louis, I never dreamed you could do such devilish things
as--"

"I can. If I were not always behind you in my score I'd scarcely dare
let you know what I might do if I chose.... How far ahead is that little
mink, yonder?"

"Tressilvain?"

"Yes."

"He has taken about a thousand--wait!" Portlaw consulted his note-book,
made a wry face, and gave Malcourt the exact total.

Malcourt turned carelessly in his chair.

"O Herbert!" he called across to his brother-in-law; "don't you and
Helen want to take us on?"

"Rather!" replied Tressilvain briskly; and came trotting across the
room, his close-set black eyes moving restlessly from Malcourt to
Portlaw.

"Come on, Helen," said Malcourt, drawing up a chair for her; and his
sister seated herself gracefully. A moment later the game began, Portlaw
passing it over to Malcourt, who made it no trumps, and laid out all the
materials for international trouble, including a hundred aces.

The games were brutally short, savage, decisive; Tressilvain lost
countenance after the fastest four rubbers he had ever played, and shot
an exasperated glance at his wife, who was staring thoughtfully at her
brother.

But that young man appeared to be in an innocently merry mood; he gaily
taunted Herby, as he chose to call him, with loss of nerve; he tormented
his sister because she didn't seem to know what Portlaw's discards
meant; and no wonder, because he discarded from an obscure system taught
him by Malcourt. Also, with a malice which Tressilvain ignored, he
forced formalities, holding everybody ruthlessly to iron-clad rule,
taking penalties, enforcing the most rigid etiquette. For he was one of
those rare players who knew the game so thoroughly that while he, and
the man he had taught, often ignored the classics of adversary play, the
slightest relaxing of etiquette, rule, precept, or precedent, in his
opponents, brought him out with a protest exacting the last item of toll
for indiscretion.

Portlaw was perhaps the sounder player, Malcourt certainly the more
brilliant; and now, for the first time since the advent of the
Tressilvains, the cards Portlaw held were good ones.

"What a nasty thing to do!" said Lady Tressilvain sharply, as her
brother's finesse went through, and with it another rubber.

"It was horrid, wasn't it, Helen? I don't know what's got into you and
Herby"; and to the latter's protest he added pleasantly: "You talk like
a bucket of ashes. Go on and deal!"

"A--what!" demanded Tressilvain angrily.

"It's an Americanism," observed his wife, surveying her cards with
masked displeasure and making it spades. "Louis, I never held such hands
in all my life," she said, displaying the meagre dummy.

"Do you good, Helen. Mustn't be too proud and haughty. No, no! Good for
you and Herby--"

"I wish you wouldn't call him Herby," snapped his sister.

"Not respectful?" inquired Malcourt, lifting his eyebrows. "Well, I'll
call him anything you like, Helen; I don't care. But make it something I
can say when ladies are present--"

Tressilvain's mink-like muzzle turned white with rage. He didn't like to
be flouted, he didn't like his cards, he didn't like to lose money. And
he had already lost a lot between luncheon and the impending dinner.

"Why the devil I continue to hold all these three-card suits I don't
know," he said savagely. "Isn't there another pack in the house?"

"There _was_" said Malcourt; and ironically condoled with him as Portlaw
accomplished a little slam in hearts.

Then Tressilvain dealt; and Malcourt's eyes never left his
brother-in-law's hands as they distributed the cards with nervous
rapidity.

"Misdeal," he said quietly.

"What?" demanded his sister in sharp protest.

"It's a misdeal," repeated Malcourt, smiling at her; and, as
Tressilvain, half the pack suspended, gazed blankly at him, Malcourt
turned and looked him squarely in the eye. The other reddened.

"Too bad," said Malcourt, with careless good-humour, "but one has to be
so careful in dealing the top card, Herby. You stumble over your own
fingers; they're too long; or perhaps it's that ring of yours."

A curious, almost ghastly glance passed involuntarily between the
Tressilvains; Portlaw, who was busy lighting a cigar, did not notice it,
but Malcourt laughed lightly and ran over the score, adding it up with a
nimble accuracy that seemed to stun his relatives.

"Why, look what's here!" he exclaimed, genially displaying a total that,
added, balanced all Portlaw's gains and losses to date. "Why, isn't that
curious, Helen! Right off the bat like that!--cricket-bat," he explained
affably to Tressilvain, who, as dinner was imminent, had begun fumbling
for his check-book.

At Malcourt's suave suggestion, however, instead of drawing a new check
he returned Portlaw's check. Malcourt took it, tore it carefully in two
equal parts.

"Half for you, William, half for me," he said gaily. "My--my! What
strange things do happen in cards--and in the British Isles!"

The dull flush deepened on Tressilvain's averted face, but Lady
Tressilvain, unusually pale, watched her brother persistently during the
general conversation that preceded dressing for dinner.

CHAPTER XXVI

SEALED INSTRUCTIONS

After the guests had gone away to dress Portlaw looked inquiringly at
Malcourt and said: "That misdeal may have been a slip. I begin to
believe I was mistaken after all. What do you think, Louis?"

Malcourt's eyes wandered toward his wife who still bent low over her
sewing. "I don't think," he said absently, and sauntered over to Shiela,
saying:

"It's rather dull for you, isn't it?"

She made no reply until Portlaw had gone upstairs; then looking around
at him:

"Is there any necessity for me to sit here while you play cards this
evening?"

"No, if it doesn't amuse you."

Amuse her! She rested her elbow on the window ledge, and, chin on hand,
stared out into the gray world of rain--the world that had been so
terribly altered for her for ever. In the room shadows were gathering;
the dull light faded. Outside it rained over land and water, over the
encircling forest which walled in this stretch of spectral world where
the monotony of her days was spent.

To the sadness of it she was slowly becoming inured; but the strangeness
of her life she could not yet comprehend--its meaningless days and
nights, its dragging hours--and the strange people around her immersed
in their sordid pleasures--this woman--her husband's sister,
thin-lipped, hard-featured, drinking, smoking, gambling, shrill in
disputes, merciless of speech, venomously curious concerning all that
she held locked in the privacy of her wretchedness.

"Shiela," he said, "why don't you pay your family a visit?"

She shook her head.

"You're afraid they might suspect that you are not particularly happy?"

"Yes.... It was wrong to have Gray and Cecile here. It was fortunate you
were away. But they saw the Tressilvains."

"What did they think of 'em?" inquired Malcourt.

"What do you suppose they would think?"

"Quite right. Well, don't worry. Hold out a little longer. This is a
ghastly sort of pantomime for you, but there's always a grand
transformation scene at the end. Who knows how soon the curtain will
rise on fairyland and the happy lovers and all that bright and sparkling
business? Children demand it--must have it.... And you are very young
yet."

He laughed, seeing her perplexed expression.

"You don't know what I mean, do you? Listen, Shiela; stay here to
dinner, if you can stand my relatives. We won't play cards. You'll
really find it amusing I think."

"Do you wish me to stay?"

"Yes, I do. I want you to see something."

A few moments afterward she took her umbrella and waterproof and went
away to dress, returning to a dinner-table remarkable for the silence of
the diners. Something, too, had gone wrong with the electric plant, and
after dinner candles were lighted in the living-room. Outside it rained
heavily.

Malcourt sat beside his wife, smoking, and, unaided, sustaining what
conversation there was; and after a while he rose, dragged a heavy,
solid wooden table to the middle of the room, placed five chairs around
it, and smilingly invited Shiela, the Tressilvains, and Portlaw to join
him.

"A seance in table-tipping?" asked his sister coldly. "Really, Louis, I
think we are rather past such things."

"I never saw a bally table tip," observed Tressilvain. "How do you do
it, Louis?"

"I don't; it tips. Come, Shiela, if you don't mind. Come on, Billy."

Tressilvain seated himself and glanced furtively about him.

"I dare say you're all in this game," he said, with a rattling laugh.

"It's no game. If the table tips it tips, and our combined weight can't
hold it down," said Malcourt. "If it won't tip it won't, and I'll bet
you a hundred dollars that you can't tip it, Herby."

Tressilvain, pressing his hands hard on the polished edge, tried to move
the table; then he stood up and tried. It was too heavy and solid, and
he could do nothing except by actually lifting it or by seizing it in
both hands and dragging it about.

One by one, reluctantly, the others took seats around the table and, as
instructed by Malcourt, rested the points of their fingers on the dully
polished surface.

"Does it really ever move?" asked Shiela of Malcourt.

"It sometimes does."

"What's the explanation?" demanded Portlaw, incredulously; "spirits?"

"I don't think anybody here would credit such an explanation," said
Malcourt. "The table moves or it doesn't. If it does you'll see it. I'll
leave the explanation to you, William."

"Have you ever seen it move?" asked Shiela, turning again to Malcourt.

"Yes; so has my sister. It's not a trick." Lady Tressilvain looked
bored, but answered Shiela's inquiry:

"I've seen it often. Louis and I and my father used to do it. I don't
know how it's done, and nobody else does. Personally I think it's rather
a stupid way to spend an evening--"

"But," interrupted Portlaw, "there'll be nothing stupid about it if the
table begins to tip up here under our very fingers. I'll bet you, Louis,
that it doesn't. Do you care to bet?"

"Shouldn't the lights be put out?" asked Tressilvain.

Malcourt said it was not necessary, and cautioned everybody to sit
absolutely clear of the table, and to rest only the tips of the fingers
very lightly on the surface.

"Can we speak?" grinned Portlaw.

"Oh, yes, if you like." A bright colour glowed in Malcourt's face; he
looked down dreamily at the top of the table where his hands touched. A
sudden quiet fell over the company.

Shiela, sitting with her white fingers lightly brushing the smooth
mahogany, bent her head, mind wandering; and her thoughts were very far
away when, under her sensitive touch, a curious quiver seemed to run
through the very grain of the wood.

"What's that!" exclaimed Portlaw.

Deep in the wood, wave after wave of motion seemed to spread until the
fibres emitted a faint splintering sound. Then, suddenly, the heavy
table rose slowly, the end on which Shiela's hands rested sinking; and
fell back with a solid shock.

"That's--rather--odd!" muttered Tressilvain. Portlaw's distended eyes
were fastened on the table, which was now heaving uneasily like a boat
at anchor, creaking, cracking, rocking under their finger-tips.
Tressilvain rose from his chair and tried to see, but as everybody was
clear of the table, and their fingers barely touched the top, he could
discover no visible reason for what was occurring so violently under his
very pointed nose.

"It's like a bally earthquake," he said in amazement. "God bless my
soul! the thing is walking off with us!"

Everybody had risen from necessity; chairs were pushed back, skirts
drawn aside as the heavy table, staggering, lurching, moved out across
the floor; and they all followed, striving to keep their finger-tips on
the top.

Portlaw was speechless; Shiela pale, tremulous, bewildered;
Tressilvain's beady eyes shone like the eyes of a surprised rat; but his
wife and Malcourt took it calmly.

"The game is," said Malcourt, "to ask whether there is a spirit present,
and then recite the alphabet. Shall I?... It isn't frightening you, is
it, Shiela?"

"No.... But I don't understand why it moves."

"Neither does anybody. But you see it, feel it. Nor can anybody explain
why an absurd question and reciting the alphabet sometimes results in a
coherent message. Shall I try it, Helen?"

His sister nodded indifferently.

There was a silence, then Malcourt, still standing, said quietly:

"Is there a message?"

From the deep, woody centre of the table three loud knocks
sounded--almost ripped out, and the table quivered in every fibre.

"Is there a message for anybody present?"

Three raps followed in a startling volley.

"Get the chairs," motioned Malcourt; and when all were seated clear of
the table but touching lightly the surface with their finger-tips:

"A B C D E F"--began Malcourt, slowly reciting the alphabet; and, as the
raps rang out, sig-nalling some letter, he began again in a monotonous
voice: "A B C D E F G"--pausing as soon as the raps arrested him at a
certain letter, only to begin again.

"Get a pad and pencil," whispered Lady Tressilvain to Shiela.

So Shiela left the table, found a pad and pencil, and seated herself
near a candle by the window; and as each letter was rapped out by the
table, she put it down in order.

The recitation seemed endless; Malcourt's voice grew hoarse with the
repetition; letter after letter was added to the apparently meaningless
sequence on Shiela's pad.

"Is there any sense in it so far?" asked Lady Tressilvain.

"I cannot find any," said Shiela, striving with her pencil point to
divide the string of letters into intelligible words.

And still Malcourt's monotonous voice droned on, and still the raps
sounded from the table. Portlaw hung over it as though hypnotized;
Tressilvain had fallen to moistening his lips with the tip of his
tongue, stealthy eyes always roaming about the candle-lit room as though
searching for something uncanny lurking in the shadows.

Shiela shivered, wide-eyed, as she sat watching the table which was now
snapping and cracking and heaving under her gaze. A slow fear of the
thing crept over her--of this senseless, lifeless mass of wood,
fashioned by human hands. The people around it, the room, the house were
becoming horrible to her; she loathed them and what they were doing.

A ripping crash brought her to her feet; everybody sprang up. Under
their hands the table was shuddering convulsively. Suddenly it split
open as though rent by a bolt, and fell like a live thing in agony, a
mass of twisted fibres protruding like viscera from its shattered core.

Stunned silence; and Malcourt turned to his sister and spoke in a low
voice, but she only shook her head, shivering, and stared at the wreck
of wood as though revolted.

"W-what happened?" faltered Portlaw, bewildered.

"I don't know," said Malcourt unsteadily.

"Don't know! Look at that table! Why, man, it's--it's _dying_!"

Tressilvain stood as though stupefied. Malcourt walked slowly over to
where Shiela stood.

She shrank involuntarily away from him as he bent to pick up the pad
which had fallen from her hands.

"There's nothing to be frightened about," he said, forcing a smile; and,
holding the pad under the light, scanned it attentively. His sister came
over to him, asking if the letters made any sense.

He shook his head.

They studied it together, Shiela's fascinated gaze riveted on them both.
And she saw Lady Tressilvain's big eyes widen as she laid her pencil on
a sequence; saw Malcourt's quick nod of surprised comprehension when she
checked off a word, then another, another, another; and suddenly her
face turned white to the lips, and she caught at her brother's arm,
terrified.

"Will you keep quiet?" he whispered fiercely, snatching the sheet from
the pad and crumpling it into his palm.

Sister and brother faced each other; in his eyes leaped a flame infernal
which seemed to hold her paralyzed for a moment; then, with a gesture,
she swept him aside, and covering her eyes with her hands, sank into a
chair.

"What a fool you are!" he said furiously, bending down beside her. "It's
in us both; you'll do it, too, when you are ready--if you have any
sporting blood in you!"

And, straightening up impatiently, his eyes fell on Shiela, and he
shrugged his shoulders and smiled resignedly.

"It's nothing. My sister's nerves are a bit upset.... After all, this
parlour magic is a stupid mistake, because there's always somebody who
takes it seriously. It's only humbug, anyway; you know that, don't you,
Shiela?"

He untwisted the paper in his hand and held it in the candle flame until
it burned to cinders.

"What was there on that paper?" asked Shiela, managing to control her
voice.

"Why, merely a suggestion that I travel," he said coolly. "I can't see
why my sister should make a fool of herself over the idea of my going on
a journey. I've meant to, for years--to rest myself. I've told you that
often, haven't I, Shiela?"

She nodded slowly, but her eyes reverted to the woman crouching in the
chair, face buried in her brilliantly jewelled hands. Portlaw and
Tressilvain were also staring at her.

"You'd better go to bed, Helen," said Malcourt coolly; and turned on his
heel, lighting a cigarette.

A little later the Tressilvains and Shiela started across the lawn to
their own apartments, and Malcourt went with them to hold an umbrella
over his wife.

In the lower hall they separated with scarcely a word, but Malcourt
detained his brother-in-law by a significant touch on the arm, and drew
him into the library.

"So you're leaving to-morrow?" he asked.

"What?" said Tressilvain.

"I say that I understand you and Helen are leaving us to-morrow."

"I had not thought of leaving," said Tressilvain.

"Think again," suggested Malcourt.

"What do you mean?"

Malcourt walked up very close and looked him in the face.

"Must I explain?" he asked contemptuously. "I will if you like--you
clumsy card-slipping, ace-pricking blackguard!... The station-wagon will
be ready at seven. See that you are, too. Now go and tell my sister. It
may reconcile her to various ideas of mine."

And he turned and, walking to a leather-covered chair drawn up beside
the library table, seated himself and opened a heavy book.

Tressilvain stood absolutely still, his close-set eyes fairly starting
from his face, in which not a vestige of colour now remained; and when
at length he left the room he left so noiselessly that Malcourt did not
hear him. However, Malcourt happened to be very intent upon his own
train of thought, so absorbed, in fact, that it was a long while before
he looked up and around, as though somebody had suddenly spoken his
name.

But it was only the voice which had sounded so often and familiarly in
his ears; and he smiled and inclined his graceful head to listen,
folding his hands under his chin.

He seemed very young and boyish, there, leaning both elbows on the
library table, head bent expectantly as he listened, or lifted when he,
in turn, spoke aloud. And sometimes he spoke gravely, argumentatively,
sometimes almost flippantly, and once or twice his laugh rang out
through the empty room.

In the forest a heavy wind had risen; somewhere outside a door or
shutter banged persistently. He did not hear it, but Shiela, sleepless
in her room above, laid down Hamil's book; then, thinking it might be
the outer door left carelessly unlocked, descended the stairs with
lighted candle. Passing the library and hearing voices she halted,
astonished to see her husband there alone; and as she stood, perplexed
and disturbed, he spoke as though answering a question. But there was no
one there who could have asked it; the room was empty save for that
solitary figure. Something in his voice terrified her--in the uncanny
monologue which meant nothing to her--in his curiously altered laugh--in
his intent listening attitude. It was not the first time she had seen
him this way.

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