第71章

He had searched every likely nook and corner of the rooms,and found nothing.The absence of the bottle set him thinking.He became certain that the hand of another was in this.Ada had never left her room;therefore the bottle had been brought to her.And the one who brought it had taken it away again.Clara had been the last one to see her alive,and of course.He stopped with an unshaped thought in his mind,and then smiled at it for an absurdity.Tired with his exertions,he sat on the sofa,digging his elbow into the cushion,and instantly felt something hard underneath.The next moment he was on his feet,holding in his hands the bottle of brandy,half empty.He stared stupidly at the bottle that had sent Ada to her death and set him free,wondering who had paid for it and brought it into the house.As he turned the bottle in his hands,examining it with the morbid interest with which one examines a bloodstained knife,he heard a light tap on the door.

"Come in,"he cried,absorbed in his discovery.

He turned with the bottle in his hands,to find Clara standing in the doorway with a tremulous smile on her lips.But,as Jonah turned,her eye fell on the bottle.

"I've been a day findin'this,"said Jonah;"but now."An extraordinary change in Clara's face stopped the words on his lips.

The tremulous smile on her parted lips changed to a nervous grin,and her colour turned to a greyish white as she stared at the bottle,her eyes dilated with horror.For some moments there was a dreadful silence,in which Jonah distinctly heard Miss Giltinan giving an order downstairs.

Slowly he looked from Clara to the bottle.Again he stared at the frightened woman,and his mind leapt to a dreadful certainty.

"Come in,an'shut the door,"he said.His voice was little more than a whisper.

Clara obeyed him mechanically.

"Sit down,"he added,putting the bottle on the table.

For a while each stared at the other,too stunned to move or speak.

Jonah's world had fallen about his ears,and Clara's dreams of wealth mocked at her and fled.

Suddenly,in the deadly silence,Jonah began to speak.

"So it was you,was it?I never thought of that.I wonder what brought yer 'ere just as I found this?They say murder will out,an'I believe it now.If this 'appened to anybody else,'e'd go mad.But I can stand it.I'm tough.I fought my way up from the gutter.An'ye're the woman that I worshipped.For God's sake,woman,speak!Make up something that I can believe.Say yer never 'ad a 'and in this,an'I'll kiss the ground yer walk on.No,it wouldn't be any use.I couldn't believe the angel Gabriel,if he looked at me with that face.Yer paid for that bottle an'brought it 'ere.I saw that the moment yer set eyes on it.

Yer thought Ada wasn't goin'ter hell fast enough,an'yer'd give 'er a shove.An'I see now why yer did it.Yer wanted ter step into 'er shoes,an''andle my money.It wasn't me yer wanted.I might 'ave known that.

It was the shop that yer were always talkin'about.An'if yer 'adn't walked in at that door just now,I should never 'ave suspected.Screamin'funny,ain't it?She wasn't much loss,but she was a thousand times better than the ladylike devil that killed her.I don't know 'ow the law stands in a case like this.Yer may be safe from that,but yer've got me ter deal with first.Yer led me on with yer damned airs to believe in things I've never dreamt of before.An'now yer've killed the best in me as sure as yer murdered my wife.Well,yer must pay for that,too."Clara sat on the chair like one in a trance.She understood in a numbed kind of way that something dreadful was going to happen.O God,she had never meant to do wrong!And if this was the punishment,let it come quickly.Jonah had been walking backwards and forwards with nervous steps,and she noted every detail of his person with a fixed stare.The early repugnance to his deformity returned with horror as she studied the large head,wedged between the shoulders as if a giant's hand had pressed it down,the projecting hump,and the unnaturally long arms ending in the hard,hairy fist of the shoemaker.

She felt that he was going to kill her.She wanted to speak,to cry out that she was not so guilty as he thought,but her tongue was like a rasp.

Suddenly Jonah stopped in front of her.Her stony silence had maddened him,and in a moment he was transformed into the old-time larrikin,accustomed to demand an eye for an eye,a tooth for a tooth.He rushed at her with a cry like an animal,and caught her by the throat with his powerful hands.But the contact of his fingers with that delicate flesh that he had never dared to touch before brought him to his senses.Aviolent shudder shook him like ague,his fingers relaxed,and with a sobbing cry,dreadful to hear,he dragged the fainting woman to her feet and pushed her towards the door,crying "Go,go,for God's sake!"She walked unsteadily through the shop with a face the colour of chalk,hearing and seeing nothing.The red-letter sale was in full swing.Acrowd of customers jostled one another as they passed in and out;the coins clinked merrily in the till.Miss Giltinan caught sight of her face,and wondered.Half an hour later,growing suspicious,she ran upstairs,and knocked at the door on a pretext of business.Hearing nothing,she opened the door,with her heart in her mouth,and looked in.

Jonah was crouching motionless on the end of the sofa,his head buried among the cushions,like a stricken animal.Puzzled,but reassured,she closed the door gently and went downstairs.

Jonah never saw Clara again.He spent a week in the depths,groping blindly,hating life for its deceptions.Then,one day,his passion of hatred and loathing for Clara left him suddenly,as a garrison surrenders without a blow.He took a cab to her house,and knocked at the door.Acurtain moved,but the door remained unopened.A month later he learned that she had married her old love,the clerk in the Lands Department,transferred by request to Wagga,beyond the reach of Dad and his reputation.The following year Jonah married Miss Giltinan,chiefly on account of Ray,who was growing unmanageable;and on Monday morning it was one of the sights of Regent Street to see the second Mrs Jones step into her sulky to drive round and inspect the suburban branches of the "Silver Shoe"which Jonah had opened under her direction.

Chook and Pinkey did not need to stare at sixpence before spending it,but their fortune was long in the making.Meanwhile Chook consoled himself with the presence of a sturdy son,the image of Pinkey,with a mop of curls the colour of a new penny.

The End