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Sharples made his hand a fist around the coin, like a man doing a magic trick for a child.
"Butter wouldn't melt in your mouth, would it, sir?" He slipped the coin into his pocket. "Was he still lying there, gasping, sir, when you pinched it? Or did you wait till he'd breathed his last?"
"Go to hell."
"This won't cover it, sir. No, sir, not by a long shot, sir. Not what you owe me and the gentlemen at Flint's, sir."
Henry turned on his heel; he made a small adjustment of his top hat against the driving wind; he began to walk fast towards the corner. He could hear the scrape of Sharples's heels on the pavement behind him. And no one ahead in the misty dark; no one behind, that little seam of light from the door of Flint's no longer visible.
He could hear Sharples drawing close to him. Into the pocket of his coat he reached. His knife. Slowly he drew it out, opened the blade, and gripped the handle tight.
Suddenly he felt the pressure of Sharples against his back.
"Seems to me you need a little lesson in paying your debts, sir," the bastard said to him.
Sharples's hand came down on his shoulder; but Henry turned swiftly, forcing his knee against Sharples and knocking him off balance a step. For the brilliant silk of his vest Henry aimed, where the knife might go in between the ribs, with no impediment. And to his astonishment he felt it sink into the man's chest, and saw the white of Sharples's teeth as he opened his mouth in a dry scream.
"Bloody fool! I told you to leave me alone!" He drew out the knife and stabbed the man again. He heard the silk rip this time, and he stepped back, trembling violently all over.
The man took a few faltering steps. Then he fell down on his knees. Gently he pitched forward, shoulders hunched, and then softly heaved to one side, his body going limp and loose on the pavement.
Henry couldn't see his face in the dark. He saw only the lifeless form sprawled there. The bitter cold of the night paralyzed him. His heart thudded in his ears as it had in the chamber in Egypt when he had gazed down at Lawrence lying dead on the floor.
Well, damn him! He shouldn't have tried that with me! The rage choked him. He could not move his right hand, so cold it was, in spite of the glove, the knife clutched in it. Carefully, he lifted his left hand, and closed the knife and put it away.
He glanced from right to left. Darkness, silence. Only the faraway rumble of a motor car on a distant street. Water dripping somewhere, as if from a broken gutter. And the sky above lightening ever so faintly--the color of slate.
He knelt down in the thinning darkness. He reached out for that gleaming silk again, and careful not to touch the great dark wet spot spreading there, he reached under the lapel of the coat. The man's wallet. Fat, full of money!
He did not even examine the contents. Instead he slipped it in the same pocket with the knife. And then he turned on his heel, lifted his chin and walked off with crisp loud steps. He even began to whistle.
Later, when he was comfortably settled in the back of a cab, he drew the wallet out. Three hundred pounds. Well, that was not bad. But as he stared down at the wad of dirty bills, a panic seized him. It seemed he couldn't speak or move, and when he looked out the little window of the hansom, he saw only the soiled grey sky over the roofs of the dreary tenements, and there seemed nothing he wanted, or could want, or could ever have that would alleviate the hopelessness he felt.
Three hundred pounds. But he had not killed the man for that. Why, who could say he had killed anyone! His uncle Lawrence had died of a stroke in Cairo. And as for Sharples, a despicable moneylender he had made the acquaintance of in Flint's one evening, well, one of Sharples's confederates had killed him. Sneaked up on him in a dark street and sunk a knife in his ribs.
Of course that's what had happened. Who would connect him to these sordid affairs?
He was Henry Stratford, vice chairman of Stratford Shipping, a member of
a distinguished family soon to be connected by marriage to the Earl of Rutherford. No one would dare....
And he would call now on his cousin. Explain that he was a little down on his luck. And she would surely come up with a comfortable sum, three times perhaps what he held in his hand, because she would understand it was only temporary, these losses. And it would be a great relief to make them right.
His cousin, his only sister. Once they had loved each other, Julie and he. Loved each other as only a sister and a brother can. He would remind her. She wouldn't give him any trouble, and then he could rest for a little while.
That was the worst part of it of late. He couldn't rest.
ULIE PADDED softly down the stairs in her slippers, the full folds of her lace peignoir gathered in one hand so that she did not trip, her brown hair in loose waves over her shoulders and down her back.
She saw the sun before she saw anything else, as she entered the library--the great blessed flood of yellow light filling the glass conservatory beyond the open doors, a dazzle amid the ferns, and in the dancing water of the fountain and in the great mesh of green leaves curling beneath the glass ceiling.
Long slanting rays fell on the mask of Ramses the Damned in its shadowy corner, on the dark colours of the Oriental carpet, and on the mummy himself as he stood upright in his open case, the tightly wrapped face and limbs becoming golden in the haze, golden as desert sand at midday.
The room lightened before Julie's eyes. The sun exploded suddenly on the gold Cleopatra coins on their bed of velvet. It shimmered on the smooth marble bust of Cleopatra with its demure, half-lidded gaze. It caught the translucent alabaster of the long row of jars. It gleamed on tiny bits and pieces of old gold throughout the room, and on the gilded titles of the many leather-bound books. It struck the deep-graven name "Lawrence Stratford" written on his velvet-covered diary that lay on the desk.
Julie stood still, feeling the warmth surround her. The dark musty smell was fading. And the mummy, it seemed to move in the brightening light, as if responding to the heat. To sigh almost like a flower opening. What a tantalizing illusion. Of course it had not moved at all; yet it did seem fuller, somehow, its powerful shoulders and arms more rounded, its fingers poised as if alive.
"Ramses ..." she whispered.
