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‘Very good of you,’ answered Borrow, with some surprise. ‘A big subscription, eh?’
Hamer smiled dryly.
‘I should say so. Just every penny I’ve got.’ ‘What?’
Hamer rapped out details in a brisk businesslike manner. Borrow’s head was whirling.
‘You – you mean to say that you’re making over your entire fortune to be devoted to the relief of the poor in the East-end with myself appointed as trustee?’
‘That’s it.’
‘But why – why?’
‘I can’t explain,’ said Hamer slowly. ‘Remember our talk about vision last February? Well, a vision has got hold of me.’
‘It’s splendid!’ Borrow leaned forward, his eyes gleaming. ‘There’s nothing particularly splendid about it,’ said Hamer grimly. ‘I don’t care a button about poverty in the East-end. All they want is grit! I was poor enough – and I got out of it. But I’ve got to get rid of the money, and these tom-fool societies shan’t get hold of it. You’re a man I can trust. Feed bodies or souls with it – preferably the former. I’ve been hungry, but you can do as you like.’
‘There’s never been such a thing known,’ stammered Borrow. ‘The whole thing’s done and finished with,’ continued Hamer. ‘The lawyers have fixed it up at last, and I’ve signed everything. I can tell you I’ve been busy this last fortnight. It’s almost as difficult getting rid of a fortune as making one.’
‘But you – you’ve kept something?’
‘Not a penny,’ said Hamer cheerfully. ‘At least – that’s not quite true. I’ve just two pence in my pocket.’ He laughed.
He said goodbye to his bewildered friend, and walked out of the mission into the narrow evil-smelling streets. The words he had said so gaily just now came back to him with an aching sense of loss. ‘Not a penny!’ Of all his vast wealth he had kept nothing. He was afraid now – afraid of poverty and hunger and cold. Sacrifice had no sweetness for him.
Yet behind it all he was conscious that the weight and menace of things had lifted, he was no longer oppressed and bound down. The severing of the chain had seared and torn him, but the vision of freedom was there to strengthen him. His material needs might dim the Call, but they could not deaden it, for he knew it to be a thing of immortality that could not die.
There was a touch of autumn in the air, and the wind blew chill. He felt the cold and shivered, and then, too, he was hungry – he had forgotten to have any lunch. It brought the future very near to him. It was incredible that he should have given it all up; the ease, the comfort, the warmth! His body cried out impotently . . . And then once again there came to him a glad and uplifting sense of freedom.
Hamer hesitated. He was near the Tube station. He had twopence in his pocket. The idea came to him to journey by it to the Park where he had watched the recumbent idlers a fortnight ago. Beyond this whim he did not plan for the future. He believed honestly enough now that he was mad – sane people did not act as he had done. Yet, if so, madness was a wonderful and amazing thing.
Yes, he would go now to the open country of the Park, and there was a special significance to him in reaching it by Tube. For the Tube represented to him all the horrors of buried, shut-in life . . . He would ascend from its imprisonment free to the wide green and the trees that concealed the menace of the pressing houses.
The lift bore him swiftly and relentlessly downward. The air was heavy and lifeless. He stood at the extreme end of the platform, away from the mass of people. On his left was the opening of the tunnel from which the train, snakelike, would presently emerge. He felt the whole place to be subtly evil. There was no one near him but a hunched-up lad sitting on a seat, sunk, it seemed, in a drunken stupor.
In the distance came the faint menacing roar of the train. The lad rose from his seat and shuffled unsteadily to Hamer’s side, where he stood on the edge of the platform peering into the tunnel.
Then – it happened so quickly as to be almost incredible – he lost his balance and fell . . .
A hundred thoughts rushed simultaneously to Hamer’s brain. He saw a huddled heap run over by a motor bus, and heard a hoarse voice saying: ‘Dahn’t yer blime yerself, guv’nor. Yer couldn’t ’a done nothin’.’ And with that came the knowledge that this life could only be saved, if it were saved, by himself. There was no one else near, and the train was close . . . It all passed through his mind with lightning rapidity. He experienced a curious calm lucidity of thought.
He had one short second in which to decide, and he knew in that moment that his fear of Death was unabated. He was horribly afraid. And then the train, rushing round the curve of the tunnel, powerless to pull up in time.
Swiftly Hamer caught up the lad in his arms. No natural gallant impulse swayed him, his shivering flesh was but obeying the command of the alien spirit that called for sacrifice. With a last effort he flung the lad forward on to the platform, falling himself . . .
Then suddenly his Fear died. The material world held him down no longer. He was free of his shackles. He fancied for a moment that he heard the joyous piping of Pan. Then – nearer and louder – swallowing up all else – came the glad rushing of innumerable Wings . . . enveloping and encircling him . . .
Chapter 47
In a Glass Darkly
‘In a Glass Darkly’ was first published in the USA in Collier’s, July 1934, and then in Woman’s Journal, December 1934. However, its very first public airing was on 6 April 1934 when Agatha Christie read the story on BBC Radio’s National Programme. No recording of this 15-minute performance is known to exist.
‘I’ve no explanation of this story. I’ve no theories about the why and wherefore of it. It’s just a thing – that happened.
All the same, I sometimes wonder how things would have gone if I’d noticed at the time just that one essential detail that I never appreciated until so many years afterwards. If I had noticed it – well, I suppose the course of three lives would have been entirely altered. Somehow – that’s a very frightening thought.
For the beginning of it all, I’ve got to go back to the summer of 1914 – just before the war – when I went down to Badgeworthy with Neil Carslake. Neil was, I suppose, about my best friend. I’d known his brother Alan too, but not so well. Sylvia, their sister, I’d never met. She was two years younger than Alan and three years younger than Neil. Twice, while we were at school together, I’d been going to spend part of the holidays with Neil at Badgeworthy and twice something had intervened. So it came about that I was twenty-three when I first saw Neil and Alan’s home.
We were to be quite a big party there. Neil’s sister Sylvia had just got engaged to a fellow called Charles Crawley. He was, so Neil said, a good deal older than she was, but a thoroughly decent chap and quite reasonably well-off.
We arrived, I remember, about seven o’clock in the evening. Everyone had gone to his room to dress for dinner. Neil took me to mine. Badgeworthy was an attractive, rambling old house. It had been added to freely in the last three centuries and was full of little steps up and down, and unexpected staircases. It was the sort of house in which it’s not easy to find your way about. I remember Neil promised to come and fetch me on his way down to dinner. I was feeling a little shy at the prospect of meeting his people for the first time. I remember saying with a laugh that it was the kind of house one expected to meet ghosts in the passages, and he said carelessly that he believed the place was said to be haunted but that none of them had ever seen anything, and he didn’t even know what form the ghost was supposed to take.
Then he hurried away and I set to work to dive into my suitcases for my evening clothes. The Carslakes weren’t well-off; they clung on to their old home, but there were no menservants to unpack for you or valet you.
Well, I’d just got to the stage of tying my tie. I was standing in front of the glass. I could see my own face and shoulders and behind them the wall of the room – a plain stretch of wall just broken in the middle by a door – and just as I fina
lly settled my tie I noticed that the door was opening.
I don’t know why I didn’t turn around – I think that would have been the natural thing to do; anyway, I didn’t. I just watched the door swing slowly open – and as it swung I saw into the room beyond.
It was a bedroom – a larger room than mine – with two bedsteads in it, and suddenly I caught my breath.
For at the foot of one of those beds was a girl and round her neck were a pair of man’s hands and the man was slowly forcing her backwards and squeezing her throat as he did so, so that the girl was being slowly suffocated.
There wasn’t the least possibility of a mistake. What I saw was perfectly clear. What was being done was murder.
I could see the girl’s face clearly, her vivid golden hair, the agonized terror of her beautiful face, slowly suffusing with blood. Of the man I could see his back, his hands, and a scar that ran down the left side of his face towards his neck.
It’s taken some time to tell, but in reality only a moment or two passed while I stared dumbfounded. Then I wheeled round to the rescue . . .
And on the wall behind me, the wall reflected in the glass, there was only a Victorian mahogany wardrobe. No door open – no scene of violence. I swung back to the mirror. The mirror reflected only the wardrobe . . .
I passed my hands across my eyes. Then I sprang across the room and tried to pull forward the wardrobe and at that moment Neil entered by the other door from the passage and asked me what the hell I was trying to do.
