His instincts would have been satisfied.
He knew that it was a monstrous crime, he knew that he risked his neck, but it was the monstrousness of it that tempted him and the risk that made it worth the attempt.
Here Charley put the article down.
He thought that Simon was really going too far.
He could just fancy himself committing murder in a moment of ungovernable rage, but by no effort of imagination could he conceive of anyone doing such a thing—doing it not even for money, but for sport as Simon put it—because he was driven to it by an urge to destroy and so assert his own being.
Did Simon really believe there was anything in his theory, or was it merely that he thought it would make an effective article?
Charley, though with a slight frown on his handsome face, went on reading.
Perhaps, Simon continued, Robert Berger would have been satisfied merely to toy with the idea if circumstances had not offered him the predestined victim.
He may often, when drinking with one of his boon companions, have considered the feasibility of killing him and put the notion aside because the difficulties were too great or detection too certain.
But when chance threw him in contact with Teddie Jordan he must have felt that here was the very man he had been looking for.
He was a foreigner, with a large acquaintaince, but no close friends, who lived alone in a blind alley.
He was a crook; he was connected with the dope traffic; if he were found dead one day the police might well suppose that his murder was the result of a gangsters’ quarrel.
If they knew nothing of his sexual habits, they would be sure to find out about them after his death and likely enough to assume that he had been killed by some rough who wanted more money than he was prepared to give.
Among the vast number of bullies, blackmailers, dope-peddlers and bad hats who might have done him in, the police would not know where to look, and in any case he was an undesirable alien and they would think he was just as well out of the way.
They would make enquiries and if results were not soon obtained quietly shelve the case.
Berger saw that Jordan had taken a fancy to him and he played him like an angler playing a trout.
He made dates which he broke.
He made half-promises which he did not keep.
If Jordan, thinking he was being made a fool of, threatened to break away, he exercised his charm to induce him to have patience.
Jordan thought it was he who pursued and the other who fled.
Berger laughed in his sleeve.
He tracked him as a hunter day after day tracks a shy and suspicious beast in the jungle, waiting for his opportunity, with the knowledge that, for all its instinctive caution, the brute will at last be delivered into his hands.
And because Berger had no feeling of animosity for Jordan, neither liking him nor disliking him, he was able to devote himself without hindrance to the pleasure of the chase.
When at length the deed was done and the little bookmaker lay dead at his feet, he felt neither fear nor remorse, but only a thrill so intense that he was transported.
Charley finished the essay.
He shuddered.
He did not know whether it was Robert Berger’s brutal treachery and callousness that more horrified him or the cool relish with which Simon described the workings of the murderer’s depraved and tortuous mind.
It was true that this description was the work of his own invention, but what fearful instinct was it in him that found delight in peering into such vile depths?
Simon leaned over to look into Berger’s soul, as one might lean over the edge of a fearful precipice, and you had the impression that what he saw filled him with envy.
Charley did not know how he had got the impression (because there was nothing in those careful periods or in that half-flippant irony actually to suggest it) that while he wrote he asked himself whether there was in him, Simon Fenimore, the courage and the daring to do a deed so shocking, cruel and futile.
Charley sighed.
“I’ve known Simon for nearly fifteen years.
I thought I knew him inside out.
I’m beginning to think I don’t know the first thing about him.”
But he smiled happily.
There were his father and his mother and Patsy.
They would be leaving the Terry-Masons next day, tired after those strenuous days of fun and laughter, but glad to get back to their bright, artistic and comfortable house.
“Thank God, they’re decent, ordinary people.
You know where you are with them.”
He suddenly felt a wave of affection for them sweep over him.
But it was growing late; Lydia would be getting back and he did not want to keep her waiting, she would be lonely, poor thing, by herself in that sordid room; he stuffed the essay into his pocket with the other cuttings and walked back to the hotel.
He need not have fashed himself.
Lydia was not there.
He took Mansfield Park, which with Blake’s Poems was the only book he had brought with him, and began to read.
It was a delight to move in the company of those well-mannered persons who after the lapse of more than a hundred years seemed as much alive as anyone you met to-day.
There was a gracious ease in the ordered course of their lives, and the perturbations from which they suffered were not so serious as to distress you.
It was true that Cinderella was an awful little prig and Prince Charming a monstrous pedant; it was true that you could not but wish that instead of setting her prim heart on such an owl she had accepted the proposals of the engaging and witty villain; but you accepted with indulgence Jane Austen’s determination to reward good sense and punish levity.
Nothing could lessen the delight of her gentle irony and caustic humour.
It took Charley’s mind off that story of depravity and crime in which he seemed to have got so strangely involved.
He was removed from the dingy, cheerless room and in fancy saw himself sitting on a lawn, under a great cedar, on a pleasant summer evening; and from the fields beyond the garden came the scent of hay.