A GRIM WAGER.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXI, Issue XV, 8 October 1898, Page 476

A GRIM WAGER.

I. ‘Speshul! Spes-shul! ’Orrible murder in the Dalton Road!’ And then another voice, pitched in a higher key, took up the cry on the further side of the street, ‘Speshul! Speshul!’ and the rest was lost in incoherency as the sound of the voices, mingled and intertwined, gradually faded away in the distance. ‘What a loathsome noise that is,’ said Peel,, with a shudder. ‘There is something positively ghoulish about it.’

‘lt always gives me the creeps, especially at night. It suggests all sorts of horrible, morbid ideas,’ joined in Lelange, who was perched on the model throne, smoking innumerable cigarettes. Kovno, the owner of the studio, said nothing, but smiled in rather a superior way. He was a person of somewhat unusual taste. His pictures betrayed him in that.

We were rather a cosmopolitan lot gathered in the big studio that night. Lelange was a merry, light-hearted little Frenchman, clever to the tips of his restless fingers, but quite incapable of serious work. Peel and myself were English — painstaking, not wholly unsuccessful, but without half Lelange’s versatility. Ferguson was Scotch—serious and argumentative; and Kovno—the owner of the studio—was a Pole by birth, though much of his life had been lived in Paris and London.

He was two or three years older than the rest of us. As far as his art was concerned he was brilliant, original and startlingly unpleasant. For himself he had a fine head—the head of a dreamer. Usually a reticent man, he would at rare intervals flash out into a fiery, animated flood of talk, accompanied by wild gesticulation. Only one other person was in the studio — Dora Smith, our model, a pretty, nervous little person, at the present moment toasting her toes at the big stove and enjoying a cigarette during her well-earned rest. ‘Well, there’s only one good thing about a murder,’ said Ferguson, ‘it will out. And that, as a rule, ends in hanging.’ ‘Nonsense, my dear chap,’ said Kovno. ‘lt’s only the clumsy idiots who are found out. Anyone who isn’t a fool could kill as many people as he pleased and never be even suspected, if you grant him an average amount of luck.’ Ferguson shook his head doubtfully.

‘lt takes more than brains to make a successful murderer,’ said he. Ht would require an absolute lack of nerves or imagination, call it what you please. Ugh!’ he went on with a shudder, ‘if ever I got led into anything of the sort I should never know another peaceful moment as long as I lived.’

Lelange began drumming a sort of ‘danse Macabre" on the model throne with his heels, and struck a tragic attitude which made Dora laxigh.

‘1 wish you wouldn’t all be so horribly gloomy,,’ she said. ‘I believe this great big barn of a studio is haunted. Do, for goodness’ sake talk about something cheerful.’ ‘lt’s not gloomy at all. It’s most interesting,’ persisted Kovno. ‘I don’t mind owning that the possibilities of undiscovered crime have a great fascination for me.’

‘The possibilities of an undiscovered shilling in my trousers pocket would be more attractive to me personally,' said Peel, ruefully, surveying his worldly possessions. ‘Archie’—turning to me—‘we shall have to pad the hoof to-night. Can’t afford an omnibus.’

Frank Peel and I. it would lx* well to explain, share a large attic which we dignify by the name of studio, in the region of Wandsworth. ‘I am willing to bet.’ Kovno continued, without noticing the interruption. ‘I am willing to bet that I could commit a. murder without a possibility of detection.’ He was getting into one of his excitable mbotls, and gesticulating freely. ‘Rubbish.’ said 1, laughing. ‘Anyone can talk like that; but. in the first place, it’s altsurd, and in the second. I don’t suppose for a minute that you’d lie such an abject fool ns to try.’

Kovno himself laughed at that, for by nature he was one of the mildest creatures imaginable.

‘No, no. I don’t mean to say that I want to harm anyone in particular for the mere satisfaction of proving to a pareel of lunatics that I am talking common-sense; but still I maintain I could do so.’

‘Well, you prove it to me and I’ll take your bet,’ said I, jeering. ‘Will you?’ he asked.

‘Of course I will,’ I replied. ‘Frank, we’ll have a dinner on the strength of this.’

‘Done with you, then,’ said Kovno. ‘l’ll bet you five pounds to a shilling. I sold a couple of sketches to-day.’ ‘That’s all very well,’ put in Ferguson, slowly, ‘but short of actually murdering the man and then confessing to us—in which case we should inevitably trot you off to the nearest police station—how are you going to give us proof of your ability?’ Kovno thought for a moment.

‘Look here,’ he said, speaking quickly. ‘supposing I manage to spirit a man away and cause him to vanish for a week—ten days, if you like—without any inquiries that may be made enabling anyone to connect me with the matter, and supposing that I obtain a written confession from that man, acknowledging that it was in my power to kill him if it pleased me, will that satisfy you?’ ‘lt’s hardly a fair test,’ grumbled Ferguson. ‘Still, I suppose you can’t manage better —short of actually committing a crime.’ ‘You’ll have the deuce to pay when you let him go,’ suggested Lelange. ‘I shall make his release conditional on no further steps being taken,’ answered Kovno. ‘Come, are you satisfied ?’ After a little more discussion the terms were agreed to, and Ferguson was appointed to hold the stakes. The meeting broke up and Peel and I started out on our weary way to Wandsworth. H. For the next three days we saw nothing of Kovno or the others, as we were both hard at work at the art school. On Saturday, however, my weekly allowance having arrived, I made up my mind to go down to the country for a few days and make some studies. Peel couldn’t come, as Dora was sitting to him on Monday. So, while he started off to the art school as usual in the morning, 1 sauntered out to invest in a sketch-book. On my’ way back I met Kovno. I had clean forgotten all about the wager, and having- an hour or so to spare, I walked back with him to his studio. He was in conversational mood, and kept chattering on about some wonderful masterpiece he was starting on. When we got to the studio—a great big barrack of a place, which had once been used by a sculptor, and stood in a little isolated plot of ground back from the road — he produced some whisky and glasses, bade m.e help myself, rolled a cigarette, and started work. It was a very hot day, and I had been working late at black and white work the night before. 1 leaned back drowsily in a rickety old chair and watched him rapidly sketching in his picture on a large canvas. 1 lit my pipe and took a long pull at my whisky and water. After that 1 suppose I went to sleep. (I found out afterwards that the whisky had been doctored.) Any’how, the next thing I remember is waking up with a horrible shooting pain running through all my limbs. It was pitch dark. I tried to move and stretch myself. I couldn’t budge an inch in any’ direction. I was securely bound hand and foot. Tn an instant the truth flashed upon me. Kovno had heard of my intended jaunt to the country, had lain in wait for me and deliberately hired me to the studio. What he had done then beyond drugging me. or where I was. 1 had not the faintest idea. I was at the same time immensely’ relieved and distinctly annoyed—relieved to remember that it was only a joke, annoyed to think of the simple way in which I had been taken in.

Hours passed, and the pain of ropes cutting into me was intolerable. I began to get furiously angry. Kovno was carrying the thing too far. I shouted and yelled till I was hoarse, and stamped my bound feet against the wall, to which I had rolled in my struggles. The air was close and stifling, and there was a foetid, earthy smell about it.

I began to lose my nerve. I tried to count, to reckon the time—anything

to distract my attention; but to no purpose. At last, utterly worn out and exhausted, I lost consciousness again.

The next thing I remembered was a faint glimmer of light and Kovno bending over me. He was laughing silently, and his eyes glittered weirdly in the uncertain light. I cursed him furiously in no measured terms, but as he only continued to chuckle to himself in that hateful, silent manner, I got more and more alarmed. I implored him to undo the ropes, I promised to sign any paper he liked, and to confess that he had won his bet, but not a word would he answer. He merely bent down, and holding the light nearer to me, gloated over my helpless condition. 111. His face was all distorted by the dancing shadows, and his eyes gleamed in a perfectly detestable manner. Suddenly the awful, horrible truth dawned upon me. He had gone mad! His mind, always of a morbid turn, had been unable to withstand the fascination of putting his theories into practice. The lust of secret crime had got hold of him, and the man was to all intents and purposes a raving lunatic. As soon as I recognised this my last vestige of self-control left me. I babbled at him incoherently, I begged, I prayed, I implored, I flattered his cunning, I cursed him, I laughed at him, but all in vain. After standing looking at me in silence for a short time, and evincing a keen delight in my mental agony, he turned and left me without a word. Hunger and thirst soon added to my tortures. Then the earthy smell of the place, and the absolute blackness and silence must have made me delirious. I remember nothing more distinctly—save one thing, too horrible almost to mention. In one of my more lucid intervals I became aware of Kovno sitting at a little sketching easel, a light beside him, calmly and rapidly making sketches of my distorted features, muttering and laughing to himself the while.

It was only after weeks of delirium that I came to myself and found Dora sitting beside me in my own attic at Wandsworth, and it was from her that I learnt the manner of my escape. My absence, it appears, was not noticed for the first three days, and I was supposed to be in the country.

Then Peel got alarmed, and he and the others held a consultation. Two more days passed, and at last Dora’s suspicions were aroused by a strangeness in Kovno’s manner—something furtive, but at the same time triumphant. A chance oversetting of a portfolio confirmed their suspicions, as among the sketches were those of me as I lay hound in the darkness. A search was organised, and at last I was found behind a whole pile of lumber and studio refuse in an old cellar under the building in which the sculptor, the original tenant, used to keep his store of modelling clay. Poor Kovno became dangerously violent on his return, for he had been absent when the search was made. He was taken to an infirmary and thenee to an asylum. The doctors say that it is only temporary insanity, but then they have never seen his eyes gleaming through the darkness as I saw them in that loathsome hole, and as T sometimes fancy I see them still. —Cecil Hayter, in ‘Answers.’