raged in the breast of this man whose intellectual achievements had amazed the scientific world. A demon of merciless cruelty, urging him, driving him to outrageous acts of subtle torture.
And yet—what was this wild thrill that raged through him as he stared at Eleanor Appleby? It was as if he had suddenly awakened to something new and wonderful.
Her eyes were cast down, and she was trembling violently, and her childish face was pitiful. Yet, perhaps because of her extreme pallor, she looked as fresh and sweet as a dew-drenched rose at dawn. Alec Portal continued to stare at her. That brute’s wife, he told himself! And with the soft lamplight pouring on her flawless face and brown-gold hair she looked a very dainty and pretty little wife.
So pretty, indeed, as her lashes trembled against her smooth, pale cheeks that a voice whispered madly within him of things he had never dreamed.
All at once a little gasp broke from her. She looked up at the man who held her wrists so cruelly; her eyes lit with anguish.
‘Oh, please—please stop!’ she whispered.
Doctor Alec Portal heard it. He started forward, his handsome face working convulsively. But at the same moment Professor Appleby released his wife, and turned. There was sardonic amusement, and something else unfathomable, lurking in the gleaming eyes that mockingly challenged the doctor’s.
‘I must thank you for your solicitude,’ he drawled, ‘but I find my wife quite well. In any case, I think I should prefer myself to choose her medical attendant if she were ill—one, say, who is not quite so impetuous, and who understands better the etiquette of his profession.’
Aflame with anger, Doctor Portal was on the point of making some hasty retort, but checked himself in time. There was something besides his own personal feelings to be considered. This girl—for she was little more—was being driven to breaking point.
His eyes, narrowed to shining slits, blazed at the cold, sneering face.
‘I warn you, sir, that you may have a very serious matter to answer for,’ he said between clenched teeth. ‘Mrs Appleby needs rest and change. She is near to nervous prostration, and must take a holiday. It is the worst case of nerves I have ever encountered.’
Professor Appleby drew himself up. His smooth, white face lost its sneering smile and became terrible.
For a moment he glared at the young doctor, and his eyes held the burden of his storming and reviling soul.
‘Nerves, eh?’ he grated, like a bug spitting venom, ‘Doctor, from my own observations, I should say it was a case of the heart.’
He walked to the door and flung it open. For all that he was holding it under control, his rage was staggering.
‘Get out,’ he said thickly. ‘D’you hear? Get out! Or, by the Lord Harry, there’ll be a case of horsewhipping for the villagers to gossip again. And please have the decency to leave my wife alone in future. And don’t come near my house again—understand.’
Alec Portal stared at him hard.
Not since his schoolboy days had he felt such an overwhelming, primitive impulse to punish another human being. He would dearly have liked to have wiped the disdain from that gross face with a thudding left. But in the end he shrugged and gathered up his ulster and cap. He was in an impossible position, and the only thing he could do was to leave with dignity.
Bestowing a formal little bow upon Eleanor, who sat with eyes cast down, shamed, he strode past the malevolent figure of Professor Appleby at the door and went from the house.
But as he opened the front door, he heard the sound of a stifled sob, and he looked back, startled, questioning. She was in there with that brute, crying. Should he go back? Should he kill the husband?
His heart was filled with a cold, murderous rage. He took a grip of himself, and was astonished. What was the matter with him? Was he himself tonight?
He closed the door, and strode away into the gathering dusk, pulling his coat collar up and his broad-visored cap down. He was almost afraid of himself, afraid of his own thoughts and desires. Something primitive and lawless had woke to life in Doctor Alec Portal, who had always thought himself so cold.
He walked quickly, trying to shake off his thoughts. One thing was obvious. He must never go near the house that contained Professor Appleby’s wife again. Passion and love had been awakened in his deep strong nature at last. And it was love for another man’s wife!
Even now he fought against a wild impulse to turn back. All his chivalry urged him to protect her from that brute. But with a resolute gritting of his teeth he strode on.
His eyes were bleak as they penetrated the gathering dusk.
‘Heavens,’ he muttered; ‘it’s a funny old world!’
Doctor Alec Portal had scarce closed the front door behind him when Professor Appleby returned to the drawing-room. Outwardly he was calm and collected. His gleaming monocle was screwed in his right eye, and he tried to restrain the twitching of his lips.
Eleanor, his wife, was still sitting on the settee, racked by a tempest of half-stifled sobs.
He watched her from the doorway with a sneering smile.
Her beauty no longer moved him. Indeed, beauty in all living things impelled in him an awful, mad lust to destroy. That was the kink in this brilliant scientist’s brain. He had been known to sit for hours plucking the petals from one choice bloom after another. As a boy, one of his absorbing hobbies had been the collection of butterflies and birds’ eggs, and he had plundered nests ruthlessly and taken a peculiar delight in the destruction of Nature’s most beautiful creatures.
Thus it was with his wooing of Eleanor.
From the first, her beauty and peculiar charm had exercised a fatal fascination for him. He desired her as he had wanted the butterfly when a boy—to pin down and destroy. He had never been the lover. And on the very day of their marriage had come frightful disillusion for Eleanor Appleby.
She had married not a man, but a fiend who was capable of exercising the most cunning and subtle forms of cruelty.
Whether it was from knowledge of the law’s remorselessness, or his own desire to play with his victim, Professor Appleby had adopted a gradual process of destruction. His constant spying on her, his taunts, his subtle and hideous little cruelties, all were tearing at Eleanor Appleby’s nerves. Visibly she had lost her fragrant charm, and was listless, apathetic, like a drooping flower. But even she had not known how near she was to nervous exhaustion until recently, and then in a panic she had sent for Doctor Alec Portal.
Professor Appleby threw back his head in a mirthless, almost silent laugh.
He felt queerly elated—pleased. Something seemed to snap in his brain, and the result of it was that he felt as a man does who has tossed off a bumper of champagne to which he is unaccustomed. When he let himself go there were compensations to this queer kink in his brain. He knew he was not normal, but it was a very pleasant state.
He commenced to lash her with his tongue.
‘So this is what you do!’ he said in that thin, precise tone with which he addressed a medical board. ‘You, whom I thought were a faithful wife—you to whom I have given the best in me. To think that you are a light-o’-love, Eleanor …’
He had chosen the words with devilish cunning. She started as though fire had touched her, and looked up.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said with his thin, mirthless smile. ‘I heard it, even in my room. He was urging you to go away—to leave me—’
With a faint moan she put up her hand as if to stay the cruel words. But he stepped forward and dashed it aside, glowering down at her.
‘Say something,’ he commanded with brutal violence. ‘What is that man to you?’
She was trembling violently.
‘I—I—you